What? No Boycott of Italy?
What? No Boycott of Italy?
By Joe Bob Briggs
March 26, 2003
First of all, Italy is about as Old Europe as you can get. It may be the definition of Old Europe.
Second, they rank the highest of all European countries in public opposition to the war--74 percent and climbing. They don't just have demonstrations on Saturdays. They're pretty much skipping work every day to unfurl banners and march past cathedrals. Add this to the fact that they have more official holidays than any other western country--every saint, after all, has to be respected--and you have wall-to-wall peaceniking replacing the usual wall-to-wall picnicking.
Third, they have all the diabolical World War II evils of both France and Germany. They had a fascist dictator that we had to get rid of, and we went in and saved their ass and got kissed by the local women. They were invaded and liberated.
Of course, I already know the answer to my rhetorical question. Silvio Berlusconi, the Prime Minister, has been to the Crawford Ranch and signed on for the whole cattle drive. We don't really care what the Italians think as long as the Italian leader is trustworthy--and man is this guy trustworthy. Since he controls 90 percent of all commercial television in Italy--no, that's not a typo--we can probably assume there aren't too many screeching leftist talk shows muddying up the placid flow of the Tiber.
That's not to say he can pull a total Mussolini and give the United States whatever it wants. (Although, speaking of Mussolini, the granddaughter of Benito is a member of one of the parties that make up Berlusconi's ruling coalition, and she pretty much thinks grandpa was right.) When this thing started, Berlusconi said Italy would contribute troops and weapons and money. That got knocked down to weapons and money--alas, the defense minister said, we have such a small army and all our soldiers are committed in the Balkans, can I interest you in a spotted necktie?--and then to money, and then to the right to Italian air space. Eventually, with so many people marching in the streets, Berlusconi was reduced to "flyovers only," further promising that he wouldn't allow any offensive operations against Iraq to be launched from the 14 U.S. and NATO bases scattered across Italy. (Whoops! Guess where those paratroopers took off from? Hey, they said don't do it, but, you know, it's Italy.)
In other words, Berlusconi cratered--and he's not the kind of guy who normally backs down. He kept saying "I back the war," but in fact Italy doesn't back the war. Send back that bottle of Chianti!
To give you some idea of what we're talking about here, the biggest anti-war demonstration anywhere in the world occurred on November 9 in Florence--one day after UN resolution 1441. The official crowd estimate, which tends to be low since the government is pro-war, was 500,000. Organizers claimed more than a million. One thing was clear, though--the city was engulfed. There are only a half million residents of Florence.
I've been watching this anti-war movement develop since last summer, and I don't think anyone in Washington has been fully aware of just what happened between November and February-- namely, that it grew by exponential factors and came to include so many groups that had never before worked together that it might be something unique in human history. You've got your anti- globalization groups, your pro-Palestinian groups, your various Arab organizations, the environmentalists (I don't get it, but they're onboard), the European trade union movement, the farmers (yes, I said farmers--the emotional highlight of the Florence rally was apparently the festooned tractors of the Spanish agriculturalists), the "women and children" movement (this is an old tradition in Italy, but all-female contingents of grandmas and babes-in-arms have been showing up en masse in front of the air bases), all your run-of-the-mill leftist political parties, a new student movement that models itself on sixties protesters, the activist Catholics who took the Pope's remarks to heart, a whole host of liberal Protestant groups from Europe and the U.S., and no doubt a large contingent of disaffected young people who are just looking for something to belong to. (I kept thinking, "Why Florence? Why not Rome or Milan?" And then I realized the answer: much cooler place for backpacking! After the demonstration, we'll all meet up at the Duomo, get a cheap pension, and check out the Uffizi tomorrow.)
Whenever people write about the anti-war movement in the U.S., they compare it to Vietnam. But it's nothing like Vietnam. Just a month ago I spoke to the annual gathering of college newspaper editors in Seattle, and their interest in the war was mild to lukewarm. We have no draft, therefore we have no feeling of student oppression.
