<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=iso-8859-1"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><blockquote type="cite"><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">"...Under Obama, as you may know, wealth is concentrating faster, the environment is deteriorating faster, the military has spread further and cost more, the warrantless spying has spread and been firmly established as without criminal penalty, rendition and torture have become policy choices rather than crimes, imprisonment without charge or trial has been 'legalized' (although Obama is still fighting for that power in court), an assassination program has been created and openly advertised, wars have been launched without the courtesy of lying to Congress, the CIA has been given major war powers, 'special' forces are in 70 nations on any given day and raiding a dozen homes to kill on any given night, drones have raised to new heights the percentage of war victims who are civilians and the percentage of the people in certain nations who hate our government, secrecy has mushroomed, and retribution against whistleblowers has exploded..."<br><div><br><blockquote type="cite"><h1 class="with-tabs">Respectable Murderers: An Open Letter to Dan Ellsberg</h1>By David Swanson<br><a href="http://warisacrime.org/content/respectable-murderers-open-letter-dan-ellsberg">http://warisacrime.org/content/respectable-murderers-open-letter-dan-ellsberg</a><br><p>Dear Dan,</p><p>You and I are getting ready to tape a debate on the question of
whether to vote for Obama (in "swing states"). It will air on Lila
Garrett's "Connect the Dots" show on KPFK next Monday. I'm looking
forward to it, if for no other reason, because I think our public
discourse lacks much serious debate between people who respect each
other's intentions. I have nothing but respect for you and believe you
mean nothing but the best in advocating votes for Obama. You honestly
believe I was catastrophically wrong to vote for Jill Stein in Virginia,
as I've done, and I honestly believe you are horrendously misguided to
be expending your valuable energy trying to get others to vote for
Obama. And yet we'll be friends through this and regardless of whether
one or both of us ever change our minds.</p><p>An hour debate will also be a refreshing change from the usual sound
byte simplification of the media, and yet not necessarily sufficient.
So, let me tell you a couple of stories.</p><p>I wandered over to the Obama campaign office here in Charlottesville,
Va., on Wednesday when former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was
scheduled to visit. She showed up, in fact, and told everyone how
terrific Obama is.</p><p>I asked Albright whether she still believed that killing a half a
million young Iraqi children was "worth it." She said that she very
much regretted having made that remark. But did she regret having
enacted the sanctions that killed those children? I asked if she
opposed the current "crippling sanctions" on Iran, and she said that she
did not.</p><p>Here's video: <a href="http://youtu.be/gdmix60ajmA">http://youtu.be/gdmix60ajmA</a></p><p>I'm not so much troubled by Albright's sanctioning of mass murder, as
by the agreement with her on the part of the many people gathered to
applaud her comments. Not a single person present expressed the
slightest concern over Albright's having taken part in the murder of so
many young lives and many more older ones. Not a single person
expressed an interest in learning about a history they were perhaps
ignorant of. Not a single person offered an argument for what the
positive "it" was that could have made such slaughter "worth it." Not a
single person offered a claim that George Bush Sr. or Bob Dole would
have killed even more children.</p><p>I don't mean to give the impression that Albright's audience was
comatose. On the contrary, numerous individuals began grabbing me,
shouting at me, pushing me, grabbing my camera, twisting my arm, and
spitting out the most vicious hatred. In theory they would all, no
doubt, agree that in a system of self-governance people should be able
to question their elected officials, former elected officials, and
at-large mass-murdering former elected officials. But in this case,
this official was playing for the Good Team. The proper role, they
believed, therefore, was that of cheerleaders, the highest value
deferential respect.</p><p>Do they believe the wholesale slaughter of human beings, whether by
sanctions or bombs, is sometimes justified by some mysterious "national
interest"? Do they believe I was a raving lunatic and that Albright
would never have hurt a fly? Do they just believe it's most appropriate
not to ask, because that would involve disrespect toward someone on the
Good Team? No matter which way you slice it, you come back to a room
full of well-dressed polite supporters of mass-murder. That's far more
worrying to me than the individual sociopath speaking to them.</p><p>Now, present in that room were TV cameras and newspaper reporters.
