[Peace-discuss] Anti-war movement

[C. G. Estabrook]

[There's a real danger that the anti-war movement, begun from
concern about the war, becomes concerned primarily about the
anti-war movement.  But it's surely necessary to understand
the politics and policies of people who see themselves as part
of the movement.  Here for example is what seems to me a
generally persuasive critique of one proposal about the
movement.  --CGE]  
 
 
April 19, 2006
Ritter Gets It Wrong
Why all the negativity?
by Maureen Aumand and Steve Breyman

It's odd that just as the tide turns irrevocably against the
U.S. occupation of Iraq – both here and there – the otherwise
steady Scott Ritter panics. He recently posted a harsh
critique of the contemporary U.S. antiwar movement on his
blog. In it, Ritter makes three main claims:

(1) There is a "growing despondency" among antiwar activists
because they see that "the cause of the antiwar movement … is
in fact a losing cause as currently executed." Even worse, the
movement is "on the verge of complete collapse."

(2) The movement lacks "any notion of strategic thinking,
operational planning, or sense of sound tactics." This is made
worse by a "failure to have planned effective follow-up
efforts, failure to have implemented any supporting
operations, an inability to recognize opportunities as they
emerge, and a lack of resources to exploit such opportunities
if in fact they were recognized to begin with." The movement
lacks organization, central leadership, and "a mechanism to
effectively muster and control resources."

(3) The movement needs a centralized intelligence
operation/think tank to generate antiwar ideas and policies,
and a "laser-like focus" to replace the panoply of left-wing
issues and causes that confuse and divert from the antiwar
message. We're unable to produce facts during debates, and/or
our "facts" are inaccurate and incomplete. The mass media
"treats the antiwar movement as a joke because many times that
is exactly what the antiwar movement, through its lack of
preparation and grasp of the facts, allows itself to become."

We address each of these claims below.

No doubt social movements of all sorts – including the antiwar
movement – might always be bigger, more organized, and more
effective than they actually are. This has been the lament of
every thoughtful activist from time immemorial. To paraphrase
Donald Rumsfeld – not something we often do – you resist war
with the antiwar movement you have, not the one you wish you
had. For some indicators of the health of the peace movement,
let's take a look at just the last half-year or so. The
AFL-CIO called for the "rapid return" of troops in Iraq in
July 2005. Dozens of local, state, and national labor
organizations passed similar, often stronger resolutions. Some
one hundred or more municipalities across the country –
including Baltimore, Chicago, Philadelphia, and San Francisco
– passed resolutions to bring the troops home. Public opinion
turned strongly against the war – and the war president – as
shown by a torrent of polls. The opinions of the troops in
Iraq were polled recently: 72 percent were for complete
withdrawal by the end of 2006. Faith communities weighed in.
The Union of Reform Judaism – the spiritual home of a million
and a half American Jews – resolved last November to bring the
troops home. The United Methodist Church – whose members
include George Bush and Dick Cheney – called not only for
troop withdrawal in October 2005, but for accountability for
those "responsible for leading us into this disastrous war."
Thousands of former military personnel (including Gen. Newbold
most recently), diplomats, and intelligence professionals
denounced the war and actively oppose it.

Several new antiwar veterans' organizations – led by those who
served and bled in Iraq – have formed. Coordinated citizen
lobbying efforts have changed and emboldened members of
Congress leading to a growing menu of antiwar bills. "Full
disclosure" military recruitment campaigns continue to bedevil
Army recruiters, who are finding it harder to sign up enough
youth to keep the war going. Thousands of antiwar events took
place across the country on the war's third anniversary. The
agitation for a Department of Peace gathers steam in the midst
of Bush's failed preemptive war. Increasingly coordinated and
focused political efforts challenge congressional incumbents
whose cowardice and failure in the face of the will to war
permits the debacle to proceed. We're currently gearing up for
the season's big antiwar demonstration in New York City on
April 29. This does not sound to us like a "losing cause" or a
movement on the "verge of complete collapse."

What Ritter reads as "despondency" is instead profound sorrow
for the loss of lives, treasure, opportunities, and moral
standing over the past few years. At the same time, however,
this sadness deepens the desire of activists to work harder,
commit more fully, and search more effectively for the means
to bring about enduring systemic change. Shared grief and rage
also compel activists to reach out for one another. Rather
than the tottering Tower of Babel of the disparate and the
dispirited that Ritter sees, we discern a dendrite-like
emergence of new alliances furthered by a wired world.
Stopping this and the next war (against Iran) is our top
priority, but it's not our only one. More and more of us see
that the state's power to make war is the same power that
enables and reinforces other crimes and injustices, and we're
vocal about this recognition.

Again, any and every social movement – like public or private
entities of every description – could think, plan, and act
better. But the antiwar movement is not the unified empirical
entity assumed by Ritter. It cannot be ordered this way or
that as he prefers. There's no horse to bring to water, let
alone force to drink. Social movements are not corporations or
military units. They generally have no CEOs or commanding
generals. Movements are made up of coalitions (e.g., United
for Peace and Justice), which are made up of tendencies or
spectrums (e.g., Christian), which are made up of
organizations at global, national, state, and local levels
(e.g., Pax Christi), which are made up of individuals (e.g.,
peace-loving Catholics). Try pinning – to mix equine metaphors
– a centralized tail on that donkey.