But what does exist--and did not exist in 1968--is a moment in history when American leaders might ultimately have to take into consideration the effect of street movements in foreign countries. Already the streets forced Berlusconi to back down. Tony Blair's government is in jeopardy for the same reasons. On the one hand it doesn't seem possible--American political decisions being affected by civil unrest half a world away--but these are strange times, when a placard in Berlin, or a cop beating a crowd back in Copenhagen, can work its way up through the political food chain and actually cross the pond.
Sound far-fetched? Ask Colin Powell. I don't think so.
First of all, it's not a good thing, in the 21st century, to be hated. All those people in the streets will eventually go to the polls, and they're now likely to elect more Jacque Chiracs and fewer Silvio Berlusconis, and one thing they'll be interested in is, "How tough will you be on America?"
Second, the propaganda value for Al Qaeda is enormous. Osama bin Laden despises Saddam Hussein. This is a dream war for him, weakening two enemies at the same time. Any dead Iraqi children can be blamed on either side and he still wins.
Third, we need money from all these countries. Germany is helping rebuild Afghanistan. Russia was cracking down on black- market nuclear technology sales--until we insulted them this week by picking a fight over technology transfers to Iraq that, as it turns out, probably originated from private firms in Belarus. We even need France; they're sort of the senior partner when it comes to fighting terrorism. In fact, they invented the word.
Fourth, there's an overwhelming belief among all the protesters that the war is nothing but an oil grab. This needs to be countered in some significant way--and awarding the first private governmental contract in Iraq to Halliburton, Dick Cheney's old company, was not the brightest p.r. move. (I'm from Texas. There are dozens of companies there that know how to put out oil field fires.)
Meanwhile, every weekend we've got 100,000 demonstrators in Rome, 60,000 in Milan, and lesser numbers in Bologna, Venice, Turin, Genoa, Savona, Palermo--hell, they had 3,000 show up at Cagliari, which is on the island of Sardinia. In other words, it's become the way to spend your weekend in Italy, and it helps that the popular symbols of the bad guys are easy to hate--Bush is a colonialist bully, Berlusconi a billionaire lackey who lives in a 70-room villa, is married to a movie star, belongs to the Freemasons, and parties on a 150-foot yacht. They carry sloganeering placards peppered with the word "Assassino!" They sing anti-Fascist songs from World War II. The women stand on their balconies and shower the parade with confetti. They release balloons into the sky. And Berlusconi looks more and more foolish as he stations thousands of machine-gun-toting carabinieri everywhere and then they're not needed--these are more carnivals than angry confrontations.
Not that there aren't violent incidents as well. Earlier this week two vehicles belonging to American military personnel were firebombed near Vicenza, where the paratroopers were based. There was an anthrax scare at the American embassy. And these events are used by Berlusconi to warn of "another Genoa" (there were shops vandalized and a protester shot last June at the G8 Summit) if Italy doesn't remain eternally vigilant against outside agitators.
But alas, there are no outside agitators--merely Italians, who love to fight anyway. In February two Green Party members of Parliament were ejected for rabblerousing against the war. (I don't know how you eject someone from Parliament, but in Italy I guess it's possible.) When Bush asked Berlusconi to cut off diplomatic ties with Iraq, Berlusconi couldn't deliver. He made a big show of sending four diplomats home, but the embassy stays.
Then there's the matter of the Vatican. It's difficult to maintain a position of "USA All the Way" when the papal nuncios are telling the people that they still regard Saddam Hussein's government as legitimate. What's happening is that the Italians are making the Iraq war one of those do-or-die issues, like abortion, that every politician fears.
I'm telling you, they're ready to take their place in the boycott pantheon--better stock up on olive oil and Gucci loafers. I'll skip the Fellini movies at the neighborhood repertory theater, though. You can go several years before you need to watch those again. And besides, you can see the same thing in the piazzas of Verona.
Joe Bob Briggs writes a number of columns for UPI and may be contacted at joebob@upi.com or through his website at www.joebobbriggs.com. Snail mail: P.O. Box 2002, Dallas, TX 75221.
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