COLUMN LEFT : In a Rambo World, What’s Left for Peace? : Anti-war activists didn’t account for a ‘remasculinized’ America.

While the nation celebrates its unexpectedly easy victory over Iraqi forces, anti-war activists ask why they so wrongly underestimated Americans’ enthusiasm for war and what the role of a postwar peace movement should be.

There are at least three reasons why anti-war activists and intellectuals failed to accurately grasp the mood swings of the American people. First, many activists underestimated Americans’ passionate need to live down the Vietnam syndrome with a vengeance. “By God, we’ve kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all,” gloated President Bush, and a hefty majority of Americans applauded. With superior technology, the Nintendo war fascinated the public and minimal U.S. casualties did nothing to wither war enthusiasm.

Too many anti-war activists also underestimated Americans’ equally passionate need to challenge warnings of America’s economic and social decline. People needed to believe--and demonstrate--that the United States, absent the Cold War, could still rule the world through its moral leadership and military might. A successful war, dazzlingly fought with military electronic wizardry, temporarily allowed Americans to forget Japan’s superior electronic consumer market and America’s raging trade deficit. At least on the battlefield, America was still No. 1.

Finally, the culture of the 1980s had prepared the nation for what Susan Jeffords has called the “remasculinization” of American society. Popular culture glorified militarism and effectively broke the back of the Vietnam syndrome. As the omnipresent Rambo replaced the 1970s’ achingly sensitive new man, the backlash against the women’s movement resurfaced as a cultural adulation of tough men.

What, then, is the role for an anti-war movement now? To be a significant force in American political culture, the anti-war movement will have to become an affirmative peace movement. It will have to offer a better vision of collective security than the model of American hegemony that George Bush brandishes. Political elites who bridle at Bush’s version of a “new world order” will need such a movement if they are to stand a chance of resisting the quick-trigger mood. Some thoughts for the future:

-- To bear moral witness against war is to keep alive the tradition of seeking a nonlethal means of resolving conflict. To achieve a genuinely new world order, we will need widespread support for negotiation and genuinely multilateral collective security. People may grow tired of vigils and marches, but such actions do, over time, sustain a much-needed alternative voice in an otherwise militarized society.

-- Keep up the public refrain, “Whatever happened to the peace dividend?” We must be prepared to fight a serious battle against the urge to squander our resources on new modes of weaponry. To do this, we must keep public opinion focused on the impoverishment of our domestic life and the disintegration of our environment. We must also cultivate political candidates who feel greater enthusiasm for decent housing and ecological conservation than for new ballistic missiles.

-- We should recognize the strong possibility that anti-war sentiment eventually can exert a restraining force on military adventures. There is a reason why the military orchestrated this war and censored the media--precisely to contain anti-war sentiment. Just a few weeks after the war began, the gender and race gaps reappeared, demonstrating that both women and racial minorities represented potential--if unorganized--anti-war constituencies. The voices of labor, religious groups, Latinos, blacks, veterans and military families who opposed this war legitimized anti-war sentiment as an honest, patriotic opposition against employing military solutions to political problems.

-- One of the first political goals for a postwar peace movement should be support for a negotiated settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and a ban on arms sales to the region. Yet it is vital that the anti-war movement--too ready to engage in Israel-bashing, too quick to resort to anti-Semitism, too thrilled by Third World romanticism--recognize that the security of Israel must be absolutely ensured at the same time that Palestinian claims are acknowledged.

The peace movement didn’t have the political muscle to prevent this war. That doesn’t mean it was wrong. But the movement may be too parochial and short-sighted to have a significant impact on postwar foreign policy. Anti-war activists will have to think long and hard about postwar visions that might influence America’s future direction. The time to begin is now.