On Thu, 31 Oct 2002, Dennis Perrin wrote:
> Are such concerns being expressed at "antiwar" rallies? "No Blood for Oil"
> and "No Iraqi Chemical Weapons"? Have I missed this part of the argument?
Dennis, c'mon. No one should expect position papers from rallies. Rallies are about slogans and manifesting unity. You want detailed position papers, go to the NGOs. www.globalpolicy.org is an alliance of 300+ NGOs that try to influence the UN and they have a long report on the subject that I think lays out most of the ideas I discussed at
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/sanction/iraq1/2002/paper.htm#8
There are always policy intellectuals churning out detailed examinations of every possible position. But policy intellectuals don't get into the papers because they are smart. Rather they get published their side is winning. So I think it's wrong to say you can't support the peace movement because it hasn't come up with a detailed alternative plan. There are such plans. The reason they aren't getting any publicity is because at the moment, they seem politically irrelevant, like an idea for a public works program.
The first object of the peace movement has to be stop the war. If we get to the point where that seems possible, then editors will ask, Well, what would you do instead? And all these NGO guys will come out of the woodwork and get published and all the pundits will repeat what they say.
If the peace movement at the moment looks likes it's battling to return to the status quo it's because that would now be a major victory. And now that we've cleared up that point about the Kurds, it should be clear that there's no downside to doing it. The only thing you can say is that if we got back to that point, then of course we'd want to improve things more if we possibly could. Absolutely.
The right is exactly the same way, BTW. We didn't hear their plans about what they'd do the day after until they'd clearly gotten past the halfway point of getting us into war. The ideas were out there, in their think tanks, and they had been for years. But they weren't news until it became conceivable that they might become policy.
Michael