Quit Iraq Now

My reason for speaking at this rally was to support the Columbia Coalition Against the War. I've been a Barnard professor since 1969, and I've not seen a cause on campus more urgent than opposition to the Iraq war. As citizens of the nation who started this war, we should act now to get out of Iraq. We have a duty to offer nonviolent action and cease our complicity in the killing.

By reliable scholarly and medical American and British estimates, hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians have been killed. Whether directly by our hands or not, our presence, at the very least, shows our complicity.

We mourn our American soldiers as we see their names in our media. But Iraqis go nameless. If we are at all concerned with just war theory, try to find a theory that justifies this.

When I arrived here 38 years ago to teach political theory and movements, I found the campus even more divided than it is now, over the issue of Vietnam. I learned that if we are not unified on a cause as plain as unjustified war, if we lack imagination and commitment to strategies of nonviolent action, then we will stay mired in inaction. But if we unite, as we did in 1985 over Columbia's divestment from apartheid, then effective and successful nonviolent action can follow.

It's often argued that we're actually saving lives by staying the course in Iraq. There are many variations on this position, from those of our government officials to recent articles in the Spectator. There's certainly no point whatsoever in trying to argue this with the current administration in Washington because, even despite the recent Congressional election results combined with the administration's own self-appointed Iraq report, the president opposes public opinion with the latest "surge" policy.

Here on this campus, we have a chance to become a microcosm of nonviolent protest, setting a model of strict nonviolent action, as we did in April '85. In our earnest considerations of precisely how to act, we should, as we did then, study history and what it might teach us in moments of crisis. Since Western dominance solidified in the 19th century, exploiting poorer countries, there has been a pattern, forecast by Thucydides' critique of the Athenians during the Peloponnesian War, that a big power is peculiarly vulnerable to hubris, rationalizing that its intrusions are just or justified, from Pericles' famed "Funeral Oration" to the Melian dialogue. From Kipling's "White Man's Burden," in 1899, giving a poetic rationale for British imperialism, to 20th century French colonialism in Algeria and Vietnam, where it was followed by America, together with similar intrusions in the Middle East, when the time for withdrawal is long past, the argument against it remains the same: we can't pull out because they need us.

To paraphrase Machiavelli in The Prince: the world is a woman who needs our protection, and she must be dominated by the superior force of virtue. At issue is the security of all, regardless of gender or culture, and in the end will come the gratitude of history. Machiavelli wrote this in 1515, but, as we're taught here, we study the classics for a reason-to learn their lessons. So it's no accident, given our tradition of dominance, that we have today in power politicians who imagine themselves in the role of Machiavellian deciders.

I ask you for a moment, in the style of the "Reacting to the Past" class offered at Barnard, to imagine yourself playing the role of Gandhi in August, 1942, at the moment that he announces his famous "Quit India" campaign for independence and immediate British withdrawal.

Gandhi knew that the British were determined to stay the course in India at all costs, in order to guarantee security, for, after all, the entire world was at war. The future of democracy was at stake.

Gandhi, who had led the Indian independence movement for 23 years up to this final campaign, and witnessed intense sectarian violence between Hindus and Muslims, responded to the British in just two words: "Quit India." Why? Because it would stop civil war? No. Only because continued British presence would make the killing worse, and in no case could ensure India's security. Churchill would have preferred to maintain the Raj for many years. Gandhi instead started, among victims of imperialism in the last century, the historic process of decolonization that continues into this century. I suggest that we follow Gandhi's wisdom now, as we failed to do in Vietnam, and adopt his mantra: "Quit Iraq Now." There are forces in this world other than violence, as Thoreau inspired Gandhi, and then King, to demonstrate.

The author is a political science professor at Barnard College. This is a summary of a speech he gave at Thursday's rally.