The Power of Persevering for Peace

"On May 8, the day before a hundred thousand citizens were to demonstrate in Washington, Nixon ... announced that the 'great majority' of the American units in Cambodia would leave by the second week in June ... that all American soldiers would be withdrawn by July 1.. Nixon's decision to limit the Cambodian offensive demonstrated anew the ultimate power of the antiwar movement."
                pp. 194-5, The Price of Power: Kissinger in the White House, by Seymour Hersh

Seeing this ugliness, many of us undoubtedly feel helpless, isolated in a nation that seems to approve of vengeance and to be blind to the almost certain results of hooking up with a new collection of "allies" who are dictators and potential terrorists. But that sense of helplessness itself is a weapon of those who are invested in war. We cannot afford to feel powerless, because we do have some power, and because we must use what we have. We cannot afford to believe we are not heard, because the historical evidence is that we have been heard, and almost certainly are being heard now, even in the White House.

We should all be clear that the forces of restraint and peace have already won significant victories. World opinion -- including, I believe, substantial public opinion in the U.S. -- has limited Bush in what he can do, and made it necessary for him to move much more slowly than he wanted to, and to make a great effort to plausibly present what he is doing in terms that suggest protection of civilians and even providing humanitarian aid. Bush and those who surround him (and the overlapping bunch that advised Clinton) are quite willing to attack a civilian population with weapons of mass destruction and to starve children and the elderly. But they are wary of being caught doing it while moral leaders watch.

I included the quote above about Nixon because it illustrates both the limits of our power as peacemakers, and the very real power we do have. Of course, there aren't hundreds of thousands of demonstrators against Bush's policy -- yet. But there has already been significant U.S. opposition among the clergy, including a very powerful petition by the Sojourners group, (who gave critical support to Bush's faith-based initiative) and among the mainline peace groups. Bush's advisors know enough history to know how much potential power these groups have. And there has also undoubtedly been pressure from the allies of the U.S., especially the Europeans, who have no interest in escalating the violence on the very land mass they live on, and who do not have our illusions that we can end this violence by sending out the posse. This combined pressure has made a visible difference in the days since 9/11, in the rhetoric that Bush uses, and in his actions and his quickness to act.

I clearly remember the invasion of Cambodia, and the actions that followed it. Even as student demonstrators were shot and killed in Mississippi and Ohio, dozens if not hundreds of campuses shut down, and hundreds of thousands of us went into the streets. Our actions did not force withdrawal from Indochina, or an end to U.S. militarism and imperialism. But, as Hersh shows, what we did caused Nixon to limit his offensive. At a time when Nixon's strategy was to strike fear into his enemies by appearing to be a "madman" who might do anything, we set limits on his madness.

We must not fall for the image of presidential invulnerability or of national unanimity that the media is pushing so hard. The Bush position, and the position of the U.S. national security/corporate elite in general right now, has enormous weaknesses. Here are the goals that they must simultaneously meet, while under intense scrutiny from around the world:

• to preserve corporate control of the global oil supply
• to keep good relations with two main client states, Israel and Saudi Arabia, both of which are currently run by brutal but extraordinarily different regimes who each hate the other, while also satisfying new clients like Pakistan and Uzbekistan
• to construct something that at least looks like a legitimate international coalition to support all of this, and not squander the moment of good will that 9/11 created for the U.S.
• to avoid the complete unraveling of the lies they have told the American people about energy and the Middle East, including the real options for sustainable energy, the first choice of most Americans, and
• perhaps their greatest concern, to protect themselves personally (including Bush I) from being called to account for funding terrorists and terror regimes, and facing impeachment or even prosecution.

Frankly, they cannot succeed at all of these goals, any more than their predecessors could succeed in all of their goals in Vietnam. They do have more armed force than any government has ever had, and they have much of our national wealth at their disposal in public and secret military and national security funds. But they are not all powerful, and their actions can be and have been limited. We have the responsibility -- and the power -- to work to help to limit them. We must keep the pressure on. We must do more to build broad opposition to the profoundly cynical policies of our national security elite, and to move the world a little closer to the global democracy that is our only hope of survival as a species. It will help us to do so if we recognize and claim for ourselves the limited but real power that peace forces in the U.S. and globally do have -- power that I believe we have once again demonstrated in the past month. 

P.S. For those who are fixated on how bad the Taliban were, and therefore think that warring against them was an answer, here's one effective thing we could have done in 1998 to undermine them. A few steps like this, and 9/11 might not have happened.