Reply to Howard Zinn's "Are We Politicians or Citizens?"

Please read Howard Zinn's "Are We Politicians or Citizens?" before you read this. The article, which appeared in The Progressive and can be found online at www.progressive.org/zinn , is quite brief and will make this reply much more interesting to read.

Also, there are many Iraq statistics on www.About.com and at www.brookings.edu . I encourage anyone mildly interested to check out at least the first (it is much shorter). The information is stunning and heart-breaking. I sincerely hope that this reply is helpful to anyone interested in politics. Thank you.

The argument proposed in Howard Zinn's recent article "Are We Politicians or Citizens?" is summarized quite well by the article's seventh sentence: "When a social movement adopts the compromises of legislators, it has forgotten its role, which is to push and challenge the politicians, not to fall meekly behind them". This is an intriguing and appropriate claim given some of his examples and conversations I myself have had on the subject of politics. The general sense of "being reasonable" or "being rational" or "being realistic" pervades political discussions. What we can do constantly comes into conflict with what we ought to do. Fiat justitia, pereat mundis has no American equivalent. But if we are not Romans, neither are we Greeks. Our republicanism rests on our representation, consequences of the size of our country and the historic volatility of pure democracies (these are the two most prominent arguments in The Federalist Papers).
Ancient Greeks, having no variety in religion, nor any separation between their religious practices and their civic habits, lived generally by the custom of civic virtue; they were driven to act by what they "ought" to do, what they believed was right. And that opinion was subject to no mediator; the purity of their democracy resided in the assembly wherein politics was openly discussed. It was hostility discussed and subject to the tyranny of rhetoric which lead to great conflicts and the corruption of discourse as well as politics. Seeing this difficulty in Ancient Greek and Ancient Italian states, the framers of the Constitution and the Constitution's most eloquent advocates proposed a more moderate solution to the desire for freedom and independence; represent, in different ways, the potentially wavering and radical ideas of the people without sacrificing moderation. Thus, Howard Zinn is quite right; there are politicians who represent people, and there are people whom are represented. And if people benignly confess their opinions they will be poorly or falsely represented. If they have no opinions then politicians have no place in government. If their opinions are the same as politicians then there is no need for representation, the general will becomes naturally incorporated into politicians' understanding.
Yet, the article seems to drift between bold parallels and curious (and unexplained) evidence, both of which ultimately support the initial assertion tangentially at best. In effect, he brings up examples of both citizens acting like politicians and politicians acting like citizens and condemns the former and praises the later which means that everyone (politicians included) ought to act like citizens. Inasmuch as they represent citizens (which is part of his original claim, and what is enacted by the Constitution), politicians ought to think like citizens and act on their behalf before their own. That is why people elect them. But ought they be citizens who cannot compromise, who cannot moderate, who need mediators?
Much of the evidence is to the effect of defeating the honor and intellectual integrity of the "phased withdrawal" plan being considered by Congress. Here's the most intriguing and most convincing argument he proposes:
"Timetables for withdrawal are not only morally reprehensible in the case of a brutal occupation (would you give a thug who invaded your house, smashed everything in sight, and terrorized your children a timetable for withdrawal?) but logically nonsensical. If our troops are preventing civil war, helping people, controlling violence, then why withdraw at all? If they are in fact doing the opposite-provoking civil war, hurting people, perpetuating violence-they should withdraw as quickly as ships and planes can carry them home".
There are comprehensive polls provided by the Brookings Institution and About.com on Iraqi opinions. The opinion given by Howard Zinn in the first sentence of the paragraph above (the "morally reprehensible" part) agrees very well with what can be generally understood to be the Iraqi Sunni perspective (which represents less than 38% of the countries population) which overwhelmingly disapproves of the invasion, the occupation and the current Iraqi government. Two other groups, the Shia and the Kurds (the Shia are Arabic and thus ethnically similar to the Sunni while the Kurds are ethnically distinct from both, but religiously they are Shia) are more evenly divided, though a majority of those polled (53%, including all sectarian groups) believe that "security issues" are "the biggest problem facing Iraq as a whole". 26% responded that "political/military issues" were the biggest problem. Thus, an great majority (i.e. 81%) of those polled are concerned primarily with political, military and security issues, all of which are inescapably linked to one another. If one is failing, the rest too will fail. At present, all are failing. There have been some recent security successes in less-populated regions (and the Kurds seem to have had the most successful economic and military transition) but overall the evidence is to the contrary.
