4 - The Michigan Daily - Wednesday, September 19, 2001 OP/ED Gbe lA+iigun :zd1l 420 MAYNARD STREET ANN ARBOR, MI 48109 daily.letters@umich.edu EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN SINCE 1890 GEOFFREY GAGNON Editor in Chief MICHAEL GRASS NICHOLAS WOOMER Editorial Page Editors Unless otherwise noted, unsigned editorials reflect the opinion of the majority of the Daily's editorial board. All other articles, letters and cartoons do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Michigan Daily. NOTABLE QUOTABLE If the Americans go to war, I pity those boys. I pity their mothers and sisters and brothers. It will be 10 times worse than Vietnam. Vietnam will be a picnic by comparison. Here they will get it in the teeth. Oh, they will get it good." - Former Soviet colonel and Afghanistan veteran Yuri Shamanov in yesterday's London Evening Standard. 01 HARGF F lt tit Z ,Ahl\ AA 4 4 C) t, LL, 'u,. a Thoughts on building an indusive peace movement NICK WOOMERBAC I'O TH WOOM 4 traitor wrote this column - that's what a lot of Americans would say any- way. Others might just call me a naive jerk. Why? Because I oppose, unequivocally, the massive military response to the Sept. 11 tragedy the Bush administration is trying to sell to this country. One would think that, in the wake of all the death the nation endured last week, it would be hard to convince U.S. citizens that much more blood - foreign and American - ought to be shed. Fortunately for the war hawks and defense contractors, an utterly complacent corporate media has worked tirelessly to render absurd any suggestion that we should think twice before we restart the killing machine. Instead, the public is bombarded with stories of retail stores selling out of American flags, of previously apathetic youth now invigorated with patriotism, and spontaneous eruptions of "God Bless America." Certainly, all these "patriots" are not necessarily militant nationalists - for many, the United States' diversity alone is enough to evoke a deep love for this country. But the venom spewed last week by opinion- makers like Jerry "The ACLU Did It" Falwell and Ann "Kill Their Leaders and Convert Them to Christianity" Coulter is proof that, at least for the post-Sept. 11 jingoist right, "patriotism" has become a synonym for "bloodlust." Once again, the United States needs a strong, broad-based anti-war movement to bring everyone back to their senses. And in my esti- mation, the students at the renowned, large pub- lic universities in Berkeley, Madison and Ann Arbor are the best hope to initiate a process that will ultimately produce such a movement. These three cities are historically predisposed towards fostering political dissent and probably have the largest concentrations of progressives who are particularly skeptical of the American propaganda machine. Already in Ann Arbor, some students and community members are organizing against our government's seemingly immanent war. As they plot their strategies, I respectfully submit a few thoughts on how to best proceed: It is imperative that when the anti-war movement speaks, its message reverberates around the country, and the only way to do this is to get noticed by the national media. Given Ann Arbor's unique place in the history of stu- dent activism, anti-war activists here are particu- larly fortunate in that they can play up the Vietnam-era nostalgia factor for reporters. But nostalgia will only take a cause so far - the key to building any sustainable grass-roots move- ment is to get as many people as possible out to demonstrations, marches and rallies - and the only way to do that is to narrow the message so that the movement is as inclusive as possible. The biggest challenge for any progressive movement is to stay on-message. The left, being composed of people with an acute appreciation of the complex interrelationships between seem- ingly separate forces, is prone to split itself into factions that each support specific political agendas. We can't do that. But that is what we're doing. At a Monday night coordinating meeting for tomorrow's anti- war rally on the Diag, the discussion meandered around. "What should be the precise wording of the rally's plank against racial scapegoating?" "Why aren't we discussing the origins of the impending war in the context of U.S. foreign policy?" "What should we say about preserving civil liberties?" These are all important issues that are worthy of discussion in themselves, but they are also tangential to what ought to be the primary focus of an anti-war movement - stopping the U.S. government from starting a military conflict that will only result in the destruction of even more innocent human beings. Integrating any