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Keeping Hope Alive |
Current rating: 0 |
by Bill Hartung
(No verified email address) |
23 Mar 2003
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The War Has Started, But The Peace Movement Has Not "Lost" |
As promised, President Bush started his war with Iraq last week. The United States has marched off to war despite the fact that the majority of the world’s people oppose it, despite the fact that the Bush administration could not secure explicit authorization from the UN Security Council, and despite the fact that many Americans are supporting the war under false pretenses.
Roughly 44% of Americans think Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11 attacks and over half of Americans think Iraqi citizens were among the 9/11 hijackers. There were no Iraqi hijackers, but there were 15 Saudi citizens. But other than a few hard-line associates of Richard Perle, no one among the American political elite is suggesting that we overthrow the House of Saud.
You can be forgiven if, like me, you were a bit depressed to hear that the war had started. Haven’t we been down this road before? But this is no time to go into a funk. It’s time to sustain and build the peace movement, and engage in a full-throated debate about the meaning of this war. Otherwise, as Michael Klare has noted, this could be the first of many resource-driven wars for regime change.
At a panel discussion I attended last week, Stanley Crouch, a syndicated columnist and cultural critic, suggested that a major problem facing the anti-war movement is that “the war might not last more than a few weeks.” Therefore, how can people expect to build the kind of opposition that was built during Vietnam, which dragged on for years and years?
Crouch’s analogy is insightful, but the solution to the dilemma he poses has to do with re-defining the problem. To be effective, the anti-war movement cannot limit itself to being against the war with Iraq – it must be against the “war without end” doctrine of military first strikes, nuclear sabre-rattling, and aggressive unilateralism of which the war in Iraq is just the opening act.
The chances of preventing George W. Bush – a true believer in the cleansing powers of military force if there ever was one – from going to war with Iraq were always small. But look what the global anti-war movement accomplished. We forced the Bush administration to take the issue to the UN; we turned out millions of people in the largest coordinated anti-war demonstrations in history; we helped embolden swing states like Guinea, Cameroon, Mexico, Chile, Angola and Pakistan to resist U.S. bullying and bribery at the UN Security Council; we put the future of entire governments at risk when they attempted to side with the United States against the will of their own people.
That doesn’t sound to me like a peace movement that is “losing.” That sounds to me like a peace movement that may have lost the first skirmish, but is poised to win the larger struggle to put the doctrine of aggressive unilateralism back in the trash bin of history, where it belongs.
For the next few weeks, anti-war voices may be muted in the mainstream media as our loyal press corps covers the Iraq war as if it were a sporting event, focusing solely on tactical issues and “who’s winning,” not on whether it was necessary to go to war to disarm Iraq in the first place.
As the Win Without War coalition has noted, other options were available that would have allowed the Bush administration to save face and back off from the war. As chief UN inspector Hans Blix had pointed out, even if Saddam Hussein had bent over backwards and turned cartwheels to cooperate in disarmament, it would have taken a minimum of two to three months to accomplish that. The Bush folks could have pressed a resolution for Iraq to disarm within three months or face “serious consequences.” The resolution could have included concrete benchmarks for disarmament to be achieved along the way – not the kind of phony benchmarks that the Blair government was promoting at the last minute, but practical, achievable ones that would have given a rhythm and focus to the disarmament process. Three months later, we would either have had a disarmed Saddam Hussein, or a Bush administration with a much broader coalition for using force.
The Bush administration decided not to take this route because for them, this war has never been about disarming Saddam Hussein. It has been about projecting U.S. power into the Persian Gulf in a way that administration true believers think will enhance U.S. political, military, and economic interests and create a safer, and ultimately more democratic, Middle East. Why we should trust the crowd that can’t even abide democracy in Florida to bring democracy to Baghdad, Riyadh, and Teheran is one of those great unanswered questions that you are not likely to hear asked on “The O’Reilly Factor,” or CNN, or anywhere outside perhaps “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” on Comedy Central.
So, what should the peace movement do now? First and foremost, we shouldn’t give up. We should maintain all of the energy and creativity that has resulted in the mass mobilizations, the vigils, the mass faxes and phone calls to Congress, the growing civil disobedience against the war, the campus teach-ins, and the whole rich festival of democratic activity that has gotten us this far.
