STUDENTS STUMP ON BOTH SIDES OF IRAQ WAR
Robert Faturechi
The UCLA Daily Bruin
March 5 2008
CA
Months before launch of US military campaign, current Bruins were
making war stances known
Mark Stefanos started many of his Friday nights in high school in
typical fashion: piling into a car with some friends and heading
into town.
It’s what he’d do once he got there that wasn’t so typical.
During the run-up to the war in Iraq, Stefanos – now a fourth-year
political science student – and his friends spent their Friday nights
leading pro-war demonstrations along one of the busiest thoroughfares
in their native Long Beach.
"My friend’s truck seated six, so it was like the six of us and we
put the signs in the back," he said.
His small group eventually grew to about 30-strong.
"You’d have your typical kind of Long Beach, Sublime-type surfer
drive by in his truck and maybe honk his horn and give you a fist
in support. Then you’d have the same type of guy come by and say,
‘You’re crazy, you’re just a warmonger.’"
Taking on the war in a city as politically diverse as Long Beach,
home to many military families, as well as a strong liberal presence,
became Stefanos’ first real taste of political activism.
Just an hour’s drive north, in La Crescenta, another political science
student-to-be saw the run-up to war from a very different perspective.
Babken DerGrigorian, now a fifth-year, considered the imminent invasion
of Iraq so unjust he could not sit idly by.
So he organized a walk-out at his high school so big school
administrators were forced to cancel classes for the day.
"Everyone was going crazy, and to see that a war was about to happen
over something that had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11, I just
couldn’t sit around," he said.
The students’ two stories offer a stark picture of how political
ideologies are incubated, and how college-aged Americans, who have so
much else in common, can stake claim to such varied stances on the war.
"I can see their perspective. It would only take a fraction of a
percent of my ideology to change before I can say, ‘Well, I can see
the other side, I see why this isn’t worth it," Stefanos said.
"There’s very little difference between what I know and what that
other person knows as far as why we define ourselves a certain way."
DerGrigorian, now a leader of Students for a Democratic Society,
a radical progressive group on campus, said his perspective on the
war is influenced most by his upbringing in an Armenian household.
"I was raised in a household where Armenian activism is very big, I
mean I knew about the (Armenian Genocide) before I even knew what a
genocide was," he said. "And to feel that kind of injustice done to
your people has given me the ability to seek commonality with other
injustices that are happening in the world."
Stefanos, the son of Christian Egyptian immigrants, another
historically persecuted group, says his family’s background was also
a great influence, but for him to support the war.
"For me, having foreign parents, I knew the value of what being
American is. And there’s a lot of responsibility involved," he said.
"(My father) really instilled the values of standing up for your
country and your values in me."
Stefanos is now a part of Bruin Republicans and editor of the
conservative campus publication The Bruin Standard.
Dwindling support for the war – especially on college campuses –
has not hampered Stefanos’ commitment to the pro-war cause.
"Being on the side of the minority who still supports the war, I
don’t feel like I’m not encouraged," he said. "I feel like being on
a college campus where most people don’t support something and I do
is just a way of me defining myself."
DerGrigorian – who’s organized die-ins and other anti-war
demonstrations on campus – agrees that his political activism has
too defined his time in college.
"I think when I look back at my college years, my involvement in
activism is going to be where I got my best education. It’s not going
to be in the classroom," he said. "It’s going to be all the skill
development, all the leadership development, the ability to have the
space to think critically and radically about things."
Looking forward
Like many college-aged Americans, both Stefanos and DerGrigorian got
their first look at a war that has lasted for most of their young
adulthood from a television screen in a high school classroom.
The U.S. military’s overwhelming bombing from air and sea evoked
night-and-day reactions from the two.
"Shock and Awe was like a nightmare," DerGrigorian said. "I literally
remember watching it in class as if it was a movie or something."
For Stefanos, the strike on Baghdad and elsewhere was more of a
victory, the successful end to a cause he had protested in favor of for
months. He remembers a buddy in a band turning to him and commenting
that "Shock and Awe" would be a great title for a hard rock song.
"It was what I wanted to see which is a military showing its might
and the United States showing the world that we were able to stand
up in the face of adversity," he said. "It was a good thing to see
that we were still capable of making such a grand media spectacle. I
felt a lot of that South Park-style patriotism at the time."
Five years later, both have had their understandings of the war
bolstered by their political science coursework and years of
activism. Still, they stick staunchly to their original stances.
"Things aren’t going to be perfect. They’re not going to be as nice
as we were told they’re going to be. But are generations to come
going to look at this and say this was the biggest failure of the
21st century? I doubt that," Stefanos said. "As long as there’s a
hope then I’m still in support."