Obscenity in the Protest of Obscene Military Actions - David Loftus

On Friday, October 1, the activist group Veterans for Peace, who state that they are opposed to wars and occupations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Palestine, hung the banner pictured here in a prominent place in Washington, D.C. The site was the Newseum, a museum just off the Capitol Mall between the U.S. Capitol and the White House, at 555 Pennsylvania Avenue NW. The protestors pointedly hung their banner over a 74-foot marble engraving of the First Amendment.

Someone posted this photo to a discussion list I belong to -- one devoted to professional theater and film work -- and created a mini-uproar. As usually happens when people respond emotionally over a political issue, a lot of ground got covered in a very short time. Comments questioned the taste and appropriateness of the banner and its circulation to our list; objected to the President being addressed as merely “Mr.”; questioned the tactical wisdom of a banner that seemed intended only to “inflame, offend, and spark dissension”; and affirmed that the poster was (or was not) proud to be an American.

First, being offended does not confer any particular moral stature upon the person who takes offense, or express any inherent righteousness. We are all offended by different things, and some emotional responses are more justifiable than others. The reason one can offer for taking offense, if it is persuasive to others, is what confers legitimacy upon one’s complaint.

In this case, some readers in my newsgroup (and undoubtedly elsewhere) were offended by blatant public obscenity. But that was precisely the activists’ point: the banner acknowledges its offensiveness, but makes a comparison to the death and destruction our forces are responsible for overseas.

“The American public should be shocked that we are still killing and crippling thousands of innocent people in these countries as well as our own soldiers – that’s what’s truly obscene,” VFP spokesman Mike Ferner told the media. Ferner is a 59-year-old veteran who served as a navy corpsman during Vietnam. “Blowing people’s arms and legs off, burning, paralyzing them, causing sewage to run through their streets, polluting the water that kills and sickens children, terrorizing and bombing people and their livestock with flying robots -- that defines obscenity. If this banner shocks and offends a single person who hasn’t been shocked and offended by what’s being done in our name, we’ve accomplished our mission.”

Just imagine how people would react if enemy soldiers were in California, doing to American citizens precisely what our soldiers are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan! Yet we passively accept that it’s going on day after day, month after month, and year after year in our name. According to Ferner’s terms, the outraged responses to the banner among my peers in the theater list was precisely what the veterans had sought. Ideally, they might desire to change some minds and get more people to lobby against the wars, but given the state of apathy and helplessness with which most Americans seem to view U.S. foreign policy, in this as in so many other areas, Veterans for Peace surely knew that was too much to hope for.

Next: the tactical use of obscenity, and addressing the President