Lesson One: Years in the Making

The Times starts off by pointing out that the “bloggers lead the way” and that the “Egyptian revolt was years in the making.” It’s important to remember that these things don’t come out of nowhere. Bloggers have been active for years: leading, learning, making mistakes and collecting knowledge. Many of the first round of bloggers were ignored and repressed. Some of them were effectively neutralized when they were co-opted into what the Times calls “the timid, legally recognized opposition parties.” “What destroyed the movement was the old parties,” said one blogger. A lesson we might draw for that is that blogging isn’t necessarily a stepping stone to “real activism” but is instead it’s own kind of activism. The culture of blogs and mainstream movements are not always compatible.

Lesson Two: Share Your Experiences

The Egyptian protests began after ones in Tunisia. The context was not the same: “The Tunisians faced a more pervasive police state than the Egyptians, with less latitude for blogging or press freedom, but their trade unions were stronger and more independent.” Still, it was important to share tips: “We shared our experience with strikes and blogging,” a blogger recalled. Some of the tips were exceedingly practical (how to avert tear gas–brought lemons, onions and vinegar, apparently) and others more social (sharing torture experiences). Lesson: we all have many things to learn. It’s best to be ready for counter-tactics.

One of the interesting sidelights was how the teachings of American nonviolence strategist Gene Sharp made it to Cairo. A Serbian youth movement had based their rebellion on his tactics and the Egyptians followed their lead, with exiled organizers setting up a website (warning: annoying sound) compiling Sharp’s strategies:

For their part, Mr. Maher and his colleagues began reading about nonviolent struggles. They were especially drawn to a Serbian youth movement called Otpor, which had helped topple the dictator Slobodan Milosevic by drawing on the ideas of an American political thinker, Gene Sharp. The hallmark of Mr. Sharp’s work is well-tailored to Mr. Mubark’s Egypt: He argues that nonviolence is a singularly effective way to undermine police states that might cite violent resistance to justify repression in the name of stability.

As an aside, I have to say that as a longterm peace activist, it tickles me no end to see Gene Sharp’s ideas at the heart of the Egyptian protests. America really can export democracy sometimes!

Lesson Three: Be Relentless in Confronting Lies

The Times reports that Maher “took special aim at the distortions of the official media.” He told them that when people “distrust the media then you know you are not going to lose them. When the press is full of lies, social media takes on the fact checking role. People turn to independent sources when they sense a propaganda machine. The creator of a Facebook site was a Google marketing executive working on his own. He filled the site We Are all Khaled Said “with video clips and newspaper articles [and] repeatedly hammered home a simple message.”

Lesson Four: Don’t Wait for Those Supposed To Do This Work

Most of this social media was created by students for goodness sake and it all relied on essentially-free services. Everyone’s always thought that if Egypt were to explode it would be the dreaded-but-popular Muslim Brotherhood that would lead the charge. But they didn’t. They scrambled not knowing what to do as protests erupted in the major cities. Eventually the Brotherhood’s youth wing joined the protests and the full organization followed suit but it was not the leaders in any of this.

When we’re talking about popular organizating, money and established credentials aren’t always an advantage. What’s interesting to learn with the Egypt protests is that the generation leading it doesn’t seem to have as strict a religious worldview as its parents. This came out most dramatically in the images of Christian Egyptians protecting their Muslim brothers in Tahir Square during times of prayer. This is having ramification in copycat protests in Tehran. Iranian leaders tried to paint the Egyptian students as heirs to their own Islamic revolution but it seems practical considerations are more important than setting up an Islamist state (stay tuned on this one–protests have begun in Tehran on one hand and the Muslim Brotherhood might well take over from Egypt protesters now that Mubarak is out).

On a personal note…

It’s interesting to watch how the three-year old Save St Mary’s campaign has mimicked some of the features of the Egyptian protests. Their blog has been pretty relentless in exposing the lies. It’s attracted far more media attention than the professionally-staffed Diocesan press office has been able to muster. There’s been a lot of behind-the-scenes talking with churches in other regions to compare tactics and anticipate counter-moves. As far as I know it’s one of seven churches nationwide with round-the-clock vigils but it’s the only one with a strong social media component. It’s average age is probably a generation or two younger than the other vigils which gives it a certain frank style that’s not found elsewhere. The Philadelphia Archdiocese is exploding now with arrests of recent Diocesan officials and revelations from the District Attoreny that dozens of priests with “credible accusations” of pedophilia are still ministering around kids and while church closings and the pedophilia scandals are not officially connected, as a non-Catholic I’m fine admitting that they arise from a shared Diocesan culture of money and cover-ups. Again, “repeatingly hammering home a simple message” is a good strategy.

Nothing’s really changed now except U.S. political interests. Hussein is still a tyrant. He’s still stockpiling chemical weapons. Why are U.S. political interests different now? Why does Bill Clinton want U.S. media attention focused on Iraq? Look no further than Big Bill’s zipper. Stop the next war before it starts. Abolish everyone’s weapons of mass destruction and let’s get a President who doesn’t need a war to clear his name.

