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War in the New Era Essays by Barbara Ehrenreich, Bogdan

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War in the New Era Essays by Barbara Ehrenreich, Bogdan Inside: Third Wave Feminism PUBLISHED BY THE DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISTS OF AMERICA March/ April 1993 Volume XXI Number 2 War in the New Era Essays by Barbara Ehrenreich, Bogdan Denitch, and Michael Walzer ALSO: Health Care Activism + Lesbian and Gay Struggles + Julia Reichert's New Film INSIDE DEMOCRATIC LEFT Justice Delayed On the Left by Harry Fleischman . 12 by Dorothee Benz ... 2 DSAction . .. 13 War in the New Era: Third Wave Feminism Thoughts on Interventions in the Post­ by Bonnie Pfister . 14 Cold War World, with contributions from Barbara Ehrenreich, Bogdan In for the Long Haul: Denitch, and Michael Walzer . .. 3 Notes on Julia Reichert's New Film Health Care Reform in Kentucky by David Glenn . .. 20 by Chuck Sohner . .. l 0 Jimmy Higgins Reports ... 24 cover photo by Enrique Marti/Impact Visuals day bigots, too, shaU become a remember Birmingham's Sixteenth EDITORIAL shameful footnote in humankind's Street Baptist Church. The Septem­ struggle against fear and ignorance. ber 1963 bombing that took the lives The slow but steady gains of the of fo ur Sunday school students was JUSTICE gay rights movement over the last as sure a sign of progress a:-. the par­ quarter century have provoked a tial desegregation of the city that vicious and often violent backlash in preceded it. Violence is the last ref­ DELAYED recent years. Last year there were uge of those whose idea::; are losing BY DOROTHEE BENZ fo!Jr anti-gay ballot initiatives in the power. United States; one, in Colorado, Martin Luther King argued that The homosexual community stated passed. Ballot measure 9 in Oregon one has a moral responsibility to that they will infiltrate the schools and would have declared homosexuality oppose unjust laws. He defined un­ take ouer children at a young age. "perverse and unnatural"; it failed, just laws, in part, as those that pre­ Because half of them are dead and are but not before two gay Oregonians scribe difference among human going to die because of AIDS, and they were murdered, and many more as­ beings, such a:-. segregatJ n statutes. need a new outlet to recruit. -- Dolores saulted. In October, gay Seaman Clearly, the military's ban on gays Ayling, founder of Concerned Par­ Allen Schindler was beaten and lac­ falls in thesamec.ategory, as does the ents for Educational Accountability, erated to death beyond recognition. anti-gay statute m Colorado. To New York Newsday, 2/8/93 In January three Marines dragged cha! lenge and overcome these laws is I am not afraid of the word 'tension' Crae Pridgen out of a bar and beat our obligation. We can begin by join­ .. .th e kind oftension in society that will him because, they said, they hated all ing the gay righb march m Washing­ help men [sic] rise from the dark depths of homosexuals. ton on Apnl 25. prejudice. - Martin Luther King, Jr., There are many who would ar­ Letter from Birmingham Jail, 1963 gue that such violence is a reason to DEMOCRATIC LEFT There have been times in history delay lifting the military ban, lest when those who would exclude and mandated social tolerance provoke Ma11agi11g Editor persecute certain members of the more violence. The same was said in Michael Lighty human community claimed thatJews Birmingham in 1963. But it is always Produdion used the blood of Christian children wrong to delay justice because it Dui d Glenn in their religious rituals, just as they might provoke violence. Moreover, Editorial Committee now claim that gays will pervert and acceding to this argument gives J~nne Barkan, Dorothee Benz, molest children. Opponents of lifting power to those who would threaten Howard Croft, Mitch Horowitz, the ban on gays in the military clamor gays -- or any other vulnerable Sherri levine, Neil McLaughlin, that morale will be shattered by members of our society. Maxine Phi!lips making heterosexual and homosex­ That there can be no progress Founding Editor ual men share showers and foxholes, without struggle is an old adage, but Michael Harrington (1928-1989) as once they protested the integration one that is nonetheless true. If Presi­ Ooall!Cnd< I.aft ([Sb.'I 016403207) I I ~od bimomhly t! 1' of blacks into the armed services. If it dential retreat in the face of right­ °"'1<h5'., • 500, NY, NY10038 S.Cond-d•1> S-~g< peldotN<w Yor~ . NY(Publicallon Nu. 070 1 -%07). ~ Slr.gul.u; is true that oppressed people cannot wing opposition depresses us; if gay­ nSINtilubONI Poocmo1t.rS.r.daddr-<honge1<>lSOutthS< I 500. NY, NY 1003". Dtrn«T•"< I.flt 1> ~ lb)' ltw remain oppressed forever, then there bashing in the pulpits and in the o..