By a member of the Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist League (RAIL)
University of California at Los Angeles; Wednesday February 5, 2003--Close to 1000 students, activists and professors gathered at UCLA's Ackermann Grand Ballroom for an anti war teach-in sponsored by the student organization "Speak Out!" The speakers were Barbara Johns from Voices in the Wilderness, Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky, the latter two present via telephone.
As the teach-in got underway a few pro-war protesters seized the stage with signs that read: "Finish the Job!" and "No war = No peace." They hardly resisted the efforts of the organizers to remove them and eventually slouched quietly on the ground for the remainder of the-teach in.
RAIL is pleased to report that Speak Out! made overall correct claims about imperialism, puppet governments and Third World dictators like Saddam Hussein. The emcee listed the top imperialist State Department reasons for war and divided them into half-truths and outright lies. The half-truths were that Saddam Hussein is a brutal dictator and that Iraq has connections to Al-Qaida. He correctly exposed the missing half of the story that the United $tates has historically supported the world's most brutal dictators and was also the principal supporter of Al-Qaida against the social-imperialist Soviet Union's occupation of Afghanistan. The outright lies were that the United $tates harbors a profound care for the people of Iraq--something which doesn't square with daily U.$. bombings of Iraq and barbaric U.$.-supported sanctions which kill tens of thousands of Iraqis each year. Another outright lie is that the United $tates is committed to the principle of stopping the spread of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Even if the U.N. finds evidence of WMD in Iraq, it was the United $tates which sold these arms to Iraq in the first place and hence bears principal responsibility for making Iraq WMD-capable.(6)
While Speak Out! did a good job bringing some of the basic facts about the impending war to UCLA students, it still made some pragmatist, bourgeois-democratic mistakes. For example, the flyer they distributed carried the headline "No war! That is what the majority says." This contradicts polls which consistently show that a majority of Amerikans support a U.N.-endorsed war. A Speak Out! member at first claimed that this showed the strength of U.$. anti-war forces, but later conceded that the U.N. would either rubber stamp the war or be powerless to stop it.
Generally Speak Out! chose its arguments so they had broad appeal for Amerikans--to the detriment of their effectiveness. As we wrote in the last issue of MIM Notes, what matters is that we achieve the goals we have--peace. If Amerikkkans are not ready to hear it, it does not mean we can afford to dump the goal!
Another example: Speak Out! argued that an attack on Iraq is also an attack on "us"--meaning Amerikans. The emcee said that the principal reason for opposing the U.$. war is that it is not in "our" interests, which he cited as free health care for Amerikans, low university tuition and employment. This is another one of those cases where Amerikans fantasize about how bad things are in the U.$. and how they can only get worse while failing to grasp that imperialist war is the source of the perks and comforts everyone, including the poorest people in the United $tates get to enjoy. This means things like universities that don't get bombed by U.$. manufactured weapons, hospitals (free or otherwise) which are not bulldozed by U.$. supported rogue states, high paying jobs (most people on earth live on less than $2.00 per day) and an employment-ensuring militarized border to seal the whole deal.
The first speaker was Barbara Johns from Voices in the Wilderness, an organization that struggles to end the U.$.-imposed sanctions on Iraq by documenting the effects that these sanctions have on living conditions in Iraq. She began by pledging her allegiance to the unfortunate philosophy of moral relativism which does not believe in truth and consequently does not believe that anything can be right or wrong. It's odd that in spite of this ideology Barbara Johns is out addressing a crowd of anti-war activists and students. Opposing imperialist war isn't a popularity contest. In the struggle for a long and lasting peace worldwide one should expect to make both enemies and allies along lines that divide. In a clear example of what wishy-washy ideology gets you, her self-contradictory position led her to encourage the crowd to "welcome" the pro-war activists as "humyn beings" and not as people who support the use of weapons of mass destruction to achieve the death of Iraqis. The crowd cheered.
The politically watered down blanket term "humynity" was a big deal to the first speaker. She went on about the "dehumynization" of society by the imperialist mass media which creates war-mongers like Madeline Albright and Colin Powell. Because humynity comes in classes of oppressors and the oppressed we don't speak of it in the abstract. Albright and Powell represent a class in whose interest it is to carry out war. The mass media represents that same class and is therefore uncritical of it.
After winning encouragement for the pro-war activists and their "humynity" Johns talked about her recent trip to Iraq where she came to realize that the U.$. war against Iraq has continued for 12 years with daily bombings and sanctions. As a consequence of this ongoing war there are few hospitals or universities in Iraq. She says that for the first time in her life she witnessed many children dying, of cancer in particular. Chemotherapy is non-existent in Iraq as U.$.-supported sanctions prohibit the manufacture or import of anything associated with this potentially life-saving treatment. The major preventable diseases in Iraq responsible for the death of thousands are radiation poisoning (from living in a land littered with U.$. bombs), cholera and typhoid. There are not enough hospitals to admit the countless victims of the ongoing U.$. war.
Johns claimed that Iraqis lack "the ability to organize politically" and said, "we are lucky to live in the United States and should be grateful." But as MIM has said: this is a fantasy. There is no statistic in any country that compares to U.$. imprisonment of Black people (1) and MIM has to constantly fight against the U.$. "freedom of censorship" (2) to distribute MIM Notes and organize prisoners.(3) Of all the speakers Johns was the least scientific.
