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The so-called Tea Party is as we know a mood rather than a movement,
much less a party, and is even more various than the anti-war
movement. Unlike the antiwar movement, it has moneyed interests
(such as the Koch brothers) and traditional political groups that re
trying to co-opt it.<br>
<br>
But we can't simply ignore the anti-war currents within the
TP/Libertarians, e.g.<br>
<br>
~ the Ron Paul movement: Paul won the straw poll for president at
both recent CPACs; he's been consistently anti-war,
anti-intervention, anti-Pentagon.<br>
<br>
~ <antiwar.com>, one of the best sites on the web, is a
Libertarian site.<br>
<br>
~ paleo-conservative elements, such as the journal American
Conservative, have been against the neo-con wars in principle from
the beginning; Pat Buchanan has attacked the Libyan adventure as
unconstitutional (which it is). <br>
<br>
For the anti-war movement itself, the co-option has already taken
place, by the Democrats and Obama. We forget that the Democrats were
given control of Congress in 2006 specifically to end the war, as
they recognized. The firing of Rumsfeld after the election was the
administration's recognition of the fact. But the Democrats quite
consciously and cynically pissed it way - e.g., with "timelines" -
when they could have de-funded the wars (which required only 41
votes in the Senate) in the SE Asia and LA were finally defunded.
Then the coup-de-grace was provided by Obama's smiling lies and the
foolish trust that so many people who should have known better put
in him.<br>
<br>
Remember that the antiwar movement of the 1960s grew up in
opposition to both business parties. There were attempts to co-opt
it, notably by Robert Kennedy and Richard Nixon. Nixon (whom Obama
much resembles in this regard) was elected in 1968 as the "peace
candidate" because in part it was widely believed that he had "a
secret plan for ending the war."<br>
<br>
Events of this week have shown once again how much a new antiwar
movement of that sort is required. The percent of the population
opposed to the administration's wars is now about where it was in
1968.<br>
<br>
Regards, Carl<br>
<br>
On 3/22/11 9:13 AM, Corey Mattson wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid:AANLkTikm_NbAEmJVPaDrO=dRSP-j-Kdv91451t_64Fs4@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">I support what Iraq Veterans Against the War did in
Madison on March 12 --- bring the anti-war cause to our natural
allies, workers and students <i>fighting</i> the Tea Party. When
I was in Madison February 19th, there were about 1,000 Tea Party
counter-demonstrators to our 80,000. Those 1,000 Tea Party
activists were way more than any of their number ever protesting
the war.<br>
<br>
An anti-war Tea Party movement? Where is it? Fledgling right-wing
libertarian groups clearly haven't been that successful in
bringing them to the anti-war cause. It's not worth diluting the
substance of our opposition to the war to attract a handful of
libertarians who are opposed to the war for the wrong reasons and
are our enemy on practically every other issue. In the proposed
movement to "Stop the War, Stop the Spending," what are
left-wingers supposed to say when their right-wing partners attack
the poor, bust our unions, and make U.S. capitalism even more
savage and inhumane?<br>
<br>
By the way, in the piece below, David Boaz gets the timeline wrong
as to when the anti-war movement weakened, and I believe he does
it purposefully for political points. The anti-war movement was
already seriously weakened by 2006, maybe as early as 2005, as
demoralization set in. Surely hopes in a electoral victory played
a role, but there was no sudden death of the movement upon Obama's
election. If Boaz is going to blame the Democrats for the
movement's demise, he should at least get it right. I suspect that
he wasn't involved in the anti-war movement back then and wouldn't
know what happened.<br>
<br>
--- Corey <br>
Bloomington-Normal Citizens for Peace and Justice<br>
<br>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Mar 21, 2011 at 11:29 PM, C. G.
Estabrook <span dir="ltr"><<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:galliher@illinois.edu">galliher@illinois.edu</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt
0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);
padding-left: 1ex;">[From a director of the 'libertarian' Cato
Institute.]<br>
<br>
"...the $64,000 question — though these days it would have to
be at least a $64 billion question — could a new antiwar
movement hook up with the Tea Party movement in a Stop the
War, Stop the Spending revolt?"<br>
<br>
What Ever Happened to the Antiwar Movement?<br>
David Boaz - March 21, 2011<br>
<br>
About 100 antiwar protesters, including Daniel Ellsberg of
Pentagon Papers fame, were arrested Saturday outside the White
House in demonstrations marking the eighth anniversary of the
U.S.-led war in Iraq. It’s a far cry from the Bush years, when
hundreds of thousands or millions marched against the war, and
the New York Times declared “world public opinion” against the
war a second superpower. Will President Obama‘s military
incursion in a third Muslim country revive the antiwar
movement?<br>
<br>
On a street corner in Washington, D.C., outside the Cato
Institute, there’s a metal box that controls traffic signals.
