Yearly Archives ⇒ 2003

Recycling Dead Horses

November 12, 2003
· Martin Kelley

I orig­i­nal­ly titled this entry “Why the peace move­ment is doomed,” but maybe that’s too strong a charge. Still, it’s hard to see how the coterie of small main­stream groups (and the old­er activists in charge) expect to attract new peo­ple when they keep recy­cling old cam­paigns that are ridicu­lous and borderline-irrelevant. A small coali­tion is call­ing for a new cam­paign of anti-war phone tax resis­tance.

A lot of U.S. war tax resisters have loved protest­ing the “phone war tax” over the years. Some his­to­ry, from the new site: a tax on phone use was first used to fund the Spanish-American war back in 1898 and spe­cial war-related phone tax­es came and went for forty years. The only prob­lem is that it was a good fund­ing stream, a tax the U.S. Con­gress didn’t want to give up. So the phone tax has been autho­rized and reau­tho­rized the Sec­ond World War.

If I’m read­ing the site’s his­to­ry right, there’s been a con­tin­u­ous phone tax since 1932(!) and it’s all gone into the gen­er­al bud­get. Like all tax­es, a good chunk of it has fund­ed mil­i­tary action, but it’s no dif­fer­ent per­cent­age than any oth­er tax. Like all tax­es, we’ve need­ed this many tax­es because the U.S. is a very mil­i­ta­rized coun­try and it has gone up and down in rela­tion to mil­i­tary spend­ing. But even Con­gress hasn’t both­ered to think of it as war-related for many years now.

I’d be embar­rased to try to tell some eigh­teen year old born in 1985 that this tax has some spe­cial war sig­nif­i­cance just because did dur­ing the Viet­nam War. Back in the six­ties, a bunch of rad­i­cal paci­fists jumped on the phone tax resis­tance and haven’t been able to let go in all this time. So why this cling­ing to phone tax­es as a way of protest­ing war? I assume every­one likes it is because it’s safe. For those rea­sons it’s also entire­ly sym­bol­ic and almost com­plete­ly meaningless.

Can’t we come up with new tac­tics? When will we be able to leave the Viet­nam War to the his­to­ri­ans and just move on? Many peo­ple think the old-line peace move­ment is a bunch of aging hip­pies; with cam­paigns like this, we kin­da prove them right. Let’s brain­storm some new actions!

Blueprint for a Mess, the planning behind the U.S. occupation

November 3, 2003
· Martin Kelley

For those asleep for the past two years, the _New York Times Magazine_ has a long arti­cle by David Rieff, “Blue­print for a Mess”:www.nytimes.com/2003/11/02/magazine/02iraq.html, that looks at ongo­ing prob­lems with the U.S. occu­pa­tion of iraq:
bq. His­tor­i­cal­ly, it is rare that a warm wel­come is extend­ed to an occu­py­ing mil­i­tary force for very long, unless, that is, the post­war goes very smooth­ly. And in iraq, the post­war occu­pa­tion has not gone smoothly.
The arti­cle looks at the ide­o­log­i­cal roots of the post-war plan of occu­pa­tion. A num­ber of key deci­sions were made in the Pen­tagon’s war room with lit­tle input from the State Depart­ment. Much of the plan­ning revolved around Ahmad Cha­l­abi, the two-bit, self-proclaimed iraqi oppo­si­tion par­ty leader dur­ing the last decade of Sad­dam Hus­sein’s reign. Cha­l­abi spent most of the 90s in Lon­don and Wash­ing­ton, where he became the dar­ling of the Repub­li­can pol­i­cy hawks who were also side­lined from polit­i­cal pow­er. Togeth­er Cha­l­abi and Wash­ing­ton fig­ures like Don­ald Rums­feld spent the 90s hatch­ing up war plans if they ever took pow­er again. Unfor­tu­nate­ly Rums­feld’s plans did­n’t have the wide­spread sup­port of the U.S. diplo­mat­ic and mil­i­tary estab­lish­ment and Cha­l­abi has had vir­tu­al­ly no sup­port inside iraq. But the con­ver­sa­tions and deci­sions between the token iraqi oppo­si­tion and the out-of-power Repub­li­can hawks has dri­ven the occupation:
bq. The lack of secu­ri­ty and order on the ground in iraq today is in large mea­sure a result of deci­sions made and not made in Wash­ing­ton before the war start­ed, and of the spe­cif­ic approach­es toward cop­ing with post­war iraq under­tak­en by Amer­i­can civil­ian offi­cials and mil­i­tary com­man­ders in the imme­di­ate after­math of the war.
Rieff is pes­simistic but he backs up his claims. The arti­cle is long but it’s a must-read. The post­war occu­pa­tions of iraq and Afghanistan will almost cer­tain­ly be the defin­ing for­eign pol­i­cy issue of this gen­er­a­tion, and paci­fists must look beyond ide­ol­o­gy and rhetoric to under­stand what’s hap­pen­ing in iraq.

