Africa Speaks Reasoning Forum

The Mother of All Anti-War Forces
By Naomi Klein

AlterNet Posted on July 9, 2004,
Printed on July 12, 2004
http://www.alternet.org/story/19191/

There is a remarkable scene in "Fahrenheit 9/11" when
Lila Lipscomb talks with an anti-war activist outside
the White House about the death of her 26-year-old son
in Iraq. A pro-war passerby doesn't like what she
overhears and announces, "This is all staged!"

Ms. Lipscomb turns to the woman, her voice shaking with
rage, and says: "My son is not a stage. He was killed
in Karbala, Apr. 2. It is not a stage. My son is dead."
Then she walks away and wails, "I need my son."

Watching Ms. Lipscomb doubled over in pain on the White
House lawn, I was reminded of other mothers who have
taken the loss of their children to the seat of power
and changed the fate of wars. During Argentina's dirty
war, a group of women whose children had been
disappeared by the military regime gathered every
Thursday in front of the presidential palace in Buenos
Aires. At a time when all public protest was banned,
they would walk silently in circles, wearing white
headscarves and carrying photographs of their missing
children.

The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo revolutionized
human-rights activism by transforming maternal grief
from a cause for pity into an unstoppable political
force. The generals couldn't attack the mothers openly,
so they launched fierce covert operations against their
organization. But the mothers kept walking, playing a
significant role in the dictatorship's eventual
collapse.

Unlike the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, who march
together every week to this day, in "Fahrenheit 9/11,"
Lila Lipscomb stands alone, hurling her fury at the
White House. But she is not alone. Other American and
British parents whose children have died in Iraq are
also coming forward to condemn their governments; their
moral outrage could help end the military conflict
still raging in Iraq.

Last week, California resident Nadia McCaffrey defied
the Bush administration by inviting news cameras to
photograph the arrival of her son's casket from Iraq.
The White House has banned photography of flag-draped
coffins arriving at air force bases, but because
Patrick McCaffrey's remains were flown into the
Sacramento International Airport, his mother was able
to invite the photographers inside. "I don't care what
[President George W. Bush] wants," Ms. McCaffery
declared, telling her local newspaper, "Enough war."

Just as Patrick McCaffrey's body was being laid to rest
in California, another solider was killed in Iraq:
19-year-old Gordon Gentle of Glasgow.

Upon hearing the news, his mother, Rose Gentle,
immediately blamed the government of Tony Blair, saying
that, "My son was just a bit of meat to them, just a
number . . . This is not our war, my son has died in
their war over oil."

And just as Rose Gentle was saying those words, Michael
Berg happened to be visiting London to speak at an
anti-war rally. Since the beheading of his 26-year-old
son who had been working in Iraq as a contractor,
Michael Berg has insisted that, "Nicholas Berg died for
the sins of George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld."

Asked by an Australian journalist whether such bold
statements "are making the war seem fruitless," Mr.
Berg replied, "The only fruit of war is death and grief
and sorrow. There is no other fruit."

It is as if these parents have lost more than their
children, they have also lost their fear, allowing them
to speak with great clarity and power. This represents
a dangerous challenge to the Bush administration, which
likes to claim a monopoly on moral clarity. Victims of
war and their families aren't supposed to interpret
their losses for themselves, they are supposed to leave
that to the flags, ribbons, medals and three-gun
salutes. Parents and spouses are supposed to accept
their tremendous losses with stoic patriotism, never
asking whether a death could have been avoided, never
questioning how their loved ones are used to justify
more killing. At Patrick McCaffrey's military funeral
last week, Paul Harris, chaplain of the 579th Engineer
Battalion, informed the mourners that, "What Patrick
was doing was good and right and noble . . . There are
thousands, no, millions, of Iraqis who are grateful for
his sacrifice."

Nadia McCaffrey knows better and is insisting on
carrying her son's own feelings of deep disappointment
from beyond the grave. "He was so ashamed by the
prisoner-abuse scandal," Ms. McCaffrey told The
Independent. "He said we had no business in Iraq and
should not be there." Freed from the military censors
who prevent soldiers from speaking their minds when
they are alive, Lila Lipscomb has also shared her son's
doubts about his work in Iraq. In Fahrenheit 9/11 she
reads from a letter Michael Pederson mailed home. "What
in the world is wrong with George, trying to be like
his dad, Bush. He got us out here for nothing
whatsoever. I'm so furious right now, Mama."

Fury is an entirely appropriate response to a system
that sends young people to kill other young people in a
war that never should have been waged. Yet the American
right is forever trying to pathologize anger as
something menacing and abnormal, dismissing war
opponents as hateful and, the latest slur, "wild-eyed."
This is much harder to do when victims of wars begin to
speak for themselves: No one questions the wildness in
the eyes of a mother or father who has just lost a son
or daughter, or the fury of a soldier who knows that he
is being asked to kill and die needlessly.

Many Iraqis who have lost loved ones to foreign
aggression have responded by resisting the occupation.
Now, victims are starting to organize themselves inside
the countries that are waging the war. First it was the
September 11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, which
speaks out against any attempt by the Bush
administration to use the deaths of their family
members in the World Trade Center to justify further
killings of civilians. Military Families Speak Out has
sent delegations of veterans and parents of soldiers to
Iraq, while Nadia McCaffrey is planning to form an
organization of mothers who have lost children in Iraq.

U.S. elections always seem to swing on some parental
demographic or other: Last time it was soccer moms,
this time it is supposed to be NASCAR dads. But on
Sunday, NASCAR car-racing champion Dale Earnhardt said
that he had taken his buddies to see "Fahrenheit 9/11"
and that "It's a good thing as an American to go see."
It seems as if there may be another demographic that
swings this election: not soccer moms or NASCAR dads
but the parents of victims of war. They don't have the
numbers to change the outcome in swing states, but they
might just change something more powerful: the hearts
and minds of Americans.

(c) 2004 Independent Media Institute. All rights
reserved. View this story online at:
http://www.alternet.org/story/19191/