The Politics of War

I’M STANDING NEAR THE GLASS-PLATED Geisel Library on the campus of University of California, San Diego. The edifice is shaped in a way Niki de St. Phalle might design a spaceship. Otherworldly. It’s docked at the end of a paved stretchcalled Library Walk. It’s a cool May afternoon. UCSD undergrads stroll up and down Library Walk. I notice a dude in baggy jeans and unnecessary brown knit cap. He carries a skateboard and walks with a girl who’s got a cell phone pressed to an ear. They blend. They fit the demographic of happily oblivious young adults.

But today on Library Walk—between the starship library and a water-filled dunk tank set up by the UCSD Student Foundation—world reality has invaded. There’s a phalanx of news media. Every local TV news station is on site; Channel 8 has parked its van right on the walk. Cameras, tape recorders and pens are all rolling. The lure: a scheduled political demonstration. From noon until 3:30, a group of students has promised to play and replay the beheading of Nicholas Berg on a pair of televisions.

Berg was the American civilian notoriously decapitated in Iraq by anti-U.S. insurgents. The masked men claimed the killing was retribution for U.S. soldiers’ degradation and torture of Iraqis held at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad.

The student demonstration never gets rolling. Organizers say the university coerced their leader to back down. A UCSD spokesperson says the school received word the event was cancelled by the student, Ariel Mor, who initially went through proper channels to get permission. But when friends of Mor’s show up to carry out the demonstration, they are told they cannot.

UCSD officials maintain they did not initiate the cancellation of the demonstration. “The student called and cancelled,” says Nicholas Aguilar, director of student policies and judicial affairs for UCSD. “And for us, content—unless it is defamatory—is not a factor. Everybody can express themselves here on campus.”

EVAN EPSTEIN’S THROAT IS DRY. He asks reporters and passersby for a piece of gum, or something. He’s been talking all afternoon. Trying to explain who he is, what has transpired and what’s next.

Through a series of fits and starts, reporters are informed by Epstein that Mor decided that morning to de-affiliate the demonstration from the student group he signed up under, the Israel Action Committee. School rules say only organizations—not individuals—can set up booths or stands on Library Walk.

“We didn’t want to be affiliated with any campus organization,” says Epstein. “We just wanted to educate people and let them formulate their own opinions.” He characterized the event as a show of support for U.S. troops. But done under the banner of an Israel Action Committee, a demonstration would/could be construed as pro-Israel/anti-Arab.

Epstein goes to great lengths to remain neutral about the intended result of replaying a beheading for three and a half hours. But he says: “America is blind to that way of life—an eye for an eye. There is a violent entity over there. We’re not fighting a harmless group. I’ve been to the area. I’ve seen how children are raised—in their textbooks they learn anti-American sentiment. And I’m disappointed by how the media is not reporting this.”

I know. You were expecting to find a bleeding-heart peace rally on the campus of UCSD. So was I.

I HAD A VARIETY OF REACTIONS to this aborted event.

First, I went back to the office and found the despicable video on the Internet. Before today, I had no interest in a viewing. Gruesome doesn’t begin to describe it. It’s scary, because you know what’s going to happen. And it is indeed violent. The murderers didn’t use a guillotine on Berg. Rather, some sort of saw. My first thought is how egregiously wrong it is that Berg’s parents know this tape exists. In that sense, I believe I’d at least ask for family consent before repeatedly rebroadcasting the final moments of somebody’s son, brother or friend.

Watching the video does ultimately— as intended by the UCSD students— bring the graphic nature of this war that much closer to home.

However, I don’t think even a widespread media presentation of the video would cause partisans in this country to change their minds about the occupation of Iraq. Party-faithful Republicans are for it because President Bush ordered it. Hard-line Democrats are crawling out from under the bed to denounce it for the same reason.

I believe—before and after seeing the video—that the United States made one of the biggest political blunders in its history by invading Iraq without an adequate exit strategy. An eye for an eye is the law of the land in the Middle East. Especially barring conclusive evidence of illegal massed weapons, why stick even a finger into this beehivetinderbox-hellhole?

I give the UCSD students muted credit for the attempted activism. Their intention was obviously more than a forum to “educate people and let them formulate their own opinions.” But they left their motives unspoken. And it strikes me that if this is what passes for today’s on-campus political activism, then this practice has been overrun by political correctness.

It’s hard to protest—or simply discuss —a war or an occupation and not be tagged pro-this or anti-that. And so the final thought is this: “Peace activists” and “troops supporters” are not mutually exclusive. I have been guilty as anybody of treading lightly past the conviction of my beliefs. But no longer. Spurred by some college kids, I watched a nasty, sick video perpetrated by enemies of the United States. I maintain my feeling that a president of the United States needs to realize an error has been made and get us swiftly out of the theater noir that is Iraq.

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