Mr. Syverson at his 100th protest in Richmond (Via MFSO)

"On a more personal and local level, I have been protesting in front of the federal building (in Richmond, VA), (since) March 19 of last year, the day the war started … and then before the war started, I stood in front of the Virginia Federal Courthouse and, um, I did it daily for awhile, and now I do it 3 days a week, and yesterday was my 155th time standing in front of my courthouse. I’ll stand there until the troops are out, or there is full sovereignty and the troops are leaving."

"It’s been very encouraging. When I first started, they’d yell, cuss, call me a communist, call me unpatriotic, they’d tell me I was French … anything they could think of, and the worst it ever got was May 1st last year, right after the president gave his mission accomplished speech. People were extremely surly, yelling 'get a job,' 'get a life,' 'read the newspaper, the war is over,' and that was a low point around that time, May 1st. But people would honk, and I’d wave at ‘em, and they’d shoot me a finger, so what I decided to do, was to uh, confiscate their, uh, showing me the finger, and I made a sign that says, 'honk if you’re for peace.' Now the only time someone honks is if they’re for peace."

The camerawoman filming the interview indicated that she needed a break, so I jumped in during the lull.

INDC Journal: "Mind if I ask you a question or two?"

LS: "Sure."

INDC Journal: "I just wanted to ask you a question from the perspective of people who would disagree with you … I’m really curious, of the people who want to bring the troops out now…"

LS: "Me! Yeah, that’s me!"

INDC: "People have different opinions on whether we should have gone in and what the rationale was, but right now, it seems ... if we brought the troops out right now, that the security situation is so bad, the country would immediately devolve into civil war and bloody violence. So, how would you advocate what you are advocating, but … still offer a solution to that problem?"

LS: "The, you know … well, the latest polls before Abu Ghraib, 58% of the people, the Iraqis, wanted us out of the country as soon as possible, and they’re saying that the polls now are between 70 and 80% of the people just want us out after the prison abuse scandal. And most of the violence has been directed at American soldiers or the coalition soldiers, and at collaborators, and so we’re actually creating the violence with our presence. And the Iraqis want us to leave, the majority of Iraqis want us to leave … and if we leave, uh, it should be, uh, our presence there with causing the violence towards the Americans and the collaborators, that’s gone, so there. Whether or not the UN goes in, I don’t, I don’t, uh … I don’t have a, uh, feeling, I just want the American troops out. We don’t need to be there anymore. We got ri- … we’re, we’re, we don’t need to be there."

INDC: "Ok … let’s say for the sake of argument, that all the violence is caused by the United States’ presence; as far as the collaborators and the terror and all of that … but as far as the sectarian violence between the Kurds and the Shias and the, and the …"

LS: "Sunnis ..."

INDC: "... Sunnis ... Kurdistan wants its own state, the Shiites are the majority population, the Sunnis are a minority and might face retribution ... I mean, don’t you think that there would be some violence ..."

LS: "Their civilization is 4,000 years old; ours is about 200. The majority of people want us to leave. They want sovereignty, they want to rule their own destiny. If the majority of people think they can handle what happens when we leave, whether or not the sides have a problem … the majority of the people want us to go! We should not second guess and try to keep ourselves in the middle of it."

INDC: "Ok … if for some reason, you got your wish, and the troops left tomorrow, and then the country devolved into a civil war where, let’s say, tens of thousands of people died, perhaps …"

LS: "Like in Bosnia, how like in the Balkans when Yugoslavia broke down! My son Bryce, right here, he was with the First Armored, and starting in ‘98, he was in and out of the Balkans for 6 months doing peace-keeping, exactly what he was supposed to do when he went into Baghdad in May of last year, but because it was so botched, he’s actually in there as a fighter, not as a peacekeeper. So if we go out and that starts up, then we could go in … either like in the Balkans … either with the UN or NATO."

INDC: "So you would advocate leaving (Iraq) and then maybe coming back in …"

LS: "Well no, I mean … if, if that happ- … no I don’t, I advocate leaving. If things work out, fine, that’s great. If things look bad, then it should be the United Nations. I think the United States should foot the bill on everything, because we're the ones that caused the problem! I have no problem with money, I just think that American troops shouldn’t be on the front lines anymore."

INDC: "What about the argument that during Saddam Hussein’s rule, about 36,000 people a year were dying because of misappropriation of UN Oil-for-Food funds, and now what, a third of that are dying a year since the occupation. How would you have advocated solving the problems (caused by) Saddam Hussein’s regime?"

