>“Stop!” is, under certain circumstances, an entirely sufficient and adequate message.
>If I see someone dangling thier Naughty Bits into a piranha pool, that would be enough. I would not be obliged to suggest they go bowling, or take up another more wholesome activity.
That makes sense, but I think Dubya believes he sees the piranhas biting through the screen that keeps them from the angelfish pool right next to theirs…
Not quite. If you’ll read the rest of the paragraph, you’ll notice I stated that the US has a history of going in and installing regimes that are more or less friendly to US interests regardless of human rights records. The Ba’athist Party of Iraq is a textbook example. If the US goes in and replaces Saddam, it’ll be with another dictator who smiles and extends the hand of peace and cooperation to Washington while treading on the faces of more Iraqis. The US going in will only make it better for Washington, and worse for muHammad bin Public from Basra.
And it’s certainly not the case that Iraqis don’t have the balls to stand up to him - remember the Kurdish and Shi’a uprisings in 1991? Papa Bush promised them he’d help out if they tried to overthrow him, but then stood aside and let Saddam crush the rebellions. Why? Because they, and not some other Ba’athist general, was the strongest threat to the Saddam regime at that point. Better a dictatorial murderer with questionable loyalty at best than a popular movement whose feelings towards the US are nowhere near predictable, at least from Washington’s perspective.
people get the governments they deserve. no more, no less.
I’d love to see how you make that apply to the Middle East. What did they - or the Saudis, or the Kuwaitis - do to deserve other countries going in, drawing their borders, and installing their regimes of choice?
Boy, there’s always some liberal nitpicker got to drag facts into the argument. Sheeesh
Yeah, goddamn Commies.
Binary, I hope that your father continues to demonstrate. He knows that it can take time for these protests to be effective.
He might also want to look at some of the websites that address the issues and are organizing. Might as well use the new technology. Here is just one of the sites: http://www.moveon.org/ Organize! Organize! Organize!
Reasoning and open-minded people can change their minds. I was one of them during the Vietnam War.
Tell your dad that I said “Right on!”
Pax
Directly addressing the OP:
The thing is, the people seem to have an impression that, broadly speaking, Something Needs to be Done about Saddam Hussein. Bush has presented a credible plan for Doing Something about Saddam Hussein, hence he has their support. But this support is not locked down. The answer to the question, then, would be one of the following alternatives:
NB: Accusing Bush of hypocracy for not also going after, say, N. Korea doesn’t cut it. You need to make Saddam seem less evil in an absolute sense. Puffing up the threat from other nations now simply lays the groundwork for Bush to make war on them later, which is something I assume you would oppose.
Present a credible alternative to going to war. Saddam himself has pretty much foreclosed on this one. Nobody believes him anymore, and the burden of proof has clearly shifted to him, to prove that he does not have any WMDs. This is essentially a logical impossibility.
Convince people that the war won’t be worth it. Difficult to do, given that we have an all volunteer army, and the experience of the last gulf war. Concerns like “inflaming the arab street” or “creating instability” just aren’t concrete enough, not to mention that you really would have to show that the “arab street” doesn’t already hate us, and that the middle east is fundamentally stable as it is.
What prevents the Saudis, Yemen-ites (?), Omanis, etc, from sitting down and redrawing their borders, if they are so damn unhappy with them?
You are talking about a region that has been under some form of foreign occuption for most of recorded history. The borders had to set at some point if they were going to be made into independant statesl; If they don’t like where the lines on the map are, I am sure they can come to a mutually agreeable solution.
My point focuses less on the delineation of borders by foreign powers than the installation of ruling regimes by foreign powers, RobertTB. Kalt’s assertion was that people get the government they deserve; I was wondering what the peoples of the Arab peninsula and the Middle East did to deserve occupation by imperialist powers and the undemocratic selection of ruling governments by those same powers upon their withdrawal.
From one who is deeply ambivalent about invading Iraq.
