Protesting a War of Cowards and Madmen

On Sunday I attended a peace demonstration in New York's Central Park where some 20,000 people packed the East Meadow on a beautiful autumn afternoon to voice their opposition to the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Senior citizens and punks, soccer moms and communists, hippies and veterans, unionists and professionals, toddlers and teenagers, and a handful of dogs, all mingled easily amid colorful placards bearing sharp denunciations of Bush's endless war. Peace was the topic on everyone's lips, the common objective of an amazingly diverse gathering. Sitting on the grass in the pleasant breeze, watching the clouds roll by the treetops, I chatted amicably with the folks around me and listened to a series of impassioned speakers who seemed to echo my own thoughts on the war. It felt like a rare moment of sanity in a world gone mad.

The strong turnout in Central Park was just one part of a national day of protest involving two dozen cities, but it was particularly powerful because New York is the city that has suffered the most since September 11. Sunday's demonstration magnified the point that politicians are eager to invoke our city's grief but unwilling to listen to our voices. Perhaps the reason is that basically every policy that the Bush-Cheney administration has pursued in the name of September 11 was crafted prior to the terrorist attacks.

Now I'm not saying that Saddam Hussein is anything but a murderous tyrant; but there's a way to deal with murderous tyrants: prosecute them for crimes against humanity in an international court of law, if necessary deploying multinational special forces to go after them. And I'm not saying that Saddam Hussein doesn't have weapons of mass destruction; but there's also a way to deal with weapons of mass destruction: implement armed enforcement mechanisms (again backed up by multinational special forces) for the Biological Weapons Convention, the Chemical Weapons Convention, and the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, three pieces of international law that have served our world admirably for decades.

Obviously, building broad institutions to uphold the rule of law is more effective than having a sharp-shooting vigilante sheriff engage in a series of high-noon duels with potential villains. Equally obviously, the Bush-Cheney administration has made no secret of its contempt for the rule of law. It's precisely this imperial corruption of Constitutional and global rule of law that brought 20,000 New Yorkers to Central Park on Sunday in a display of defiance and dissent. But even as citizens demonstrate their courage and sanity, their government continues its march into a war of cowards and madmen.

It's a coward's war because its most vocal supporters hide in high offices and fortified bunkers as they send working-class kids across the ocean to kill and die. It's a coward's war because its leaders lack the decency to confront the American people with the hard geopolitical realities of oil and power behind the war's logic, choosing instead to cower behind a weak veil of decoys and straw men. It's a coward's war because it pits the most high-tech military force in the world against a bombed-out impoverished land where 5,000 children die of malnutrition every month. Most of all, it's a coward's war because the need to lash out with belligerent violence against weaker parties is a sign not of strength and power, but of inner weakness and insecurity, typical of abusive men on the verge of nervous breakdown and empires on the verge of collapse.

As much as it's a coward's war, it's also a madman's war, and there's a dangerous intersection between cowardice and madness where many acts of horror originate.

It's a madman's war because the Middle East is already in an angry uproar over the daily bloodshed of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and a war in Iraq will destabilize the entire region and breed millions of new anti-American terrorists. It's a madman's war because it will cost American taxpayers at least $100 billion even as millions of Americans lack basic necessities such as food, shelter, healthcare, and education. It's a madman's war because it recklessly trashes a half-century of international law, which will probably lead to a proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and an explosion of military conflicts. Most of all, it's a madman's war because it will unleash a spiral of violence that could spread throughout the Middle East and beyond.

Yes, the world has gotten itself into a horrible mess. But there's little use in bellyaching and sniveling. For me, it's enough to pick the good fight, give it a good run, and see how the play unfolds. Until the gorgeous lady sings, that's what I'll be doing.