[Dryerase] Learning the Lessons of George the First's First Gulf War

[Michael Novick]

Here's the lead editorial from the latest issue of "Turning the Tide: 
Journal of Anti-Racist Action, Research & Education," Volume 15 #4, Winter 
2003. For a free sample copy of the entire issue, email 
ara-la at antiracistaction.us, or write to the address at the bottom of the 
articles. Paid subscriptions are always welcome.

Learning the Lessons of George the First's First Gulf War
by
Michael Novick,
Anti-Racist Action-LA/People Against Racist Terror

Malcolm X said that of all studies, history best rewards our diligent 
efforts, because of the light it casts on our current reality. With that in 
mind, a look back at the previous U.S. war in Iraq, and the opposition to 
it, will pay dividends in dealing with the current Bush administration plan 
to launch a renewed military assault in the on-going US war against Iraq. 
Unless we want to repeat the failures of that previous effort, we must 
understand why we were not capable of derailing Desert Shield and Desert 
Storm in the early 1990's, or doing much to materially impede the decade of 
war that has followed. What were the key weaknesses of our organizing and 
resistance efforts? What were the main strategies of the U.S. ruling elite 
in building its international coalition and support base within the U.S.? 
How can we overcome those weaknesses, and undermine those strategies, in 
the current period?

How can we expose to people in the US, whose consent is still pivotal to 
the ability of the US regime to wage such wars, what its real costs are? 
Not by seeking a level of opposition that will minimize people's discomfort 
level, but by exposing the system that produces war.

We can identify four key weaknesses of the anti-war movement in that 
earlier period.

The most obvious and basic weakness was that the movement against the war 
flat-lined once the war began.

People are talking excitedly today about how the current growing opposition 
to the war is much greater than at a comparable period in the development 
of the Vietnam War and the anti-war movement of the 60's. But they are 
forgetting that most of the protest and opposition to the first Bush war in 
Iraq came during the build-up of Bush's international coalition and the 
massing of US and "allied" forces in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in 
preparation for the invasion.

Once Congress voted to approve Bush Sr.'s proposed use of armed force, and 
troops went in, the anti-war movement pretty much collapsed. The litany of 
"We have to support our boys" became predominant. the Democrats fell 
loyally in line behind the President once the vote was taken. That's 
because they ultimately represent the same class and colonial interests as 
the Republicans.

Vietnam an Exception to thePattern of Acquiescence to War

This is in fact the general pattern in U.S. history, to which the Vietnam 
War was a striking exception, because the Vietnamese were able to 
effectively apply a strategy of protracted people's war. Combined with US 
over-extension and weakness, this allowed the war's impact to be 
experienced first-hand by a conscript army, and seen as a prospect by 
millions more facing conscription. The rulers of the US learned two key 
lessons, which mean such a process is unlikely to be repeated. First, they 
abandoned the legal draft, obligatory military service, in favor of a 
poverty draft and a professional, high tech army. Second, they abandoned 
"escalation." Instead they opted for a combination of "low-intensity 
warfare" (covert military actions fought mainly under CIA control via 
puppet soldiers from the colonies) as in Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador 
and Afghanistan in the 80's; and nazi-style "blitzkrieg" (lightning war) as 
in Granada, Panama, Iraq and Kosovo/Yugoslavia. Remember that there was 
opposition to the US war with Mexico in 1846. Abraham Lincoln, in Congress, 
actually voted against a declaration of war. People like to quote him now 
from that speech about the dangers of executive power. But they neglect to 
mention that once the declaration passed, he along with the rest of 
Congress voted to "support our boys" and pass the appropriations bills 
necessary to fight that war of aggression. Congress later approved the 
annexation of the additional territories conquered in that war (including 
California), as they had approved the annexation of Texas, which 
precipitated the war.