Ritter's critique of the movement's "leftism" is ironic in
light of his recommendation that it operate along Leninist
lines. He would run it from a centralized headquarters, out of
which universal directives issue forth to the masses. He would
test the loyalty and ideology of members, "fellow travelers,"
and converts. Imagine not welcoming John Murtha into the
movement (whether he wants in or not)! Strategy would
apparently be the preserve of some politburo, but it's hard to
know: we just get criticized for our lack of "strategic
thinking." Has Ritter not encountered the fresh ideas coming
out of European peace research institutes, or the Friends
Committee on National Legislation, or the Institute for Policy
Studies? Even our dynamic action repertoire – ranging from
silent weekly vigils to raucous direct actions – does not
include "sound tactics." We're clueless about opportunities
(Abu Ghraib anyone?) and about how to marshal and deploy the
resources necessary to exploit them. If only we immersed
ourselves in the correct theory ("from Caesar to Napoleon,
from Clausewitz to Sun Tzu") guided by a right-thinking
vanguardist (Ritter himself)! Forget "we must be the change we
wish to see in the world," or "there's no way to peace, peace
is the way." Reminds us of the Bolshevik critique of the
Mensheviks.

Ritter must realize that stopping and preventing wars is what
President Bush might call "hard work." Just as it took decades
to build and refine the contemporary U.S. warfare state, it
will take decades to dismantle and replace. It's not the
"American people [that] seem to be addicted to war and
violence," it's their leaders, and a militaristic culture from
which escape is very difficult. For example, we must replace
the omnipresence of military recruiters in our high schools by
full-time peace and conflict-resolution educators. Becoming a
peace activist is for many ordinary Americans the equivalent
of a religious conversion. We've been so mistrained,
miseducated, lied to, and disciplined that as Ritter knows –
himself a recent convert to the antiwar cause – making the
shift is often wrenching and painful. We need sympathy,
support, and solidarity, not vague and sweeping criticism.

Ritter apparently hangs out with different antiwar activists
than we do. We marvel at the ever growing knowledge, wisdom,
and strategic insight of peace activists from all walks of
life. We know at least a hundred local activists here in our
corner of upstate New York who could go toe-to-toe with
Condoleezza Rice or Donald Rumsfeld, Ann Coulter or Bill
O'Reilly. Indeed, we've yet to witness a well-read, articulate
opponent of the war bested in an exchange with a war
supporter. How could they be? All the facts are on our side.

And what to make of Ritter's claim about mainstream
media-movement relations!? Talk about blaming the victim. The
MSM doesn't ignore us because we can't hold up our end of the
debate; the MSM ignores us because it's generally part of the
same pro-war corporate-government system that prevents genuine
debate. How difficult was it to show the immorality or
illegality of the war beforehand, and how hard is it to
counter "staying the course" now? We remind Ritter of the
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) study of network
news coverage the week before and after Colin Powell's
February 2003 United Nations presentation. Of all 393
on-camera sources on PBS, NBC, ABC, and CBS evening newscasts,
only three (less than 1 percent) were identified with
organized protests or antiwar groups. We remind Ritter of the
reporting of independent journalists such as Amy Goodman who
have relentlessly pounded away at the stenographic quality of
MSM coverage since the run-up to the war.

But the movement also makes the corporate media a "front" in
its struggle against the war. Here in the capital region of
New York, activists consistently call the local corporate
media on its poor, unfair, or absent coverage of the war and
the movement against it. Local movement activists regularly
pass regional editors articles addressing the underlying
causes of dissent. Movement spokespeople are always available
to the local media for interviews and perspective sharing. As
a consequence, the coverage has improved, and the community of
dissent broadens. No, media coverage is nowhere near what we'd
like to see, but it's better than it was. Just several weeks
ago, during the coordinated actions commemorating the third
anniversary of the war, events kicked off with a "National Day
of Local Media Protest." Activists here rented a billboard for
our message – "Support the Troops, Bring Them Home Now!" – and
held a press conference beneath it. Movement intellectuals and
media critics have produced more books, reports, videos, and
columns criticizing the corporate media's enabling of the war
in the first place, and skewering its myriad failures since,
than during any previous war. In short, this is one of the –
if not the – most media-savvy antiwar movements in American
history.

We're in it for the long haul. Red-baiting, warrantless
domestic spying, and the PATRIOT Act will not deter us.
Neither will we mindlessly ape past actions or approaches that
appear to no longer work to bring war to an end. We aim to
convince as many of our fellow citizens as possible to join
us. We intend to ramp up the pressure on the war-makers. We
hope Scott Ritter will join us.
 
 
 
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http://www.antiwar.com/orig/aumbrey.php?articleid=8872