At the Pentagon they call it the Voila Moment. That's when Iraqi soldiers
and civilians, with bombs raining down on Baghdad, suddenly scratch their
heads and say to themselves: "These bombs aren't really meant to kill me
and my family, they are meant to free us from an evil dictator!" At that
point, they thank Uncle Sam, lower their weapons, abandon their posts, and
rise up against Saddam Hussein. Voila!
Or at least that's how it is supposed to work, according to the experts in
"psychological operations" who are already waging a fierce information war
in Iraq. The Voila Moment made its first foray into the language of war
last Monday, when a New York Times reporter quoted an unnamed senior US
military official using the term.
This peppering of military jargon with bon mots could be Colin Powell's
latest plan to win over the French on the security council. More likely,
it's a product of the Bush administration's penchant for hiring advertising
executives and flaky management consultants as foreign policy advisers.
(Doesn't the Voila Moment sounds suspiciously like the Wow Factor sold to
millions of corporate executives as the key to building a powerful brand?)
Wherever it came from, the Pentagon has Voila in its sights, and it is
sparing no expense to hit its target. Airborne transmitters are flying over
Iraq broadcasting radio propaganda. Iraqi business, military and political
officials have been bombarded with emails and phone calls urging them to
see the light and switch sides. Fighter planes have dropped more than 8
million leaflets informing Iraqi soldiers that their lives will be spared
if they walk away from their military equipment. "It sends a direct message
to the operator on the gun," says Lieutenant- General T Michael Moseley,
commander of allied air forces in the Gulf.
According to the senior military official quoted in the New York Times,
central command will know it has reached Voila when "we see a break with
the leadership". In other words, the US military is advocating nothing less
than mass civil disobedience in Iraq: a refusal to obey orders or to
participate in an unjust war.
Will it work? I'm sceptical. There was, after all, a Voila Moment during
the last Gulf war, when many Iraqis living near the Kuwaiti border believed
US promises that they would be supported if they rose up against Saddam. It
was followed shortly afterwards by a Screw You Moment, when the rebels
watched US forces abandon them to be massacred.
But all this Voila talk got me thinking: the civil disobedience the US
military is hoping to provoke in Iraq is exactly the sort of thing the
anti-war movement needs to inspire in our countries if we are really going
to stop, or at least curtail, the pending devastation in Iraq. What would
it take for large numbers of people in the US, the UK, Italy, Canada - and
any other country assisting the war effort - truly to break with our
leaders and refuse to comply? Can we create thousands of Voila Moments back
home?
That is the question facing the global anti-war movement as it plans its
follow-up to the spectacular marches on February 15. During the Vietnam
war, thousands of young Americans decided to break with their leaders when
their draft cards arrived. And it was this willingness to go beyond protest
and into active disobedience that slowly eroded the domestic viability of
the war.
What will today's conscientious objectors and military deserters look like?
Well, in Italy activists have been blocking dozens of trains carrying US
weapons and personnel on their way to a military base near Pisa, and
dockworkers have refused to load arms shipments. Two US military bases were
blockaded in Germany, as was the US consulate in Montreal and the air base
at RAF Fairford in Gloucester, while thousands of protesters have
demonstrated at Shannon airport, which, despite Irish claims of neutrality,
is being used by the US military to refuel its planes en route to Iraq.
In Chicago, more than a hundred high-school students demonstrated outside
the headquarters of Leo Burnett, the advertising firm that designed the US
military's hip, youth-targeted Army of One campaign. The students claim
that in underfunded Latino and African-American high schools, the army
recruiters far outnumber the college scouts.
The most ambitious plan has come from San Francisco, where a coalition of
anti-war groups is calling for an emergency non-violent counter-strike the
day after the war starts: "Don't go to work or school. Call in sick, walk
out. We will impose real economic, social and political costs and stop
business as usual until the war stops."
It's a powerful idea: peace bombs exploding wherever profits are being made
from the war - gas stations, arms manufacturers, missile-happy TV stations.
It might not stop the war, but it would show that there is a principled
position between hawk and hippy: a militant resistance for the protection
of life.
For some, this escalation of the war against war seems extreme: there
should simply be more weekend marches, bigger next time, so big they are
impossible to ignore. Of course there should be more marches, but it should
also be clear by now that there is no protest too big for politicians to
ignore. They know that public opinion in most of the world is against the war.
What they are carefully assessing, before the bombs start falling, is
whether the anti-war sentiment is "hard" or "soft". The question is not "do
people care about war?" but "how much do they care?" Is it a mild consumer
preference against war, one that will evaporate by the next election? Or is
it something deeper and more lasting - a, shall we say, Voila kind of care?
On one end of the caring spectrum, Levi's Europe has decided to cash in on
the anti-war fad by releasing a limited edition teddy bear with a peace
symbol attached to its ear. You can clutch and hug it while watching the
scary terror alerts on CNN.
Or you could turn off CNN, refuse to be a soft and cuddly peacenik, get out
there and stop the war.
· Naomi Klein is the author of Fences and Windows.
Link: http://www.nologo.org
