As the possibility of a U.S. invasion turns into the reality of
massive carnage, the war on Iraq cannot avoid confronting Americans with
a tacit expectation that rarely gets media scrutiny. In a word:
obedience.
When a country -- particularly "a democracy" -- goes to war, the
passive consent of the governed lubricates the machinery of slaughter.
Silence is a key form of cooperation, but the war-making system does not
insist on quietude or agreement. Mere passivity or self-restraint will
suffice to keep the missiles flying, the bombs exploding and the faraway
people dying.
On the home front, beliefs are of scant importance. Antiwar
sentiment is necessary but insufficient to halt a war. Much more is
needed than expressions of dissent that stay within the customary
bounds.
Daily media speculation about the starting date for all-out war on
Iraq has contributed to widespread passivity -- a kind of spectator
relationship to military actions being implemented in our names.
We can't just blame the media conglomerates and Washington spinners
for the prevailing stupor. After decades of desensitizing propaganda, we
routinely crave the insulation that news outlets offer. We tell
ourselves that our personal lives are difficult enough without getting
too upset about world events.
The conventional wisdom of American political life has made it
predictable that editorial writers and politicians cannot resist
accommodating themselves to expediency by the time the first missiles
reach Baghdad. Conformist behavior -- in sharp contrast to authentic
conscience -- is notably plastic.
A pathetic case in point is Sen. John Kerry, the Massachusetts
Democrat who voted for the congressional war resolution last October
while trying to pass himself off as a critic of President Bush's
enthusiasm for war. While campaigning in Iowa recently for his party's
presidential nomination, Kerry told a New York Times reporter: "When the
war begins, if the war begins, I support the troops and I support the
United States of America winning as rapidly as possible. When the troops
are in the field and fighting -- if they're in the field and fighting --
remembering what it's like to be those troops, I think they need a
unified America that is prepared to win."
Prepared to win. Such a phrase rolls off an oily tongue with ease.
As a consequence, of course, many blameless people must die.
Howard Dean, a former governor of Vermont, is supposedly an antiwar
candidate for the Democratic presidential slot. On the campaign trail in
Iowa, he "stopped short when asked what he would say if there was a
war," according to the Times.
"You know, I don't know the answer to that yet," Dean said.
"Certainly I'm going to support American kids that are sent over there.
Obviously, I'm going to wish everybody well. You know, you root for your
country."
You root for your country. No matter how horrific its actions.
Billions of buds on countless flowers and trees will wondrously
open across the United States during the next weeks. Meanwhile, the
Pentagon's firepower will destroy uncounted human beings in Iraq during
what will be, to put it mildly, a war of aggression.
Judgments at Nuremberg and precepts of international law forbid
launching aggressive war -- an apt description of what the U.S.
government has in store for Iraqi people this spring.
"We must make clear to the Germans that the wrong for which their
fallen leaders are on trial is not that they lost the war, but that they
started it," said Supreme Court Justice Robert L. Jackson, a U.S.
representative to the International Conference on Military Trials at the
close of World War II. He added that "no grievances or policies will
justify resort to aggressive war. It is utterly renounced and condemned
as an instrument of policy."
Last November, more than 300 law professors in the United States
signed a statement pointing out that "the international rule of law is
not a soft luxury to be discarded whenever leaders find it convenient or
popular to resort to savage violence."
The deadening lockstep of obedience is easier to fault in other
societies. Close to home, as the adrenaline of unfathomable violence
pulses through the televisions of America, the siren of deference to
authority may seem irresistible. But it isn't.
_______________________________________________
Norman Solomon is co-author of the new book "Target Iraq: What the News
Media Didn't Tell You," published by Context Books
(
www.contextbooks.com/newF.html).
For the transcript of Solomon's March 11 appearance on CNN discussing
U.S. plans for war on Iraq, go to:
www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0303/11/sdi.04.html
Background link:
www.lcnp.org/global/IraqLetter.htm
