Failed Revolutions

I posted this on big orange, but it is probably better suited for DD.

Having to travel this week, I picked up a Time magazine for some low impact mental aerobics.  Thumbing through the October 22 edition, I came across an article by Andrew Marshall, entitled “Anatomy of a Failed Revolution.”  The subhead was depressing:

A correspondent looks back on a week of hope and despair in Burma’s brief, shining – but ultimately doomed  – uprising

I could feel the despair rising in my own chest as I prepared to digest one man’s post-mortem of yet another attempt by repressed people to peacefully attempt regime change.  We know the Buddhist monks chanted the mantra:

Let everyone be free from harm
Let everyone be free from anger
Let everyone be free from hardship

We know the monks were gunned down in cold blood.

By any tangible measure, the protests failed.  The junta murdered innocent people.  The world mumbled a few platitudes that they shouldn’t oughta do that.  Here at the big orange tent of democracy, a valiant group of diarists tried to keep Burma on the recommended list and in the hearts and minds of Kossacks.  The shooting stopped.  The blood was washed from the streets.  Big orange returned to the arduous task of documenting the capitulations and betrayals of members of the Democratic Party to the Bush junta.  Burma faded from our lips.  Bush brushed up on his pronunciations of Myanmar, while trotting out platitudes about democracy and announcing meaningless sanctions.  Nothing left but the mental masturbations to bemoan the failure of peaceful protests to produce meaningful political changes.

In two paragraphs, Andrew Marshall summed up the depressing reality in Burma.

It was the Buddhist monks who first sang this mantra. For a week now, they have been marching through these streets, calling peacefully for change in a country that has been ruled for almost a half-century by a barbaric military junta. Burma’s monkhood and military are roughly the same size–each has 300,000 to 400,000 men–but there the similarities end. With the monks preaching tolerance and peace and the military demanding obedience at gunpoint, these protests pit Burma’s most beloved institution against its most reviled.

“Get closer,” the young woman urges. The troops are a hundred yards away, and I think that’s close enough. I’m mindful of reports that just last night the military raided more than a dozen monasteries, beating and arresting hundreds of monks. And I know that soldiers like these snuffed out Burma’s last great pro-democracy uprising in 1988, killing and injuring thousands. I know they will not hesitate to shoot, whether or not there’s a foreigner present. Sure enough, seconds later they open fire. From that moment on, the world’s most unlikely uprising–with its vivid images of marching monks and exuberant students, of golden pagodas and rain-drenched streets–feels doomed.

I put the magazine down at that point and stared at the scattered clouds and pathwork of greens and browns passing beneath the airliner.  In our success-obsessed culture, actions that do not immediately produce the desired outcome are labelled failures.  We admire the monks for their courage, but the game goes into the loss column.  On the streets of America, winning is everything in politics, business, sports, and even love.  There is no room in our heart for losers.

Our response to the Iraq war is the perfect case in point.  Before the war, most Democrats voted to give Bush and Cheney the money to commit war crimes in our name.  Protests were derided as worthless, if not counterproductive.  A majority of Americans supported the war and over 70% approved when it looked like we had won an easy victory against a paper tiger.  Howard Dean, one of the most vocal critics of the war, made Democrats nervous and a more electible candidate was found to oppose Bush. Years later, with Iraq becoming a bloody quagmire, members of the Democratic Party finally found the courage to criticize the war.  The American people had become disillusioned and voted for regime change in Congress and the Senate.  For a few shining months, it looked like a political revolution had occurred.

The success turned sour as Pelosi and Reid turned to Lieberman’s chiropractor for treatment of spinal pressure.  Before long, the leadership in the House and Senate were able to bend over backwards to accommodate Bush, lest he and Cheney unleash Freedom Watch, Swift Boats, and the propaganda hounds. Defeatocrats.  Soft on terrorism.  Comforting our enemies.  Mighty General Petraeus mowed down the opposition with the reflection off his medals.  Before long, resolutions were passed to condemn a newspaper ad and allow Bush to plan a new and improved “Shock and Awe” bombing campaign.  For good measure, the administration was given a pass on its FISA violations, rendition and torture policies, use of the Department of Justice for political advantage, election frauds, catering to corporation corruption, and abuse of power. After Blackwater murdered Iraqi citizens, Congress called Erik Prince to testify, allowed him to lie under oath, and failed to cancel his millions of dollars in government contracts.  The November 6 revolution seems much more of a failure than what happened in Burma during the past four weeks.

This is what true leadership looks like:

The monks form an unbroken, mile-long column–barefoot, chanting their haunting mantras, clutching pictures of the Buddha, their robes drenched with the late-monsoon rains. They walk briskly, stopping briefly to pray when they reach Sule Pagoda. Then they’re off again, coursing through the city streets in a solid stream of red and orange, like blood vessels giving life to an oxygen-starved body. Their effect on Rangoon’s residents is electrifying. At first, only a few brave onlookers applaud. Others clasp their hands together in respectful prayer or quietly weep. Then, as people grow bolder, the monks are joined by tens of thousands of Burmese, some chanting their own mantra, in English: “Democracy! Democracy!”

So I ask you, where are the crowds of Americans chanting “Democracy! Democracy!” in response to the blatant attempts of the Bush administration to undermine democracy in America?  Where are the crowds in opposition to the war crimes of the Bush administration?  Where are the crowds demanding health care for all?  Where are the marches to restore habeas corpus and judicial oversight over domestic surveillance? 

Andrew Marshall continued his post-mortem on the Burma protests.

The crackdown has worked. There are small, sporadic protests but no marches. The sacred rallying points, the Shwedagon and Sule pagodas, are locked and guarded. Everywhere there are troops arresting and beating people.

As I leave Rangoon for Bangkok, the 2007 democracy uprising feels over. Even the monsoon rains–such a feature of these once joyous protests, with the monks marching shin-deep through flooded streets–have petered out. The sun returns, and a cheerless rainbow arcs across the city. “Peace and stability restored, traveling and marketing back to normal in Yangon,” trumpets The New Light of Myanmar.

And yet, Marshall ends on a hopeful note.

But the Burmese aren’t giving up. Before leaving Rangoon, I met a former political prisoner who was delighted that so many young students had joined the protests. “Some were carrying fighting peacock flags, just like in ’88,” he said. “The message has clearly got through to the next generation.” The ’07 Generation–monks and laypeople alike–may yet rise again.

Time interviewed Thich Nhat Hanh, one of my favorite Buddhist spiritual leaders, about the events in Burma.

He said the Burmese monks had “done their job. It is already a success because if monks are imprisoned or have died, they have offered their spiritual leadership. And it is up to the people in Burma and the world to continue.” Pressed on the question of martyrdom, he replied: “We nourish the awareness that monks are being persecuted and continue to suffer in order to support the people in Burma for the sake of democracy.”

I am left to wonder where are our political and spiritual leaders.  “We do not have the votes” is a pathetic mantra.