[Reader-list] Albert: peace prospects

[Boud Roukema]

                          Peace Movement Prospects

                              By Michael Albert


http://www.lbbs.org/peacepros.htm





     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.



     The answers to these questions are all important. In our world,
     the only alternative to vigilantism is that guilt should be
     determined by an amassing of evidence that is then assessed in
     accordance with international law by the United Nations Security
     Council or other appropriate international agencies.



     Last night there was a two hour marathon Hollywood extravaganza
     broadcast by all the major networks and watched by millions. There
     was nearly no anger and no celebration of power. It was a
     dignified event that respected the dead and appropriately
     celebrated the courage of those who worked to save lives. The
     evening's songs sought restraint and understanding. This event
     occurred while elites seek lock-step obedience. Johnny and Jill
     are supposed to be donning marching boots. Yet this was no pep
     rally for war. Instead, the songs urged love 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 rather
     than saner heads and hearts were actually ascendant, then we would
     have had the Bob Hope and Charlton Heston Hour, and 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 run by 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.