The weakness of the anti-war movement

C. G. Estabrook galliher at alexia.lis.uiuc.edu
Wed May 19 14:36:13 PDT 1999


On Wed, 19 May 1999, Doug Henwood wrote:


> I can't speak for the rest of the world, but it seems to me that most
> Americans don't care too much if their military is bombing other
> countries as long as no Americans get killed, or are at risk of getting
> killed. No draft, no antiwar movement. Am I being too cynical?

Probably. Chomsky (savaged today by a hack on the WSJ editorial page) had what seems to me a good comment on this matter in an interview six weeks ago; it's appended.

--C. G. Estabrook

* * *

Q: Some people say that unless American soldiers start being

shipped home in body bags, there will not be a serious anti-war

effort in this country. What is your assessment of that?

NC: I don't agree with that at all. I mean, look at the history:

During the 1980's there was overwhelming opposition to US

atrocities in Central America. As a matter of fact, opposition was

so strong that the Reagan Administration had to back off and resort

to using international terrorist networks like the Contras to carry

out its policies. And there were no Americans in body bags then.

Today there's strong opposition to US support for Indonesian

slaughter in East Timor, and there are no American body bags. If

you look at the opposition to the Vietnam War, Americans were of

course being killed, but that was by no means the decisive factor.

I think that the notion that only dead American soldiers will

inspire a peace movement -- in other words, that people are

motivated only by self-interest -- is US propaganda. It's

intolerable for the propaganda system to concede that people might

act on moral instinct, which is in fact what they do...

References

1. http://www.lbbs.org/ZMag/kosovo.htm



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