Editor's Note: Physicians for Social Responsibility is the U.S. affiliate of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, which won the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize.
The day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, on Dec. 8, 1941, 388 members of Congress voted to declare war on Japan. The United States was, for all intents and purposes, already at war, and the debate's outcome was not in doubt.
But there was one lone dissenter: Rep. Jeannette Rankin, R-Mont. She declared simply, "I cannot vote for war." It was not her first -- or her last -- dissent against war. In 1917, also as a member of Congress, she voted against a declaration of war on Germany after the liner Lusitania was torpedoed. And in 1968, at the age of 87, she led a Woman's Strike for Peace against the escalating Vietnam War. Rankin was politically punished for her acts of conscience, thrown out of office after her two anti-war votes. But a statue of her now stands in the U.S. Capitol, inscribed with her words, a testament to courage in the face of popular opinion.
What happens to a peace movement when the shooting starts? Usually there is a backlash against those who oppose war. We see this now as public opinion has hardened in support of President Bush's action against Iraq. More dismaying, many are arguing that we must all quiet down now that we are fighting, and support the president. I cannot agree. To do so betrays the values for which our government says we are fighting -- the liberty to speak freely and dissent from the government. The only way we know whether a cause is just is through constant and vigorous debate. And we admire, in retrospect, those voices in the wilderness -- prophets who predicted the future.
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. is now widely lauded for doing more than any other to realize the American creed during the last century. But when he turned his attention to Vietnam in 1965, he was roundly criticized. Similarly, Cesar Chavez was persecuted when he brought his labor movement to bear on the Vietnam War, which disproportionately led Latinos into combat. Today, we know he was right to oppose that bloody and wasteful conflict.
During the 1980s, the Reagan administration pursued jungle warfare in Central America and nuclear arms to face down the Soviets. But minority voices brought out the appalling tactics of the U.S. government in Central America -- the funding of death squads and the distribution of assassination manuals -- and helped bring those wars to an end. And anti-nuclear protesters helped compel both the Reagan administration and the Soviet Union to diffuse the 50-year-old Cold War. Dissent is deeply rooted in the American experience.
The British war against American insurgents in 1776 was opposed by British statesmen Edmund Burke and William Pitt. President George Washington himself warned against foreign entanglements and predicted that "real patriots, who may resist the intrigues of the favorite, are liable to become suspected and odious" -- an apt description of the treatment of anti-war protesters today.
Unpopular protests against war established much of the case law enforcing liberties of speech, assembly and petition, built by courageous activists taking provocative positions in a time of national crisis. Those dissenters, denounced as un-American, helped us, in fact, become more American. We in the anti-war movement do not hate America. We do not hate our fighting forces. We support our men and women in uniform. But we want America to live up to its creed as a beacon of freedom and decency for all the world. We do not believe that can be done through blunt unilateral military action abroad, which is what Americans came to learn 30 years ago in Vietnam.
In our own history, we honor and admire those who saw the future before the rest of us. But we will never know who those prophets are unless they are allowed to be heard.
Dr. Felix Aguilar is president of Physicians for Social Responsibility - Los Angeles. The organization is the U.S. affiliate of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985. This column was produced for the Progressive Media Project, which is run by The Progressive magazine, and distributed by the Tribune News Service.