F
ormer 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)
