[Peace-discuss] How to be an anti-war movement

[Carl Estabrook]

[AWAREists-- Here's an interesting discussion about how an anti-war
movement should proceed.  You will perhaps not be entirely surprised to
learn that I think Chomsky has it right.  (And note that in the twelfth
graf of his answer, Chomsky uses "question-begging" in the traditional
sense of assuming what you set out to prove, rather than in the sloppy
modern sense of simply posing a question.) Happy new year, CGE]

Chomsky was recently asked to respond to an article by David Cortright in
the Progressive, especially this paragraph:

"We need to win the support of many of those who favored the war in
Afghanistan.... This means focusing on the dangers of war in Iraq rather
than dwelling on US misdeeds in the past. We should frame the anti-war
message in ways that appeal to mainstream audiences. We can do this by
emphasizing widely shared values and themes, such as protecting the
innocent, winning the campaign against terrorism, cooperating with allies,
and preventing the rise of anti-Americanism.  We should strive to ride the
patriotic wave and offer forward-looking solutions that uphold the best
traditions of American democracy."

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Reply from NC,

I've known Dave Cortright for some years, and respect him very much, and
have heard similar views from others I respect.

Nevertheless, I disagree, radically.

To begin with, let's see what's at stake. The concrete proposals are to
focus on "protecting the innocent, winning the campaign against terrorism,
cooperating with allies, and preventing the rise of anti-Americanism. We
should strive to ride the patriotic wave and offer forward-looking
solutions that uphold the best traditions of American democracy."

Let's take them point by point.

On "protecting the innocent," there will be no disagreement, except on
everything that matters: how do we do it? And in asking how we do it, do
we pretend that the institutions we are calling on to "protect the
innocent" (like the White House, the Pentagon, the CIA, the energy
corporations,....) have no institutional structure and no history, and can
therefore be trusted, with a kind of religious faith, to do "the right
thing"? Or do we try to understand these questions so that maybe we can
make some sensible choices about "protecting the innocent"? No sensible
person would accept the first choice. But if we accept the second, we are
entering the domain that we are told to avoid. It is, therefore, hard to
find a sensible interpretation of the proposal.

Take the second point: winning the war against terrorism. Which terrorism?
Let's have a look at the lead recipients of US military aid: Israel,
Egypt, Colombia, Turkey, and a little earlier El Salvador and other such
attractive places. Does that tell us something about how to win the war
against the most vicious form of terrorism, namely state terrorism
directed internally? For example, by not massively contributing to it? But
we are told to avoid that topic, which means, to keep away from the core
questions of how to win the war against terrorism.

Suppose, however, we keep to the narrow form of terrorism that we are
allowed to look at in accord with prevailing ideology, and this
injunction: the terrorism of enemies committed against us and our allies.

How do we win that war?

Everyone who is at all serious knows that one crucial element is to attend
to the sources of the terrorism, and if there are legitimate grievances
interwoven among them, as is almost always the case, to attend to those
grievances -- not only to reduce the likelihood of terrorism, but also
because it is right to do so. This is understood by everyone who is
serious about the topic. To take just one current case, the head of
Israel's General Security Services (1996-2000), Ami Ayalon, recently
repeated publicly the truism that those who want to defeat Palestinian
terrorism by force "want an unending war"; the only way to end it is by
satisfying their legitimate demands for national self-determination in a
viable independent state. If Israelis were to follow the advice we are
considering, and not attend to their own past crimes, they would commit
themselves to an unending war. The point generalizes.

What about "cooperating with allies"? Suppose our Turkish ally is carrying
out massive atrocities against its Kurdish population, as it was doing
through the 1990s. The US did cooperate: by providing 80% of the arms in
an escalating flow. Is that the advice? Suppose our European allies
increase agricultural subsidies to prevent poor countries from exporting
to them. Should we cooperate by doing the same? In fact, we should
cooperate when it is right to do so, not otherwise, which leaves us where
we were. The proposal has no content, and simply evades the important
issues.