There is no reason to expect that a war in Iraq will be protracted, once 
launched. Remember that people made dire predictions to the effect that 
Afghanistan would be a snare for the U.S. because of its long history of 
protracted, bloody battles against foreign invaders, and the fact that they 
had bogged down the Russians for almost a decade. Yet neither the Afghan 
winter, nor its mountains, nor its clans, proved to be any substantial 
impediment to the US military operations. (This is not to say the US 
operation was a success, either on its own terms or from the perspective of 
the Afghan people, who are now suffering under a new set of mujaheddin 
warlords.)

Iraq has almost no natural protection from invasion in terms of terrain, 
and only a little in terms of weather. Its army and people have been 
weakened by over a decade of warfare by the US and Britain. It will no 
doubt pay a horrible price if Bush succeeds in once again sending in troops 
and launching a full-scale air war on Baghdad.

But we cannot expect that the course of the war will provide opportunities 
for an incremental growth of opposition and anti-war organizing based on 
the costs of the war for the U.S. in conventional terms. We must do it now 
-- the building, the extending, and the engaging of people in a critical 
dialogue that will deepen their questioning of the whole sick system.

It's an Empire, not a Policy

A second related weakness of the anti-war movement a decade ago was that it 
fell into the trap of a "foreign policy" debate. Seeking the lowest common 
denominator, people focused on the need for using diplomatic means to 
achieve US goals, rather than on exposing and opposing the US empire. 
Forces that did present a supposedly "anti-imperialist" analysis mostly 
tried to portray Saddam Hussein as a bulwark of anti-capitalist 
development. The connection between the war and the totality of the 
imperialist system, including the way it functions inside the U.S. itself, 
was not dealt with.

Recall that once the war was launched, there was in fact a massive, 
jingoistic outpouring of support, especially to hail the conquering heroes. 
Yellow ribbons appeared everywhere and in cities across the US there were 
victory parades greeting the returning troops with crowds far larger than 
any opposition march had been. Anti-war organizing must take on, head-on, 
this identification with the empire. It must challenge both the costs that 
the empire extracts from, and the inducements it offers to, people in this 
country. Without this key element, simply trying to expose how Saddam used 
to be the CIA's man does little to motivate people to the sacrifices 
necessary to really confront the war machine. The anti-war movement cannot 
perpetuate illusions about democratic decision making in Congress or 
Democratic opposition to war. The Congressional vote this year, like that 
in 1990, came to a foregone conclusion. Enough Democrats vote 'no,' once 
passage is assured, to preserve the illusion of debate and 'loyal 
opposition.' The war must be fought through forms of direct action, 
resistance, education, and the development of the social and political 
forces that can stop it. These lie outside of Congress and the political 
parties of the rulers. We must take into account that the empire began 
here, in the territories and among the people of America, and it is here 
that it will ultimately be ended.

Racism, Police Brutality, and the War at Home

Even more critically, the anti-war movement against Desert Storm failed to 
deal with the central issue of racism. This had several manifestations. 
Here in Los Angeles, for example, the struggle over the war practically 
coincided with the widely publicized police beating of Rodney King. Yet the 
peace movement was invisible on the issue of this manifestation of a "war 
at home." Although there was some significant Black participation in peace 
rallies in L.A., including several Black war resisters in the ranks of the 
military, there was minimal white involvement in the justice struggle to 
end police brutality.

More than 5000 people marched on the LAPD's Parker Center on Mother's Day 
1991 to protest the King beating and demand a house-cleaning with top to 
bottom change at the LAPD, but the folks from "Another Mother for Peace" or 
other white, west-side and student based peace groups were not there. It 
was mostly a "Black thing."

The fall-out from this failure of the peace movement to connect to the 
issue of police abuse was profound for both issues and movements. The 
white-dominated peace movement failed to make connections or sink roots by 
linking the issue of militarism at home and abroad, despite lip service to 
the theme of "peace and justice." It failed to add its force to a push for 
radical social transformation and community empowerment. As a result, the 
powers-that-be were able to install a few minor cosmetic changes at LAPD, 
allowing Chief Gates to stay in power for another year or more and for the 
cops who beat King to be acquitted. Warren Christopher went from brokering 
a deal for phony "reforms" in the LAPD to charting the course of the empire 
as a king-maker and Secretary of State for Bill Clinton. And the peace 
movement condemned itself to irrelevance.

