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As I write this, it looks like war.
This, in spite of the obvious lack of enthusiasm in the
country for war. The polls that register "approve" or
"disapprove" can only count numbers, they cannot test the
depth of feeling. And there are many signs that the support
for war is shallow and shaky and ambivalent.. That's why the
numbers showing approval for war have been steadily going
down.
This administration will not likely be stopped, though it
knows its support is thin., In fact, that is undoubtedly why
it is in such a hurry; it wants to go to war before the
support declines even further.
The assumption is that once the soldiers are in combat, the
American people will unite behind the war. The television
screens will be dominated by images showing "smart bombs"
exploding, and the Secretary of Defense will assure the
American people that civilian casualties are being kept to a
minimum. (We're in the age of megadeaths, and any number of
casualties less than a million is no cause for concern).
This is the way it has been. Unity behind the president in
time of war. But it may not be that way again.
The anti-war movement will not likely surrender to the
martial atmosphere. The hundreds of thousands who marched in
Washington and San Francisco and New York and Boston - and in
villages, towns, cities all over the country from Georgia to
Montana - will not meekly withdraw. Unlike the shallow
support for the war, the opposition to the war is deep,
cannot be easily dislodged or frightened into silence.
Indeed, the anti-war feelings are bound to become more
intense. To the demand "Support Our GIs", the movement will
be able to reply: "Yes, we support our GIs, we want them to
live, we want them to be brought home. The government is not
supporting them. It is sending them to die, or to be wounded,
or to be poisoned by our own depleted uranium shells".
No, our casualties will not be numerous, but every single one
will be a waste of an important human life. We will insist
that this government be held responsible for every death,
every dismemberment, every case of sickness, every case of
psychic trauma caused by the shock of war.
And though the media will be blocked from access to the dead
and wounded of Iraq, though the human tragedy unfolding in
Iraq will be told in numbers, in abstractions, and not in the
stories of real human beings, real children, real mothers and
fathers - the movement will find a way to tell that story.
And when it does, the American people, who can be cold to
death on "the other side", but who also wake up when "the
other side" is suddenly seen as a man, a woman, a child -
just like us - will respond.
This is not a fantasy, not a vain hope. It happened in the
Vietnam years. For a long time, what was being done to the
peasants of Vietnam was concealed by statistics, the "body
count", without bodies being shown, without faces being
shown, without pain, fear, anguish shown. But then the
stories began to come through - the story of the My Lai
massacre, the stories told by returning GIs of atrocities
they had participated in.
And the pictures appeared - the little girl struck by napalm
running down the road, her skin shredding, the mothers
holding their babies to them in the trenches as GIs poured
rounds of bullets from automatic rifles into their bodies.
When those stories began to come out, when the photos were
seen, the American people could not fail to be moved. The war
"against Communism" was seen as a war against poor peasants
in a tiny country half the world away.
At some point in this coming war, and no one can say when,
the lies coming from the administration - "the death of this
family was an accident", "we apologize for the dismemberment
of this child", "this was an intelligence mistake", "a radar
misfunction" - will begin to come apart.
How soon that will happen depends not only on the millions
now - whether actively or silently -- in the anti-war
movement, but also on the emergence of whistle blowers inside
the Establishment who begin to talk, , of journalists who
become tired of being manipulated by the government, and
begin to write to truth. . And of dissident soldiers sick of
a war that is not a war but a massacre --how else describe
the mayhem caused by the most powerful military machine on
earth raining thousands of bombs on a fifth-rate military
power already reduced to poverty by two wars and ten years of
economic sanctions?
The anti-war movement has the responsibility of encouraging
defections from the war machine. It does this simply by its
existence, by its example, by its persistence, by its voices
reaching out over the walls of government control and
speaking to the consciences of people.
Those voices have already become a chorus, joined by
Americans in all walks of life, of all ages, in every part of
the country.
There is a basic weakness in governments, however massive
their armies, however wealthy they are, however they control
the information given to the public, because their power
depends on the obedience of citizens, of soldiers, of civil
servants, of journalists and writers and teachers and
artists. When these people begin to suspect they have been
deceived, and withdraw their support, the government loses
its legitimacy, and its power.
We have seen this happen in recent decades, all around the
globe. Leaders who were apparently all-powerful, surrounded
by their generals, suddenly faced the anger of an aroused
people, the hundreds of thousands in the streets and the
reluctance of the soldiers to fire, and those leaders soon
rushed to the airport, carrying their suitcases of money with
them.
The process of undermining the legitimacy of this government
has begun. There has been a worm eating at the innards of its
complacency all along - the knowledge of the American public,
buried, but in a very shallow grave, easy to disinter, that
this government came to power by a political coup, not by
popular will.
The movement should not let this be forgotten.
