Posted
27th September 2001
Peace Movement USA
By Michael Albert of www.zmag.org
September
11 went well beyond tragic. Worse is possible. Much better is
also possible. And to achieve better is why activists need to
not only mourn, but also to educate and organize. But many people
I encounter doubt peace movement prospects. I find this wrong
for two reasons. One, doubting prospects wastes time. Even when
prospects of change are dim, to work for better outcomes is
always better then to bemoan difficulties. Two, contrary to
despondency, current circumstances auger hope. "Are you crazy?"
some people will ask. It is one thing to urge action, but it
is another thing to surrender reason to desire. However, it
is not desire that gives me hope, but evidence.
Last
night there was a two hour marathon Hollywood extravaganza broadcast
by all major networks and watched by millions. Elites are urging
lock-step obedience. Johnny and Jill are supposed to be donning
marching boots. Yet this was no pep rally for war. There was
nearly courage of those who worked to save lives, often giving
their own. The evening's songs sought restraint and understanding
and explicitly rejected cycles of retribution and hate. Don't
get me wrong. The evening wasn't ZNet set to music. But nor
did it support piling terror on top of terror. If the right-wing
were actually as ascendant as so many fear, we would have had
the Bob Hope and Charlton Heston Hour. We didn't. More, in the
last few days there have been scores of small and also some
quite large demonstrations and gatherings. Reports indicate
there are 105 scheduled today, Saturday. There is no war yet.
But there is resistance, and it is growing rapidly.
Just
two days ago I was asked to be on a national radio call-in show
with a listenership of roughly two million from all over the
country. The host, a Republican, thought there would be division
emerging about any war plans and he wanted to offer diverse
voices (which is itself a good sign). He told me I'd be on for
fifteen minutes. The time came, they called, I was asked how
I differed from Bush. I answered, and the discussion continued
for two hours. The host eventually left hostility behind, becoming
more and more curious. Many callers were hostile, sure, but
they were also open to cogent commentary. The simple formulation
that attacking civilians is terrorism, that terrorism is horrible,
and that therefore we should not attack civilians, was irrefutable.
More interesting, no one even tried to rebut contextual argument
and evidence. They made clear they knew my claims about U.S.
policies in Iraq and elsewhere were true and they would with
a few exceptions even grudgingly assent to them, so the remaining
issue was whether the U.S. should be bound by the same morals
that we hope others will be bound by, a dispute that is easy
to win with anyone but a fanatic. I won't proceed with details.
The point is, even in a right-wing forum, many people will hear
our views, understand them, and even change their minds.
U.S.
elites like war. War sends the message that laws do not bind
U.S. elites, that morality does not bind U.S. elites, that nothing
binds U.S. elites but their estimates of their own interests.
It trumpets that everybody else better ratify our plans, or
at least get out of the way. Likewise, for U.S. elites, war
preparedness is good economics. Military spending primes the
capitalist pump and spurs its engines, but crucially military
spending doesn't give those in the middle and at the bottom
better conditions or better housing or more education or better
health care or anything else that will make people less afraid,
more knowledgeable, more secure, and particularly more able
to develop and pursue their own agendas regarding economic distribution.
War empowers the rich and powerful, but its real virtue is that
it disempowers working people and the disenfranchised poor.
War annihilates deliberation. It elevates mainstream media to
dominate communication even more than in peacetime. War abets
repression by demanding obedience. It labels dissent treason,
or in this case, incipient terrorism. Elites like all this,
not surprisingly. So while elites gravitate toward a war on
terrorism for these reasons, what, if anything, might obstruct
their plans?
When
Bush says that attacking civilians for political purposes is
wrong and urges that we must find ways to eliminate such terrorism
- he is very compelling to almost everyone. But when in the
very next breath Bush urges as the method of doing so diverse
military attacks on civilians (or starving them), his hypocrisy
begs critique. As a solution to the danger of terrorism, committing
more terrorism that in turn breeds still more, will not sustain
support. Likewise, to fight fundamentalism with assertions that
God is on our side, will also prove uninspiring. Five-year-olds
can and will dissent. And so will adults.
