War protests planned for holiday weekend
Posted on 01/16/2003 3:09:24 AM PST by MeekOneGOP
War protests planned for holiday weekend
Organizers chose King birthday because of his opposition to militarism
01/16/2003
WASHINGTON - While polls indicate most Americans support a war with Iraq, opponents say growing unease over such a conflict should bring hundreds of thousands into the streets of Washington and other cities over the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend.
"There's just a lot of folks who may have had reservations in the past who are now feeling more comfortable about going to a teach-in or getting on a bus to Washington," said Peter Lems, an anti-war organizer with the American Friends Service Committee, or Quakers.
A Gallup Poll of 1,000 adults taken between Jan. 3 and 5 found 53 percent of those Americans contacted saying that the situation in Iraq is "worth going to war over." Other polls have found more support for war, but that enthusiasm wanes when pollsters ask about a war involving U.S. troops attacking on the ground or thousands of U.S. casualties.
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"We'll be reminding the nation about Dr. King's opposition to war, racism and militarism at a time when we are imminently close to a full-scale attack on Iraq, backing Israel's occupation, the nation's economy is faltering and civil liberties are under assault," said Damu Smith, who founded Black Voices for Peace after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Although war opponents cite many causes, organizer Mr. Lems said public unease stems mostly from a fear that the United States is pursuing confrontation with many Islamic and Arab states in the face of worldwide opposition.
"We said to the world, 'Either do it our way, or else.' Europe and the Arab world are not convinced or supportive of that approach, and the larger Islamic world is very concerned this is a religious vendetta," Mr. Lems said. "Some people are saying, 'Slow down, let the inspectors do their work.' Others are saying our whole policy is wrong."
War opponents say public support for war comes from a sense that Iraq and Sept. 11 are connected, even though no evidence has emerged tying those attacks to Saddam Hussein's regime.
"The American people wanted heroic responses to Sept. 11, whatever that might entail," said Ian Lustick, a University of Pennsylvania political science professor. "But this war is not developing in response to demand. It is a supply-side war, drummed up by a cabal of neoconservatives who before Sept. 11 were fully committed to a new American order in the Middle East."
Other war opponents make the same argument about a "cabal" promoting war. They cite a long campaign urging confrontation with Iraq by the signers of a 1998 letter to President Clinton making the case for military action to overthrow Saddam Hussein's regime.
Several who now hold prominent posts in the Bush administration, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, signed the letter. White House National Security Council aides Elliott Abrams and Zalmay Khalilzad, who are responsible for democratization in the Middle East and Iraq, also signed.
The letter was sent when Iraq was frustrating U.N. weapons inspectors' efforts to gain access to presidential palaces and other sites and when nations such as Russia and France were pressing to lift economic sanctions. Mr. Clinton ordered four days of bombing strikes against Iraq almost a year after the letter and endorsed regime change as the focus of U.S. policy toward Iraq.
"The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction," the letter read. "In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power."
Prominent neoconservatives William Bennett, William Kristol and Richard Perle were among the other signers. Mr. Perle is now chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board.
Anti-war churches
Arguments against such a war are coming from several diverse sources. Churches with a tradition of anti-war activism, such as the Mennonites and the Quakers, are helping to organize this weekend's demonstrations.
They cite a confidential U.N. report that predicts war could lead to as many as 500,000 Iraqi casualties and leave tens of millions dependent on international relief agencies for food and medicine.
The 12-page report, prepared in December, said another war would pose much greater hardships on the 26 million Iraqi people than they experienced in 1991.
"The bulk of the population is now totally dependent on the government of Iraq for a majority, if not all, of their basic needs and, unlike the situation in 1991, they have no way of coping if they cannot access them," the U.N. report found.
Church-based war opponents say war could inflame anti-American sentiments around the world and spur more terrorist attacks.
Many former generals and diplomats with experience in the Arab world also oppose a war. Their chief concerns are hostility toward the United States in the Arab world due to the Bush administration's close alliance with Israel and the lack of any peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.
"This would not be intended to restore the status quo or assert international law," as was the 1991 war with Iraq, said Charles Freeman, U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the Persian Gulf War and president of the Middle East Policy Council in Washington. "This would be a war to overthrow the status quo and arrange the region to our liking."
Retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, the State Department's special Mideast envoy, has said that the United States should not go to war with Iraq until a peace process is in place in the Middle East. And Gen. Wesley Clark, former NATO commander, and Gen. John Shalikashvili, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have urged against unilateral military action by the United States.
President Bush said again Tuesday that the confrontation is about one last chance for Saddam Hussein to comply with 11 years of U.N. demands for disarmament.
"Time is running out on Saddam Hussein," the president said. "He must disarm. I'm sick and tired of games and deception."
Mr. Hussein insists he has no more weapons of mass destruction. Several war opponents, including actor Sean Penn and celebrity Bianca Jagger, have traveled to Baghdad asking that U.N. inspectors be given whatever time they need to ensure such weapons have been destroyed.
Dr. Lustick, who spoke at a conference on Capitol Hill last week, said those advocating war want much more than Iraqi compliance with U.N. resolutions.
"They want U.S. bases in the region and the elimination of all pressure on Israel to withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza," he said. "It requires war with Iraq to take the oil ... It's grand-scale unilateralism."
No one in the administration has put forward such an agenda. Mr. Bush has repeatedly pledged U.S. support for creation of a Palestinian state and has said Iraq's oil belongs to the Iraqi people.
Leon Hadar, a research fellow with the libertarian Cato Institute, points to administration statements about bringing democracy to the Arab world to buttress his contention that the United States is embarked on a "grand hegemonic American adventure in the region."
Mr. Hadar said the American people would be unlikely to support a lengthy, costly occupation of Iraq and predicted Iraq would split along ethnic lines as was Yugoslavia if a war occurred.
"The Middle East will once again prove to be a graveyard for the great expectations of outside powers," he said.
E-mail jlanders@dallasnews.com
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