Compare that to the high water mark and lasting impact of the anti-war, 
anti-imperialist struggle at the time of the Vietnam War, which was in many 
ways led and pushed by Black, Chicano and Asian liberation forces in this 
country. Even a figure like Martin Luther King, Jr. was clear that the 
struggle for justice and against war were one and the same. He declared 
that the struggle against the war in Vietnam had to be a struggle against 
the system that produced war or we would simply be fighting a rear-guard 
action against another war in short order. It was the Black Power movement 
that coined the slogan, "Hell No! We Won't Go!" which set a standard of 
resistance that galvanized anti-draft and anti-war protests. It was 
Muhammad Ali who said, "No Viet Cong ever called me nigger." It was the 
Chicano Moratorium that seared into people's consciousness the visceral 
connection between racist police brutality and imperialist war.

The anti-war movement today must follow that earlier example and overcome 
the weaknesses of the movement against the first Gulf War in this regard, 
or it is doomed to irrelevance.

In the USA PATRIOT law and the Homeland Security Department, in the 
anti-immigrant crackdown and Operation Tarmac, and in LA police chief 
William Bratton's definition of supposed gang violence as a 'national 
security problem,' police repression and brutality are tightly connected to 
the drive towards endless colonial wars around the globe. The empire 
becomes ever more seamless. The "peace movement" must address the needs, 
issues and leadership of the "peace makers," the gang truce activists who 
are trying to bring peace to their own communities, and assert community 
control over abusive police. And clearly, anti-war activists must get 
ourselves organized to protect ourselves from and defend against police 
abuse and repression of political dissidents.

War and Fascism

The fourth and final aspect of a failure by the peace movement of the early 
90's to deal with racism and the nature of the system is two-fold, and we 
are still seeing its repercussions. It has to do with a failure to deal 
with fascist activity in the U.S. On the one hand, racist and fascist 
elements seized on the war to present themselves as opponents of the 
government and the Bush "New World Order," and thereby sought to infiltrate 
and recruit from the anti-war movement. In Seattle, a member of the Lyndon 
LaRouche fascist network took a position of leadership in the main anti-war 
coalition. In many cities the John Birch Society as well as openly 
anti-Semitic forces hiding behind Pat Buchanan, attempted to worm into 
peace rallies. White Aryan Resistance leader Tom Metzger sent racist 
propaganda to US soldiers in the Gulf. At the same time a wave of bigoted 
violence broke out within the US, directed at both Arabs and Jews. These 
twin phenomena have continued unabated to this day, in fact on a far larger 
scale. They must be high-priority areas for the peace movement to act, 
particularly in defense of immigrants targeted as scapegoats by both the 
state and out-front racists. If the anti-war movement clearly opposes the 
totality of the empire, defends the human rights and needs of oppressed 
people around the world and inside the US, and struggles for justice 
against racism and police abuse, it will clearly demarcate opposition to 
the war based on a commitment to human liberation, from the propagandistic 
posturing and racist scapegoating carried out in war time by fascist 
forces. Neo-nazi groups in substantial numbers are presenting themselves as 
opponents of the US war drive in order to recruit disaffected young whites 
to their ranks. The anti-war, anti-imperialist forces must be explicitly 
anti-racist, and also explicitly revolutionary-minded, to effectively 
out-organize such nazi formations.

We offer this analysis as a contribution to building a more powerful, more 
effective and more revolutionary movement against the latest phases in 
Bush's "endless war." We invite feedback and criticism, and hope that by 
understanding and debating this history, we can overcome the problems that 
hamstrung the anti-war efforts a decade ago. Please respond to:
ara-la at antiracistaction.us

Lead editorial from "Turning the Tide: Journal of Anti-Racist Action, 
Research and Education"
Volume 15, Number 4, Winter 2002-2003
Anti-Racist Action/People Against Racist Terror (ARA/PART)
PO Box 1055
Culver City CA 90232
310-495-0299
ara-la at antiracistaction.us