Let's Look Right, Too!

Murray Polner co-authored Disarmed and Dangerous, a biography of the Berrigan brothers. He also wrote No Victory Parades: The Return of the Vietnam Veteran and Branch Rickey: A Biography, about a conservative who racially integrated baseball.

"The greatest legacy that [George W. Bush]...could leave is...peace. It's not too late to reverse this very bad first step [bombing Baghdad last February]. Stop the bombs. Pull the troops out. Start friendly trading relations. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

--Lllewelyn H. Rockwell, Jr., president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, AL. He also edits a website, Lew Rockwell.com.

I've been against war and compulsory military service since that glorious day I was discharged from the army. But when George Bush & Co. began acting as if they were back in the good old days when Moscow and Washington went toe to toe, I really began worrying. What if, as a result of their tough talk and inane posturing, we suddenly found ourselves at war again with, say, China or North Korea? Which Americans would stand alongside us in opposing such a war? This led to my modest effort to have people of opposite political loyalties get to know one another and to form coalitions grounded on one and only one common denominator: refusing to accept neo-Cold War-like imperial policies. Other than politicians, purveyors of myths, and munitions makers, who really needs another memorial to our war dead in Washington? I began searching the Internet and found informative conservative and libertarian websites (excluding the bellicose neoconservatives, as always, ready for armed combat, though with other peoples' kids). You will no doubt heartily dislike their domestic views (as they will yours) but you will also learn that they are as antiwar as you are. When I'm asked by my liberal and leftist friends which conservative and libertarian media and writers are worth reading, I mention the libertarian Reason magazine, the conservative New York Press's less emotional columnists, the neo-conservative National Interest, mainly because of Owen Harries, its literate editor, as well as several websites: the remarkably well-informed and comprehensive <www.antiwar.com>, and the conservative libertarian <www.againstbombing.org> and <www.LewRockwell.com> (There are more.) If you prefer books, you could start with the historical background in Ronald Radosh's Prophets on the Right (Simon & Schuster, 1975; Free Life Editions, 1978), a deft presentation of such "conservative critics of American Globalism" as Robert Taft, Oswald Garrison Villard, and Charles Beard, among others. And you can find the Orlando Sentinel's Charley Reese, my favorite libertarian columnist, on the Internet. I certainly don't agree with all his opinions, but so what? Here's Reese on a subject you will rarely if ever hear being discussed among Washington's bipartisan hawks:  "All armchair generals--those civilians who get the war itch and want someone else's son to scratch it--should keep a picture of their own son at about age 18 in front of them. Look at that youthful face and ask, 'Is this political spat in some distant land worth my son getting his jaw shot off?'" You wouldn't have seen this unless you are willing to read people with different, though equally antiwar, views. Did you know, for example, that Harry Browne, the Libertarian candidate for President in 2000, said about war,  "[It] is the worst obscenity government can inflict on its subjects. It makes every other political crime‚ seem petty." --Murray Polner

Earlier this year, when an Off-Broadway play opened with the deliciously pertinent title,  "Now That Communism is Dead My Life Feels Empty!" I thought of the writer Mark Danner's apt remark in the World Policy Journal that, more than a decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States is still "marooned in the cold war." Stranded, beached, in a frozen state of paralysis. The danger of accidental, deliberate or terrorist-inspired nuclear war has not evaporated and the need for reciprocal and verifiable reduction and elimination of nuclear arms is more pressing than ever. (After Robert McNamara viewed 13 Days, the riveting film about the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, he told a PBS audience he believed the world had been evencloser to nuclear war than depicted in the movie.)

So with thanks to Jonathan Swift, here is my own "modest proposal." Let peacemakers of all ideological and political beliefs broaden their search for new and additional partners in the battle against war and warmakers by forming tactical alliances with antiwar, anti-conscription groups and people with whom they may not always agree. (Does anyone remember the journal Left and Right?)

During the air war against Serbia, many in and out of the traditional foreign policy elite expressed their unhappiness because "Our Boys" were not sent into combat--the what's-the-use-of-having-a-military-if-we-won't-use-them syndrome. And today, our Beltway's unrepentant warriors, an integral part of the cloistered and influential foreign policy oligarchy--few of whom have ever been on active military service and whose kids will probably never serve either--now have a new shibboleth called "hegemony" or "global leadership." However one defines it, Barbara Conry of the libertarian-conservative Cato Institute (www.cato.org) put it well in describing it as "essentially coercive, relying on 'diplomacy' backed by threats or military action."

But--and this is my essential point--antiwar and nonviolent activists of various political stances continue to rely too much on opportunistic, habitually fainthearted political allies who may be with them on domestic policies but who are too often mute whenever Washington unleashes its military and political power in Central and Latin America, Lebanon and the Middle East, Grenada, Panama, and the Balkans, not to mention silent during the first four or five years of the Vietnam War.

