The tension within the anti-war movement between the declining pacifist tendencies, the “anti-imperial solidarity” tendencies, and everyone in between has pretty much played out in favor of the second grouping. The prevailing notion in the movement is that while nonviolent methods are appropriate for action the industrialized countries, we must understand the necessity for violent struggle on the international front and therefor not just the reactions of the oppressed to their circumstances based upon our own privileged realities.
I became active while in high school and I sided squarely with the “solidarity” wing. Violence in the Wallersteinian “core” was imprudent, but necessary on the periphery. We championed the cause of the military resistance in El Salvador, while opposing our own military policies. There were elements which didn’t share the agenda, and I met a very articulate representative in seeking draft resistance counseling from the CCCO. The woman pointed out that FMLN buttons were frequently adorned at demonstrations, but few knew anything about FDR, the actual political organization of resistance which was actually organizing and arguing the need for change unarmed, and thus more vulnerable to right wing death squad aggression. Why did we rarely hear about them, when their mortality rate was much higher than the guerrilla fighter in the countryside? I think a lot of it had to do with the romanticization in the afterglow of the 1960s publication of Revolution in the Revolution and a dozen or so movies made by film makers like Costa Gavras and Gillo Pontecorvo.
The bulk of demonstrations I attended during the 1980s were dominated by the self-defined “radical” or “revolutionary” crowd. But the anti-nuclear crowd was a little more grounded in practical politics and reality, and was more heavily influenced by the peace tendency. I was introduced to the intra-movement conflict when I became involved with the June 12th Coalition, organized for the Geneval Disarmament Talks and calling for a bilateral nuclear freeze. The “radicals” wanted to broaden the agenda of the San Francisco march to include among other things opposition to intervention in El Salvador. Despite stacking meetings and disrupting that actual work of organizing, the majority in the coalition kept the focus and over 100 thousand marched from Dolores Park to the Civic Center instead of the usual suspects of a few thousand ineffectual radicals which characterized the majority of demos I’d attended.
I was in my second year of college in the fall of 1983 when President Reagan ordered the invasion of the small island-nation of Grenada (slightly less populated than Humboldt County today). It came as no surprise to me as I had been paying close attention to the politics around Grenada, and I was actually planning a visit to Grenada with some fellow students for the following summer. The military had already rattled Grenadian nerves with naval maneuvers the spring before, and the poli sci professors had been warning us that the invasion was imminent, with some conservative students scoffing at the “conspiracy theories” then pouncing on the necessity of the invasion when it did happen in a manner reminiscent of the immediate transition of consciousness in Orwell’s 1984 when Big Brother suddenly switched enemies. The week prior to the invasion had been depressing enough, with Maurice Bishop being overthrown and killed by a more radical faction and creating perfect conditions for invasion both militarily and politically. The invasion took place one day following the truck-bombing of American soldiers in Lebanon killing several hundred. I remember hearing about it and a number of us converged on the television lounge at Merrill College. Several female students were already there waiting for a soap opera. They were immediately resistant to changing the channel, but as as the preemption announcement came on they got up and left, tossing some obscenities in our direction as if it was our fault. We spent the better part of the rest of the day staring at the screen in disbelief. It had been our first headlines invasion since Vietnam, not including relatively minor incursions into the Middle East and Africa.
As you may remember, the war lasted a week. The Grenadian defense itself pretty much collapsed on the first day, and the US military spent the rest of the week subduing about 500 well-trained angry Cubans. We didn’t learn most of the details for months afterward, but just enough to trigger that above-described radical romance factor in young middle class leftists. A group of us decided to head up to Oakland on the following weekend for a demonstration. It was raining by the time we arrived and there was talk of cancelling the demonstration, but one woman vehemently objected: “our brothers and sisters are facing bullets while we’re afraid of raindrops!” Needless to say the demonstration went forward as planned, and we marched through downtown chanting the usual mindless “hey heys” and “ho ho’s.” But the invasion wasn’t stopping, and it had the support of about 90 percent of the population, most of whom had never heard of Grenada prior. I was on a kind of autopilot and wondered what had become of the Grenadans which had come to speak at UCSC the prior school year. The Spartacus League, the RCP, the CWP, all the regular groups were there pushing their papers. The placards were filled with words like “murder,” “butchers,” and “CIA.” It was business as usual and it felt futile if not counterproductive.
