The Inconvenience of War

by Warren Mar
3/22 /03

This lettter was written to the San Francisco Chronicle writer who complained about how the anti-War civil disobedience inconvenienced her.

I am writing as one of the people arrested March 20th blocking traffic in San Francisco. There are so many things I want to respond to in the backlash for our actions in your editorial pages that I cannot address all of them. I would just like to focus on one reason my wife of 23 years and I decided to join with mostly young people to get arrested. It was not something we looked forward to but like most people who made this decision it was done with great sadness because we felt that it was such a minor thing to be doing in face of the terrible bombing campaign President Bush unleash on the Iraqi people.

One of the reasons for my own personal sadness at the outbreak of war and the backlash I now see against peace demonstrators is the usual indifference towards non-white life. As an Asian American who first became involved against the Viet Nam war, this was one of the first things I noticed.

Supporting our troops usually meant calling for a wider range massacre of the Vietnamese and other South East Asians. Then and now I hear in polite conversation mostly white Americans say how sad they are that it’s started but they hope it will be fast and “lets just get it over with”. Then they express concern for our troops. “Why don’t they just give up so we won’t have to bomb them into the Stone Age?” So I’m sad and angry that most of my fellow white American’s don’t care about killing people who don’t look like them. Collateral damage. We can’t even say they are human beings.

Inconvenience 2 - Not Doing Enough

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