Reasons to Resist Despair and Keep Fighting
Jan 30 at 1:01am by Anonymous
At the same time, there are a number of sound empirical reasons to think that antiwar activists have already won significant victories and can expect more triumphs. There are other reasons to keep resisting that have nothing to do with past victories or the objective balance of forces. In what follows, I give arguments for Americans who hate the war to resist defeatism and stay energized against Bush foreign policy and for the causes of peace, justice and democracy at home and abroad.
Unprecedented Early Resistance.
The depth, breadth and scale of the domestic, overseas and popular resistance to Bush’s war are remarkable - unprecedented at this stage of an American military campaign. The numbers antiwar activists put in the streets even before the conflict even formally opened were phenomenal. Despite the best jingoistic efforts of the White House and corporate-state media, popular antiwar activism is already at a level peace organizers were unable to attain until many years into the Vietnam War.
Lives Saved.
Peace demonstrators at home and around the world have already saved Iraqi lives by contributing significantly to the creation of a political climate in which “mass civilian casualties” are feared as “a public relations disaster for Washington” (Reuters).
No Quick and Easy Victory.
A key part of the sales job for this war has been the promise of rapid, total victory. Bush never leveled with the American people regarding projected deaths of Iraq civilians or US soldiers and the length and danger of the war and the occupation. So where are all the grateful, welcoming, self-consciously “liberated” Iraqi civilians predicted by the Bush administration? This Sunday’s CNN coverage acknowledged “unexpectedly strong resistance” from Iraqi forces. Invading Iraq to install a new regime without any real support from other Arab states and other leading world nations may prove to be a long and bloody struggle. The fierce determination of Iraqi leaders is combining with resurgent Iraqi nationalism and Kurdish distrust of US intentions to prevent easy and rapid imperial triumph. This works against the quick disappearance of the peace movement on the model of 1991, when Daddy Bush achieved the basic objective (Iraq our of Kuwait) in short order with a “Nintendo War” and when there was no question of a long and difficult occupation following “regime change.”
Where Are All Those Terrible Weapons of Mass Destruction?
Another key part of the White House’s sales job is the notion that Saddam possesses huge and threatening stockpiles of major, state-of-the-art chemical and biological weapons and the potential to develop nuclear weapons. The Pentagon will pressure the media to play along with the doctrinal requirement that Saddam be shown to have possessed truly fearsome caches of WMD. There is potential for welcome White House embarrassment here, thanks to the monumental deception involved in the claim, well understood by serious investigators.
Soft, Passive and Qualified Support for Bush’s Unnecessary War.
Many Americans express outward support for the president because they think they should “support our troops” in a moment of crisis and have been led to believe that the war will be quickly won and concluded. Privately, however, many Bush supporters don’t get the president’s obsession with Saddam Hussein and his determination to put our soldiers in harm’s way for incredibly murky reasons. Their assent is full of misgivings, reflecting a sneaking and accurate suspicion that they have been fed bad information to convince them that Saddam represents a serious threat to people outside Iraq.
As the struggle extends and costs more American as well as Iraq lives, with the justifications unclear and questionable, some of this outward support will erode. It won’t help the White House that America’s incredibly unequal political economy continues to wallow in pseudo-recovery, its top-heavy torpor furthered by the regressive domestic policies Bush hopes to advance with his imperial agenda.
It is an indication of the soft and passive nature of the president’s support that pro-war rallies only put hundreds in public squares while antiwar activists marshal tens and even hundreds of thousands of passionate marchers.
The “Vietnam Syndrome” is not Dead.
Bush’s father spoke too soon when he claimed that the Persian Gulf War (when the US and its allies dropped 84,200 tons of munitions on Iraq and Kuwait) put the “Vietnam syndrome” to rest. The “Vietnam syndrome” refers to the American population’s reluctance to sustain mass American casualties in overseas conflicts of dubious defensive necessity. The high-altitude bombing of Iraq and the horrific slaughter of Saddam’s defeated troops in 1991 hardly qualified as a serious test of the “syndrome’s” strength.
The father of one of the first US soldiers killed in “Operation Liberate Iraq” accused the president of essentially taking his son’s life for no good reason. This mourning father is rightly unconvinced that Saddam Hussein represents the sort of danger that might justify such a sacrifice. The Bush administration will elicit more such bitterness among grieving families and communities as it wages its unnecessary imperial war of occupation on sullen, un-welcoming, and armed Iraqis.
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