Greetings, peace to all and something to ponder...

[Guest guest]

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030414&s=schell

 

The Other Superpower

by

 

As the war began, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld promised

a "campaign unlike any other in history." What he did not plan or

expect, however, was that the peoples of earth--what some are

calling "the other superpower"--would launch an opposing campaign

destined to be even less like any other in history. Indeed,

Rumsfeld's campaign, a military attack, was in all its essential

elements as old as history. The other campaign--the one opposing the

war--meanwhile, was authentically novel. In the pages that follow,

The Nation gives a snapshot of it in fourteen countries. If news has

anything to do with what is new, then this campaign's birth and

activity are the real news. What emerges is a portrait of a world in

resistance.

 

Although there is an abyss of difference between the means of the two

campaigns, there are also a few notable similarities. Both are

creatures of the Information Age, which underlies the so-

called "smart" technology on display in the war as well as the

Internet, which has become the peace movement's principal organizing

tool. Both are global--the United States seeks to demonstrate its

self-avowed aim of global military supremacy, and the peace movement

is equally determined to reject this. Not only is the whole world

watching, as people used to say, the whole world is defending itself.

Yet both campaigns are at the same time surprisingly agile, able to

change their tactics and timing in response to events. Most

interesting, perhaps, both conceive of power at least as much in

terms of will as of force.

 

The first days of the war, for example, produced a surprise when the

United States, instead of immediately showering missiles and bombs on

Baghdad to produce "shock and awe," as predicted, instead carried out

a limited strike aimed at killing Saddam Hussein and perhaps his

sons. The goal, in the hideous phrase that now trips off so many

tongues, was "decapitation" of the regime. Rumsfeld made clear the

larger purpose in his briefing. He entertained the hope that the

regime would collapse without a fight. "We continue to feel that

there's no need for a broader conflict if the Iraqi leaders act to

save themselves and to prevent such further conflict," he said, and

proceeded to give these leaders a set of explicit instructions, as if

he were already running Iraq: Do not destroy oil wells, do not blow

up bridges, etc.

 

The unexpected twist in strategy generated a spate of admiring

commentary. National Public Radio's Pentagon correspondent, Tom

Gjelten, marveled that the new Administration policy was

heavily "psychological.The clear hope here was that somehow this

regime will just collapse," he commented. "Maybe the war won't even

be entirely necessary." And in an article called "A War of Subtle

Strategy," the military analyst William Arkin called the new way of

proceeding a "thinking man's war." In truth, however, the policy was

less novel than the commentators were suggesting. History is filled

with episodes of great armies drawing up before the gates of cities

and demanding their surrender on pain of annihilation. (In

Shakespeare's Henry V, for example, Henry menaces the inhabitants of

Harfleur with plunder, rape and massacre if they do not yield up

their town, and they do yield.) To have one's way without a fight is

indeed the dream of every empire. Such is the strategy, for that

matter, every time someone points a gun at someone else and

orders "Hands up!" Far from being what Arkin calls a "middle ground--

militarily and politically," such a tactic brings to perfection the

policy of brute force--of shock and awe. The devastation threatened

is so irresistible and crushing that its mere approach is meant to

make the enemy surrender out of sheer terror. It aims to crush the

will before the body is crushed.

 

Within a few days, however, the strategy of bloodless terror seemed

to be foundering, as Iraqi forces proved willing to fight, and

American and British forces were lured into cities where guerrilla

operations against them began. A few early (and admittedly

inadequate) indications suggest that the suffering people of Iraq,

asked to choose between a dictator and a conqueror, wanted neither.

In the words of one Iraqi opponent of the Hussein regime to the New

York Times in the city of Nasiriya, "No Iraqi will support what the

Americans are doing here. If they want to go to Baghdad, that's one

thing, but now they have come into our cities, and all Iraqis will

fight them."

 

The global peace movement, too, makes its appeal to the will, but in

a diametrically opposite spirit. It encourages people not to give up

their beliefs in obedience to the dictates of force but to act on

those beliefs in the face of force. The war, we are told, is being

fought for freedom. But who, we may ask, are the free ones--those who

knuckle under to violence or those who defy it? The new superpower

possesses immense power, but it is a different kind of power: not the

will of one man wielding the 21,000-pound MOAB but the hearts and

wills of the majority of the world's people. Its victories have been

triumphs of civil courage, like the vote of the Turkish Parliament to

turn down a multibillion-dollar bribe and, in keeping with public

opinion, refuse the United States the use of Turkish bases in the

war, or like the refusal of the six small, nonpermanent members of

the United Nations Security Council to succumb to great-power

browbeating and support its resolution for war. The question

everywhere was which superpower to obey--the single nation claiming

that title, or the will of the people of the earth. Outside the

imperial counsels, the people of the earth were prevailing.

 

Never, in fact, had this will been expressed more clearly than in the

moments leading up to the US assault. On the brink of the war no

public but the Israeli one supported it under the conditions in which

it was being launched--that is, without UN support. Public-opinion

polls showed that in most countries opposition to the war was closer

to unanimity than to a mere majority. A Gallup poll showed that

in "neutral" (and normally pro-American) Switzerland the figure was

90 percent, in Argentina 87 percent, in Nigeria 86 percent, in Bosnia

(recently the beneficiary of NATO intervention on its behalf) 91

percent. In all of the countries whose governments supported the war

except Israel's, the public opposed it. The "coalition of the

willing" was a coalition of governments alone.

 

A new phenomenon of rolling demonstrations circled the world--not

only in the great capitals but also in provincial cities and even

small towns. (There was a demonstration in Afghanistan, the last

scene of "regime change.") Most newspapers outside the United States

opposed the war. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan expressed his

chagrin. The Pope said the war "threatens the destiny of humanity."

For once, the majority of the world's governments spoke up

unequivocally for the majorities of their peoples.

 

The candles in windows did not stop the cruise missiles. The

demonstrators did not block the tanks rolling north to Baghdad. Pope

John Paul II did not stop President George W. Bush. Yet against all

expectation, a global contest whose consequence far transcends the

war in Iraq had arisen. Dr. Robert Muller of Costa Rica, a former

assistant secretary general of the United Nations, caught the mood of

the new peace movement when, at age 80, he received an award for his

service to the UN. He startled his discouraged audience by

saying, "I'm so honored to be here. I'm so honored to be alive at

such a miraculous time in history. I'm so moved by what's going on in

our world today." For "never before in the history of the world has

there been a global, visible, public, viable, open dialogue and

conversation about the very legitimacy of war." This was what it

looked like, he said, to be "waging peace." It was "a miracle." Shock

and awe has found its riposte in courage and wonder.

[Guest guest]

, "fewtch" <fewtch> wrote:

>

> http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030414&s=schell

>

> The Other Superpower

> by

>

> As the war began, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld promised

> a "campaign unlike any other in history." What he did not plan or

> expect, however, was that the peoples of earth--what some are

> calling "the other superpower"--would launch an opposing campaign

> destined to be even less like any other in history. Indeed,

> Rumsfeld's campaign, a military attack, was in all its essential

> elements as old as history. The other campaign--the one opposing

 

Namaste,

 

At this level it is all about tribal manipulation and human

inadequacy. Nationalism is a psychosis and patriotism is its cult.

Toss a dollop of greed and ego and there we have war.......ONS..Tony.