Shouting for Attention

October 29, 2003
· Martin Kelley

Burn­ing up the blo­gos­phere is a post and dis­cus­sion on Michael J Tot­ten’s site about the “Work­ers World Par­ty and Inter­na­tion­al ANSWeR”:http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/000131.html.
He calls them “the new skin­heads” (huh?), but his cri­tique of these orga­ni­za­tions and the “uncon­di­tion­al sup­port” they give to anti‑U.S. fas­cists the world over is valid.
As a paci­fist it’s often a tough bal­anc­ing act to try to remain a steady voice for peace: this spring we were try­ing to simul­ta­ne­ous­ly cri­tiquing both Sad­dam Hus­sein and U.S. war plans against iraq. Both left and right denounce paci­fists for this insis­tence on con­sis­ten­cy, but that’s okay: it is these times when non­vi­o­lent activists have the most to con­tribute to the larg­er soci­etal debate. But hard-left groups like Inter­na­tion­al ANSWeR refuse to draw the line and refuse to con­demn the very real evil that exists in the world.
Inter­na­tion­al ANSWeR has spon­sored big anti-war ral­lies over the last year, but anti-war is not nec­es­sar­i­ly pro-nonviolence. Many of the par­tic­i­pants at the ral­lies would nev­er sup­port Inter­na­tion­al ANSWeR’s larg­er agen­da, but go because it’s a peace ral­ly, shrug­ging off the pol­i­tics of the spon­sor­ing group. I sus­pect that Inter­na­tion­al ANSWeR’s sup­port base would dis­ap­pear pret­ty quick­ly if they start­ed ral­ly­ing on oth­er issues.
Inter­na­tion­al ANSWeR just had anoth­er ral­ly last week­end but you did­n’t see it list­ed here on Non​vi​o​lence​.org. Oth­er peace groups co-sponsored it, echo­ing the All-caps/exclamation style of orga­niz­ing. It’s very strange to go the site of “Unit­ed for peace,” a coali­tion of peace groups, and look down the list of its next three events: “Stop the Wall!,” “Stop the FTAA!, “Shut Down the School of the Amer­i­c­as” When did paci­fism become shout­ing for atten­tion along­side the Work­ers World Par­ty? Why are we all about stop­ping this and shut­ting down that?

Attacks a sign of our success

October 28, 2003
· Martin Kelley

I could­n’t believe it when a friend told me the news. In the wake of four coor­di­nat­ed sui­cide attacks in iraq that killed 30 and injured 200, Pres­i­dent George Bush claimed that the “attacks were mere­ly a mark of how suc­cess­ful­ly the U.S. Occu­pa­tion is going”:www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/10/27/sprj.irq.main/index.html :
bq. “There are ter­ror­ists in iraq who are will­ing to kill any­body in order to stop our progress. The more suc­cess we have on the ground, the more these killers will react — and our job is to find them and bring them to justice.”
This is real­ly his way of explain­ing away all oppo­si­tion to the U.S.: peo­ple must be jeal­ous of all we have and all we do. But maybe iraqis con­tin­ue to be angry that we invad­ed their coun­try; maybe they’re angry that we’ve only rein­stalled many of their gen­er­als and many of Sad­dam’s hench­men. Maybe they’re wait­ing for a democratically-elected coun­cil. I’m sure many iraqi’s con­demn yes­ter­day’s bomb­ings. But it’s still way too ear­ly to declare vic­to­ry in the war of iraqi pub­lic opinion.