While “General Chung” and “General Woodruff” (my friend Lee’s nicknames for CNN’s Connie Chung and Judy Woodruff when they’re in full metal war coverage mode) ooh and aah over the smart bombs while ignoring the dumb policies that made the dropping of the bombs come to pass, we need to change the subject. We can ask some of the questions that the media is afraid to bring front and center (not that they are NEVER asked, just that they don’t get the time and attention they deserve).
Even if everything goes perfectly in Iraq from President Bush’s point of view – a quick, “clean” war in which Saddam Hussein is deposed and disarmed – will America or the world will be any safer the day after the war ends? Will we be less vulnerable to terrorist attacks? Will it be less likely that some tinpot dictator will get hold of a nuclear arsenal? Will the poverty, ignorance, and ideological fervor that are fueling war and terrorism be diminished?
My short answer to these questions is no, no, no and no again. We’re not going to build a safer world by pushing aggressive unilateralist policies at the expense of diplomatic, economic, and security cooperation. We’re not going to be in a better position to “roll up” Al Qaeda networks after a war with Iraq. We’re not going to be in a better position to recruit systematic allied cooperation to thwart the nuclear weapons programs of North Korea and Iran. We’re not going to be in a better position to revive the U.S. and global economies and replace the visions of strife and victimhood that pervade so much of our global polity with visions of hope and prosperity.
The next “regime change” that needs to happen after the one in Baghdad should not be in Teheran or Pyongyang – it should be in Washington. It won’t come through force of arms, it will come through what one recent documentary called “a force more powerful” – non-violent, democratic activism.
For those folks who think the peace movement has “lost,” I say, get back to me in November or December of 2004 (depending upon whether we need another “recount” this time around). I’m going to be busy for the next twenty months trying to take my country back from the prophets of aggressive unilateralism.
William D. Hartung is a Senior Research Fellow at the World Policy Institute and the author of “The Hidden Costs of War” (Fourth Freedom Forum, 2003). His project’s web site is www.worldpolicy.org/projects/arms/ |
See also:
http://www.commondreams.org/
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Hail America |
by Anders Stephanson
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
23 Mar 2003
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The battle is not chiefly about disarming Saddam Hussein, but rather a massively ambitious bid to reshape the world
Because he thinks he can change the world, George W. Bush has chosen to go to war against Iraq. What began in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001, as a diffuse "war on terrorism" now has escalated into a massively ambitious campaign to reshape the strategic landscape of the world in the forthright interest of the United States. The president has embarked on the greatest shift in U.S. foreign policy since Harry S Truman announced the Cold War in March 1947.
Gone are the attempts of the 1990s to lead the world by dint of economic ordering, by culture and diplomacy. The Bush administration thinks this is a unique chance to show the world that no threat or even competition is exempt from the forceful exposure to unadulterated U.S. power. If power always combines force and persuasion, the Bush gamble relies starkly on the former.
The current war is not chiefly about "disarming" Iraq. It is even less about preventing terrorism, the threat of which is in fact more likely to increase. The war is about "regime change," not only in Iraq but in the entire region. It is also, more important, about making sure that others understand in no uncertain terms the full force of the U.S. claim to global rights of intervention. The self-professed idea of pre-emption is nothing but the reproduction on a much vaster canvas of the old U.S. right to police Latin America, a right claimed (in the Monroe Doctrine, let us recall) in the name of democracy and liberty for everyone.
Such pieties apart, the Bush gamble is framed in the language of messianic Protestantism: The United States is chosen, in fact obliged, by higher authority (certainly higher than the United Nations) to redeem anywhere and everywhere. As the president declared in January, "We are called to defend the safety of our people and the hopes of all mankind." In carrying out this obligation he would take "whatever action is required, whenever action is necessary." His source of authorization is quite clear, for the freedom at stake "is God's gift to humanity." America, Bush has said, has "been called to a unique role in human events."
Such a calling assumes an absolute distinction and difference between the United States and the rest of the world. This conviction explains why the administration has so consistently refused any international treaties that could possibly restrict the absolute U.S. right to sovereign control.
