The American peace movement and the Middle East.

• Author: Zunes, Stephen

Over the past few decades, popular movements in the United States challenging the U.S. role in Southeast Asia, Central America and Southern Africa have been an important factor in confronting foreign.policies seen to be inconsistent with the officially-stated goals of peace, democracy, international law and self-determination. Yet, during this same period, U.S. policy toward the Middle East has been particularly problematic regarding effective popular mobilization. This essay takes a look at the American peace movement and its role regarding the U.S.-led 1991 war against Iraq and the long-standing U.S. support for Israeli policies toward its Arab neighbors, as well as the movement's strengths, weaknesses, and possible future directions.

First, I will examine the reasons why the peace movement was unable to stop the Gulf War, why it failed to turn public opinion against the war once it started, and how it has failed to address the resulting humanitarian crises. At the same time, I will argue that the movement was far more successful in many respects than even most of its supporters credit it for being. Using the Gulf War as the opening context, I then turn to broader issues of peace, human rights and justice in the Middle East and how the centrality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been an obstacle to building an effective peace movement. I critically examine the failure of the peace movement to address the question of Israel and Palestine in a more forthright and effective manner, particularly the difficulty in influencing decision-makers into supporting Israeli-Palestinian peace, despite popular support for such a shift in policy from its current bias in favor of Israeli government policies.

GULF WAR AFTERMATH

The current weakness of a Middle East peace movement in the United States comes in part from the popularity of the 1991 Gulf War and the resulting marginalization of its opponents. There were a number of factors that made the peace movement appear weak and lacking popular support - a highly effective propaganda barrage by the Bush Administration, the censorship of the press at the war front, the deliberate falsification of reports from the battlefield to exaggerate military successes and underestimate civilian casualties, the low number of American casualties, the short duration of the war, and the nefarious nature of the Iraqi regime. In addition, the media played largely a cheer leading role, with opponents of the war - including Middle Eastern experts - largely ignored as analysts and notably absent from network talk shows.(1) Pro-war sentiment was stage-managed from the highest level and was no match for an underfunded grass roots movement.

There were also some serious errors which cost the peace movement some support: One was the fact that peace activists largely shared with most Americans a profound ignorance of the Middle East, Islam, and the Arab World) For example, during the months preceding the outbreak of hostilities, Time observed that "The public response resembles a massive cram session, as earnest people try to understand the complex forces at work and calculate the potential costs, human and material of going to war."(3)

One result was a series of tactical errors: for example, many anti-war activists focused on the precedent of Vietnam, despite great differences between the two situations. As with the old adage about generals, anti-war activists also tend to fight the last war, often ignoring the unique aspects of an upcoming crisis. For example, Vietnam did not have the capability of threatening large populations beyond their borders, as did Iraq, thereby the Bush Administration could raise a more credible - though still questionable - specter of further aggression.(4) In Vietnam, the U.S. fought a popular nationalist struggle utilizing guerrilla warfare in a mountainous jungle terrain. The Gulf War was in a flat desert area against a conventional army in a territory that was either uninhabited or supportive of the U.S.. Another error came in emphasizing the potential of large American casualties in an era when the high-tech equipment of American forces can keep "kill ratios" so favorable to allied forces and the war could be fought and won in a matter of weeks. Indeed, it was the relatively low number of American casualties and the brevity of the ground war, in the face of dire predictions by some that it would turn into "another Vietnam," which helped undermine the peace movement's credibility.

Still another problem came with the peace movement's late start in opposing the preparation for war. Despite the apparent absence of any real Iraqi threat to Saudi Arabia, that the rush to send foreign troops hardened Iraq's refusal to withdraw,(5) and that the initial U.S. troop build-up was, rather than being defensive, actually a calculated preparation for offensive military action, the deployment received near universal support from decision-makers, as well as from such progressive political figures as Jesse Jackson, Todd Gitlin, William Sloane Coffin and Bernie Sanders. Outside of some traditional pacifist groups, such as the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the anti-war movement did not respond, in large part, until November, when the Bush Administration went public with its intention to launch a war.