How about preventing the rise of anti-Americanism? What is
"anti-Americanism"? If it is opposition to murderous and destructive US
policies, should we prevent its rise? Or should we deal with the reasons
-- which means departing from the advice? If we want to understand the
sources of what is mislabelled "anti-Americanism" -- that is, opposition
to specific US policies -- should we follow the advice and refuse to
investigate the topic, inquiring into those policies and what they led to?
That is the advice we are being given. Surely it doesn't make sense, as
soon as it is spelled out.

The rest is just question-begging and we can ignore it.

If what is meant is that we should not respond to questions about how to
deal with al-Qaeda by giving a lecture about the Pequot massacre, I quite
agree, but so does everyone else.

The advice may sound constructive on the surface, but I'd suggest taking
it apart and looking more closely. I think you'll find it dissolves.

There are further considerations.

Let's look back a little. During the Vietnam war, very similar arguments
were given. It was commonly argued that we shouldn't tell the truth about
the fact that the US attacked South Vietnam and expanded its aggression to
the whole of Indochina, and we shouldn't go into the reasons for the
aggression and atrocities, or place the actions in the context of global
planning, to try to make sense of them and explain them. We shouldn't try
to bring out the true nature of the war crimes and crimes against
humanity. We should not take the position that the war was fundamentally
wrong and immoral," not a "mistake," because if we did, we would alienate
the American people -- about 70% of whom regarded the war as
"fundamentally wrong and immoral," not "a mistake," by the late 60s -- and
still do, with minor fluctuations.

Rather, it was argued, we should concentrate on the cost, the "quagmire,"
etc., thus separating ourselves from the population but appealing to the
educated elites, who did overwhelmingly insist that the war began with
'blundering efforts to do good" but by 1969 had become a "disaster" that
was too costly to us, a quagmire that was harming our society and killing
Americans, etc.; I'm quoting Anthony Lewis, at the extreme dovish/left end
of the tolerable intellectual spectrum.

Who was upholding "the best traditions of American democracy"? Is it
really true that "the best traditions of American democracy" are to
suppress our crimes and praise ourselves for our magnificence, whatever
the facts? And to suppress the reasons for what we have done, because it's
too unpleasant to face or hard for people not as smart as us to
understand? That's some conception of the best traditions of American
democracy.

There's a lesson there, I think, and it applies constantly. The advice
that we should suppress what we believe and keep to so-called "pragmatic"
concerns expresses real contempt for the general population. It amounts to
holding that the general public are morally incompetent and stupid, so we
must appeal to them in terms of simple ideas that they can understand --
in fact, those that are held, commonly in educated elite circles. But is
there any reason to suppose that the people we run into in the supermarket
or gas station are any less capable of decency than we are? Or so stupid
that they can't understand what we can? Are we some kind of superior
beings, who have to tone down what we believe because it is too lofty for
ordinary people to understand?

Maybe the way one talks to kids in nursery school? I don't see any other
way to interpret these proposals, I'm afraid.

Even in the narrowest tactical terms the proposals are, I think, very far
from the mark. There are always plenty of people who will keep to the
version of "American democracy" that holds that we must avoid the truth
about our past and present actions in the name of "patriotism." We don't
have to waste our time joining them, and if we do, no one will listen
anyway -- or should listen, because we are choosing to be dishonest:
that's what the advice amounts to. We surely should talk about protecting
the innocent, pay attention to others, etc. But that doesn't mean
suppressing the truth: rather, the opposite. It means telling the truth
about our own crimes, not taking the coward's way out and harping only on
the crimes of others. Our own crimes are vastly more important for the
simple reason that we can do something about them, easily: stop committing
them.

I don't think it takes great genius to understand that. I think, in fact,
it takes a good education not to understand it.

We should do our best to understand and find out the truth about important
matters, and we should be honest in approaching other people.

If we are not , they should disregard us.

One can doubtless contrive circumstances in which it is better to deceive,
but there's a heavy burden of proof to bear for anyone who counsels that
-- and putting in simple terms, that's what the advice comes down to. I
know of no way to meet that burden in this case. I think the opposite is
true. Honesty is not only the right policy, but also the most effective
one, apart from people who are so deeply indoctrinated that no headway
will be made anyway.

Noam Chomsky