How the Anti-Iraq-War Movement was Stabbed in
the Back
by Ami Isseroff, April 06, 2003
Americans sympathize with underdogs, loathe war and have no great love for President
George W. Bush. This combination that should have made it easy to muster opposition
to the war in Iraq, an operation of dubious value in the fight against terror,
fraught with dangers to US foreign policy and image. Surprisingly, support for
the war and for George Bush is high, according to polls for ABC/Washington Post
and the Los Angeles Times. About 70% of Americans support the war; most think
the war is justified even if no weapons of mass destruction are found, and about
half would support a war on Iran if it continues its nuclear program.
The reason for this support may be found not in the public relations efforts of
the Bush administration, or the alleged nefarious hold of the Zionists
over the US media and government, but rather in the anti-war movement itself.
War opposition was co-opted early on by a variety of groups with their own unpopular
agendas. They emphasized point after point that appealed to their own constituencies,
but alienated Americans. They told Americans over and over that the war would
help the causes they support and fight the causes they abhor.
The war is about oil, is a major theme of the demonstrators and the
anti-war pundits, representing the anti-globalization and anti-capitalist
interests. Few slogans could be better calculated to win support for George Bush
and the war on Iraq. Americans hold a grudge against the Gulf state oil monopolies
that raised the price of oil after 1973, and fear US dependence on Arab oil. The
anti-war protesters told them that the war would put Iraqi oil in US hands and
assure a steady supply. Visions of 25 cent a gallon gasoline recruited support
for the war. Of course, the war is not about oil, and the US has in all likelihood
made gentlemens agreements with its Saudi and Kuwaiti allies to maintain
the price of oil, but the message got across.
Those who are still bitter about the fact that the demise of communism occurred
under the reign of Ronald Reagan and the neoconservatives, pointed out disparagingly
that the war is supported by a clique of neocons, and represents the
same sort of strategy they claimed to have used successfully against the USSR.
This reminded Americans that in the perception of many, the greatest victory of
the twentieth century was won by the US by standing tough and using
winner take all tactics, without support for allies or regard for
fair play. If the policy that brought down the Evil Empire
of the USSR would bring down the Axis of Evil, it had to be good.
It made no difference that in fact, the Clinton government had contemplated regime
change as well, after Saddam effectively blocked UN inspections in 1998.
The anti-Zionists however, outdid all the other anti-war advocates. The Palestinian
cause was in desperate straits after the revelations of Palestinian Authority
complicity in terror. The anti-Iraq war movement seemed to be a good way to get
people marching and associate their cause with the Palestinian resistance.
Saddam was pictured as a great defender of the Palestinians. This strategy paid
great dividends in the Middle East and Europe, but in the US it was a grave error.
Saddam has funded suicide bombers and supported extremists among Palestinians.
The events of September 11 have not made suicide bombers popular in the United
States. One person interviewed in a poll prepared for the Washington Post, said,
I think the guy [Saddam Hussein] is a threat. If nothing else, the guys
paying the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. That alone is enough to show
his militant stance toward the West.
However, the most disastrous tactic of the anti-war group was to try to convince
Americans that the Iraq war was somehow in Israeli interests. Article after article
insisted that the war was fomented by Ariel Sharon and his supporters in the US,
by Zionists and finally, by the Jews. A crucial exhibit
in this campaign was the Clean Break document, prepared by an American
Zionist think tank for use by right-wing Israeli PM Benjamin Nethanyahu. Articles
in The Nation, The Guardian and The Boston Globe and Mail, as well as many imitators
hammered home the message, based on the flimsiest evidence. They insinuated that
the Clean Break paper, some of whose authors have influence or alleged influence
in the Bush administration, was the real basis of the war, that would make the
Middle East safe for Ariel Sharon. Private correspondence from supporters of this
bizarre idea went so far as to insinuate that the Zionists in Washington
who were promoting the war were agents of the Israeli government.
In reality, the Clean Break document, whatever its faults, was a strategy for
making Israel independent of the US, and demonstrating that Israel did not want
and did not need US troops or US money to fight its battles. This was needed,
according to the neoconservative authors, to overturn the Oslo process and ensure
victory over the Palestinians rather than accommodation. This is stated explicitly
in the document. This line of thinking is diametrically opposed to encouraging
a US war against Iraq. Further pressure on Israel for a settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli
conflict through the Roadmap was an announced concomitant of the US
- British Iraqi policy. That could hardly be a goal of Ariel Sharon or the Zionist
right, and it would not remake the Middle East to Israels advantage. However,
the facts were of no more relevance to this campaign than they were in judging
allegations about the Protocols of the Elders of Zion circulated by
Henry Ford over 80 years ago.
Israel has been, and remains, immensely popular in the United States, in part
because it is seen as a firm ally against Islamist fundamentalism in the Middle
East. Tying Iraq to anti-Zionism was obviously a disastrous strategy. The anti-war
movement could hardly have hurt Saddam and Iraq more if they had insisted that
the war was recommended by 9 out of ten doctors as a cure for aging and impotence,
and that Saddam was against Moms apple pie.
As the campaign reached a climax, it veered off into anti-Semitic hysteria. Representative
James Moran insisted that the war would not be happening without Jewish support.
An Anti-War coalition barred radical rabbi Michael Lerner from speaking
out against the war at a rally. The fate of the anti-Iraq war movement was now
sealed, because the American Jewish community has been a key factor in every major
US social movement beginning with the civil rights struggle and the anti-Vietnam
war protests. In the presidency of George Bush Sr, James Baker had said Fthe
Jews, they didnt vote for us. Not many Jews voted for the son either,
but the anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic campaign made it impossible for Jews to
support the anti-war groups with any great enthusiasm.
The anti-war strategy played into the hands of war supporters so well that it
seems like it might have been choreographed by the CIA. How did it happen? Legitimate
opposition to the war was co-opted by others, with different and unpopular agendas.
For them, the demonstrations are not about bombed-out kids in Iraq, but about
advancing their own causes. The tactic is familiar from the practice of V.I. Lenin
and his successors. It is the same mechanism that is ringing the death knell for
the Israeli peace movement as well.
Draft article
Copyright 2003 Ami Isseroff
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