Thoughts On Joining Up

A group of old men, dressed in white, fumbled down the street. Their eyes covered with dark glasses to show their blindness, they tapped the ground ahead with canes. Big black UN signs were taped on their backs. Following them was a Hummer carrying many excited and hale young men in uniform brandishing rifles yelling at the white clad group ahead, "Get out of our way!"

Welcome to the Grand Junction Lions Day Parade. For some reason I thought of hallucinogenics; could they help me deal with this shit? I listened for Al Michaels and John Madden to start the play by play. I looked for an invigorating military flyover. A marching band started playing down the road. With the Super Bowl over it must be up to the Lions Club to keep Football Nation revved up on its way to war. Who knows what else I could have seen at the parade, but it was time to go. I headed one block north to the Federal Building at 4th and Rood to join one of the largest antiwar protests ever to take place in Western Colorado.

Sometime before the new year, anger at the actions of my government reached the point where I felt the need to do something. I heard about a small group of people who had begun meeting Fridays at noon at the Federal Building in downtown Grand Junction to protest the race to war in Iraq. I started joining them. It felt good to publicly display my disagreement with US policies. It was illuminating to see the response from my fellow citizens..

There were many friendly waves and smiles from passersby but it was shocking to be on the receiving of so many violently tossed epithets, "Fuck you," or "Nuke 'em, Kill 'em, Kill all Iraqis!" or "You people are so damned stupid, go back to Iran," or "Yeah War! Yeah War! Yeah War!"

Remember Jack Nicholson in Easy Rider, "...all these people talk about is freedom, but when they see somebody being free, it sure pisses 'em off."

It has been uplifting to get more involved in the process of being a citizen in a democracy. I've never been a flag flyer, but I felt more patriotic than ever, and started carrying a flag on occasion at the protests..

The pro war group should not be able to lay sole claim as the only true citizens of our country. Out of the early milieu the small group of protesters started organizing and chose the name, A Voice Of Reason (AVOR). With the help of some newspaper articles and a billboard message (SAY NO TO WAR) by Confusion Corner (Grand & 1st & 6 & 50) AVOR started getting some publicity. More people started showing up at the weekly protests. Things were getting done, people were taking action.

In mid January, when a few hundred thousand people marched against the war in Washington DC, about 150 people did the same in Grand Junction. About three hundred people came to a teach-in at Mesa State College in early February where four professors spoke on the politics, geography, history, and cultural realities of Iraq and the Persian Gulf. This past February 15, when millions around the world protested the impending war in Iraq, the number of marchers in Grand J swelled to 350. It was quite a scene as the group stretched down five blocks along North Avenue amidst the ever spirited response from passersby---about evenly split between thumbs up and finger up..

It was a great success but it might have been even more powerful if we could have joined up with the Lions Parade. George W. Bush's response to the massive protests went along the lines of, "certain people think Saddam Hussein is not a threat to world peace, I respectfully disagree." Boy, did that piss me off. It is wrong to equate opposing the war with thinking the protesters sympathize with Saddam Hussein.

I had to join the antiwar movement, but it has not been easy. I feel empowered to be taking action, but I have been troubled by the blatant and what I consider unwarranted paranoia that some zealots bring to the antiwar movement. Early in January we had a discussion about a video on the 9/11 attacks that purported to show that the US government conspired to carry out the attack or at least knew about it and did nothing to stop it. Karen and I left after half an hour. Who needs that crap? I read an article in The Nation that tore apart the conspiracy theorist who had produced the video. The Nation,

to say the very least, is not a Bush lover. I think most of George W. Bush's policies are short-sighted, backward, and harmful, but I do not think he made 9/11 happen. The things that he and his administration do up front, out in the open are horrifying enough. The actions of my government splashed on the front pages every day scare the hell out of me and make me want to do anything I can to change its direction. Paranoid diatribes against the government marginalize the antiwar movement and undercut its potential impact.

The group International ANSWER has been one of the prime organizers of some of the major national antiwar protests. When I attend a protest in Grand Junction I can be associated with an ANSWER sponsored protest even if that is not the case. ANSWER has an agenda that I'm not entirely in agreement with. Now here I am marching in Grand Junction, along with hundreds of thousands of others marching in DC and SF and elsewhere. Whether or not we are aware of it, by proxy, we are supporting certain unstated goals of ANSWER. Unsettling...

I like to be aware of these things.

