Anti-War Movements

Lou Paulsen wwchi at enteract.com
Wed Oct 17 20:21:25 PDT 2001


-----Original Message----- From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>


>Ok, let me see if I have this right - I'm feeling a bit dim today.
>Parties not entirely unknown attack the U.S., and parties quite known
>have sworn to kill us in large numbers. Our response should be to put
>Sharon, Kissinger, Clinton, and Bush Sr. on trial.
>
>Do you crave political irrelevance, or is it just an irresistible
>habit of thought?

Doug, it's not clear whether you are talking about "what really happened" or about "how it should be spun" or about "what to do now."

As for what really happened, it all depends on how you frame it.

If you think that everything was peaceful and happy on this little blue ball in space until 9/11/2001, and then a radical Islamist group spoiled everything by killing innocent people, then they are the problem, and somebody should solve the problem by going after them and eliminating them and returning us to our happy pre-9/11 life.

If, on the other hand, you "examine the replay" of the years prior to 9/11/2001, and discover that there has been a bloody war going on for decades, with over a million casualties so far, over the general question of who should exploit mideast oil, and that there has been ruthless slaughter on both sides, that is, on the side of the forces trying to steal the oil and profit from it, and the forces trying to keep their own oil and profit from it themselves, then the picture looks a bit different, and all the focus on the WTC, in isolation from everything else that has been going on between the U.S., and the countries in the Morocco - Uzbekistan - Indonesia triangle, seems rather off the point.

As for what to do about it, it all depends on how you frame YOURSELF.

If you see yourself as part of an embattled polity along with George Bush Jr. and Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon and the Congress and America's men and women in uniform and columnists and intellectuals who get published in "legitimate" magazines and newspapers, among whom there might be differences of approach, but whose interests are basically the same, and that "we" have to figure out what "we" should do now about "those people" who are attacking "us" and trying to keep "us" from keeping "our" troops in the land of the two holy places to ensure "our" oil supply, then you might end up saying pretty much what is being said right now by "elected leaders" or "respected experts" or "certified pundits" of one party or faction or another.

If on the other hand you see yourself as part of a basically disenfranchised majority, living as powerless wage slaves under the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, and you see that this bourgeoisie has been pursuing a policy of war and plunder, which not only has been killing large numbers of people whom you think might possibly be as valuable as yourself, but which now, it seems, has gotten people so infuriated that they are likely to kill anyone who happens to live in New York, and that the bourgeoisie is going to raise the level of the conflict regardless of what it does to your life, job, income, happiness, etc., then you might start desperately thinking about how you can yell out to those infuriated people, "No!! It's not me!! It's them!! You think we run this country, but we don't!! You think we love this policy of war and mass murder, but we oppose it!! We're your friends, really!!", and then you might start thinking of how you could show that this was really the case, and maybe even about how to wrest the reins of power away from that bourgeoisie so that the war can come to an end and we can live on this little blue ball in space in relative peace and mutual respect.

Or of course you might try moving to Finland, which nobody much is angry with right now so far as I know. Finland also has a good deal of fresh water which will be useful in the event of global warming. The language is difficult for adult native speakers of English, though, I have heard.

As to how to spin it, it all depends on how you frame that.

If your picture of what happened and what to do about it pretty much matches what Bush or Powell or Daschle or some other "respectable person" has been saying, then you don't have a problem. It's a free country and you are free to say that you support the war.

If your picture of what happened and what to do about it pretty much is entirely different from what Bush and his experts and media have been saying, and even from what most people in the U.S. believe at the moment, then it further depends on whether your priority is to assure that, whatever happens, most people would agree that your opinions are respectable and relevant and legal to hold, or to assure that, whatever happens, you are engaged in the process of pointing out the truth to people.

I don't suppose that there is complete unity on this list on any of these points, and therefore I think it is unlikely that this list will arrive at a unified analysis or strategy.

Lou Paulsen



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