"Undermining my electoral viability since 2001."

Riverbend / Billmon / War Guilt

Billmon has a soul-searching post up, provoked by the first post in months from Iraqi blogger Riverbend which is in itself a vital read. His post reflects on our moral responsibility for the depth of the carnage in Iraq, which is what I want to talk about for a second:

I opposed the invasion -- and the regime that launched it -- but I didn't do everything I could have done. Very few did. We may have put our words and our wallets on the line, but not our bodies. Not when it might have made a difference. In the end, we were all good little Germans.

I also opposed the invasion, but I want to point out the logical and moral trap that comes from "you can always do more." It's true. You can always do more, but you can't always win.

Let's take Billmon's point that we didn't "lay our bodies on the line" seriously. Let's assume that the 2.5M or so people who protested here in the US were all ready to throw down. Would lying down in traffic have stopped the war? Would a mass hunger strike? Would violent resistance?

I'm pessimistic about all those options. The only way to imagine Bush not being able to launch that war would be to re-imagine the last 12 years of political history, starting with how the aftermath of the first Persian Gulf war went down, and the lessons learned there. The truth is I have no doubt that at zero-hour, or even in the Summer of 2002, mass resistence from 2.5 million Americans wouldn't have stopped the war. In fact, it may have deeply worsened the situation.

At that time, it could have led to mass arrests, and those arrests would likely have been applauded by enough people. Political leaders would have been pressed to denounce the resistance. It would have made the vaguely fascist overtones of 2006 America look like the summer of love.

Nothing less than a full-scale civil war (or a functioning opposition party) could have ever presented a challenge to Bush's misadventure. I think Billmon more than most appreciates that; so enough with the self-loathing.

In fact, I'll go so far as to say that the only way to dodge this bullet would be for George W Bush not to have been President during 9/11. In that respect, we all failed, and our democracy failed, both in allowing him to assume power at an all-time low point for our electoral system, and in presenting the kind of social environment which allowed him to so blatently and groutesquely hump that tragedy into an unrelated exercise in mass death.

Furthermore, it's wrong to assume that dissenters who failed or even cheerleaders and button pushers bear full or direct responsibility for all this. That's a rather imperialist position, Billy, to deny the people living and dying in Iraq the responsibility for their choices. Come now.

It's all connected, but I didn't handcuff, torture, execute and behead 60 people last night, and neither did the 3rd Infantry Division or the Generals who put them there, or even the President who commands these Generals and launched the war. I don't sympathize with Bush's rhetoric or find it especially useful, but the truth is that these are the acts of evil men who are Iraqi, not us. Soon they and their ilk will once again run the country, and our little experiment will be over.

True, it would not have gone down that way if we didn't try to play God over there. And yeah, I feel war guilt. It's a fucking awful thing, but I don't think there's anything I could have done that would have stopped it, other than having the presence of mind in October 2000 to spend three weeks in Florida. Lord knows I could hustle up 600 votes in three weeks. But I was a long way away from that kind of consciousness at the time; I voted for Ralph Fucking Nader.

It's that consciousness -- that politics matters in a bloody-knuckles kind of way -- that drove me into this business in the first place, out of art and out of lax second-wave hipster bohemia and post-college fun. And I grew to dispise that lack of insight, that blindness. I once had a guy try to tell me in early 2004 that Gore would have done the same thing (invade Iraq after 9/11) and I just about slapped the shit out of him. That's ignorance, brothers and sisters, and it's a particularly dangerous breed.

So get wise. Vote early and vote often; emancipate yourselves from mental slavery and appreciate the full range of your agency. This isn't your war, but you can still help bring our part in it to and end. It won't stop the bloodshed, but then again, nothing will.

Responses

I'm a little disturbed by this post. Where does one draw the line for what one is responsible for and what one isn't? We (ostentibly 'we') did do enough to try to prevent the war, but we don't do enough on the political front? Is voting alone enough to say we 'did enough'? Why is armed resistance seem to be posited as the only alternative to political resistance?

Do you think if 2.5M people stopped paying their taxes back then - would that have helped?

I don't like the 'he said' - 'she said' - 'if we had' of these types of debates. It decends into specifics to damned quickly. "if we had xxx then they would have yyy and that would have gotten us nowhere..." Plain and simple we don't and can't know what would have happened if we had taken a different course of action in 2000, 2004, anytime in our whole fucking lives.

The only moral imperative is to do what we think is right, now. I've been stewng over this for few weeks and I am greatly disturbed that it feels like the best thing we can do for our country is to re-take the House and Senate and make a much less powerful executive branch. Something about that feels weak. Feels like our best hope for the future is a 2 year castration. I hate that. But what choice have we got?

This is where the 'moral imperative' concerns me. What can we do other than on the political front. Because, honestly, polotics just ain't enough, mon frere. We agree that we aren't anywhere near a point where armed rebellion is warranted or viable, and the tried and true rallies, marches, and petitions - also just don't work.

I'll be stewing on this for a few more days before I come up with something, but seriously - do you think the dems being successful in this election is enough? What other political solutions can you offer? And is there really nothing else we can do to help stop the bloodshed one moment earlier than would happen if we didn't exist - are we so weak that our vote is our only weapon?

Billmon hits on the taxes route too.... I just don't know if thats the right way though.... hmmm

I don't think there's a definative way to determine this, but I do feel that it would have taken either widespread physical resistance (e.g. systemic sabotage) or staunch political reistance from democrats and members of the press to avert the war. The former would be incredibly risky, ugly, and likely to backfire. No way you could get enough people doing it.

