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I can hardly imagine a more diverse group on the
libertarian-progressive axis than Iraq Veterans Against the War.<br>
<br>
If one insists on Absolute Ideologic Purity, one will find that even he
himself is found lacking. Better that we cut everyone some slack for
their "areas needing further growth and understanding". I too have
been guilty of wounding my friends at times.<br>
<br>
Carl and others have pointed out that the "Tea Party" is a quite
diverse group and that its recent incarnation began with the Ron Paul
R[3voJ]ution on 16 DEC 2007, a quite vocal and large libertarian group,
and has been seriously defamed damaged and co-opted by the same-old
same-old neoconnish elements seeking to cop a spin from the unrest and
a teachable moment.<br>
<br>
One can't be a fiscal conservative or any other kind of conservative
(other than neo-) and favour the War. Sunday morning flag decals still
won't get 'em into heaven.<br>
<br>
There still remains a Teachable Moment that can be taken at the cusp.<br>
<br>
Why not a paleoconservative/classical liberal/libertarian/progressive
Coalition Against the War?<br>
<br>
If such a diverse motley crew as Ron Paul, Walter Jones, Barney Frank,
Ralph Nader, Cynthia McKinney, Dennis Kucinich, Chuck Baldwin, Tim
Johnson, et al can put aside deep ideologic disaggregative forces and
stand together against the War Machine, why cant more of us find it in
our hearts to do the same? <br>
<br>
Why not?<br>
<br>
On 2011-3-22 22:13, 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="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; 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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