If not war, then what?

Watch CNN and you can't miss the footage: Protesters - sometimes without a stitch of clothing - using their bodies to spell out "NO WAR" or to create a peace sign on the lawn. You roll your eyes and prepare to dismiss these latest activists.

But then, in church the next day, your minister offers a carefully reasoned sermon about why a US attack on Iraq is morally wanting. No gimmicks, just a clergy member and a congregation searching for the high ground - and coming down on the side of nonviolence - at a time of confusion and fear.

Related stories 02/14/03 Antiwar rallies: how effective are they at swaying opinion? 02/11/03 War, peace collide in sermons 01/28/03 Antiwar movement swells, still searching for its voice

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It's easy to wonder if the antiwar movement is ridiculous or sublime. If it's peopled by the anti-Bush left, or thoughtful Americans of all political stripes. If it is strident or reasoned.

The reality is, it's all of the above - and every- thing in between. In adopting a "big tent" philosophy, organizers have welcomed all comers, all shows of support. And their efforts have resulted in the fastest-growing antiwar movement in US history, allowing them to draw crowds the size of which only showed up in the Vietnam era after years of conflict. Its factions include clergy and anarchists, college students and veteran '60s protesters, internationalists and Hollywood celebrities - all united, at least for now, under the No War With Iraq banner.

"A lot of folks are saying, 'You know, isn't it time to find other, perhaps more constructive or creative ways to deal with problems between people? Do we always have to rely on military, and therefore violent, solutions?' " says Leslie Cagan, a veteran organizer and cochair of United for Peace and Justice, a four-month-old coalition.

It's often easier for people to agree on what they don't want - in this case an invasion of Iraq - than it is to reach a consensus on a trickier issue: If not war, then what? Still, interviews with prominent antiwar thinkers and activists indicate a sincere wrestling within the movement over what the nonwar solutions to the Iraq conflict might be.

"How we respond to this threat will shape the kind of people we're going to be. And that's the moral question. How do you not become something terrible in your response to something terrible?" asks Jim Wallis, cofounder of Sojourners, a Christian ministry that focuses on justice and peace.

He and others in the religious community have looked beyond the current chorus of more inspections and containment to offer other alternatives.

Their six-point "Religious Initiative," made public last Friday, includes removing Saddam Hussein from power by establishing an international tribunal and indicting him, letting the world know he has no future. It also suggests enforcing coercive disarmament, including intensified, military-backed inspections and better monitoring of the arms embargo. And it makes demands on foreign policy, asking for a "road map to peace" in the Middle East, one that would make Palestine and Israel separate states, and send the message that a moral and political link exists between the troubles there, the war on terror campaign, and the Iraq situation. (The entire initiative is at sojo.net.)

Such ideas are the result of overwhelming opposition from churches around the US and the world. The religious community reached a consensus much faster on Iraq than it did during the Vietnam era, able to offer the current movement a moral conscience much sooner. With the exception of the Southern Baptists, who generally support President Bush, church leaders from Pope John Paul II to the National Council of Churches in the US have called a war with Iraq "unjust."

"That's never, in my experience or knowledge, happened before, that there's such unity in the churches against this war," Wallis says.

More impressive than just the clergy's quick response is the speedy mobilization of mainstream America at the grassroots level. Using the modern bullhorn - the Internet - online organizers have rallied tens of thousands to participate in a variety of public protests in recent months.

Since August, the membership of MoveOn.org, a leading lobbying group, has grown from about 400,000 to about 1.6 million, including more than 1 million US members.

"[The Internet] is an incredibly efficient way to allow people to get involved," says Joan Blades, who founded MoveOn with her husband, Wes Boyd. "A huge number of our members wanted to participate in some way and had no idea how to do so."

The site makes it easy by giving them posters to download, petitions to sign, and e-mail alerts when their contributions are needed to keep trumpeting diplomacy as an alternative to war.

This week, MoveOn - a member of the equally moderate Win Without War coalition - delivered a petition to the United Nations Security Council. Signed by more than 1 million people worldwide, it urged the international body "to back tough inspections, not war."

"We've never had a response this overwhelming," says Ms. Blades. "We really want [the UN] to understand how broad and how deep the support for a diplomatic resolution is."

That kind of ingenuity - combined with the weakness of the Bush administration's case - is what has helped attract the grandmothers and the soccer dads of mainstream America to the antiwar movement, says Todd Gitlin, a former Vietnam protest organizer who now teaches sociology at Columbia University in New York.

