A Tribute to Alice

After a few days of orientation and vaccinations in Philadelphia, I have arrived safely in Mali where I will be working for the next two years constructing water sanitation pumps, digging wells, soak pits and irrigation ditches. I am now writing from Tubaniso; the Peace Corps training compound outside Bamako. Though I have spent so much time writing essays and conducting interviews and getting my fingerprints taken and collecting gear preparing to do this, and after so many months of waiting I am finally here, there is very little for me to say about my own life for there are far more important things on my mind right now. Namely, one of my dear friends and one of the most special people to ever grace this planet has just been killed in a tragic accident, crushed by a garbage truck as she rode her bicycle to work.

Anyone who knew Alice Swanson would agree that she was perhaps the kindest, gentlest and most determined soul whom they had ever met. She had that effect on everybody for good reason – because it was true. Perhaps it was her grin which showed off every last one of her pearly white teeth, perhaps it was her flowing locks of Nordic blonde hair which left every passerby in sheer rapture of this cutest of souls. Alice was a petite woman and almost childlike in some of her features, such as her unabashed love of animals which she wore on her sleeve – or rather, her dress which she had embroidered with the likeness of a wizened owl. But her small stature and innocent looks belied a great sophisticated woman who sure as hell knew about and did a whole lot in the world around her.

When Alice Swanson came from Worcester to Amherst her first year, in violation of school policy she brought her pet hamster to keep her company, wandering the hallways of her dormitory in its plastic ball. Out of love for all creatures great and small she naturally found her way to the Zü – Amherst’s vegetarian cooperative house – so that she could refrain from contributing to the mistreatment of a single Holstein cow by adhering to a strict vegan diet. That same year she also took charge of the Progressive Student Alliance which she used to organize her friends into simple acts of kindhearted activism from working at the farm to grow vegetables for a local food bank to raking leaves for the homeless. All sorts of animals, especially humans, were direct beneficiaries of Alice’s selfless nature.

Alice was no merely cute young woman, however – I think that was signified by the nose ring which signified that she was a badass rebel to the nth degree. Alice Swanson was possessed by that rare spark which convinces earnest young idealists that they too can change the world. She was an anarchist in the fully romantic sense of the word, with boundless faith in humanity and our capacity to take charge of our own destiny. She studied Spanish and Arabic to fluency, but majored in history; her stated intention was to be that world-historical individual in the Hegelian sense who was going to liberate all of the Middle East and Latin America from autocracy and neocolonialism. Alice cared quite earnestly about the plight of the Palestinians and under occupation, the exploited workers at Mexico’s maquiladoras, not to mention the poor and disenfranchised of Western Massachusetts. If couldn’t get others to join her, she would continue plying away on her movement for peace and justice even if she had to change society all by herself. And she did.

The first time I met Alice Swanson was naturally on a trip to Washington for an antiwar demonstration that she had organized. At the time I was a freshman who had a very difficult time making friends– and I couldn’t find anybody on campus who was interested in conversing with me about my monomaniacal obsession on Iraq, not a single person – that is, until I met Alice. Not only was she patient enough to engage this troubled soul, but she was kind enough to befriend me and invite me to the Zü and eat curry and teach me all about the Sandinistas and the Nicaraguan environmentalist movement. Whenever I had a burning gripe about all of the violence in the world and needed a sympathetic soul to help sort out my anxieties, Alice acted as an older sister-type figure of sorts, a mentor and role model as she opened her revolutionary literature-strewn dorm room into a refuge for the angst-ridden and alienated of Amherst College. She was an oracle of the possible, an ever-smiling beacon of hope.

During a typical solace session I would burst in Alice’s room shouting about whatever it was that had outraged me that day – usually unannounced, and she would tell me to have a seat, hand me a plate of oatmeal-raisin cookies, and deftly transform my grief into more healthy sentiments. At one memorable exchange I was so distraught by recent events in Fallujah that I woke her up from a nap in search of sympathy, and Alice put me in my place with one of the best pieces of advice that I ever received: “No matter how concerned you are about the war, there’s no use in moping around and feeling sorry for yourself. Why don’t you do something constructive instead?”

Alice’s optimistic turnaround made an impression on my malleable psyche. Doing something constructive was then beyond the stretch of my imagination, so I asked her what she had in mind. Her preferred method of establishing peace was working in education; organizing lectures, helping local immigrants study for their citizenship exams, and going to Egypt to study Arabic and teach schoolchildren English. Alice’s deeds made quite an impression on my tender mind; she persuaded me to start Arabic lessons myself so that maybe one day I too could go do great things like her.

