September 11 went well beyond tragic. Worse is possible. Much better is
also possible. And to achieve better is why activists need to not only
mourn, but also to educate and organize. But many people I encounter
doubt peace movement prospects. I find this wrong for two reasons.

One, doubting prospects wastes time. Even when prospects of change are
dim, to work for better outcomes is always better then to bemoan
difficulties.

Two, contrary to despondency, current circumstances auger hope. "Are you
crazy?" some people will ask.  It is one thing to urge action, but it is
another thing to surrender reason to desire. However, it is not desire
that gives me hope, but evidence.

Last night there was a two hour marathon Hollywood extravaganza
broadcast by all major networks and watched by millions. Elites are
urging lock-step obedience. Johnny and Jill are supposed to be donning
marching boots. Yet this was no pep rally for war. There was nearly
courage of those who worked to save lives, often giving their own. The
evening's songs sought restraint and understanding and explicitly
rejected cycles of retribution and hate. Don't get me wrong. The evening
wasn't ZNet set to music. But nor did it support piling terror on top of
terror. If the right-wing were actually as ascendant as so many fear, we
would have had the Bob Hope and Charlton Heston Hour. We didn't.

More, in the last few days there have been scores of small and also some
quite large demonstrations and gatherings. Reports indicate there are
105 scheduled today, Saturday. There is no war yet. But there is
resistance, and it is growing rapidly.

Just two days ago I was asked to be on a national radio call-in show
with a listenership of roughly two million from all over the country.
The host, a Republican, thought there would be division emerging about
any war plans and he wanted to offer diverse voices (which is itself a
good sign). He told me I'd be on for fifteen minutes. The time came,
they called, I was asked how I differed from Bush. I answered, and the
discussion continued for two hours. The host eventually left hostility
behind, becoming more and more curious. Many callers were hostile, sure,
but they were also open to cogent commentary. The simple formulation
that attacking civilians is terrorism, that terrorism is horrible, and
that therefore we should not attack civilians, was irrefutable. More
interesting, no one even tried to rebut contextual argument and
evidence. They made clear they knew my claims about U.S. policies in
Iraq and elsewhere were true and they would with a few exceptions even
grudgingly assent to them, so the remaining issue was whether the U.S.
should be bound by the same morals that we hope others will be bound by,
a dispute that is easy to win with anyone but a fanatic. I won't proceed
with details. The point is, even in a right-wing forum, many people will
hear our views, understand them, and even change their minds.

U.S. elites like war. War sends the message that laws do not bind U.S.
elites, that morality does not bind U.S. elites, that nothing binds U.S.
elites but their estimates of their own interests. It trumpets that
everybody else better ratify our plans, or at least get out of the way.
Likewise, for U.S. elites, war preparedness is good economics. Military
spending primes the capitalist pump and spurs its engines, but crucially
military spending doesn't give those in the middle and at the bottom
better conditions or better housing or more education or better health
care or anything else that will make people less afraid, more
knowledgeable, more secure, and particularly more able to develop and
pursue their own agendas regarding economic distribution. War empowers
the rich and powerful, but its real virtue is that it disempowers
working people and the disenfranchised poor. War annihilates
deliberation. It elevates mainstream media to dominate communication
even more than in peacetime. War abets repression by demanding
obedience. It labels dissent treason, or in this case, incipient
terrorism. Elites like all this, not surprisingly. So while elites
gravitate toward a war on terrorism for these reasons, what, if
anything, might obstruct their plans?

When Bush says that attacking civilians for political purposes is wrong
and urges that we must find ways to eliminate such terrorism - he is
very compelling to almost everyone. But when in the very next breath
Bush urges as the method of doing so diverse military attacks on
civilians (or starving them), his hypocrisy begs critique. As a solution
to the danger of terrorism, committing more terrorism that in turn
breeds still more, will not sustain support. Likewise, to fight
fundamentalism with assertions that God is on our side, will also prove
uninspiring. Five-year-olds can and will dissent. And so will adults.