-:r-11< Sod>!a10 of Amonuo, ISDulcl>.Sr.. 1~ """k'. !1.'Ylrolll will come a day when these latter- streets arouses despair, we should (212) !'62.0J'}O 518""' llffi:lts aftrSS IW~ .Va!ll;nnl I "''"'' 2 DEMOC RATIC Lr.FT War in the New Era: Thoughts. On Interventions in the Post-Cold War World The last few months have seen the U.S. participate in military interventions of all sorts -- unilateral and multilateral -- in coun­ tries as diverse as Iraq, Somalia, and Bosnia. How should U.S. democratic socialists respond to such actions? Following are two essays -- one by DSA Honorary Chair Barbara Ehrenreich and one by DSA Vice Chair Bogdan Denitch -- along with a short reply by Dissent co-editor Michael Walzer. I. BARBARA EHRENREICH: "BREAK THE Aoo1cr10N" thout any overriding strategic lesson was to ban the media ~ntirely, as!in the considerations to justify them, media-invisible invasion of Grenada. The next, U.S. military interventions have and far craftier, step was to enlist the media W become increasingly arbitrary, directly in the war effort, which was what hap­ even whimsical. An intervention can be pened in Panama, and, most stunningly, in Iraq. launched to salvage a president's popularity, to Operation Desert Storm was our first made­ influence a domestic election (in the case of for-TV war. Admirers of this war can cite George Bush's contemplated raid on Iraq dur­ dozens of justifications for it; and surely some ing the 1992 Republican national convention), or response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait was called to amuse a lame-duck president during his final for (though it should have been offered before weeks in office. The most disturbing develop­ the damage was done, when Hussein first made ment in post-cold war interventions is what I his intentions known to April Glaspie). Noth­ call "wars of spectacle" -- military operations ing, however, justified the actual response, undertaken chiefly for their domestic political which was war, and of course a war which impact. The most promising development, punished hundreds of thousands of Iraqis while many would say, is the altruistic, "purely hu­ leaving the perpetrator more firmly entrenched manitarian" intervention, such as the ongoing than ever. one in Somalia. Both call for sophisticated and The reasons for war lie in Bush's domestic imaginative responses from a revived peace difficulties in the summer of 1990 -- the S&L movement. crisis involving his son and the beginnings of a The war of spectacle has evolved out of a feeble Democratic congressional response to slow and painful redefinition of the relations supply-side economics. And the war was, at between the military and the media. In Viet­ least until its disquieting end in the desert "tur­ nam, the military learned that the media could key shoot," a magnificent and gripping spec­ be another "enemy" -- undermining domestic tacle: CNN and the networks offered special support by revealing the daily atrocities that logos and theme music, even several-minute­ constituted the war. The first application of that long, gauzy, MTV-ish videos featuring flutter- MARCH/APRIL 1993 3 War in the New Era ing flags, handsome soldiers in the desert, Grenada on, I suggest that the anti-war move­ church steeples at home. ment raise the following three questions as The anti-war movement tried to counter loudly as possible whenever our leaders start with its own spectacle of mass demonstrations, contemplating a new one: but was easily eclipsed. Both print and elec­ 1. Why war? There will be countless provo­ tronic media ignored the demonstrations, shut cations at least as serious as the invasion of out the dissidents, and focused on the glorious Kuwait. The habitual response of nation-states crusade in the Middle East. For Bush, the whole to provocations is war; war is what nation-states thing was a great success, at least temporarily, -- with their standing armies and powers of and well into the summer of '91 commentators taxation -- are set up to do. I am not a pacifist; praised the war -- not for achieving any strategic sometimes, no doubt, war is the only possible or foreign policy goals - but for "bringing us response. But war is an instrument that has to be together," curing "the Vietnam syndrome," and used only with the greatest caution and reluc­ making us "feel good about America." tance, since its effect is always to extend the If the Gulf War knocked the wind out of the cycle of violence and revenge that leads ineluc­ peace movement, the intervention in Somalia tably to the next war. (And we may only see the would seem to have eliminated its very reasons bloody residue of Desert Storm when a genera­ for existence. This is unquestionably a military tion of Iraqi youths enters adulthood.) intervention - led by generals and involving a One lesson of Desert Storm is that anti-war massive deployment of troops -- but its aim education and persuasion cannot be taken up in could not be more kindly and pacific: safe­ an ad hoc manner on the eve of each threatened guarding the delivery of food to starving war.
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