By Berry Craig   [7-11-05]

The American death toll in Iraq is edging toward 2,000 this Independence Day. Meanwhile, the bumper sticker war rages on the home front:

"I Support President Bush and Our Troops," "Let's Roll!," "These Colors Don't Run, " "Peace is Patriotic," "Who Would Jesus Bomb?," "Support the Warriors not the War" are among mobile messages that signal America is again divided by armed conflict.

Some on the "Let's Roll!" side say the "Peace is Patriotic" bunch is giving "aid and comfort" to the enemy. David Greenberg disagrees.

"Critics of war -- even when they've been wrong, or their comments distasteful [or woefully misguided like Jane Fonda's trip to Hanoi] -- have done far more good than harm," Greenberg wrote in one of his "History Lesson" columns I mined from the electronic archives of Slate, the online magazine that features news and commentary on culture and politics.

Greenberg is an author and a Rutgers professor. He concedes that enemy leaders might feel better when Americans are disunited. Even so, "the mere expression of opposition has never materially hurt any U.S. military campaign. Except perhaps for the Revolution's Loyalists [Sorry, I prefer "Tory"], no dissenters have aided America's adversaries in large numbers," he wrote.

"When, as in Vietnam, conditions like flagging troop morale have undermined battlefield success, it was the soldiers' awareness of the war's futility -- not the protests back home -- that created those conditions. The sense that the war was unwinnable fueled the peace movement, not the other way around."

Protesting wars is an old American tradition, Greenberg added. Indeed, we the people have united behind just one of our wars, World War II. It was America's "only major war that lacked an organized bloc of dissenters," he wrote.

Greenberg added, "Pearl Harbor had made an isolationist stance untenable, and as Americans learned more and more about Nazi Germany, most anti-war activists decided the defeat of fascism was worth fighting for."

Americans battled each other -- not just the British -- in the Revolutionary War. "Fully one third of Americans opposed independence, in John Adams' famous estimate, while an equal third favored it," Greenberg wrote. "Only in retrospect did the Revolution become an unambiguously glorious endeavor."

There was also significant domestic opposition to the War of 1812 and the Mexican-American War. No war divided America like the Civil War.

"Popular support for the Spanish-American War waned as the relatively easy fight for a free (i.e., pro-American) Cuba gave way to a more controversial program of wresting away Spain's other colonies, particularly the Philippines," Greenberg wrote.

So many Americans questioned U.S. involvement in World War I that the government organized a special committee to whip up anti-German sentiment. Sauerkraut became "liberty cabbage," hamburger "liberty steak," German dogs "liberty pups" and German measles "liberty measles." (Now we've got "freedom fries" and "freedom toast.")

Many Americans grew skeptical of the Korean War when it became a bloody stalemate. Vietnam, America's longest war, sharply split the country into "hawks" and "doves."

The birds are back with Iraq.

"Who would Jesus bomb?" is a good question, though impossible to answer. The proper role of Christians in war is a debate as old as Christianity itself.

My Presbyterian heritage prevents me from presuming to know upon what enemies, if any, the Prince of Peace would rain "bunker busters" from Heaven.

As an historian, it is hard for me not to conclude that we had to fight the British for our independence. It took the Civil War to make the South give up slavery and required World War II to stop Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and imperial Japan. Turning the other cheek and appeasing Hitler, Mussolini and the Japanese militarists led to World War II in the first place.

But the Iraq war? Call me "conflicted" like movie mobster Paul Vitti, the Robert De Niro character inAnalyze This.

"War -- except in self defense," Bill Moyers aptly observed, "is a failure of moral imagination, political nerve, and diplomacy." I'll add a Presbyterian "amen" to that.

Yet is Saddam a bad egg? The baddest.

Do I admire the skill and bravery of our fighting men and women, the Brits and the other troops who rid Iraq of Saddam and his mob of mass murderers? Absolutely.

Are Iraqis better off with Saddam behind bars? Unquestionably.

But did President George W. Bush fudge the facts -- or rely on dubious intelligence -- to get us into war in Iraq? It seems so.

Therefore, are my fellow Americans justified in protesting this dubious conflict that is costing us dearly in blood and treasure and losing us a ton of moral capital among many of our democratic friends in the world? No doubt about it.

Anyway, Greenberg concluded that if Americans stopped protesting the Iraq war, "we would all have to trust the Bush administration completely to decide whether to continue, escalate, or end the war. The government would have a free hand to do as it likes. Far from showing their patriotism, critics who muzzle themselves in wartime are abdicating a democratic responsibility."

I haven't joined our local anti-war group. But I'll put another "amen" to what Greenberg wrote.

Along the way counter protestors held signs up for us to see: "Our troops are fighting to protect your whiny hiny," "Viva la Bush" (from a Hispanic group), pink signs calling us Pinkos, and the usual assortment of folks calling out to us. Other than taking their pictures, we did not engage with them but kept cheering and singing and chanting: "Bring the troops home . . . NOW!"

On the stage near the bottom of the sloping ground at the park, speakers from the military, families of service personnel, parents whose sons and daughters had been killed in Iraq, Vietnam veterans, they were all there, urging an end to the US presence in Iraq.

As I looked at the interesting assortment gathered, what I saw in large numbers were those who live on the fringes of society, the disenfranchised, the vulnerable, as well as the committed-to-justice-and-peace groups, professors and preachers, housewives and girls whose clothes didn't always meet in the middle, veterans of civil rights days and kids on their first march. But as I looked around, I was aware of who was not present. The ones I missed seeing were the white collar business and corporation execs, the movers and shakers of society. So I indulged in a fantasy:

Lo and behold, there was Paul Wolfowitz with a pony tail, jeans and tatoos standing in a group with Dick Cheney with a beard, funky glasses, smoking something that didn't look like a Philip Morris, in an enthusiastic conversation with a guy from Texas who was carrying a large banner stating "Make Love, Not War," and with body piercings of exceptional quality. On the hillside near me was a big contingent of power brokers, among them Donald Trump (I liked his blue hair), Michael Skilling and Bill Gates and a bunch of others, their jackets slung over their shoulders. One had his little girl riding piggy-back so she could see the performers on stage. Carrying symbolic coffins into the park were top brass from the Pentagon, solemnly lining them up for an impressive display.

Franklin Graham was on the stage with his guitar, singing an old VietNam era anti-war song, backed up by a band of Muslims. And a group nearby consisted of members of Congress, in jeans and overalls, baseball hats with peace signs, and singing along with the crowd, "Let There Be Peace on Earth. . . and let it begin with me." What a great rally.

I blinked and looked again, and all I saw were the ones who were part of an emerging power group, the grassroots folks, the ones who will one day bring about the change we seek. These are the peacemakers, blessed and inheriting the earth. The absent ones are the lost ones who have not yet tasted the bitter consequences of their self-serving actions. We missed them.