Mon, Mar 24, 2003 page3

• US peaceniks confront patriotic testosterone

  CALL TO ACTION Many Americans appear to get a high from a perceived state of siege, but the street fights in San Francisco show it is a nation that is hardly united

  • THE OBSERVER
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  "Let's roll!" went up the cry in Molly's bar, New York, as US President George W. Bush concluded his declaration of war, on screen.

  It was the same call to action immortalized on the day all this started, aboard the hijacked plane sent tumbling into the Pennsylvania earth on Sept. 11. "USA! USA!," they chanted now, as then; even more than the fight against Afghanistan the unleashing of an attack on Iraq is seen as payback time.

  But the America that went to war last week was a split-screen nation -- more than a thousand arrested during anti-war blockades and even street fights in San Francisco, and elsewhere a raucous bellicosity charged with patriotic testosterone, as support for the war soared to 76 percent and the troops rolled in.

  Crowds converged on Chicago's Federal Plaza while Bush was still speaking, chanting "No blood for oil," making way for the wave of demonstrations next day.

  But in the heart of the Illinois cornfields, at Jim's steakhouse in Bloomington, diners cheered the president and launched into a round of patriotic songs. There is a slice of America that gets high on war and danger; it may be heresy to say so, but America enjoys a perceived state of siege.

  At airports and stations, heavily armed troops and National Guardsmen revelled in marshalling crowds this way and that for no apparent reason, as did those they herded. At the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, those who came to hear Verdi's Otello rather than Bush seemed delighted by the excitement of having their furs shaken down by officers with metal detectors.

  The Pentagon has done an about-turn on its clampdown on media coverage during the 1991 Gulf War, now ensuring front-row seats for battalions of supercharged television reporters and their kit. And even if the military took a couple of days before embarking on the "Shock and Awe" phase of its campaign, the television networks have certainly cranked theirs up to carpet-bombing intensity.

  There was little or no coverage of refugee or transit camps in Jordan or elsewhere; this will be a war in which the public will be spared such side-effects and bombarded instead by boys' talk of M1 tanks, M2 Bradley fighting vehicles, F1-17s and "breaking news" -- the expulsion of four CNN staff from Iraq. It is no soldier, but Walter Rogers of CNN who is the first American hero of this war, for being narrowly missed by an Iraqi missile while panting his report from Kuwait via videophone: "What the hell!" The clip was shown over and over again; even 24 hours later anchor Paula Zahn stared at her monitor with shock, awe and disbelief: "Wow! Phew! Well, I'm happy to tell you all that Walt has not come into harm since that time."

  The anchors and reporters talk endlessly to each other, and rarely to anyone else. On minority radio stations, such as Washington's CSPAN, elderly ladies voiced their concerns quietly -- about how the war offended their Christian faith and the doctrine of St Thomas Aquinas. "Oops, I'm sorry," said the host, taking calls to a Washington Post reporter, "we had two in a row there opposing the war. We don't like that kind of imbalance, very sorry there."

  For American Muslims, this was an uneasy time. Reported attacks on Muslims and Islamic targets increased, with particular damage to a mosque in upstate New York.

  Abdul-Hakim Shabazz's brother is serving in the Air Force, leaving Shabazz of Springfield to advise him: "Keep your head down, and your mouth shut, and you'll be all right." But the FBI is to interrogate tens of thousands of Iraqis living in America -- 25,000 in San Diego alone -- under an order from the Justice Department, ostensibly in search of information that may help the military campaign and prevent Iraq-backed terrorism.

  Imam Mustafa al-Qazwini said that many members of his mosque in Costa Mesa, California, had already been detained, including many who have become US citizens. "It's a bit ironic," he said, "that after escaping Hussein's tyranny, they travel thousands of miles away from Iraq to find refuge, and are approached by FBI agents to interrogate them."

  In Pittsburgh, Omar Slater, president of the local Islamic council, was surprised to get a friendly call from the Feds asking for his co-operation in the scheme, and even more amazed to find himself sharing the FBI's podium at a press conference -- despite the fact that local businessman Dall Mohaged said: "We are being targeted as if violence was endemic in our community, but we have no power to stop the targeting, so we'd rather have a working relationship with law enforcement."

  Demonstrations swept across America faster than the troops were able to move across the sand, with that in San Francisco the most dramatic in America since the Seattle riot of 2000.

  More than 1,300 were arrested as the protesters halted the financial district, blocked bridges and 40 intersections, fought with the police and clashed with pro-war patriots

  But smaller rallies spoke for larger numbers like that in Jackson, Mississippi, under the slogan "Support our Troops," and a thicket of American or Confederate flags.

  But, said Victor Marshall, back in New York and come to pay his respects at "Ground Zero," where it all began: "It's very scary. I can't imagine what the people are feeling in Baghdad. Perhaps it's like what we felt here."
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