[Peace-discuss] What do we do now?

[jencart at mailstation.com]

Exactly.  

Plus lemme add that our protests might have an impact on Kerry.  The largest protests in history have had zero impact on Bush.

Jenifer C.
-----Original Message-----
From: "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at alexia.lis.uiuc.edu>
Sent: Oct 8, 2004 1:00 AM
To: Peace-discuss at lists.cu.groogroo.com
Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] What do we do now?

Getting the Bush administration out of office is important, but not
"irrespective of Kerry's positions and statements."  The reductio ad
absurdum is obvious: would voting against Bush still be appropriate if
Kerry were a Nazi?  But of course he isn't, and on some matters (mostly
domestic) the Democrat policies are to be preferred. Moreover, the
election is a referendum on the Bush administration, and they shouldn't
win it.

But Mahajan is no fool. He makes some explicit suggestions of what we
should be doing, given that (as Chomsky recently remarked) "elections are
a matter of secondary significance: what's far more important is to build
a democratic culture, in which they will be meaningful.  But they are not
of zero significance.  In a swing state, anything but a vote for Kerry is
in effect a vote for Bush.  Those who want to help give the Bush crowd a
mandate can do so if they like, but they should not delude themselves
about what they are doing."

Mahajan writes, "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."

Allowing for the unlovely (and faintly oxymoronic) expression "build our
base," we can still draw from this exhortation rather specific suggestions
about what AWARE's media and publicity campaigns should be about this
winter. There's in fact some interesting convergence on the overall goal:
see the piece by the eminently middle-of-the-road Stanley Hoffman (as it
happens, a former teacher of mine) in the current NY Review of Books ("Out
of Iraq," http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17470).  He says that the US
must treat Iraq as De Gaulle did Algeria -- which would mean "giving up
the less-talked-about but central US aim of turning Iraq into a
US-dominated satellite, with American bases, American companies in charge
of its oil, and a compliant regime" -- a position contrary to Kerry's too,
of course, which we should be talking about.  --CGE


On Wed, 6 Oct 2004, Morton K.Brussel wrote:

> 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...
> >

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