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What's left after war? / For peace activists, good fight goes on Published in Santa Barbara NewsPress, 5/4/03 Voice Of; Sri Subramanian On a recent Saturday on State Street in Santa Barbara, the site for protest marches every week since September 2002, there were fewer than 300 protesters, in contrast to the thousands who marched before and during the war. Nationwide, other issues, like the Scott Peterson case or the SARS infection, are taking center stage. Right-wing talk-show hosts are scoffing at the peace movement and its dire predictions of World War III, a nuclear attack by Israel in retaliation for Iraqi biological missiles and Vietnam-like casualties from street-to-street fighting, all of which failed to materialize. After an initial hiccup, the war was won with fewer-than-feared U.S. military and Iraqi civilian casualties. Iraqis, especially the majority Shiites, were seen on TV celebrating the demise of the Hussein regime, seeming to lend yet another justification for the war. Is that it, then? The peace movement is dying, the war is old news, U.S. defense policy is best left hidden from the public, and such pre-emptive wars are nothing unusual, so get used to it? What just happened? Like divorced parents seeking to influence their only child, both sides of the issue tried to influence the American public. "Don't listen to your father. Just because you're the strongest kid in your school doesn't mean you have to beat up kids you don't like. If you do, watch out, they're all going to gang up on you."
The peace movement also raised legal and moral issues. The foundation of the argument for war was the Bush administration's certitude that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. On this foundation, a shaky structure was built with suggestions of links between Iraq and al-Qaeda and of Iraqi transfer of technology to al-Qaeda. Based on this reasoning, Iraq was considered to be a threat to U.S. security and a war was waged. Now, it appears that not only the structure but the entire foundation is shaky. Not only does Iraq seem as though it posed no threat to us, its repeated justification for war is being marginalized by this administration in the hope that the public will neither notice nor care. And perhaps it may not. If the economy recovers and the cost of shouldering the reconstruction of Iraq is not felt by the average taxpayer, the public may wince, shrug and accept the consequence of an already-prosecuted war on the premise that it was mistakenly started. Then the peace movement may indeed be left toothless and unable to prevent another such war in the future. But this administration is not doing anything to help the economy; on the contrary, it has proposed huge tax cuts that most experts agree will do little for the economy, and will certainly hurt states, many of which are already in budgetary trouble. This represents the best hope for the peace movement. Against a backdrop of recession and unemployment, the American public is bound to listen to arguments that this costly war was unnecessary for security reasons. Furthermore, if it can be proved that this administration deliberately deceived the public just to make its case for war (as in the blatantly forged Niger document), this will further harden public stance against such wars. Then, the next time this administration cries "Wolf!", even FOX may not care.
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