Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 27, 1991 TAG: 9102270350
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
At the electronics company where he works, some co-workers have turned cool. "One guy said, `You stay away from me,' and he has for three weeks," the Roanoke peace activist says. At the same time, "I've had intelligent, responsible people get screaming mad because I wear a dove."
The first casualty of war, it is often said, is truth. The second, at least this time around, may have been debate, and with it, the peace movement.
The echoes of Vietnam still ring loud in America's ear, and with them a nation's distorted and selective memories of the last war. Some say the United States "lost" in Vietnam because anti-war demonstrators undermined public morale. To make sure the Persian Gulf War didn't turn into "another Vietnam," many people this time have made a special effort to stifle any questions and show their support for the troops, if not the policy.
A result has been, to peace advocates, a curious and disturbing silence.
Before the war started, the folks who run the Plowshare Peace Center in Roanoke heard from lots of people - ordinary people - who questioned the rush to war.
Since then, virtually nothing.
"As soon as it happened, there was this thing of, `We've got to follow the president,' and no one will even talk about it anymore," Harrison says. "At work, I've felt the same kind of ostracism the Jews felt. People wouldn't talk to me. I think they feared some sort of guilt by association."
He's baffled at how many Americans, even those who opposed going to war, are now saying it's unpatriotic to disagree with the president during wartime. "You know who came up with that? Lenin," Harrison says. "It seems strange to hear that now. It's not really an American tradition, but you hear everyone say it."
"It seems dangerously close to fascism to have this silence," says Rick Waters, a Virginia Tech English instructor who is active in the peace movement in the New River Valley. "I want to see democracy work." And democracy means debate, discussion, even dissent.
Perhaps even worse than the silence, from the peace advocates' point of view, is the outright cheerleading for what has turned out to be an especially popular war - and one that the United States is winning in blitzkrieg fashion.
"I think people are feeling guilty about the Vietnam War, and that's the reason for a lot of the patriotism, if that's what you want to call it," Harrison says.
Some peace advocates would prefer to call it something else. Bullying, for one thing.
"There is this atmosphere of intimidation," says Polly Branch, Plowshare's co-director. "It's frightening how people's emotions can flare up against one man who's portrayed as a monster, and that's translated into hatred of an entire race of people" - and eventually comes back to bite the Americans who have been demonstrating in favor of peace.
Roanoke Valley artist Sue Roy Nauman is one of the regulars at the Friday afternoon vigils that Plowshare sponsors on the Roanoke City Market - usually about El Salvador, more recently the Persian Gulf. "You get people driving by who yell, `Get that excrement off the pavement,' except they don't say `excrement,' " she says.
That kind of reaction has taken a toll. "Some of the people who have vigiled with us for six years on Central America have not come out because they're afraid of people misunderstanding us," Branch says.
"Sooner or later, somebody is going to drive by who's lost somebody in the Army, and they're going to feel very hard towards me, and I don't think I deserve that," says one vigil "regular" who has quit taking part and didn't want to be identified.
At Tech, Waters recently stirred up a controversy in the campus paper, the Collegiate Times, with a letter to the editor opposing the war and what he called a "naive" attitude of "my country, right or wrong."
The response came not only in the form of other letters to the editor, but a private "profane" letter from another faculty member he didn't even know, Waters says. "He made it clear he hated me and various of my body parts," Waters says.
He blames President Bush for making anyone who opposed the war appear unpatriotic. "It was a very clever political move to suggest people demonstrating are trying to resurrect the '60s," Waters says. "It really disturbs me to see the people protesting portrayed as hippies who have nothing to do but listen to Grateful Dead records."
Many peace advocates also blame the media - along with Pentagon restrictions on combat coverage - for portraying the war as bloodless, a giant Nintendo game in the desert, and therefore fun.
Nevertheless, the vitriolic reaction of many Americans has prompted soul-searching within the peace movement. Is now the best time to talk peace, or the worst? Will peace demonstrations now get the point across, or will peace advocates simply be seen as traitors and discredit the entire peace movement for years to come?
Harrison laughs at the questions. "You must have been to some of our meetings," he says.
There's no clear consensus on how the peace movement - not so much a monolithic organization as a collection of individuals whose views about war and peace are by no means the same - should respond, and the fast-moving events in the gulf may soon render the point moot anyway.
Many of the forums that peace groups in the Roanoke and New River valleys have organized to discuss the war won't be held until next month.
In the meantime, there's been the peace movement's burden - the now-legendary accounts of peace protesters spitting on returning Vietnam vets. It wasn't just anti-war demonstrators who treated Vietnam vets badly, but the nation as a whole, Branch says. But it's the peace movement that gets the blame.
As a result, many peace advocates have been careful to say this time around that they, too, support the troops; they just want them home.
It's not always a distinction that the other side notices.
"The people who profess to be pro-war, pro-troops, I don't find too supportive of the people who are pro-peace," says Susan Anderson, a Virginia Tech math instructor and peace advocate. "They automatically assume if you're against the war, you don't support the troops. The one statement everyone is making is they support the troops; we want them home safe."
But some peace advocates don't like to say they support the troops. How can you support the troops without supporting the war? "I can't treat them as heroes," Harrison says.
Other peace advocates have tried to seize the flag as their symbol, too, although the grasp has been a tentative one.
"I think peace advocates are really careful to be as patriotic as the people supporting the war," says Mike Heller, a Roanoke College English professor. "But I think peace advocates are concerned with the larger patriotism. There is a patriotism that would put America first and if other people have to suffer, that's OK. I say that's not OK. Maybe our patriotism should be to the Earth and not the 50 states."
Against an apparently solid phalanx of support for the war, peace advocates have had to content themselves with small victories. For a while, Harrison didn't think anyone at work noticed his dove. "One day, I came in without it and someone said: `Where's your dove?' I've had two people ask for them."
But not even the sudden collapse of most Iraqi forces that promises to bring the war to a quick end can console those who didn't think the United States should have gone to war in the first place.
"No one wants the war to go badly," Heller says. "But I think peace advocates are afraid if the war is over quickly, we might forget what we've learned [in the past] and feel we ought to do it again, it seems so easy."
by CNB