The purpose of the event was to generate positive news about the reasons
to vote for Obama and the stature of the people supporting Obama's
reelection. Clearly, from that point of view, the staffers in the
office did the absolute right thing in chasing me out of the building
and making sure that not another inconvenient question was posed. As
I'm sure you realize, voting for Obama in a swing state as a single
secretive individual can hardly be called rational. A single vote makes
no difference. To be the rational strategic voter you envision, each
person must also strive to recruit others.</p><p>On the other hand, you say that you agree with me that independent
policy-driven activism is more valuable than elections. You agree that
we don't have legitimate elections offering a wide range of choices,
that we need a movement to demand changes we cannot vote for, changes to
strip out the money, open up the debates and the media, undo the
gerrymandering, do away with the electoral college, provide automatic
registration, and on and on and on. You probably agree that women did
not vote themselves the right to vote, that the labor movement grew when
it struggled and sacrificed by striking and has shrunk while funding
the Democratic Party asking nothing in return, that major changes for
peace and justice and civilization have been driven primarily by
independent movements and often movements that have mobilized third and
fourth party campaigns before winning over the Big Two. You may agree
with Howard Zinn that it's not so much who's sitting in the White House
as who's doing the sitting in. You might even agree with Emma Goldman
that if elections alone changed anything, they'd be banned. In any
event, during certain non-election years, I see you doing as much useful
activism for this country and the world as anyone I know.</p><p>Presumably you place some value on spreading awareness of what
sanctions did to Iraq. Presumably you see what value there could be in
halting the sanctions on Iran. But what would you have done in that
Obama campaign office in this swing state on Wednesday? You are a
remarkable person, but still only one person. Would you have ruined the
entire publicity stunt by pressing Albright further on her record of
genocide? Or would you have thrown her a softball about what sort of
evil lawyer Mitt Romney might be expected to nominate to the Supreme
Court? Let's accept that both would have been good questions. But you
could not have asked both. There was not time, and asking the first
would have negated the purpose of the second -- not to mention getting
you thrown out of the event.</p><p>Even you cannot follow your advice, and you are Daniel Ellsberg.
Imagine how hard following your advice is for other people. Most
people, to one degree or another, identify with candidates and parties.
They talk about "us" winning when their candidate wins. To various
degrees they avoid becoming aware of their team's flaws. To various
degrees, they censor their opposition to their party or politician,
before, during, and after elections. What is your time calculation? Do
you prioritize campaigning for a month, six months, a year? How much
time out of each four-year period do you sacrifice from independent
activism of the sort that has always changed the world? And how much
time out of every two-year term of those legislators who
Constitutionally are supposed to be running the country?</p><p>I'm convinced that you personally do an excellent job of avoiding
lesser-evil team cheerleading in between elections. But, most people do
not. Our RootsAction petition on "strategic voting" got a response
several times lower than any other action we've ever sent to our list.
Some people do hold their noses and vote, but they have no idea how
tightly they should be holding their noses, and they do not act
appropriately post-election. All the activists running around knocking
on doors and making phone calls for candidates will not do so for peace
or justice in December. They'd look at you like you were crazy if you
suggested it. Their work is done. Their energy is drained. Their role
as spectators is established. And the promise is contained in any
activism that they, or even you, muster: We will attempt to
inconvenience you, but we will never ever vote against you.</p><p>In between elections, as we move from having voted for the less evil
party toward the inevitable contest four years hence between two parties
that are both more evil than the time before, our activism is neutered
by a system of unions, PACs, and nonprofit clicktivist and media
complexes that seek their funding, power, and sense of importance from
one half of the government. It has become routine for grassroots or
astroturf activist leaders to head into the veal pen and ask the elected
officials of the Good Party or of the "Progressive" wing of the good
party what they should ask their members to demand. This is an
inversion of representative government. You'll recall groups that
favored single-payer healthcare forbidding their members from mentioning
it, asking instead for a "public option" because so-called public
servants had instructed the public to ask for that. The point is not
that legislators should never compromise, but that we should leave it to
the legislators, because when we pre-compromise, we end up with even
less in the end. </p><p>When Obama was in Charlottesville, hundreds of people waited in line
for hours for the chance to cheer anything he said. Some of us went to
talk to the people waiting in line. We wanted to get a sense of how
they felt about all the policies that had produced such outrage under
Bush and been expanded under Obama. Under Obama, as you may know,
wealth is concentrating faster, the environment is deteriorating faster,
the military has spread further and cost more, the warrantless spying
has spread and been firmly established as without criminal penalty,
rendition and torture have become policy choices rather than crimes,
imprisonment without charge or trial has been "legalized" (although
Obama is still fighting for that power in court), an assassination
program has been created and openly advertised, wars have been launched
without the courtesy of lying to Congress, the CIA has been given major
war powers, "special" forces are in 70 nations on any given day and
raiding a dozen homes to kill on any given night, drones have raised to
new heights the percentage of war victims who are civilians and the
percentage of the people in certain nations who hate our government,
secrecy has mushroomed, and retribution against whistleblowers has
exploded. You are aware of all of this. We couldn't find a single
person in that crowd who had ever heard of any of it. Major news
stories that would have put people into the streets in outrage if the
president were a Republican did not exist to this crowd.</p><p>Sure, you know the facts. But are you devoting every ounce of energy
to spreading the word and building resistance? Of course not. You're
investing your time in campaigning for Obama votes (in swing states).