The next speaker was Howard Zinn whose short talk could be favorably summarized as "Don't believe U.$. lies about war. The real reason for a war against Iraq is oil." Zinn correctly pointed out that the United $tates is the country with the most weapons of mass destruction and noted that the United $tates is determined to concoct "evidence" for why war is needed.
He did not develop the line about a U.$. war for oil but said instead that he believes that the principal danger to world peace does not lie with Saddam Hussein but with George Bush. According to Zinn war is useful for the Bush administration to deflect attention from what he calls an "attack against national wealth" and a "crime against the Amerikan people." Teaming up with Speak Out! Zinn thinks that environmental degradation in the United $tates, health care, education, housing and hospitals are the real issues being ignored by the Bush administration. This tag-team of speakers suffers from thinking that the main problem with war is ignoring Amerikan concerns but only internationalism can bring the fact that the problem is U.$. expansion and imperialism.
The problem of getting hung-up on Amerikan concerns is closely followed by the problem of getting hung up on individual Amerikan leaders and ignoring the systematic nature of imperialism and the economic and political reasons underlying all wars. George Bush is an imperialist, but so is Gore and any other politician in Amerika who supports the continued exploitation and oppression of other peoples under the illusion of protecting Amerika's "national wealth."
Howard Zinn's glimmer of hope for stopping the war is the fact that people all over the world are opposed to the war and "the common sense and sense of decency of the Amerikan people." RAIL is glad to see millions of people all over the world protesting the U.$. war, but Amerikan "common decency" gets you 37% of Amerikans who support war without U.N. approval and the 30% who want to see war start soon. The 63% who want to see war only after U.N. inspections is not a consoling "glimmer of hope."
Noam Chomsky was only available for a question and answer period. It went like this (paraphrasing):
Q: Why is the U.$. government going to war?
A: Weapons of mass destruction are not the reason. The people in power now in are the same people who sold the weapons to Saddam Hussein. Also, if the United $tates takes over Iraq weapons production in Iraq will increase at least to levels matching the armories of neighboring states--especially I$rael.
Chomsky noted that war on Iraq, by the admission of the U.$. military will result in the proliferation of WMD, their use and terrorism in the U.$.
Q: Why did Colin Powell not mention Osama Bin Laden in his morning address to the U.N. Security Council? What about the Al-Qaida-Iraq connection?
A: He didn't mention it because it is an embarrassment. As far as Al-Qaida and Iraq, there are radical Islamic groups in the Southern border of Iraq. But these groups are opposed to Saddam Hussein. The Iraqi government "tolerates" them because it doesn't have the power to do otherwise.
Q: How will the United $tates justify this war? Will the international community intervene?
A: The United $tates will not try to justify the war. They will invoke overwhelming military force. It is extremely unlikely that anyone in the U.N. will oppose the United $tates--people throughout the world fear the United $tates and the United $tates wants it this way.
According to Chomsky Donald Rumsfeld summed up the U.$. attitude towards war and the international community when he divided the world into "Old Europe" consisting of Germany and France who have qualms about a U.$. war against Iraq and the "New Europe" of Italy and Spain that show overwhelming support for war. Rumsfeld said that the "Old Europe" is irrelevant.
Rumsfeld is simply recognizing that world imperialists are butting heads on the re-division of the world. On the question of U.$.-inspired fear we refer to Mao Zedong who says that all reactionaries are paper tigers. "In appearance, the reactionaries are terrifying, but in reality they are not so powerful. From a long-term point of view, it is not the reactionaries but the people who are really powerful." (5) Peace-minded people in the first world have to realize that it is not the U.N. but the overwhelming majority of people of the world that have a fearless desire to overthrow world imperialism altogether.
Q: Are pre-emptive strikes a shift or continuation of U.$. foreign policy?
A: Let's clear up the terminology. "Pre-emptive" is used by the government as a synonym for "preventive." No strike can be pre-emptive or preventive. It is a shift in form of degree, but an extension of past practice to a higher-more explicit degree.
We agree with this. The luminaries in power in the U.$. think that "if we hit them before they hit us then they won't hit us again." This is not nor has it ever been true so long as there is injustice and exploitation throughout the world. World imperialists like the U.$. have been waging WWIII against the world and on September 11, 2001 they got hit. No amount of carpet bombing and pre-emptive attack strategies short of nuclear annihilation can prevent the oppressed from fighting back.
It is great that Speak Out! was able to draw many people new to politics to this teach-in. RAIL and SLALA handed out MIM Notes after the teach-in. We think that as people become involved in the anti-war movement in the U.$. it is important to argue for the revolutionary anti-imperialist position, because that is the historically-tested most effective way of stopping imperialist wars and ending the oppression they perpetuate.
Notes:
1.http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/faq/freecoun.html
2. "Google Pulls Plug on MIM Ads" MIM Notes No. 247, January 15, 2003. http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/mn/mn274.pdf
3. http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/agitation/prisons/censor/
4. http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/2002/10/21_Polls.html
5. "Talk with the American Correspondent Anna Louise Strong" (August 1946), Selected Works, Vol. IV, p. 100. (http://art-bin.com/art/omao6.html)
6. See e.g. "Bush's 'State of Union' old news," MIM Notes 276, 15 Feb 2002.