I don’t remember any prowar demonstrators at that particular event, although a group of Moonies would counter-demonstrate an SF event a few weeks later. However on one corner in Oakland we passed by two women holding signs advertising a “peaceful protest” for the following day. They ignored the scattered boos. I gave them a mild smile and tepid wave just trying to be civil and they nodded nervously without smiling. It’s one of those moments in time I wish I could have back so I could leave the march and join them. But like my fellow marchers I was pretty pissed off, and while the stupidity of some of the slogans were making me cringe, I wasn’t in the mood for nonviolence. It didn’t seem to me at the time that it was what the Grenadians would want from us. On the other hand, with Bernard Coard’s military coup, there hadn’t been much about the Grenadian revolution to defend anyway. It was a pretty gray moment for me.
They might not have had an immediate impact on me, but a few of my fellow Santa Cruz students had been put off by the tone of the demonstration and the slogans. While everyone around us was chanting some angry thing or another, several of the women in our group started singing John Lennon’s Give Peace a Chance. One of the demo monitors came over and tried to get them to engage the chant in conformance with the rest of the crowd. The women ignored them until the guy accosted them and accused them of disruption. Seriously. I wasn’t in the mood for joining the argument and picked up the pace to get to the destination, some park downtown. We all sat on the grass; listened to a couple of very predictable speeches which quickly spread from the invasion of Grenada to the wars in Central America, the occupation of Lebanon, racism in America, the need for workers to be organized, the right to an abortion; etc.; then headed back to Santa Cruz.
….
I’m just gathering my thoughts in this narrative. I’m not trying to make any big philosophical arguments. In some of the discussions about the antiwar movement in these threads I’ve been called everything from a “Zionist” (for the record, I’m not) to a “neoconservative” (not even close) from one side, and a “socialist” (not even sure what the word means anymore) or something equivalently predictable from the other side. Rather than argue the labels, I’m just going to lay out some key moments in the progression of my world views. I don’t think they’re coherent enough to warrant any sort of “ism” at this point in my life. But I got pretty jaded on the left very early on, though I would still consider myself a leftist for most practical purposes.
So I’m going to post a series of accounts mostly in free form. Maybe I’ll tie it all together at some point. I’m not necessarily going in chronological order. And I’m not necessarily going to wrap up each such post with a tidy message about how the left ought to be. But during the 1980s, I actually went through a brief period where I questioned everything I believed and explored right wing groups and perspectives. Ultimately I settled back into a leftist view, but I did and do see things from a different view. When I see some of the “anti-corporate,” “anti-Zionist,” and other views which come across to me as dogmatic, I’m not making any profound judgments. I was there. I understand where you’re coming from. Sometimes I still feel the way you do. But the left, by any definition, has been wrong on some very big issues. A left wing political philosophy sans any checks and balances in a number of countries was responsible for millions of deaths. We can debate the numbers or whether the philosophy itself was inherently responsible for those deaths rather than the particular circumstances, but the fact of the matter is, the American left, by any definition, mostly soft-pedaled those horrors, including the small scale carnage which preceded the Grenadian invasion in 1983. The calls to bring Coard and Austin to justice the week prior to the invasion disappeared as soon as the US was involved. And yes, I agree that the situation should have been left to the Grenadians to solve on their own. The point is, it wasn’t even a topic of conversation a week later except for some activists who argued that the coup had been a CIA set-up, though the mechanism was never made clear. They needed clarity, not ambiguity or nuance. And cognitive dissonance won the day, as it so often does. And I think it’s a tragedy, for the possibilities a saner left might offer. But unfortunately, former KPFA manager Pat Scott’s comments I think ring true: “we had the old left, then the new left, and now we have the what’s left.” I’m not quite so glum about it, but I really do think that the left has abandoned critical thinking to its peril. If there’s any overall point to these threads and my radio show, that’s it.
