Analyzes left-wing responses to the war in Spain and Italy
Barkan, Joanne
IF YOU'RE AN AMERICAN Who didn't support the war in Iraq, what have been your choices since "major combat operations" ended in April 2003? Call for withdrawing U.S. troops, leaving the Iraqis to...
...When time came this past February to renew funding for all of Italy's military missions (in Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Albania, Afghanistan, the Mideast, East Africa, and Iraq), the left parties entered a byzantine web of negotiations...
...More generally, we've hoped that our natural allies—European leftists, either as government parties or opposition movements—would act together as protagonists in an alternative to U.S...
...ANTIWAR SENTIMENT in Italy ran high before, during, and after the invasion...
...DISSENT / Spring 2004 • 37...
...Still, the leaders of Communist Refounding seem to use the language of pacifism with ease...
...Spanish voters threw out (an apt verb given the speed and vehemence with which this happened) Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar's Popular Party and voted in Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's Socialist Party...
...Some of us believe that France, Germany, and Russia bear a share of responsibility for not preventing the Bush administration's war in Iraq (their inept power politics and vested interests in Iraq are a wellknown story...
...Meanwhile, the outcome of the vote in Parliament had never been in doubt...
...Berlusconi's substantial majority approved the funding...
...Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and company, pacifism demonstrates how effete, ineffective, and out-of-touch "Old Europe" is—as opposed to the uncritically proBush "New Europe...
...On July 1 nominal authority passes to the Iraqis, and the United Nations will probably provide a mandate for the troops that remain...
...The electorate spurned him after the bombings because he blamed them on Basque terrorists despite growing evidence to the contrary, thus playing the politics of lies with Spain's greatest national tragedy in decades...
...We'll see if this is what Spain's new prime minister has in mind...
...The dilemma of the occupation might well be a non-issue in a matter of weeks...
...The tragedy was not a "price" anyone paid for the upset election...
...The DS and some of the labor unions have more difficulty...
...The seven parties, still divided, produced a mix of "not yes" votes on funding: no's, abstentions, and refusals to vote at all—each variant with its own political nuance...
...That same day, Piero Fassino, secretary of the DS, asked the March 20 organizers to make the event a protest against terrorism as well as a demonstration for peace...
...The demonstration's success boosted the political clout of the large antiwar movement that calls itself pacifist...
...Here are two cases in point: one that inspires some hope and one that doesn't yet—Spain and Italy...
...Father Albino Bizzotto of the Blessed Builders of Peace (i Beati construttori di pace) explained, "The demonstration was already against terrorism because you can't combat it except with peace...
...The widespread, popularized use of pacifist rhetoric reflects something else: the relative wealth, security, and "peaceableness" of the European Union...
...They opposed war in Kosovo and Afghanistan as well as Iraq, but, in general, no one says much about wars not waged by the United States...
...It could mean better intelligence gathering, more coordinated police work, and more effective opposition to reckless war...
...Italy's centerright government under Silvio Berlusconi maintains about 2,700 troops in Iraq...
...But for the most part, the left in Europe hasn't shown much interest in pro-active counter-hegemony...
...The jockeying concerned alliances for the European parliamentary elections in June and relations with the pacifist movement...
...Strange is the only way I can describe the Italian left's current effort to adopt the language of pacifism...
...This is post-conflict Europe...
...As some Italian activists like to say, there already is a second superpower in the world: all the people who want peace...
...Every strand of Italy's left tradition— communist, socialist, liberal, and Catholic— was tempered in the armed resistance against fascism, and well into the 1980s at least, the left used the Resistance as a touchstone for what was best and noble in its tradition...
...media— could be a great good...
...The DS went anyway, with its own slogans and banners, and was viciously attacked by groups of bottle-throwing, bat-wielding young people...
...The rhetoric implies, We Europeans live in a zone of peace...
...Spanish voters didn't turn against military operations in Iraq because of the terror in Madrid...
...But the election did repudiate the Bush administration's twisted claim that the war in Iraq makes the world safer from terrorism...
...But the organizers of the March 20 demonstration wanted a no vote...
...A veritable Kama Sutra of positions," one right-wing opponent scoffed...
...hegemony remains...
...hegemony...
...they wouldn't support the U.S...
...But the result of the election will be a reshaped foreign policy for Spain...
...If the European leftists who rely on the rhetoric recognized this fact, they could get to work on concrete proposals for a united EU foreign policy, proposals to make the world safer from terrorism while countering U.S...
...It would be too easy to dismiss all this as dead history...
...In July all the left parties in Parliament voted against stationing Italian troops in Iraq: they had protested the illegitimate war...
