"I think it makes it harder to organize a movement. [4] Lessons From the Catastrophic Failure of the Metaverse Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, the second Black justice to sit on the court after Thurgood Marshall, has spent years opposing affirmative action. tn_pos: 'rectangle_4', The Vietnam War sparked a mass antiwar movement employing the civil disobedience tactics and grassroots mobilizations of the civil rights struggles. inline_cta_bg_color_316888 = '#ffcf0d'; }else{ slotId: "thenation_right_rail_407605", jQuery("#inline_cta_2_btn_316888 a").attr("href",inline_cta_2_url_316888); "I think a couple of things happened to the anti-war movement in the U.S.," says Celia Cook-Huffman, professor of conflict resolution at Juniata College in Huntingdon, Pa. "First, we did see it, alive and well, prior to the Iraq war. jQuery("#inline_cta_2_btn_316888 a input").css("background",inline_cta_2_bg_color_316888); inline_cta_2_url_316888 = 'https://subscriptions.thenation.com/loading.do?omedasite=Nation_Gift'; My longtime trope was that weby which I mean we Americansallowed those fighting our endless wars to be only heroes or victimsthe former to valorize, the latter to pitybut nothing else. On the first night of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, protesters in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Saratov and other major Russian cities protested and chanted "No to . } It was a decade of political and cultural mass protest and activism. The anti-war movement had two main effects on American society. var magazine_button_text_407605 = ''; In Moscow, the number detained was at least 2,319, OVD-Info said. War policy is directed by what happens on the ground and, to a lesser degree, at the ballot box. What if we dont see it, in part, because it doesnt look like any anti-war movement weve even imagined? Doing the Work While Doing the Work Not only are members of Congress beginning to call attention to such under-covered issues, but perhaps theyre even starting to accomplish something. Now and then, small pockets of protesters still band together. PBS. } Not Your Soldier also connects young people on an emotional level by connecting them with men and women who have served in the war in Iraq. Joe Coffee's Revolution (Madison WI: Badger, 2003). Peace movement leaders opposed the war on moral and economic grounds. It didnt help that the US militarys wars only sporadically drew extended public attention. } ), as Kelly Dougherty, IVAWs first executive director, complained, We come home and everyone shakes our hands and calls us heroes, but no one wants to listen to us. Stories of bravery, horrific wounds, and even post-traumatic stress syndrome were acceptable. Their protest made significant news for those five weeks, as media around the world featured heart-rending stories of mothers in mourning and veterans in tears, photos of an iconic white tent, and interviews with Cindy Sheehan whose son, Casey, had been killed in Iraq the year before. The Campus Rights Long War on Free Speech cta_1_check_407605 = true; By signing up, you confirm that you are over the age of 16 and, agree to receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support. magazine_button_text_316888 = ''; inline_cta_2_url_316888 = 'https://subscriptions.thenation.com/Nation_index?pk=G2A1C6M'; Her first command was stationed at Diego Garca, a tiny island in the Indian Ocean. }, Nor, strikingly enough, is Sanders the only Democratic presidential candidate now running on what is essentially an anti-war platform. cta_2_check_407605 = true; The Pleiades report found that out of the 165 anti-ESG bills proposed this year, only 22 were approved by state governments. Conspicuously absent from the newfound civic engagement, despite more than a decade and a half of this country's fruitless, destructive wars across the Greater Middle East and northern Africa, was. "Basically, in a year or two, its very likely that [the anti-war movement] will be as dynamic as college campus activism during the anti-apartheid movement. "And what theyre going to get into [if they join the military]. As a result, they badgered me to make our citys newspaper of record print a daily report of deaths in the war. That last point is exactly what weve been seeing, at least among Democrats, in the Trump years. She is also a political partner with the Truman National Security Project. The following is an excerpt from LIFE's new special . That goal was finally (more or less) achieved, though at great cost and so much later than they had been demanding, making it anything but a resounding victory; nor did it, in the end, have much to do with those young veterans. That two-decade-long boots-on-the-ground (and planes in the air) episode has now officially been declared over and done with, if not exactly paid for. Echoing the Ruckus Societys beliefs, Canning is clear that the anti-war movement needs new leadership: Those most impacted by the militarys recruitment and the poverty draft need to be empowered to work against the struggle that most affects them. Its not that they are uncaring. If, for instance, I asked a room full of climate-change activists whether they also considered themselves part of an anti-war movement, I can imagine the denials Id get. inline_cta_text_316888 = '
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'; In a piece about the power and pitfalls of storytelling, Jonathan Gottschall notes that, in the tales we tell, we tend to divide people into a tidy triad of heroes, victims, and villains. inline_cta_font_color_316888 = '#000000'; Less local reporting meant fewer stories about people we might actually know or examples of how world events affect our daily lives. In campaign season 2016, in an op-ed in The Washington Post, political scientist Elizabeth Saunders wondered whether foreign policy would play a significant role in the presidential election. Today's opinion-makers are the same baby-boomer generation that led the antiwar demonstrations in the 60s, except that today they've been shocked by the events of 9/11 into understanding what great danger the country is in today. And their work seems to be making an impact. When I say we need something equivalent to the Green New Deal for foreign policy, its this., A few days before that, at a House Committee on Oversight and Reform hearing, Ocasio-Cortez confronted executives from military contractor TransDigm about the way they were price-gouging the American taxpayer by selling a $32 non-vehicular clutch disc to the Department of Defense for $1,443 per disc. VIDEO: People in Denmark Are a Lot Happier Than People in the United States. ", A demonstrator waves a flag marked with the peace symbol on Jan. 26, 1991, during