How anti-war protest movements have made the U.S. stronger
An article in Slate provides a quick history lesson on American anti-war protests, that have occurred in every conflict, including the Revolutionary War.
In American history in particular, wartime dissent has a venerable lineage. Even during that most mythic of causes, the Revolution, fully one third of Americans opposed independence, in John Adams’ famous estimate, while an equal third favored it. Only in retrospect did the Revolution become an unambiguously glorious endeavor.
New England states considered seceding during the War of 1812. Congress censured Polk for the Mexican-American War. Andrew Carnegie and Mark Twain objected to the Spanish-American War. Wilson was deeply unpopular for bringing America into World War I. The only conflict in which there was no organized anti-war dissent was World War II, though people were isolationist prior to Pearl Harbor. Still, there were pacifists who refused to fight (Howard Zinn mentions meeting with one in the preface to his
People’s History of the United States. (As an aside, you can read both Zinn and, say, Paul Johnson’s
Modern Times, and wind up with a perhaps balanced but incoherent view of the world. Either that, or schizophrenic.)
Dissent is a good thing. It’s fundamentally American. And even wartime dissent is a net positive:
Critics of war—even when they’ve been wrong, or their comments distasteful—have done far more good than harm. Although enemy leaders may take heart from knowing that Americans are divided, the mere expression of opposition has never materially hurt any U.S. military campaign.
Fundamentally, this sort of dissent is one of the necessary ways that constrains American action, and keeps us closer to our ideals than not.
There’s also an article up at the New Republic on Saddam gets bad advice. Fundamentally, it’s the nature of a regime built and operated on fear. People with important, though bad news are reluctant to bring it to the attention of their superiors, for fear of dying; it’s possible Saddam believes his own news reports. Democracies, where dissent is practiced and hopefully encouraged, on the other hand, put a high value on quality information and open discussion and debate. Silencing all voices would not only have moral reprecussions but practical ones.