...Take, for example, funding for the troops in Iraq...
...Not all these organizations are pacifist in the usual sense of the word—opposition to violence as a means to resolve disputes under all circumstances (often with support for nonviolent citizen resistance...
...Although the Aznar government ignored public opinion on Iraq, many Spaniards had planned to vote for his party because they liked his domestic record...
...The organizers refused...
...In its 2002 statute, the Party of Communist Re-founding describes itself as being inspired not by Mahatma Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr., but by the "thought of Karl Marx...
...The European Union is the new peaceable Europe—and it would be great progress if the rest of us were more like the EU...
...Any nation is at risk for Islamist terrorism...
...Some nations DISSENT / Spring 2004 • 35 IRAQ that refused to participate without the UN might send troops...
...when they didn't get it, they told the DS they were no longer welcome to participate in the demonstration...
...But simple, perhaps simplistic, logic says that Britain, Spain, and Italy have been at greatest risk...
...hegemony...
...IRAQ The most immediate pressure on Italy's left parties—especially on the largest of them, the Left Democrats (DS)—comes from the pacifist movement...
...As for postwar Iraq, much of the European left has been satisfied with "End the occupation now"—also the theme of this year's international mobilization on March 20...
...Only some of the March 20 organizers expressed chagrin...
...It didn't dwell on the consequences for Iraq of pulling out troops...
...But a more united Europe with Zapatero's promised focus on fighting terrorism— a focus largely ignored by the U.S...
...The day after Zapatero's Socialists won the Spanish elections, leaders of Italy's center-right parties called the outcome a victory for terrorism...
...They didn't agonize much over the chaos in Iraq...
...He won a democratic election and has campaign promises to keep, including leaving Iraq...
...For U.S...
...But the popularized rhetoric of pacifism doesn't amount to a foreign policy...
...their governments tied themselves most closely to the Bush administration...
...The movement is looser and more heterogeneous than its name implies...
...In fact, rigorous pacifism remains a relatively small movement everywhere in Europe...
...Give the Bush people another eighty-seven billion dollars to use as they please...
...Most of the left parties have tried to adopt the language of pacifism and accommodate the political demands of the movement...
...The most prominent spokespeople for the movement call for an end to all wars: "Without ifs and without buts" is the slogan...
...On February 15, 2003, when people around the world rallied against the coming war, a million or more Italians marched in Rome...
...A majority of the DS opted not to cast their votes: Berlusconi wouldn't allow a separate vote on the Iraq mission, and the DS majority didn't want to vote against funding the other missions...
...Argue that the United Nations should take over right away when the organization could not possibly handle the violence and chaos without a larger, better organized coalition...
...Italy's seven left and center-left parties are chronically divided...
...The "old" as well as the new left in Italy celebrated third world wars of liberation...
...occupation...
...This hasn't always been easy...
...After the invasion, many of us hoped that Europe would unite in a nation-building effort to counter the Bush administration's bungled and self-interested occupation...
...The horrific terrorist attack in Madrid on March 11 and the startling upset in Spain's parliamentary elections just three days later changed the foreign policy map in Europe—and, given what we know so far, changed it for the better for many who oppose the Bush administration's foreign policy...
...Zapatero did not "reward" Islamist terrorists (the perpetrators of the Madrid atrocity...
...Prime Minister-elect Zapatero laid out his goals for the European Union: a united EU foreign policy, an EU constitution (Spain under Aznar, along with Poland, stymied the last effort), and repaired relations with 36 n DISSENT / Spring 2004 France and Germany...
...JOANNE BARKAN is the author of Visions of Emancipation: The Italian Workers' Movement Since 1945 and numerous articles on Italy and European social democracy...
...The head of a major labor confederation made the same request, adding that they should all march not as pacifists but as peaceable people...
...no one accepted the tragedy, let alone wanted it, except the perpetrators and their supporters...
...For example, the organizing committee for the March 20, 2004, "No to the War in Iraq" demonstration included about one hundred twenty organizations: labor unions, left political parties, religious groups, and activist associations of every kind...
...Zapatero immediately announced that he would make the fight against terrorism his top priority and withdraw Spain's troops from Iraq at the end of June unless there is a UN mandate...
...Some 85 percent of the population opposed the war in Iraq and participation in the occupation from the start...
...We see no advantage in making war, so why can't everyone else adopt the same enlightened attitude...
...But the question of what the European left has to offer as an alternative to U.S...
...troops, leaving the Iraqis to cope with the colossal and tragic mess produced by the Bush administration...
Vol. 51 • April 2004 • No. 2
