The Art of Warring over the Anti-War Movement

Last week Scott Ritter opined that there is …a growing despondency…an increasing awareness that the …anti-war movement… is on the verge of complete collapse. America [is] a nation …engaged in waging and planning wars of aggression [and] … increasingly identifies itself through its military and the wars it fights…. the American people seem to be addicted to war and violence…. (Read the article.)(Read the article.)

Cindy Sheehan responded that “the anti-war movement is not on the "verge of collapse" because we are not organized, or because we don't take a "warriors" view of attacking…but because two-thirds of Americans … will not get off of their collective, complacent, and comfortable behinds to demonstrate their dissent with our government.”

Ritter’s view is that of a warrior trained in top down hierarchies and centralized strategies. He is partially correct that “the American people seem to be addicted to war and violence.” I diverge with him slightly in that I believe the American people are less addicted to war than are our leaders. The people simply go along with it for, as Sheehan states, they (we?) are “complacent and comfortable.” (Read the article.)

Sheehan’s view, like mine, is that of a mother with skin in the game. She has lost her beloved child. My child is about to deploy to combat for the third time and I’m preparing for bad news.
I disagree with both that the anti-war movement is on the verge of collapse. I am working to stop this war…and the next one. I don’t just mean the upcoming attack on Iran. I mean the war following that war. As part of my work I traveled to occupied Iraq in 2004 to visit my child on a military base and to learn about war and terror from Iraqis. I’ve also learned from others -- Africans, Afghans, British, Chechens, Israelis, Palestinians, and Russians -- for whom war and terror are all too familiar.

I know now that it is peoples’ inaction that allows politicians to wage war.

Israeli Nurit Peled Elhanan whose daughter died in a suicide bombing put it this way:
“People have to redefine the camps because the camps are not what the politicians make us believe the camps are: Israelis against Arabs, Americans against Afghans, and so forth. It is people against politicians and armies who do whatever they want with us and with our children. Bush, Saddam, Milosevic, Sharon are all the same. They share a kind of Mafia logic: they take over a place, they slash, they burn, and they move on. Politicians don’t really care for anything. They use our kids like chips in a gambling game and when our children are killed they say, “Oops, sorry.” This is a failure of Democracy. Every four years people give license to another politician to kill us, to manipulate us, to rob us of our children, our money, everything.”

Despite layer upon layer of cynical lies slathered upon the people by the Administration, it is clear that many Americans will do nothing to demand a new direction. But the world is full of complacent and comfortable people. We saw them in Armenia, in Germany, and in Apartheid South Africa. Their inaction didn’t mean that humanity was on the verge of collapse.

Why should complacent and comfortable Americans mean the anti-war/peace movement is on the verge of collapse?

Miraculously, the world is full of active people -- including Ritter and Sheehan -- who are resisting wars and other exploitations. And they’re doing it without organization, centralization, and think tanks or by controlling resources.

Sometimes I share Ritter’s despondency about the anti-war/peace movement’s lack of centralized coordination. Sometimes the movement does appear a poorly organized, chaotic, and anarchic conglomeration of egos, pet projects and idealism. Then I talk to active people and discover that they are moving -- surreptitiously, almost unconsciously but inexorably -- beyond the top-down, centralized systems that characterize human organizations. They affiliate with like-minded groups as needed and no one group represents their entire value system.

Perhaps centralization is on the verge of collapse?

Perhaps Ritter decries “causes that take advantage of anti-war gatherings” because he doesn’t recognize them as expressions of informal democracy. He sees the environment, ecology, animal rights, and pro-choice groups as diluting the anti-war/peace message.

In fact, they are interrelating with it.

New directions are already sparking around the world as people decentralize and relate to democracy in new ways: look at Bolivia, Argentina, and Chiapas.

Americans may have to follow rather than lead. Americans who want to oppose war but do not want to be associated with “other themes” will adjust. We may not like it initially – after all, it is hard to tell who is in charge. We’re so used to competing, winning, and paying the bills that we may suffer short-term cognitive dissonance. But, we’ll catch up.