Friday, August 02, 2002

What if we are Wrong?? We are opposed to any war on Iraq.  But what if we are wrong.  Having a 30 year perspective on politics forces this question.  When I was in the movement in the 1960's and 1970's, the prospect of being wrong about the future never entered my mind.  Yet now it is abundantly clear that we were wildly wrong about some things.  For example, for many years, we actually believed we were part of a revolutionary movement that was going to replace  U.S. capitalism with something new.  We believed in the cultural revolution in China--the idea of a revolution being renewed in each generation made sense to us.  History, however, showed that capitalism and corporate power grew stronger in America, not weaker, and many of us moved into positions in the corporate world.   The personal cost and destruction of the cultural revoltuion in China also came clear later.  Instead of Mao's permanent revolution, we had mob rule scapegoating, and in some cases killing, intellectuals and others who were on the wrong side of the ruling village committees. So, individuals can be wrong in their political assessment of the future.  And whole societies can be wrong--adopting ideas and policies that hurt their real interests. How does this square with opposition to war on Iraq.  The answer, I think, is to maintain an open mind.  Political positions must be based on facts and evidence.  The striking thing about the war mongers screaming to attack Iraq is that they refuse to present facts--they simply repeat their ideology over and over. Nuclear proliferation is not simply a problem in Iraq.  Within another generation dozens of additional countries, stable and not so stable, will have nuclear capabilities.  It is not possible to keep atomic technology bottled up for one hundred years.  Given this reality, collective action to limit proliferation appears to have a much better chance for success than unilateral action.  So, if the problem with Iraq is that Sadam is a dictator with weapons of mass destruction--that does not make him so different than many others.  The U.S. has never hesitated to support dictators and repressive military regimes that serve their interests in the past.  So Saddam's crimes against his own people cannot be a basis for acting against him. Other countries also have weapons of mass destruction, yet the prospect of invading and toppling potentially dozens of governments around the world is beyond even the power of the United States. So, there must be other reasons why the Bush administration is so anxious to attack Iraq.  I suspect part of the motivation is pure panic, i.e. having no idea how to confront a terrorist threat, nor willingness to enter into collective actions that would isolate the terrorists, and make the global environment less hospitable to them.  Faced with asymetric warfare, they fall back on attacking countries, because they can.  This is a complete failure of imagination and leadership--and I am not willing to support a war based on republicans'  fear of failure. A second reason is that fear is the ally of this administration--because a fearful population is likely to accept leadership and policies with little questioning or input.  I don't think of this administration as 'democrats' with a small d.  They don't trust the American people--they can only think of manipulating them. Chomsky believes that grasp of power for its own sake is a driving force in American policy, and when the evidence is weighed, that fits the bill as well as any other alternative.  These people (Bush's backers and Cheney) are power mad, and they see war as a stepping stone to more power, both at home and abroad. 10:43:53 PM   comment []    Why We Have Vigils This evening I spent a couple of hours updating our website, in preparation for some publicity about our next vigil on the Lexington Green. Our vigils consist of 15 to 20 people, in age from 17 to 70, but mostly 40's and 50's, who stand around for an hour and hold signs saying things like "Don't Attack Iraq" or "No Wider War".  What do 15 people holding signs for an hour in a wealthy suburb have to do with the global war on terrorism? In fact, we are creating a public space for dissent.  Each time we have done this, and we try to do it monthly, the amount of visible feedback we get from cars and passers-by gets better.  Most are favorable.  <br> In fact, if you held a vote in Lexington, it is quite likely that most of the actions taken in our name for the war on terror would be voted down.  This includes the immigrant detentions, the holding of hostages in Guantanamo Bay, the refusal to allow more peacekeepers in Afghanistan, and certainly, opposition to a unilateral American attack on Iraq.  But even in this climate, people who hold these views hold back--fearful of being labeled unpatriotic or naive.  The vigils are an attempt to bring more of these political feelings to the surface--to make it commonplace that in our town, many people oppose the war on terror.  That is why we do this month after month.     12:32:00 AM   comment []

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