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Silence is complicity
Amanda Atwood
September 25, 2006

It was a warm autumn Sunday morning in New York City when I went to the Number the Dead anti-war protest. I was prepared to be judgmental and disappointed with a demonstration that criticized the war in Iraq without contextualizing Bush’s motivations or objectives. I was prepared to be cynical about Americans’ insistence on focusing on the deaths of US soldiers, without giving the same weight to Iraqi casualties. I was not prepared for the event’s meager attendance.

But I shouldn’t have been surprised. Since I arrived in the United States last month, I have been stunned that no one is speaking out more loudly against the war in Iraq or the atrocities US soldiers are committing there in the name of "stabilizing" the country. Everything—from political party primary elections to the genocide in Darfur—generates more public outrage than the fact that the US is engaged in a violent neocolonial "civilizing mission" that has cost the lives of over 2,600 US soldiers and at least 43,000 (but likely many more) Iraqis.

The American public’s silence about the Iraq war is as dangerous as it is inexcusable. Inexcusable because, in a society as free as the United States, alternative voices should be screaming in defiance. And dangerous because (particularly in the absence of any coercive restraint preventing them from speaking out) Americans implicitly condone the war by keeping quiet.

Last Sunday’s Number the Dead protest was organized to visually demonstrate the number of American soldiers killed in Iraq since the war started in March 2003. Where it worked, the event was powerful. Men and women from across racial and class differences stood in silence, holding up plain black and white signs with the names, ranks, ages and home towns of the dead. Stretched out an arm’s length away from one another, they created an eerie stillness in sharp contrast to the city’s constant bustle. I got goose bumps walking through those silent corridors. But there just weren’t enough protestors. One person was supposed to represent each fallen soldier. Instead, most of the participants held two signs each, and organizers still carried stacks of extra names. In a city of 8 million, fewer than 500 people demonstrated.

When I asked the participants what had brought them to this event, the first thing most of them said was "there’s nothing else happening." In a city of 8 million, no one else is protesting the war.

For the past seven years, I have been working with pro-democracy activists in Zimbabwe to counter the repressive regime of Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party. I have been arrested and spent two nights in a filthy police cell. 54 of us slept on concrete slabs where the sewerage backed out of the toilet and the lice and mosquitoes feasted on us. Our crime? Participating in a demonstration organized by the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions for lower taxes.

Friends of mine have been detained and faced much worse. Police arrested Tawanda, and beat him on the soles of his feet until he could barely walk. His crime? Putting up posters to encourage Zimbabweans to vote for Morgan Tsvangirai, the opposition party’s candidate in the 2002 Presidential Elections.

Police arrested and tortured Solomon. They taped exposed wires to his genitals and turned on the electricity. The police ordered him to stand in a pool of water to intensify his electrocution. His crime? Expressing dissatisfaction with the government of Zimbabwe.

So I am angry that Americans take for granted the same freedoms of speech, movement and assembly so much of the rest of the world desperately lacks. These freedoms are powerful muscles protecting the US democratic process. Like any other muscle, left unused, they will weaken. By not energetically exercising their rights, Americans risk losing to atrophy what political muscle they do have.

Despite their vast freedoms of expression and access to information, Americans are not speaking out against the horrors in Iraq. They are not shaming the Bush Administration with vigorous reminders of the Fallujah massacre, torture and prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib, or American soldiers’ alleged "rape-slaying" of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and her family in Mahmoudiya.

What is the rest of the world to conclude, then, about the values and conscience of the American people. Have Americans lost their capacity for outrage? Or do they somehow find the war in Iraq tolerable?

Silence is complicity. And America’s silence is deafening.

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