If the anti-war movement was successful...

[mk12]

...what would the world be like now? I'm referring mainly to the anti-war movement post 9-11. I remember Christopher Hitchens using this in an argument against George Galloway. If the anti-war movement was successful, it is likely that:

1. Saddam Hussein would still be in power
2. The Taliban would still be in power
3. Osama Bin Laden would be alive
4. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afhanis would still be alive

What else? What about the political implications in the US and the UK?

 

[mauvais]

The wars were largely independent of 1-3.

 

[Ax^]

was their that much protesting before they went into Afghanistan

 

[Random]

5. The Iranian and Turkish states would have far less regional power.
6. No civil war in Pakistan

Assuming that victory of the anti-war movement simply means that widespread protests and actions stopped the US going to war in 2001. Very unlikely imo, compared to preventing war in 2003.

 

[mk12]

was their that much protesting before they went into Afghanistan

I don't think so but it was certainly part of the Stop The War Coalition's main aims.

 

[mk12]

5. The Iranian and Turkish states would have far less regional power.
6. No civil war in Pakistan

Assuming that victory of the anti-war movement simply means that widespread protests and actions stopped the US going to war in 2001. Very unlikely imo, compared to preventing war in 2003.

Bush would have lost in 2004 too I imagine.

 

[redsquirrel]

Blair might have gone sooner.
You'd think that if the anti-war movement had been powerful enough to stop Afghanistan or even Iraq they might have been able to push back against other New Labour initiatives, PFI for example.

 

[ItWillNeverWork]

1) Saddam Hussain would have been swept aside in the Arab Spring.
2) The Taliban would be seen as oppressors and tyrants by Muslims all around the world.
3) The cult of Bin Laden would have lost a lot of its potency, and be weaker even though he was still alive.
4) The west would not have embarked on a road to torture, imprisonment without trial, and a total surveillance state.
5) The extreme Islamists would not have had a recruitment field day.
6) The far right would not have begun their own recruitment field day in reply.

 

[Pickman's model]

i don't see how the us would have been prevented from going to war in afghanistan after the attacks on nyc and washington. bush would have been toppled before 2004, impeached, if he hadn't gone to war. and i don't imagine there was much of an anti-war movement between the eleventh of september and the toppling of the taliban. certainly wasn't much of one here in that six or so weeks.

 

[butchersapron]

Lot of these answers are a bit top down, and not touching what a successful anti-war movement would mean in terms of grass-roots organising or whatever and what a strengthened movement would mean in the period of austerity (RS aside) - potential ability to oppose cuts, to impose a differently configured bailout and so on - this question is not all about states and international relations.

 

[Random]

Bush would have lost in 2004 too I imagine.

Or sucessful anti war protests in the UK and Europe could have meant a frustrated USA lapsing back into isolationism and supporting neoconservatism even more.

 

[Random]

Lot of these answers are a bit top down, and not touching what a successful anti-war movement would mean in terms of grass-roots organising or whatever and what a strengthened movement would mean in the period of austerity (RS aside) - potential ability to oppose cuts, to impose a differently configured bailout and so on - this question is not all about states and international relations.

The international relations macro stuff is easier to speculate about, and without getting into the axe-grinding that various former anti war movement people on here have stored up from the years of SWP betrayal

A sucessful antiwar movement would probably have only come in the UK about through either mass militancy by large numbers of people, or by a split within the UK political class. Seems to me that neither of those would necessarily lead to us now being in a better position to oppose austerity.

 

[Pickman's model]

Bush would have lost in 2004 too I imagine.

yeh to someone more right wing than him

do you think that the american public would in any way shape or form have stood for anything less than an assault on afghanistan in pursuit of al qaeda? frankly it was much nearer the famous conception of a 'just war' than the attack on iraq. anyone opposing it in the united states would quite possibly have been lynched as well given the high feelings at the time.

 

[redsquirrel]

A sucessful antiwar movement would probably have only come in the UK about through either mass militancy by large numbers of people, or by a split within the UK political class. Seems to me that neither of those would necessarily lead to us now being in a better position to oppose austerity.

You don't think that would that would have put us in a better position to oppose the cuts currently being introduced? How do you come to that conclusion?

 

[biggus dickus]

Also interesting to think about what could have been done with the billions that went into the wars

 

[Random]

You don't think that would that would have put us in a better position to oppose the cuts currently being introduced? How do you come to that conclusion?

The anti-war protests, anf general antiwar feeling, was a moral cause taken up and largely divorced from other aspects of UK politics. Apart from a handful of Respect politcians, no movement has benefited from this massive antiwar feeling. So a situation with thousands more involved in direct action wouldn't necessarily mean more people taking action on social issues, unless it also led to a new broad political movement arising. Neither CND, the SWP or the MAB were interested in seeing this happen.