I close this particular session by telling you that I became very intimate with some right wing politics, and my ultimate failure to drift into any of those camps had as much to do with disappointing similarities as differences. I’ll probably get into that at some point as well.
Feel free to argue any points, make suggestions, ask questions, etc. But I’m particularly curious to know if any of my experiences are similar to your own and I’d like you to elaborate.
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January 25, 2009 at 8:41 am
Anonymous
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
January 25, 2009 at 10:10 am
Moviedad
Thank you for sharing your observations, Erik. So this is how a southern Humboldt….(fill in label of choice)…is born. I must say I didn’t realize you were so young. Yes those were dark years during the presidency of “Him who must not be named.” In the 1980’s. Those years came on the heels of the Carter presidency. I know I will incur the wrath of the trolls for saying that I believe Jimmy Carter was the last honest man in that office, since I don’t know when.
I became aware of politics during the McGovern campaign. I was only 15, but I was on a fast track to enlist and go to Viet Nam. We did not have the feeling that it was going to end anytime soon, as long as Nixon and “Him who must not be named.” Had control of the country, through the media. They would drag it on and on, which is exactly what happened. Even Watergate did not end the war. Even evidence that Nixon drug out the negotiations to win re-election was not enough to cause any investigations into the war itself. The situation hasn’t really changed. What has happened now, is the Right-Wing media has not gotten total control of the mechanisms of communication, namely the Internet and the underground press. If the Right-Wing was a more intelligent body, John McCain would be president. They just did not anticipate the degree to which the American public is fed up with the state of the Nation.
I think you would agree with me that media outlets, such as KMUD, deserve much of the credit for the shifting of the pendulum. The information, both National and Local, is critical to understanding of the forces in opposition to the ‘American Way,” which is to say, basic fairness, human rights of the individual supreme, and only the rights of children carrying more weight. The recent criminals have disgraced us. It is obvious that they have been, and are currently, the enemies of the U.S. KMUD lets me know that I am not a lone nut-job with conspiracy on my mind. I learn instead that Norman Solomon has the actual evidence. That Michael Parenti knows were the proof can be found. Thanks to KMUD, I am empowered. As are you.
So, this blog is another example of KMUD people affecting the world at large. It is very important that we can all talk, and disagree and be passionate, without resorting the “Fox-ification,” of our intelligence by name calling and all things Ad Hominem.
Please, keep up the good works.
January 25, 2009 at 10:41 am
Jaded before you
I stopped attending rallies against the Vietnam war when I started looking around and seeing too many north Vietnam’s flags. That wasn’t what I signed up for. I have been to some demonstrations since. I was at a large demonstration in San Francisco against nuclear power after Three Mile Island. I didn’t see the Vietnamese flags but there was a small group with lots of red banners and a bullhorn talking about things other than nuclear power and turning off everyone who walked by.
I like the idea of organizing “peaceful” alternative rallies.
January 25, 2009 at 10:44 am
Jaded before you
Oh, and I remember Grenada well. I remember the justification was to rescue the medical students who were there because all of the American schools had rejected them. I remember that they were never in any danger until the invasion put them in danger.
January 25, 2009 at 11:03 am
hcn
Holy cow. I finally learned the denifintion of a “troll”, someone who disagrees with the writer or “others that must not be named”.
KMUD empowers you! Isn’t that sweet, KMUD?
