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Saturday
November 17, 2001

Opposing Jane Fondaism

Leyla Momeny's opinion piece "Opposing John Wayneism" about anti-war dissidents in America, is in my opinion, a flawed contribution. For one, readers not resident in the USA might well be left with the impression that the supposed "anti war" movement in America is far larger and more influential than it is in fact. Although it is true as Momeny reports that anti war activists have emerged in the wake of the American counter attack on the Taliban and their "guests," their numbers have been fairly small. In the San Francisco Bay Area for example--certainty one of the most left of center spots in America-the largest demonstration against the war gathered around 5,000 people. I can assure you, as a long time resident, that is minor by San Francisco standards whose residents consider demonstrations a hobby. By contrast at the start of the American/British-Iraq war in the early 1990s, around 200,000 people demonsatretaed on a single day in this city against the war. Hopefully this adds some perspective when one considers the level of American opposition to the war in Afghanistan. I can assure you when President Bush gets a majority approval rating in San Francisco, a city where Republicans are an endangered species, it constitutes a mandate from America's liberals and radicals.

Further, as Momeny's article implies much of the supposed anti war protests are actually multi issue affairs ranging from opposition to the death penalty to opposition to globilization. To call them "anti war" protests grants them far more consistency and coherence then they deserve. At best, the war has only been a catalyst for a group of permanent dissidents to vent their favorite causes. And of course there is always the reunion factor: activists from the 1960s frequently show up at such protests to relive the "good old days." Indeed, these veterans of the 1960s have been predicting the return of a mass anti war movement for over 30 years now without I might, add much to offer in the way of proof. But there is the same old reunion every few years, when ever even one American soldier is deployed in a combat role.

Moreover, one has to hope the anti-war activists Momeny has interviewed are not terribly representative of their movement. If so, I am even more convinced than ever that such a movement will fail to gain a serious hearing among the American public which will easily recognize the internal contradictions questionable argumentation. When asked for example, what the effect of the September 11th attacks has been on the Palestine issue, a student-activist named Behzad Raghian replied that the American media immediately broadcast images of Palestinian children celebrating the attacks on New York City but he says such images were "ripped out of context," and thus unfairly used to discredit the Palestinian cause. Putting aside the fact that the American media was not obsessed with such images (and perhaps even under reported the pro-Osama demonstrations among Palestinians) one must ask this budding peacenik what exactly is the proper context to understand such celebrations? What would al Jazeera do if the Israelis held demonstrations celebrating the massacres at Sabra and Chatila? I doubt that pleading for contextual understanding would on the lips of many in the Arab and Islamic world or the American "peace" movement for that matter. The art of rationalization is endless and so called anti war activist prove that all the time. (Just for the record: hundreds of thousands of Israelis protested the Sabra and Chatila massacres and their own governments role in them.)

Indeed, I strongly suspect these peaceniks would be lining up to personally push the buttons to launch cruise missiles if the female phobic Taliban and al Qeada had blond hair, blue eyes, and spoke German. Because their near enslavement of women however isn't being carried out in Europe but in the under developed world, the peace lobby "understands." They may not like it but no judgments please.

Another aspect I confess I don't understand about these anti war types is some of their demands. Momeny correctly points out that one of their rallying points is "No racist scape goating of Arab or Islamic peoples," presumably by the America government or media. OK, I fully agree but I admit I wasn't aware that Islam was a race or even an ethnic group. I thought it was a multi racial, multi ethnic religion, including white Americans or white Europeans. And this comes from people who claim that the American media and government doesn't understand Islam. The only explaination for this slogan about opposing racist (as opposed to religious) "scape goating" of Islam is another legacy of 1960s America: everything must be about race and racism.

Further, the very premise of Momeny's piece is that the Bush administration is engaging in "John Wayenism" is open to serious dispute. This claim is I would argue, so far removed from reality one has to wonder if Momeny has been watching too many Vietnam war movies. Reruns of "Platoon" and "Apocalypse Now" are not substitutes for a serious examination of events.

Had Bush like the liberal hero Bill Clinton, simply started launching endless streams of million dollar cruise missiles to demolish $10 tents, I would agree with the John Wayne criticism. Instead Bush has engaged in a measured and increasingly effective campaign to decapitate the Taliban and company. This after I might add several offers to avoid military action if the Taliban surrendered al Qaeda leaders for civilian trial in a secular court, and expelled the rank and file to their home countries. Hardly the first move a John Wayne would have made.

The problem for the peaceniks is not that Bush launched a John Wayne response or engaged in some understandably over heated rhetoric about "Osama: wanted dead or alive," but rather that he rejected a Neville Chamberlain approach: appeasement. He did not ask, as the appeasers of the 1930s did, what did we do to cause this or what concessions can be made to satisfy the aggressors. In short, he did not play the victim and that is what irritates the peace fringe in America. Moreover, unlike a John Wayne solitary individual cowboy, Bush attempted to build a coalition turning first to America's closest allies in NATO. Indeed, some in the USA, like myself, thought if Bush was making an error it wasn't in reaching out to allies and friends (new or otherwise) but in perhaps reaching out too far to too many partners. In other words, in not being John Wayne enough. I am happy to admit that I and other critics have been proven wrong on this point.

The British playwright Eric Bentley once observed that had there been no John Wayne there would have been no war in Vietnam. Perhaps. There is certainly something to the notion of the effects of cultural icons like Wayne on political and military decisions like Vietnam. Of course it is equally possible to say that without a John Wayne-as-cultural-icon, Europe and possible the mid east might well have ended up dominated either by Stalinism or fascism instead of liberal capitalist democracy.

There is another cultural icon at work here however and this that of Jane Fonda. This American movie actress came to represent a layer of 1960s anti war and leftist activism dubbed the "radical chic." For celebrates like Fonda it became fashionable not only to reject America's role in Vietnam but to actually sympathize with the Stalinist regime in North Vietnam and idealize them as freedom fighters. Fonda her self traveled to Hanoi during the war earning her the dubious title "Hanoi Jane." If Americans are, as I believe they are, rejecting John Wayenism they are also rejecting Jane Fondaism: the over identitifaation with Third World dictators and the fear and suspicion of American power that obsessed her 1960s generation.

Sincerely,

William Baker