The nascent antiwar movement is the
ivory-billed woodpecker of politics. Does it even exist?
We see the odd glimpse of one reported secondhand from time to time, and it looms large in the fever dreams of the right, a hirsute fifth column poised to hand America over to the terrorists, just as it did the communists in the `70s. But both have disappeared into the wilderness, and it's been decades since anyone's caught a live specimen. Sure, we know that a majority of Americans now opposes the war in some form, but a movement? Absent large demonstrations, fiery speeches by famous names and downcast, sober assessments by news media solons, it's a phantom.
But if there is an antiwar movement brewing in the silent majority out there, it, like the ivory-billed woodpecker, has two big problems:
Continued below the fold...
1.) Destruction of habitat: the Bush Administration has been busily floating trial balloons in preparation for a withdrawal. As the 2006 elections approach, a declaration of victory followed by a steep draw-down in force strength seems all but certain. Sure, the Green Zone will remain as the forward base of our network of permanent bases in the Middle East, as will some heavy artillery. But for the most part, Iraq's Shiite governors will be left to settle their scores with the Sunnis and conduct their dirty little civil war in peace, Salvadoran-style. Bush's Republican Guard will be free again to run on God, guns and gays. Their enablers in the Democratic Party, the punditocracy and the news media will be more than happy to move on with them, leaving antiwar types to sputter on unnoticed in the vast reaches of the blogosphere, ranting about vanished credibility, wasted lives and plundered treasures like crackpot street corner End Times preachers. But who'll care once we're disengaged? Most Americans just want to put this war behind them and remember as little of it as possible.
2.) No representation: apart from a gaggle of news junkies with little more cred than birdwatchers, nobody really wants to be bothered with the big questions our misadventure in Iraq raises, and since few public figures of note, whether cultural or political, have spoken out against the war, there won't be any rush for agonizing reflection. The leftish intellectuals, journalists, pundits and pols who lined up behind Team Bush will always insist: They were proved fucking right! After all, many were also generously compensated for their stance, plied with lucrative Hoover Institution fellowships or published in the New York Times. Why should they admit their folly? They've been deputized as administration propagandists, and they're getting paid. Even if they got off the gravy train in Sadr City, who wants to admit they really screwed the pooch on this one?
So where does that leave us? Depends on what your goals are. There's a faction of the online antiwar left that says it just wants the troops out, by any means necessary. If that means declaring victory so that the GOP can swallow a withdrawal, so be it. Let's move on. Maybe now we can talk about domestic issues, the Democrats' strong suit.
That's not enough for me. The road to Baghdad was a long and divergent one, with origins in the Ottoman and British Empires and much farther back than that. But we started down this road in Vietnam by failing, though a combination of willful ignorance and artful misdirection, to comprehend how we got there and why we got chucked out on our ears. If the pols get another pass and the average person again fails to internalize our defeat, the reasons for it and the massive quantities of blood, treasure and soft power lost, then we're destined to repeat it, and maybe my son or daughter will be humping a rifle through some God-forsaken desert without a map in 20 years.
The key question facing the antiwar movement, if indeed it exists, is not merely how to get them home in a hurry, but how to hold our corrupt leaders accountable and ensure that we learn from their folly - in the absence of an independent press, political representation (outside of Pelosi, Feingold and a few others) or any public presence at all - so that we don't find ourselves right back in this mess.