During the Bush years there was hardly a day that it didn’t
sport a poster advertising an antiwar march or simply
denouncing President George W. Bush and the war in Iraq. But
the marches and the posters seemed to stop on election day
2008.<br>
<br>
Maybe antiwar organizers assumed that they had elected the man
who would stop the war. After all, Barack Obama rose to power
on the basis of his early opposition to the Iraq war and his
promise to end it. But after two years in the White House he
has made both of George Bush’s wars his wars.<br>
<br>
In October 2007, Obama proclaimed, “I will promise you this,
that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am
president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our
troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take
that to the bank.” Speaking of Iraq in February 2008,
candidate Barack Obama said, “I opposed this war in 2002. I
will bring this war to an end in 2009. It is time to bring our
troops home.” The following month, under fire from Hillary
Clinton, he reiterated, “I was opposed to this war in 2002….I
have been against it in 2002, 2003, 2004, 5, 6, 7, 8 and I
will bring this war to an end in 2009. So don’t be confused.”<br>
<br>
Indeed, in his famous “the moment when the rise of the oceans
began to slow” speech on the night he clinched the Democratic
nomination, he also proclaimed, “I am absolutely certain that
generations from now we will be able to look back and tell our
children that . . . this was the moment when we ended a war.”<br>
<br>
Today, however, he has tripled President Bush’s troop levels
in Afghanistan, and we have been fighting there for more than
nine years. The Pentagon has declared “the official end to
Operation Iraqi Freedom and combat operations by United States
forces in Iraq,” but we still have 50,000 troops there, hardly
what Senator Obama promised.<br>
<br>
And now Libya. In various recent polls more than two-thirds of
Americans have opposed military intervention in Libya. No
doubt many of them voted for President Obama.<br>
<br>
There’s another issue with the Libyan intervention: the
president’s authority to take the country to war without
congressional authorization. As many bloggers noted over the
weekend, in 2007 Barack Obama told Charlie Savage of the
Boston Globe,<br>
<br>
The President does not have power under the Constitution to
unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that
does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the
nation.<br>
<br>
Candidate Hillary Clinton spoke similarly:<br>
<br>
If the country is under truly imminent threat of attack, of
course the President must take appropriate action to defend
us. At the same time, the Constitution requires Congress to
authorize war. I do not believe that the President can take
military action – including any kind of strategic bombing –
against Iran without congressional authorization.<br>
<br>
And candidate Joe Biden:<br>
<br>
The Constitution is clear: except in response to an attack or
the imminent threat of attack, only Congress may authorize war
and the use of force.<br>
<br>
Fine words indeed. Will their supporters call them on their
apparent reversal?<br>
<br>
It’s hard to escape the conclusion that antiwar activity in
the United States and around the world was driven as much by
antipathy to George W. Bush as by actual opposition to war and
intervention. Indeed, a University of Michigan study of
antiwar protesters found that Democrats tended to withdraw
from antiwar activity as Obama found increasing political
success and then took office. Independents and members of
third parties came to make up a larger share of a smaller
movement. Reason.tv looked at the dwindling antiwar movement
two months ago.<br>
<br>
With his launch of a third military action, President Obama
seems to have forgotten a point made by Temple University
professor Jan C. Ting: “Wars are easy to begin, but hard to
end.” Americans haven’t forgotten, though.<br>
<br>
Nearly two-thirds of Americans now say that the war in
Afghanistan hasn’t been worth fighting, a number that has
soared since early 2010. Where are their leaders? Where are
the senators pushing for withdrawal? Where are the
organizations? Could a new, non-Democratic antiwar movement do
to Obama what the mid-2000s movement did to Bush? And the
$64,000 question — though these days it would have to be at
least a $64 billion question — could a new antiwar movement
hook up with the Tea Party movement in a Stop the War, Stop
the Spending revolt?<br>
<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2011/03/happened-antiwar-movement/"
target="_blank">http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2011/03/happened-antiwar-movement/</a><br>
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</blockquote>
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