New "crises" will surely arise and wars threaten (Taiwan? Korea?) and we need to develop a working coalition and relationship with antiwar people of all stripes, the better to counter the warmakers' propaganda and resist their call to arms. The coalition I propose includes liberals and leftists, moderates, libertarians, and conservatives, and of course ordinary Americans unhappy about sending their kids off to yet another American military intervention. Let's ask ourselves: Do we really need another memorial to our war dead in Washington? (See, for example, the conservative-libertarian website www.againstbombing.org).

Many of you will find rightwing stances on domestic issues personally objectionable, but antiwar people can use all the partners they can find without subjecting them to rigid ideological or special interest purity tests. Whether you like their politics and views on abortion, guns, free trade, public health and the environment or not, they nevertheless regularly express strong and articulate reservations about American actions abroad. We antiwar people are often denigrated as "neo-isolationists," but we know the term is a deliberate way of trying to limit or close off serious, tough public debate about alternatives to policies that could very well lead to the next war.

Certainly China is high on the enemies list for our latest crop of Washington-based hawks, whose extraordinarily exorbitant and still technologically unworkable missile defense scheme is aimed less at so-called rogue states than at China, lest it challenge American mastery of East Asia. Lately, I've been reading the neoconservative quarterly The National Interest, edited by the very perceptive Owen Harries. In several venues, he has raised questions challenging the demonization of China. Similarly, Andrew Marshal of the British newspaper The Independent has (rightly) concluded that, bit by bit, with very little open discussion or dissent, China is becoming the US's newest adversary.

Consider, too, Bill Clinton's misconceived policy of expanding NATO to the Russian frontier and his equally perilous scheme (with a majority of congressional backing) that sent $1.3 billion in largely military aid to Colombia in its alleged war on drugs (a war that's as inane as it is futile). Other possible (and presently ignored) future wars that will sooner or later have their cheerleaders and "expert analysts" urging action in defense of "freedom" include the potentially lethal, though still muted, struggle presently underway between the US, Russia, Turkey, Iran, the oil giants, and others for control of Central Asia's vast oil deposits.

Personally, I found "Tripwire: Korea and U.S. Foreign Policy in a Changed World" (Cato Institute, 1996) by former Reagan staffer Doug Bandow to be a breath of fresh air. In it, he argues that outmoded cold war attitudes demand that 37,000 American troops remain stationed in South Korea while that country can well defend itself. "US soldiers' lives are not gambit pawns to be sacrificed in some global chess game." (He is also very much opposed to the reinstitution of the draft). How many public figures you may have voted for have the courage to say out loud what Bandow wrote about Korea?

I also find other perceptive conservatives and libertarians saying much the same thing. Harry Browne, who ran for the presidency on the widely ignored Libertarian ticket in 2000, wrote memorably, "War is genocide, torture, cruelty, propaganda, dishonesty, and slavery. War is the worst obscenity government can inflict upon its subjects. It makes every other political crime--corruption, bribery, favoritism, vote-buying, graft, dishonesty--seem petty." Not many politicians or media pundits will dare say this aloud and mean it.

There are other libertarian, conservative or rightwing people saying the same thing. So I ask my fellow antiwar progressives: Aren't antiwar, anti-draft people of whatever ideological views worth getting to know?

Left and Right Against War. Why not?

Much of this article appeared originally in Fellowship magazine. A somewhat different version, aimed at a different audience, was published in www.LewRockwell.com and www.antiwar.com--both conservative-libertarian.

Youth & Militarism On-line Magazine -- Special Issue on Military Advertising;

The AFSC National Youth and Militarism Program announces the on-line posting of its May-June 2001 news magazine. This issue features critiques of the military services' new advertising campaigns: (Harold Jordan, AFSC, National Youth and Militarism Program, 1501 Cherry St., Philadelphia, PA 19102)

The New Face of Military Advertising

The Pentagon now spends a record $11,000 per recruit on advertising and recruiting. We examine how these new advertising campaigns developed. Harold Jordan reports.

The Selling of the "Individual"

The "Army of One" campaign is part of a larger trend in marketing popular culture to youth: selling "individualism" in order to sell a mass product. Miranda Amanti reports.

School: A Place to Teach or to Sell?

A high school student reflects on the strategies used by the military and corporations to sell their products in schools. Emiliano Huet-Vaughn reports.

Military Escalates Assault on Civilian Schools

The latest federal proposal would help the armed forces force their way into high schools. Rick Jahnkow reports on a little known amendment to the proposed No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.

REVIEW Black Prisoner of War: A Conscientious Objector's Vietnam Memoir by James A. Daly and Lee Bergman. Reviewed by Shannon McManimon.

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