-Caveat Lector-
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/10.07A.wrp.no.retreat.htm
No Retreat, No Surrender
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Sunday, 6 October, 2002
To get to the Seaport Hotel, you must cross
over the Moakley Bridge, named for the recently deceased senior
Congressman from Massachusetts. The bridge lies in the shadow of a
new Federal courthouse that likewise bears his name.
Friday morning found a small crowd standing
on the crest of the bridge under a gray, windy sky, staring into
the fetid waters of the Fort Point Channel below. Periodically they
scanned the horizon, out by Logan airport, looking for a large
airplane with 'Air Force One' painted on the side to come out of
the clouds.
The crowd wasn't small for long. A number
of groups had been sounding the alarm for weeks - George W. Bush is
coming to Boston on October 4th to hobnob with Gubernatorial
candidate Mitt Romney, and to stand for pictures with devotees of
the GOP who were willing to cough up $5,000 for the privilege of a
photo-op with The Great Man. The love-in would be happening at the
Seaport Hotel, behind South Station, out by the World Trade Center,
out on the piers along the harbor. Bring signs, bring flyers, bring
your best shouting shoes, and meet on the bridge. We march on the
hotel before noon. The purpose of the protest: To try and stop this
coming war in Iraq.
The word was well-spread. Before 10:00
a.m., hundreds of people had come pouring out of the city and over
the bridge, bearing banners and signs and very worried faces. This
was no lark. The police in Portland several weeks before had
unleashed a terrible attack upon peaceful protesters outside
another Bush fundraising/campaign event. Several people were shot
with rubber bullets, and much of the crowd - including an infant
brought by a parent who never suspected there could be violence -
took a face-full of mace.
The crowd flowed into the provided First
Amendment Zone - a rectangle of road perched along a smaller
bridge. Citizens at the front were pressed against steel barriers
manned by police, hemmed in on both sides by water, with more
police flowing in behind. The Zone was several hundred yards from
the hotel door, and seemed designed to be a very effective killing
bottle. If things got out of hand, the protesters had nowhere to go
but into the Atlantic ocean or straight up to Heaven. Above, a
helicopter made slow, deliberate circles above the crowd, lingering
with menace at times while its rotors churned the air. On the roof
of the hotel, snipers watched impassively through binoculars.
The fear on the faces of the hundreds of
protesters did not come simply from a concern that they might meet
the business end of a police baton. The last several days of news
had made it all too clear that war with Iraq was inevitable. House
Minority Leader Dick Gephardt had inexplicably rolled over for the
Bush administration, promising them everything under the sun and
guaranteeing that the dangerously vague language of Bush's war
resolution would pass easily through that body. Subsequent media
reports suggested that the Senate, with a few dissenters, would
likewise approve the Bush resolution.
The Bush resolution references not simply
war on Iraq, but uses the opaque phrase "the region" when defining
the parameters of the engagement. If Congress passes the resolution
with that language intact, they will have granted Bush the legal
ability to make war on any Middle Eastern nation he wishes, without
the need to further consult Congress. The Bush resolution does not
contain any language including the United Nations in the
deliberations. In that resolution is the legalization of a
permanent state of hot war, managed and driven only from the White
House, and with no clearly defined end in sight. For the
neo-conservatives within the administration who have been wishing
for such a thing for years - Perle, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld and Cheney
- Congressional approval of this resolution would be a dream come
true.
The crowd of protesters in Boston was not
merely comprised of full-bore peace activists. A great many carried
signs demanding a return of basic diplomacy to the business of the
Oval Office. Other signs demanded United Nations involvement in
whatever happens, and denounced the concept of unilateral and
pre-emptive aggression. On every face was that stamp of fear, and
the full knowledge that the nation trembled on the edge of a
terrible, terrifying decision that would haunt us for generations
to come.
Pictures from the crowd: A little girl
standing with her father at the barricade, he in army fatigues, she
holding a sign reading, "Don't Kill My Daddy." A circle of drummers
pounding a martial beat, giving rhythm to the chants of the
assembled. A woman in evening wear, wending through the crowd, who
chose the wrong route to get to the hotel door for her picture with
Bush, turning and slapping a protester who asked her how she could
be associated with the GOP. A man in an expensive suit, also
walking through the crowd to the hotel, barking at someone to "Get
a job!" only to hear the response, "In this economy?" The urgency
of the hoarse chants - "One, two, three, four, we don't want your
oil war!" Always, the helicopter above. Always, the fear.
The protesters in Boston on October 4th
were but one physical representation - repeated in New Hampshire
and Portland and Denver and Phoenix and New York and California and
London - of a tremor of terror that thrums through this land. The
Bush administration means to make war in Iraq, despite the absence
of a threat to our nation, despite the absence of any credible hint
of evidence to suggest a threat, despite the repudiation this will
bring from the international community, despite the damage that
such action will do to our already-bleeding economy, despite the
incredible chaos that will be unleashed in the Middle East, despite
the specter of thousands of American military casualties and tens
of thousands of civilian dead, and despite the brass-bound surety
that such action will bring down more terrorism on our shores.
The Bush administration means to make war,
and the Congress appears ready to give him legal protection for a
widening of that war in directions not to be contemplated in
comfort or calm. The war is being pushed during the buildup towards
an incredibly important midterm Congressional election season, a
calculated maneuver designed to hem in Congress members who might
otherwise stand against Bush. This cynical tactic appears to be
working - Senator Robert Byrd has said he will filibuster the
resolution if enough Americans call his office and voice their
concerns, but too many others seem unable to summon the courage to
fight this wretched future.
The people of this nation do not want this
war, the international community does not want this war, and every
argument for this war flies in the face of caution and fact. Yet it
comes inexorably. The protesters in Boston knew perhaps some of
this, or all of this, but stood anyway in defiance and shouted down
the man who would lead them to dissolution. The defiance is
mandated, if only to represent the feelings of the country, if only
to throw down a marker before the world, if only to remind Congress
that we are watching, we see what they do, and we will not forget
this moment in time.
Bruce Springsteen played to a packed house
at the Fleet Center in Boston that Friday night. His fans,
accustomed to power-chord anthems and melancholy ballads about
love, cars and blue-collar survival, were treated to a rather
solemn evening of songs from his new album, 'The Rising,' which
deals on many levels with the events of September 11th, 2001. Had
he been with the protesters on the Moakley Bridge, in the First
Amendment Zone outside the Seaport Hotel, had he known all the
seemingly insurmountable dangers arrayed before this nation and the
world, dangers brought forth in no small part by the deadly
miscalculations and deliberate obfuscations of the Bush
administration, he might have added a final song to his playlist.
No retreat, baby. No surrender.
-------
William Rivers Pitt is a teacher from
Boston, MA. He is the author of two books - "War On Iraq" (with
Scott Ritter) available now from Context Books, and "The Greatest
Sedition is Silence," available in April 2003 from Pluto Press.
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