[Peace-discuss] Fwd: [SRRTAC-L:14356] The Mother of All Anti-War Forces by Naomi Klein

[Alfred Kagan]

>Subject: [SRRTAC-L:14356] The Mother of All Anti-War Forces by Naomi Klein
>Date: Thu, 8 Jul 2004 10:52:49 -0400
>Thread-Topic: The Mother of All Anti-War Forces by Naomi Klein
>Thread-Index: AcRk+zzJz7o+T2k6Q72CAIpYQq7Zzg==
>From: "Hornbuckle, Del" <dHornbuckle at provisionslibrary.org>
>To: SRRT Action Council <srrtac-l at ala.org>
>Reply-To: srrtac-l at ala.org
>Sender: owner-srrtac-l at ala.org
>
>FYIŠŠŠŠ.
>
>
>Del Hornbuckle, Library Director
>Provisions Library: Resource Center for Activism & Arts
>1611 Connecticut Ave, NW - Suite 200
>Washington, DC 20009
>202.299.0460-ph
>202-232-1651-fax
>dhornbuckle at provisionslibrary.org
><file://www.provisionslibrary.org>www.provisionslibrary.org
>Is it true?.....Is it kind?.....Is it necessary? ~Thich Nhat Hanh
>
>
>The Mother of All Anti-War Forces
>Washington's talk of Moral Clarity falls Dumb 
>before those who have lost Children in its Wars
>by Naomi Klein
>There is a remarkable scene in Fahrenheit 9/11 
>when Lila Lipscomb talks with an anti-war 
>activist outside the White House about the death 
>of her 26-year-old son in Iraq. A pro-war 
>passerby doesn't like what she overhears and 
>announces, "This is all staged!"
>
>Ms. Lipscomb turns to the woman, her voice 
>shaking with rage, and says: "My son is not a 
>stage. He was killed in Karbala, April 2. It is 
>not a stage. My son is dead." Then she walks 
>away and wails, "I need my son."
>
>Watching Ms. Lipscomb doubled over in pain on 
>the White House lawn, I was reminded of other 
>mothers who have taken the loss of their 
>children to the seat of power and changed the 
>fate of wars. During Argentina's dirty war, a 
>group of women whose children had been 
>disappeared by the military regime gathered 
>every Thursday in front of the presidential 
>palace in Buenos Aires. At a time when all 
>public protest was banned, they would walk 
>silently in circles, wearing white headscarves 
>and carrying photographs of their missing 
>children.
>
>The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo revolutionized 
>human-rights activism by transforming maternal 
>grief from a cause for pity into an unstoppable 
>political force. The generals couldn't attack 
>the mothers openly, so they launched fierce 
>covert operations against their organization. 
>But the mothers kept walking, playing a 
>significant role in the dictatorship's eventual 
>collapse.
>
>Unlike the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, who 
>march together every week to this day, in 
>Fahrenheit 9/11, Lila Lipscomb stands alone, 
>hurling her fury at the White House. But she is 
>not alone. Other American and British parents 
>whose children have died in Iraq are also coming 
>forward to condemn their governments; their 
>moral outrage could help end the military 
>conflict still raging in Iraq.
>
>Last week, California resident Nadia McCaffrey 
>defied the Bush administration by inviting news 
>cameras to photograph the arrival of her son's 
>casket from Iraq. The White House has banned 
>photography of flag-draped coffins arriving at 
>air force bases, but because Patrick McCaffrey's 
>remains were flown into the Sacramento 
>International Airport, his mother was able to 
>invite the photographers inside. "I don't care 
>what [President George W. Bush] wants," Ms. 
>McCaffery declared, telling her local newspaper, 
>"Enough war."
>
>Just as Patrick McCaffrey's body was being laid 
>to rest in California, another solider was 
>killed in Iraq: 19-year-old Gordon Gentle of 
>Glasgow.
>
>Upon hearing the news, his mother, Rose Gentle, 
>immediately blamed the government of Tony Blair, 
>saying that, "My son was just a bit of meat to 
>them, just a number . . . This is not our war, 
>my son has died in their war over oil."
>
>And just as Rose Gentle was saying those words, 
>Michael Berg happened to be visiting London to 
>speak at an anti-war rally. Since the beheading 
>of his 26-year-old son who had been working in 
>Iraq as a contractor, Michael Berg has insisted 
>that, "Nicholas Berg died for the sins of George 
