Thursday, December 19, 2002

Congressman Sees War in 4 to 6 Weeks; Says Peace Movement Will be Marginalized There is so much to write about that it is hard to know where to start.  Don’t ignore the INS arrests of between 500 and 1000 law abiding Iranians rounded up in LA over the past two days.  I hope Talk Left will take this up.  Many of these people had been in the U.S. for years, have family members who are citizens, and have not gotten their green cards or visa extensions through the incompetence and mistakes of the INS.  Now they are nameless detainees.   With the holidays, I may have less time to write.  But I wanted to keep up on what was happening with the peace movement in our corner of the world.    Michael Capuano is the Congressman from Cambridge and Somerville, Massachusetts.  He voted against the Iraq war resolution, after perceiving a large groundswell against the war in his district.  Recently he met with a number of peace activists, to essentially tell them they will be marginalized when the war starts.   One of the attendees of the meeting put together a memo, from which most of the following points were taken.  Capuano said he expected the war to start within four to six weeks, that it would last about three weeks, and that Bush would emerge a hero.   He said that as soon as the war starts, he could support no organization that did not feature “We support our Troops” as a leading part of its message.   He went on to say that opposing the war in Iraq was now a lost cause, and given the tremendous surge of popularity for Bush that he expects to emerge from the war, he expects progressives in Congress to lay low and not criticize the war once it starts.   He says he expects criticism will resume once the shooting stops, and the Iraqi government has collapsed. According to the memo, “Capuano believes that the Administration intends to occupy Iraq, but will not characterize its intentions as such. Publicly the Administration will announce an intention to leave Iraq and to rebuild it. The peace movement in Capuano’s view must then put the lie to the Administration’s statements. “ ”Capuano further believes that if pressure is not put on the Administration to withdraw, the Administration may feel entitled to use Iraq as the stepping stone toward further military action in the region. That is - US military withdrawal from Iraq is the best guarantee against more US Middle East wars.” The reaction to this has been to put the peace movement in something of a quandary.  A lot of people are not willing to give up on moral witness, i.e. demonstrating that the war is morally wrong, regardless as to whether this position can command mass support or not.  Others, including a old friend who wrote a thoughtful email, suggested that Capuano has a good point about further occupation, and that the platform on which to build a movement large enough to affect policy, the key issue would not be "stop the war" but "no occupation, no further war."   To me, there is little danger of repeating one mistake of the Vietnam anti-war movement, which was to initially vilify the troops who went to Vietnam.  Today, it is important that all of us make clear from the beginning our commitment to save the lives of our soldiers—which means we cannot oppose things that will protect them.  However, we can say their lives are being wasted for no consequence—that this military action in the Gulf will not help the war on terrorism, but will prolong it for a generation.   There is also the issue of radiological weapons used by the U.S. in the form of depleted uranium.  Some feel the Iraq battlefield will be a much more deadly and sickening place for American troops than it was in 1991.  The issue is that alpha radiation (the kind given off by depleted uranium) is not dangerous externally, but leads to tumors when lodged in by dust in the lungs.   So, my own feeling is that sacrificing Americans for an unnecessary war is wrong, and those who do so need to be held to account.  This is an argument that can be made before, during, and after the war.    11:29:06 PM   comment []

© Copyright 2003 Toby Sackton. Last update: 1/2/2003; 11:22:22 PM.