You may understand that there's been no step back from Bush's policies,
that Obama has advanced them further. Yes, Romney could advance them
even further even faster than Obama would in the next four years -- even
in the face of the public opposition that would likely materialize for a
President Romney. But we need a reversal of course, not a slightly
slower death, not even a significantly slower death. The environment is
collapsing. Weaponry and hostility are spreading. We're dealing with a
need for survival, not a desire for utopia. What we need for survival
is a credible independent movement.</p><p>When a labor union today says "Reform NAFTA and push for the Employee
Free Choice Act, or else," the "or else" is empty and everyone knows
it. When Bill McKibben says "The tar sands pipeline is your test,"
nobody believes that when Obama fails the test McKibben will oppose his
reelection. Compare this battered-spouse relationship with that of
Latinos who posed a credible threat to desert Obama and thereby won some
modest immigration rights. </p><p>You know that we had a significant (pitiably weak but significant)
peace movement in 2005 and 2006. Why? Because opponents of war and
opponents of Republican presidents' wars were teamed up together. That
fell apart as Democrats took power in Congress in 2007 and as 2008
turned out to be the year of one of those endlessly recurring "most
important elections of our lifetime." The movement was temporarily shut
down, never to be restored. We went from Mitch McConnell secretly
warning Bush to get out of Iraq to Obama getting credit for withdrawing
from Afghanistan even as the troops there were double the number
deployed when Obama entered the White House. </p><p>How in the world can anyone have spent the last many years in the
peace movement and not noticed this partisan-based electoral-based
collapse? I'm sure you've seen and were likely surveyed during the
study done by the University of Michigan's Michael Heaney and Indiana
University's Fabio Rojas. They documented this collapse and its
partisan basis.</p><p>Would I object to people voting for a less-evil but still evil
candidate if they could continue organizing for justice? Of course not.
I do not fail to understand the power of your argument. I'm sure
you'll do me the courtesy of not simply repeating it. A more evil
candidate is more evil than a less evil candidate. A greater warmonger
and bigger destroyer of the environment is worse than a lesser warmonger
and lesser destroyer of the environment. I think the case for Obama's
superiority to Romney is vastly overblown. I think, in fact, that Obama
has been able to get away with much that we would never have allowed
McCain to achieve. We stood up against Bush's attack on Social
Security. But China is to Nixon as humanitarian goods are to Obama.
Let's grant, however, that Obama is better than Romney. Let's grant it
because it is not the central argument and may very well be right. That
is, if you compare their platforms as presented, guesstimate how much
of each is outright lies, and factor in the likely public resistance to
each, Obama may come out ahead. My argument is not that he doesn't. My
argument is not that he doesn't do so meaningfully. My argument is not
that this isn't a question of life and death. And my position involves
complete awareness that I will not be the first to die, someone else
will.</p><p>Here, in contrast, is my actual argument: It is vastly more important
that we have an independent movement based on policy changes rather
than personality changes. In theory we could have that with
lesser-evil-swing-state voting. In reality, we cannot. We cannot build
a national movement in the 38 states from which all candidates and
journalists have fled, and on the condition that we avoid building it
large enough to have any impact whatsoever (which would ruin the whole
strategy by transforming a non-swing state into a swing state). We
cannot keep a movement from shutting down for each election cycle as
long as most people see their jobs as followers of politicians rather
than as the true sovereigns of this land. </p><p>I don't care about my purity. If I wanted to be pure I would avoid
thinking about these matters at all. I wouldn't subject myself to a
room full of well-dressed polite backers of mass-murder at all if I
wanted to be pure. And I would hold my nose and work with them
shoulder-to-shoulder if I thought that would lead to the greater good. I
would have voted for Captain Peace Prize if I believed it would save
the most lives. I do not. I believe that building an activist movement
that depends on rejecting support for a party of mass murderers will
save the most lives, and will do so in the relative near term -- or we
will all perish.</p><p>As you know, I've spent months trying to avoid this discussion
because I believe that our so-called elections drain energy away from
activism. They also serve to divide us. We all want peace and justice.
But we drop everything to debate or, more often, quarrel with each
other over electoral matters -- something the powers in Washington must
have great laughs over. But the election is this week, and this debate
must be had. I enter it with a great deal of respect for that small
group of people on the other side of it who understand the need for a
real mass movement and believe a mass movement is compatible with
lesser-evilism. I'm simply not persuaded.</p><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><p>David Swanson's books include "<a href="http://warisalie.org/" target="_blank">War Is A Lie</a>." He blogs at <a href="http://davidswanson.org/" title="http://davidswanson.org" target="_blank">http://davidswanson.org</a> and <a href="http://warisacrime.org/" title="http://warisacrime.org" target="_blank">http://warisacrime.org</a> and works as Campaign Coordinator for the online activist organization <a href="http://rootsaction.org/" title="http://rootsaction.org" target="_blank">http://rootsaction.org</a>. He hosts <a href="http://davidswanson.org/taxonomy/term/41" target="_blank">Talk Nation Radio</a>. Follow him on Twitter: <a href="http://twitter.com/davidcnswanson" target="_blank">@davidcnswanson</a> and <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/David-Swanson/297768373319#" target="_blank">FaceBook</a>.</p>
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