>Bush and Donald Rumsfeld."
>
>Asked by an Australian journalist whether such 
>bold statements "are making the war seem 
>fruitless," Mr. Berg replied, "The only fruit of 
>war is death and grief and sorrow. There is no 
>other fruit."
>
>It is as if these parents have lost more than 
>their children, they have also lost their fear, 
>allowing them to speak with great clarity and 
>power. This represents a dangerous challenge to 
>the Bush administration, which likes to claim a 
>monopoly on moral clarity. Victims of war and 
>their families aren't supposed to interpret 
>their losses for themselves, they are supposed 
>to leave that to the flags, ribbons, metals and 
>three-gun salutes. Parents and spouses are 
>supposed to accept their tremendous losses with 
>stoic patriotism, never asking whether a death 
>could have been avoided, never questioning how 
>their loved ones are used to justify more 
>killing. At Patrick McCaffrey's military funeral 
>last week, Paul Harris, chaplain of the 579th 
>Engineer Battalion, informed the mourners that, 
>"What Patrick was doing was good and right and 
>noble . . . There are thousands, no, millions, 
>of Iraqis who are grateful for his sacrifice."
>
>Nadia McCaffrey knows better and is insisting on 
>carrying her son's own feelings of deep 
>disappointment from beyond the grave. "He was so 
>ashamed by the prisoner-abuse scandal," Ms. 
>McCaffrey told The Independent. "He said we had 
>no business in Iraq and should not be there." 
>Freed from the military censors who prevent 
>soldiers from speaking their minds when they are 
>alive, Lila Lipscomb has also shared her son's 
>doubts about his work in Iraq. In Fahrenheit 
>9/11 she reads from a letter Michael Pederson 
>mailed home. "What in the world is wrong with 
>George, trying to be like his dad, Bush. He got 
>us out here for nothing whatsoever. I'm so 
>furious right now, Mama."
>
>Fury is an entirely appropriate response to a 
>system that sends young people to kill other 
>young people in a war that never should have 
>been waged. Yet the American right is forever 
>trying to pathologize anger as something 
>menacing and abnormal, dismissing war opponents 
>as hateful and, the latest slur, "wild-eyed." 
>This is much harder to do when victims of wars 
>begin to speak for themselves: No one questions 
>the wildness in the eyes of a mother or father 
>who has just lost a son or daughter, or the fury 
>of a soldier who knows that he is being asked to 
>kill and die needlessly.
>
>Many Iraqis who have lost loved ones to foreign 
>aggression have responded by resisting the 
>occupation. Now, victims are starting to 
>organize themselves inside the countries that 
>are waging the war. First it was the September 
>11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, which speaks 
>out against any attempt by the Bush 
>administration to use the deaths of their family 
>members in the World Trade Center to justify 
>further killings of civilians. Military Families 
>Speak Out has sent delegations of veterans and 
>parents of soldiers to Iraq, while Nadia 
>McCaffrey is planning to form an organization of 
>mothers who have lost children in Iraq.
>
>U.S. elections always seem to swing on some 
>parental demographic or other: Last time it was 
>soccer moms, this time it is supposed to be 
>NASCAR dads. But on Sunday, NASCAR car-racing 
>champion Dale Earnhardt said that he had taken 
>his buddies to see Fahrenheit 9/11 and that 
>"It's a good thing as an American to go see." It 
>seems as if there may be another demographic 
>that swings this election: not soccer moms or 
>NASCAR dads but the parents of victims of war. 
>They don't have the numbers to change the 
>outcome in swing states, but they might just 
>change something more powerful: the hearts and 
>minds of Americans.


-- 


Al Kagan
African Studies Bibliographer and Professor of Library Administration
Africana Unit, Room 328
University of Illinois Library
1408 W. Gregory Drive
Urbana, IL 61801, USA

tel. 217-333-6519
fax. 217-333-2214
e-mail. akagan at uiuc.edu
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