Antiwar advocates: Stifled dissent or beaten in debate?

By W. James Antle III
web posted March 18, 2002

Critics of the war on terrorism have been marginalized for the
past six months, but want you to know that it is not because their
views are aberrant. It is rather because our recent military
actions have been supported by a domestic campaign to
suppress dissent.

The latest example that has them worked up into a lather is
William J. Bennett's Americans for Victory Over Terrorism.
Bennett and Empower America recently founded this
organization to counter attacks on the war on terrorism in the
academy and elsewhere, or as was said at a gathering of the
National Press Club "take to task those groups and individuals
who fundamentally misunderstand the nature of the war we are
facing." After all, David Horowitz can't be everywhere. The
group's senior advisors are former CIA Director R. James
Woosley, former Reagan Defense Department official Frank
Gaffney, former Attorney General William P. Barr and
Republican Jewish Coalition chairman Lawrence Kadish.

Bennett emphasizes that AVOT's objective was not to "silence
people; we wish to answer people." For his part, Woosley
maintained, "We're not here to shut anybody up or impugn their
patriotism or anything like that." But critics don't see it this way.
"This is a campaign of intimidation," avers David Corn,
Washington editor of The Nation. In a column for Alternet.org,
Jim Lobe darkly warned that Bennett, Woosley and Gaffney "are
all veteran members of a neo-conservative network of groups
with overlapping boards of directors" that support Israel and a
strong national defense. Harper's Magazine editor Lewis
Lapham has called the group "a front organization for the hard
neo-con right," an unlikely category of political analysis. Are you
or have you ever been a reader of Irving Kristol?

Putting aside the debate over neo-cons' politics, what then is
AVOT up to that bothers these liberal writers so? They appear
to take rather personally the argument that some of the anti-war
criticism being bandied about might "weaken national resolve" in
ways detrimental to the war on terror. Isn't this a ridiculous
assertion intended to suppress debate?

Corn heaps scorn on the very idea: "I suppose it is possible that
Kim Jong-Il, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and Saddam Hussein
monitor CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, and C-SPAN around the
clock and step up their nefarious plotting whenever they see
someone take issue with a portion of the war." But of course that
isn't the point. If our enemies detect indecision among our
political leaders or find in public opinion a lack of national will to
commit the necessary resources to vigorously contest terrorism,
they may rationally feel more secure in the commission of
terrorist acts or even conclude that terrorism pays. Alternately,
they can be informed of the scenarios they can work toward that
will defeat us, such as mounting casualties that might force a US
withdrawal from some locale where terrorist cells are being
combated.

AVOT is essentially an effort to prevent the antiwar movement
from doing in this war what it did during Vietnam. Vietnam was
initially a very popular military intervention according to public
opinion, but opposition from intellectuals, youth radicals and
others did have the effect of undermining support for continuing
the conflict in Washington. While this may or may not have been
a desirable outcome - Vietnam remains controversial to this day
- even the Soviet Union, much less the North Vietnamese or the
Viet Cong never inflicted the deaths of over 3,000 people on this
country in a domestic terrorist attack. The current war is
unambiguously in the national interest and the stakes are very
high. Singing "Kumbuya" will not make the threat go away.
AVOT seeks to engage the still tiny antiwar movement in debate
and beat them in the marketplace of ideas before they become
chic.

This doesn't mean we should ratify every aspect of the war
policy, or even every solution AVOT's heavies have to the
terrorist threat. This writer is skeptical about attacking Iraq (web
link:
http:
//www.enterstageright.com/archive/articles/0102/0102iraq.htm)
as part of an anti-terrorist campaign and opposed (web link:
http:
//www.enterstageright.com/archive/articles/1001/1001avoid.htm
) the "Project for A New American Century" letter to President
Bush.

Overzealous interventionists have recently been taken to task not
just by liberals, but also by the right. National Review On-Line
dropped Ann Coulter's column after her notorious "invade-kill-
and-Christianize" column shortly after Sept. 11 (this caused them
to miss out on her gem suggesting that Transportation Secretary
Norman Mineta is "burning with hatred for America" and is
consequently "subjecting all of America to the Bataan Death
March"). Perhaps to demonstrate that he was not the "girly-boy"
of Coulter's imaginings, NR editor Rich Lowry entertained - i.e.,
didn't instantly proclaim to be nuts - the idea of launching a
nuclear attack on Mecca suggested to him as a deterrent by a
reader in an e-mail. Former Spintech senior editor Jeremy Lott
took him to task for this in a piece posted on The American
Prospect's website. While The American Prospect may be
liberal, Lott - an occasional ESR contributor - most assuredly is
not. Peggy Noonan also gently pointed out in her column that
"we should probably not be having chatty conversations about
whether or not it would be a good idea to take out Mecca."

(To be fair, Lowry has emphasized that he does not advocate
nuking Mecca and that at least some portion of his reference to
the idea was sarcastic. He also described Noonan's as "a
perfectly fair and reasonable point." Nevertheless, when I read
his NRO piece about the possibility that North Korea already is
a nuclear state, I couldn't help but imagine he was going to
propose a first strike against Mecca to deter Pyongang. If I were
him, I'd write about the Laffer Curve for a while.)

This also doesn't mean that all criticism of the war should be off-
limits simply to avoid weakening national resolve. While most of
those criticizing the current interventions as "open-ended" are
either motivated by ideology or a partisan dislike of the Bush
administration that blinds them to the reality we are fighting an
open-ended enemy, insuring that the conflict has clear objectives
is important. We must make prudent use of our military abroad
and continue to abide by the Constitution at home. There is a lot
of ground in the debate over the use of American force between
Coulter and Noam Chomsky.

Yes, when important people appear critical of continued military
action against the terrorists who stalk our land and the regimes
that support them, it can lead to the perception that the United
States lacks the will to fight this war to fruition. But the most
important argument AVOT must make is not on the basis of
national resolve. It is that those who will not respond militarily to
terrorists are substantively wrong.

W. James Antle III (wjantle@enterstageright.com) is a senior
writer for Enter Stage Right.

Enter Stage Right - http://www.enterstageright.com