WITNESS AGAINST WAR 2008: From Chicago to St. Paul
By Karl Meyer
July 14, 2008
Why go on foot to the Republican National Convention?
1968 was the year when another Republican candidate for President promised to end a failing war, with “honor”, with “victory”, with “success” for American forces. The war was Vietnam. The candidate was Richard Nixon. He won the election. Then he continued the war at full blast for four more years. He expanded it with bombing campaigns and land incursions into Cambodia and Laos, neighboring countries he accused of harboring enemy forces. He battered North Vietnam, as well as the South, with massive bombing. Part of the cost was hundreds of thousands of Asian lives never adequately counted, plus about 21,000 more U.S. servicemen and women killed, and about 102,000 more wounded. Then shortly before the 1972 election he settled on most of the terms for a face-saving agreement with North Vietnam, that he touted as an honorable withdrawal. That settlement soon turned into total defeat.
Forty years after 1968, another Republican candidate promises to end a national insurgency, in Iraq, with “honor”, with “victory”, with “success” for American forces. He suggests that the Iraqi government and people may ask or allow U.S. military forces to remain in Iraq for a hundred years to anchor and protect U.S. interests and investment in the oil resources of the Middle East.
Where have this man and his Party been sleeping for the last forty years? Lieutenant Commander John McCain’s bomber plane was shot down over Hanoi in 1967, during his twenty-third mission bombing cities and villages of North Vietnam. He spent the next five and a half years in North Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camps and prisons. He presents this as part of a depth of experiences that equip and qualify him to run the military and foreign policy of the United States wisely. Years of experience can be great sources of education and wisdom. But what if you learn the wrong things from your experience?
John McCain never got the message. Millions of determined Vietnamese never appreciated his flights over their country to “bomb them back into the Stone Age”, as General Curtis LeMay proposed in 1965. Vietnamese defenders shot him down for a reason, and similar reasons prevail in Iraq today.
We have no guarantee that Democratic candidates for national office will end the Iraq War more wisely, decisively, or quickly, but John McCain has made it clear that his 2008 plan for ending it bears a tragic similarity to Nixon’s plan in 1968.
Why did John McCain speak of U.S. bases in Iraq for a hundred years? The fundamental challenge for human society in this century is energy. Shortages of oil and gas, and severe atmospheric and climatic consequences from burning the oil and gas we have, seem inevitable. Although McCain and other Republicans may speak of alternative energy sources and energy independence, the linchpin of their current policy is neo-imperial control over foreign sources of oil, supplemented by drilling for all possible reserves in untapped lands and territorial waters of the United States. When they look at the challenges of the 21st Century, their minds and vision are still locked into the strategies of the 19th and 20th Centuries.
Again, we have no guarantees that Democrats would do much better, so the witness of our walk is aimed at all who run for office, and all people who will play a part in our collective destiny.
War and Resistance
Those of us who remember, and those who have learned the lessons of our history, know that in 1968 there was a huge and vigorous movement of protest and resistance against the Vietnam War. It focused on both the Democratic and Republican nominating conventions that summer. The elders among us were part of that movement. We wonder why there is no comparable movement of protest and resistance to the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars this summer. The answer probably hinges on the military draft that confronted all young American men in 1968, with an imminent threat to life and limb, for a cause that they could not believe in. Lost American lives piled up at a rate on the order of ten times the recent loss of lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thousands of young men, civilians, draftees and enlisted men already in the military avoided or resisted this fate by myriad acts of protest and personal resistance. Girlfriends, sisters, brothers, parents, relatives and friends supported them with their own acts of protest and resistance, including explosive growth of a movement to refuse payment of federal income taxes and the 10% federal tax on telephone service.
Inspired by knowledge of these struggles, we look for a comparable movement of protest and resistance against the current wars, and their disastrous economic consequences for all of us. But, we don’t see it happening today. Though stop-loss extensions of military service and repeated deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan burden and threaten the lives of our brothers and sisters in the National Guard and the Reserves, there is no wave of protest adequate to build momentum for a mass movement of resistance.
We are walking from Chicago to St. Paul this summer to demonstrate a direct way to travel toward our goal of a peaceful society. The core of any contemporary movement to resist war and military empire building must be a radical change in the way each of us and all of us use energy and other limited resources of our common planet:
- We must travel less, or in energy efficient ways.
- We must build homes and work places differently, so we can light them, heat them or cool them in energy efficient ways.
- We must diversify and support local agriculture, to conserve soil and water, and reduce the costs of food preservation and long distance transportation.
- We must repair, reuse, or recycle every kind of consumer and industrial product, and reduce our demand for products we do not need.
Through these actions we reduce our demand for oil, gas and other limited world resources. The demand for war is closely related to excess demand for limited resources.
Every dollar, or hour, that we divert to local food production, energy efficient transportation, retrofitting existing houses with super-insulated walls and passive solar energy design, repairing, reusing and recycling the things we use, will reduce our personal demand for the fruits of war and empire.
We walk to persuade our people and their government to divert billions in investment, away from war and the military infrastructure:
- Advanced systems of rapid rail freight and passenger lines should parallel every mile of our present interstate highway system.
- Government should mandate and subsidize maximum energy efficiency in the design of all new buildings, and retrofitting of existing buildings, so that we can light, heat or cool them for a small fraction of current energy use.
- A new national agriculture policy could provide incentives for diversified local food production and distribution, and sustainable conservation of soil and water resources.
- We should encourage and mandate manufacture of durable consumer products that can be repaired readily, and can last for a long time.
- We should organize systems for efficient recycling of all reusable materials.
- We should support research and development of every possible means of energy generation that does not have serious negative effects in our natural environment.
Every dollar diverted from current military spending to initiatives of this nature will increase the economic and political security and well-being of our people, our country, and our world. This is the message of our walk.