an anti-Gulf War rally at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. With items in the news cycle lasting for ever-shorter periods of time before being replaced, administrations becoming ever harder to embarrass, and a voting public getting accustomed to being lied to, even a short memory became a challenge. "I sometimes see people from the military coming to my shows and saying that theyre fans. Instead, in a pretty significant political shift at the time, they overwhelmingly opted for their tax dollars to go toward job creation and education. Theyre certainly right to question why Congress, with the constitutional duty to declare war, has until recently allowed both presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump to wage war as they wished without even consulting them. jQuery("#inline_cta_316888").html(inline_cta_text_316888); The Campus Rights Long War on Free Speech It happened in 1991, when throngs rallied against U.S. involvement in the first Gulf War. So, they told and retold their stories to anyone who would listen: stories of misguided raids and policing actions for which they were ill-equipped and ill-trained; of soul-destroying cruelty they found themselves implicated in; and of their dawning awareness, even while they were in Iraq, that they could no longer be a party to any of it. In May, for instance, Omar tweeted, We have to recognize that foreign policy IS domestic policy. Then, when you achieve it, you can, of course, claim victory. Theyre right to feel nervous when a national poll shows that more Americans think were fighting a war in Iran (were not) than a war in Somalia (we are). You might look at the lack of public outrage now, or perhaps the exhaustion of having been outraged and nothing changing, and think an anti-war movement doesnt exist. Palacek, Mike. Mass national protests didnt sway the Bush administration, so young organizers have focused their strategy on local counter-recruitment campaigns. if( magazine_button_url_316888 !='' ){ freestar.config.enabled_slots.push({ / And like many Americans, for a few weeks as August 2021 ended, they were alarmed by the heartbreaking consequences of their countrys failed mission in Afghanistan and its betrayal of the people there. I can talk as much as I want about the war. By: History.com Editors. Each successor generation is less likely than the previous to prioritize maintaining superior military power worldwide as a goal of US foreign policy, to see US military superiority as a very effective way of achieving US foreign-policy goals, and to support expanding defense spending. Of course, once upon a time, we werent incessantly at war either. inline_cta_url_407605 = 'https://www.thenation.com/donate-website?utm_medium=website&utm_source=Website&utm_campaign=june-appeal&sourceid=1066666&ms=post-inline&utm_content=post-inline'; } Even the far larger Vietnam anti-war movement was only one pressure point in winding down that conflict. Popular inline_cta_text_316888 = 'Donate Now to Power The Nation.
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'; And so how do we incorporate that learning into our counter-recruitment work?". The people of the US are building an intergenerational anti-war movement from the ground up in protest of the billions sent to war and destruction abroad March 17, 2023 by Natalia Marques Today, some organizers are too young to remember the outbreak of the Iraq War, representing an entirely new generation of the anti-war movement. "Thats the whole lesson of all this huge spiral roll marketing stuff. magazine_button_bg_color_407605 = '#dd3333'; var inline_cta_2_button_text_407605 = ''; tn_loc:'atf' If you had asked me two years ago, I would have chosen all of the above. Now, Im not so sure. Time was, a war abroad was a galvanizing moment for a certain cross section of Americans. }); Its true, by the way, that Brown Universitys Costs of War Project did a formidable job of tackling that issue in those endless war years, but their accounts were, of course, anything but mainstream. Realizing that mass national protests did not sway the Bush administration from staying the course in Iraq, many young organizers focused their strategy on local counter-recruitment campaigns. }else{ jQuery("#magazine_text_316888").html(magazine_text_316888); To Chain the Dog of War: The War Power of Congress in History & Law (Urbana: U. of Illinois, 1989). Meanwhile, the mainstream media has made it ever harder for peace groups to gain traction by applying a double standard to protest or outsider politics, a reality sociologist Sarah Sobieraj has explored strikingly in her book Soundbitten. Last August, in the midst of the chaotic US pull-out from Afghanistan, I tuned in to a podcast about political and social activism just as Rashad Robinson, president of the racial justice organization Color of Change, was making a distinction between presence (retweets, shout-outs from the stage) and power (the ability to change the rules). The United States is knee-deep in at least three international military conflicts at the moment in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. Why didnt we learn? But it's just not the same. } While 2020 Democratic candidates for president, some of whom have been in the political arena for decades, are gradually hopping on the end-the-endless-wars bandwagon, the real anti-war momentum in Washington has begun to come from new members of Congress like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) and Ilhan Omar who are unwilling to accept business as usual when it comes to either the Pentagon or the countrys forever wars. In various ways. In the Library: Fiction. It concludes that the anti-war movement in America evaporated because Democrats inspired to protest by their anti-Republican feelings stopped protesting once the Democratic Party achieved success in Congress in 2006 and then in the White House in 2008. Even today, in that mainstream, accurate counts are still hard to come by. After the hearing, Teen Vogue created a list of the 5 most ridiculous things the United States military has spent money on, comedian Sarah Silverman tweeted out the AOC hearing clip to her 12.6 million followers, Will and Grace actress Debra Messing publicly expressed her gratitude to AOC, and according to Crowdtangle, a social media analytics tool, the NowThis clip of her in that congressional hearing garnered more than 20 million impressions. var is_user_logged_in = getCookie('SESSname'); IVAWs overriding aim was to bring the troops home immediately. The lack of noise and the apparent nonchalance raises the question: Where have all the protesters gone?Dentist In Macon, Ga That Accept Peach State,
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