Left Tackles Peaceniks - The

Left Tackles Peaceniks - The LA Weekly - the La La Land version of the City Pages - has been astoundingly balanced for this type of publication (especially when compared with the comically dogmatic City Pages (or, to be fair, the comically-intense dogmatism of editor Steve Perry and the vast majority of his staff).

In this article, Marc Cooper tackles some of the hypocrisy and self-absorption of the "anti-war" movement:

Maybe someone in the peace movement should figure out that not only Bush could stop this war. So could Saddam — by resigning his unelected post and saving his people any further sacrifice. Yet I’ve yet to see one anti-war placard allude to Saddam’s responsibilities in securing the peace.

But talk about quagmires. The peace movement, which promises so much in its scope and energy, itself remains bogged down in a minimalist program of simply and only opposing U.S. military action. That’s hardly enough. The movement suffers a malady similar to that of the Bushies, but in reverse: smart principles but dumb — no, make that stupid — operational politics. Pure rejectionism, since the outbreak of war makes the peace movement as blind and indiscriminate as a WWII-vintage iron-cast bomb, though considerably less dangerous and infinitely less powerful.

Blocking traffic when 74 percent of the American people support the war, or endlessly whining about CNN’s coverage, or grandstanding as Michael Moore did at the Oscars (news - web sites) telling America that a president who currently enjoys (for all the sordid reasons we know) stratospheric popularity ratings is “fictitious,” has much more to do with personal therapy than with effective politics. Continue on that tack and you can pretty much count on another four years of Bush, no matter how ugly the war turns.

The article also notes, rightly, that the whole notion of "bringing the troops home" is specious - if we were to turn around and drive back to Kuwait, it'd open the Iraqis up to horrendous consequences.

Protecting the Iraqi people, as the peace movement rightfully desires, is one helluva lot more complicated than merely shielding them from the collateral damage caused by U.S. bombs. (That is, unless you really believe that America is the “greatest terrorist state in the world,” as is so often repeated on KPFK’s drive-time shows. If your world-view is that facile, then indeed we have little more to discuss.)

Those who chant “U.S. out of Iraq” ought to be prepared, then, to offer themselves as human shields to protect the Kurds against threatening Turkish troops (a task currently in the hands of U.S. special forces). Or as shields to protect the southern marsh Arabs against occupation by the theocratic armed forces of Iran. Perhaps all those human shields, idle now after fleeing Baghdad when Saddam’s government ordered them anchored to strategic military targets, could assume these new responsibilities.

It's all worth a read - high praise from something from the LA Weekly.

Posted by Mitch at April 2, 2003 06:57 AM