NP - Operation Enduring Protest

[David Morris]

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=special&s=featherstone20011018

The Nation
Operation Enduring Protest
by Liza Featherstone

On Saturday, October 13, a cry to stop the bombing in Afghanistan was heard 
all over the world. More than 20,000 demonstrators in London, 15,000 in 
Berlin, 10,000 in San Francisco and thousands more in Sweden, Nepal, South 
Korea, Nigeria and elsewhere called for peace. A rally in New York City's 
Washington Square was comparatively small, attracting some 700 people.

That rally, organized by War Is Not the Answer, one of several emerging New 
York City peace coalitions, attracted New Yorkers of varying races and 
nationalities, but the 1960s generation was heavily represented. Protester 
Curtis Mack of Crown Heights avoided the draft during the Vietnam War, even 
though his seven brothers fought. He said, "We need a peaceful solution to 
this mess. Why can't we all just get along?" Smiling sheepishly at his 
reference to Rodney King's famously naïve plea, he explained, "I don't have 
all the answers, but this is what I feel in my heart."

[...]

Speakers were just as passionate as Curtis Mack, but unfortunately, equally 
short on answers. All did their best to avoid the thorny question of how to 
fight terrorism without bombs. Physicist Michio Kaku gave a witty speech 
about the ineffectuality and wastefulness of Star Wars; he said little about 
Afghanistan. Others engaged in more elaborate avoidance strategies, evoking 
well-worn left paradigms that seemed at best peripheral, if not completely 
irrelevant. Some talked about corporations that would profit from war, 
attempting to conjure the Gulf War with the slogan "No War for Oil"-which 
has been making a comeback nationwide. Though oil is crucial to the US 
relationship to the Middle East, and military contractors do benefit from 
war, it strains credibility to suggest that the Bush Administration's 
assault on the Taliban, a response to a brutal massacre on US soil, is 
driven by corporate greed. Many speakers blamed the ideologically biased 
media for public support of the war; rally emcee and Democracy Now! radio 
host Amy Goodman repeatedly invoked the concept of "manufactured consent." 
(Apropos of that, she ended the rally with an appeal to support her crusade 
against Pacifica, while some of her acolytes handed out fliers referring to 
the "Pacifica Board Hijackers.") Of course much of the mainstream media 
coverage amounts to a twenty-four-hour war infomercial. But when people are 
afraid of terrorist attacks, consent to an aggressive solution hardly needs 
to be "manufactured."

Some of Washington Square's assembled seemed frustrated with the event's 
muddled message. "It's so irresponsible," a woman sighed in exasperation as 
Al Sharpton concluded his rousing antiwar polemic. "He doesn't say what we 
should do." The left is accustomed to refusal. But there may be aspects of 
Bush's "war on terrorism" that peace activists should support, if they are 
to persuasively oppose its murderous violence. The current bombing campaign 
is killing innocent people, creating a relief crisis in a destitute country 
and further destabilizing an already-perilous region. It is dangerously 
limitless in its scope and military insiders are expressing serious concerns 
about whether it will even accomplish its goals. Yet given that terrorism is 
an immediate and continuing threat, protesters must be able to discuss 
alternative approaches to national security. "We'd like to see a united 
international effort to bring [the terrorists] to justice," rally organizer 
Reecha Upadhyay said, admitting that the movement was finding it difficult 
to figure out how this would work. "We know what we shouldn't do."



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