Alice was supposed to have lived to be 100 and lived a long, full life of tending to the poor and downtrodden. Quoted in a local newspaper, her father said, “Alice wanted to help people, but now that’s not going to happen.”

… Yet I would not speak too soon. Because of Alice Swanson, there are now immigrants in who were able to become United States citizens, schoolchildren who can now speak English, and a few less people who went to bed hungry at night. And as trite as this may sound, Alice’s spirit lives on in every life that she touched – from Worcester to Washington, from Amherst to Managua and Cairo and everywhere in between, there are now countless souls are possessed by that crazy notion that we can make a difference, that we too can change the world. As I write from the flickering computer at Tubaniso, I can say with confidence that Alice’s radiant example is why I am in Mali today. Instead of moping around, I am learning how to dig wells for people without potable water. Those pieces of Alice’s courage, grit and passion which rubbed off on me will always be an integral part of who I am. And I know that I am not the only one.



I’m going to miss you, Alice.

On the Movement Against the War in Iraq

As one of the many Americans opposed to the war in Iraq, I make a habit of going to demonstrations where I can fraternize with sympathetic souls. They tend to be enjoyable events where I can express myself, get a good cardiovascular workout and reunite with missed friends. But as I was wandering the National Mall on January 27, my optimism for a looming change in foreign policy was joined with reserved skepticism towards my fellow demonstrators.

Hundreds of thousands of people marched on Washington that day to express their desire for an end to the Iraq War, mostly the kind of people you would expect to see at a rally like this; disgruntled veterans, grieving family members, Catholic and Quaker pacifists, organized labor, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, Hollywood stars, and lefty gadflies like Dennis Kucinich. But most of those who came to express their dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs cannot be pigeonholed so easily; after all, to be a critic of the war is now to find oneself firmly within the mainstream of American public opinion. This is why I have such faith in this movement’s potential to succeed in ending the war in Iraq, and why I am also so discouraged with its current leadership.

My frustration can be best illustrated by my experience on the bus to our nation’s capitol. Participants shared their thoughts over the loudspeaker to pass the time, so I encouraged my fellow disaffected students to register to vote, write to their Congressmen, and to even consider a career in public service. The response was terrifying; self-proclaimed Anarchists, Communists and Islamic Revolutionaries shouted down this “white bourgeois reactionary” for daring to work within the institutions of American democracy – as opposed to plotting its violent overthrow. With this it dawned on me that the biggest obstacle to ending the Iraq War might well be the antiwar movement itself.

This earnest student of American politics believes that for the opinions of the common citizenry to translate into substantive results, Iraq activists must learn the ways of Washington realpolitik. And what I am advocating is not merely superficial change. The fact is are that the plurality of Americans are against the war, but many lawmakers are still wary of being associated with the radical groups and ideologies which make up the most visible elements of the war’s opposition. And rightly so, for as awful as the war is, many of these factions are rather despicable themselves.

On the Mall that day, demonstrators called for not just withdrawal from Iraq, but the withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan, the Philippines, South Korea, Somalia and every other country in the world in which there is a United States military presence. As some students scrawled on their makeshift riot gear, “US Out of Everywhere.” The reemergence of such sentiment has been one of the unfortunate consequences of our disastrous entanglement along the Tigris and Euphrates, but this is not so much of an indictment of the administration as it is of those who have fallen prey to the seductive logic of pacifist isolationism. The belief that military intervention is necessarily wrong in all places and at all times is as dogmatic and fanciful as the neoconservative ideology which begat this mess in the first place. Though opposition to the protection of American interests can be dismissed as naïve idealism, what is truly reprehensible about this intellectually bankrupt philosophy is that it precludes even the use of force for humanitarian ends (such as intervening to end the Darfur genocide) for the sake of avoiding the appearance of American imperialism. What is precisely wrong with the vocal leadership of the current antiwar movement, why it creates such problems for those in the reality-based community, is that it is not merely anti-war in Iraq but anti-war.