Jimmy Carter! Jimmy Carter! Jimmy Carter who only lasted one term (and yes I know Bush Sr only lasted one term)? Jimmy Carter that gave away control of the Panama Canal (for those that don’t know much about history the U.S. spent millions to build the canal and many U.S. soldiers/personnell died building it)? Jimmy Carter who gave amnesty to draft evaders that fled to Canada? Jimmy Carter who oversaw the capture/takeover of the U.S. embassy in Iran and the holding of US hostages for something like 440 days (that’s over a year to all youi KMUD listeners)? And those hostages just happened to be released hours before Ronald Reagan took office! And why was that? Because the Iranian terrorists respected him? Jimmy Carter was the worst president since LBJ.
As to the invasion of Grenada. I recall the video footage of U.S. medical students kissing the ground when they arrived safely on U.S. soil, delivered to safety by the U.S. military.
I think it’s time for some Fox News.
January 25, 2009 at 11:15 am
Eric Kirk
Jimmy Carter that gave away control of the Panama Canal (for those that don’t know much about history the U.S. spent millions to build the canal and many U.S. soldiers/personnell died building it)?
Maybe you can clear it up for me, but where is the Panama Canal located?
I recall the video footage of U.S. medical students kissing the ground when they arrived safely on U.S. soil, delivered to safety by the U.S. military.
It was one student and it was a famous shot. But that doesn’t mean they were in any danger. If the Grenadian junta had any such intention, don’t you think they would have been taken hostage immediately? The interview with one student revealed that the Grenadian government had met with them a couple of days before and told them that an invasion was imminent and that they should stay in their dorms when it happened. They never saw nor heard from any government or military officials thereafter. The American bombers were very careful to avoid the school grounds. If the Grenadians/Cubans were the action movie villains they had been made out to be, I’d think at minimum they would have dug in around the American students. Whatever they had done to their own people the week before, to their credit they did not make use of the presence of American students.
January 25, 2009 at 11:18 am
Tom Hanson
A very fine sifting of your political views, and a salutary reminder to your readers of the danger of pigeon-holing you. (Like most interesting thinkers, you are more easily defined by what you are not than by what you are.)For the record, though, Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Zionist (as was Churchill, though he is much less elevated in the Left’s pantheon). Why is the quest for a Jewish homeland any less honorable than, say, the struggle for a Kurdish state? As far as the current state of the Left goes, you might want to read Nick Cohen’s “What’s Left?” or the new book by Bernard-Henri Levy,”Left in Dark Times.” The latter book has pungent comments on Chomsky, Jose Bove, and especially Jimmy Carter.Since Hamas has been in the news lately, I’ll quote a passage from page 172: …Hamas, in Jan 2006, takes power with a charter expressly borrowing, sometimes to the letter, the terms of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”: not only does nobody lift a finger but one eminence, an Elder, former president Jimmy carter, speaking at the eighth annual Human Rights Forum in Ireland in June 2007, says out loud what the neoprogressive International thinks to itself, offering his blessing to this valiant “resistance” organization, denouncing the Western tendency to support, against it, Pres. Mahmoud Abbas, and, without a word of reproach for a political program that hearkens back to the glory days of the Ku Klux Klan, describes the American refusal to accord full recognition to its electoral victory as “criminal.”” Levy is provocative in a similar manner throughout his book.
January 25, 2009 at 11:28 am
Eric Kirk
I know I will incur the wrath of the trolls for saying that I believe Jimmy Carter was the last honest man in that office, since I don’t know when.
Some would say that’s why he was so ineffective.
I stopped attending rallies against the Vietnam war when I started looking around and seeing too many north Vietnam’s flags. That wasn’t what I signed up for.
There were some groups, like the Progressive Labor Party, who openly identified with the other side. I wasn’t really politically aware at the time, but from what I’ve heard the events of Kent State and Jackson State led to a reduction of sane people at the demonstrations selecting for the more militant crowd. But the “Days of Rage” and other crazies-organized demonstrations predated those events. I think burn-out factors also have to be considered.
I didn’t see the Vietnamese flags but there was a small group with lots of red banners and a bullhorn talking about things other than nuclear power and turning off everyone who walked by.