This digression is intended to shed some light on the complicated and contradictory opinions of the very distinct ethnic and sectarian groups in Iraq. I will return to the quotation, specifically, whether or not the argument for withdrawal is in fact "logically nonsensical".
It seems indelibly manifest that if the US troops were actually "preventing civil war", "helping" and "controlling violence" that they ought not to withdraw. There would, in that case, be no argument at all. Neither would there be an argument if US troops were doing the very opposite. However, the situation seems drastically more complex than to afford these two simple alternatives. This kind of distinction between a manifest good and a manifest bad (without any middle ground) is in fact precisely the kind of ideological scenario liberals (or "progressives") have been denouncing in the Bush Administration since the beginning of the war. There exists a debate not merely for the sake of politics as such (although that is lamentably a part) but in part because Iraqis disagree on how their country should be run. The political parties in Iraq are supported by unofficial militias which are run by sectarian groups; politicians gained support in elections due to the sponsorship of militias who helped garner votes in exchange for political support. This means that without any US Military or Coalition forces monitoring insurgent groups, unaccountable, nontransparent and violent militias will be the principle foundation of political parties. Many of the insurgents fighting strictly the US and Coalition forces are foreign nationals (from across the Persian Gulf) and/or are supported by Iran which openly states that it desires to see the US fail in Iraq. More Iraqi civilians have been attacked by insurgents (i.e. not the result of collateral damage of attacks on US troops) than US and Coalition troops consistently since 2003.
In a cycle of violence that has characterised Mesopotamia since the Abbasid Caliphate conquered it in the seventh century, Baghdad and its surrounding regions are today subject to constant conflict. This conflict will not cease with a withdrawal of US and Coalition forces, which is not to say that that is reason enough to remain in Iraq. The harrowing truth is that no one knows what would happen were we to withdraw immediately or in a year. Staying or leaving is a gamble for Iraqis and for all military forces in Iraq. The question then becomes, for citizens as well as politicians, how we can keep as many people alive as possible. Protesting against the occupation or against war in general will, at best, remove US and Coalition Troops from Iraq, but it makes no assurance whatsoever that the Iraqis who are killing other Iraqis for reasons that we, as westerners, do not understand will stop. I makes no assurance whatsoever that terrorists who have emmigrated to Iraq to kill Americans will be indefinitely deterred from killing other Americans in the future.
On the other hand, a total troop withdrawal could provide breathing room for Iraqi politics, which is desperately needed. A troop withdrawal could significantly reduce Iraqi civilian causalities (from accidental US Military action, from collateral from insurgent activity directed against the US Military). A Troop withdrawal would, obviously, end US and Coalition casualties. Or, as suggested above, it could do none of these things.
I opposed the proposal of "Operation Iraqi Freedom", I opposed the war itself and I have been profoundly infuriated by the way that reconstruction has been executed. I taught a history class to rising sixth graders two years ago during the summer and I focused the class, in part, on a comparison between reconstruction in the South after the Civil War and reconstruction in Iraq after "Operation Iraqi Freedom". As we read and wrote and debated we found that there were no clear answers in either situation unless we became rigid partisans. The reminder that we ought to be uncompromising in our core beliefs is very attractive to me until I think of those who believe that gay people don't deserve to participate equally in our society, until I think of those who believe that sentencing people to death is consistent with the aims of our penal system. Rather, we ought to be uncompromising in our pursuit of the truth, as citizens, as politicians and as human beings. We ought to let our perpetual search for the truth guide our minds and our hearts and the results of that search guide our beliefs without violence, as far as we can avoid it, and without disrespect or dishonor to all human beings.
Every war is, to some extent or another, criminal. This is the most salient argument of Zinn's article, and it is and argument that Thucydides made much more eloquently and much more earnestly over two thousand years ago. I am not sure of what the best course is to take with Iraq now. My inclination is to security; whatever will get Iraqi security forces most effective, most quickly is what we ought to do. Without any accountable, legitimate control of violence, innocent Iraqis will continue to die. We are in a position to help change their fate. It is no compromise to realize this.