A LOCAL PEACE RALLY AND THE FUTURE OF THE U.S. MOVEMENT AGAINST THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN
By Jack A. Smith
It’s an interesting paradox; one for the books, as they say.
The U.S. is experiencing a spasm of patriotic hyperventilation following the traumatic September terror attacks, compounded by Washington’s vigorous drumbeat for war and national chauvinism, and the corporate mass media’s monomaniacal preoccupation with fear and trembling.
Yet, in such inhospitable soil, a mass antiwar movement is growing in our country faster than Jack’s Beanstalk. What such a movement may or may not accomplish is the subject of this article, moving from the particular of a peace rally in a semi-rural region of New York State to the general prospects for U.S. peace forces.
It was the Mid-Hudson Valley’s turn in Kingston, N.Y., on Saturday, Oct. 27, to contribute its humble portion to this antiwar phenomenon with the largest local peace rally in anyone’s memory. About 250 demonstrators were present at one time at the chilly Saturday afternoon rally in Academy Green Park--a figure derived from two separate head counts. A large percentage were antiwar students, mostly from Bard and Vassar colleges, plus veterans of peace and justice struggles dating from the 1940s to the 1990s. There were several children, a sweet little baby and a handsome black dog, too, as well as lots of home-made signs, banners and enthusiasm.
The event was organized by the Mid-Hudson National People’s Campaign and co-sponsored by a broad and politically diverse number of organizations including the Bard Student Action Collective (SAC), Vassar Student Activist Union (SAU), Vassar Amnesty, Green groups from Dutchess and Ulster counties, the Catskill Alliance for Peace, Caribbean and Latin America Support Project (CLASP), Hudson Valley Sustainable Communities Network, Woodstock Committee to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal, Community One Love One Race, Presence for Peace and CHANGES.
The lively, indeed exciting, rally didn’t pull any political punches. Several speakers pointed to U.S. policies of worldwide hegemony and the imperial projection of military power as important contributing factors in generating the frustration and antagonism that propelled a handful of fundamentalist suicide soldiers to crash passenger planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Washington was likewise excoriated for its role in assisting the right-wing Taliban government to power by its intervention in the first Afghan war (1979-96). It was also frequently noted that the alleged leader of the terrorist attack, Osama bin Laden, was an old boy from the anti-Soviet CIA network in Afghanistan.
Some 14 speakers addressed the two-hour meeting, mostly representing the sponsoring groups. They included, in order of appearance, Donna Goodman, Mid-Hudson NPC; Irit Reinheimer, Mid-Hudson Committee for Peace and Justice in the Middle East; Julie Tozer, Vassar SAU; Jane VanDeBogart, CLASP; Jack A. Smith, Mid-Hudson NPC; Joel Kovel, Bard professor and Green Party figure; Matt Dineen, Bard SAC; Fred Nagel, Dutchess Greens; Kierin Matthews, a local organizer; Mark Vian, an Ulster Green; Tanya Marquette, from the New Paltz 9/11 group; Jay Wenk, Vets for Peace; Ed Haffmans, a local activist; and Dillon Stillwood, a Colombia Univ. activist.
Local folksinger Bob Lusk led the entire crowd in singing "We Shall Overcome," a popular highlight which one participant later said “should have lasted 10 more choruses.”
A dozen or so antiwar protesters maintained a vigil along the Albany Ave. side of the park during the rally. Since Kingston is the kind of town that sports a number of “two-flag” SUVs, there were occasional shouts and obscene curses from passing motorists on the busy street--one of the more amusing being, “Go back to Afghanistan!”--but participants reported that there were many “honks” for peace as well.
It was a rally that almost didn’t happen. The organizers managed to obtain a million-dollar insurance policy, and thus a park permit, one hour before the Kingston Parks Dept. closed for the weekend on Friday afternoon. In previous meetings at the park over the last several years they had not been instructed to secure the insurance.
This time the authorities became interested in the rally mainly due to an article that appeared earlier in the daily Kingston Freeman, announcing in a front page headline that “Doves, war hawks plan rallies in Kingston park on Saturday.” The newspaper evidently took at face value a publicity-grabbing exaggeration by a tiny number of local ultra-conservatives--inspired by a far-right website, not any local organizations--that they were going to conduct a pro-war rally in the same location and time as the peace rally. Obviously, such a possibility was fraught with confrontational overtones in the prevailing atmosphere. The Freeman quoted the conservative spokesperson as terming the peace meeting as a “pro-Taliban” rally, four times. At that point the police made it known that a million-dollar insurance policy was required to obtain the park permit to relieve the city of Kingston of any liability.
