So Bush Wants Civil Disobedience?

By Naomi Klein, AlterNet. Posted March 3, 2003.

The U.S. President is urging Iraqis to rise up against Saddam Hussein. It's time to turn the domestic tables and -- Voilà! -- escalate the war against the war.

At the Pentagon, they call it the Voilà Moment.

That's when Iraqi soldiers and civilians, with bombs raining down on Baghdad, suddenly scratch their heads and say to themselves: "These bombs aren't really meant to kill me and my family, they are meant to free us from an evil dictator!" At that point, they thank Uncle Sam, lower their weapons, abandon their posts, and rise up against Saddam Hussein. Voilà!

Or at least that's how it is supposed to work, according to the experts in "psychological operations" who are already waging a fierce information war in Iraq. The Voilà Moment made its first foray into the language of war last Monday, when a New York Times reporter quoted an unnamed senior U.S. military official using the term.

This peppering of military jargon with bon mots could be Colin Powell's latest plan to win over the French on the Security Council. More likely, it's the product of the Bush administration's penchant for hiring advertising executives and flaky management consultants as foreign policy advisers (doesn't the Voilà Moment sound suspiciously like the Wow Factor -- sold to millions of corporate executives as the key to building a powerful brand?).

Wherever it came from, the Pentagon has Voilà in its sights, and it is sparing no expense to hit its target. Airborne transmitters are flying over Iraq broadcasting radio propaganda. Iraqi business, military and political officials have been bombarded with e-mails and phone calls urging them to see the light and switch sides. Fighter planes have dropped more than eight million leaflets informing Iraqi soldiers that their lives will be spared if they walk away from their military equipment. "It sends a direct message to the operator on the gun," says Lieutenant-General T. Michael Moseley, commander of allied air forces in the Persian Gulf.

According to the senior military official quoted in the Times, Central Command will know it has reached Voilà when "we see a break with the leadership." In other words, the U.S. military is advocating nothing less than mass civil disobedience in Iraq, a refusal to obey orders, or to participate in an unjust war.

Will it work?

I'm skeptical. There was, after all, a Voilà Moment during the last gulf war, when many Iraqis living near the Kuwaiti border believed U.S. promises that they would be supported if they rose up against Saddam Hussein. It was followed shortly after by a Screw You Moment, when the rebels watched U.S. forces abandon them to be massacred by Saddam Hussein.

But all this Voilà talk got me thinking: The civil disobedience the U.S. military is hoping to provoke in Iraq is exactly the sort of thing the antiwar movement needs to inspire in our countries if we are really going to stop, or at least curtail, the pending devastation in Iraq. What would it take for large numbers of people in the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, Canada -- and any other country assisting with the war effort -- to truly break with our leaders and refuse to comply? Can we create thousands of Voilà Moments back home?

That is the question facing the global antiwar movement as it plans its follow-up to the spectacular marches on Feb. 15. During the Vietnam War, thousands of young Americans decided to break with their leaders when their draft cards arrived. And it was this willingness to go beyond protest and into active disobedience that slowly eroded the domestic viability of the war.

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