By JENNIFER SARANOW THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE
Warren Langley, a former president of the Pacific Exchange in San Francisco, was arrested March 14 while blocking the entrance to the exchange during an antiwar protest. The 60-year-old Air Force veteran talked to us about why the conflict in Iraq prompted him to protest war for the first time, and what he is doing to get others in the business community involved.
What's different about this war that led you to get involved opposing it?
I was in my 20s and 30s [during the Vietnam War] and my view of the world was different. I was in the Air Force and was trying to do my job as best I could. … I didn't question whether the war was right or wrong or any of those things at that point in time. [Mr. Langley served as a U.S.-based engineer and professor for the Air Force during the Vietnam War.]
Now, I turned 60 in January so I have a different perspective of the world. … I watched things unfold after Sept. 11 and it seemed to be that we jumped from protecting against terrorism to focusing on Iraq, and that never made sense to me. As we kind of marched through the fall there was this huge disconnect between what are we doing and why are we doing this. … It started to feel like a political war to me.
Fundamentally, I think war is the last resort. War is when you can't find other ways to accomplish your means, and it appeared to me there were lots of ways to disarm Saddam Hussein without invading him. That just didn't make sense to me and I always rebel against things that just seem totally out of whack. I have to say that that feeling got stronger on my 60th birthday in January. My wife said, "Well, what do you want to do for your birthday?" And I said, "Well, I'd like to march in this march they're having here in San Francisco." And so on my 60th birthday I went down and marched.
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Who was spearheading the movement?
I would say it's a really good example of what I would call a modern organization. I always thought of the hierarchal military organization as a very well defined, controlled organization. This organization is of loosely connected groups that couldn't have existed without e-mails or cellphones. I think we saw it originally in the antiglobalization stuff in Seattle that extended across the world. It always seems disorganized, but always comes out more organized than you thought. When we did the civil disobedience, in my traditional way of thinking I thought, "Well why aren't we planning for this contingency and that contingency?" But when something we hadn't talked about happened, somebody there would help the group move in one direction or another so it's not a command and control. It's much more of an influence, and everybody chooses. It's much more consensus and sometimes I guess that can be frustrating.
But I have to say I've been very impressed, and you never had this feeling that there was a big hand someplace that you didn't know orchestrating all of this. Nobody could have organized it that way. It just sort of came together at that time.
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What do you think the protestors will achieve?
I hope it makes politicians who are in office right now more accountable and gives those who need it more courage to stand up because they realize there are people out there, more than they thought, who think a certain way. I hope in the next year or two it affects choices we have to make about supporting peace in Israel, about reorganizing Iraq, about not going into North Korea and about not going into Iran.
What have you found the reaction to the war to be in the business community?
I think people who are in the middle of their careers, I found a number of them who agree with me. But they are reluctant to speak out because they see it as a risk. If I'm running a business, what if half my customers don't like what I say?
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What's next for you?
I'm actively speaking and responding to any opportunity to put forward the thoughts and ideas I have about why the war was a bad thing. ... I'm reaching out to people in the business community to see what they think about trying to start an organization or a platform or a place [for] business people and people with military backgrounds who may oppose war in general, or a war of this nature. [Such a group] might have some political power and certainly will have some authenticity and credibility when speaking to the public.
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