The Oberlin Review
<< Front page News November 3, 2006

OPAL Leads Day-Long Forum on War in Iraq

The Oberlin Peace Activist League, in conjunction with several other student political organizations, held a series of events last Saturday concerning America’s involvement in Iraq.

Called the “Day of Remembrance,” Saturday’s events included an hour-long panel discussion between representatives of student political groups, two anti-war documentaries and a public anti-war exhibit, hosted by the American Friends Service Committee.

“We felt it was important to raise people’s consciousness about the war, to remind people that this is still an issue, particularly with the midterm elections coming up,” said sophomore Elijah Bergman, a member of OPAL and the host of the panel discussion.

The first event, the panel discussion, invited representatives from various student groups – the American Civil Liberties Union, the OC Republicans, the OC Democrats and the Socialist Alternative – to present their organization’s views concerning Iraq and the civil liberties controversies here at home. Following brief speeches, the representatives engaged in a question and answer session with the audience.

College first-year Samuel Lewis of the Dems argued that voting for the Democratic Party represented the best practical hope for changing the direction of American policy in Iraq. Because Washington leadership has become ossified by Republican dominance, he said, giving the opposition party more votes would allow genuine debate about Iraq.

“The only major force for change is the Democratic Party,” said Lewis. “We need people in power who listen to us. The people in power will not allow us to make change.”

This view was at odds with the Socialist Alternative viewpoint, which blamed both major political parties for the war and encouraged more social activism against the war. 

“There is no hope in any party,” said college junior Shane MacDonald, the first speaker for the Socialist Alternative. “Once elected, they will serve the ruling class.”

The Republican representative, college senior Todd Ares, was largely silent on the morality of the war itself, but argued that remaining in Iraq was necessary even if invading it was wrong.

“This is not the same war that the U.S. started,” Ares said. He warned that the insurgent violence “hasn’t even gotten to the point where it’s at all serious yet.”

The ACLU and the Republicans debated the clampdown on civil liberties and violations of the Geneva conventions. College senior Jonathan Bruno, an audience member and co-chair of OC Republicans, argued that the untraditional nature of terrorism justifies unconventional, controversial responses.

“This war is different because of the nature of terrorism,” said Bruno. He added that “some of the things we do are justified,” referring to perceived violations of civil liberties and human rights.

Members of Amnesty International attended the forum to protest the Military Commissions Act but did not give a speech. Representatives from the group had a list of Congressmen who supported the Military Commissions Act and encouraged the audience to write them in protest. They even offered envelopes with the names and addresses of the congressmen already written on them.

The two films were played after the forum. The first, The Ground Truth, was made up of a series of interviews conducted with Iraq War veterans. In these interviews, the soldiers talk frankly about their experiences during the war, their attempts to cope with life back in America and their feelings about the political and military bureaucracies that they felt wronged them before, during, and after the war.

The other documentary, Why We Fight, chronicles the rise in America of what former United States President Eisenhower referred to as “the military-industrial complex.” The militarization of American society, the filmmakers argue, is ultimately the reason for the Iraq war.

OPAL also invited the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker anti-war organization, to present its exhibit in the Science Center. The organization has displayed the exhibit – an array of over one hundred army boots, one for each soldier from Ohio that has died in Iraq – throughout Ohio, stopping at Oberlin as part of its statewide tour.

Bergman expressed satisfaction with the event, especially with the large turnout among Oberlin students and predicted that OPAL will continue to host events like this in the future.

“Our group was impressed by the amount of people that attended the various events,” he said. “We put a lot of time into advertising, but we were impressed by the amount of people that came [who] we didn’t know [before]. We got such a positive response from people that we will probably have another event like this later in the year, possibly before the anniversary of the Iraq war.”


 
 
   

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