The administration, as Americans have tended to do throughout their history, sees the United States as a crystallization of the world as it ought to be. The real, outside world is inherently inferior, a space to be acted upon. Other places, no matter how close and similar to the United States, can never become equal. Like ancient Rome, the United States is thus a world empire.
The degraded outside world, consequently, can have no right to judge the United States. It makes perfect sense that the United States should have the universal right to act when the world is in need of discipline and punishment.
All of which, not surprisingly, is a source of considerable worry for those potentially on the receiving end. And there is reason to worry. For one thing, there is now an enormous disparity in military power between the United States and the rest of the world. The United States is more important to the outside world than the outside world is to the United States, or so it seems. Like Desert Storm in 1991, this war against Iraq will be watched as a spectator sport. At home, Americans will experience few fundamental changes in their ordinary lives. Terrorism notwithstanding, war for the United States is something that happens elsewhere.
Why then call this a gamble? I am not thinking of the fact that war always involves unpredictable friction, but rather of the chances that George W. Bush's Monroe Doctrine for the world might work in the manner the president intends.
Only if the war is a blindingly spectacular success - meaning few U.S. casualties; the rapid collapse of the Iraqi regime without extensive destruction and civilian suffering; the discovery of a large presence of weapons of mass destruction; the installation of a decent government that keeps the country together without unending, massive occupation; the continued stability and even liberalization of the hitherto "friendly" Islamic oil states, and a forceful attempt to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian issue - would Bush (and British Prime Minister Tony Blair) emerge strengthened and capable of moving on, perhaps, to the next target. The quarrelsome French and Germans would then slowly fall back in line; the Russians and the Chinese would find economics reasons to do likewise.
But the odds for that kind of resounding success are not that great. What would happen then? Let us leave the scenario of disaster aside. A merely middling victory would maintain U.S. interests in the region for the foreseeable future, though the long-term effects are hard to discern. The damage to the larger international order, however, would be serious.
The administration's messianic unilateralism already has generated a strong counterreaction in the diplomatic game that has been conducted over the Iraqi question since last fall. Secretary of State Colin Powell, probably, managed to convince the administration to acknowledge, if only tactically, the legitimating force of the UN. This posture has now been discarded completely. The international goodwill that persisted through the Afghan campaign has evaporated along with it. The administration claims, to be sure, legal authority for the war in UN resolutions; but it is now Iraq, oddly, that could bring the attack to the Security Council as a war of aggression.
More important, anything short of full success would give a great boost to the ingenious attempt (mainly French) to make the UN the strategic counterweight to the new U.S. world order. That design has strong underpinnings. The UN is unwieldy and often ineffective. It encapsulates, however, the idea of law and legitimacy. In the 1990s, when geopolitical conflict waned, there was an enormous expansion of law or law-like procedure on an international scale. The United States has always advocated this in principle. But in reality, the United States accepts no potential infringements by the lesser lights of this world and goes along only if the outcome is favorable.
France, Germany and perhaps Russia, in focusing on the UN, would be in a position to form a wide political coalition against U.S. supremacy. The United States, by contrast, would have to rely on bribes, cajolery and threats. As shown by the extravagant attempted payoff to the Turks recently in exchange for U.S. troop bases, this is not an economical way of doing things.
Beyond this, messianic unilateralism, even with a band of assorted auxiliaries eager to curry favor, would undermine the struggle against terrorism. The French have been highly effective in terms of intelligence gathering and prevention, the two capabilities one needs above all others to be successful against terrorists. Here the United States needs as much cooperation across borders as it possibly can get - not less.
George W. Bush is apparently convinced that there will be no security for the United States until evil everywhere has been rooted out and that he has the right to act accordingly wherever and whenever he thinks fit. The war against Iraq shows that he is serious about his unlimited form of imperial rule. He may well succeed in Iraq. But much of the world is now more worried about what Bush might do than about Saddam Hussein's whereabouts. At no time since the end of the Vietnam war has the world been more politically at loggerheads with the United States. That is not a recipe for security.
Anders Stephanson is a professor of history at Columbia University and author of "Manifest Destiny: American Expansionism and the Empire of Right."
Copyright © 2003, Newsday, Inc.
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