And not paying taxes? Since when did this government give a flying fuck about deficits?

My problem is that this is ultimately a non-pragmatic exercise. Resistance that fails, and knows it will fail, is at best symbolic, and at worst self-indulgent exercise. Thereau didn't stop slavery either.

I realized resistance and protest were useless right after the Feb 15th protest. Until then I thought it would matter that millions of people (around the world) demonstrated against the war. But it didn't, which in hindsight should have been rather obvious.

Anway, as to your point about what might be enough... I really don't know. Over the past couple of years I've been gradually coming to terms with the slowness of change, the brutality of reality, the lack of a point of caring if millions of people die half way around the world, and the fact that the world is so huge and full of good things that it's really hard for all the stuff I worry about to actually fuck it up that badly.

And no, taking back the house is not enough, but it's a step in the right direction, and it happens in a few weeks. Local political control is important too, as is individual and social consciousness raising. It's also important to live a good life and be part of a good community. Lots of things matter. Is it ever enough? Probably not, but that's part of the point, right?

We've been referring to this administration for a long time as the 'emperor with no clothes' when I'm beginning to think that something else is at root. I've said many a time that the problems we face today are systemic and many are only seeing individual issues. I'll take that a step further now.

We feel completely disempowered by our nation becasue we are. I'm beginning to think that the framers accounted for darn near everything except the pace of communication, and the ability for poloticians to twist there words.

Yes. The upcoming election is important - go vote. However, you say yourself that the pace of change is glacial. Seems like the ramp up to war and the actual act of going to war was not very glacial at all. Change need not be glacial - but at the moment the government, because of money, and because they are using a system that they have tailored to their own benefits can effect change much quicer than any grassroots endeavor.

In 99% of the cases I would say that is a good thing - except that it effectively removes the power of 75% of the population to be able to sway the government.

Here is a different way to put it. Theplayers of the game have gotten particularly good at swaying the public opinion. Whether it be a get-out-the-vote against gay mairrage or gaining popular approval for a war - they have found efficient ways to qickly garner mass approval or disapproval. But the reverse isn't true. If you or I can employ the same tools to garner approal or disapproval we cannot then leverage that to change anything therein lies the problem.

Wouldn't poloticians think twice before tossing their weight around in distraction campaigns, or war-for-profit things if they knew that mass-disapproval had consequences. Whether conciously or not the past 100 years has taken the teeth out of the American people by one at a time removing its weapons against the government. First armed rebeliion, then the ability to ignore peaceful protest (probably the the co-opting of the mass media), and no through things like a 'two-tiered internet' and more.

I just spent the past hour and a half re-reading the constitution convinced that there had to be a way for the people to pass an ammendment without going through government in any way. There isn't. This is an interesting passage

Popular Amendment

One other way of amendment is also not mentioned in the Constitution, and, because it has never been used, is lost on many students of the Constitution. Framer James Wilson, however, endorsed popular amendment, and the topic is examined at some length in Akhil Reed Amar's book, The Constitution: A Biography.

The notion of popular amendment comes from the conceptual framework of the Constitution. Its power derives from the people; it was adopted by the people; it functions at the behest of and for the benefit of the people. Given all this, if the people, as a whole, somehow demanded a change to the Constitution, should not the people be allowed to make such a change? As Wilson noted in 1787, "... the people may change the constitutions whenever and however they please. This is a right of which no positive institution can ever deprive them."

It makes sense - if the people demand a change, it should be made. The change may not be the will of the Congress, nor of the states, so the two enumerated methods of amendment might not be practical, for they rely on these institutions. The real issue is not in the conceptual. It is a reality that if the people do not support the Constitution in its present form, it cannot survive. The real issue is in the practical. Since there is no process specified, what would the process be? There are no national elections today - even elections for the presidency are local. There is no precedent for a national referendum. It is easy to say that the Constitution can be changed by the people in any way the people wish. Actually making the change is another story altogether.

Suffice it to say, for now, that the notion of popular amendment makes perfect sense in the constitutional framework, even though the details of affecting popular amendment could be impossible to resolve.

Going back for a second to what I was saying in the 'emporer has no clothes passage' seems to me like the emporer with no clothes is that we, as a people, are sitting around feeling disempowered, feeling that the only good we can do is wait for change to role around.

I'll repost to this comment thread once I've ome up with a plan, and posted it on my blog. I think I might have an idea, but it needs to sit a while longer.

I would if I could but I can't. Only the quote need be there, not the copies of my comment, I copy my comment halfway through to prevent me losing it if the page bonks but, I screwed up.

I would argue that the pace and ease of communication on a many-to-many scale is the biggest shining light in all this darkness, and it's the fact that so many people still hew to what the TeeVee says that lets the sheisters get away with their crap.

And as for the founding fathers, well, they were hardly all seeing or all knowing, but they did caution against an economic power siezing political power, and it's hard to argue that that hasn't happened over the past 50 years.

My hope for the future is to make the good things in life cheap and easy, like they should be, and let the rest take care of the rest.

One other thing, on the popular amendment front... it's an interesting idea and I think you should pursue it, but I think that pursuit will lead to a deeper appreciation of how big the country is, how many different opinions there are, and how hard it is to get a lot of people organized and moving in the same direction.

The truth is that most of our problems aren't with the laws per se, but rather the "reality of the situation" that is American life for most people. Crappy jobs. Cultural wasteland. No community. No vision or hope or prospects, etc.

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