The right-wing did not in fact hold a rally. Only eight of them showed up to picket at the north end of the park.
Noting that the right-wing defined the rally as being “pro-Taliban,” one of the speakers said that “Such a designation contains a certain historical irony. During the 1980s, when the United States was massively intervening in the Afghan civil war, albeit clandestinely, many on the left warned that this would result in the overthrow of Afghanistan’s first progressive government and its replacement by a backward, right-wing fundamentalist element. This of course is what happened, resulting in the ascension to power of the ultra-conservative Taliban. At the time, our critics labeled opponents of the Taliban as communists. Now they label us Talabandistas as well as 'commies' for opposing this second U.S. intervention in Afghanistan. Then we were told to ‘go back to Russia.’ Now we have been told to ‘go back to Afghanistan.’ Historical accuracy has never been the far-right’s strong point.”
Another speaker addressed Washington’s sudden concern with the plight of Afghani women oppressed by the ultra-conservative Taliban, which repealed all the laws supporting women initiated by the overthrown progressive government. “The women of Afghanistan are living under one of the cruelest and most misogynist regimes on earth,” she said. “These same women once had the right to work, to get an education, to move about in society without being stoned to death, to live their lives. Our government knew then--when it sent money and arms to the reactionary fundamentalist anti-woman forces and helped them come to power--what the Taliban stood for. We here want to see these women freed from their oppression. But we cannot stand by while the Pentagon and CIA, which helped put the Taliban in power, once again decide the fate of Afghani women. The best way we can help our sisters in Afghanistan is to stop this war, which is only increasing their sufferings, destitution and hunger.”
While it was true for the day, as the Kingston Freeman said in its Oct. 28 report on the rally, that “the war supporters were dramatically outnumbered by the antiwar contingent,” none of the demonstrators or speakers had any illusion that they represented more than a relatively small minority of U.S. public opinion. The latest New York Times/CBS News poll, for example, showed Oct. 30 that 88% of the American people “approve of the military attacks” against Afghanistan, while only 8% disapprove. At the same time, of course, the Bush government is well aware that its broad support could evaporate quickly--as public attitudes toward other U.S. wars have demonstrated in recent decades. The president’s father attained a significant approval rating when he launched the war against Iraq--but not long afterward was defeated for a second term in office. This is one reason why the present administration is manipulating a confused and pliant public opinion to accept a “several-year war,” one which could span the next presidential election year to provide President Bush with the “wartime” support he may need to win reelection. A long war, which might shift to a few so-called “rogue states” after the Pentagon demolishes Afghanistan, would likewise provide an incentive for Congress to pass more “anti-terrorist” abrogations of civil liberties and pro-business legislation.
The fact that support for the war is exceptionally high at the moment, brought to near hysteria by the scare-story-a-minute corporate media, makes all the more paradoxical the unusually swift rise of the movement opposed to the Afghan war. Scores of thousands took to the streets in antiwar protests throughout the U.S. a week before the Bush administration even started bombing Afghanistan, despite the congealing of an intimidating pro-war jingoism draped in red, white and blue bunting from coast to coast. This took a lot of nerve. It is also interesting that the left and antiwar movements which have taken to the streets in protest have a far more developed political critique of the Afghanistan government than the Bush administration or the pro-war majority.
The large infusion of youth, primarily college students, into the antiwar struggle is obviously the main reason the movement has grown so quickly. The student antiwar movement of the 1960s was strongly against the Vietnam war as well, but it took longer to develop and was inspired in part by the draft and the relatively large number of U.S. dead and wounded. There’s no draft today, and the Pentagon is essentially conducting a long-distance war to avoid American casualties, hoping the “allied” Northern Alliance troops will get themselves killed off fighting the Bush administration’s war before Washington has to deny them access to Kabul and political power.
The student youth movement has been developing in the U.S. for several years, following a long period of introspection--first in response to sweatshops, labor exploitation and issues concerning democracy, then gravitating two years ago in Seattle into staunch opposition to the World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund, World Bank and to the globalization of capital generally, though not yet from a socialist perspective. The leap to antiwar and anti-imperialist activism took place after Sept. 11 when two things happened. First, the Bush administration was about to launch a long and vaguely defined war. Second, nearly all of the progressive groupings in the leadership of the anti-globalization initiatives abruptly canceled long-planned protests in Washington against the IMF/WB set for the end of September, and virtually disappeared from the political radar screen. A number of traditional peace, liberal and social-democratic groups also remained quiet in the days and weeks following the terror attacks, except for occasional statements.
