Pine Belt Progressive

So much has been written about the war in Iraq this week, I have been forced to think pretty hard about what I can say about it that others aren’t saying already. A few thoughts on my personal experiences the past five years are the best that I can do.

2002 and 2003 were not exactly a season of hope for me. I remember thinking pretty early on that there wasn’t much chance of stopping the war, but that people who thought it was a bad idea were obligated to try. I wrote letters to my congressional delegation and to the President on the moral, economic, and political consequences of an aggressive war. Perhaps my most bizarre personal political experience of the last eight years was receiving, during the 2004 presidential campaign, an autographed photo of George W. Bush addressed to me.

I am not naive when it comes to the efficacy of communicating with the White House. I sent the letter expressing my opinion against the war more out of a sense of obligation to do something – anything – than in any real hope that it would be read or considered. Since it’s the only message I’ve ever sent to the President, I assume it was used to add my name to a mailing list. Receiving the photo was pretty amusing, since I’m not even an “independent.” It was also a little sinister, because it occurred to me that this might be the administration’s way of saying “up yours” to everyone who sent letters about the war and encouraging them not to vote.

At the beginning of the war I still had some disposable income, and I was single. In addition to sending the letter, I bought myself a seat to D.C. on a bus chartered by United for Peace and Justice for the big weekend of protest. I was surprised by the number of high school students on that trip, and surprised by the number of people who joined us as we rolled across Alabama on the way to D.C. I was also surprised by the massive numbers of people from all over the country who actually showed up for the march.

To this day, I have never seen a mainstream media source report even a remotely accurate count of the number of people who attended that protest. I remember looking down a side-street at an intersection about half-way through the march and seeing the back half of the line – but not the end. I have no doubt that the protesters marching that day could easily have surrounded a couple of city blocks, and the street was packed from curb to curb. My friends who watched the coverage on television told me that nearly equal time was given to the counter-protests, which amounted to a few knots of maybe forty or fifty people each (if that), who were allowed by the police to stand in place along the route with signs. I already knew at that point we had media problems. I had known it for quite some time, but coverage of the run-up to the war showed me just how far-reaching those problems were. I think this was the experience that moved beltway media complicity with the propaganda arms of the government from the “occasional problem” category to the “endemic reality” category for me.

The details from the march that I found most striking were the mixed reaction of the police and the presence of the military. Many of the police officers lining the route scowled and looked as though they’d like to bash some heads, but just as many gave us a thumbs-up. The number of fatigue-clad people on rooftops with long zoom-lenses was shocking, and was, I thought, disproportionate to the threat posed by even such a large group of peaceful demonstrators. I don’t think many people really had any illusions about stopping the war at that point, but I was impressed by the spirit of hope and community that seemed to infect everyone I spoke to in Washington that day.

The day the war actually started was entirely different. I sat alone in the dark, unable to sleep, and watched the shock and awe on television for what seemed like an eternity. I wondered in those early days about a lot of things. I wondered how I was going to keep participating in the economy that was fueling the overthrow of the postwar non-aggression framework. I wondered how many years it was going to be before enough people came to their senses to stop the war. I wondered what I could do to contribute to solving all the problems that made us so vulnerable to the crooks and liars. There are also some things I never doubted. I never doubted that the war was wrong, or that it would damage our country internationally, or that it was begun under false pretenses, or that it would last for years once it began. I never doubted those things for a moment, but it is small consolation to look back five years later and know that I was correct. It was about this time I discovered the blogs. There have been many times over the past five years when they have been my only source of external validation and inspiration. I’ve learned a lot from them, and I don’t even want to think about where I’d be on this fifth anniversary of the war without them.

At some point during the first few weeks of the war, I also attended a protest in my home town, which amounted to about 30 people standing in front of our major highway intersection and holding signs. I was struck during that even by how many older people turned out in this college town, and by how few of the people who did show fit the standard media profile of the angry protester. A lot of people driving by honked and yelled positive things. A lot of people also made obscene gestures and yelled no-so-positive things. A truckload of young fellows who didn’t like what we were doing even stopped and tried to make trouble, but fortunately, the situation was easily defused by older and wiser people who were there as protesters. A couple of guys in an unmarked Crown Victoria and Hawaiian shirts came and took everyone’s picture with very expensive cameras. The newspaper and the t.v. station came and interviewed a few folks. I thought it was funny (and telling) that they went straight for the five or six people in the crowd who had long hair and were wearing tie-dyed shirts.

