Four More Years (Let’s Roll Up Our Sleeves)

November 3, 2004

Pres­i­dent George W. Bush has been re-elected for four more years. The man who led the Unit­ed States to “two wars in four years”:http://www.nonviolence.org/articles/cat_iraq_antiwar.php and whose poli­cies in Afghanistan and iraq con­tin­ue to cre­ate chaos in both coun­tries will get four more years to pur­sue his war of ter­ror­ism against the world. Amer­i­cans will not sleep any safer but will dream ever more of con­quer­ing and killing ene­mies. We’ll con­tin­ue to sow the seeds of wars for gen­er­a­tions to come.
I was wor­ried when Sen­a­tor John Ker­ry unex­pect­ed­ly picked up in the pri­maries to become the Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial can­di­date. In his patri­cian upbring­ing he was very much like Pres­i­dent Bush, and they actu­al­ly agreed on many of the big issues — war, gay mar­riage, stem cell research. But in his per­son­al­i­ty, style and tem­pera­ment Ker­ry was too much like for­mer Vice Pres­i­dent Al Gore.
Yes, I know Gore won the pop­u­lar vote in the 2000 elec­tion and that his loss was declared by mys­te­ri­ous chads and a hand­ful of senior cit­i­zen judges in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. But an elec­tion as close as that one should have been seen as a resound­ing loss, no mat­ter what the Supreme Court ver­dict. As Vice Pres­i­dent, Gore had helped lead the nation to one of its great­est eco­nom­ic recov­ers in our life­times. He was also clear­ly smarter in the Pres­i­dent, more knowl­edge­able and far­sight­ed, with more care­ful­ly artic­u­lat­ed visions of the future. But he bare­ly won the pop­u­lar vote, mak­ing the elec­toral col­lege vote close enough to be debated.
Ker­ry is intel­lec­tu­al and aloof in the same way that Gore was. And clear­ly there are a num­ber of Amer­i­can vot­ers who don’t want that. They want a can­di­date who can speak from the heart, who isn’t afraid to talk about faith. They also want a can­di­date who can talk in sim­ple, moral­ly unam­bigu­ous ways about war.
And what about war? Would a Pres­i­dent Ker­ry have real­ly pulled out troops soon­er than Pres­i­dent Bush will? Who knows: Demo­c­ra­t­ic Pres­i­dents have pur­sued plen­ty of wars over the last cen­tu­ry and when Ker­ry pro­claimed he would hunt down and kill the ene­my, he spoke as the only one of the four men on the major tick­ets who actu­al­ly has hunt­ed down and killed fel­low humans in wartime.
We can make an edu­cat­ed guess that a Kerry-led Amer­i­ca would leave iraq in bet­ter shape than a Bush-led Amer­i­ca will. Ker­ry has the patience and the plan­ning fore­sight to do the hard coalition-building work in iraq and in the world that is nec­es­sary if U.S. mil­i­tary pow­er will trans­late to a real peace. But a Ker­ry plan for paci­fi­ca­tion and rebuild­ing of iraq could eas­i­ly have fol­lowed the path that Demo­c­ra­t­ic Pres­i­dent Lyn­don B. John­son’s did in Viet­nam: an unend­ing, constantly-escalating war.
Did Amer­i­cans offi­cial­ly approve the coun­try’s past two wars yes­ter­day? It’s hard to con­clude oth­er­wise. Despite the lies of mass destruc­tion and despite the “will­ful mis­lead­ing of the Amer­i­can people”:http://www.nonviolence.org/articles/000194.php that Sad­dam Hus­sein was some­how involved in the 9/11 attacks and “pos­sessed weapons of mass destruction”:http://www.nonviolence.org/articles/cat_iraq_weapons_of_mass_destruction_scandal.php, some­thing over 50% of Amer­i­cans thought the Bush/Cheney Pres­i­den­cy was worth keep­ing for anoth­er four years.
But there’s noth­ing to say a pop­u­lar vote grants wis­dom. In the next four years, those of us want­i­ng an alter­na­tive will prob­a­bly have many “teach­able moments” to talk with our neigh­bors and friends about the dete­ri­o­rat­ing sit­u­a­tion in iraq and Afghanistan. Maybe those of us whose “paci­fism is informed by reli­gious understandings”:www.nonviolence.org/martink/archives/000462.php can cross the intel­lec­tu­al divide some more and talk about how our faith gives us a sim­ple, moral­ly unam­bigu­ous way to argue against war. The coun­try needs “strong paci­fist voices”:http://www.nonviolence.org/issues/philosophy-nonviolence.php now more than ever. Let’s get talking.
ps: …and donat­ing. Non​vi​o​lence​.org is a nine years old peace resource guide and blog. It’s time it gets reg­u­lar fund­ing from its mil­lion annu­al read­ers. “Please give gen­er­ous­ly and help us expand this work”:http://www.nonviolence.org/support/. We have a lot to do in the next four years!

