The conversation turned, like most over the past few weeks, to Iraq and war.
"I don't know what to think," a friend said while watching the grainy, greenish videophone images that have come to symbolize the American mission to behead Saddam Hussein's regime. "I hope they know more than I do."
True believers abound on both sides, at least in the mainstream media, where anything approaching dissent has been snuffed, and in the streets, where millions turned out in protest over the weekend.
But many of us, even most, find ourselves somewhere in between. And that middle ground gets murkier by the day.
It's increasingly difficult to find anyone who believes the Bush administration's most recent avowed objective, bringing freedom to the Iraqi people. Maybe it's because the target seems to keep shifting, from disarmament to "regime change" to creating a mini-America in the desert. Or it could be because Hussein seems a bit less diabolical by the day, with no sign that the "weapons of mass destruction" our leaders have insisted he has will be used, or even exist.
At the same time, plenty of people who disagree with our government's goals and methods won't speak up now that the war is underway, for fear of seeming unpatriotic. That may be the biggest victory for Bush and his supporters to date. Framing the discussion in those ludicrous terms forces any dissenter to start out in apology mode -- "I support the troops, but I'm against the war" -- as if those who don't buy the rationale issued by the government wish death upon those carrying out the orders.
Not every Republican would share that spin.
"Patriotism means to stand by the country," Theodore Roosevelt said in 1918, during a very different sort of war. "It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official, save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country. In either event, it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else."
Another friend is stationed in Kuwait, where he had been going stir-crazy since January while waiting for orders. At one point, he and his comrades passed time by creating military-style diagrams for such complex tasks as how to operate a pen. I watched the war's opening air strikes with his fiancee, who took her eyes off the television screen only to check her cell phone.
"I just want him to come home," she said.
For some, the spectacular barrage on Baghdad was cause not for concern, but celebration.
"I think this is great," said one woman, the only person I ran into last week who was strongly for the war. "This means we'll be safe from the terrorists."
After briefly considering pointing out the holes in her thesis, I thought better of it.
"I hope you're right," I said.
Around the world, the opening of hostilities fueled protest, rather than quelling it.
At a rally in Buffalo last week, about 300 people turned out in the rain to hear antiwar speakers and march down Elmwood Avenue.
For the most part, the event proceeded exactly as scripted in the protester's playbook -- simplistic signs ("No Blood For Oil"), fake coffins and irritating chants starting with "Hey, hey, ho, ho ..." and the ever-popular "What do we want, when do we want it ..."
But if parts of the rally managed to make the left as painfully uncool as the propaganda-spewing righties on television and radio, there were moments of insight that stood out.
As the marchers plodded toward the Unitarian Church, one man stood under an awning, holding a sign that read "U.S. ARMY VETERAN AGAINST THIS WAR."
"I support the troops -- I was one," said Brian Wood, who served from 1964 to 1967. "I think we need to bring them home. For the second time in my life, the first being Vietnam, I'm ashamed of my country, because we're attacking a country that can't defend itself."
Media demagogues expended nearly as much hostility on protesters like Wood as on the Big Bad Wolf of Baghdad. "Un-American" rivals "shock and awe" as the most popular war-related phrase of cheerleaders across the dial. One Buffalo radio talker even claimed last week that "all the protests are funded by Communists." I changed the station before finding out whether the Masons were also involved.
Some of the marchers in Buffalo might have been Communists, particularly if Communists wear dreadlocks, ponchos and nose rings. But along with the expected college-age kids were professional-looking men and women, many carrying babies, and a range of ages all the way up to 94-year-old photographer Milton Rogovin.
As of this writing, at noon Sunday, U.S. troops are meeting with more opposition than some expected from the Iraqi army, with none of the wholesale surrenders that marked the ground phase of the first Gulf War. Gas prices are down, and the stock market is up -- which is all that matters to some.
But it's tough to escape the nagging questions about what exactly it is we're trying to accomplish in Iraq, and why we're trying to accomplish it. It's also difficult to gauge just what kind of political ramifications the seemingly inevitable conquest will have. Conventional wisdom holds that George W. Bush's popularity could return to post-Sept. 11 levels if things go right, but there's very little that's conventional about this war.
If you see two guys of roughly equal size and age square off in a bar, there's a certain morbid entertainment value. The same goes if a little guy goads a big guy into fisticuffs, only to receive his comeuppance.
But if you see a big guy goad a little guy into a fight the smaller man wants no part of, it leaves you with a sick feeling -- the same kind that lingers every time White House spokesman Ari Fleischer or the unofficial flacks on the Fox News Channel use the phrase "Operation Iraqi Freedom" without a trace of irony.
The images of missiles raining on Baghdad are certainly stunning, so much so that it's easy to forget that there are people in those buildings, most of whom have no great love for the men who run their country.
The size and passion of the protests are also impressive, and they only figure to grow if the anticipated quick knockout drags into a lengthy fight, even if it's not a particularly competitive one.
What, if anything, they'll accomplish also gets increasingly unclear. The notion that dissent will somehow extend the war, advanced by some war supporters, rings hollow. Just like the concept that the people making the important decisions will listen, or even care.
At this point, there's only one thing of which I'm absolutely sure.
I hope they know more than I do.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | March 25 2003 |