So
what obstructs war? People do. It's that simple. People who
first doubt the efficacy and morality of piling terror on top
of terror. People who slowly move from quiet dissent to active
opposition. People who move from opposing the violence of war
and barbarity of starvation to challenging the basic institutions
that breed war and starvation. If elites choose war as a national
program they will do so in hopes that it can defend and even
enlarge their advantages. If we act so that war instead spurs
public understanding, and opposition not only to war, but in
time even to elite rule - then elites will reconsider their
agenda. Indeed, I bet many are already having grave doubts.
So how hard is our task? What do most people think about this
situation, before activism has countered media madness? Well,
it certainly isn't definitive, but Gallup polls give us more
reason for hope.
First
question: "Once the identity of the terrorists known, should
the American government launch a military attack on the country
or countries where the terrorists are based or should the American
government seek to extradite the terrorists to stand trial?"
In Austria 10% said we should attack. In Denmark 20%, Finland
14%, France 29%, Germany 17%, Greece 6%, Italy 21%, Bosnia 14%,
Bulgaria 19%, Czechoslavakia 22%, Croatia 8%, Estonia 10%, Latvia
21%, Lithuania 15% Romania 18%, Argentina 8%, Colombia 11%,
Ecuador 10%, Mexico 2%, Panama 16%, Peru 8%, Venezuela 11%,
and even in the U.S. only 54% favor attacking. Gallup didn't
get numbers for China, for the mideast countries, etc. Gallup
next asks: "If the United States decides to launch an attack,
should the U.S. attack military targets only, or both military
and civilian targets?" In Austria 82% said only military targets.
In Denmark 84%, Finland 76%, France 84%, Germany 84%, Greece
82%, Italy 86%, Bosnia 72%, Bulgaria 71%, Czechoslavakia 75%,
Estonia 88%, Latvia 82%, Lithuania 73% Romania 85%, Argentina
70%, Colombia 71%, Ecuador 74%, Mexico 73%, Panama 62%, Peru
66%, Venezuela 81%, and even in the U.S. 56% favor attacking
only military targets, 28% attacking both military and civilian,
and 16% gave no answer.
It seems clear that we do not inhabit a world lined up for protracted
war. We live, instead, in a world that is prepared for arguments
against war, for opposition to war, and even, in time, for addressing
the basic structural causes that produce war. Humanity does
not lack scruples or logic, but only information and knowledge.
If people have information and if they can escape media manipulation
and conformity, they will draw worthy conclusions. Our task
is to provide information and help break conformity.
Finally,
regarding the issues at hand. How hard is it to understand the
obvious? The U.S. postal system is not known for its exemplary
humanitarians or geniuses, much less by radicals. Yet in response
to workers killing others on the job--which is called "going
postal"--the postal service did not decide to determine where
the offending parties lived and attack those neighborhoods for
harboring terrorists. They also did not say that the stress
of postal work justifies serial homicide in the workplace, of
course. They instead legally prosecuted, on the one hand, and
also realized that stress was a powerful contributing factor
and so worked to reduce stress to in turn diminish the likelihood
of people going postal. Anyone can extend this analogy. It isn't
complicated.
For that matter, the U.S. government, which is certainly not
a repository of wisdom or moral leadership, doesn't generally
decide about terrorism to hold whole populations accountable.
When Timothy McVeigh bombed innocents, the Federal government
called it horrific, accurately, but did not declare war on Idaho
and Montana for harboring cells of the groups McVeigh was associated
with -- much less on all people sharing McVeigh's race or religion.
The government opted to prove McVeigh's culpability and to employ
legal means to restrain him and try the case. What makes September
11 different regarding our government's agenda is not so much
the larger scale of the horror, but instead its utility to the
government's reactionary programs. In the case of McVeigh, bombing
Montana wouldn't benefit elites. In the case of September 11,
elites think bombing diverse targets will benefit their capitalist
profit-making and geopolitical interests. That's harsh. That's
about the harshest thing one could say, I guess, in some sense,
in this situation. It is devilish opportunism. Yet, I honestly
think that at some level everyone knows it's true. It has gotten
to that point in this country. They play with our lives like
we are their little toys.and we know it, and we have to put
a stop to it, a step at a time.
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