Bush's attack on Iraq is down to the wire. The peace movement needs a breakthrough. We cannot accept war as inevitable. The last refuge of the dishonest advocate is not patriotism; it is inevitability. Inevitability has from the beginning been the Bush Administration's mask for a war that is, to say the least, embarrassingly gratuitous.
Claustrophobia can trigger panic -- an urge on the part of activists to escalate. Each of us must follow her or his own conscience, but collectively activists should beware of isolating themselves from the large numbers of Americans who have doubts about this war.
At least two things could still stop war. One would be the political collapse of the poodle, British Prime Minister Tony Blair. That is the task of our friends in the United Kingdom. In the negotiations prior to the House of Commons vote on February 26th, Blair had to promise to come back to Commons for another vote before he actually takes Britain to war. The other opportunity is ours, and parallel. A Congressional vote against war would be an ominous warning to George W. Bush.
But is an anti-war vote in Congress really possible? In January, Senators Ted Kennedy and Robert W. Byrd introduced Senate Resolution 32, calling for continued inspections. Unfortunately, a head count currently shows that the vote would not change much from last fall, when Congress -- 77-23 in the Senate, 296-133 in the House -- gave Bush war authority of dubious Constitutional legitimacy. S.R. 32 has been referred to the Foreign Relations Committee; meanwhile, Kennedy and Byrd are in no hurry for a vote they fear they would lose.
There may, however, be an opening wedge: the issue of an occupation. When Congress voted its war resolutions last fall, sponsors rarely discussed how long U.S. troops would have to stay in Iraq. The size of this force is only now emerging. On February 25th, General Erik K. Shineski testified to the Armed Services Committee that several hundred thousand soldiers would have to stay in Iraq at least two years. (Later in the week, the Pentagon -- with transparently political motives -- disavowed Shineski's estimate.)
According to the polls, the American public may have bought war -- in part just "to get it over with." But that's precisely what will not happen. When pollsters ask them whether they are willing to keep large numbers of troops in Iraq, majorities say they are not.
In this opinion gap lies our opportunity. Influential moderate lawmakers such as House Speaker Denis Hastert and conceivably Foreign Relations Committee members Charles Hagel (R-NE) and Chairman Richard Lugar (R-IN) probably believe that without strong support from the American public, U.S. determination to stay in Iraq will falter as liberation day fades and GI's fall to snipers. This is also the view of influential commentators such as Thomas Friedman of The New York Times. Friedman favors war but acknowledges that the alleged threat of weapons of mass destruction, like the Al Qaeda link, is overblown (NYT, 02/19/03). He supports war because he thinks a democratic Iraq (a.k.a. a vassal state on the Euphrates) will transform the Middle East. He wants to "do" Iraq (like an American tourist "doing" lunch at Tour d'Argent) but only if it is "done right." And he knows this will happen only if President Bush is honest at the point of sale.
Congress's vote on war is the focus of democratic decision. Unless Congress debates and votes on the real war and occupation before war begins, the public will not feel it was dealt a fair contract. Even the "do it right" school acknowledges that this is the lesson of Vietnam.
I am not remotely suggesting that invading Iraq can be "done right." Instead, the point for the peace movement is that by throwing the spotlight on an issue of democratic procedure, and insisting on a vote on occupation, we can swing on the pivot of these key moderate lawmakers.
Good as the Kennedy-Byrd resolution is, it may not now be our most effective legislative tool. We might even do better if the resolution in question were pro-war but explicit about what it entailed. Alternatively (and they aren't necessarily contradictory strategies) an anti-war Senator might introduce a new pro-inspections resolution that overwhelmingly stresses the occupation issue. But this second approach isn't, I think, as politically powerful, because it can be voted down on the grounds that the President already has all the authority he needs. What we need to do in the first instance is push lawmakers to recognize that Bush doesn't. They may not all agree on the fundamental Constitutional grounds Byrd so validly stresses. But they might agree that, as a practical long-term political matter, they owe the nation a new vote.
Once the nation knows there will be a new vote, we will have done much to lift the pall of war's inevitability. Here would be a favorable context to renew all the arguments we have been making for months. Two will be central. One is to show how likely it is that occupation will turn bitter -- and spark global unrest, such as a fundamentalist takeover in nuclear Pakistan. The other half of our case is to show we have an alternative. That means a plan for how and why inspections can work; and, as David Cortright and Alistair Miller suggest, how a containment force might be internationalized. Equally it means refocusing the debate on weapons of mass destruction from Iraq's 0 nuclear weapons to our 10,000; from Iraq's disputed stocks of anthrax to our genetically engineered strains. It means insisting, as Jonathan Schell has done, that without a comprehensive and fair approach to disarmament, we have none at all.
A new debate and vote on Iraq are only a beginning. But they are where to begin.
