[A-List] So, Bush wants civil disobedience? By Naomi Klein

["Ralph Johansen" <michele@xxxxxxxx>]

Globe and Mail      Thursday, February 27, 2003

So, Bush wants civil disobedience?

The U.S. President is urging Iraqis to rise up against Saddam Hussein. It's
time to turn the domestic tables and -- voilà! -- escalate the war against
the war

By Naomi Klein

At the Pentagon, they call it the Voilà Moment.

That's when Iraqi soldiers and civilians, with bombs raining down on
Baghdad, suddenly scratch their heads and say to themselves: "These bombs
aren't really meant to kill me and my family, they are meant to free us from
an evil dictator!" At that point, they thank Uncle Sam, lower their weapons,
abandon their posts, and rise up against Saddam Hussein. Voilà!

Or at least that's how it is supposed to work, according to the experts in
"psychological operations" who are already waging a fierce information war
in Iraq. The Voilà Moment made its first foray into the language of war last
Monday, when a New York Times reporter quoted an unnamed senior U.S.
military official using the term.

This peppering of military jargon with bon mots could be Colin Powell's
latest plan to win over the French on the Security Council. More likely,
it's the product of the Bush administration's penchant for hiring
advertising executives and flaky management consultants as foreign policy
advisers (doesn't the Voilà Moment sound suspiciously like the Wow Factor --
sold to millions of corporate executives as the key to building a powerful
brand?).

Wherever it came from, the Pentagon has Voilà in its sights, and it is
sparing no expense to hit its target. Airborne transmitters are flying over
Iraq broadcasting radio propaganda. Iraqi business, military and political
officials have been bombarded with e-mails and phone calls urging them to
see the light and switch sides. Fighter planes have dropped more than eight
million leaflets informing Iraqi soldiers that their lives will be spared if
they walk away from their military equipment. "It sends a direct message to
the operator on the gun," says Lieutenant-General T. Michael Moseley,
commander of allied air forces in the Persian Gulf.

According to the senior military official quoted in the Times, Central
Command will know it has reached Voilà when "we see a break with the
leadership." In other words, the U.S. military is advocating nothing less
than mass civil disobedience in Iraq, a refusal to obey orders, or to
participate in an unjust war.

Will it work?

I'm skeptical. There was, after all, a Voilà Moment during the last gulf
war, when many Iraqis living near the Kuwaiti border believed U.S. promises
that they would be supported if they rose up against Saddam Hussein. It was
followed shortly after by a Screw You Moment, when the rebels watched U.S.
forces abandon them to be massacred by Saddam Hussein.

But all this Voilà talk got me thinking: The civil disobedience the U.S.
military is hoping to provoke in Iraq is exactly the sort of thing the
antiwar movement needs to inspire in our countries if we are really going to
stop, or at least curtail, the pending devastation in Iraq. What would it
take for large numbers of people in the United States, the United Kingdom,
Italy, Canada -- and any other country assisting with the war effort -- to
truly break with our leaders and refuse to comply? Can we create thousands
of Voilà Moments back home?

That is the question facing the global antiwar movement as it plans its
follow-up to the spectacular marches on Feb. 15. During the Vietnam War,
thousands of young Americans decided to break with their leaders when their
draft cards arrived. And it was this willingness to go beyond protest and
into active disobedience that slowly eroded the domestic viability of the
war.

What will today's conscientious objectors and military deserters look like?
Well, all week in Italy, activists have been blocking dozens of trains
carrying U.S. weapons and personnel on their way to a military base near
Pisa, while Italian dockworkers are refusing to load arms shipments. Last
weekend, two U.S. military bases were blockaded in Germany, as was the U.S.
consulate in Montreal, and the air base at RAF Fairford in Gloucester,
England. This coming Saturday, thousands of Irish activists are expected to
show up at Shannon airport, which, despite Irish claims of neutrality, is
being used by the U.S. military to refuel its planes en route to Iraq.

In Chicago last week, more than 100 high-school students demonstrated
outside the headquarters of Leo Burnett, the advertising firm that designed
the U.S. military's hip, youth-targeted Army of One campaign. The students
claim that in underfunded Latino and African-American high schools, the army
recruiters far outnumber the college scouts.

The most ambitious plan has come from San Francisco, where a coalition of
antiwar groups is calling for an emergency non-violent "counterstrike" the
day after the war starts: "Don't go to work or school. Call in sick, walk
out: We will impose real economic, social and political costs and stop
business as usual until the war stops."

It's a powerful idea: Peace bombs exploding wherever profits are being made
from the war -- gas stations, arms manufacturers, missile-happy TV stations.
It might not stop the war but it would show that there is a principled
position between hawk and hippy -- a militant resistance for the protection
of life.

For some, this escalation of the war against war seems extreme. There should
simply be more weekend marches, bigger next time, so big they are impossible
to ignore.

Of course, there should be more marches, but it should also be clear by now
that there is no protest too big for our politicians to ignore. They know
that public opinion in most of the world is against the war.

What our politicians are carefully assessing before the bombs start falling,
is whether the antiwar sentiment is "hard" or "soft." The question is not
"do people care about war?" but how much do they care? Is it a mild consumer
preference against war, one that will evaporate by the next election? Or is
it something deeper and more lasting -- a, shall we say, Voilà kind of care?


On one end of the caring spectrum, Levi's Europe has decided to cash in on
the antiwar fad by releasing a limited-edition teddy bear with a peace
symbol attached to its ear. You can clutch and hug it while watching the
scary terror alerts on CNN.

Or you could turn off CNN, refuse to be a soft and cuddly peacenik, get out
there and stop the war.

Naomi Klein is the author of No Logo and Fences and Windows.

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