The Failures of the Peace Movement

by Peter Ryan

As the number of U.S. and civilian causalities continue to mount throughout Iraq, the question on everyone's minds seems to be "what went wrong?" Was this the inevitable consequence of a foreign occupation of a predominately Muslim country? Did failed strategies after the initial invasion lead to a popular insurgency? What happened, is it fixable and who's to blame?

Wandering around the University of Irvine's "Peace Wants You" conference, I was expecting to find these question rehashed, debated and scrutinized in every detail, as I had already seen it done a thousand times before. Instead, during a lecture by Professor Mark Levine, I found a much more focused zone of inquiry. Mr. Levine also wanted to know "what went wrong"-not in the war in Iraq but with the global peace movement.

"Bush didn't plan for the post war," Mr. Levine remarked, "But the Peace and Justice movement didn't plan for the post war period either."

In his view, the peace movement made a fatal mistake by putting all of its energy into preventing the war and none of its efforts into plans for continuing the struggle post-invasion. Entry into Iraq was actually relatively easy for peace advocates, Mr. Levine and others took advantage of this opportunity, but in the initial period only a few hundred came, while he strongly believed that there should have been thousands. Unfortunately, now that the violence has escalated, this strategy is no longer a viable option. As a result, in his view, "a major opportunity has been lost."

Pictured: Mark Levine discusses the global peace and justice movement

The movement, in his view, also failed on a rhetorical level. Bush was able to capitalize on the rhetoric of democratization-a key issue of the peace and justice movement. An adequate response to Bush's claim that Iraq would be a "beacon of democracy" in the Middle East was never formulated. Mr. Levine's hope was that the peace movement would stand against this claim by supporting the democratization of all repressive regimes in the region, including ones that currently get U.S. support. He also believed that the evils of Saddam's dictatorship should have been highlighted by the peace movement, even as they sought to educate the public about the potential evils and pitfalls of war.

Mr. Levine outlined another dangerous trend in the peace and justice movement: the tendency to fudge or forgive the violence of resistance groups. Though believing that the movement, at its core, was justifiably anti-imperialist, he described the current willingness of some prominent "peace" advocates to endorse the violence of resistance groups as simply "disastrous." At a recent anti-war conference in Lebanon organized by prominent members of the global peace and justice movement, Hezbollah and the PFLP were allowed to participate, causing the conference to, at best, provide a mixed message on its stance toward violence and, at worst, to openly celebrate violent resistance. From Levine's perspective, such an endorsement must be evaluated by three standards: 1) legal, 2) moral and 3) strategic.

From a legal point of view: according to a U.N Security Council resolution, violent resistance specifically directed towards military targets is a right of those forced to live under an illegal occupation. This has often been used by resistance groups to justify their course of action. Of course, the resolution does not condone any attacks on civilians and certainly does not condone tactics like suicide bombings in civilian areas.

On a moral level, though clearly personally opposed to violence, Mr. Levine admitted that the rights of occupied and oppressed peoples posed a complicated dilemma. "Is there a moral right for oppressed and occupied peoples to violently defend themselves and further their cause?" Palestinians, he noted, resist the Israeli occupation nonviolently everyday and are nevertheless killed and wounded by Israeli soldiers and settlers. "In fact the United States," he reminded us, "was born out of a forcible resistance to occupation." Not wanting to wade too deeply into the moral nuances of such a debate, Mr. Levine left it with "we could sit here arguing about the moral issues involved all day" and skipped to what he felt was the strongest card in his hand: the strategic question.

The strategic question is a simpler one: does violent resistance work? The success models used at the conference in Beirut included Algeria, Vietnam and Lebanon, heralded as the "success stories" of violent resistance groups. "This are not good examples for the peace and justice movement," Mr. Levine explained. Why? Well, Algeria was a horrible and bloody civil war that has left the region in continuous state of instability. Vietnam left 2 to 3 million South Asians dead with 58,900 American causalities, hardly a "shining success story." As for Lebanon, the Israeli military withdrew simply because there was no strategic reason to remain. It is dangerous to compare it, for example, to the situation in Palestine where about 50% of the Israeli public, according to polls, has declared their willingness to evacuate the entire Palestinian population in order to hold on to the territories of Gaza and the West Bank. In Iraq, where there are disastrous consequences both for remaining and for pulling out, the insurgency is unlikely to be able to achieve the "Lebanon effect."

For resistance groups, it seems, violence simply does not work. This, in my view, has huge implications for the moral argument. The only potentially viable moral argument for violence is that the "ends justify the means," by taking life, you can bring peace, security and justice. But very rarely does violence actually offer these rewards-far more likely, as we see from the above examples, it only brings carnage and despair. In other words, in political situations, strategy and morality cannot be tidily separated.

Ironically, in the Iraqi situation, Mr. Levine is convinced that the Occupation is thriving due to the presence of a violent insurgency. He refers to the lack of security as "sponsored chaos," a method by which the Occupying forces can ensure that no viable political alternatives arise to its political power structure. I am uncertain whether or not I agree with Mr. Levine on this point, the truth is, I can't make heads or tails of Bush's strategy in Iraq. But this much is clear to me: this war is about power, not democracy. Power to control oil and resources, power to shape the future of the region, power to threaten neighboring countries through the presence of permanent Iraqi military bases, and power to act unilaterally in global affairs.

In the years ahead, the peace movement will no doubt face many more daunting challenges, similar to the situation in Iraq. The United States spends $500 billion dollars a year on 720 military bases across the globe. We will always be haunted by issues of war and peace. The peace and justice movement, in order to reach its full potential, will have to listen carefully to internal criticism from people like Mark Levine. Like any other organization or movement, we will make thousands of mistakes and misjudgments. We ignore them at our own peril.

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This article is a Middle East Window exclusive. It cannot be republished without the prior written consent of the editor. For information about republication rights, please contact: peter@middleeastfellowship.org