LS: "We’re not the world’s policeman! Our job is not to pick and choose … why haven’t we gone after Castro, why haven’t we gone after Red China? There are a lot of other countries that are here …"

INDC: "Some would say that the political realities don’t allow us to go after China or Cuba …"

LS: "So we pick somebody that we’ve had sanctions on for 11 years! Before the war started, we were bombing, getting rid of all the anti-aircraft sites … we got ‘em to where they were just a pittance of a country and we could go in because we could easily smack ‘em around. We’re not going after Korea, Cuba, or red China, because we’ll … it will be true war, and we’ll get our butts kicked! And we shouldn’t go to those either, it’s not our job!"

INDC: "But, in the scenario where the US would have the … opportunity to change a regime that was ..."

LS: "… it’s not our job…"

INDC: "...committing genocide, you would …"

LS: "No, like Rwanda, we should have gone in there! The world should have gone in and they sat back, and it’s probably partly racist."

INDC: "I agree with that. But Saddam Hussein killed over a million people and you would …"

LS: "Well, why didn’t we go into Cambodia when Pol Pot was murdering his people? We pick and choose ... we wanted the oil! And we pick and chose that for the oil."

INDC: "I agree that economic interests … "

LS: "It’s 100% that! And to settle a vendetta between Bush and Saddam Hussein that was never settled after ’91!"

INDC: "But the biggest question I have is … you’re saying that we should not intervene in any country for moral purposes, merely (for) the sake of being consistent?"

LS: "Unilaterally."

INDC: “For example, what happened in Kosovo, where there was genocide taking place on European soil, would you …”

LS: "Wholeheartedly I agreed with it! Bryce in ’99, was in Albania on the border, and I was with it wholeheartedly because it was UN and NATO …"

INDC: "The UN actually didn’t approve of that action, because Russia (would) have vetoed it …"

LS: "But the thing is, we weren’t unilateral."

INDC: (Not bothering to fruitlessly mention the coalition in Iraq) "Ok, and if NATO had said ‘no,’ and the genocide was still taking place, would you have agreed with intervention?"

LS: "Probably not; I don’t agree with unilateral … we’re not the world’s policeman."

INDC: "So it would be fine if those people were getting killed … you would just sacrifice them instead of sending US troops?"

LS: "Which country are you talking about now?"

INDC: "No, I’m talking about in any case of genocide, where ..."

LS: "I would think that it's gonna be a world issue."

INDC: "But if the world doesn’t want anything to do with it because of …"

LS: (Getting excited) "We didn’t do it in Rwanda!"

INDC: (Not getting excited) "I agree, they should have gone in, but … let’s take the Holocaust. Hypothetical situation … Russia came out with a separate peace with Germany, Western Europe was defeated, and the Jews were still being exterminated in Europe; would you agree with America going in and doing something about that?"

LS: "We didn’t then!"

INDC: "I know, I know …"

LS: (Getting animated) "We didn’t bomb the tracks to Auschwitz in ’44, when the Hungarian, when 400,000 Hungarian Jews were being sent there! Who knows?"

INDC: "I know, my question …"

LS: "So I can’t … (getting more animated) when you’re asking me if we’d do it, we didn’t do it! So why are you … why are you asking me now, when …"

INDC: "No, so I’m saying, as a moral decision, don’t you think that it is incumbent upon the United States to stop people from being murdered? When it intersects with (other interests)?"

LS: "It’s going on every day. Why aren’t we lining up to do other countries is all I’m saying ... it’s not our job, it’s the UN’s job."

At that point I thanked him and walked away. The discussion was at a dead-end, I was afraid that his head was going to pop off and the foreign film crew had begun circling us with the camera as soon as Mr. Syverson began raising his voice.

His view particularly annoyed me, not because he was an isolationist or some sort of realist, but because he was an inconsistent selective moralist. I would have to say that the one thing about the antiwar movement that bothers me the most is the fact that they lay claim to absolute moral authority as a basis for argument, and then selectively apply it against the United States.

If Mr. Syverson was willing to criticize Roosevelt for failing to slow down the Holocaust by bombing that portion of Germany's infrastructure, and he believed in intervention to stop genocide in Kosovo, how can he absolutely argue that the US has no moral authority or responsibilty to halt the systematic murder and oppression in Iraq?

I don't pretend to believe that we can or should right all of the world's injustices, but my doctrine is consistent: if the United States has the capability and domestic political will to sustain action, then we have a responsibility to use a variety of means up to and including a military option to halt active genocide. Furthermore, if a regime poses a potential threat, controls international economic interests and is an overt, declared enemy of the United States with ties to terror ... game over.

Isolationist tendencies and concerns about Realpolitik aside, don't frame non-intervention in Iraq as a moral argument; it's a loser.