March Madness

Mark Engler

September 23, 2005

Mark Engler, a writer based in New York City, is an analyst with Foreign Policy In Focus. He can be reached via the website http://www.democracyuprising.com. Research assistance for this article provided by Katie Griffiths.

Growing public dissatisfaction. Rumblings in Congress against indefinite occupation. Expressions of organized resistance. These three factors represent the pillars of opposition to the war in Iraq. Each can fortify the others, and together they could well grow strong enough to force an ignominious U.S. exit from our country's newest imperial outpost.

But while the first two pillars have been holding their weight recently (Bush's approval ratings are at historic lows, and nascent congressional hearings have been called to discuss potential exit strategies), the peace movement has lately seemed to be missing altogether.

Come this weekend that will change. With large crowds amassing just outside the White House, led by the likes of Cindy Sheehan, George W. Bush will once again have "hit the trifecta."

The peace movement can be credited with good timing in its present mobilization. But, where have anti-war organizations been hiding? And what is their contribution likely to be?

What Ever Happened To The Movement?

Operating below the radar of mainstream media outlets, organized resistance to the Iraq War has played an important role in laying the groundwork for the present anti-war moment. The apparent absence of a movement in the recent past had a lot to do with strategic decisions made—for better or for worse—by activists and leading peace groups.

During the 2004 election cycle, the great majority of activists decided that beating Bush at the polls should be their priority, and they rallied behind groups like MoveOn.org that supported this goal. Following Bush’s demoralizing re-election, many feel that the peace movement disappeared into a political black hole. Indeed, since the election, the prevailing sentiment has been that public disapproval of the war has grown to its highest levels yet not because of organized resistance, but in spite of its absence. 

But is this really the case? While not altogether unfounded, this perception overlooks the ways in which peace movement organizations have both tapped into and fueled some of the major currents of anti-war sentiment. Counter-recruitment drives , while not widespread, have publicized the worst abuses of aggressive military career salespeople unable to make quota; efforts to highlight the costs of occupation look prescient in light of recent natural disasters; persistent lobbying—in combination with a rising U.S. death toll—has helped to slowly change the tenor of congressional debate.

Undoubtedly the most significant strategic move on the part of leading organizations like United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) has been the decision (as Institute for Policy Studies Fellow Phyllis Bennis wrote in a December 2004 strategy paper for the coalition) “to keep organizations like Military Families Speak Out, the new Iraq Veterans Against the War, and others at center stage of our mobilizations.” One military family member, in particular, has transformed recent debate about the war.

Cindy Sheehan’s courageous confrontation of President Bush in Crawford was a genuine act of personal indignation. But she did not stand alone. Before her rise to national prominence, anti-war organizations like UFPJ and Veterans for Peace created many venues where she could begin to speak out, including protests led by veterans in Fayetteville, N.C., home of Fort Bragg, last March. The same month, Sheehan appeared on the cover of The Nation , with a story entitled “The New Face of Protest?”

Sheehan’s Camp Casey was bolstered by the speedy infusion of experienced activists from anti-war groups like Code Pink. Such established networks quickly spread the word about her stand in Crawford, encouraged people to join her, and raised money to help PR efforts. UFPJ organizers are playing a significant role in coordinating the “Bring Them Home Now” bus tour that is carrying her and a group of similarly persuasive anti-war veterans and affected family members to Washington, D.C.

The Tipping Point

The same networks that lent support to Camp Casey and helped to broadcast its message will provide these speakers with an audience of tens of thousands at this weekend’s protests. The mass demonstration comes at a critical time, when many commentators are suggesting that we are on the verge of a "tipping point" against the war.

The incompetent federal response to Hurricane Katrina has created a domestic crisis for the Bush administration to match the debacle in Iraq. The president now faces his lowest approval rating ever, with support hovering around 40 percent and disapproval of his handling of Iraq jumping to 67 percent. The percentage of Americans who support “immediate withdrawal of some or all of the U.S. troops in Iraq” has jumped 10 points in the past two weeks according to a new Gallup poll, rising to 66 percent. At the same time, the September 15 ad hoc congressional hearings on exiting Iraq, led by Rep. Lynn Woolsey, are the latest sign that an increasing number of lawmakers are starting to get serious about finding a way out.

How do mass protests generate greater anti-war momentum in this environment?

Not all of those who come for the demonstrations will be calling for the same thing. UFPJ will stick with a single, “Bring the Troops Home Now” message. And more moderate supporters of the mobilization, including the Win Without War coalition, will focus on a timetable for U.S. exit. On the most radical end of the spectrum, the controversial ANSWER coalition will not only demand immediate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, but will throw in a long list of additional causes, including an “end to colonial occupation” from Palestine to Haiti.

The disagreements around these demands are real, and may affect each group’s ability to appeal to broader segments of the increasingly anti-war American public. Yet, those who shun a march because it accommodates a diversity of views overstate the immediate practical importance of these differences. After all, the movement is not setting policy, and none of the demands, from radical to moderate, has much prospect of being promptly adopted. More important than laying out an ideal exit strategy, the march will dramatically highlight the one goal all the participating groups share: ending the war in Iraq. This mass mobilization can lend urgency to the discussion of the occupation’s failure and urge greater numbers of elected officials to take firm stands against “staying the course.”

A Time To Protest

Some critics may complain that large marches and ritualized civil disobedience are stagnant tactics. In some respects they are. Yet mass demonstrations serve an important function, rallying the movement's base and serving as bellwethers of wider activity.

Those who contend that the energy of large-scale protests could be better directed elsewhere assume that national action and local action are somehow mutually exclusive. They fail to take into account how momentum builds on itself. For leading anti-war organizations, national mobilizations generate an influx of donors and activists. Groups like those that make up UFPJ’s coalition will leave Washington in a better position to organize teach-ins and counter-recruitment, prod action from public officials, and support anti-war veterans.

The savviest organizers will always use mass mobilizations to engage participants in local campaigns. In the present case, UFPJ is calling for activists returning home from the demonstration to organize events on October 8 highlighting the "local costs of the war." The coalition is also calling on members of the clergy to conduct religious services against the war on Veteran's Day Weekend in November—a move that local activists can encourage their own religious leaders to follow. Contrary to the “saving our energy” approach, such local actions are simply less likely to happen in periods when national mobilization is low and sympathizers are generally deactivated.

Even when protests themselves are unpopular—Americans are notoriously unenthusiastic about virtually all actions, such as marches, that transgress narrow bounds of electoral-oriented debate—they consistently reinforce public opinion against the war, opening wider discussion of how our country can exit Iraq.

No doubt, conservatives will try to conjure pictures of flag-burning hippies to make the anti-war movement look like a marginal fringe instead of a legitimate political force. But those who direct their energy to worrying about such backlash rather than organizing to build a better mobilization make two mistakes:

First, they miss the lesson of John Kerry, who showed that the right-wing machine will do its best to demonize all opposition, and that no amount of tepid moderation will deter them.

And, second,  they give too little credit to organizers in groups like UFPJ, Military Families Speak Out and Iraq Veterans Against the War, who rarely match the stereotypes. These groups demonstrate a sophisticated understanding of tactics—eschewing radical dogmatism, they are combining marching, religious services, lobbying and direct action in DC—and are asking for the broadest possible support this weekend.

The more support the movement gets, the greater the chances are that the marches and other actions will ignite wider swaths of anti-war public opinion. In turn, more members of Congress will feel heat not just from the national Mall, but also from voters in their home districts. For a peace movement just re-emerging from the shadows, this would be a worthy contribution.