The Current Peace Movement's Got No Buzz

Despite the fact that protesters have organized successful marches in cities around the country, the current peace movement doesn't seem to be growing or garnering a real buzz on the street, even among many people on the left. Polls show that since Sept. 11, since George W. Bush began talking about military action and since the peace protesters took to the streets, Americans are more, not less, supportive of military action. According to a recent Gallup poll 90 percent of the public now believes bombing the Taliban is necessary.

Over the past few weeks I've spoken with quite a few people I'd have expected to be on the front lines of the peace movement but who support the bombing campaign that has been under way, even if they do not passionately do so (and really, anyone passionate about possibly killing civilians?or anyone?would scare the daylights out of me). They may not be hanging out their flags, but they're certainly not burning them. So far, the antiwar message isn't permeating even among its target audience.

Why the resistance to the resistors? Having run press and publicity operations for the media-savvy AIDS activist group ACT UP in the late 80s, I speak from experience when I say: Ya gotta have a gimmick. Put less succinctly, in appealing to the public for support you have to have concrete and realistic goals, spelled out in a discernible and captivating message that will resonate with people once they are educated on the issues. With their hackneyed soundbites?"Justice yes, war no!"?their noble but often untenable loyalty to pacifism at all costs (which some might call fundamentalism in and of itself), and their confusion about alternatives, the antiwar protesters don't appear to possess any of that.

Ironically, the antiwar activists' larger critique, percolating under the trite and nostalgic slogans, is on target and is even agreed upon by foreign affairs specialists across the political spectrum?notwithstanding the cadre of right-wing pundits who have tried to portray the antiwar protesters as wingnuts and traitors. A logical solution to the current crisis is one that seems illogical and contradictory on the surface: give in to the terrorists' demands?and simultaneously hunt them down and destroy them. The antiwar protesters have had half of that right when speaker after speaker at their rallies has charged that U.S. policies in the Middle East have fomented outrage in the Islamic world and must change?even if, from a p.r. perspective, it's pretty callous to appear to be blaming the victim days after an horrific attack.

Al Qaeda's complaints, shared by millions of Muslims, are all about U.S. involvement in the Muslim world. Who could disagree? We have propped up dictatorships throughout the Arab world as we have simultaneously propped up Israel, while looking the other way as Israel has chased Palestinians from their homes and murdered many. Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups have exploited the anger against us among a fervently religious, politically disaffected swath of Muslims globally. And the millions of comparatively moderate Muslims across the globe who don't support terrorism or Islamic fundamentalism are often nonetheless indifferent or downright hostile in the face of the U.S.'s current plight because of U.S. policies in the Middle East.

If the U.S. forced a settlement between Israel and the Palestinians by putting pressure on Israel as equally as it pressures the Palestinians?and strongly condemned and punished Israel for its human rights atrocities just as it condemns terrorism by Islamic fundamentalists?many Arabs across the world would see a different U.S. They might even have more respect for democracy in time and beat back the fundamentalists among them rather than passively supporting their own dictatorial governments that, to varying degrees of success, keep the fundamentalists in line through brutal measures.

Where the peace movement is completely off the mark, however, is in demanding that no military action?and thus no strong response at all?come from the U.S. regarding the Sept. 11 attacks. The terrorists must be punished for attacking our country, no matter how much their reasons for mass murder are couched in legitimate grievances. Ditto the governments that harbor and support them. Otherwise, any rogue state or crazed foreign group will believe it can easily get away with entering the U.S. and killing thousands of Americans at whim.

This is where the antiwar people offer no realistic alternative and where their message is muddled. For example, some of the antiwar protesters have claimed that, rather than taking military action, we should bring the perpetrators to trial in an international court?as if it would be easy to just go and extract Osama bin Laden from Afghanistan and bring him to trial, convict him and send him to prison. The protesters have often claimed that attacking the Taliban will only instigate further terrorist attacks?a "cycle" of violence. But taking bin Laden into custody?if that were even possible?could incite terrorism just the same, if not more. If bin Laden were in prison many future terrorist attacks could conceivably be made demanding bin Laden's release, and threatening further action. Or Americans would be taken hostage with the condition of their release being bin Laden's freedom. We've seen these kinds of strategies countless times before among terrorist groups.

And even this, the only proposed alternative from the antiwar protesters?bringing bin Laden to trial?is not supported by a great many of them. "Some look to promoting international tribunals," says Andy Thayer, a Chicago antiwar activist and cofounder of the Chicago Anti-Bashing Network, a gay and lesbian group that opposes the current military action. "I'm personally extremely skeptical of this approach as the U.S. has made it clear that it wouldn't submit its own officials to such jurisdiction... Without the U.S. also submitting to such a court (while insisting that foreign nationals be subject to it), it's just another case of the U.S. playing bully, and arrogantly insisting that a different standard be applied to it vis-a-vis the rest of the world." Thayer thus believes that the only response is to change our policies in the Middle East, end of discussion.

The antiwar movement in the Vietnam era grew over time and resonated with millions because Americans increasingly felt they had no business micromanaging that part of the world, particularly if it meant many Americans would die in the process. Americans might be convinced in time that they have had no business, for the past several decades, micromanaging the Middle East either, and might work toward changing that now. But it will be difficult to convince substantial numbers of them that they shouldn't be responding swiftly and with force to the murderers who've killed thousands of people, or that the U.S. shouldn't be sending a message to other would-be terrorists. And unless the peace movement agrees upon and clearly lays out a realistic alternative, it will be impossible.