[iwar] [fc:A.lonely.voice.of.New.York.dissent]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2002-08-26 06:06:54


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Date: Mon, 26 Aug 2002 06:06:54 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [iwar] [fc:A.lonely.voice.of.New.York.dissent]
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Observer Comment Extra
A lonely voice of New York dissent

 "For critics of war a day at the office is rather like being a homosexual in 
a homophobic world - you search others for signs that it's safe to to come 
out to them",

&lt;A HREF="http://www.observer.co.uk/worldview"Observer 
Worldview&lt;/A
Michael Steinberg
Sunday August 18, 2002
The Observer
<a href="http://www.observer.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4483514,00.html">http://www.observer.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4483514,00.html>

It is a persistent misconception that the United States - where free speech 
is guaranteed by the Constitution - has a vigorous tradition of dissent and 
protest. Just as conservatives fail to see how unusual the quiet, relatively 
crime-free 1950s were, so leftists forget that the fractious 1960s were an 
anomaly. Americans remain likely to identify with government policy, 
especially in international affairs where there is something of a national 
consensus that the U.S. should present a united front to the rest of the 
world.So I suppose I should not have been surprised at the near-unanimous 
support for the Bush administration after the September 11 attacks. All the 
same, my first reaction was something like shock. 

My wife and I had watched the president's speech to Congress, and we wondered 
how his stiff, choppy, overly-scripted delivery could possibly be mistaken 
for strength. But television commentators and acquaintances all admired his 
presidential stature.That was the first taste of the isolation most opponents 
of the war have come to feel, and it was only a beginning. As the country 
moved towards an invasion of Afghanistan my first impulse was to join what I 
thought would be a national debate - like any good citizen I wrote to my 
local newspaper. But I found it almost impossible to place an op-ed piece or 
even a letter there. It was soon clear that the quality of the writing wasn't 
the issue. The paper was no longer a forum. Instead, its mission seemed to be 
to encourage unity and build support for what was taken to be the national 
consensus.I couldn't bear the silence. 

One morning, overwhelmed with powerlessness and dread, I registered a domain 
name, designed a logo, and converted my rejected letters and articles into 
the core of an anti-war website. It gets 
about 5,000 hits a week. But I am 
visible only in cyberspace. I have found that there is a personal quality to 
the support for the war that goes beyond the hyper-patriotism of the Vietnam 
era. It makes face-to-face discussion almost impossible. I've never told the 
judge I work for about the site, although I suspect he would be more 
understanding than another judge, who dropped a "map" of the Middle East on 
my desk a few days after the attacks showing Afghanistan as a parking lot. 

Riding in the elevator the other day I heard a woman read with audible 
disgust the American Bar Association's recommendation that U.S. citizens held 
as unlawful combatants be allowed counsel. Our court clerk - an 
Italian-American woman who has never had the education her intelligence 
deserves - is simply afraid to discuss the issues with her co-workers. For 
critics of the war, a day at the office is rather like being a homosexual in 
a homophobic world - you search others for signs that it's safe to to come 
out to them.How did this happen? 

Most Americans have little knowledge of the rest of the world, an ignorance 
the media do little to dispel; and most would like to believe that the war on 
terror is the best way to ensure safety in the future. Many adhere to an 
almost Manichean division of the world into good guys and evildoers, a 
world-view which makes the most outrageous of Bushisms seem plausible.But 
this is also, in part, due to the failure of opponents of the war to present 
any kind of coherent analysis or anything around which popular opinion might 
coalesce. 

Last week, for example, at an academic conference where many of the speakers 
were highly critical of the war, I heard that everything was either the fault 
of the oil industry or the military technology companies. Besides the 
conspiracy theories, there were accounts that buried the specificity of 
recent events under categories dragged, in bleeding hunks, from the books of 
Michel Foucault and Edward Said. A speaker explained how the scapegoating 
American Muslims was comparable with the internment of Japanese-Americans 
after Pearl Harbour, since both were hegemonic constructions of the Other.

Beneath these unconvincing banalities, though, was a peculiar strain of 
nostalgia for the days immediately after the attack. One newspaper editor 
recalled a spontaneous sense of solidarity that, he felt, had led to the 
massive display of American flags. This is something of a classical trope in 
American life: the composer Charles Ives heard a crowd of commuters break 
into a hymn as the news of the Lusitania sinking reached them in 1915, and 
titled a piece evoking the experience "From Hanover Square North, at the end 
of a tragic day, the voice of the people again arose."An NYU professor spoke 
feelingly of the temporary triumph of real journalism, free for a few days 
after September 11 from commercial interruption and corporate constraints. 

And a tenured professor, a Muslim facing removal from his position because of 
comments presented (out of context, he insists) on a Fox News program, 
remembered blood drives, interfaith services and meetings during which he and 
his family felt truly American for the first time.This may be the best 
explanation for the reticence of opponents to the war. America may have been 
founded and populated by people who deliberately left or were removed from 
their communities, and who chose to govern themselves through a system 
explicitly crafted to eliminate factions. 

Yet Americans have nonetheless retained the desire for an all-encompassing 
sense of national purpose. I felt it myself in the horrible hours of 
September 11 and, in spite of the government's rhetoric, for weeks after 
that. The Bush administration has played on that desire with some skill, 
aided by a press that often seeks to build as well as express a common voice. 


Opponents face the challenge of not only providing a coherent alternative 
explanation for the events of September 2001 and after but of shaking the 
country's confidence and need to believe that the future is being secured. 
Few wish to be woken from a seductive dream of unity.That the American press 
has offered little perspective and even less critique is not surprising. 

The belief that the mainstream press opposed the Vietnam War is a myth. 
Opposition to that war had little political visibility until significant 
numbers of American lives were lost.And so the post-9/11 dream remains, 
supported by little flags on countless office desks, American eagle 
screen-savers, and public silence. It is, for all that, a troubled dream. 

As she cut my hair a few weeks ago my hairdresser asked me, "So, what is it 
about this WAR?" 

Her tone was pained as well as ironic. 

There is opposition to American foreign policy, concerns about its co
nsequences and fears about the possible invasion of Iraq. But this opposition 
and concern remains inchoate. It would be a tragedy if it came into the open 
only after thousands more die; but it would not be an unprecedented tragedy.· 


Michael Steinberg is a legal clerk and writer based in New York. You can find 
his website at &lt;A HREF="http://www.whythiswar.com/"www.WhyThisWar.com&lt;/A 
and contact him at &lt;A HREF="mailto:<a href="mailto:mlstein@rochester.rr.com?Subject=Re:%20(ai)%20A%20lonely%20voice%20of%20New%20York%20dissent%2526In-Reply-To=%2526lt;17b.d6abcb5.2a99d42e@aol.com">mlstein@rochester.rr.com</a>"<a 
href="mailto:mlstein@rochester.rr.com?Subject=Re:%20(ai)%20A%20lonely%20voice%20of%20New%20York%20dissent%2526In-Reply-To=%2526lt;17b.d6abcb5.2a99d42e@aol.com">mlstein@rochester.rr.com</a> 

&lt;/A.

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