20% Got it Right
I just finished a book by Paul Rieckhoff, a soldier who spent the first few years of the Iraq War in Baghdad. He was an infantry platoon leader, so his perspective is that from one on the front lines. The book is titled Chasing Ghosts. It is well written, lively, down to earth, and quite insightful. If you ever wonder what it is like to be stationed in Iraq in the infantry, this is the closest you can come to understanding the mindset involved. There is nothing about the Iraq War I have ever liked. I marched with others in the streets of Chicago to protest starting that War, every damn thing I projected (along with many others) that would happen, DID. The consequences of this War, which still continues, has reeked total havoc on Iraq, has done immeasurable damage to the image of America across the globe, has left money for domestic American issues nonexistent, and generated the kind of religious hatred which produces the kind of fanatical killing fields across the globe, which are almost impossible to reign in. Religious fanatics of all ilk (maybe with Buddhism as an exception) are ever so willing to kill, go to War, torture, and jail their perceived 'heathens'. At the end of each religious blood bath, it is always vowed 'never again' but this wisdom is not the kind of thing one generation can pass on to the next. And all this amidst environmental and human population pressures which create conditions never faced by the human species since it first evolved.
It seems SO long ago I marched against ever starting that War. I guess it was way back in March 2002. I think I marched in part because I had not really marched or done much of anything on any of the major social issues of my time. If blks got to attend white schools, if women got rights denied---well if any group got any justice in my time, it wasn't because I was out in the streets on their behalf. For most of my life I was closer to the mindset that if someone didn't like it here 'they could leave'. Things were ok for me. so these rabble rousers were nothing but an irritant. It took years of teaching, of being exposed to these discordant elements of our society in meaningful ways, before I began to understand just how un-level the playing field was for so many groups. Of course you don't get many points siding with those groups outside your own group---it almost reeks of disloyalty and leaves you isolated from any group. In some respects it puts you in some sort of no man's land. Fortunately for me, no man's land was more liberating, and brought more contentment than being in the right box with braces on my brain.
That march back in 2002 did not stop the War, it only closed down Lake Shore Drive for a period of time and did serve to impress me a lot with the kind of people who participated. I have never been in a crowd so diverse. When it comes to questions of War, decency, and fairness---no ethnic, religious, economic, or social group has any monopoly on these measures. I remember many things about that march, things kind of permanently etched in my mind. It was a total mixture of poor, wealthy, middle income, blk, white, hispanic, Asian, every religious persuasion, young, middle aged, old, handicapped, non handicapped, etc. It was one of those rare instances when one feels human, not a partisan clans-person of some sort.
It was in Daley PLaza roped off on the perimeter by horses end to end. The speeches were too loud and too emotional for me and after a bit I decided to leave. Surprise! I couldn't get out. No one could get in or out. The Plaza was filled. The people were excited and the police, almost to a man/woman were filled with hostility at the spectacle. We were all, to them, the unpatriotic scum of the country. At that time about 80% of Americans were for invading Iraq. They had swallowed all the lies fed to them by their own government. It was going to be like Grenada, go in, kick a little ass, save the people from a dictator, and as icing on the cake show the Muslims how to run a country. A bit of showoff bravado for every taste.
I told some cops on the horses that I really just wanted to leave, let me through.
