Questions and Answers: What Happened to 2/15?
Press Action
Monday, March 01, 2004
http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/mickeyz03022004/
By Mickey Z.
"The foolish ask questions that the wise cannot answer." -Oscar Wilde
Someone once asked me how I define genius -an unenviable task for anyone with even a shred of common sense. Ignoring all those teachers who told me there are no bad questions, I bravely (?) ventured: “I don’t know about ‘genius,’ but I’ll readily take someone who asks new questions.”
This is a new, but silly question: If our Secretary of State had a half-brother, would his name be Semi-Colin?
There are also plenty of bad new questions being asked these days: Did Martha, Kobe, or Michael do it? Did Janet mean to do it? Is Justin Timberlake really a human being or is he actually a CIA robot designed to put the last touches on the pacification of the American populace?
I have a serious new question to share: What happened to 2/15?
An excellent book, 2/15: The Day the World Said NO to War, offers some context about that date: On February 15, 2003, the world changed once again. Political activism exploded with marches and protests in more than 100 nations around the globe. Up to 30 million people demonstrated worldwide. Flip through 2/15 and treat yourself to a look at the incredible photos from an international day of peace. It’s a book that should sit on everyone’s coffee table -or gun case. A book to be shared and a day to serve as a foundation ... A day called “the biggest global peace demonstration in the history of political activism.”
You’d think maybe the Left might wanna build on that, right?
At UnitedforPeace.org, however, we learn that 2/15 has been voluntarily co-opted by another date: March 20, 2004. On that day, people on every continent will take to the streets to say YES to peace and NO to pre-emptive war and occupation, the website explains. March 20 will be the first time the world’s “other superpower,” as The New York Times described us, will take center stage since February 15, when more than 15 (sic) million people across the globe expressed their opposition to Bush’s looming war on Iraq [MZ: Kerry voted for it].
Here’s another one of them new fangled questions I was talking about: Why March 20?
The answer, my friends, is blowin’ at the United for Peace website: March 20, were told, is a Global Day of Action against War and Occupation and it’s the one-year anniversary of the U.S. bombing and invasion of Iraq [Yeah, the same bombing and invasion Kerry voted for].
Besides ignoring the fact that this war began -and has continued unabated -when the Security Council imposed comprehensive sanctions against Iraq on August 6, 1990, four days after Iraq invaded Kuwait ... the United for Peace answer merely provokes yet another new question:
Why is March 20 different from other dates that commemorate American military outrages? Protestors could have just as easily picked, for example, January 15 (Operation Desert Storm) or August 6 (the bombing of Hiroshima) or August 7 (when the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was signed) or (ironically) February 13-14 (the firebombing of Dresden).
There are no shortage of outrages -or shortage of dates. But there’s only one date that marks the biggest global peace demonstration in the history of political activism.
Same old new question: What happened to 2/15?
We’ll get no help answering it from United for Peace -where the reasoning is explained in stark anti-Bush, not anti-war, terms: “Politically, the U.S. protests will also take on the domestic impact of Bush’s foreign policies -what some people call ‘the war at home.’ We will express the growing opposition to the USA PATRIOT Act [MZ: Kerry voted for it], which has authorized political arrests, indefinite detentions, domestic spying, and religious and racial profiling. We will say no to massive military spending amidst vast cuts in vital domestic social and economic programs [MZ: Kerry voted to repeal welfare].”
Scary question: Come November, if the corporate elites decide that they’d rather trust Kerry with managing the American Empire for the next four years, will the vast majority of the March 20 protestors return to their regularly scheduled programming, secure in the fact they’ve saved the planet from Dubya’s doom?
Crucial question: No matter who wins in November, will we demand our own day of non-partisan peace in 2005, a day of solidarity that goes beyond ethnic and gender lines, across national borders, and through class barriers?
2/15 ends with a quote from Noam Chomsky, who says the “people in power” can’t live with “sustained pressure that keeps building, organizations that keep doing things, people that keep learning lessons from the last time and doing it better the next time.”
Final question (for now): Have we learned the lesson that we need to change the way we think and the way we live in order to do it “better the next time”?
(2/15 is available at AK Press.)
Mickey Z. is the author of two upcoming books: “A Gigantic Mistake: Articles and Essays for Your Intellectual Self-Defense” (Prime Books) and “Seven Deadly Spins: Exposing the Lies Behind War Propaganda” (Common Courage Press). He can be reached at mzx2@earthlink.net.