Betsy Hartmann
As the US army occupies Baghdad, the peace movement is faced with a series of
strategic challenges, challenges we must face openly, and challenges for which
there are no easy answers. We must develop political strategies that draw on
solidarity and information from activists and analysts in diverse social movements
and incorporate those into our own work.
The following reflections are offered as a contribution to the ongoing strategic
debates within the peace movement. They are based upon my own ongoing involvement
in the peace movement and informed by my own thinking over the past several
years about how to build a broad-based progressive social justice movement in
this country, a movement that sees the connections between national and international
policies and a movement that, while respecting difference, moves beyond the
narrow confines of identity and single-issue politics.
1. We must sustain our resistance to the war. Even though we have failed to
stop the war, our collective pressure may be able to prevent some of the worst
military excesses, and this could translate directly into saving the lives of
both civilians and soldiers. Sustaining resistance means we need to remain optimistic,
and not to be depressed by the opinion polls, which tell us over two-third of
Americans are for the war. Those figures change dramatically according to how
the questions are asked. We are not alone: an estimated 200,000 people were
on the streets of New York in early March protesting the war, as well as thousands
more in other cities in the United States and around the world. It is also important
that people in other countries see that there is resistance here, in the “belly
of the beast.”
2. We must squarely recognize the class challenges of this war and the resistance
to it, and guard against the arrogance of white, middle-class entitlement in
framing both resistance and a proactive program of peace and social justice.
This was brought home to me when I attended a demonstration at Westover Air
Force Base in Chicopee, Massachusetts, not far from where I teach at Hampshire
College. Families in front of their houses were shouting insults at us, while
men drove by in flag-covered SUVs and trucks, giving us the finger. The chasm
was not only about attitudes toward the war but social class; it felt like middle-class
Amherst vs. working class Chicopee. In a depressed economy, with enormous gaps
between rich and poor, joining the military is often an economic, not a political
or moral decision. Students at universities and colleges across the country
serve in the reserves or the National Guard because it is one of the only ways
to pay for college. How do we negotiate the class divide? We can shout, “Support
our troops, bring them home,” but bring them home to what?
3. If ever there were a time to integrate issues of economic justice, it is
now. Not only is it costing us hundreds of billions of dollars to destroy Iraq,
but it will also cost billions more to pay any number of corrupt crony corporations
to rebuild it. In the process, the Bush administration manufactures a false
sense of economic scarcity as communities all over the country are forced to
make massive cuts in education, health care, and job creation. The peace movement
not only needs to expose these processes—exposing links between Bush administration
officials and crony firms and showing how the war in Iraq is undermining economic
security at home—but it must also put forward an alternative economic agenda
that lasts beyond the immediacy of the war. We are not only struggling for a
peace dividend, but a profound transformation of business as usual.
4. Make the links between war at home and war abroad, for the strength of the
national security state depends on a highly racialized internal and external
enemy. For over a decade now, the so-called war on drugs has been a war on communities
of color, and repression of immigrants was intensifying well before the September
11th attacks. Unless the peace movement seriously challenges the attack on the
human rights and civil liberties of all those deemed “Other,” and
defends the rights of those forced outside the boundaries of privileged white
American citizenship, it will fail to build an enduring alternative because
the militarization of domestic society is precisely what has paved the way for
militarism abroad.
5. We must also understand the link between war abroad and Bush’s war on
women and reproductive rights. It is a characteristic of fundamentalist regimes—and
the evidence suggests that we are moving closer to one in this country—that
women’s sexuality and reproduction become the target of state control,
not only legally and administratively, but symbolically. The Bush administration
has already made explicit its opposition to reproductive rights for women at
home and abroad through its limits on funding for reproductive health programs
and its attacks on abortion rights. At times of war, gender differences become
further reified and enforced, and male aggression and violence celebrated. We
must understand these connections, and link the peace movement to the ongoing
struggle for gender equality and reproductive rights.
6. Monitor and expose the environmental consequences of war. Even in times of
relative peace, the US military is probably the single-biggest polluter and
energy user on the planet and in times of war the damage is far more extensive.
Moreover, as in the case of the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, Bush will try to use
the war as an excuse for further environmental deregulation.
7. While our eyes are trained on the situation in Iraq, we must remain vigilant
and look elsewhere for repercussions. Several months ago, prominent Israeli
academics circulated a letter warning of the possibility that Sharon would use
the opportunity of war in Iraq to embark on a massive ethnic cleansing in Palestine.
We must consider what pay-offs members of the “coalition of the willing”—or
rather coalition of the killing—have received for their support of Washington.
We can be sure the US will turn a blind eye to human rights abuses in those
countries.
8. Be prepared for the next stage—the occupation of Iraq. While the US
is already putting into place its own proxy rulers, the peace movement here
needs to forge links and make common cause with progressive Iraqi groups. We
have to be ready to engage in an informed way in the murky politics of humanitarian
assistance.
9. Build a new, positive vision of peace and security that eschews both American
isolationism and imperialism and strengthens the rule of international law.
This isn’t the place to present an outline of a whole new security agenda.
But what would real security look like? My short list includes:
• Dismantling weapons of mass destruction in all countries, including ours.
• Supporting institutions to end the impunity of war criminals such as
the International Criminal Court and stronger institutions for the protection
of human rights.
• Promoting economic, social, and environmental justice that reduces the
risk of conflict.
Such positive visions are perhaps the hardest thing to contemplate at times
like these. But we must look forward, and not allow the pictures of tanks and
bombs and death and destruction on TV to colonize our imaginations, preventing
us from imagining a better world. We must stay firmly rooted in our sense of
possibilities despite the grim days ahead.
Betsy is the director of the Hampshire College Population and Development
Program and a member of the Committee on Women, Population, and the Environment.
She originally wrote this for Foreign Policy in Focus (www.fpif.org).