Vassar community sounds off on the troop surge

Greg Armstrong Guest Writer

“War makes good people very monstrous,” said Associate Professor of History and Africana Studies Ismail Rashid as he introduced the panel discussion “War, Peace and Justice: Building a Safer World.” “Many people feel that the war in Iraq and the war in Darfur are foreign wars. But wars always come home. They come home in body bags and with wounded soldiers.”

Rashid’s opening remarks, drawing from his firsthand experience with civil war in his native country of Sierra Leone, set the tone for the two-hour conversation last Jan. 25 at 7 p.m. in Sanders Auditorium. The panel addressed political and human rights issues associated with U.S. intervention in Iraq and the recent move by the administration to increase U.S. presence in the region.

The discussion was organized in conjunction with the national anti-war Washington Peace March held in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 27. Many Vassar students attended the protest, traveling on buses chartered by the Women’s Studies, Africana Studies and American Culture Departments.

Despite the discussion’s unfortunate context, the introduction expressed the hopeful nature of the event. Rashid included a quote from Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1941 speech to Congress: “Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere. Our support goes to those who struggle to gain those rights and keep them.”

While most of the conversation focused on foreign policy issues and human rights concerns associated with the war in Iraq, Classics Professor Rachel Kitzinger began the discussion by speaking about the relationship between portrayals of war in classic Greek literature and the current war in Iraq, and read a few passages from Homer’s The Iliad. “If we accept war as inevitable, we are also obliged as human beings to recognize the cost,” she said. Kitzinger alleged that since “we don’t see the body bags, we don’t see the wounded.”

Pacing in front of the podium, History and International Relations Professor Robert Brigham followed Kitzinger to discuss the parallels between the war in Iraq and the Vietnam War. Brigham noted that the similarities between these two conflicts have grown recently, especially with the call for a troop surge.

“[The surge] is not a strategy, it is a tactic. Any cadet at West Point will tell you that,” Brigham said, extrapolating that the tactic will not make the Pentagon’s “failed strategy in Iraq a successful one,” given what is known from the failure in Vietnam 30 years ago. Brigham outlined his position in support of diplomatic relations with other powers in the region, including Iran, Syria and China, asserting that “the time for diplomacy is now.”

Political Science Visiting Instructor Shelley Hurt discussed problems associated with U.S. intervention in Iraq’s economic policy, and its efforts to transform Iraq’s economy into a free-market capitalist system that is hospitable to world trade. Hurt alleged that U.S. policy in Iraq allows private American corporations to profit at the expense of the Iraqi population, citing data that showed that although U.S. exports to Iraq have skyrocketed in the past few years, according to U.N. reports, hunger and child malnutrition have also soared.

Student Victor Ray ’07 spoke about the importance of protest and criticized those who dismiss its usefulness. “Some say that protest only makes you feel better about yourself,” Ray said. “I say, what’s so bad about feeling better about yourself?” Ray cited civil rights activist Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who rallied support with the position that “dismissing protest fundamentally assists those we hope to oppose,” and “power achieves nothing without demand.”

After the panelists’ remarks, the floor was opened to questions from the audience, which continued until the end of the two-hour time limit and drew some debate. Despite the lofty intentions of the event’s title, one of the most poignant questions, in which an audience member asked the panelists to explain their ideal solution to the turmoil in the Middle East, drew only a pervasive silence from the panel.