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Editorial
Voicing Peace
It
could have been a scene in EDSA or Mendiola. This massive peaceful
protest gathering of a reported half a million people. Except that
the weather was bitingly and bitterly cold. Not since the anti-Vietnam
protest rallies in the early 70s has Washington DC experienced such
an overwhelming show of force. And
the demonstrators were not the usual protesters. They came from
all walks of life. Young and old, of different religious and political
persuasions. They came on foot, in cars, in buses from all over.
Even Ithaca from upstate New York sent five busloads that included
high school students who were eager to join the growing clamor to
“Act Now to Stop the War and End Racism.”
The peaceful
anti-war demonstration included families who suffered loss of a
loved one during that fateful day of September 11, 2001. “Not in
His name,” said one placard that had a picture of a victim of the
World Trade Center attack. It was a clear message to President Bush
not to use their suffering as an excuse to launch a war against
Iraq and cause similar pain to civilians who would surely bear the
brunt of war.
Until the
January 18 peace march to denounce Bush’s war plan against Iraq,
the American people had largely been disturbingly silent, acquiescing
by default to the US president’s rampaging campaign “to rid the
world of evil.” In Bush’s unnuanced world of black and white, the
US was the good guy, the keeper of the light, the one privileged
to own an arsenal of weapons that can annihilate the world, the
one with the right to violate the sovereignty of other nations on
the mere suspicion of having weapons of mass destruction or of harboring
terrorists. Thus, anyone not with the US in its war against terrorism
is against the US.
Patriotic
fervor after the September 11 attack provided fertile ground for
Bush’s policy of intolerance. In those early months, it had suddenly
become dangerous to be of Arab descent. A university student who
was born and raised in the United States was forced to drop out
when he found himself with no friends because of the color of his
skin. A mid-easterner who had gone home to tend to his ailing mother
found it difficult to return to his Filipina wife in the United
States. Not a few who dared question the administration policy met
with rebuke. And as the circle of the “evil” widened to include
Asian sites as possible terrorist havens, our own President declared
all out support for Bush’s policy, welcoming US troops to the Philippines
to help flush out the “terrorists,” irregardless of whether or not
this would infringe on our sovereignty.
It may well
be that Bush still thinks he could use patriotism and the September
11 tragedy for his war harangue against Iraq. But the shock of September
11 has worn off, and, thank goodness, more and more Americans are
refusing to be locked up in Bush’s black and white world. They do
not buy the line that to stop terrorism and preserve the world’s
peace is to wage combat operations against Iraq.
For the families
of victims of September 11, they cannot see how inflicting suffering
on Iraqi families will assuage their own pain. The best tribute
they feel they can give their loved ones is to work for “peaceful
tomorrows.”
Major religious
denominations in the US are also coalescing to oppose the war Bush
seems resolute to launch, even without the UN Security Council approval.
They believe the impending war will damage, not enhance, the US
standing in the community of nations. Giles Fraser of The Guardian
quotes Baptist minister Peter Gomes, “I demand a better excuse than
revenge or oil for the prosecution of a war that is likely to do
more harm than good, that will destabilize not only the region but
also the world for years to come, and that will confirm ... our
country’s reputation as an irrational and undisciplined bully.”
The youth
feel it their moral obligation to articulate their anti-war position.
It is after all, their present and their future that Bush is gambling
with. When interviewed on TV why she traveled through snowstorm
from Ithaca to join the protest march, Amanda Scherrer, 16-year
old daughter of Cornell academics Cliff and Jane Scherrer, said
it was important for her to make the world know that the young do
not think like Mr. Bush; that for them to have a world of peace
and a future to look forward to, they must themselves act on that
future now. When the young think and act this way, there is much
hope for the world.
But as more
and more people join the anti-war movement, Pentagon is stepping
up its war preparations. The deployment of more aircraft carriers
to the Persian Gulf continues. And Bush remains intransigent. But
it is a foolish leader who does not heed the counsel of his people
and listen to the wisdom of the youth.
We join hands
with the American people and with peace advocates world wide in
demanding a stop to war.
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REBYU
DISKUSYON
TAMPOK