Scott Ritter Criticizes the Anti-war Movement

In his must read article, "The Art of War for the anti-war movement", Scott Ritter takes the anti-war movement to task for its lack of coordination, leadership and strategic planning and offers straight-laced advice - military style - for how to overhaul its aims and methods. Ritter pulls no punches in his criticism and reminds those of us who are anti-war of what the main goal of the struggle should be:

It is not enough to win a battle against the pro-war movement; the anti-war movement needs to win the war of ideologies. As such it must not only prepare to win a particular fight, but to exploit that victory, massing its forces against any developed weakness, and drive the pro-movement into the ground and off the American political map once and for all.

Ritter is an old soldier, so it's not surprising that he would approach this subject from a hard core disciplinarian attitude.

He writes:

The anti-war movement needs to study the philosophies of those who have mastered the art of conflict, from Caesar to Napoleon, from Sun Tzu to Clausewitz. It needs to study the "enemy" learning to understand the pro-war movement as well as it understands itself. It needs to comprehend the art of campaigning, of waging battles only when necessary, and having the ability to wage a struggle on several fronts simultaneously, synchronizing each struggle so that a synergy is created which maximizes whatever energy is being expended.

To those of us with non-military backgrounds, Ritter acknowledges that his criticism and ideas come across as stern and harsh. But, make no mistake about it: he's right. Without our own anti-war CENTCOM, we are destined to keep losing the ideological war. As Ritter says, we can't just hope to go out with posters every now and then to protest wars (I fully support protests, by the way) and think that that's enough of an effort to get our message across. The real battle comes in confronting a cultural attitude that, as he states, only seems to be anti-war when it looks like the war effort is being lost due to circumstances on the ground.

For people who are anti-all-war like me, it isn't enough to sit on our laurels watching the Iraq war going terribly bad while not also making the point that war in general is a losing proposition. We must focus on the larger picture and we are responsible for stoking the public debate about the appropriateness of war as a strategy - any war - not just Iraq, Afghanistan or the coming conflict with Iran.

We have failed. The pro-war culture continues to thrive because too many citizens believe that war is a necessity instead of a perversion. They have lost faith in diplomacy and negotiations because they fervently believe that the time bomb is ticking and is ready to explode in their neighbourhood some time soon. They have bought into centuries of fearmongering and refuse to believe that peaceful methods of solving conflicts are actually reasonable.

This is observable on a daily basis simply by looking at the violence in our societies. You can't just live in fear and hope that nothing happens to you and your family. You have to become proactive. But, that does not mean that you need to become violent yourself in order to defend your rights and freedoms. People understand that on a local level. They need to be informed that this type of attitude can also work on a global scale. It can be done, but as long as those in charge refuse to acknowledge realistic options, opting instead for the armed conflict method of continually keeping enemies in line by a show of force and power, those of us who are anti-war and anti-violence feel powerless.

War is a business and there's no doubt that those involved in the sector profit enormously from this propagation of war after war. In the west, money is power and the threat to that is seen as nothing short of blasphemous in a culture so entrenched in worshipping the almighty buck. We need to continue to drive home the fact that military-based economies can become a distant memory and that any losses suffered can be replaced by new sources of income.

There are many angles available to the anti-war movement that would enable a very broad discussion of the meaning and effects of war in today's world. First, we need to convince the population that it is, in fact, acceptable to have that discussion without feeling unpatriotic and treasonous. With the backdrop of the current Iraq situation behind us, we need to do more as a movement to expand the dialogue to a point where we are talking about the role of war in this century.

Ritter offers his help and an organizational structure that we would be loath to ignore if we truly aim to engage the public in such a dialogue. The only question is: are we prepared to move forward with the clear vision and strategy he lays out so well for us or will we simply keep resorting to tactics that will ensure that we keep losing this battle for the hearts and minds of our neighbours?

We cannot be afraid to broach these topics on a much larger scale and, in order to do so, we must get organized. Whether we choose to do so following Ritter's model or perhaps a more business-like corporate structure really is irrelevant. We are in a position right now to have a much larger impact due to the reality in Iraq and, whether or not we are able to pull more people to our ideological belief that all war is unnecessary, the least we can accomplish is to get more citizens to ponder what they truly believe about the role of war in their lives and in their world and to lay out the options so they can take a realistic look at what living in a continual military culture really means.