Response to Warren Hoge, Antidote to Eurocritics In Red, White and Blue, New York Times, June 5, 2003

 

During the first half of 2003 we were active members of Americans for Informed Democracy (AID), a student organization founded at Oxford and reported on by the New York Times in June, 2003. We believe this New York Times article misreported the organization's mission  and the meaning of our participation in its activities. This brief response outlines our reasons for joining AID and our understanding of its purpose.

 

AID was founded by Seth Green, Jason Wasfy and David Tannenbaum with two purposes in mind. The first was to inform Americans back home that opposition to unilateral U.S. involvement in Iraq was not led by "anti-American" radicals and opportunistic politicians. Despite U.S. mass media depictions to the contrary, our experience was that cool-headed Europeans of all political stripes opposed the war. This included Europeans who were deeply pro-American, both in their embrace of American culture and in their warmth towards Americans such ourselves living in their countries. We pursued the goal of correcting the misrepresentations of the American mass media by organizing American students studying abroad to pen op-eds and letters-to-the-editors in newspapers to report our observations of widespread opposition to American policy. This was our primary goal and primary activity, and it was the reason we adopted the name "Americans for Informed Democracy."

 

The second reason for founding AID was to show Europeans that not all Americans supported the U.S. government's unilateral decision to invade Iraq. We hoped to counterbalance the European mass media's depiction of Americans as vengeful warmongers. We pursued this goal by organizing events in Oxford that gave U.S. and European students a chance to air a diverse set of opinions. The primary message of these events was that national leaders should prioritize diplomacy over unilateralism.

 

In pursuing both prongs of this strategy we were very conscientious that in a time of great political drama the media was prone to exaggerating claims and depicting individuals to fit the scripts of wartime. For this reason we tried to keep ourselves above the political fray -- this is why, as the articles quotes David Tannenbaum, "We . . . tried very hard not to appear to be Bush bashers."

 

What the article does not mention is that although we avoided personal attacks on George W. Bush (which were even more prevalent then than now), we did not hesitate to criticize his foreign policy. In fact, opposition to his foreign policy was the very reason for creating the organization.

 

A second reason to avoid personal attacks on Bush was to create a bigger tent for American Republicans living abroad to join in the critique of Bush's foreign policy. Although many neoconservatives were strong supporters of Bush's policy, we knew Republican realists who would not attack the leader of their party but would criticize his foreign policy. We wanted those voices to be heard.

 

The article attributes to Jason Wasfy the observation that "while liberals probably outnumbered conservatives, most of the group supported the war in Iraq." In our view that assessment is false. Most of the members, including ourselves, joined AID because we believed one or both of two things. First, that the war on Iraq could not be justified and would cause more harm than good. Second, that even if invasion was ultimately a justifiable strategy, the Bush administration's decision to act unilaterally and forego diplomacy undermined the entire enterprise.

 

We personally oscillated between these two views throughout our time in Europe and appreciated the opportunity AID presented to work out our own views. However, at no time did we believe that most, or even a significant number, of the group supported the war. American supporters of the war founded other organizations at Oxford in response to our opposition to American foreign policy.

 

Many members of AID articulated these objections to the article amongst ourselves at the time of its publication, but we ultimately decided not write a letter-to-the-editor (though another Oxford student criticized the coverage on his blog, and others reported the story correctly). At the time, AID was still a young organization hoping to make a difference and some of its leaders felt that objecting to the coverage would undermine goodwill with the international press. We had deep misgivings about this decision at the time, and still wonder whether it was the right decision.

 

Although we have no pretensions that our opinions on the war or our efforts in 2002 had any measurable effect on the world, we feel it is important to set the record straight. Over the last four years AID has grown into the dynamic and respected organization it hoped to be, and we appreciate this opportunity to let our views on the article be known.

 

- David Tannenbaum & Chris Bradley