One tactic that would help is if fewer war protesters openly displayed hostility to American culture, government, and behavior in general. In other words, you lose more people than you gain by saying the war reflects the slavery of GWB to phantom “corporate interests,” or that the war is just a symptom of the overall racist imperialist dogbreathness of the USA. I’m turned off by such sentiments when I would otherwise be open to an anti-war message.
Most particularly, divorce the question of the war on Iraq from the war on terrorism! (Al Gore has shown the way). I, and most Americans, are unalterably in favor of the war to wipe out al-Qaeda. When the person preaching against war in Iraq goes on to denounce the war in Afghanistan, she loses whatever chance she had to persuade any significant number of people.
In fact, I believe that most of those who oppose, or at least doubt, the war solution aren’t anti-American in the least, but these strident America-bashers are so high-profile that they slant the public perception of the overall anti-war movement. That’s what you need to change.
Ditto to what Danimal said.
There are a lot of good questions to be asked about the possible fallout from a war. Will the Iranians open their borders to guerrillas, i.e., be the Cambodia to Iraq’s Viet Cong, in the rebuilding phase of the operation?
Will the U.S. be able to maintain the support of the world, and its own people, in the event of a house-to-house fight in Basra, Tikrit, and Baghdad?
Will the U.S. stay the course in the event of a protracted low intensity conflict such as that the Israelis wage in the occupied territories? Or will that be an effective course of action for the enemy?
Will the U.S. be able to round up Iraqi WMD’s before they can be distributed to Hamas, Al Qaeda, and similar cretins?
I think the American people are open to this kind of reality-based analysis, and the answers to these questions could, on reflection, be very sobering to many hawks.
But is this what we hear on the anti-war left?
No.
What we hear is the same pathetic, shreiking, piddle-headed nonsense the anti-war left has been vomiting for years.
Just today I heard it’s “Bush’s War” (no, it’s ALL OF US’s war), I heard it was the big chance for the Right Wing (yeah, that’s capitalized Right Wing) to create an imperialist American “empire,” that we’re “Going to war with 60 countries at once, and thank you George Bush” (As if it were us, and not Saddam, who’s at odds with the entire civilized world.) I hear the United States’s policy towards Iraq is “racist” (unsupported), “genocidal” (generally supported by the unsubstantiated claim that 5 million Iraqi children have died because the U.S. won’t buy Iraqi oil or something, the Oil for Food program notwithstanding), that Bush is waging war because he’s a man, and if we could just get American women to lean on Laura Bush and let her know we want peace she can use her unique feminine talents and her innate peaceful nature as a woman to change Bush’s mind (i’m not making this up).
Oh, and Junior ROTC programs–"the recruiting wing of the U.S. military are disproportionately targeting minority neighborhoods, as if that were a bad thing.)
I heard all these pea-brained formulations just today on public radio-none of which provide a reasonable alternative course of action.
So it’s pretty clear to me that the leaders of the anti-war left are a bunch of half-witted old-school kneejerkers, and if they can’t bring in more than a few hundred people to their rallies, because they are overly emotional, unable to articulate a reasonable alternative policy which leads to a better outcome with less downside risk, and because they are so shrill and obnoxious no one but other frustrated hippies and 60’s retreads want anything to do with them, then they have no one to blame but themselves.
They can engage in meaninful debate–the arguments are there. But time and time again they completely miss the boat and wind up shreiking invectives at one another–at the already convinced–rather than engaging hawks and the american people in a meaningful dialogue.
Here’s another thought. A lot of the Iraq war hawks in the general population want to go to war just because they (quite rightly) conside Saddam Hussein to be a bloody murderer, a tyrant, and all-around despicable human being. The standard left-wing response has generally been, “But we supported him!”, as if that made it any less desirable to remove him.
An alternative would be to concentrate on showing that his replacement will likely also be a bloody murderer, tyrant, etc. Do some homework on the Iraqi National Congress. (I’ve tried to do this myself and failed to turn up much). They talk a good fight about democracy and human rights and pluralism and all that. But look up their names and delve into their personal histories. I strongly suspect that at least some of them, maybe most of them, have done Saddam’s dirty work when it was in their interest to do so, and are only against him now because they fell from grace with him.
