[Peace-discuss] What do we do now?

[Morton K.Brussel]

I find articles like this frustrating. As if getting Bush out of office 
is not important, irrespective of Kerry's positions and statements 
(There is only one way.) If Mahajan believes that he is a fool. 
Moreover, it is one thing to say what we all SHOULD be doing, as 
outlined towards the end of his piece, but the main conundrum is HOW to 
achieve what he recommends. He complains, but offers nothing on this 
HOW question. Should we storm the White House, the local armory, stop 
traffic, distribute pamphlets, write letters? What? People are acting, 
contrary to his thesis. There is no collapse of the antiwar movement so 
far as I can see, but some lack of focus because our challenge now is 
how to change an ongoing situation, not how to protest a specific event 
such as the start of an invasion.

MKB


On Oct 6, 2004, at 12:31 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:

> [The following is the text of a radio commentary by Rahul Mahajan, 
> whose
> blog Empire Notes is quite good.  He seems to me here to make 
> suggestions
> of the sort of thing AWARE should be doing this fall and winter. --CGE]
>
> 	Collapse of the Antiwar Movement
>
> The occupation is a disaster and nobody outside of the extreme right 
> wing
> is able to support it. The United States has repeatedly attacked entire
> towns because of the supposed presence of a handful of wanted people
> (taking Israeli methods of collective punishment and expanding them
> dramatically) and committed a serious of shockingly sadistic abuses on
> innocent Iraqis in their custody. When, in late April, Bush was forced 
> to
> defend his "Mission Accomplished" stunt of the year before, he said,
> "Well, at least there's no torture chambers, rape rooms, and mass 
> graves
> in Iraq."
>
> Except, of course, for the torture chambers, rape rooms, and mass 
> graves.
>
> Across the political spectrum, people know that we were right and they
> were wrong. Yet there has hardly been a peep out of the antiwar 
> movement.
> There RNC protest was great, but it was basically an anti-Bush protest 
> --
> there wasn't even any messaging about the just-concluded offensive 
> against
> Najaf in which probably 2000 or more people were killed.
>
> There are many reasons for this collapse of the antiwar movement, but 
> I'll
> focus on two.
>
> First, the drive to get Kerry elected.
>
> If this happens, it will be largely due to the efforts of a wide 
> variety
> of progressive nonprofits and activist groups to do voter-registration 
> and
> get out the vote efforts in the handful of "swing states" remaining in 
> the
> country. Pro-Democratic operatives in key states like Pennsylvania and
> Florida are claiming a 2, 3, or more to 1 advantage over Republicans in
> registering new voters.
>
> Massive amounts of resources have been devoted to this; for example, 
> the
> Service Employees International Union is spending $65 million on such
> efforts.
>
> Much of the core membership of United for Peace and Justice are doing 
> the
> same thing, although at a vastly smaller scale.
>
> Work like this is laudable and enables antiwar groups to build links 
> with
> labor, communities of color, and others.
>
> But this is not antiwar work. And if any progressives, up to and 
> including
> the leadership of SEIU, think that Kerry will reward them if elected, 
> they
> are living in the same fantasy world as George Bush. He will credit the
> militarism of the Democratic National Convention and his promise to go 
> and
> personally kill every terrorist or would-be terrorist in the world. 
> And,
> of course, his corporate and military backers.
>
> A second reason is that, with regard to protest actions, we have dumbed
> down our message to the ultimate demand "Bring the troops home now!"
>
> I have no problem with calling to end the occupation now. But we have 
> to
> realize that even people who don't support the war don't look to us as
> some kind of spiritual authority. Nobody cares about our demands. 
> People
> will listen to our arguments, information, and plans, but no longer to 
> our
> ultimate demand.
>
> We need responses to immediate political developments and transitional
> positions and campaigns. Otherwise, we appear out of touch; even now, 
> as
> they've raided Samarra and started bombing Sadr City regularly, we 
> have no
> response.
>
> Some groups have tried to imply that transitional demands imply 
> dilution
> of the anti-imperialist agenda. This is as silly as saying that demands
> for living wage legislation imply dilution of an anti-capitalist 
> agenda.
>
> Everything that happens in Iraq should build our base. We must mobilize
> against bombing of civilian areas and build our base. We must mobilize
> against torture and build our base. Right now, we must mobilize against
> Bush administration plans to manipulate the January elections in Iraq 
> (and
> the upcoming election in Afghanistan). Any election held under military
> occupation is illegitimate. But we can't stop the elections in Iraq. 
> Thus,
> we have to mobilize to ensure that the elections, while remaining
> illegitimate, are as free and fair as possible. In the process, we 
> bring
> into the movement people who believe in democracy but were unsure about
> the occupation; we may even derail plans to fix the elections.
>
> The occupation of Iraq will be a long struggle. The election will be 
> over
> in a month, but the occupation is with us for years to come. We can't
> affect it unless we build steadily over time. Mere repetition of "Bring
> the troops home now" won't do it.
>
> [Rahul Mahajan is publisher of Empire Notes. His latest book, "Full
> Spectrum Dominance: U.S. Power in Iraq and Beyond," covers U.S. policy 
> on
> Iraq, deceptions about weapons of mass destruction, the plans of the
> neoconservatives, and the face of the new Bush imperial policies. He 
> can
> be reached at rahul at empirenotes.org.]
>
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