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The Peace Movement Today - Where Is It?

Comment by Larry Ross, March 27, 2007

As one who foresaw, and lectured against the Vietnam War before it started in the early 60's, and more or less continuously ever since about the nuclear arms race, wars and lately the Iraq War and the US planned War against Iran, I have been concerned about the peace movement. Where are the thousands that demonstrated in 2003 before Bush launched his illegal war on Iraq ? Now the Iraq body count is 655,000, the same people don't bother to demonstrate or make any noticeable gesture against this war now. Why? Tom Englehart gives some of the answers below. The most important reason is the lack of the draft. The draft during the Vietnam War brought it home to millions of young men, their families and friends, that they could be snatched off the streets and sent to kill and be killed in Vietnam . So their own persons were directly threatened. So they read far more about the Vietnam War, and decided for a host of reasons that it was a barbarous, illegal crazy kind of war without any justification. They decided "We won't go" and took to the streets to say so.

With no draft today they are not aware of a personal stake. It's not the same and is remote enough that they don't worry about it. Also, the mass media does not tell them about Bush's lies and how his administration conned the American people and Congress into war. They don't tell the people that Bush is repeating the same kind of lies to get their support for a much bigger war on Iran, with long-term consequences, that threatens the future of all humanity in many respects.

In Sept/Oct 2006 I did a lecture tour of New Zealand on the dangers of a US-led War on Iran, Keeping NZ nuclear free, and the general dangers of the Bush Administration and it's new permissive doctrines on nuclear weapon usage. Attendance was disappointingly poor, lower than expected, and response was sluggish, with no reportage and publicity. I suppose because New Zealand did not join Bush's 'coalition-of-the-willing' duped nations like the UK, Australia and a few others, New Zealanders did not think that the existing and proposed wars had a direct application to them.  I have to conclude, that if the threat is not frighteningly obvious and knocking at their door, people are not interested. The thought that the war threats and barbarisms, that may seem remote today, can become real and involve them tomorrow, is not enough to stir them to action. Also, bookings for talks were fewer than expected. People just were not interested. Also, demonstrations against the Iraq war have dropped from several thousand participants to 100 or less. On the 4th year anniversary of Bush's illegal Iraq war, well publicised beforehand, we had only about 100 attending our rally with music and short talks in Cathedral Square Christchurch .

Although there are many indications of extreme dangers and threats to humanity from the Bush regime, people don't seem to want to know, or care.

Although many experts say the threat of a nuclear war is greater than ever before, people are generally unconcerned or prefer not to be bothered learning about such things. They are either too busy, or just choose to do something else.

Also, because media coverage of the Iraq war and the lies Bush invented to justify it, is so poor, people don't know enough to be worried or feel activated. On the nuclear threat issues, and Bush's new 'nuclear weapon permissiveness' the media has been remarkably silent. Again, if people don't know because their media does not tell them, they assume there is no threat, and that the occasional peace activist warning about it, can be safely ignored. They assume, that because there has been no nuclear war for 60 years, it won't happen now, especially with the end of the cold war. Therefore there's nothing to worry about. They have been conditioned by 'managed news' which avoids certain realities, that someone's alleged nuclear threats are not worth worrying about or even finding out if there are such threats.

These are some of the problems the peace movement faces today.

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Demobilizing America: Outsourcing Action in an Imperial World

by Tom Engelhardt, March 25, 2007

Excuse me if, at 62, and well into my second era of protest against yet another distant, disastrous, and disabling American war, I express a little confusion. Was it actually like this in Rome while the legions were off fighting on the German frontiers? Was this the way it felt in London while the imperial forces conducted their frontier wars in Afghanistan, or Paris when the Foreign Legion was holding down North Africa ? Was this how it felt in Washington when Douglas MacArthur's father was suppressing the Filipinos and General Jacob Smith was turning the island of Samar into a "howling wilderness"? Is this the way it usually feels in the heartlands of great empires until the barbarians actually do come knocking at the gates?

    I went marching against the President's Iraqi war of choice in my hometown last Sunday. I found myself in an older crowd, many visibly from the Vietnam era. It was relatively quiet, small-scale, and lacking in energy; all in all - for me at least - a modestly dispiriting experience, given the crisis at hand and the disillusioned state of public opinion here in the U.S.

    I came home wondering whether some Bush-era version of the old Roman formula had indeed been working. Had bread and circuses become croissants and iPods, or Bud and American Idol , or Sony PlayStation 3 and 24? I couldn't help puzzling over the gap between public opinion on the President's war and public action, or between the conclusions opinion polls tell us so many Americans have reached and those generally reached in Washington as well as in the mainstream media.

    I know I'm not alone in wondering about such things, so here's my provisional exploration of some of what's puzzled me most. I don't claim to have the answers, only perhaps some of the questions. Think of this, then, as a guided tour of a few of the trees on our landscape - with the hope that you'll be able to spot the forest.

     An Imperial Frame of Mind

    For four years now, journalists have reported on Iraq; editorial pages have editorialized; and pundits - that special breed of Ciceros - have opined; while the retired generals who fought our last frontier wars have trooped onto FOX, MSNBC, and CNN to analyze this one; and experts and political figures of every expectable sort have appeared again and again on the Charlie Rose Show, Meet the Press , and their ilk, without our general fund of wisdom seeming to improve appreciably.

    The same people who once thought Bush's war was a great idea, or a good idea, or at least an okay idea, or something we should all support no matter what, are still at it. Now, some of them claim the war was a lousy idea but, following Colin Powell's Pottery Barn rule , are convinced that, since we "broke" Iraq , it's "ours" anyway. Some, like the Washington Post editorial page's editors, still think the invasion was a good idea, just somehow poorly - the word you always see is "incompetently" - carried out, making the mess the Iraqis are in still ours.

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