I had been struggling since the late 90s to figure out what I should study at the graduate level. The war, and the blogs, pushed me toward political science. Abu Ghraib confirmed my worst fears and showed me just how little I knew about how and why groups of people do political things. Not long after, I started dating my best friend of more than 10 years. We were married in 2004, and she convinced me that I really could do graduate work. So I got into a graduate program in political science and began to work very diligently toward acquiring the knowledge I needed to operate effectively in this very hostile Southern culture. I believe I learned as much as I was capable of learning from that experience, and now I am struggling to build a social network here, where I live – not an easy thing to do, since I am a pretty shy person and have always had trouble building and maintaining relationships with others. Which brings me to today.

Five years in, what can we say about the Iraq War, other than those things I’ve already mentioned? Here’s a list.

1. It’s killed around 4,000 U.S. soldiers and stretched our military almost to the breaking point.
2. It’s resulted in millions (yes, millions) of dead and displaced civilians.
3. We have $12 billion a month in borrowed, public funds going to sustain the occupation while our economy grinds in fits and starts toward an actual, honest-to-goodness, depression.
4. The international credibility of the United States is at the lowest point it’s been in more than a century.
5. Due in part to this war, the postwar international legal regimes that constituted one of the very few bright spots in the politics of the 20th Century are in danger of being broken beyond repair (or, if you prefer, dismantled).

The Bush administration, its political supporters, and its media propagandists bear more responsibility for these things than any other group of our citizens. They are, at this moment, resisting all efforts to end the occupation of Iraq in order to avoid political and legal responsibility for their lawlessness and dishonesty. They are hoping to run out the clock on the administration. They are hoping to either continue the occupation of Iraq under John McCain, or to use the issues arising from the war to destroy the next Democratic president. Either option will do for them. They see potential for profit in both.

The question for me is, what do about it? I think about that a lot. For starters, we can support this responsible plan. A more progressive, more assertive Congress strikes me as a necessity at this point. Beyond that, I don’t know. Talking about these things, even in the most non-confrontational terms, certainly doesn’t gain me many friends in South Mississippi. I am glad the entire country does not look like South Mississippi, but even here, things are beginning to change just a little bit.

People are less inclined now than in years past to reflexively reach for the patriotism card or raise the specter of 9-11 at the first sign of criticism of the war. Some people are even willing to admit that it isn’t going so well. It is possible now, on some days, to ride around all day and not see more than one or two of those magnetic yellow ribbons that say “Support Our Troops” but really mean “Support George Bush.” I first noticed the number of these ribbons beginning to decline not long after Katrina, and a friend of mine joked that the hurricane had blown them all away, and people didn’t have the money to buy new ones. I am glad to see these signs, but I don’t want to make too much of them. Roger Wicker, the man appointed by our governor to succeed Trent Lott, was on the local news last night spouting the same old argument from 2004-05 about “fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here.” When I try to engage people on the war I find that most people would rather not talk about it or think about it. The exceptions are people who have had family or friends maimed or killed and people who pretty much share my views on the war already.

For now I just go on talking, hoping, and praying that we see something like a new coalition forming at the national level by the time the current election cycle is over. If that can happen, then maybe we can find a way to end the occupation and begin to define patriotism in such a way that our nation never feels the need to engineer such an all-encompassing travesty of justice again.

Long term, I think, the only thing that can result in positive, sustainable change is for the Conservative Movement, which has owned the Republican Party lock, stock, and barrel for at least a good 20 years now, to be utterly and completely broken as a force for political change in this country. I view it as a radical movement bent on changing the values of our culture for the worse, and by any means necessary. People need to see it for what it is and be ashamed to identify themselves with it. So I hope we find a way to end this war soon, and I think the shortest path to an end of this war lies in the development of a Progressive movement capable of leveraging real political power in D.C. In other words, I think I’m probably going to be writing a sixth anniversary piece and possibly a seventh anniversary piece too, assuming I am still alive two years from now. Just to be clear: my political position is that we ought to get out of Iraq now, and we ought to be shouting that message from the rooftops every chance we get. But my realistic assessment of the situation is that we’re in for another year of it at the very least.

I am hoping for a Democratic victory (and a lot of smaller Progressive victories) in November. If that happens, maybe we can look forward to ending the occupation of Iraq sometime before the 2010 mid-terms. I would love for the occupation to end tomorrow, but I don’t see how that’s happening. So I go on talking, writing, praying, and trying to make some friends. The alternative, to me, is to give up hope and stop thinking about these things. That’s really no alternative at all.

Late addition:

I found out at the last minute about an event in my hometown today, so I went and joined a few others in holding up signs at our major intersection. I am not sure how many people were there, but I was pleased to finally get to meet John Leek of Cotton Mouth fame, and to see a couple of people who taught me political science in attendance, as well. Lots of people driving by — including quite a few soldiers — gave us peace signs and honked. Only a couple of people scowled and made obscene gestures. That probably doesn’t sound like much to most people, but this is Mississippi, so it made me very happy.

If I still have time, I’ll add this post to the blogswarm that’s been going on all day. Lots of good reading there.