Normal Students Against War

Last Saturday morning, as demonstrators against a U.S. attack on Iraq trickled onto the lawns next to the Vietnam Memorial in Washington D.C., a woman in a cowboy hat and a skull mask worked the edges of the crowd. She handed me a neat, word-processed flier from a stack under her arm. There were no “Muslim terrorists” on the flights on Sept. 11, it said. The whole atrocity was set up by the U.S. government, which directed the planes by remote-control. About ten web addresses followed. I pursued the woman to the next cluster of demonstrators and tapped her on the shoulder. “Excuse me,” I said, meeting her eyes through the mesh of the skeleton mask, “Do you really believe this?”

“Ma’am,” she snapped, “if you follow those links and still don’t believe it, more power to you.” She continued on her circuit. I rejoined the group who drove to Washington with me: another Harvard undergraduate, a Harvard Medical School doctor and two other Bostonians. It was already mid-morning, and few “ordinary” people were in sight. Political radicals lined the Constitution Gardens walkways, hawking at least three different Communist and Socialist papers. About 10,000 kids with dreadlocks in frayed black sweatshirts roamed the lawns. I feared that these radicals would do more to undermine the anti-war cause with their outrageous claims than to promote it. I was worried that the presence of so many extremists would repulse those who might otherwise agree with a broad anti-war agenda.

But as noon approached, buses of “ordinar y Americans” continued to arrive. The crowd swelled to 100,000, filling the grounds. Its demographics had changed. A group of pink-cheeked New Englanders bore a “Vermonters against the war” banner; church associations filed in with their own signs. A Dart mouth College contingent of about fifteen students landed, looking fresh off a ski trip. By early afternoon, the masses seemed to now be mostly young white professionals, retired couples, conservatively-dressed Muslim families pushing babystrollers, middle-aged people in anti-war T-shirts, and college students. The radical fringe was now out-numbered.

On returning from Washington, I told a Harvard friend about the woman in the skull mask. “The extremists are inevitable,” he replied. “That’s why I don’t go to rallies.” Most Harvard students are embarrassed by the trappings of demonstrations and the extremists who frequent them. We practice critical thinking all day. By night, we write response papers ripping apart political theories and literary masterpieces. The earnest “Hey hey, ho ho, war in Iraq must go” of the kids in front of the Science Center offends our critical sensibilities. We blush, cringe, smirk and flee to the safety of the library, even when we support the chanters’ cause.

The average Harvard student relinquishes any political voice for fear of criticism. We all want our political positions, like our theses, to be well-informed and invulnerable to possible nitpicking by the opposition. If we have not done all the research, we are afrai d to take a strong position. Yet many of us continue to postpone the background reading on important current issues; music rehearsals, tutoring commitments, lab work, and midterms always take precedence. We want to excel at eve rything. Many of us who are not experts on politics don’t have time to become experts, and eventually give up on taking a stand altogether.

But by attending rallies, mainstream Americans show policy-makers the true depth of public concern for an is sue. The article on the Washington rally in Sunday’s New York Times does not mention the scattered corny chant lyrics, conspiracy theorists, star speakers, or the speeches’ content. Instead, it focuses on the number of attendees. Clearly, here, the most important function of a public assembly is to prove that countable masses of people back a given cause. Thus, it is vital that those of us who oppose a high-cost invasion of Iraq, who are concerned about more serious threats to our long-term security—such as the spread of AIDS to India, Russia, and China and global food and water crises—do attend demonstrations, even if we must grit our teeth during the occasional chant. Stay home, and be counted among supporters of military action.

A large rally ag ainst an Iraq attack is set for this Sunday at 1 p.m. on Boston Common. All who oppose an attack should attend, regardless of quibbles with other causes organizers may try to link to it. I disagreed with some of the speakers on Saturday, especially over a ttempts to link the Iraq issue directly with the crisis in Israel and the Palestinian territories. After all, the issue at hand is greater than the problems of the Middle East. We are dealing with fundamental issues of international law, problem-solving a nd negotiation. But set secondary disagreements aside. Think of Sunday’s rally as a public opinion poll with only two possible answers. You can respond “Yes, I am against unilateral military action against Iraq” by simply showing up. Of course, you may st ay home. But if you choose to linger over Sunday waffles or revise a response paper as New England converges on Boston Common, be aware that your silence tells the pollsters: “No, I am not against war on Iraq. I support the President in military action.”< p>Hannah S. Sarvasy ’03 is a Folklore and Mythology concentrator in Leverett House.>