North by Northwest

October 27, 2003
· Martin Kelley

One of the joys of the web is that you can think you’ve seen every­thing and then sud­den­ly stum­ble across some­thing new. This hap­pened to me this morn­ing with “West by Northwest”:westbynorthwest.org, a great web-only pub­li­ca­tion focused on pro­gres­sive issues in the Pacif­ic North­west. Orga­nized as a ecu­meni­cal project by area Quak­ers, it’s a jour­nal of “arts & let­ters, ecol­o­gy, and peace & social jus­tice.” I espe­cial­ly rec­om­mend their “Voic­es of Peace”:http://westbynorthwest.org/artman/publish/peace.shtml selection.

Where’s the grassroots contemporary nonviolence movement?

October 17, 2003
· Martin Kelley

I’ve long noticed there are few active, online peace sites or com­mu­ni­ties that have the grass­roots depth I see occur­ring else­where on the net. It’s a prob­lem for Non​vi​o​lence​.org [update: a project since laid down], as it makes it hard­er to find a diver­si­ty of stories.

I have two types of sources for Non​vi​o​lence​.org. The first is main­stream news. I search through Google News, Tech­no­rati cur­rent events, then maybe the New York Times, The Guardian, and the Wash­ing­ton Post.

There are lots of inter­est­ing arti­cles on the war in iraq, but there’s always a polit­i­cal spin some­where, espe­cial­ly in tim­ing. Most big news sto­ries have bro­ken in one month, died down, and then become huge news three months lat­er (e.g., Wilson’s CIA wife being exposed, which was first report­ed on Non​vi​o​lence​.org on July 22 but became head­lines in ear­ly Octo­ber). These news cycles are dri­ven by domes­tic par­ty pol­i­tics, and at times I feel all my links make Non​vi​o​lence​.org sound like an appa­ratchik of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty USA.

But it’s not just the tone that makes main­stream news arti­cles a prob­lem – it’s also the gen­er­al sub­ject mat­ter. There’s a lot more to non­vi­o­lence than anti­war expos­es, yet the news rarely cov­ers any­thing about the cul­ture of peace. “If it bleeds it leads” is an old news­pa­per slo­gan and you will nev­er learn about the wider scope of non­vi­o­lence by read­ing the papers.

My sec­ond source is peace move­ment websites

And these are, by-and-large, unin­ter­est­ing. Often they’re not updat­ed fre­quent­ly. But even when they are, the pieces on them can be shal­low. You’ll see the self-serving press release (“as a peace orga­ni­za­tion we protest war actions”) and you’ll see the exclam­a­to­ry all-caps screed (“eND THe OCCUPATION NOW!!!”). These are fine as long as you’re already a mem­ber of said orga­ni­za­tion or already have decid­ed you’re against the war, but there’s lit­tle per­sua­sion or dia­logue pos­si­ble in this style of writ­ing and organizing.

There are few peo­ple in the larg­er peace move­ment who reg­u­lar­ly write pieces that are inter­est­ing to those out­side our nar­row cir­cles. David McReynolds and Geov Par­rish are two of those excep­tions. It takes an abil­i­ty to some­times ques­tion your own group’s con­sen­sus and to acknowl­edge when non­vi­o­lence ortho­doxy some­times just does­n’t have an answer.

And what of peace blog­gers? I real­ly admire Joshua Mic­ah Mar­shall, but he’s not a paci­fist. There’s the excel­lent Gut­less Paci­fist (who’s led me to some very inter­est­ing web­sites over the last year), Bill Connelly/Thoughts on the eve, Stand Down/No War Blog, and a new one for me, The Pick­et Line. But most of us are all point­ing to the same main­stream news arti­cles, with the same Iraq War focus.

If the web had start­ed in the ear­ly 1970s, there would have been lots of inter­est­ing pub­lish­ing projects and blogs grow­ing out the activist com­mu­ni­ties. Younger peo­ple today are using the inter­net to spon­sor inter­est­ing gath­er­ings and using sites like Meet­up to build con­nec­tions, but I don’t see com­mu­ni­ties built around peace the way they did in the ear­ly 1970s. There are few peo­ple build­ing a life – hope, friends, work – around pacifism.

Has “paci­fism” become ossi­fied as its own in-group dog­ma of a cer­tain gen­er­a­tion of activists? What links can we build with cur­rent move­ments? How can we deep­en and expand what we mean by non­vi­o­lence so that it relates to the world out­side our tiny organizations?