One told me I should have thought about that before I came there. But the idea of letting people leave appealed to their mood of the moment, so they parted a few horses for me and a couple of others to leave. MISTAKE. I was practically propelled through the opening like a cannon ball when some agitated young people, some with drums, bull horns, whistles, and whatever, surged through the opening depositing me and anyone in front of them out on Madison Avenue. Immediately the whole Daley Plaza was emptying out onto Madison Avenue and the Police were radioing for permission to arrest, mace, or do whatever it took to contain the crowd. They were extremely angry when the word came down for them to let the people march until they damaged anything and then use force. MISTAKE. For the most part, people who are against going to War are not the type who revel in smashing up things, turning over cars, smashing store windows. I can't remember all the slogans but all sorts of clever ones with the same message---'No war'.---were filling the air in deafening volumes. And the drums were beating, whistles blowing, and people in cars trapped among masses of people heading for Michigan Avenue, who, in some cases, probably out of fear, were all giving thumbs up to us as we proceeded. I remember one cop on his radio saying, "No they are not damaging anything but we can't stop them, they refuse to stop or go where we tell them." Fortunately we live in an age where police have to have good reason to assault citizens who are protesting peacefully. True, we had no permission to be on the street, but true, people who are against a war need some room to make their point. The disruption we caused that rush hour weekday afternoon was miniscule compared to the disruption subsequently caused by the war. It was March, and March in Chicago is no picnic weather. The march didn't start off with all that many. I don't know, maybe a thousand. So the Police Command Center told the officers to let them march, stay with them, keep them in the street. MISTAKE. As the march progressed more and more people, many heading to train stations to go home, or waiting for buses, began to join in the march, so the numbers kept growing. Thus at some point, as the numbers grew to tens of thousands, the police were unsure how to stop that many people. In an age of instant communication with TV, internet, and cell phones, people began racing downtown to join the March. When the March got near my train station I had no idea where the hell it was going and feared I would end up too far from the train station to be able to walk back. Something to do with aging joints. At first I was right up front in the March, having been pushed into the lead with the initial thrust through the police line, but a little birdie told me to fall back a bit, not look like some kind of leader. There was going to come a point when someone was going to get clubbed around. Well, that little birdie took too long to enlighten me. A week later, when it was a special on Public Television, there I was, right up in front, surrounded by these energetic (screaming) young people---I suppose looking like a 60's hippie having been raised from the dead for the occasion. Maybe I am still on some official potential terrorist list.
When I got to my suburban station an hour later I heard on the radio that the March was still going on at 10PM, and they were now up around Chicago Avenue. The march had started around 5PM. They had marched onto Lake Shore Drive and closed that down, and the Police, I can well imagine, were by then livid with anger, hostility, hungry and tired, and no green light to beat the hell out of these unpatriotic scums, but finally---near midnight, got the green light to make arrests. When they moved they charged in and grabbed whomever they could and threw them in Paddy Wagons lined up for blocks. It really didn't make much difference who they grabbed as everyone was doing the same thing----marching. Of course the police had to stop it, if they didn't it would have gone on all night and all the next day, virtually forever with different people joining and leaving the march. Of course when the cases got to court the Judges threw out all the charges figuring the bruises and overnight jail time was sufficient. Of course the police felt, as usual, they do their job and the judges let the arrested go free. Democracy can be messy.
And of course the War shortly commenced. Our President was going to War, alone if necessary, and like planned clockwork---a few weeks later the President put on his bomber jacket and declared 'Mission Accomplished'. To be fair to the President he didn't really identify what mission was accomplished. Maybe it was the mission to dupe the American public into a War which should never have been waged, would break us financially, send millions of Iraqis into exile, kill hundreds of thousands of Iraqi (most by their own people), jail thousands of innocent Iraqi people (turned in by personal enemies to teach them a lesson), turn the whole country into piles of rubble, leave vast portions of the people unemployed, without electricity most of the time, and swell the ranks of terrorists worldwide to levels which would destabilize many areas of the world for years to come, and leave our own country at risk for retaliation by the friends and relatives of the millions of victims of the War. No surprise, really. After all Bush did say, 'Bring em on'. And they are still coming, seven years later----poorer, angrier----with nothing left to lose---and 'God' on their side, with the world becoming unsafe in more and more places. What a War this has been. One for the books with no easy happy ending in sight.
I wonder how many of those same cops who hated us marchers so intensely, ever look back and say to themselves, 'those unpatriotic scums had it right. More people should have marched". Incidentally, to my knowledge, not one mainstream politician marched or spoke that day. Nope, not even Obama. He got it right, but he didn't march. For once I did. In my heart, good for me. Better late than never. And just to think----I inadvertently started the march by asking for a path to leave. I guess being circumstantially relevant is better than irrelevancy. One could argue the whole exercise was irrelevant---the War happened anyway. Hey, walk through a graveyard and ask yourself how many of the long dead were ever relevant to the millions of years old God created evolutionary process? The real tough questions are beyond human reason.
