A NEW BREED OF PEACENIK

Stephen Robinson talks to anti-war demonstrators on the streets of the American capital

Washington IF A Berkely sociology professor had tried 12 months ago to devise a model of an unjust war for the 1990s, his scenario might have foreseen the deployment of US troops to restore an Arab monarch with dim views about democracy and the status of women. The model might have depicted a Republican president with a background in the Texas oil industry sending into battle hundreds of thousands of Americans many of them blacks and women — for a war seen to benefit, amongst others, the multinational oil companies. (Bang on cue, Amoco this week announced its profits in the final quarter of last year rose by 69 per cent over the year before on the back of higher oil prices.) As an issue to rekindle the spirit of the Sixties and early Seventies, and to advance the fashionable 1980s' concerns of environ- mentalism and feminism, Operation Des- ert Storm is perfect.

During that strange phase in the phony war when the whole of America appeared to be holding its breath, and when poison- tipped Scud missiles held the Middle East in thrall, the anti-war movement seemed to be growing fast enough to undermine George Bush. But the early American military successes, and Saddam Hussein's decision to release videotape of battered American PoWs which ruined breakfast for millions of television viewers on Mon- day morning, have temporarily turned the tide, but probably not for long.

The peace rallies, it is often reassuringly said, are nothing like the ones seen in the Vietnam era. That is only partly true: the protest gatherings of recent weeks are actually far, far bigger than those at the beginning of the Vietnam war.

Lafayette Park, opposite the White House, has long attracted peace workers in pursuit of a war. About a dozen God Is Love, One World One Love, No Nuke protesters have maintained a permanent vigil there which predates the invasion of Kuwait. But their ranks have been swollen in recent weeks, and last Saturday unseas- onably warm winter weather brought some 25,000 marchers out in front of the White House, and double that number on to the streets of San Francisco.

Many in the crowd were old-fashioned hippies, who, though not even born at the beginning of the Vietnam war, perfectly mimicked the mannerisms and dress of that era with their tie-dyed T-shirts and bang- les. A young woman in a sari who wanted to be identified in The Spectator only as Sena (her 'spiritual name') was typical of the rump of 'peace workers' who perpe- tually tour the country chasing the warmer weather. A former manager at a company making (of all things) casino surveillance equipment, Sena threw in her $30,000 a year job to travel, preaching love and dispensing herbal tea remedies from the back of her Volkswagen camper van.

Talking to Sena one felt one had stum- bled on to an American campus circa 1969, but she was different in one signal respect from the radicals of her parents' genera- tion. She recoiled at displays of anti- Americanism, particularly flag-burning, a sight which repels almost all Americans.

In the early 1990s, most peace protesters are neither anarchic nor subversive. Cer- tainly the protests have brought weird and diverse groups on to the streets: banners in Washington last weekend announced the support of 'Queers for Peace', Aids pres- sure groups, anti-Zionist Palestinian Soli- darity Fronts, sundry pro-bicycle activists and the National Organisation for Women ('Kuwait and Saudi Arabia practise gender-apartheid,' opined one women's leader).

But few are like the marchers of the Vietnam era, when the early protests were led by students. Many in Washington last weekend were the families of servicemen and women in the Gulf, who proudly proclaimed their patriotism, some by car- rying small American flags. All were at pains to stress they were not against the servicemen.

Many brought children and grandchil- dren along with them. Just as typical as the hippie tendency represented by Sena and her bangles was the mother of two Marines now in the Gulf, a life-long Republican. She detested the numbing chant of the crowd — 'Hell no, we won't go, we won't fight for Texaco'. She confessed she rather liked George Bush, and she certainly saw no sinister imperialist or Zionist master- plan behind the deployment of US troops in the Gulf. She had driven to Washington from Baltimore because she thought the war was 'plain stupid', and not worth risking the lives of her two young sons.

`No one is going to carry an Iraqi flag,' says Todd Gitlin, who actually is a profes- sor at Berkely and a veteran activist of the 1960s. 'It's not hate-America time,' he says, showing the peace organisers have learnt a thing or two in a generation. The organisers are deliberately more meas- ured, less student-led and self-consciously less 'elitist'. GIs are not reviled, and men in uniform are not heckled or spat upon, as was the case during the Vietnam ructions. Rather, the servicemen, particularly the blacks, are viewed as victims lured out of hopeless lives by glossy Pentagon adver- tisements offering job training and social respectability. This war is not seen as wicked, just daft. The protesters don't want to change the world, merely lead the troops out of harm's way.

Last weekend, part of the protesters' territory along Pennsylvania Avenue was occupied by flag-waving 'pro-war' demon- strators, holding placards which invited passing motorists to 'honk if you support our troops'. The cacophony of horns blar- ing past the White House confirmed the early opinion poll findings which show that three in four Americans support Mr Bush in unleashing Operation Desert Storm.

The great surge in popular support flows largely from the dangerous assumption that war will be over in a matter of days. One poll back in early January, when most analysts spoke of a war lasting many weeks or several months, showed only 29 per cent of Americans supported military attack before sanctions had had time to work.

The Pentagon is now belatedly warning Americans to guard against euphoria, but the damage was done with the release of video footage showing how American bombers could pinpoint and destroy Iraqi installations with apparent impunity. Sal- oon bar opinion still has it that Saddam will be lucky if he survives another fortnight, and few people are now thinking about a costly ground war which looks unavoid- able.

The polls greatly exaggerate the popular support for the Gulf war, and flatter the Commander-in-Chief in the White House. The danger is not that America is isolation- ist at present, or that a majority of Amer- icans opposed sending troops out to the Gulf. The problem lies in the volatility of public opinion revealed in the crazy swings in the polls. 'And that', as one of the 'Nuke Saddam Now' protesters opined as he distastefully eyed a dreadlocked hippie sauntering along Pennsylvania Avenue, 'is the price you pay for democracy.'

Stephen Robinson is Washington corres- pondent for the Daily Telegraph.