A chorus against war.

• Author: Zinn, Howard
• Position: Cover Story

As I WRITE THIS, it looks like war. This, in spite of the obvious lack of enthusiasm in the country for war. The polls that register "approve" or "disapprove" can only count numbers; they cannot test the depth of feeling. And there are many signs that the support for war is shallow and shaky and ambivalent.

This Administration will not likely be stopped, though it knows its support is thin. In fact, that is undoubtedly why it is in such a hurry; it wants to go to war before the support gets any thinner.

The assumption is that once the soldiers are in combat, the American people will unite behind the war. The television screens will show "smart bombs" exploding, and the Secretary of Defense will assure the American people that civilian casualties are being kept to a minimum. (We're in the age of megadeaths, and any number of casualties less than a million is no cause for concern.)

This is the way it has been. Unity behind the President in time of war. But it may not be that way again.

The anti-war movement will not likely surrender to the martial atmosphere. The hundreds of thousands who marched in Washington and San Francisco and New York and Boston--and in villages, towns, and cities all over the country from Georgia to Montana--will not meekly withdraw. Unlike the shallow support for the war, the opposition to the war is deep and cannot be easily dislodged or frightened into silence.

Indeed, the anti-war feelings are bound to become more intense.

To the demand "Support Our GIs," the movement will be able to reply: "Yes, we support our GIs, we want them to live, we want them to be brought home. The government is not supporting them. It is sending them to die, or to be wounded, or to be poisoned by our own depleted uranium shells."

No, our casualties may not be numerous, but every single one will be a waste of an important human life. We will insist that this government be held responsible for every death, every dismemberment, every case of sickness, every case of psychic trauma caused by the shock of war.

And though the media will be blocked from access to the dead and wounded of Iraq, though the human tragedy unfolding in Iraq will be told in numbers, in abstractions, and not in the stories of real human beings, real children, real mothers and fathers, the movement will find a way to tell that story. And when it does, the American people--who can be cold to death on "the other side," but who also wake up when "the other side" is suddenly seen as...