Many peace activists also fell victim to some of the same anti-Arab racism of which they accused many supporters of the war, seeing the Kuwaitis as primarily a group of oil-rich sheiks not worthy of concern. Actually, most rich Kuwaitis fled south the day of the invasion. Those who suffered the most under the Iraqi occupation were the less well-off Kuwaitis who stayed behind as well as the large numbers of Palestinian and other foreign workers. Peace activists also tended to ignore the fact that though the Sabah dynasty had many faults, Kuwait had made more advances toward political pluralism than any other country in the Gulf region and that the human rights situation under Iraqi occupation was qualitatively worse than what was experienced under the monarchy.(6) Some peace activists blithely accepted the Baghdad government's statement that Kuwait was historically part of Iraq.(7) Indeed, given the propensity of the U.S. government in the preceding years to mislead the American public regarding the nature of the Sandinista government of Nicaragua and other Third World adversaries of the U.S. government, many peace activists were understandably skeptical about the reports of atrocities by the Iraqi government or of its totalitarian nature. In this case, however, most of these reports were true.

There were also some cases of Israel-bashing, with some war opponents even going as far as insisting that Israel was the cause of the conflict and that it was the pro-Israel lobby that led to the U.S. decision to launch the war.(8)

Some far right groups, including the Liberty Lobby, the John Birch Society, followers of Lyndon LaRouche and independent rightists known for paranoid conspiracy theories (which on some occasions happened to parallel more thoughtful left critiques) joined in with anti-war efforts, and were at times allowed into coalition efforts by those unaware of their anti-Semitic and far right ideologies. The LaRouche Movement had actually developed close ties with Iraq's Ba'ath party, with which it shares an essentially fascist ideology.(9) These alliances harmed the credibility of the peace movement.

There were also serious divisions within the left. Some prominent figures respected by the American left actually supported the war: Patrick Lacefield, a former staff member of the radical pacifist magazine Win, a leader in the Democratic Socialist of America, and editor of a popular anti-war anthology on Central America;(10) Fred Halliday, a Marxist scholar of the Middle East from Great Britain who serves as an editor of New Left Review;(11) and, John Judis, a senior writer for In These Times and former editor of Socialist Revolution.(12) More seriously, however, were divisions within the anti-war movement itself: Two coalitions organized separate national demonstrations in Washington, DC on two separate dates in late January 1991, after the war was underway. The primary differences revolved around the preferred date of the rally as well as on the question as to whether to condemn Iraq's invasion and occupation of Kuwait along with the U.S.-led war. Arguing that Iraqi aggression was not the cause, but the excuse, for U.S. intervention, the more radical of the two coalitions - the Emergency Committee to Stop the United States War in the Middle East, which organized the 19 January rally - insisted that any denunciation of Iraq would confuse the issue. Supporters of the 26 January rally, led by the National Campaign for Peace in the Middle East, a coalition of over 400 more mainstream organizations, stressed the importance of taking a principled - as well as more politically-acceptable - position condemning both Iraqi and American actions.(13)

Despite these problems, however, the anti-war movement showed some real strengths as well.

STRENGTHS OF THE ANTI-GULF WAR MOVEMENT

One interesting aspect of the anti-war movement was its popular appeal in areas not usually known as strongholds of dissident politics in recent decades.(14) Some of the most widespread opposition was in the West and Midwest, where anti-war sentiment was strongest prior to the Cold War. Unlike the Vietnam War, it was not hippies versus hard-hats or one generation against another; indeed, the strongest anti-war sentiment was among the elderly,(15) and a far lesser proportion of the movement was made up of students. In addition, intellectuals were behind, rather than ahead of, public opinion regarding opposition to the war. Since the armed forces had a disproportionate number of people from lower-income backgrounds, students at the less-prestigious universities were more likely to know someone at risk and...