 

[Fedayn]

...what would the world be like now? I'm referring mainly to the anti-war movement post 9-11. I remember Christopher Hitchens using this in an argument against George Galloway. If the anti-war movement was successful, it is likely that:

1. Saddam Hussein would still be in power
2. The Taliban would still be in power
3. Osama Bin Laden would be alive
4. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afhanis would still be alive

What else? What about the political implications in the US and the UK?

Any reason the hundreds of thousands of lost lives lost comes bottom of this list?

 

[Puddy_Tat]

Dunno really.

I'm pretty sure that the US would have gone ahead with Afghanistan and Iraq with or without the UK.

It's hard to predict just what would have happened if Tony Bleurgh had told GWB to piss off, but...

bearing in mind that the previous tory manifesto had been full of 'our special relationship' with the USA, and that (with a few honourable exceptions) much of the noise from the tories and their friends in the press was critical of the new labour government for not going to war the minute that bush whistled, I can't help thinking there would have been a lot of fuss from the tories.

Then there might have been the consequences like the US stopping the UK using US satellite technology for our 'independent' nuclear deterrent, or calling in the loan for world war 2 that we were still paying off. either or both of which would have almost inevitably led to closer alliance with Europe. And I can't imagine the tories being too happy about that either.

A tory election campaign with much union jack waving, Tony Blair as a 'surrender monkey' on the front pages of the tory press could well have followed...

And an incoming tory government would probably have reduced the level of regulation on the financial sector (which is what they, in opposition, were calling for, right up until the moment the shit hit the fan)

 

[mk12]

Any reason the hundreds of thousands of lost lives lost comes bottom of this list?

It wasn't a league table.

 

[biggus dickus]

Dunno really.

I'm pretty sure that the US would have gone ahead with Afghanistan and Iraq with or without the UK.

It's hard to predict just what would have happened if Tony Bleurgh had told GWB to piss off, but...

bearing in mind that the previous tory manifesto had been full of 'our special relationship' with the USA, and that (with a few honourable exceptions) much of the noise from the tories and their friends in the press was critical of the new labour government for not going to war the minute that bush whistled, I can't help thinking there would have been a lot of fuss from the tories.

Then there might have been the consequences like the US stopping the UK using US satellite technology for our 'independent' nuclear deterrent, or calling in the loan for world war 2 that we were still paying off. either or both of which would have almost inevitably led to closer alliance with Europe. And I can't imagine the tories being too happy about that either.

A tory election campaign with much union jack waving, Tony Blair as a 'surrender monkey' on the front pages of the tory press could well have followed...

And an incoming tory government would probably have reduced the level of regulation on the financial sector (which is what they, in opposition, were calling for, right up until the moment the shit hit the fan)

I remember a lot of the commentary at the time said that Britain had a very important role in this. France and Germany opposed it and if England had, then other EU countries like Italy, Spain and Poland would not have risked isolating themselves by going along with it and if the EU had opposed it then this would have had an effect on the whole thing

 

[barney_pig]

If the antiwar movement had succeeded, then saddams massacre of his own people would have continued, the tensions between the taliban and Iran may well have developed into open war, the Pakistani state may well have fallen to the pak taliban, all in all 100s of 1000s of iraqis, Iranians, afghanis, Pakistanis etc. Would have died, but unremarked upon by a smug western left.

 

[mk12]

Do you now support the invasion?

 

[barney_pig]

Do you now support the invasion?

ambivalent

 

[Jeff Robinson]

saddams massacre of his own people would have continued

Was Saddam massacring his own people when Iraq was invaded? The Kurds were protected by a no-fly zone and the government campaigns against the Marsh Arabs and dissidents, brutal as they were, were not on the same scale as the killings and internal displacements that took place after the 2003 invasion.

the tensions between the taliban and Iran may well have developed into open war,

I know we are dealing with counter-factuals here, but even so that is massive conjecture.

the Pakistani state may well have fallen to the pak taliban,

The Pakistani state are now in a fully fledged war against the Taliban who have occupied significant parts of the country directly as a consequent of the Afghan war. The Afghan war has undoubtably strenghtened the hand of the Taliban in Pakistan, not weakened it.

all in all 100s of 1000s of iraqis, Iranians, afghanis, Pakistanis etc. Would have died, but unremarked upon by a smug western left.

