[Mb-hair] Something happening here ...

[Reeeees at aol.com]

Thursday, November 10, 2005 | Los Angeles  Times
Something happening here  ...
By Mark Rudd
 
MARK RUDD, who led the student uprising at Columbia  University in 1968 and 
then became a member of the Weather Underground, teaches  math at a community 
college in New Mexico.
 
I JOINED THE anti-Vietnam War movement as an  18-year-old college student, a 
freshman at Columbia University. It was the fall  of 1965, just months after 
the U.S. began sending ground combat troops to  Southeast Asia. 
 
The older members of the Columbia chapter of Students  for a Democratic 
Society explained to me that unlike World War II, Vietnam was  an imperial war, a 
war of occupation whose purpose was the repression of a  national liberation 
movement. We were a small group then, but over the next  three years SDS became 
a critical part of a larger antiwar coalition. Our anger  mounted, our 
protests grew and our ranks burgeoned. Unfortunately, we went many  bridges too far 
and got ensnared in the hallucination of revolution. By 1969, it  became more 
important in SDS to fight each other over who had the "correct  revolutionary 
line" than to fight against the war itself. 
 
Early the next year, while the war was still raging, my  own faction, the 
Weathermen, made the stupid and ultimately disastrous decision  to disband SDS 
and opt instead for "armed struggle," our middle-class version of  urban 
guerrilla warfare. Predictably, we became isolated and irrelevant over the  ensuing 
years, even as the larger antiwar movement went on to achieve its goal:  U.S. 
withdrawal from Vietnam. 
 
I often wonder what would have resulted over the long  haul if SDS — which 
represented the radical, anti-imperialist wing of the  antiwar movement — had 
not chosen to self-destruct in violence and fantasy but  instead had kept 
plugging away, encouraging more and more people to understand  and oppose the 
building of an American empire.
 
This question seems particularly relevant today, 40  years later, as a 
reawakening antiwar movement prepares to confront many of the  same issues. Who 
benefits and who loses from an American empire? What are the  moral and economic 
and spiritual costs to Americans? Is a system of  international law possible as 
an alternative to endless use of American military  power? Viewed against the 
bleak future that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice are  offering Americans and 
the rest of the world, these questions begin to seem more  practical than 
idealistic.
 
What's hard to understand — given the revelations about  the rush to war, the 
use of torture and the loss of more than 2,000 soldiers —  is why the antiwar 
movement isn't further along than it is. Given that President  Bush is now 
talking about Iraq as only one skirmish in an unlimited struggle  against a 
global Islamic enemy, a struggle comparable to the titanic, 40-year  Cold War 
against communism, shouldn't a massive critique of the global war on  terrorism 
already be underway? 
Yet the movement has remained small and  politically isolated since the 
original outpouring of opposition in the spring  of 2003, during the run-up to the 
war. In part, it was the victim of its own  early success, the spontaneous 
demonstrations involving millions of people in  the streets here and around the 
world trying to stop the war before it began.  When this initial outburst 
failed, many became demoralized and hopeless. 
 
Then, in 2004, most of the pent-up antiwar energy  flowed into John Kerry's 
campaign, with little to show for it but further  demoralization. The movement 
caught a second wind with the energizing presence  of Cindy Sheehan, but it 
remains small compared with the outpouring against the  Vietnam War. 
 
Probably it's because there's no draft now. Clearly the  fact that 
middle-class boys across the country were receiving draft cards and  lottery numbers 
went a long way toward helping spur resistance to the Vietnam  War. Nor is there 
a countercultural movement today that questions authority like  the one that 
emerged in the 1960s and 1970s. 
 
But building a movement can be done. To increase our  ranks, we'll need to 
break through the too-common belief that change is  impossible. 
 
We'll also need to take on the larger war. As the next  battle heats up, 
perhaps against Iran or Syria, the movement will have to ask  the American people 
to look honestly at who we are in the world. The antiwar  movement will have 
to engage in the most difficult dialogue of our lives with  our neighbors. 
 
Throughout American history, popular movements have  made vast 
transformations in the social and political geography of this country  — the abolition 
movement, the women's suffrage movement, the civil rights  movement, the labor 
movement, the gay movement. 
 
My own contribution is to tell the story of how an  antiwar movement 
involving millions of people accomplished something unique in  American history and 
almost unique in the history of empires: We helped stop a  war of aggression by 
our own country. This was American democracy at its best. I  lived through it, 
I saw it with my own eyes. 
 
If all of us "gray-hairs" were to tell our stories, we  might be able to make 
a contribution. At least we could help people find hope in  this dark time.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.islandlists.com/pipermail/mb-hair/attachments/20051110/6d26989c/attachment.htm