Waging Peace: The Art of War for the Antiwar Movement
Former U.N. weapons inspector Ritter(War on Iraq)is that rarity, a peacenik who's also a gung-ho ex-Marine besotted with the leatherneck's romanticized warrior ethos. In this eccentric manifesto, he critiques the antiwar movement in the light of military-philosophical chestnuts gleaned from Sun-Tzu, Marine Corps maneuver warfare principles and aerial combat guru John Boyd's OODA-loop theory. His mission, couched in a repetitious blend of stolid Pentagonese and bloody-minded exhortation, is to militarize the peace movement's organization (A Type I Personnel Support Unit would be able to mobilize with a week's notice to deploy... for up to 7 days within a 500 mile radius) and attitude (Dominate and destroy your enemy). Unfortunately, Ritter's practical proposals are cumbersome and ill-considered, his political instincts hackneyed (proposed antiwar battle cry: reverence for the Constitution) and his intellectual conceits—which encompass everything from Newtonian physics to the centrality of conflict in life and shopping—unenlightening. The relevance of, say, dog-fighting doctrine to political organizing remains murky, except as a vague model of abstract virtues of speed, improvisation and initiative. Ritter raises cogent points about the peace movement's failure to think strategically, hone a compelling message and build bridges to mainstream America, but then obscures these issues in a fog of garbled war metaphors.(June)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.