I put this at the bottom of the piece because then the idea that Clinton might have done this was still way out there.

Since then most every major turning point in the President’s scandals has been echoed by military maneuverings.

On August 17th Clinton gave a televised address which was widely criticized as being “too little, too late” and non-repentant enough. Public opinion turned sharply against him. Three days later Big Bill sent 100 cruise missiles into Afghanistan and Sudan in order to assassinate Osama bin Laden, the previously unknown archenemy of the United States.

And now, on the afternoon before the House of Representatives was scheduled to begin proceedings on his Impeachment, Clinton has ordered an attack on Iraq. Congress will of course delay the vote. Rumors are that this new bombing campaign might last more than a few days, and come January’s new Congressional term there will be five less Republicans.

Each time these coincidences happen, a few pundits that mutter about “Wag the Dog” scenarios before assuring the audience that Clinton would never do that. Everyone talks about coincidence and then moves on.

But coincidence has been Clinton’s friend throughout his scandals. Remember the long-lost Whitewater documents that mysteriously appeared on Hillary Clinton’s coffee-table when investigators were threatening to issue here a subpoena? Remember the job offers that Clinton cronies arranged for key witnesses just before they either recanted their stories or lied under oath? All of Clinton’s scandals have been of the “who cares” variety-shady land dealings twenty years ago in Arkansas, his having sex with an intern in the Oval Office. They displayed a lack of judgment and character, but were not Impeachable. But his scandals have grown and taken a life of their own as Clinton and his wife have been visited by an ever-growing amount of coincidences.

Enough is enough. How much more are we to believe? As I write this the missiles are screaming over Baghdad and Iraqis are dying horrible deaths. This is real. This is not some political game. It is time for Americans to stop denying that these coincidences are really coincidental.

It is time to demand Clinton’s resignation.

And if he refuses, then it is time to subpoena White House records on the last year of military actions. If they show that Clinton has murdered in his desperate attempt to save his Presidency, then it is time not only to impeach him but to put him into jail.

We’re told it’s because U.N. inspectors believe that Iraq has hidden “weapons of mass destruction.” But of course so does the United States. And Britain, France, Russia, the Ukraine, China, India and Pakistan. Iraq doesn’t even hold a regional monopoly, as Israel certainly has atomic weapons atop U.S.-designed rockets aimed this very moment at Hussein’s Baghdad palaces.

Insanely-destructive weapons are a fact of life in the fin-de-Millennium. There’s already plenty of countries with atomic weapons and the missile systems to lob them into neighboring countries. Hussein probably doesn’t have them, and the weapons U.N. inspectors are worried about are chemical. This is the “poor man’s atomic bomb,” a way to play at the level of nuclear diplomacy without the expenses of a nuclear program.

Clinton seems oblivious to the irony of opposing Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction with our own. The aircraft carriers and battle fleets that have been sent into the Gulf in recent weeks are loaded with tactical nuclear missiles.

If the possession of weapons of mass destruction is wrong for Iraq, then it is wrong for everyone. It is time to abolish all weapons programs and to build real world peace along lines of cooperation.

He’s our Bully

Most Americans, on hearing a call to let Hussein be, will react with disbelief. Conditioned to think of him as our modern Hitler, anyone opposing a new Gulf War must be crazy, someone unfamiliar with the history of the appeasement of Hitler prior to World War II that allowed him to build his military to the frightening levels of 1939.

But Americans have alas not been told too much of more recent history. Saddam Hussein is our creation, he’s our bully. It started with Iran. Obsessed with global military control, the U.S. government started arming regional superpowers. We gave our chosen countries weapons and money to bully around their neighbors and we looked the other way at human rights abuses. We created and strengthened dictators around the world, including the Shah of Iran. A revolution finally threw him out of power and ushered in a government understandable hostile to the United States.

Rather than take this development to mean that the regional superpower concept was a bad idea, the U.S. just chose another regional superpower: Iraq. We looked the other way when the two got into a war, and started building up Iraq’s military arsenal, giving him the planes and military equipment we had given Iran. This was a bloody, crazy war, where huge casualties would be racked up only to move the front a few miles, an advance that would be nullified when the other army attacked with the same level of casualties. The United States supported that war. International human rights activists kept publicizing the abuses within Iraq, and denouncing him for use of chemical weapons. They got little media attention because it was not in U.S. political interests to fight Hussein.

Nothing’s really changed now except U.S. political interests. Hussein is still a tyrant. He’s still stockpiling chemical weapons. Why are U.S. political interests different now? Why does Bill Clinton want U.S. media attention focused on Iraq? Look no further than Big Bill’s zipper. Stop the next war before it starts. Abolish everyone’s weapons of mass destruction and let’s get a President who doesn’t need a war to clear his name.