And then there is Saddam Hussein and his 30 years of terribly cruel leadership. I recently received some e-mails from a friend of a friend, a writer who has lived in the middle east for years. She has spent time in Iraq over the past few months and is presently in Kurdistan in Northern Iraq. She expresses strong antiwar sentiments, but also writes that almost every Iraqi she meets wants a US invasion. This troubles me. I have thought about it a lot. I continue to think about it. Despite the conflicts I see in the antiwar movement, I am still in it. I still believe it is the right thing to do. Gary Harmon of the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel (gjsentinel.com, read it for free) helped clarify the situation for me when he wrote that the war protesters are a bunch of confused people. Yes, I am confused. These are confusing times. Many contradictions are built into the fabric of our lives. I see two sides to every issue, or three or four or twelve or 6 billion. And when someone tells me they have the answer, I am ready to run the other way. I live in the gray areas. I do not see the black and white world that certain writers and political leaders apparently reside in.

Schizophrenically, I still sometimes think: What if Bush is right? What if the Iraq war goes like clockwork, the US sets up a democratic government that takes hold and leads to a movement toward democracy throughout the region, which leads to a lasting settlement of the Israeli/Palestinian wars, which leads to improvements in the basic living conditions throughout the Islamic world, which takes away the urge of so many disenfranchised young people to flow in the direction of Osama and his ilk, which leads to less fear in the US as the American Way Of Life spreads around the globe. Gee whiz! If this scenario plays out, I'll eat my hat and vote Bush (Jeb, Laura, the kids) for the rest of my life.

But I don't think Bush is right. I think this Iraq war will be counterproductive. The best chance for the above dream to actually become reality is by not going to war. The best hope for the Iraqi people and for people around the globe lies with diplomacy. We are the animal with the big brain after all. Difficult as it may be we need to use our brains over our brawn to solve our conflicts. Diplomacy is not easy, but it is the true job of our politicians. Diplomacy and continuing pressure from the world community offer the best hope in Iraq for change to take place from within. Forcing change from the outside will not work in the long run.

I started feeling a little stronger in my convictions after a recent dinner engagement with a good friend, a retired Captain of Industry. We spoke at length over several bottles of very good merlot with labels I could not read. He thinks the war is necessary. He thinks Saddam has weapons of mass destruction and that he will use them against us. He said that when we go to war if the Iraqis use even a hint of a biological or chemical weapon, we should pull our troops out immediately and nuke Baghdad. He is an extremely intelligent person. What, I think, does it mean to be intelligent? Confusing times, indeed.

"Well," I replied, "that sounds like a great way to get the third world war started."

This is my worst fear. The best way to avoid it is for the US to take a long overdue, deep look inward. Since our political leaders refuse to do this, the antiwar movement may serve as a catalyst to make it happen. We need to search for answers to the most obvious questions that have not collectively been asked since 9/11: Why? What drove those men to carry out that heinous crime? Why does so much of the Islamic world have such animosity toward us? Why do we have military forces around the globe? Why is the gap between the haves and have-nots in the US and around the world growing? We must be willing to ask, How are we part of the problem? Only by painstakingly exploring these questions will the US be able to find answers that will allow us to move forward in a direction that leads to more security for people throughout the world.

It is March 10 today. The war may well have started by the time this paper hits the street. The Saddameter at Slate.com has been at 99% for the past week. In the news this morning Russia stated that it will use its veto on the latest US/Brit resolution authorizing war in Iraq. That's a nice pay back for dropping out of the ABM Treaty during Bush's pre 9/11 time in office. North Korea tested another cruise missile this weekend. During his news conference a few days ago, while acting more like a fundamentalist religious zealot than ever, Bush said that we don't need permission from anyone to do anything. Hard to find hope when my own president scares me more than anyone else in the world.

I do find hope that A Voice Of Reason and so many similar groups have sprouted up around the country. AVOR has succeeded in starting a dialogue in the community. Now comes the hard work of keeping it going. Hopefully the group will carry on and continue to ask necessary questions to try to improve the health of our community. It has been very energizing joining this group. It's important just to be standing up. I encourage fence sitters everywhere to give it a try. I will keep working for peace with the hope that in some small but ultimately significant way I am nudging my community in a positive direction.

Where else do I find hope? Well...Dylan is still playing and still singing "Blowin' In The Wind" at almost every concert. It's not for lack of material he keeps doing that song. I have hope that humans will learn to solve conflict without combat. I think this can happen. Whether it's later this month or in 500 years is the big question. Maybe we need a rogue asteroid to start heading our way, a relatively smallish one. Nothing like a cosmic interloper threatening our very existence to make us realize the magic: out of this great big cold universe here we are walking around, watching the sunset with the dog at our side. I find hope every time I go out with Karen in the early morning to listen to the wind and the cacophony of birds, like this morning when the robins were singing to the coming of Spring.