Young people tend to like war. During the run-up to the conflict in Iraq, both the Pew and CBS News/New York Times polls found that Americans aged 18-29 supported military action by a 3-1 margin, more strongly than any other group. The broadly anti-war outlook among Washington University students is not backed by their coevals.
Seems like many anti-war protesters like the war, too. Laughter was in the air as dozens marched across campus last Thursday, chanting, “What do we want?! Peace! When do we want it?! Now!” The same day in New York, crowds danced to the music from the loudspeakers, and some teens vandalized a McDonald’s. For those interested, there will be an anti-war party in the Quad on Sunday, with a DJ and some free food (concluding in a short protest march to Forest Park).
Shawn Redden, the organizer of the party, would not comment on what it would accomplish. But Shawn Kumar, an experienced protester, did give some reasons to march. “You get to meet other people, learn why other people are against the war,” he said; “You build solidarity. You bring attention to something that without you, there would not be attention brought to.”
These are all good reasons – but they won’t stop the war. They won’t “send a message” to President Bush, either; no one believes that WU community represents the American population, which is 2-1 pro-war. As for influencing people’s minds, 1 in 5 adults surveyed told the ABC News/Washington Post pollsters on Sunday that seeing the anti-war demonstrations actually made them more likely to support the war; only 7 percent said they are now more likely to oppose it (but polls like this one tend to be sketchy).
The protesters mainly march for personal reasons. It helps them assuage the guilt they feel. They are “at least doing something” – though of course they aren’t doing anything of substance. For a minority to be effective, they need to credibly threaten adverse consequences – economic or otherwise – against the powers that be. Noise annoyance and blocked traffic won’t do. The Montgomery Bus Boycott, which drove the bus company out of business, is a classic example of a successful action that required some real sacrifice (walking to work). Kumar points out that in San Francisco, the protesters did shut down the financial district for a day. But most anti-war “activists” are too afraid of getting arrested or expelled to do anything that would really raise the price of war for the society and stay the hand of the military.
There is something, then, to be said for Sgt. Asan Akbar, a serviceman with the 101st Airborne Division in Kuwait. Akbar, a convert to Islam, attacked the command tents of the division, killing two soldiers and wounding 14. Whatever you think of lobbing grenades at sleeping people, his selflessness is admirable. Akbar opposes the war with Iraq, and he sacrificed his future – and perhaps even his life, if he gets the death penalty – to try and affect the outcome. In this, he stands apart from the anti-war crowd.
****
What’s striking about the pro-war camp, meanwhile, is a conspicuous failure of empathy. Death is an abstract term for many hawks. The day the bombing started, Gar Allen’s Darwinian Revolution class held a brief discussion of the conflict. An opponent of the war passed out a grisly picture of a dead soldier, probably Iraqi, taken during the last Gulf war. The man’s charcoaled face had a macabre grin; it looked as if he died screaming.
The pro-war students hardly looked at the picture. The most vocal supporter of the conflict in class went out of his way to avert his eyes. He was behaving not unlike American TV cameras, which gorge on the spectacular fireballs over Baghdad but fail to zoom in on the mutilated human carnage that the bombs leave.
When discussion turns to human lives, supporters of the war have some great arguments on their side. If the conflict is short, it could plausibly cost fewer Iraqi casualties than if Hussein were allowed to stay in power. Saddam’s regime has killed more than 100,000 of its own citizens, and the war with Iran alone claimed 1 million. U.S. attacks are likely to end up saving more lives than they take. As for gory pictures, they could be misguiding. Where were the photographers when whole Kurdish families were poisoned on Hussein’s orders? Emotions obscure facts and lead to some bad decisions.
This line of argument is strong. Saddam’s killings, however, don’t in themselves justify ours. The Iraqis who might die deserve contemplation beyond the utilitarian death math. Mutilated corpses are a legitimate part of the anti-war argument, if we are the ones doing the mutilating. Don’t dismiss them too hastily.
****
The U.S. military has not been winning the “hearts and minds” of Arabs (or anyone else). Its double standards are partly to blame. The same spokesmen who now decry the Arab channel al-Jazeera’s broadcast of the American captives as a violation of the Geneva Convention, have defended denying a POW status to the captured Afghani fighters.
Or take WMDs. In his speech to the nation two weeks ago, President Bush warned Iraqi troops not to obey instructions to use chemical or biological weapons. Those are scary, yes; but a rampant missile landing in a Baghdad market could prove more fatal than a gas that’s dissipated by wind seconds after release. No gas has killed anyone in this conflict yet.
In case a chemical attack was launched, Bush continued with uncharacteristically existentialist reproach, “it will be no defense to say: I was just following orders.”
A few days later, in that broadcast of the captured American soldiers, an Iraqi journalist asked one serviceman: “Why do you come from Texas to Iraq?”
His answer: “We follow orders.”