Before considering anything else, the discourse on American foreign policy must recognize that there are wars worth fighting. The United States must exercise some degree of intervention in Iraq and the Middle East as we have indeed vital national security interests which necessitate the preservation of political stability in the region; namely, continued access to the oil supplies and a moderate public opinion towards the West. The preemptive invasion and continued occupation of Iraq has been such a tragic mistake for this very reason, because it has overextended our armed forces, fractured the international counterterrorism consensus, diverted scarce resources away from eliminating the Al Qaeda network and Afghanistan’s resurgent Taliban, and has engendered greater willingness for Muslim youth to join extremist groups hostile to the United States. Any arguments about the moral or ethical dimensions of American foreign policy aside, what is more important is the national interest-based rationale for withdrawal; strategic redeployment from Iraq is necessary because our country’s current path is counterproductive to the larger objectives of the Global War on Terrorism.

As the dovish multitude hundreds of thousands strong passed the rather pathetic counterdemonstration of no more than a few dozen hawks, one of the endangered species held out a sign which actually brought up a good point: “Why aren’t you protesting the terrorists?” From the speakers’ rostrum there was much anger directed towards the American sins of Haditha and Abu Ghraib, but very little was said about the even greater evils which brought about this overreaction in the first place. Though I hate to invoke such imagery, anyone who has seen the charred remnants of Ground Zero knows the consequences of failed government policy towards anti-American Islamic fundamentalist movements, there was little evidence that anyone at the rally had any suggestions for dealing with our geopolitical rivals other than the doctrine of laissez faire.

Unfortunately, one of the pitfalls to which the antiwar crowd often succumbs is the sophistry that any foreign occupation must be wrong, and therefore any opposing faction must be in the right; this illogic has resulted in the morphing of some genuinely concerned lovers of peace and freedom into apologists for quite violent, illiberal movements such as the Mahdi Army, Hezbollah and Hamas. Though such groups’ demands for national sovereignty are certainly worthy, the former’s anti-Sunni pogroms and the latter two’s orchestration of terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians, among other things, make it difficult to believe that there is anything truly democratic about them. As Harry Truman found himself on the eve of the Cold War flanked by redbaiters on the right as well as Communist sympathizers on the left, today’s liberals must also hold a careful line against both ideological extremes.

Despite its organizers’ faults, what nevertheless makes the movement against the Iraq War so promising is that it represents the will of the overwhelming majority of Americans. This significant fact is unfortunately overlooked by the most prominent group coordinating antiwar activism, United for Peace and Justice, which operates as a motley federation of narrow interest groups and counterculturalists. If they wish to ever have a role in the peacemaking process, they should take a cue from the Palestinian Authority’s Fatah leadership and begin a mass purge of their most extremist member groups; to begin, the Communist Party. Any benefit that including such fringe groups might have in bringing bodies to a rally is certainly offset by the fact that few mainstream politicians will dare touch it with a ten foot pole. Among those which should be expunged from the coalition are groups dedicated to the Palestinian national liberation movement, for regardless of whether they are right or wrong, they are but a distraction to the issue at hand. Just as Lincoln refrained from invoking the abolition of slavery during the Civil War so as to keep the border-states in the Union camp, in the effort to establish a national consensus against the current policy in Iraq there is absolutely no reason to invoke the single most venomous controversy in the entire world. Since there has been no indication of United for Peace and Justice’s desire to remake itself, the mantle of the movement should be passed on to more effective liberal groups such as MoveOn, Campus Progress and particularly the ad hoc Win Without War – which labels itself as “a mainstream voice advocating an end to the war in Iraq”.

The only way for the energy and idealism of the antiwar movement to translate into tangible results is for all of the folks who show up to peace vigils put down their Chomsky readers and accept that the only way that they are going to ever get anything done is through the American institutions of capitalism and democracy. There is no need to reinvent the wheel when the available means are quite sufficient to attain our goals. As a matter of fact, the gears have already begun to churn in our favor.
If activists wish to actually bring this misbegotten war to an end, the first thing that we must adequately grasp is how profoundly the political dynamic has changed since last November’s elections, namely that we now have a Democratic Congress largely as a result of antiwar sentiment. Now that advocates of exercising the legislative branch’s constitutional authority to change course in Iraq are firmly ensconced in the most powerful corridors of Capitol Hill, the difference that can be made by the old-fashioned traditions of civic activism have already begun to show. Now even stalwarts of the Republican foreign policy tradition like Senators John Warner, Richard Lugar and Chuck Hagel have decided to resist the Bush administration’s policy in Iraq – which according to the latest Pew Research Group poll is now supported by a paltry 23% of Americans. What shall actually be done still remains up for speculation.

