Dope

What is to be done?

The first stage of the antiwar movement is clearly over. We receive emails that urge us to demonstrate on the first day of the war, and we have to ask: what kind of gesture is that? It�s an oddly ineffectual and resigned move � surely the emails should have been pouring in to have us demonstrate during the last three days, or the last week.

In any case, we expect that the conventional wisdom is right, and that the fighting against Saddam H. will be a matter of the demonstration of overwhelming American power and the quick collapse of his forces. If the conventional wisdom isn�t right, then Americans will have a very hard time justifying this war over the course of the next two weeks � for the only reason I can think of that would explain the prolonged resistance of a country that has been at war, or under sanctions, since 1979, to an invading force of the size and quality of the Americans is that the resistance is popular.

My friend, Alan, at his Gadfly site, has posted a comment that the only thing left to do is pray. Well, we�ve heard that comment from others, and we have to say�. What are we praying for, exactly? Peace? A swift end to the disorder? Big, happy oil contracts for Haliburton?

I�m anti-prayer, myself. This site, at least, thinks that the next stage is to oppose American pillaging of Iraq; to oppose the dissolution of the current governmental structures in Northern Iraq; to oppose the appointment of an American head of Iraq after Saddam is defeated; and to support an accelerated withdrawal of American troops from Iraq so that they are not in the country for two years is also a goal. Make that six months, max.

In the last Gulf War the protests were in some disconnect with the real inhumanity of the American assault on the Iraqi army and population, which suffered much greater casualties than we knew at the time. The protests, in other words, went mushy from lack of info. So the short range goal seems to me to be to use the internet to get around corporate media�s willingness to obscure the real nature of the war in order not to shock prayerful Americans out of their various private raptures. This is where antiwar blogs can be of some service. So we will try to plug into and link to as much uncensored information as possible.