By RJ Schinner, 2/9/07
In confronting the
challenges of ending the war and driving out the Bush regime, all too often the
“conventional wisdom” and “rules” of how to move millions of people to resist actually
hold people back from mobilizing people to act on what is in the interests of
humanity. Below is part one of a series
on worldcantwait.org about the “rules”
and the reality of what it will take to move millions of people to resist and
stop the direction the Bush regime is taking the world.
Rule #1:
There has to be a draft for
there to be a student movement against the war.
Reality:
This whole notion that
people only act to change the world when it directly affects them and only out
of their own narrow self-interest is quite frankly bullshit.
Just think about any
movement for progressive social change.
History has seen many examples of people seeing a profound injustice,
finding it intolerable to allow it to continue, and changing their lives to
stop it.
When the United States was bombing the civilian
population of Vietnam,
a core of students became conscious of the unjust war being carried out by
their government, and sparked a society-wide rebellion against the war. While the draft certainly focused many
people’s attention on the war and undoubtedly caused more people to resist, the
core of the anti-war movement in the 60’s was motivated not out of the fear of
being drafted, but out of an understanding of the war crimes being committed
and a moral responsibility to stop them.
Even the resistance inside the military was guided to a large degree by
many soldiers” increasing disgust with the horrors they were being ordered to
carry out – not simply from being sick of having to fight and die. This whole history has been hidden, and the deceitful
story now told is that the movement against the Vietnam War happened because of
the draft.
Today, the Bush regime is
committing war crimes on a massive scale in Iraq, and threatening to bring the
same destruction to other countries.
Bombing of civilian populations.
Systematic torture. Use of
chemical weapons. Destruction of
infrastructure. Massacres of Iraqi
people. Confronting a generation with
this reality can be the impetus for a resistance movement to take hold on the
college campuses. When people understand
what their government is doing in their names, and are challenged with the
moral responsibility that goes with this understanding, the campuses can be
transformed quickly from being all too passive to being places where people
refuse to allow war crimes to continue in their names.
|
War crimes are being committed by your government. |
The beginnings of this kind
of transformation can be seen in the student strikes against the war called for
on several campuses Feb. 15th.
As students at Columbia
College put it:
We
will no longer go on with business as usual as if this is not happening. For
millions of Iraqis, daily life is characterized by bloodshed and horror.
For Iraqi civilians, networking, grades, and career planning are not
options. In solidarity with the civilians of Iraq
and in opposition to the horrific crimes of our government; we the students of
Columbia College Chicago are joining University
of California – Santa
Barbara and Columbia
University by declaring a
student strike on February 15.
The simple fact is, human
beings are perfectly capable of understanding when a profound injustice is
being carried out and on that basis being moved to do everything to stop
it. Moreover, one of the good things
about students is they”re not so ground down by everyday life, have a certain
ability to get a broader view of the world, the tools to understand the world,
and have more freedom to act to change the world. The question is, what will this freedom be
used for?
To resign ourselves to the
notion that people can only be moved to act when it affects them directly is to
resign ourselves to accepting an unjust war, torture, and living in an empire
that pulverizes and destroys the rest of the world. Rather than resigning ourselves to what is
dictated as the rules of resistance, we need to be on a mission to challenge
people, and especially students, that it is simply unacceptable to allow this
carnage to continue. We need to look at
what’s in the interests of humanity and challenge others to do the same, rather
than seek to appeal to people based on more narrow self-interest.
Fuck the rules.
Drive out the Bush regime.