The primary objective of the movement against this ill-fated war should now be the passage of legislation calling for a binding timetable for the withdrawal from Iraq – this should be the antiwar movement’s holy grail. This bill will need to be approved in both houses by not just simple majorities, but by at least two-thirds majorities that can sustain President Bush’s certain veto. For the Whips to accumulate sufficient votes remains and uphill battle, but we private citizens can do much more than simply watch from the sidelines.

The first avenue for the great vocal majority to make the timetable for withdrawal into reality is the race for the next Commander in Chief of the United States Armed Forces. As the current holder of that title has made clear, how to end the war in Iraq shall be bequeathed to his successor, and the identity of the next Decider will be is up to us to decide. So register to vote, take part in the primary and of course the general election – even if you are a Republican. If you are willing to spend your weekend at an antiwar rally, it is worth your time to get seriously involved in an electoral campaign.

The second avenue is lighter on democracy and heavier on capitalism. As we have learned by recent events, one of the most effective ways for private citizens to effect change is through their Rolodexes and checkbooks. Yes, what I am calling for is for the antiwar movement to reach its apex of political sophistication and entrench itself in the business of campaign finance.

Go to all the antiwar demonstrations your heart desires, but if you want to make a real difference, this is my advice: tune in, turn on, and get involved in the democratic process. Partaking in this game of wealth and power might require the most principled of us to hold our noses and learn to compromise, but that’s politics.

The Toll from Iraq Hits Home

(September 2005)

Citizens of our participatory self-government base our opinions on a number of factors, be it moral conviction, general philosophy, or rational self-interest. In terms of the war in Iraq, the debate has until now mostly consisted of the first two; e.g. chest-thumping nationalism versus doctrinaire pacifism, the evangelical fervor of neoconservatism versus the sober prudence of foreign policy realism. Though these conflicts are extremely important, the most important thing about seeing public opinion of the war through these lenses is that the vast majority of people do not. Unlike the classes who can afford to sit idle in their armchairs and pontificate about ideals and isms, most United States citizens have real jobs to do, families to care for, and enough personal problems to deal with that they simply did not care about a war which did not seem to have an adverse affect on their own well-being… until now.


According to the science of political economy, the informed voter is knowledgeable about his or her own needs and will support government policies which benefit themselves. And likewise, if every member of society were adequately educated and voted in every election for the candidate which promises to follow the course of action most narrowly tailored to their own self-interest, then government policies would follow the dictates of reason and fulfill the needs of the "median voter", that mythical individual who embodies the absolute center of public opinion. This median voter is the swing vote, the one in the equation of "50 percent plus one" who theoretically determines the actions of every re-election-minded public servant. Of course, the ideals of a perfectly rational electorate did not exist when Congress took up the issue of authorizing the invasion of Iraq less than a month before the 2002 elections, for only a handful of intelligence analysts and weapons inspectors knew anything at all about the raison d'être for this war: weapons of mass-destruction non-proliferation.

If only a well-informed electorate were able to have a say in whether Saddam Hussein's capacity to manufacture unconventional weaponry was so dangerous as to necessitate a pre-emptive military strike, then very few people would have been able to take part in this debate. Among those who would have been disqualified for ignorance include the 77 senators and 296 congressmen who authorized the president to "disarm" Saddam - even last year's Democratic ticket of John Kerry and John Edwards. Like a gambler at a poker table with a friend planted to read off his opponents' cards in code, the Bush administration national security team had access to asymmetrical information in regards to Iraq, for only the president and vice president were privy to certain intelligence briefings which evaluated the prospects of Iraq's WMD capabilities as "highly dubious" and that a guerilla insurgency could last for years after the downfall of the regime. If this information were publicly available at the time that the Iraq debate first came to Congress, it is hard to believe that the representatives of the American people's self-interest would have accepted the terms of the sale.

John Kenneth Galbraith wrote in The New Industrial State that the modern corporation does not necessarily supply wares in response to the natural demands of consumers; the firm of our times has so much power over market activity that it produces whatever is most profitable and then manufactures artificial demand for its new line of merchandise. Under the authority of the first president with an M.B.A., George W. Bush has been running the United States government in essentially the same manner as Galbraith's modern corporation, and the war in Iraq is the most convincing piece of evidence. There was always a small cadre of on the far right of the spectrum who wanted to march on to Baghdad since the first Gulf War, but the median voter of the American public never demanded an invasion of Iraq until President Bush sold it to him, using his bully pulpit to pitch this product which his state had already decided to be in its best geopolitical interests.