100s of thousands have died (mostly Iraqis) as a consequence of these wars. Chomsky has argued, and I think he's right on this point, that morality is acessed on the basis of an agent's sphere of influence. It is those wrongful actions that we are most able to prevent that should be the primary focus of our activity. It may well be the case that all over the world people are subject to oppression at the behest of the political/military cliques that rule over them, but as tax paying British citizens we are less directly responsible for those than we are for the direct actions of our governments and their allies. You can bemoan Taliban oppression all you like, but if you are at best 'ambivalent' to the manifold expressions of imperialist violence expressed through the war on Terror (the extra judicial murder of thousands by US drones, the global rendition/CIA black site programs, and the Randification of the Iraqi economy to name but a few) then you sound quite the smug hypocrit yourself.

 

[barney_pig]

Perhaps I am misunderstanding you Jeff, are you arguing that these deaths are worse when carried out by the west? That imperialist violence is worse than other kinds?
My reply reflected my disillusionment with the politics and assumptions of the anti imperialism of the British left. Willing to ally itself to butchers and tyrants across the world in the war against the main enemy.

 

[toblerone3]

Also interesting to think about what could have been done with the billions that went into the wars

US$4 trillion = US$600 per head of population if spent equally on each person on the planet.

 

[Jeff Robinson]

Perhaps I am misunderstanding you Jeff, are you arguing that these deaths are worse when carried out by the west? That imperialist violence is worse than other kinds?
My reply reflected my disillusionment with the politics and assumptions of the anti imperialism of the British left. Willing to ally itself to butchers and tyrants across the world in the war against the main enemy.

You are misunderstanding me. First of all, I wouldn't wish to distinguish 'violence' and 'imperialist violence', either methodologically or morally. I wouldn't draw the distinction methodologically because seemingly localised acts of violence are so often connected to imperialist violence (ranging from the product of the dislocating effects of structural adjustment and 'accumulation by dispossession' through to covert imperialist support for anti-communist and anti-left-nationalist forces as has been the case in Iraq [Saddam], Iran [the Shah] & Afghanistan [the mujahideen]).

Neither was I drawing a moral difference between killings that take place under the mantels of 'imperialism' or 'anti-imperialism' (even if it were possible to disentangle them in such a way) - obviously to do so would be crass in the extreme. My point was rather that citizens in imperialist states have a different normative relation to the imperialist violence perpetrated by their states (as well as non-state actors) and their allies relating to their proximity to such violence (as well, I would add, on the basis of the tactic benefit often gained from it). This seems to me quite a simple moral point: it would be natural for me hold a parent more blameworthy for neglecting to look after their children that they live with than I would for them failing to look after somebody else's child that lived down the street from them. As a British citizen I am more accountable for the actions of a government that I pay taxes to, can protest against and so forth than I am for the actions of governments in the middle east etc. It follows therefore than there is more pressing moral concern on me to oppose the violence of my government and her allies than of various despots in the Global South.

I guess you could counter that when 'my' government declares a war on some despotic regime this alters my position in relation to the actions of the despotic regime, which in some sense now I am more directly in a position to alter by either actively supporting, passively acquiescing, or opposing an action against said regime. If I oppose action against the regime I suppose in a sense I am accountable for the actions of that regime that could otherwise have been prevented. My response to that would be that whilst that may be true it neither necessarily follows that I support that regime nor that on a cost-benefit analysis it would be correct to support an intervention against that regime. To make a comparision, imagine the Brazillian army are going to enter a Brazilian flavela with a view to stamping out a violent drug gang. I might oppose that operation on the basis that (a) the operation itself will result in many deaths and (b) that it will be ineffectual (and counterproductive) in stamping out the structural causes of drug based crime such as poverty etc and (c) that the army are themselves part of an agency that sustains those very conditions that generate the drug gangs in the first place. It wouldn't seem right to describe that position as a 'pro-criminal gang' one. I wouldn't be 'willingly allying' myself with the drug gangs by opposing a military operation in the flavela. I feel the same when I took at the blood soaked legacies of the imperialist interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The US and her allies (imperialism more generally) are responsible for the conditions that they claim to be fighting and the way they are fighting them will not vanquish them (the example of the US 'drone wars' in Pakistan, Yemin etc are most illustrative here - each drone strike is surely creating many more 'terrorists' than are wiped out by them). (whow... that was a long post!).

 

[barney_pig]

Thankyou for your considered answer.

 

[barney_pig]

I am afraid that I do not agree with you, but as it is late and you do not deserve a pat answer I will attempt to reply properly tomorrow.

 

[ymu]

was their that much protesting before they went into Afghanistan

There wasn't time for 'much', but that is how the Stop The War Coalition came into being (timeline - the invasion started 7/10/01). There were lots of very prescient placards about Iraq on those early demos too.