Thoughtful liberals should protest Bush, not Iraq

Those of us who questioned the administration's rationale for this war and opposed the manner in which it came about must now reckon with the awful truth that soldiers fighting in our stead are being tortured and killed — and we must answer a hard question: how can we support the troops and stay faithful to our own beliefs about the wrongheadedness of the Bush approach to world affairs?

Young men and women overseas, many of them younger than I, have decided to risk their lives for my safety — and yours. We owe them our respect and admiration — and we owe them all the blankets, food, and yes, weapons they need to ensure their safety (i.e., victory). Those of us who consider ourselves activists must ask whether it is possible to oppose the war and support the troops, whose safety depends on the speedy and successful execution of that war.

I marched at a "preemptive peace rally" in Washington in January, before official hostilities had begun. But with war underway, it is not at all clear to me — and it is not clear to many others — what the antiwar protestors now hope to accomplish. Some have a goto rebuttal: "supporting the troops means pulling them out." But at this point, pulling the troops out of Iraq hastily will make matters worse for both the U.S. and the middle east. Pulling out now means leaving a country in chaos — with all the tribal feuds, power struggles, and humanitarian disasters that will likely ensue.

There are other, more persuasive arguments, in support of protesting. The reasons many people opposed the Bush administration's rush to war, after all, did not become illegitimate once the bombing started in Baghdad. We can say that democracy means speaking our minds, and we can say that antiwar protests show the world not all Americans agree with the Bush administration's policy toward Iraq. But it seems to me the situation has changed fundamentally now that my peers are dying in the name of my country. I cannot oppose the war, because the war is their mission, and without its complete success, many more of my peers will die. That is something I refuse to accept.

The goals of activists are apparently twofold. One is personal: to prove to themselves that they stood up against events they believed were wrong. The other is political: to change those events. But the problem is not Iraq. The problem is bigger than Iraq. The problem is a worldview in this administration that alliances and partnerships do not matter compared to the administration's view of what is right. The problem is a worldview in this administration that dismisses dissent as uninformed and irrelevant. The problem, simply put, is a worldview in this administration that defines national interest so narrowly that there is no room in it for the concerns of other peoples and countries.

The most important thing I learned from attending the January peace rally was that many of those marching were there not simply or even mainly protesting the war in Iraq. They were there because they were outraged by the Bush administration, and its vision, which they saw as heavy-handed, narrow-minded, and ultimately dangerous. Iraq is not the sine qua non of the protest movement — it could just as easily be Kyoto, or the International Criminal Court, or the Durban Conference, except that these issues lack gravitas because people's lives are not on the line. Each was mishandled in a way that reflects the administration's belief that the national interest supercedes — rather than encompasses — the global interest. Protesters can stay true to their beliefs by protesting against the administration's philosophy and in support of a broader approach to international affairs — not against a war that is already being waged, but in support of a greater UN role in a postwar Iraq.

President Bush often quotes President Kennedy in support of the war in Iraq. One of his favorites is taken from a Kennedy speech during the Cuban Missile Crisis: "We no longer live in a world where only the actual firing of weapons represents a sufficient challenge to a nation's security to constitute maximum peril." Well, I have another Kennedy quote — a quote that is less susceptible to easy manipulation. It is a quote that embodies all that was decent in Kennedy's approach to world affairs, and all that is wrong in Bush's approach. It should serve as the mantra of a new protest movement — a movement that supports our troops without question, and that opposes not the war, but the Bush administration's hazardous worldview.

"In short," said President Kennedy at the University of Washington, "we must face problems which do not lend themselves to easy or quick or permanent solutions. And we must face the fact that the United States is neither omnipotent nor omniscient — that we are only six percent of the world's population — that we cannot impose our will upon the other ninety-four percent of mankind — that we cannot right every wrong or reverse each adversity — and that therefore there cannot be an American solution to every world problem."