Bjorn Staerk thinks it will be harder for the Europeans to continue to be against the actual war, as opposed to the predicted catastrophe:
Ebb of the peace movement?
Posted Thursday April 03, 2003 18:00 CET by Bjørn Stærk
There was an interesting debate on TV2's Holmgang yesterday, and it could be a part of a shift in public opinion on Iraq. To be against a potential war is not the same as being against an on-going war, and hoping that the US doesn't attack Iraq isn't the same as hoping that it will lose, once it does. War is uncertainty, and in the anti-war climate that existed here before March 20, it's really no wonder that many people would imagine an Iraq war straight out of the darkest pages of history - long, brutal, pointless. But once the shooting actually begins, the possible outcomes narrow down very quickly, except for people who live entirely in their own fantasy world.
From a humanitarian disaster that would send millions on the run as refugees, last well through the "brutal Iraqi summer", kill houndreds of thousands of civilians and lit the Middle Eastern powder keg, the Norwegian media image of the Iraq war has turned into something closer to a few months long semi-tough struggle with Saddam loyalists, with civilian casualties in the thousands, the reception cold and resentful, and American victory inevitable if they can stomach the casualties. That's not support, but it's important to realize the difference between these two wars: the potential one, an outrageous catastrophe, vs the real one, a war that's harder to win than "some people predicted", marred by occasional misbombings, but not dominated by them.
This has to have an effect on the peace movement and how it is perceived. For one thing, as their worst fears fails to manifest, I expect its sensible members to speak more softly, raise "concerns" instead of predicting disaster, though not change their minds - not just yet. That leaves behind the wackier members of the peace movement as its most visible elements, the ones that define the anti-war side of the public debate. Another effect of the potential war turning real is that it's no longer all that interesting whether you were for or against the war in the first place. Once it has begun, it's more interesting how you want it to end. And just as the position that appeared most prudent and moral in the media before the war began was to support peace, (because the alternative was war, which is evil), the position I expect to seem most sensible now that the war has started, is to hope for the Americans to win, despite their arrogance and stupidity, (because the alternative is for an evil dictator to beat a democratic ally, which is bad, and hey wouldn't it be nice to be rid of Saddam?)
That's what I expect anyway, that the peace movement, which in Norway was a popular movement with a lot of non-wacky and politically mainstream members, will gradually be left to its wacky members, and also be perceived publicly as wacky and extremist. It's not easy for me to be sure if or when this happens, that is, when the peace movement loses hold of the mainstream, because to me it has been totally wacky all the time. It's not easy to pick up nuances at a distance.
But it could be happening now, and that's where the TV debate I mentioned enters the picture. That American foreign policy is stupid and/or evil is practically beyond debate here, (and I don't think a successful war will change that), and that assumption leaves any intelligent debate on the war dead before it begins. But there is a wide open side entrance for pro-war opinion into Norway, and that's Eastern Europe. When I read an article by Polish-born Nina Witoszek in Aftenposten describing the odd dilemma that many Eastern European intellectuals (Vaclav Havel, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Adam Michnik, Czeslaw Milosz, György Konrad, Wolf Biermann) actually support the war, I shrugged - well of course they do, I thought. I forgot that "Eastern European intellectual" is a term that has nothing but positive connotations, in Norway as in any Western country, so when one of them agree with the US, people actually sit up and listen.
Witoszek's article lead directly to that TV debate yesterday, which posed the question of whether members of the anti-war movement are ignorant of history. Invited were Erling Borgen, Per Egil Hegge, an editor of Klassekampen (Class Struggle), and a few others. Borgen is NRK's former foreign correspondent to South America, and has sailed up as a leading figure in the peace movement, (besides Petter Nome). His many years in South America have apparently left him extremely bitter towards the US. Klassekampen is a communist daily, not much read but fondly ridiculed, and taken somewhat seriously as one of the "opinion-carrying newspapers", as we call low-circulation ideological papers in Norway. Hegge is Aftenposten's former foreign correspondent to the US, skeptical towards Bush and the war, but perhaps the only significant pro-US presence in the Norwegian media.
What struck me watching this was how extremely repulsive Erling Borgen's anti-Americanism appeared. His every statement turning into long, breathless Chomskyish rants, empty of any nuance, qualification or doubt, every opportunity to paint Americans badly exploited to the extreme - all I could think was: Norwegians are smarter than this. Contrast him with Per Egil Hegge, a coldly analyzing debater rather than a rhetorician, who'll refuse to be budged from his more quiet, nuanced style, but will throw a well-placed insult when a good opportunity opens. The boor vs the sharp-shooter. Taking place in the real-war context I described above, where hyperbole must pass the test of reality, this is the first time I have gotten the clear impression that the Norwegian peace movement actually lost a TV debate.
I could be wrong, so let's call it a working theory. Certainly there's a significant number of Norwegian wacky leftists, and will always be. But I find it hard to believe that anyone who isn't a wacky leftist (and most aren't) could listen to Erling Borgens angry tirades, full of obvious logical shortcuts and populistic sensationalism, and identify with his position. They could when the issue was very vague, war or peace, but it's a bit harder when it's specifically the US or the Baath Party. If that is the case, the peace movement has begun to die as a popular movement, (but not as a movement), and will only revive if something unexpected happens, (Americans carpet bomb Baghdad, war drags on through the year, etc.)
The potential war was Vietnam. The real one isn't, and therefore can't maintain a full grown Vietnam movement of its own.
bearstrong.net |