A lot of people turned against the Vietnam war not from any perception that America was evil and the NVA and Vietcong were right, but from recognizing that the North and South Vietnamese governments were both viciously tyrannical, and that it was absurd to kill American G.I.'s and Vietnamese civilians to determine which tyrant got to run Vietnam. If Americans similarly perceived both Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi National Congress to be interested in nothing but maintaining personal power at all costs, I believe many would be less gung-ho about a war to replace one with the other.
Those are nice suggestion, but the main problem is that the effectiveness of protests is highly overrated. They are definitely a nice supplement, but your main object needs to be lobbying. If you do not lobby, you will not get what you want.
If BinaryDrone’s father really wants to make an impact, he is going to have to join up with another group and get more members. Next, he will research and come up with a coherent, rational, non-confrontational presentation to make to his representative or one of the rep’s staffers. Maybe 15 minutes in length. If you can show that you represent 150 votes in his district, your rep will make time to see you.
This method needs to be repeated in every district, particularly in districts where the rep is a non-Republican.
Along those lines, public education is needed. Contrary to popular belief, shouting slogans at people is not educating. Print up hundreds or thousands of fliers showing the inconsistencies in the Bush Administration’s reasons for going to war. Don’t bring up the oil conspiracy…it makes you look like lunatics. Discuss with people one member at a time, and then give them their representative’s contact information and encourage them to write. Also invite them to participate in your group in some way. I would also consider asking them to contribute a few dollars for the production of more materials if you think that you have changed their mind. When people make a small sacrifice for a goal, they are more likely to put more interest in seeing the goal achieved.
Anyway, all of these are a lot more effective than simple protests. But they are also a lot harder and require a lot more time and energy, which is why they don’t get used often enough. It’s a shame, because it’s the most effective way to get things done.
<<Don’t bring up the oil conspiracy…it makes you look like lunatics. >>
I think the OP starts with the premise “given that we’re lunatics.”
In other words, they don’t want the many fallacies of the anti-war left position to be called into question. I think the idea is simply how best to market lunatic ideas. <g>
Don’t post pointless drivel.
The OP in now way starts with the premise that they are lunatics. It just said what’s are the best tactics for changing government policy, if you disagree with what the government is doing.
Neurotik,
<<Don’t post pointless drivel.>>
Simply because my points are lost on you does not mean my posting is either pointless or drivel.
The OP does, indeed, state “assuming you disagree with the policies of the current administration.”
I am perfectly free to characterize the anti-war left–in its current and most common form–that form which is irrationally fond of the “no war for oil” and the “Bush’s war for corporate interests” construction" regardless of how many elections that loses for them or how much evidence they must ignore in order to reach their inane conclusions, as ‘lunatic.’
And to the extent they pursue the losing “no war for oil” placard rhetoric, in my opinion they are. Maybe not literally ‘lunatic,’ but not rational. The same goes to the extent they allow themselves to be associated with appeaseniks and anti-American rhetoric.
I’m also under no obligation to let assumptions–including the unspoken assertion that these guys are right-- go unchallenged.
That said, I did list several ways of making their case that ARE rational, and that don’t make them look like lunatics, like their current rhetoric does.
The best way to change government policy, of course, is to win elections and get your people in the majority.
Oh, and blaming the media for the lack of coverage doesn’t help. It just reinforces the perception of irrelevance that plagues the appeasing left.
Like Inigo from the Princess Bride, I must say, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
Appeasement, in foreign policy, means giving another person or country what they want because they threaten to go to war if you don’t. Example: giving the Sudetenland to Hitler because he threatens to take it by force otherwise, which is where appeasement got its bad name.
Saddam Hussein isn’t threatening to attack us (or anyone) if we don’t do what he wants. Even the most hysterical leftist isn’t claiming that we ought to hand Kuwait or some other valuable item to Saddam on a platter because he’ll attack us if we don’t. They just say we shouldn’t go to war with Iraq.