peripheral issues into a call for peace and reason only makes an already difficult public relations job even harder. A surefire way to alienate people who other- wise support peace (and allow media spinsters to distort the fundamental message) is to draft up some sort of multi-plank agenda - no mat- ter how basic those planks seem to be. One of the most notable things about last Tuesday's vigil on the Diag was that it brought together students who would otherwise have nothing to do with each other: Students who stand with Israel and students who want to free Palestine, socialists and libertarians, atheists and religious fundamentalists. Only a movement with a sin- gular, uncompromising plank - stop the imma- nent war - will be maximally effective at bringing people into the anti-war movement. The war hawks have already had one week to urge Americans to "put aside their differ- ences" and whip-up popular support for a war that promises to produce death on a massive scale and make the world a more dangerous place. A new peace movement will have to take the nationalist "unity" rhetoric to heart to pre- vent even more horror. 4 I Nick Woomer can be reached via e-mail at nwoomer@umich.edu. V LETTERS TO THE EDITOR V ANALYSIS 4 Daily is not prudent, it is cowardly TO THE DAILY: I am writing in response to yesterday's edi- torial "War" In the editorial, the Daily writes "It becomes clear when listening to our mili- tary personnel speak that the United States is not interested in justice, it is interested in revenge." The Daily went on to say, "The nation has been attacked. We have been injured, we have been assaulted, we have been hurt. But we have not been pushed into war - we are pushing ourselves into war." This is close to being the most ridicu- lous statement I have ever heard. Is America just inventing this heinous act, or did it really happen? The death toll is approaching 6,000, and I believe this is a serious underestimation. So as a government what should we do? I hear your criticisms of what we have done, but what are you suggesting? Oh I see, "before launching a devastating attack that will lead to further civilian casual- ties, the nation as a whole needs to seriously consider the motives of its actions." It has been one whole week since this event. What does the Daily suppose the leaders of the free world are doing if not considering the consequences of their actions? Now does that mean we don't act? I think we are being patient and deliberate by asking the countries harboring these criminals to turn them over, but if they don't, do we simply say "oh well, we tried?" We did not become a great nation by burying our heads in the sand and hoping the bad people would go away. The free- doms that you enjoy, like publishing this naive opinion, were not given to us, we fought to ensure them. It becomes clear to me that the last verse of the National Anthem refers to two groups. For the land of the free (that's you) and the home of the brave (that's the rest of us). ORLANDO FEATHERSTONE Department oPublic Safety officer LETTERS POLICY MTe Michipati Dail welcome,, 1tteri from all of' irs readers. Lette fro U eniverty students, faculty, tap and administrator, will be giv n pority over other tLetmers mst include the writer's 'name, phon& run-her and schbol year or Uri veity afilia' tion. TiheDailywill not pint> ny rtu that cannot he veriied. Ad homtcmm attacks wil not be tolerat, ed Letters should be kept to ,jproximately 300 words. The Michigan Daily reserves the right t edit for kength, clarity and accwacy'. Loner ",Vi('wpoius" m ht arranged With an editor. Lerrers will be un ccordmg to order recE ivd and the amount of space av ailable. Lettersh uld be sent over e-mail (no anach- mnenrs plealse) to udatl} eter+@urich']at or oniled to rhe Dily at 420 M ynard S. Editor can be" reached via e-mail at editpaYe edirrrszumi edu.j Lett s e-mailed to rhe Daily will be given priori- iy over those dropped off in person or sent via the U.S. Postal Service, Opponents must provide options TO THE DAILY: There are many who have and, in the days ahead, will criticize and oppose the United States government's proposed mili- tary actions. True, the right to criticize is one of our most cherished freedoms. But with it comes also a deep responsibility. The government does not have the luxury of merely criticizing other people's ideas - it must choose a course of action, even non- action. Those who disagree with the govern- ment have an equal responsibility to propose specific alternative actions, so that all of us can weigh and choose which course is better. It is not enough to say the government is going the wrong way. Critics must spell out what specific course of action they would