---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 16 Oct 2002 01:39:11 -0700
From: radtimes <resist@best.com>
Subject: Who Will Lead?
Who Will Lead?
<http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/gitlin/2002/42/we_175_01.html>
An antiwar movement is finally, thankfully stirring. But the ideology-bound
leaders of that movement are steering it away from the millions of
Americans whose concerns and ambivalence might fuel it.
By Todd Gitlin
October 14, 2002
An antiwar movement is stirring, an overdue fact and a necessary one, as
the Bush crowd
lick their chops and the odds of war with Iraq rise by the minute, against
reason, against allies,
against American doubts.
The odds of one or another catastrophe in the short, middle, or long run
are terribly high, and the chances of a smooth, slick, low-cost, high-gain
victory are terribly low. Surely, the moment cries out for a smart,
extensive, inclusive popular movement against the gangbusters approach that
the Bush administration favors. Surely, the sobriety and skepticism of the
American people deserve organization and mobilization.
Might this nascent antiwar movement be that redemptive moment, when the
national conscience surges into the streets to take over where a supine
Congress stands aside?
Unhappily, no. This movement is far too weak and provincial to stop the
coming war.
What a smart movement could do is put out the markers, create the
organizational networks, and establish the foundation on which a more
substantial antiwar movement might later be built. Alas, that is also
unlikely.
The leadership of the current antiwar movement is building a firebreak
around itself, turning
the movement toward the bitter-end orthodoxy of the Old Left and away from
the millions of
Americans whose honest concerns and ambivalence might fuel it. If antiwar
sentiment turns
out to have any impact on the course of events, it will probably be despite
the organized
protests, and not because of them.
I spoke at an antiwar rally outside the UN on September 12, the same day
that President
Bush, inside, addressed the General Assembly. The turnout was ragged, 300
or so. But the
numbers weren't the most dismaying aspect of that gathering. The signs were.
Most of the printed placards held by the protesters said 'NO SANCTIONS, NO
BOMBING.' The international sanctions against Iraq have been a humanitarian
disaster for
the country's civilians. But doesn't Saddam Hussein bear some
responsibility for that
disaster? Must that not be noted? The bombing, US and UK attacks in the
no-fly zones of
northern and southern Iraq, are taking place under the auspices of a
mission to protect Iraqi
Kurds in the north and Iraqi Shiites in the south. Again, the Iraqi leader
bears responsibility;
Washington and London have made a credible case for the no-fly-zone sorties
because and
only because Saddam Hussein has trampled these long-suffering people in
more ways than
there is room to describe in this space.
Those picket signs are emblematic of a refusal to face a grotesque world.
They express a
near-total unwillingness to rebuke Saddam Hussein, and a rejection of any
conceivable
rationale for using force. The left-wing sectarians who promote 'NO
SANCTIONS, NO
BOMBING' don't want the US, or anyone, to lift a finger on behalf of the
Kurdsto whom
you might think we have a special responsibility, since our government
invited them to rise
up in 1991.
Now, those same cynics of the hard left have moved to the front of the
current anti-war
movement. The sponsors of what's being billed as a national anti-war
demonstration in
Washington on October 26, and their eminence grise, Ramsey Clark, express
no displeasure
with Saddam Hussein. Their world is two-toned and, as with the Old Left at
its worst, it's
always clear who's wearing the black hats. (Ramsey Clark belongs to the
International
Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic, after all.)
This will not play in Peoria. It does not deserve to play in Washington.
Clark and others of his mindset are not only morally tainted, they're
doomed. And the antiwar
movement is doomed if they are allowed to lead it. Liberal-left
antiwarriors need to be
out-front patriots if they expect to draw the attention and the support of
Americans at large.
Many are the compelling arguments against Bush's preventive war. For one
thing, it would
boost the odds that Saddam Hussein will use weapons of mass destruction
either in the
Middle East or, if he can manage it, in the United States. That risk and
others are not hard for
Americans to grasp. But these arguments are not made by self-proclaimed
anti-imperialists
who seem to have little to no interest in the security of Americans or the
world. (If you think
I exaggerate, take a look at the www.internationalanswer.org.)
Marc Cooper, that rare journalist of the left who calls know-nothings by
their proper name,
put it bluntly and well in the Los Angeles Times on September 29 ("A Smart
Peace
Movement Is MIA"), writing that "If the left is not for war against Hussein
and is also
opposed to economic sanctions, what is it for? If the left is for
containment instead of
invasion, then isn't it the U. S. armed forces that must do the containing?
... If, at the end of
the day, Hussein does foil weapons inspections, what is to be done then?"
To the unswerving Ramsey Clarks of the world, such questions are trivial or
worse. So how
did they end up at the front of the antiwar parade? In part, it's because
they're always ready,
and because they always have the same answer to every question: US Out of
Everywhere. In
part, it's because they're organized. They stay "on message"a horrible
political phrase to
describe the discipline of fanatics. In part it's because other antiwar
groups, chiefly pacifists,
are grateful simply to have company in resisting the stampede.
Where is the party of sense? Now that the Democrats having caved inmost are
too
calculating by halfwho will mobilize the millions of Americans who think
the Bush
doctrine is dangerous, but are sure to flee left-wing pieties? Will the
silent majority of
American antiwarriors stand up?
Those who care about global peace and security, and reject preventive or
preemptive war as
the means to achieve it, should be organizing teach-insreal teach-ins. They
should be
holding debates, not rallies of the faithful, mouthing nonsensical slogans.
Right now, the hard left is in charge by default, and the antiwar movement
is lame on arrival as
a result. If sensible antiwar forces make a valiant effort to speak outward
to the American
public, not upward to the gods of the hollow left, then and only then will
we stand a chance
of usefully weighing in against the rush to war.
----------
Todd Gitlin is a professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia
University. His
most recent book is .Media Unlimited: How the Torrent of Images and Sounds
Overwhelms Our Lives. Next spring, Basic Books will publish his Letters to
a Young
Activist.
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