Despite rising public opposition to the Iraq war, anti-war activists still follow a lonely trail in working for peace.
Four years ago, peace activists spoke out against the prospect of war as the administration prepared to invade Iraq. Their warnings and
questions went largely ignored.
Today, Coloradans involved in peace-building efforts continue to question the war, especially President Bush s announcement to send
more troops to Iraq. Like the Iraq Study Group, they see no easy answers. Instead, they agree that the United States must commit to a long
process that must involve other Middle Eastern countries to bring peace to Iraq and the rest of the region.
Here s a look at what four Colorado peace activists are doing in a time of rising opposition to the war in Iraq.
The spiritualist
They re going to solve problems by being the biggest guy on the block, through muscle . It s always confrontation, Elias Amidon says of
the Bush administration.
Amidon and his wife, Rabia Elizabeth Roberts, spent three months in Iraq in the fall and winter of 2002-03. The co-directors of the Boulder Institute
for Nature and the Human Spirit held anti-war protests there – hanging banners saying to bomb this site is a war crime from a hospital, for instance.
And they wrote about what was happening in that country in e-mails to friends and supporters.
Amidon, 62, hasn t been to Iraq since February 2003. It s too dangerous, he said.
Instead, he s traveled to other parts of the Middle East, including Syria, Iran, Jordan, Israel and Palestine. He s working on the Abraham
Path Initiative, an effort to develop a walking trail through the Middle East following the path of the prophet who was considered the father of
Christianity, Islam and Judaism. The idea is to build respect and understanding among people of different faiths, as well as bring tourism money
to the area.
Today, Amidon is as frustrated as anyone over the situation in Iraq. The planned troop increase indicates a level of isolation, as well as a continued
insistence on resolving conflict through confrontation, he says.
He d prefer to see U.S. troops pulled out of Iraq and replaced by an international peacekeeping force. Peace talks should include Syria,
Iran, and even al-Qaeda, he believes.
Despite the troop increase, Amidon is heartened by the growing opposition to the conflict.
What I m pleased about is the level of intelligent inquiry with which people are coming out now. I wonder where they ve been.
The local activist
The Iraqis want us out . As an occupier, we aren t really creating the peace.
In December 2002, Carolyn Bninski and other peace activists were arrested for refusing to leave Republican U.S. Sen. Wayne Allard s suburban
office. They were there seeking a meeting to ask Allard to oppose an invasion of Iraq, though he d voted for a war resolution earlier that year.
Since then, Bninski has been arrested or ticketed at other protests – for holding an anti-war banner at the Bolder Boulder in 2005 and at a rally outside the White House in Washington, D.C. Last August, she served 10 days in the Jefferson County jail after being convicted of trespassing at
a military recruiting office.
Bninski, 57, is a longtime Boulder peace activist who works as international issues coordinator for the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center. Heartened by the November election results, she s now trying to encourage others who oppose the war to lobby their congressional representatives.
The Democratic Congress needs to stop funding the war; that s what s going to stop it. We need to recognize that we need to leave and
[Bush s] strategy is just going to prolong the agony of the U.S. military.
Bninski helped organize a Boulder anti-war rally last month and doesn t rule out the prospect of more non-violent civil disobedience in months to
come.
Congress will be hearing from lots of people. The tide has turned and people really need to use their power to pressure Congress.
The peace-builder
For the Democrats who have just been elected, I think they believe – and I think they re correct – the American public wants out of Iraq.
In the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, John Paul Lederach wrote an essay and gave a speech suggesting that the United
States use the attacks as a springboard to promote peace around the world, particularly in the Middle East.
We had a lot of moral capital after Sept. 11 that we completely squandered.
Lederach, 51, travels the world to negotiate peace pacts as a professor of international peace-building at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International
Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace.
He holds a doctorate from the University of Colorado and lives in Rollinsville when he isn t traveling.
In recent years, Lederach has worked in Asia, South America and Africa. In November, he returned from Nepal, where he helped negotiate the transition of the military from the royal family to that country s political leaders. Last month, he traveled to Colombia, where he s working with people displaced by conflict.
Lederach doesn t believe the troop surge will make a difference in the outcome in Iraq. He predicts the country will eventually become a loose federation instead of the unified country created after World War I.
Iraq will not hold together as a country, he said.
Global leaders should examine what makes it possible for terrorists to lure new recruits – motivators such as American troops in Iraq or the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Lederach says.
And resolving those conflicts requires a regional solution with Syria and Iran included in negotiations.
We may not like everything we get when we engage [Iran and Syria], but I don t think we ll like everything we get when we don t.
The negotiator
“More American troops will not help – even twice that many.”
In 2002 and 2003, William Ury was among several peacekeepers working behind the scenes to encourage Saddam Hussein to step aside.
“It was a long shot, obviously … . We needed to find a face-saving way. Though he was homicidal, he wasn’t suicidal. He really cared about his own personal survival.”
That turned out to be a futile effort, even though Ury, 53, is a specialist in such negotiations. He’s director of the Global Negotiation Project at Harvard University Law School and co-author of “Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In.” He lives in Boulder.
These days, Ury is working with Amidon on the Abraham Path Initiative. He’s also co-chairman of Reuniting America, an effort to seek common ground and end political polarization in the United States by encouraging communication among leaders and citizens with different ideas and beliefs. His next book, “The Power of a Positive No,” comes out this month.
Like others, Ury sees no easy answer when it comes to Iraq.
“The only way out of a bad situation like this is for the United States to basically acknowledge to the world that we’ve made a mistake and that we need help. The United States needs to ask the world community, under the auspices of the United Nations, to convene a standing peace conference on Iraq.”
Ury says Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries don’t want to see a wider civil war in Iraq, motivating those countries to take part in a peace process.
“It’s going to be hard for both the political right and the political left. There will need to be a stabilizing force, a peacekeeping force, for some time.”
For more information, go to boulderinstitute.org; abrahampath.org; rmpjc.org; kroc.nd.edu/index.shtml; pon.harvard.edu/research/projects/
gnp.php3; and reunitingamerica.org.
