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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 18-Aug-04
The al-Sadr standoff in Najaf is reaching a climax

Web Log - August, 2004

The al-Sadr standoff in Najaf is reaching a climax

Are you old enough to remember when Mark Rudd took over Columbia University in April, 1968?

Moqtada al-Sadr

Moqtada al-Sadr

Fighting is continuing in the southern Iraqi city of Janaf as Shiite rebels battle US-led Coalition troops. The rebels are mostly angry unemployed young men, led by the young Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who is holed up in Imam Ali Mosque, the holiest Shiite Muslim site in Iraq. He's threatened to blow up the Mosque and everyone in it if America tries to forcibly remove him. A confrontation is near.

If you want to better understand the psychology of what's going on with al-Sadr takeover of Najaf today, there is no better way than by comparing it to the takeover of Columbia University by Mark Rudd in April, 1968.

Mark Rudd in 1968

Mark Rudd in 1968

I've written in the past about how Iraq today, one generation after the Iraq/Iraq war, is very much like America in the 1960s, one generation past World War II. Nowhere is the similarity more striking than in what's happening today.

Mark Rudd was part of the violent Students for a Democratic Society and Weather Underground. He led a large group of protesting students from New York's Columbia University to take over several administration buildings on the campus, and refuse to leave. As conditions for ending the "sit-in," he demanded that the University stop supporting the Vietnam War and end Columbia's "racist" attitudes.

The rhetoric of the time is very interesting to read today. Columbia president Grayson Kirk said,

Our young people, in disturbing numbers, appear to reject all forms of authority, from whatever source derived, and they have taken refuge in a turbulent and inchoate nihilism whose sole objectives are destruction. I know of no time in our history when the gap between the generations has been wider or more potentially dangerous.

As we've written, America in the 1960s was in a generational "awakening" period, and such periods are characterized by hostility between older and younger generations. The phrase "generation gap" was commonly used in the media throughout the 1960s to describe the vast difference in world view between the older generation of heroes who had fought in World War II and the younger generation of college kids with no personal memory of World War II. Grayson Kirk was wrong, incidentally: Similar generation gaps had also occurred during previous awakening periods in the 1820s and 1890s.

On April 22, Mark Rudd wrote an open letter to Grayson Kirk, responding to the above quote. Here is the letter in its entirety:

Your charge of nihilism is indeed ominous, for it it were true, our nihilism would bring the whole civilized world, from Columbia to Rockefeller Center, crashing down upon all our heads. Though it is not true, your charge does represent something: you call it the generation gap. I see it as a real conflict between those who run things now--you, Grayson Kirk--and those who feel oppressed by, and disgusted with, the society you rule-we, the young people.

You might want to know what is wrong with this society, since, after all, you live in a very tight self-created dream world. We can point to the war in Vietnam as an example of the unimaginable wars of aggression you are prepared to fight to maintain your control over your empire (by now you've been beaten by the Vietnamese, so you call for a tactical retreat). We can point to your using us as cannon fodder to fight your war. We can point to your mansion window to the ghetto below you've helped to create through your racist University expansion policies, through your unfair labor practices, through your city government and your police. We can point to this University, your University which trains us to be lawyers and engineers, and managers for your IBM, your Socony Mobil, your IDA, your Con Edison (or else to be scholars and teachers in more universities like this one). We can point, in short, to our own meaningless studies, our identity crises, cogs in your corporate machines as a product of and reaction to a basically sick society.

Your cry of "nihilism" represents your inability to understand our positive values. If you were ever to go into a freshman CC [Contemporary Civilization] class you would see that we are seeking a rational basis for society. We do have a vision of the way things could be: how the tremendous resources of our economy could be used to eliminate want, how people in other countries could be free from your domination, how a university could produce knowledge for progress, not waste consumption and destruction (IDA), how men could be free to keep what they produce, to enjoy peaceful lives, to create. These are positive values, but since they mean the destruction of your order, you call them "nihilism." In the movement we are beginning to call this vision "socialism." It is a fine and honorable name, one which implies absolute opposition to your corporate capitalism and your government; it will soon be caught up by other young people who want to exert control over their own lives and their society.

You are quite right in feeling that the situation is "potentially dangerous." For if we win, we will take control of your world, corporation, your University and attempt to mold a world in which we and other people can live as human beings. Your power is directly threatened, since we will have to destroy that power before we take over. We begin by fighting you about your support war in Vietnam and American imperialism - IDA and the School of International Affairs. We will fight you about your control of black people in Morningside Heights, Harlem, and the campus itself. And we will fight you about the type of mis-education you are trying to channel us through. We will have to destroy at times, even violently, in order to end your power and your system - but that is a far cry from nihilism.

Grayson, I doubt if you will understand any of this, since your fantasies have shut out the world as it really is from your thinking. Vice President Truman says the society is basically sound; you say the war in Vietnam was a well-intentioned accident. We, the young people, whom you so rightly fear, say that the society is sick and you and your capitalism are the sickness.

You call for order and respect for authority; we call for justice, freedom, and socialism.

There is only one thing left to say. It may sound nihilistic to you, since it is the opening shot in a war of liberation. I'll use the words of LeRoi Jones, whom I'm sure you don't like a whole lot: "Up against the wall, motherfucker, this is a stick-up."

Yours for freedom,

Mark

The 1968 media was extremely supportive of Mark Rudd and extremely hostile to President Johnson.

That led Mark Rudd to believe that he would receive enormous popular support for his actions. In fact, most Americans, even most college students who opposed the war, considered Mark Rudd to be a criminal.

The worldwide media have been extremely supportive of Moqtada al-Sadr and its constant talk of "Shiite uprisings" throughout the country. Such uprisings have, of course, never occurred, and in fact most Iraqis, even those who dislike American occupation, dislike al-Sadr even more.

There is one enormous difference between Mark Rudd in 1968 and Moqtada al-Sadr today: Mark Rudd did not have a large arsenal of guns, missiles and explosives, and al-Sadr does. That makes the al-Sadr situation much more explosive, both literally and figuratively.

Mark Rudd's sit-in ended a few days later on April 30, when 1,000 police raided the campus, evicting students from the occupied buildings.

The Iraqi provisional government is planning something similar. We can only wait and how it will unfold. (18-Aug-04) Permanent Link
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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 18-Aug-04 The al-Sadr standoff in Najaf is reaching a climax

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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 18-Aug-04
The al-Sadr standoff in Najaf is reaching a climax