Images of Patriotism and the Swift Boat Controversy

August 23, 2004

The U.S. elec­tion cam­paign has many ironies, none per­haps as strange as the fights over the can­di­dates’ war records. The cur­rent Pres­i­dent George W. Bush got out of active duty in Viet­nam by using the influ­ence of his polit­i­cal­ly pow­er­ful fam­i­ly. While sol­diers killed and died on the Mekong Delta, he goofed off on an Alaba­ma air­field. Most of the cen­tral fig­ures of his Admin­is­tra­tion, includ­ing Vice Pres­i­dent Dick Cheney also avoid­ed fight­ing in Vietnam.
Not that I can blame them exact­ly. If you don’t believe in fight­ing, then why not use any influ­ence and loop­hole you can? It’s more coura­geous to stand up pub­licly and stand in sol­i­dar­i­ty with those con­sci­en­tious objec­tors who don’t share your polit­i­cal con­nec­tions. But if you’re both anti­war and a cow­ard, hey, loop­holes are great. Bush was one less Amer­i­can teenag­er shoot­ing up Viet­nam vil­lages and for that we com­mend him.
Ah, but of course George W. Bush does­n’t claim to be either anti­war or a cow­ard. Two and a half decades lat­er, he snook­ered Amer­i­can into a war on false pre­tences. Nowa­days he uses every photo-op he can to look strong and patri­ot­ic. Like most scions of aris­to­crat­ic dynas­ties through­out his­to­ry, he dis­plays the worst kind of poli­cial cow­ardice: he is a leader who believes only in send­ing oth­er peo­ple’s kids to war.
Con­trast this with his Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty rival John Ker­ry. He was also the son of a politically-connected fam­i­ly. He could have pulled some strings and end­ed up in Alaba­ma. But he chose to fight in Viet­nam. He was wound­ed in bat­tle, received met­als and came back a cer­ti­fied war hero. Have fought he saw both the eter­nal hor­rors of war and the par­tic­u­lar hor­rors of the Viet­nam War. It was only after he came back that he used his polit­i­cal con­nec­tions. He used them to punc­ture the myths of the Viet­nam War and in so doing became a promi­nent anti­war activist.
Not that his anti­war activ­i­ties make him a paci­fist, then or now. As Pres­i­dent I’m sure he’d turn to mil­i­tary solu­tions that we here at Non​vi​o​lence​.org would con­demn. But we be assured that when he orders a war, he’d be think­ing of the kids that Amer­i­ca would be send­ing out to die and he’d be think­ing of the for­eign vic­tims whose lives would inevitably be tak­en in conflict.
Despite the stark con­trast of these Pres­i­den­tial biogra­phies, the pecu­liar log­ic of Amer­i­can pol­i­tics is paint­ing the mil­i­tary dodger as a hero and the cer­ti­fied war hero as a cow­ard. The lat­ter cam­paign is being led by a shad­owy group called the Swift Boat Vet­er­ans for Truth. Today’s Guardian has an excel­lent arti­cle on the “Texas Repub­li­cans fund­ing the Swift Boat controversy”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/story/0,13918,1288272,00.html. The New York Times also delves the “out­right fab­ri­ca­tions of the Swift Boat TV ads”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/20/politics/campaign/20swift.html?ex=1094018686&ei=1&en=691b4b0e81b8387f. A lot of Bush’s bud­dies and long-time Repub­li­can Par­ty appa­ratchiks are behind this and its lies are trans­par­ent and easy to uncov­er. It’s a good primer on dirty pol­i­tics 2004 style.
One of the big ques­tions about this elec­tion is whether the Amer­i­can vot­ers will believe more in image or sub­stance. It goes beyond pol­i­tics, real­ly, to cul­ture and to a con­sumerism that promis­es that with the right clothes and affect­ed atti­tude, you can sim­ply buy your­self a new iden­ti­ty. Pres­i­dent Bush put on a flight jack­et and land­ed a jet on an air­craft car­ri­er a mile off the Cal­i­for­nia beach. He was the very pic­ture of a war hero and strong patri­ot. Is a pho­to all it takes anymore?