The only appeasement going on here is Iraq’s desperate, and so far unsuccessful, attempt to appease us. We’ve made it pretty damn clear that we’re going to attack Iraq if it doesn’t disarm itself of WMDs. Iraq is now trying to appease us by convincing us that it has in fact disarmed itself. Unfortunately, its apparently bogus declaration hasn’t appeased much of anybody.
Re: “appeasement”, Your criticism, while perhaps hypertechnical, is well-taken…I think “enabling” would more precisely describe my meaning.
By routinely ignoring or downplaying the overwhelming evidence that Hussein retains WMD’s, and by casting about such red herrings as “but we shouldn’t go to war in Iraq because we sold arms to them in the 80s” or “we shouldn’t go to war in Iraq because North Korea has nukes too and it’s a double standard,” or, dumbest of all, “we shouldn’t go to war with Iraq because we have WMDs too,” and by equivocating the horrendous human rights violations in Iraq, and downplaying his known support for the families of Palestinian suicide bombers, the anti-war left continues to enable Saddam’s behavior, much like an abused wife enables her husband’s behavior by rationalizing or making excuses or failing to confront it honestly.
please, please, please can we stop with the broad generalizations? I’m thinking in particular of Hickory6’s assertion that either America or Saddam is ‘at odds with the entire civilized world,’ and references to ‘the anti-war left’ … but such generalizations are everywhere in this debate, and it’s a massive disservice not only to the people you paint with a broad brush, but anyone who might try to disagree with you !
The problem that ‘leftists’ have when protesting the war is exactly that - there is NO SUCH THING as ‘the anti-war left’. I am against a unilateral invasion of Iraq. I guess this makes me an ‘anti-war leftist’ so I should agree entirely with all the other anti-war leftists (and drive an SUV), right? Wrong! And this is what makes protest so difficult.
If I were to get together with another ‘anti-war leftist’ to try to change some minds re: the war, we could either (a) try to agree on an alternative to the war, and present that option, or (b) find what we can agree on (‘Don’t Attack Iraq’) and go with that. Option (a) is extraordinarily difficult, more and more so the more people join the discussion (and the numbers of people participating in this discussion is large indeed). The discussion would (and usually does) turn into an argument, out of which interesting and useful ideas can emerge, but these arguments are not conclusive, nor are they reproduced on CNN, so they are largely ignored by those who ask us to come up with something useful. Option (b) is what is left.
I see many alternative outcomes for ‘what should we do about Saddam’, but too often the choice is presented as one (‘War’) or the other (‘Whatever it is that the “anti-war left” think’). The fact that the ‘anti-war left’ is never going to completely agree with each other does not mean that they do not have anything useful to say, but it seems to be painted as such.
I should also point out here that, by and large, the only press the ‘anti-war left’ gets is through street demonstrations, the more violent the better (and sometimes even that will not get attention). Their numerous other activities, writings, conferences, teachings, ideas, arguments and so on do not make the news. But just because you don’t see them doesn’t mean they’re not there.
I’m certain you have heard arguments against the war from intelligent people speaking in media other than street demos. Why are these arguments not relevant? Do they not count as ‘protest’? I am happy to provide cites for these but I don’t think I’d be showing you anything you didn’t already know. But ask, and I will be happy to oblige.
Now, for the original OP: I interpret the question as ‘what do the protesters want’? I can’t speak for others, but what I, as a ‘protester,’ want is as follows: a reasonable discussion of the alternatives, without name-calling, political posturing, and racist assumptions, to a war in Iraq. Ever since 9/11, debate has been stifled (starting with ‘If you’re not with us, you’re against us,’ and still evident - suggestions that maybe American foreign policy may have had a bit to do with 9/11 are still dangerous). How about we include some Iraqis in the discussion? Why don’t we make their well-being a priority? Why don’t we examine the geopolitical and social factors that brought this situation about? Can we abandon the false ‘war’/‘leftist’ dichotomy? This broadens the definition of ‘protest’ somewhat, to include academics, social justice activists (with a broader interest than just this war), journalists, artists, novelists and so on.
I am not presenting any Solutions. But unilaterally bombing Iraq is not a Solution, either.