Though the median voter theorem is by definition only operational on Election Day, there are other tools available to surmise where exactly that all-powerful center of public opinion lies. According to a Zogby poll conducted in June of 2003, after the triumphant sacking of the Iraqi regime and toppling a statue of Saddam amidst cheering crowds, a peak of 75% of Americans approved of a war which seemed to be going rather successfully. But only one year later, after the news showcased the psychosexual nightmare of naked prisoners being strung with electrodes and sicked by dogs at Abu Ghraib, and the grisly image of mutilated corpses of American contractors being dragged through the streets of Fallujah, the realities of war hit home; a CBS poll from June of 2004 reported that 60% of Americans thought that the invasion of Iraq was not worth the cost. Still this data did not translate into electoral results, for despite the growing frustration with the war upon which he had based his presidency, Bush was re-elected by a healthy margin. Thus proves the failure of the theorem to predict election results, for the median voter is rationally concerned with many issues. Moreover, not everyone reacts to the same information rationally; in an age when every pack of Marlboro Reds warns its consumers that buying this product will greatly increase the risk of acquiring emphysema and cancer of the mouth, throat and lungs, there are still 47 million Americans who stubbornly cling to a habit that will almost certainly lead to their own death.

Up until the past few months, though enthusiasm for the status quo had certainly waned, very few people to the right of Dennis Kucinich were calling for a withdrawal of troops from Iraq. There had been some significant antiwar demonstrations which shut down San Francisco during the initial invasion of Iraq and New York during the 2004 Republican National Convention, but the protestors were for the most part limited to the roughly 20 to 30 percent of the population which has always been opposed to the war. There was yet a mainstream movement against government actions on the other side of the world, because the distanced masses did not yet see this as a threat to their own health and safety.

Something shattered that notion this summer. First of all, the grieving mother of one of the 2,000 American casualties of this war drove to President Bush's ranch outside of Crawford, Texas to ask why her son had to die in Iraq. He could not give her a rational answer, because no such thing exists. To counter the political fallout from this sympathetic critic, Casey Shaheen's commander-in-chief who has never seen combat flew to the Utah Veterans of Foreign Wars convention to talk about how painful it is for veterans to live without a constitutional amendment against flag-burning, and then rehashed that old lie with the Idaho National Guard, "dulce et decorum est pro patria mori." In his radio address, he provided horrifically circular logic as to why we must indefinitely prolong the occupation of Iraq which will accomplish nothing but more unnecessary casualties, "Now we must finish the task that our troops have given their lives for and honor their sacrifice by completing their mission." As Bush's approval ratings have dipped to an all-time low of 37%, to a level comparable to Lyndon Johnson's during the Tet Offensive, only the choir seems to have agreed.

Before the month was out, another lover of peace intervened in the war of hearts and minds: God. Hurricane Katrina, the most devastating natural disaster in this country's history, exposed undeniable truths about the war's toll on the civilian population of the United States. To afford the $200 billion which has been spent on the war in Iraq, White House Office of Management and Budget cut allocations for the upkeep of the levees by $5 billion. While poor, black residents of New Orleans were stranded on their roof-tops and crying for their government's help from the rising waters of Lake Pontchartrain, one-third of Louisiana's National Guard units were stationed along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. The American people apparently understand this connection; A CBS poll showed 69% of respondents believing that spending in Iraq is responsible for the reduction in spending on the levee system which allowed the flooding of New Orleans, and 57% thought that the fact that National Guard units were deployed in Iraq contributed to the slow response of the federal government to Hurricane Katrina.

Especially in response to President Bush's insistence that to fund the reconstruction of the Gulf Coast we must not raise taxes but instead trim wasteful spending from the federal budget, a war which costs upwards of $5 billion a month looks like an awfully good place to start. As the saying goes, you don't need to be an ichthyologist to understand that a fish stinks, and the median voter grasps quite well that his tax dollars' commitment to a stalemated campaign of guerilla warfare is at the expense of his own self-interest. For that reason, in September the New York Times reported that a solid majority of 52% of Americans support the immediate withdrawal of all United States troops from Iraq. Democratic and Republican Congressmen alike are now supporting a timetable for the Pentagon to do just that, and Wisconsin Senator Russell Feingold has proposed December 31, 2006 as a target date for the last soldier to come home. The next round of national elections is still more than a year away, but the median voter has already spoken.