So what obstructs war? People do. It's that simple. People who first
doubt the efficacy and morality of piling terror on top of terror.
People who slowly move from quiet dissent to active opposition. People
who move from opposing the violence of war and barbarity of starvation
to challenging the basic institutions that breed war and starvation. If
elites choose war as a national program they will do so in hopes that it
can defend and even enlarge their advantages. If we act so that war
instead spurs public understanding, and opposition not only to war, but
in time even to elite rule - then elites will reconsider their agenda.
Indeed, I bet many are already having grave doubts.

So how hard is our task? What do most people think about this situation,
before activism has countered media madness? Well, it certainly isn't
definitive, but Gallup polls give us more reason for hope.

First question: "Once the identity of the terrorists known, should the
American government launch a military attack on the country or countries
where the terrorists are based or should the American government seek to
extradite the terrorists to stand trial?" In Austria 10% said we should
attack. In Denmark 20%, Finland 14%, France 29%, Germany 17%, Greece 6%,
Italy 21%, Bosnia 14%, Bulgaria 19%, Czechoslavakia 22%, Croatia 8%,
Estonia 10%, Latvia 21%, Lithuania 15% Romania 18%, Argentina 8%,
Colombia 11%, Ecuador 10%, Mexico 2%, Panama 16%, Peru 8%, Venezuela
11%, and even in the U.S. only 54% favor attacking. Gallup didn't get
numbers for China, for the mideast countries, etc.

Gallup next asks: "If the United States decides to launch an attack,
should the U.S. attack military targets only, or both military and
civilian targets?" In Austria 82% said only military targets. In Denmark
84%, Finland 76%, France 84%, Germany 84%, Greece 82%, Italy 86%, Bosnia
72%, Bulgaria 71%, Czechoslavakia 75%, Estonia 88%, Latvia 82%,
Lithuania 73% Romania 85%, Argentina 70%, Colombia 71%, Ecuador 74%,
Mexico 73%, Panama 62%, Peru 66%, Venezuela 81%, and even in the U.S.
56% favor attacking only military targets, 28% attacking both military
and civilian, and 16% gave no answer.

It seems clear that we do not inhabit a world lined up for protracted
war. We live, instead, in a world that is prepared for arguments against
war, for opposition to war, and even, in time, for addressing the basic
structural causes that produce war. Humanity does not lack scruples or
logic, but only information and knowledge. If people have information
and if they can escape media manipulation and conformity, they will draw
worthy conclusions. Our task is to provide information and help break
conformity.

Finally, regarding the issues at hand.how hard is it to understand the
obvious? The U.S. postal system is not run by exemplary humanitarians or
geniuses, much less by radicals. Yet in response to workers killing
others on the job--which is called "going postal"--the postal service
did not decide to determine where the offending parties lived and attack
those neighborhoods for harboring terrorists. They also did not say that
the stress of postal work justifies serial homicide in the workplace, of
course. They instead legally prosecuted, on the one hand, and also
realized that stress was a powerful contributing factor and so worked to
reduce stress to in turn diminish the likelihood of people going postal.
Anyone can extend this analogy. It isn't complicated.

For that matter, the U.S. government, which is certainly not a
repository of wisdom or moral leadership, doesn't generally decide about
terrorism to hold whole populations accountable. When Timothy McVeigh
bombed innocents, the Federal government called it horrific, accurately,
but did not declare war on Idaho and Montana for harboring cells of the
groups McVeigh was associated with -- much less on all people sharing
McVeigh's race or religion. The government opted to prove McVeigh's
culpability and to employ legal means to restrain him and try the case.
What makes September 11 different regarding our government's agenda is
not so much the larger scale of the horror, but instead its utility to
the government's reactionary programs. In the case of McVeigh, bombing
Montana wouldn't benefit elites. In the case of September 11, elites
think bombing diverse targets will benefit their capitalist
profit-making and geopolitical interests. That's harsh. That's about the
harshest thing one could say, I guess, in some sense, in this situation.
It is devilish opportunism. Yet, I honestly think that at some level
everyone knows it's true. It has gotten to that point in this country.
They play with our lives like we are their little toys.and we know it,
and we have to put a stop to it, a step at a time.

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