October 7, 2008, was the 7th anniversary of the commencement of the bombing of Afghanistan. Late in the evening on Tuesday the 7th, the commander of the local American Legion (I’m a Legion member) proudly sent around a photo of what was billed as the largest armed forces reenlistment ever . . . inside one of Saddam Hussein’s palaces in Iraq, when, on July 4, 2008, General David Petraeus administered the oath.
The morning following the anniversary, October 8, the New York Times had a story about the continuing and ever more intractable problems in Afghanistan, more and more looking like the quagmire that defeated the Soviet Union in 1989, after almost eleven years of war. Afghanistan outlasted the British and the USSR, and it appears it will outlast the U.S. When will we ever learn?
I’ve always been sensitive to peace and justice issues, but it wasn’t until the bombing of Afghanistan in 2001 that I became active. I remember thinking, the day the bombing of Afghanistan began, that nothing good would come of it. I was an outsider to both the policy makers and to the peace movement. I saw the bombing to be an overreaction, a revenge move by our government that we’d regret.
But it was a lonely time for a new peacenik. The Minneapolis Star Tribune for October 8, 2001, was headlined “Poll finds 94 percent of Americans back action [in Afghanistan]; most expect long war.” “And just as many Americans continue to endorse the way Bush is handling the response to the Sept. 11 assaults.” Of every 20 Americans I would pass on the street, perhaps one felt as I did.
I think it was on Friday of that week, in October 2001, that I heard of a protest at the State Capitol steps. I decided to wander over. It was early evening, and there weren’t many there. I didn’t know anyone. The speakers spoke, and across the road on the sidewalk a very angry phalanx of flag-brandishing “patriots” attempted to shout out the peace speakers. We were, I remember, a few men, women, and children on both sides, though the peaceniks outnumbered the faux-patriots.
I gradually became more engaged in the peace movement. April 20, 2002, a Saturday, I listened to Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer speak at St. Joan of Arc —first introduction to him. That same morning, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune actually published a column of mine, headlined “9-11 was excuse to go to war.” The column, which remains accessible on the web, did not even mention Iraq or Saddam Hussein, even though, as we learned later, the contents of what was to become the Downing Street Memos was already being discussed.
By early October of 2002, I was sufficiently in the loop so that I got an e-mail calling for an emergency bannering at Sen. Paul Wellstone’s office. The senator, seeking reelection, was wavering on whether or not to support the Iraq war-powers resolution. I decided to go and arrived at the appointed time, but no one was there. Later I learned that the protest had been called off, since Sen. Wellstone had decided to join Sen. Dayton in promising to vote “no.” But the war resolution passed nonetheless.
Two weeks later, Sen.Wellstone, Sheila, and several others were dead, and I joined the huge outpouring of humanity marching from the St. Paul Cathedral to the State Capitol. A few days later we attended the memorial service at Williams Arena.
War drums continued, ever louder. January 30, 2003, the Minnesota Alliance of Peacemakers (MAP) sponsored a panel discussion involving five prominent Twin Cities news personalities. We were a respectful audience that night, but things began to unravel a bit when Don Shelby of WCCO-TV said he had talked with a half-dozen “experts” on the Iraq situation, and none of them thought the conflict was about oil.
I wrote to Shelby and the other panelists the following day, making a plea on behalf of we “village idiots.” “If we even knew who these experts were, likely as not they would not give us the time of day. So, we are often left with at least two undesirable options: let fate happen to us; or come to our own conclusions based on data that we trust.”
The 2003 “Day That Will Live in Infamy” came about March 20, with the horrible bombing of Baghdad. The end of the quick war was celebrated aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln off San Diego on May 3, 2003: “Mission Accomplished.” This leads me back to the large reenlistment ceremony in Saddam’s palace July 4, 2008, which mainstream media ignored, and the upcoming election.
I was astonished to note recently that the Iraq War was way down the list of major concerns for citizens as this election approaches. The economy has bumped it off the screen, though paradoxically the war is largely responsible for the assorted disasters we are facing, and the “civil war” it has magnified, of citizen against citizen.
Unlike in 2001, the American people in 2008 are now largely against the war, but effective work to actually end the war seems to be at a low ebb. Against those odds, we have to move forward, to keep at it, and we have to look at new ways of building effective resistance. We need to regroup, and rethink the old ways of doing things. Our children and grandchildren and their cohorts everywhere need us now, more than ever.
Dick Bernard is past president, Minnesota Alliance of Peacemakers. |