They were probably members of the Revolutionary Communist Party, started by ex-SDSer Bob Avakian who is so stark raving nuts that even the Weathermen wouldn’t let him into their club. I’ll be writing about their antics in future posts. Many organizers are convinced that they’re agent provocateurs, or some of them anyway.
January 25, 2009 at 11:29 am
Eric Kirk
Tom – I’ll take up that discussion in another thread. Otherwise it’ll consume this one, even if certain people aren’t participating.
January 25, 2009 at 11:58 am
Fred Mangels
Eric wrote, “…It was one student and it was a famous shot. But that doesn’t mean they were in any danger….”.
I remember hearing from some students (don’t remember if I read it or saw it on TV) that they didn’t feel threatened by the Cubans or Granada military at all. I suspect this was simply typical war propaganda. We’ve seen it before and in every conflict since.
It’s easier to find your way around such propaganda now that we’re in the internet age. Back then, all you could do was rely on what you saw on TV and read in the newspapers and that’s often set up by the powers that be. They’re the ones who furnish the news to the media.
One great example, at least imo, not getting in to the set up of Gulf War 2, was that gal that got captured right after we invaded Iraq. How many of you remember the hype that came out right after the capture- Jessica something? We were told she fired her rifle until she ran out of ammo, killing all kinds of Iraqi soldiers.
Then, of course, there was the hype when they “rescued” her from a hospital where she was being treated. After she could give her own story the propagandists were made fools of (or were they?).
All of that was fabricated by those that wanted to put a good face on the war. I never noticed it so much until Gulf War 2, but I think that’s because it was the first conflict I could fully follow via the internet which gives you access to many different sources of information.
Don’t blame it on Bush. All those in charge during conflict do the same thing.
January 25, 2009 at 12:12 pm
Eric Kirk
Actually, the alternative media did get some information, however reliable, from Ham radio operators in Grenada who reported among other things that two American helicopters had been shot down on the first day. It didn’t get reported on the regular news until the next day. The Americans who participated in it faced some sanctions later on, but I don’t remember how it turned out. I think they were jammed after the first day.
And yeah, there’s the Jessica incident. And in the first gulf war a lie was perpetrated about Iraqi soldiers having removed babies from incubators in Kuwait, told to Congress by a supposed eye witness who later turned out to be the Kuwaiti ambassador’s daughter. A congressional investigation was underway, but then canceled when Clinton defeated Bush in 92, again on the basis that we had to “move on.”
January 25, 2009 at 1:42 pm
Fred Mangels
Also, in Gulf War 1, I believed it at the time and still think there was some truth to it: “We’re having a hard time finding anyone to fight…”, some officer was saying to CNN. Then they’d show lines and lines of Iraqi prisoners marching into captivity. That was psche ops live from the Pentagon.
While I’m sure some Iraqi units gave up fairly easily, I’ve heard from some vets that said they faced fierce opposition in some places.
Then there was one they showed on CNN right about that same time. Supposedly a bunch of Iraqi entrenchments that had been overrun. They had yellow tape around the area because they hadn’t been cleared yet. Some news guy is commenting on the entrenchments when, all of the sudden, three or four Iraqis pop up out of the trenches with the hands on their heads.
They come out to the American troops, supposedly begging to not be harmed. The American NCO is seen telling them to calm down, they won’t be hurt and giving them water.
I was amazed at the time and went to work and was telling everyone about it. Years later when I realized a lot of these things are, if not staged, then at least edited and embellished, I wondered if that whole thing was a set up- a psyop operation to get more Iraqis to surrender and making us look like the good guys.
Call me a rascist, but they pretty much all looked the same over there to me when I was there. They could of grabbed a few saudis to have them do the acting.
I’d love to speak with some of the GIs that were there when that footage was taken.