choose instead. The offering of alternative con- crete courses of action, and not mere protest, is what differentiates political discourse and true political action from simple grandstanding. JEFFERY HUo Medical school Globalization fails to make the money go round Increased inequality wi By JAMES K. GALBRAITH A dam Smith, the patron saint of free markets, had a clear-eyed analysis of inequality. "Servants, laborers and workmen of different kinds," he wrote, "make up the far greater part of every politi- cal society. But what improves the circum- stances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconveniency to the whole." What a contrast with the dominant view in our time! Today the leading economists tell us that real wages must be cut, to com- pete with those whose wages are lower still. They say that minimum wage laws, and trade unions, cost jobs. They say that my own country, the United States, is a model of flexible labor markets - of full employment achieved by accepting pover- ty. They teach that a global order of priva- tization, deregulation, free trade and open capital markets - the Washington Con- sensus - will produce great new gains for all the world's population. In Europe, the modern wisdom holds that high unemployment owes to a legacy of socialism, social democracy and the welfare state. Yet if you examine European countries one by one, you discover that those with the strongest egalitarian tradi- tions (think Norway and Denmark), also enjoy the lowest unemployment. And it is in those countries who most recently left fascism behind (think Spain), where unem- ployment has been highest. There is no general case, in Europe or elsewhere, of countries achieving sustained new prosperity by cutting real wages or accepting increased poverty for parts of their population. Despite great efforts, the econo- mists have failed to show that minimum wage laws or unions cost jobs. And the Unit- ed States, a country with strong public pen- sions, 90 percent public school enrollment, vast public (as well as private) health and university sectors, many municipal enterpris- es and extensive regulation - and where the minimum wage rose as pay inequalities and poverty and unemployment all fell in the late 1990s - is no model for the Washington destabilize global economy 4 cation and land tenure. But then, the argu- ment goes, markets should be allowed to determine pay, and if the final result is more unequal, so be it. Another viewpoint holds that inequalities per se foster growth, perhaps because saving requires accumula- tion, and this is something that can be entrusted only to the rich. But, don't the economists know about all this by now? Unfortunately the most widely used measurements of inequality - published in 1996 by the World Bank - have only confused the issues. The num- bers are often implausible - showing Indonesia more equal than Australia, just for instance. And the coverage is so limit- ed that one cannot gauge developments through time. Amazingly, you cannot even say for sure, from these measures, that worldwide inequality has risen in the past twenty years. But does anyone seriously doubt it? To fill the gap, a small group called the University of Texas Inequality Project now offers systematic, nearly annual measures of inequality in industrial pay for over 150 countries, going back to the early 1960s. With a narrow focus on pay - measured accurately and consistently through time Second, in broad terms Kuznets was right: inequality usually does decline as total incomes grow; high inequalities are more prevalent in poor countries than in rich. Part of the problem in the world economy has been a slowdown in average growth; the upcoming world slump will almost surely make pay inequalities worse. (There is no support in our measures for either variant of the "modern view.") Third, the global trend in inequality was stable in the 1960s, slightly downward in the 1970s, and up sharply after 1981 and ever since. What accounts for this? Tech- nology? Trade? We think not. Rather, the timing points mainly at the quasi-violent financial regime change of the early 1980s: rising real interest rates, debt crisis, and the triumph of private global finance. In many ways the pattern resembles what we find in individual countries (such as Chile), following a coup d'6tat. And so to policy. Above all, we think it clear that the financial order of the past twenty-eight years cannot deliver sustain- able economic development worldwide. We therefore think it necessary to rebuild an architecture of financial stabilization and control - similar to the old Bretton 6 Coxrrectiorn- Vestperdav' editorial I misidenti fi ed the title of Secretarv of State Col in Powell.