They come to be counted among those opposed to war, and to be part of the discussion of alternatives, but critics say there are not enough of them to matter.

The movement, they argue, is still just a small portion of the overall population. And between 55 and 66 percent of Americans polled recently supported military action.

Some critics suggest that by allowing lots of different opinions about the war to be expressed at rallies, organizers dilute their message and lose support.

"That's the real moral failing of these demonstrations, that they are absolutely blind to the evil of the Saddam Hussein regime, and I think that turns ordinary people against them," says Max Boot, a pro-war analyst at the Council on Foreign Relations.

A Christian Science Monitor/TIPP poll conducted last week found that 52 percent of respondents said the antiwar movement had been very effective or somewhat effective in presenting its case to the public. Forty-five percent said it had not been very effective or not effective at all ( see chart, below).

Activists maintain that American sentiment isn't consistent with the polling numbers. "I don't really believe that 60 percent of the country is for war," says historian and longtime antiwar speaker Howard Zinn, noting that when he addresses public forums, "the reaction to my antiwar pitch is very enthusiastic and strong."

Rather than looking at their lack of a majority as an inability to sway public opinion, activists choose to see it as an accomplishment that so many people are saying "no" when the Bush administration controls the microphone.

The real gauge, says Mr. Zinn, should be the protests that are happening spontaneously in little towns across the US. "We don't have radical organizers going into Bozeman, Montana," he says.

For Gary Springston, a 40-something retail administrator who recently attended an antiwar talk by Zinn in Boston, the strength of the antiwar effort lies more with its actions than its words. "I think their existence is the most important message," he says. "[They] show people like me that we're not alone, that there is something wrong with this war, even if you can't put your finger exactly on it."

Some in the antiwar effort, like Zinn, suggest solutions that would require fundamental changes in US foreign policy, such as toning down the nation's superpower status. One of the antiwar coalitions, International ANSWER, advocates similar tactics, but more stridently.

It supports lifting the sanctions and letting the Iraqis decide what to do about their leader, rather than allowing the Bush administration's "empire building." Organizers say ANSWER's stand is about more than just one conflict in one country.

"Really, the question is: What is to be done about the nature of our interactions around the world, and the living conditions of the people all around the world?" says Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, a 30-something attorney on the national steering committee of International ANSWER and cofounder of Washington-based Partnership for Civil Justice - Legal Defense and Education Fund. "It is a movement for social justice. It is not a simple, 'Don't bomb Iraq,' and then if they do, we go home."

Other coalitions, such as United for Peace and Justice, also formed with an eye to evaluating what this crisis means in terms of the role of US foreign policy around the world.

ANSWER is controversial, however. Created shortly after Sept. 11, its leaders are master mobilizers, but their critics can be found on both the left and the right. Mr. Gitlin calls them "left-wing sectarians." Mr. Boot calls the views of some of their organizers "pro-dictator."

Gitlin points out that all the talk about the group's message is healthy. "The debate about International ANSWER is really a debate about what the movement believes, and that's an important debate, that's a debate worth having," he says.

If a war starts, the movement will need to decide what position it will take with regard to troop withdrawal and the new administration of Iraq. "For International ANSWER this is a no-brainer, because they're simply 'US out of everywhere,' " he says. "But I think many other people in the antiwar movement will wonder what the movement should say. And they won't all agree, which is fine."

A war won't be a complete defeat for their cause, organizers say. They will try to keep facilitating the public discussion about the issues related to war, while supporting Americans in uniform. "There may be some demoralization and some confusion that sets in," says Ms. Cagan of United for Peace and Justice, "but I don't think we're going to see significant falling off of the antiwar movement."

She and others see signs that a worldwide peace movement is forming. "What's been happening is really the development of an antiwar movement, not just an anti-Iraq war movement," Cagan says.

That environment could foster the ideas presented by another antiwar thinker, US Rep. Dennis Kucinich. The Democrat from Ohio and presidential hopeful would like to see the US take a firmer stand for peace. For him, a burgeoning peace movement is a hint of what's to come.

"That direction is the path toward the future," he says. "And it's interesting to see ... the present that is so weighted and freighted with war, colliding with this tide of human unity."

Next: He sees a society ready to ban war | 1 | 2 | 3

KAREN SCHNEIDER - STAFF