AGAINST THE WAR
�
�� The current war
that the United States and its British allies are waging in Afghanistan
requires a clear response from anarchists. Since we oppose the state, we also
oppose militarism and the wars of the state. So we need to ask ourselves how we
can oppose the current war in practice in a way that is consistent with our
anarchist aims and principles. In developing our response we need to understand
the nature of a specifically anarchist opposition to militarism and war and
develop our practice on these terms.
�� Anarchist opposition to war cannot base itself on humanitarian
moralism. Moral principles that are placed above the real lives of individuals
as a means of judging their value are easily transformed into justifications
for the economic and political interests of those in power. In recent years,
humanitarian morality has supported a myriad of atrocities. If NATO�s
humanitarian bombing of what�s left of the Yugoslav federation and its
subsequent occupation of Kosovo did not make this adequately clear, the current
policy of dropping bombs and food packets on an already war-devastated land,
allegedly for the purpose of destroying a small group of terrorists should
leave no question as to the vacuity of humanitarianism. When we try to use the
same values against the state that it uses to justify its activities, we get
caught in a war of words in which the state has the upper hand and will find
such attempts turned against us, since as revolutionaries we do not value all
lives equally. The lives of those who rule us and the armed lackeys that they
hire to defend them mean nothing to us, since they are the ones who have sucked
the joy and wonder out of life transforming it into nothing more than different
levels of survival at a price.
�� In the same light,
anarchists do not oppose war in the name of peace. The peace of the state is
the continuation of institutional violence at a different level. When the peace
movement calls the US to stop the bombing in Afghanistan and instead go through
the World Court and its processes to carry out the so-called fight against
terrorism, it is only calling the US to continue waging its war by other means.
The aims of the American state are not brought into question, let alone the
nature of the state. In fact, these other means are being used to wage the
so-called �war at home�. In practice, turning to the law means turning to the
cops, the courts, the various institutions of detention and all that goes along
with them. Anyone who has been put through this system knows the violence
inherent in the legal process. These institutions of the state�s peace are, in
fact, weapons in the social war, unspoken threats against anyone who would rise
up against their oppression as well as means of processing, storing and
brutalizing the most oppressed. Furthermore, what distinguishes anarchism from
other revolutionary perspectives is the primacy it gives to the freedom of
every individual to create her own life as he sees fit. Thus, peace is not our
top priority. The revolutionary destruction of the state and capitalism would
put� an end to institutional violence,
but conflicts between individuals would still exist, and since the institutions
of state violence are also the institutions of control, their destruction would
mean that individuals would have to work out these conflicts for themselves in
their own way�and that may include violence. In my opinion, this would not be a
bad thing. The institutions through which social peace has been maintained are
the same as those through which domination is maintained, and the point is to
end all domination.
�� Anarchists oppose the wars of the state because these wars
always enforce the power of the state and the interests of the ruling class.
These interests include the obvious ones of economic and political hegemony in
a particular region, but there are more subtle benefits to the state as well.
By enforcing the use of a military methodology and mentality, war provides the
state with the tools it needs not only for imposing its interests abroad, but
also for suppressing class struggle and revolt at home. It also provides the
state with a means for creating a sense of national unity that blinds the
exploited and excluded to the real causes of their condition. In times of war,
those at the bottom of the social order stand with their rulers against an
alleged �common enemy��but when one examines the corpses on the battlefield,
none of the rulers are there. This is the nature of the unity produced by the
wars between states; it is just another ploy in the social war the ruling class
wages daily against those who they exploit.
�� So anarchist opposition to war is an aspect of the revolutionary
project of destroying the state. The methods we use in our struggle against the
current war need to reflect this clearly. This will distinguish us from
pacifists and others who are demanding that those in power use �peaceful� means
to carry out their agenda. For most anti-war activists the top priority is to
�stop the war�. But when the war in Afghanistan ends, the social war through
which the ruling class maintains its domination will continue, and so will the
struggle of the exploited against their condition and the specific and
conscious struggle of anarchists against the state, capital and all
institutions of domination and exploitation. If we compromise our methods and
principles in order to forge false unities to end the war, we are falling into
the some trap as those who wear the flag because Bush and the media told them
that our complex emotional reactions to the attacks of September 11 all come
down to patriotism. So our methods of struggle need to reflect our
insurrectional project. This means acting directly to destroy that which we
oppose, organizing these actions autonomously, free of the agendas and
platforms of any political or other formal group, refusing negotiation or
compromise with those who rule us and making our attack unrelentingly. The
United States was forced to withdraw its troops from Vietnam not because of the
�non-violent� anti-war movement at home (as certain pacifist myth-makers have
tried to claim), but because by the early 1970�s a majority of land and naval
troops were in open and violent mutiny against their officers and the US
military agenda. (For more information about this, check out �Harass the Brass�
by Kevin Keating. It can be found in The Bad Days Will End, issues #4-5 (double
issue, Winter-Spring 2001), Alternative Press Review, Volume 6, Number 2/
Summer 2001 or at the webpage: http://www.altpr.org/apr15/keating.html.) The
protests at home�particularly actions sabotaging the war effort�certainly
encouraged the troops in mutiny, but the mutiny is what forced the US
withdrawal.
�� But the current war is not the same as the one in Vietnam.
Popular support is great and chances of mutiny are almost non-existent. But the
basic lesson remains: the struggle against war does not succeed through demands
or negotiations, but through the active refusal to fall into line and the
active obstruction of the war effort. Certainly, one of the essential tasks of
anarchist is to counter the myth of unity with clear exposures of the role of
the American state in creating the terror networks it now condemns, thus making
it clear that the interests of the ruling class are not our interests. But the
project of counter-information needs to be combined with direct attacks against
the war effort and the social order that stands behind it.