U.S. threats on Iraq raise anti-war voices
Posted on 10/21/2002 6:34:00 AM PDT by MeekOneGOP
U.S. threats on Iraq raise anti-war voices
Immigrants, Internet among factors helping fuel movement
10/21/2002
At 22, Kelli Driscoll is a freshly minted minister with a complicated calling: peace.
With Iraq in the cross hairs of the White House, she leads college students at a rally at the University of Texas at Arlington with a bit of Socratic questioning. "How many of you believe your life has worth? Does your worth come from being American? Do Iraqis have worth?"
At another outdoor stage, beneath the backdrop of towering flags at Dallas City Hall, 49-year-old Hadi Jawad, the grandson of Iraqis, tells another crowd, "The country is not united on this. There is debate in this country."
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The echo is not strong, but it is growing.
In venues across the country, Americans are questioning whether the United States should invade Iraq and whether that country's leader, Saddam Hussein, represents an imminent threat. Some oppose any invasion; others want to use more diplomatic force.
The protests are growing as the United Nations debates a U.S.-backed resolution that makes it clear Baghdad will face consequences if it fails to cooperate with a new round of inspections to ensure that it no longer has chemical, nuclear or biological weapons or missiles to deliver them.
The U.S. demonstrations haven't been large, save for some in New York City, Los Angeles and Portland, Ore. But they're growing in frequency and in variety, from a retro to high-tech style. Some are led by church leaders, others by veterans of past conflicts. Some of the demonstrators are students; some are activists of the Vietnam era.
Fueling the movement are an instantaneous Internet that can help fill a petition with thousands of names in 24 hours and cheap bulk rates on cellphones that make calling a Washington politico a new tool for protesters to get passive pedestrians quickly engaged.
And unlike previous anti-war efforts, immigrant faces are distinguishing this one. Many are Muslims, some are Iraqi, and that is deepening the debate.
"One of the things that happens often in war is that the person becomes not human. You call civilians and talk about collateral damage, or you come up with insulting names for the foreigners. But with the immigrants here we see more of the human face of war," said Mary Lord, director of the peace-building unit at the Philadelphia-based American Friends Service Committee. "We understand more what happens when civilians are caught in a war. It isn't collateral damage."
Support for action
Four polls in recent weeks have shown that Americans support military action in Iraq; the support ranged from 53 percent to 67 percent. But when the word "casualties" is used, support falls. A CNN/ USA Today /Gallup poll, for example, said 53 percent support using ground troops in Iraq, but if there are 1,000 U.S. casualties, the support drops to 46 percent. In a CBS/New York Times poll, 67 percent said they supported military action against Iraq; the figure fell to 54 percent when U.S. casualties were involved.
The debate is shaped dramatically by the Sept. 11 attacks. And new complexities about where the United States should strike next, or focus its diplomatic energies, have risen since recent bombings in Bali, a pacific Hindu island in the archipelago of Muslim Indonesia.
Michael Klare, a professor of international security policy at Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass., said he's surprised by the quick ramp-up in activism. During the Vietnam War, the strong demonstrations didn't happen until troops were sent overseas, he noted.
A student at Columbia University during the Vietnam era, he is becoming an anti-war activist again and has held forums on Iraq. Now, he must tutor himself on the amorphous: so-called weapons of mass destruction.
"Weapons of mass destruction were not something we talked about in the 1960s and 1970s," Mr. Klare said. "Today we have to be very aware of what the U.N. inspectors can and cannot do."
And the Internet makes communications much more potent, he noted. Among the Internet protest petitions are www.peacepledge.org, www.moveon.org and www.noiraqattack.org.
His deep preoccupation is the global division on an Iraqi invasion. "What troubles me," he said, "is that the United States is acting in a bully fashion, and that we have to learn to work through the international community. It is more cumbersome and may take longer, but that is the way we have to work."
'We don't want to fight'
At UTA, Ms. Driscoll is trying to forge a Texas network of campus organizations dedicated to protesting war action. "As activists, we are not going to sit back and see another world war," she said, gazing out at students and faculty members last week who listened to the speeches.
That is why the recent Texas Christian University graduate said she got involved. Sure, some believe war might eventually be justified, but only after diplomacy has been exhausted, she said. Others are pure pacifists, who will not support any violent invasion.
People from different backgrounds need to try to understand each other to minimize hatred, she said. She learned that growing up in a polarized society of blacks and whites in Louisiana, she said. Her father was a National Rifle Association member who served in the Coast Guard during the Vietnam War. Her mother was a minister, who taught her to respect other cultures. And she is very much her mother's daughter, she said proudly.
Some of the students are less than idealistic. "We will never be like the civil rights movement," said one. But students must try, he added.
Another acknowledged that her generation has been derided as spoiled - and that the adjective is justified. "What was our biggest problem - not getting the toys we wanted?" she asked.
John Dickson, a 21-year-old UTA student, tried to work up the crowd anyway. In a rapper's cadence, he shouted into a bullhorn: "Unite. Unite. We don't want to fight."
A network of peace
Mr. Jawad listened nearby. A board member of the Dallas Peace Center and founder of the Committee in Solidarity with the People of Iraq, he works with the students and groups in Texas. A private business owner, Mr. Jawad is also fund-raising with a U.S. veterans group to refurbish Iraqi water plants, crucial for sanitation, in the economically ravaged nation. He views a potential U.S. invasion of Iraq as part of a "chess game," involving complex Middle Eastern policies and "a projection of U.S. imperial power."
Mr. Jawad came to the United States some 30 years ago at the age of 19, enamored by what America represented to a citizen of the Third World. He became a U.S. citizen in 1978.
"There is such a mystique about living in the United States," he said. "Your dream is to come and take part in freedom, democracy and educational opportunities and to practice your religion freely."
By 1998, he was seething over U.N. sanctions against Iraq, an oil-rich country of 22 million that was once one of the most prosperous in the Persian Gulf. His uncle's business was in a shambles because of the economic sanctions, imposed after the Persian Gulf War of 1991, when Iraq invaded Kuwait.
Now, he is quick to recite statistics of the death toll of children under five years of age from dysentery and malnutrition: about 5,000 monthly. At Mr. Jawad's office, fliers are abundant with the face of a curly headed Iraqi girl. "Start seeing Iraqi Children. No War," it reads. It lists the White House number.
E-mail dsolis@dallasnews.com
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