If the Bush administration keeps American troops in the Middle East, nonviolent protest is an excellent tool to facilitate the process of a military removal. Since the Iraq elections in December, Bush has promised to start shipping soldiers home, but that hasn’t happened. Students, professors and community members, however, can create a powerful voice of rebut and refute, which may spur negotiations and speed up the effort.
Appropriately and carefully initiating this relies on informed public discussion. Having a thought-out plan is key. Direct aims and strategies to combat the problem are essential. Pin-pointing the problem, too, is crucial.
On Nov. 18, 2005, at the Trinity Episcopal Church in Portland, Ore., Rev. James Lawson, the man responsible for implementing strategies of nonviolent protest during the civil rights movement, said that the real issues in our country are war and violence. For Lawson, they must not be debated. They must be defeated. Belaboring progress is an illness.
Mending the wounds of violence, especially the organized violence in Iraq, consists of having concrete pursuits, ones founded on the principles of nonviolent direct action. Such principles encompass a network of participants who are patient and prepared.
The march on Washington, D.C., in 1963, for example, commenced eight years after the civil rights movement began in 1955. Because of its meticulous planning, the event succeeded. In fact, on July 2, 1964, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, offering black people federal protection to vote, shop and be educated equally. Today, the possibility of achieving similar results lies in the arguments protesters may invoke from the Constitution.
According to the Constitution, article III, section 4, military actions are approved by the Constitution only when they’re needed to defend the United States from invasion and against domestic violence, not to overpower and domineer another state, country or nation. An argument as such is poignant, especially to the Bush administration, because it shows that America’s presence in Iraq is unconstitutional. Uncovering this injustice is imperative.
In the “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “The purpose of our direct-action program is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation.” In other words, a nonviolent protest must let the problem present itself through patience and prepared action. By being patient in the act of civil resistance, protesters incite nothing. They let the problem arise itself. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said in his essay “Spiritual Laws,” “Real action is in silent moments.” Delivering thoughtful statements with precise attribution supports and propels the effort forward in an intellectually “crisis-packed” way. Negotiations, then, may ensue.
Students, professors and community members can contribute to the removal of troops from the Middle East by understanding and implementing these methods. Valid and refined arguments, from private organization and discussion, inform and prepare protesters with the rebuts and refutes they need to defeat the organized violence in Iraq, which may cause the withdrawal of American troops from the Middle East.
Thomas Miller lives in Springfield, Ore.