The Unfortunate Consequence of the Anti-War Strategy

Hi Dyske,

I found your essay sad and somewhat depressing. I wonder why you
question the legitimacy of unity only before and during the war; the
disparate groups of individuals involved in the anti war campaign,
whatever their beliefs and drives, still represent a great number of
people who's voices were ignored by the bush and blair coalition.
Without these voices of dissent, the (far from unplanned) redevelopment
of Iraq under Bush's watchful eye would remain unquestioned. It is the
differing opinions of these voices that are now showing the cracks in
these plans and the diplomatic splits that will ensue. The simple fact
that no weapons of mass destruction have as yet been found throws the
whole 'legitimacy' of the war itself into question.

You dismiss the anti-war campaign as 'nothing but a PR stunt', but this
could equally be cited about the war machine itself and international
media coverage; the frenzy over whether it was legal or appropriate to
show american prisoners of war on Al-Jazirah demonstrated the hypocrisy
of some parts of the media who were perfectly happy to show images of
the al-Qaeda suspects imprisoned at the naval base in Guantanamo Bay.
There are plenty more examples of PR stunts and blunders, not least the
sight of American forces raising the stars+stripes over buildings in
Baghdad - it didn't look like liberation to me..

I have real problems with your statements that 'The war in Iraq is
over' and 'It appears that the loss of civilian life was kept small
enough for the world to accept it as reasonable'; the wounds inflicted
on the Iraqi people are deep and whilst their new found freedom is an
enormous step towards reform, it cannot justify the scale of the
Coalition bombing of Baghdad, Basra and the immense number of civilian
fatalities and injuries. It will also reveal the fractured society
which until recently was kept in line through state terror, and cannot
imagine that this is the end to the violence; i feel/fear the war is
far from over..

You say "My stance on the war was against unilateralism. I did not
particularly oppose the war itself. If the majority of the world wanted
to bomb Japan (my native country), I would not have any issues with
it." - I found this really frightening. Okay, it's a hypothetical
statement, but I have to question your use of the term 'majority of the
world'; how do we measure this 'majority' ? I don't think there is any
comparison possible here with the war on Iraq which was mounted by two
countries, against UN wishes.

I don't see the "scramble to disassociate ourselves from the rest of
the anti-war camp. We wanted unity for its impact, but now the same
impact is working against us." just as I can't see any negative effects
of the anti-war lobby; Again, the differences in opinions only serve to
question further why we are at war in the first place; raising all
relevant issues in the process. Our individual voices are all
important, and without a conduit for this we will all be ignored.

peace+respect

neil

On Monday, April 21, 2003, at 05:18 am, Dyske Suematsu wrote:

> Wrong by Association: The Unfortunate Consequence of the Anti-War
> Strategy
>
> My new essay on how the power of unity works as a double-edged sword:
>
> http://www.dyske.com/default.asp?view_idu0
>
> -Dyske
>
>
>
> + ti esrever dna ti pilf nwod gniht ym tup
> -> post: [email protected]
> -> questions: [email protected]
> -> subscribe/unsubscribe: http://rhizome.org/preferences/subscribe.rhiz
> -> give: http://rhizome.org/support
> +
> Subscribers to Rhizome are subject to the terms set out in the
> Membership Agreement available online at http://rhizome.org/info/29.php
>

http://slate.msn.com/id/2081376/

Quoting Dyske Suematsu <[email protected]>:

> Wrong by Association: The Unfortunate Consequence of the Anti-War
> Strategy
>
> My new essay on how the power of unity works as a double-edged sword:
>
> http://www.dyske.com/default.asp?view_idu0
>
> -Dyske
>
>
>
> + ti esrever dna ti pilf nwod gniht ym tup
> -> post: [email protected]
> -> questions: [email protected]
> -> subscribe/unsubscribe: http://rhizome.org/preferences/subscribe.rhiz
> -> give: http://rhizome.org/support
> +
> Subscribers to Rhizome are subject to the terms set out in the
> Membership Agreement available online at http://rhizome.org/info/29.php
>

Quoting Dyske Suematsu <[email protected]>:

> Wrong by Association: The Unfortunate Consequence of the Anti-War
> Strategy
>
> My new essay on how the power of unity works as a double-edged sword:
>
> http://www.dyske.com/default.asp?view_idu0
>
> -Dyske
>
>
>
> + ti esrever dna ti pilf nwod gniht ym tup
> -> post: [email protected]
> -> questions: [email protected]
> -> subscribe/unsubscribe: http://rhizome.org/preferences/subscribe.rhiz
> -> give: http://rhizome.org/support
> +
> Subscribers to Rhizome are subject to the terms set out in the
> Membership Agreement available online at http://rhizome.org/info/29.php
>

> http://slate.msn.com/id/2081376/
good point, vijay…

Quoting Dyske Suematsu <[email protected]>:
"Before and during the war, I questioned the legitimacy of unity, of uniting under the banner of "anti-war" …"

"Because of the nature of our language, we have a natural tendency to reduce a wide spectrum of opinions into a small number of categories."

oui, oui

Hi Neil,

Thanks for the response.

I'd like to respond to the overall sentiment you expressed:

I'm with you. I share the same sentiments, but I was not speaking of my
sentiments nor of your sentiments. I was speaking of the general consensus;
what's in the air, at least in the US. I do not believe that it is only in
the US that the majority consensus about the war has shifted. Some poll in
France recently showed that the majority of the French people now feel
isolated from the world. I read somewhere that at the last congress,
Rumsfeld received a standing ovation. Unfortunately the world is now seeing
the pro-war people to be right, and the anti-war people to be wrong. I'm not
questioning the legitimacy of these perspectives. As you pointed out, there
are so many facts and circumstances that contradict these simplistic views.
To reduce everyone's arguments by stating pro-war = right and anti-war =
wrong is ludicrous, but remember, the anti-war camp used the power of unity
before and during the war in order to get the maximum impact. That is, we
chose to blur the distinctions in our arguments by uniting. In effect, we
told the world a simplistic view of anti-war = right and pro-war = wrong.
So, now that the US has won the war with a minimum amount of civilian
casualties (at least as far as the majority of the people are concerned),
they are reversing the simplistic view that we have created by uniting.

The Slate article that Vijay posted is a good example of trying to break
down each individual argument of the anti-war camp, now that they have been
lumped up together into a simplistic category of "anti-war". Now the unity
of various arguments are working against us.

How I see the events of the war is an entirely different issue from how the
world sees it. Unfortunately, whatever the world sees it, in the end,
becomes the history. Whether there is any truth to it or not is besides the
point.

The way I see it personally is very much like the way you are seeing it. I
have no objections.

-Dyske