Give Peace A Makeover

Cindy Sheehan has blamed the media for retarding the peace movement in the United States. But according to “The Babe Theory of Political Movements,” which Sheehan should study closely, the peace movement has a problem: it’s ugly. The media doesn’t forgive ugly. If Sheehan wants to give peace a chance, she’ll need to give it a makeover. A disheveled woman with leathery skin and a dopey inflection is not going to get the attention she craves.

“The Babe Theory of Political Movements” is enjoying a comeback, says a blogger called Will. P.J. O’Rourke first called attention to this evolutionary force in Parliament of Whores: “Where the beautiful women are is where the country is headed,” he wrote. Will expounds:

“If sexy babes are involved in a peaceful political movement, it has a far greater chance of succeeding. If there are no good-looking women involved, the odds of a successful (and peaceful) movement fall dramatically.”

Will, who is nothing if not a thorough “researcher” (scroll down for an eyeful of the evidence), claims Lebanese lovelies will wrest political control from the unlovely Hezbollah and its Syrian surrogates. We shall see.

Will’s case against the American Left is more compelling; not since Jane Fonda has a good looking woman manned its ranks.

On a more serious note: there are good reasons, besides a lack of curves, why the antiwar movement is in bad shape. FrontPageMagazine readers are already familiar with A.N.S.W.E.R, which stands for Act Now to Stop War & End Racism. A more incoherent and contemptible coalition is hard to come by. At its core, A.N.S.W.E.R comprises American haters from the “Muslim, Arab, Palestinian, Filipino, Haitian, and Latin American communities.” One of their objectives is to undermine everything Israeli. For example, they continue to propagate the Jenin massacre canard, which was even renounced by Kadoura Moussa, the Fatah director for the northern West Bank.

Mr. “the-Jews-are-monkeys-and-swine,” aka Sami Al-Arian, is not merely someone they defend, but a star among them. The hard-Left Rabbi, Michael Lerner, is always poised to remind Israelis, whenever their civilians are blown to smithereens by suicide bombers, to take the blame and turn the other cheek. But even he is too pro-Israel for A.N.S.W.E.R. So they banished him from one of their peace throng-alongs. And A.N.S.W.E.R opposes capitalism. That their agitators are mostly unemployed may have something to do with that; that decent Americans have jobs to attend may explain why none was seen for miles on end.

One of A.N.S.W.E.R’s ragtag rallies was fronted by Al Sharpton, Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, and representatives from the United Farm Workers of America, the Alliance for a Just and Lasting Peace in the Philippines, the Socialist Front of Puerto Rico, the Nicaragua Network, the Community Labor Union of New Orleans, Mexicanos Sin Fronteras [?], the Teamsters Black Caucus, and a lone Palestinian activist claiming to have been “framed cointelpro-style,” whatever that means. In short, no self-respecting antiwar rightist—and we do exist, I’m afraid—would be caught dead among a crowd of cheering faux revolutionary socialists and other malcontents, many of whom are probably in the country illegally, judging from the pidgin they speak.

So it is with great joy that I announce a genuine peace coalition: The Perdana Global Peace Forum, headed by Dr. Mahathir Bin Mohamad. Indeed, this is the same Mahathir who once arrested a political rival, Anwar Ibrahim, for his support of “open markets and international investments“; the same Mahathir who has distinguished himself for Jew baiting, to quote:

“The Europeans killed 6 million Jews out of 12 million. But today the Jews rule the world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them.”

Clearly anti-Semitism and peace activism are not mutually exclusive pursuits. (By the way, a more Halaal-kind of anti-Semitism is called “I-am-only-criticizing-the-Jewish-State’s-‘criminal’-policies, relentlessly, day-and-night, with-no-balance, with-the-aim-of-bringing-about-the-destruction-of-that-‘despotic’-gulag, which-so-threatens-its-‘peaceful’-neighbors.)

At least two of the papers at the Perdana Peace conference were devoted to the threat Israel poses to Iran. Peace activism can be a little unintuitive—go against the grain, you know. But Mahathir and panelists—a Counterpunch scribe, Robert G. Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s Genocidal Dictator For Life, the “Attorney of Record for the Chechen Republic, an Imam or two, the Chairman of the UK-based Planetary Movement, and some UN lackeys—mean well, no doubt. Mahathir especially does a lot to make vivid the horrors of war and the effects of explosives. His speech is replete with descriptions of guts spilling out and limbs hanging by a strand of muscle. And Israel is in the thick of it. Mahathir’s latest libel—also in his keynote speech—is that Israel uses depleted uranium bullets and missiles on the plucky Palestinians. I gather the Perdana peaceniks won’t be condemning suicide bombers who smear Jews on pavements any time soon.

© 2005 By Ilana Mercer
FrontPageMagazine
December 28