Those old enough to remember Vietnam know that protests by anti-war demonstrators numbering in the hundreds of thousands were not reached until the horrors of that conflict had become front-page news and a daily feature of television reporting. Washington at first ignored the protests; then, with state and local authorities, it tried to prevent them (with lethal results). When nothing else worked, the White House talked peace but continued to walk the war road until 1973, when most U.S. forces were withdrawn. Democracy prevailed in the end -- but not before it became a bloody end.
In 2003, democracy is being challenged again as it opposes another White House hell-bent on war. What's different is that this exercise of democracy is coming before war begins -- or more properly, before it engulfs Iraq since U.S. and British airplanes have been bombing Iraq since 1991.
February 15 was a landmark day in this effort. As many as 6 million people in 600 cities all across the globe participated in rallies and marches to protest the looming U.S. war against Iraq.
The breadth and depth of ordinary people's determination to be heard was conservatively detailed by the Guardian (UK) newspaper in its February 13 edition: "[U]p to 400 cities in 60 countries, from Antarctica to Pacific islands, confirmed that peace rallies, vigils and marches would take place. Of all major countries, only China is absent from the growing list which includes more than 300 cities in Europe and north America, 50 in Asia and Latin America, 10 in Africa and 20 in Australia and Oceania."
Some authorities seemed to go out of their way to block this exercise in democracy. A federal appeals court upheld a ban by New York City on a planned march to the UN. The court agreed with the City that "public safety"concerns in a time of "war" were sufficient cause to block the march. Anti-war protestors could hold a rally, but could not march. As it turned out, police restrictions prevented thousands even from getting to the approved rally site. Democracy, it seems, became an inconvenient embarrassment in New York.
But the peace march in the "Big Apple" was not the only instance in which those elected by the people dismissed the significant and growing democratic opposition to war. Washington's staunchest supporter in the rush to war, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, is facing both a revolt by his own party's backbenchers and large majorities who, in poll after poll, disapprove of his pro-war stance. Australia's prime minister, John Howard, was censured by Australia's senate for dispatching troops to the Gulf -- the first time in its 102 years that a censure motion passed. And in Spain, whose government supports Washington, poll after poll shows overwhelming majorities oppose war. Do these voices count for nothing?
Apparently so. On Tuesday, three days after the main protest day, President George Bush opined that "democracy is a beautiful thing and people are allowed to express their opinion." But "Size of protest -- it's like deciding, well, I'm going to decide policy based upon a focus group. The role of a leader is to decide policy based upon the security, in this case, the security of the people." Fair enough -- except a very large number of "the people" believe that their security will be further jeopardized by the war policy the White House is pursuing. Compared to this possibility, they see a contained Saddam Hussein as a lesser threat.
Democracy is supposed to be of the people, for the people and by the people. That should mean that the size, extent, and continuity of letters, faxes, e-mails, marches, and rallies about a single subject ought to give pause to policy makers in the choices they pursue in the name of the people. To compare the breadth and depth of the protests against the administration's inexorable march toward war to a "focus group" is to trivialize the views of the millions who participated in the weekend's events and the millions more who support them.
The Bush administration's dismissal of the democratic process is not confined to the people. It rails against the UN Security Council's careful deliberations -- at least when it comes to Iraq. But concerning North Korea's reactivation of its nuclear facilities, which arguably is a more imminent danger to the world, the U.S. pushed for a referral to the Council by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Within NATO, administration figures and some in Congress have heaped calumny on France, Germany, and Belgium because these three countries declined to go along with the dispatch of NATO assets to Turkey, whose territory might be attacked in retaliation to a U.S. offensive from the north against Iraq. In the end, a carefully worded statement emphasizing the defensive nature of the equipment to be sent -- airborne warning and control planes, Patriot anti-missile missiles -- permitted the necessary consensus to be reached.
Presidents who face significant and persistent popular opposition to White House policy seem to believe that they are "out in front" of popular opinion and that, with firm leadership, they can win over the public. This attitude, in turn, breeds the view that their opponents are either misguided, misinformed, or are purposefully being misled and manipulated for nefarious political reasons.
When elected officials become so singularly fixated on one narrow approach to policy, especially an approach that is as destructive as war, a fair question is whether government itself is misguided and misinformed. Indeed, in the case of Iraq, the validity of so much of the "evidence" has been challenged as to raise the possibility that a misguided policy is selectively influencing information and its interpretation, which in turn further fuels the policy's errant course.
In the Federalist Papers, James Madison warned against factions whose "impulse of passion, or of interest, [are] adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community." This past weekend was full of passion, but the concerns expressed by the numerous and broad cross-section of citizens were in support of the rights and the "aggregate interests of the community" for peace. For government to summarily dismiss those who participated is to hijack democracy just as surely as any faction with an "impulse of passion, or of interest."
Daniel Smith, a West Point graduate and Vietnam veteran, is Senior Fellow on Military Affairs at the Friends Committee on National Legislation.
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