Back in the fall of 2002, six months before George W. Bush sent U.S. troops rumbling across the Kuwaiti border into Iraq, a Time reporter noted to Scott Ritter that some right-wingers were calling Ritter "the new Jane Fonda" and wondering what he'd call his new exercise video.
"If they want to have an exercise video," snorted Ritter, "then why don't they come here and say it to my face and I'll give 'em an exercise video, which will be called, 'Scott Ritter Kicking Their Ass.'"
He also has definite opinions on the ignorance of Americans about the situation in Iraq
They can't even find it on a map. Let's start with that. And those who get the superficial coverage in the news say, "Oh, well, Iraq" - they can say three words about Iraq: Sunni, Shi'a, Kurd. And now they think they understand Iraq. The fact that many Americans feel affronted that Iran, Iraq's neighbor with a long history of interaction with Iraq, would somehow deign to get involved in what's going on and say, "Iran has no right to get involved" - well, again, that just shows ignorance of the situation.
And the anti-war movement
I am not volunteering myself to be the visionary of the peace movement. All I'm saying is that having attended these meetings and reflecting on what I've seen, the peace movement's getting its butt kicked. Who knows what it should look like. The peace movement needs to decide what it wants to look like. But, you know, they need to come together. There needs to a meeting of the minds, a unified vision statement: What do we agree on? What is our focus of effort? And then once you get this mission statement, let's put a little bit of fire into this. Who's going to be the person that makes sure everyone's staying on mission? Let's call that person the "incident commander," whatever you want to call them. Let's break it down. Who's going to do the planning? That's our "operations officer." Let's insert some structure.
But as soon as you mention "structure" to the peace movement, they get all nervous. They think it's abut imposing military standards on them - an absurdity. The incident-command system that I referred to is something used by the firefighters in the United States. The big wildfires down in San Diego - ask your firefighter buddies down there what they did when they brought in national assets, state assets, local assets to fight the big fire. It's called the incident-command system. It's not a military system; it's a control mechanism. The Red Cross uses it. A lot of civilian groups use it. It's used to organize parades. It's used to organize events. It's about organizing, and making sure you don't waste resources. That's what the peace movement needs: organization and to stop wasting resources.
I'm a football fan. At the end of the day, I judge a coach and a team by the score that exists on the scoreboard when the end of the fourth quarter comes. And right now, it's the pro-war movement 60, the anti-war movement nothing. Someone can't tell me, "No, no, we're doing OK." No, you're not. You're getting beat, and you need to recognize you're getting beat, and you need to figure out why you're getting beat, and you need to figure out what you need to do to get yourself back on track. And the key thing here is: Bring a sense of focus and organization, which is lacking.