In a bold and risky decision, the International Action Center (IAC) decided afew days after the terror attacks not to cancel its planned Sept. 29 Washington protest against the Bush administration’s right-wing agenda but to transform it into a massive protest against the impending war. The IAC quickly formed a broad coalition called ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War & End Racism) and organizers worked in record time to build large demonstrations in Washington and a half-dozen other cities for the same day. The student movement and youth in general came out in droves, as did many pacifists, anti-imperialists, the left, and individuals from progressive groups that were still keeping a low profile, with some even telling their members that a protest at this time was "inappropriate." It has been estimated in this newsletter that perhaps 75% of the up to 20,000 Washington demonstrators were between 18 and 29 years of age, with many of them on the lower end of the scale, representing scores of colleges. It is worth noting that the Sept. 29 protests were red-baited unmercifully by the right-wing and its media outlets, such as the ultra-conservative Washington Times which tried to trace the origins of the antiwar protest back to the Bolshevik revolution, a practice replicated by some individual progressives as well, still reliving the old days. This did not discourage large sectors of the student movement from participating in a breakthrough event that brought the existence of significant antiwar dissent to the consciousness of many millions of Americans for the first time.
Continuing this initiative, the ANSWER coalition--designed to be all-embracing by focusing on common denominator opposition to war and racism--immediately launched another round of protests for Oct. 27. On this day alone, the coalition organized actions in 75 U.S. cities, joined by additional antiwar events in 40 cities in 20 other countries. Young people participated in large number, as they did in Kingston. Cities and campuses where activism remains low did not participate in the Oct. 27 events, of course, but this is expected to change with time. Some progressive groups are still not prepared to enter into public opposition because of extremely tense local conditions. In other cases, some progressives remained aloof from last week’s international protests because they did not want to support a left-led coalition--a happenstance hardly unique at the beginning stages of this country’s many wars and foreign conflicts over the last century. In general, Oct. 27 was an extraordinary manifestation of opposition to a U.S. war so early in the struggle, under trying conditions at a time when left forces are not strong.
At this point it looks as though the Bush administration is going to maximize and prolong the opportunity presented by the terror attacks to advance as many of its international and domestic objectives as possible. But it faces a number of problems.
Internationally, Washington may be somewhat constrained in its adventurism by the need to maintain the broad coalition of nations to pursue this stage of its “war on terrorism.” The UK government, the only ally willing to commit troops to the Afghan war, has been warning that British public opinion appears to be turning against the war. Other European allies expect popular support for the war to dwindle. Some coalition partners are demanding that a reluctant Pentagon halt the bombings during the long Muslim holiday of Ramadan, which begins Nov. 17. President Bush must also keep the State Department and the Defense Department--each representing different sectors of right-wing opinion--from going to war with each other over how far to extend the anti-terrorism campaign. Adding fuel to this fire are rumblings from conservative politicians insisting that the administration dispatch a large invading force of U.S. troops into Afghanistan. The situation is reaching the point where New York Times analyst R. W. Apple Jr. asked Oct. 31, “Could Afghanistan become another Vietnam? Is the U.S. facing another stalemate on the other side of the world? Premature the questions may be, three weeks after the fighting began. Unreasonable they are not.” Another problem Bush must finesse is should he (as the far-right demands), or should he not, start another war against Iraq to finish off this beleaguered country for good--and if so, when?
Domestically, Bush will go for everything he can get for his corporate backers--from a bigger defense budget and an expensive national missile scheme, to more tax cuts for the rich and reductions in social programs for the working class and the poor. His success or failure will depend in part on weather the Democrats break with the opportunist political unity that still holds most of them in thrall to the “wartime” White House.
The new antiwar movement has a major role to play in this political drama, especially as Washington feels the heat from allies demanding moderation and Republican warhawks demanding a wider war. If the movement continues to grow in number and in the strength of its uncompromising convictions, to act boldly and militantly on city streets and campuses, to unify all who can be united in a common struggle to end the war, and adopts a principled stand against red-baiting and exclusion, it will be able to influence events in a progressive direction over the next critical weeks, months and years. Judging by what took place in the microcosm of Kingston, N.Y., Oct. 27, where different political trends joined in unity and common purpose to protest war under complex objective conditions, the progressive forces and the left have a chance to change history, if they choose to seize it.