The first steps to de-legitimize this government are being
taken, in small but significant ways. The wife of the
President must call off a gathering of poets in the White
House because the poets have rebelled, because they see the
march to war as a violation of the most sacred values of
poets through the ages.
The generals who led the Gulf War of 1991 speak out against
this impending war as foolish, unnecessary, dangerous. The
C.I.A. contradicts the president by saying Saddam Hussein is
not likely to use his weapons unless he is attacked.
All across the country - not just the great metropolitan
centers, like Chicago, but places like Boesman, Montana, Des
Moines, Iowa, San Luis Obispo, California, Nederland,
Colorado, Tacoma, Washington, York, Pennsylvania, Santa Fe,
New Mexico, Gary, Indiana, Carrboro, North Carolina --
fifty-seven cities and counties in all -- have passed
resolutions against the war, responding to their citizens.
The actions will multiply, once the war has begun. The stakes
will be higher. People will be dying every day. The
responsibility of the peace movement will be huge - to speak
to what people may feel but are hesitant to say. To say that
this is a war for oil, for business. Bring back the
Vietnam-era poster: "War Is Good For Business - Invest your
Son". (In this morning's Boston Globe, a headline: "Extra $15
Billion for Military Would Profit New England Firms")
Yes, no blood for Oil, no blood for Bush, no blood for
Rumsfeld or Cheney or Powell. No blood for political
ambition, for grandiose designs of empire.
No action should be seen as too small, no non-violent action
should be seen as too large. The calls now for the
impeachment of George Bush should multiply. The
constitutional requirement "high crimes and misdemeanors"
certainly applies to sending our young halfway around the
world to kill and be killed in a war of aggression against a
people who have not attacked us.
Those poets troubled Laura Bush because by bringing the war
into her ceremony they were doing something "inappropriate".
That should be the key; people will continue to do
"inappropriate" things, because that brings attention - the
rejection of propriety, the refusal to be "professional"
(which usually means not breaking out of the box in which
your business or your profession insists you stay in).
The absurdity of this war is so starkly clear that people who
have never been involved in an anti-war demonstration have
been showing up in huge numbers at recent rallies. Anyone who
has been to one of them can testify to the numbers of young
people present, obviously doing this for the first time.
Arguments for the war are paper thin and fall apart at first
touch. Weapons of mass destruction? Iraq may develop one
nuclear bomb (though the UN inspectors find no sign of
development) - but Israel has 200 nuclear weapons and the US
has 20,000 and six other countries have undisclosed numbers.
Saddam Hussein a tyrant? Undoubtedly, like many others in the
world? A threat to the world? Then how come the rest of the
world, much closer to Iraq, does not want war? Defending
ourselves? The most incredible statement of all. Fighting
terrorism? No connection found between Sept. 11 and Iraq.
I
believe it is the obvious emptiness of the administration
position that is responsible for the unprecedentedly quick
growth of the anti-war movement. And for the emergence of new
voices, unheard before, speaking "inappropriately" outside
their professional boundaries. 1500 historians have signed an
anti-war petition. Businessmen, clergy, have put full page
ads in newspapers. All refusing to stick to their
"profession" and instead professing that they are human
beings first.
I
think of Sean Penn traveling to Baghdad, in spite of
mutterings about patriotism. Or Jessica Lange, speaking at a
movie festival in Spain: "I despise George Bush and his
administration." The actress Renee Zellweger spoke to a
reporter for the Boston Globe, about "how public opinion is
manipulated by what we're told. You see it all the time,
especially now....The good will of the American people is
being manipulated. It gives me the chills...I'm so going to
go to jail this year!"
Rap artists have been speaking out on war, on injustice. The
rapper Mr. Lif says: "I think people have been on vacation
and it's time to wake up. We need to look at our economic,
social and foreign policies and not be duped into believing
the spin that comes from the government and the media."
In the cartoon, "The Boondocks", which reaches 20 million
readers every day, the cartoonist Aaron Magruder has his
character, a black youngster named Huey Freedman, say the
following: "In this time of war against Osama bin Laden and
the oppressive Taliban regime, we are thankful that OUR
leader isn't the spoiled son of a powerful politician from a
wealthy oil family who is supported by religious
fundamentalists, operates through clandestine organizations,
has no respect for the democratic electoral process, bombs
innocents, and uses war to deny people their civil liberties.
Amen."
The voices will multiply. The actions, from silent vigils to
acts of civil disobedience (three nuns are facing long jail
terms for pouring their blood on missile silos in Colorado),
will multiply.
If Bush starts a war, he will be responsible for the lives
lost, the children crippled, the terrorizing of millions of
ordinary people, the American GIs not returning to their
families. And all of us will be responsible for bringing that
to a halt.
Men who have no respect for human life or for freedom or
justice have taken over this beautiful country of ours. It
will be up to the American people to take it back.
Dr. Howard Zinn is Professor Emeritus of Political Science
at Boston University. |