On Waging Peace

For this paper, I will be assessing the book Waging Peace: The Art of War For the Antiwar Movement by Scott Ritter.

Scott Ritter is an ex-marine and former chief U.N. Weapons Inspector in Iraq from 1991 until 1998. He has been highly critical of United States foreign policy and states that Iraq possessed no weapons of mass destruction prior to the invasion in 2003. The CIA, later confirmed this.

Because of his disdain for the Bush administration and opposition to the Iraq war, he has been somewhat popular or noteworthy in the antiwar movement.

Although he says he admires the people within the movement, the way it is structured bothered him enough to write a book proposing an alternative.

Waging Peace is that book. In it, he basically reiterates an earlier essay with the same points. He believes the antiwar movement’s non-hierarchal, often leaderless quality is detrimental to its effectiveness. Imitating the military’s or FEMA’s vast bureaucracy is his solution.

There are a number of problems with this. The first glaring problem and obvious one would be that top down structures do not necessarily mean success. FEMA’s handling of the post-Katrina situation testifies to that.

He seems to fail to understand that many in the antiwar movement will not operate under authoritarian leadership. Indeed, many in the movement have quite anarchistic and libertarian attitudes on top-down control. These people will abandon a militaristic modeled movement.

It is a dangerous thing to imitate your opponent or enemy. How long before you are indistinguishable from them? Personally, becoming a mirror image of the military or government is not a goal of mine.

Ritter’s second biggest suggestion is basically to move to the center of the political spectrum. He advocates citing the constitution as a way of showing our patriotism and appealing to apolitical middle class America.

Never mind that many in the movement hold ideas of direct democracy and outlooks of property completely at odds with the old piece of paper. Forget that many of us reject nationalism and view it as a symptom of war itself. Without even knowing these two characteristics of the movement, one can see that he wants us to become center-left Democrats.

I’m sorry, Scott, center-left Democrats already exist and they supported or were mostly apathetic about the invasion. No need to increase their numbers.

When it comes down to it, it is apparent that Ritter is barely familiar with the many antiwar groups and organizations and he most defiantly does not understand them. He fails to make the connection between top-down leadership, nationalism and war. He neglects to acknowledge the millions of people in the streets pre-invasion or the media’s shameful participation in the buildup of lies and Propaganda.

In summary, his book is borderline useless, unless curiosity gets to you, and you want to briefly explore the mind of some who just doesn’t get it.