January 25, 2009 at 2:42 pm
Anonymous
I remember they called it a “rescue mission”, but later said it was because of the airstrip which the French and British had been building to promote tourism. Reagan accused them of building a military air force base, then he expanded it so that it could become a military strip for us.
Bishop had taken over without killing anyone. It should not have ended the way it did.
January 25, 2009 at 3:26 pm
hcn
You remember wrong, but that seems to be a common occurance around here. Several, as in more than three or four, of the medical students in Grenada were intereviewed 20 years later, on the History Channel. They were affraid and they were thankful to be rescued. But then I’ll bet you’re going to tell me that you remember hearing that the History Channel is a sub cell of Fox News or the Republican party or something ! Have you ever been to Grenada Eric? I have and they sure do like Amercians.
And that BS about jamming the Ham operators that reported two American helicopters beging shot down. Where do you come up with this crap? Can you document or provide any reference to support these claims? Much of the news from Grenada was day old in the states. Cell phones were almost like magic back then and Sat phones were magic. Not to mention that there were no such things as embedded reporters in 1983. And who told you the helicopters were shot down?
January 25, 2009 at 4:00 pm
Eric Kirk
One of the radio operators was interviewed on KPFA shortly after the war. It was 25 years ago. I doubt it’s available on podcast. I can’t vouch for the guy’s veracity.
However, the invasion was in fact called a “rescue mission,” and there are plenty of sources on that. Do you trust, for instance, the Heritage Foundation?
As for Grenadians being friendly to Americans, I never had any doubt about that. The Cubans are as well.
January 25, 2009 at 4:14 pm
Eric Kirk
And here’s a source on the ham radio operators in Grenada during the invasion. There’s another one which looks from the Google clip like it might have more detail, but I can’ download the pdf for some reason.
Anything else?
January 25, 2009 at 4:40 pm
Eric Kirk
I remember they called it a “rescue mission”, but later said it was because of the airstrip which the French and British had been building to promote tourism. Reagan accused them of building a military air force base, then he expanded it so that it could become a military strip for us.
I don’t know about Reagan expanding the strip, but most experts agree that the NJM expansion was to facilitate tourism rather than provide for Soviet military plane landings. Begs the question anyway. Grenada as a sovereign nation was entitled to let anyone they want land.
Here’s a good comprehensive article on the events leading up to the invasion, and the trials of the surviving NJM leaders afterward. The article is four years old. I believe Amy Goodman reported last year that some of them had been released.
January 25, 2009 at 6:57 pm
Dave Kirby
Part 1 ….summer of 65. Strategic Air Command… Pease A.F.B New Hamp…Engineers…First shirt asks if I want to go to Thailand and live in a hotel in Bankok…you bet…when I get to to Phillipines I am told I am not going to Bankok . The unit has moved in country…I ask what the hell is “in country”…the Republic of Viet Nam. That was o.k. with me I was young and full of vinegar.
On Oct. 15 1969 I was marching through Frisco carrying a Labor Assembly for Peace sign…the folks in front were toting “Jonny Got His Gun”signs… behind was the entry from the Berkley Radical Student Union …they were chanting “ho ho ho chi min is gonna’ win. …that’s not what I came for … part of me wanted to say shut the fuck up. I just wanted my friends out of there.
January 25, 2009 at 7:10 pm
anon
when i was a kid in high school back in the midwest, we had to run up and down the stairs at the gym for the workout…i remember thinking about, being inspired my the struggle of the viet cong, to make it through the workout…hmmm, no wonder i ended up in humbocino…
January 25, 2009 at 11:18 pm
Eric Kirk
Dave – “Johnny got his Gun” could have been a literary reference.
January 26, 2009 at 7:43 am
Dave Kirby
It was Eric, it was a reference to a book I believe . Dalton Trumbo as I recall. About a horrifically wounded Vet. The placards were a black and white photograph of a world war 1 soldier crossing no mans land with a fixed bayonet. May have come from the book cover.
January 26, 2009 at 11:00 am
mini mousse
righty tighty- lefty loosey