[Peace-discuss] Almost anti-war...

[Morton K. Brussel]

I guess it's all in the eye of the beholder.

The UFPJ statement seems unobjectionable, except possibly their PC  
shot against nuclear reactors. However, they should have explained--- 
if it's true---why there was no mention of Iran in connection with  
announcement of the 4/29 demo in NYC. Bracketing MoveOn.org and UFPJ  
together is nastiness IMHO.

Carl, I don't see hesitancy, or subversion in the UFPJ statement.  
Perhaps I'm lacking imagination. I think the author of this piece is  
too hung up on seeing a "cover" for Democrats where they don't  
necessarily exist.

--mkb

On Apr 17, 2006, at 7:44 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:

> [Hesitancy at best (subversion at worst) in the anti-war movement  
> is described by <http://amleft.blogspot.com/>.  --CGE]
>
>
> On Thursday, I observed how United for Peace and Justice was  
> sponsoring a major antiwar rally without mentioning Iran. On  
> Friday, I received an e-mail message from UFPJ, as did many others.  
> It explained UFPJ's position on the proposed war against Iran, as  
> set forth on the UFPJ website:
>
>     "United for Peace and Justice opposes any military action  
> against Iran, as well as covert action and sanctions. We reject the  
> doctrine of 'preventive war.'  All diplomatic solutions must be  
> pursued.
>
>     "Send a clear message to the Bush Administration: Don't Attack  
> Iran! As a first and immediate step, we urge you to add your  
> signature and comments to AfterDowningStreet's petition to  
> President Bush and Vice-President Cheney opposing an attack on Iran.
>
>     "Many UFPJ member groups, including AfterDowningStreet, Gold  
> Star Families for Peace, CodePINK: Women for Peace, Progressive  
> Democrats of America, Democracy Rising, and others, are all  
> promoting this petition. UFPJ encourages you to circulate this  
> message and help expand the growing list of signers.
>
>     "Efforts to resolve any dispute with Iran should include  
> promoting negotiations –- including Israel –- on a Weapons of Mass  
> Destruction Free Zone in the Middle East. We call for the global  
> elimination of nuclear weapons. The United States should stop  
> blocking negotiations on abolition and demonstrate leadership by  
> taking steps to fulfill its own nuclear disarmament obligation. We  
> call for the development and promotion of sustainable energy  
> alternatives. We need to stop going to war for oil. And we need to  
> address climate change. But nuclear power is not the answer: Every  
> nuclear power plant is a potential bomb factory and a source of  
> radioactive waste that will remain deadly forever. Additional Iran  
> resources and action items will be available shortly on the UFPJ  
> website. And, be sure to join us in New York on April 29 in the  
> national March for Peace, Justice and Democracy."
>
> And, UFPJ confronts some of the underlying assumptions that are  
> used to justify a "preemptive attack":
>
>     "An attack on Iran would be an act of aggression, barred by the  
> UN Charter and prosecuted at Nuremberg. If executed, U.S. military  
> action would apply the Bush doctrine of 'preventive' war in an  
> unprecedented way that would set the template for years or decades  
> of regional and global violence, unrestrained by law. U.S. use of  
> nuclear weapons against Iran would be an atrocious act violating  
> the existing near taboo that has held since the U.S. devastation of  
> Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That would in turn make it far more likely  
> that the weapons will be used elsewhere as well -- including  
> against cities in the U.S.
>
>     "While Washington accuses Iran of seeking nuclear weapons under  
> cover of a civilian nuclear power program, in violation of its  
> obligations as a non-nuclear nation under the Nuclear  
> Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), the U.S. is itself in blatant  
> violation of its own NPT obligation to eliminate its vast and  
> sophisticated nuclear arsenal. There is no evidence that Iran has a  
> nuclear weapons program. The U.S., however, retains a nuclear  
> arsenal of more than 10,000 weapons, some 2,000 on hair-trigger  
> alert. With nearly 500 tactical nuclear weapons deployed in 6 NATO  
> countries, the U.S. is the only country with nuclear weapons  
> deployed on foreign soil. And the U.S. is modernizing its existing  
> nuclear weapons and publicly making plans to develop and produce  
> new ones."
>
> Meanwhile, as Norman Solomon observes, MoveOn.org remains unwilling  
> to oppose anything other than a nuclear attack. Here's the weak  
> response that Solomon received when he inquired about it:
>
>     "A response came on April 13 from Eli Pariser, executive  
> director of MoveOn. Here is his three-paragraph reply in its entirety:
>
>     'As you know, our focus is on bringing people together around  
> points of consensus. We build our advocacy agenda through dialogue  
> with our members. Since we haven’t done any work around Iran thus  
> far, we saw the prospect of a nuclear attack as a good way to begin  
> that conversation -- something everyone can agree was nuts.
>
>     'As I mention in the ["Don’t Nuke Iran"] email, a conventional  
> attack poses many of the same risks as a nuclear one. But just as  
> our Iraq campaign started with a position that attracted a broad  
> membership -- "Ask Tough Questions," in August 2002 -- and then  
> escalated, so we’re trying here to engage folks beyond the "peace"  
> community in a national discussion about the consequences of war.
>
>     'We wouldn’t have had the membership to be able to run ads  
> calling for an Iraq exit today if we’d confined our Iraq campaign  
> to the true believers from the very beginning.'”
>
> In other words, MoveOn.org had to wait until thousands more Iraqis  
> were killed, thousands more detained and tortured, while corporados  
> associated with the Bush Administration looted the country for  
> billions before it could take a stand in support of ending the  
> occupation, and should pursue a similarly ponderous discussion  
> about Iran without urgency. But such an analysis naively takes a  
> disingenous reply at face value. Solomon asserts, probably  
> accurately, that the overwhelming majority of MoveOn.org members  
> oppose military action against Iran.
>
> So, what we really have here is the effort of the self-described  
> MoveOn.org Political Action Team to stall, to avoid taking a  
> principled stand, as a means of relieving pressure on congressional  
> Democrats, until it can no longer be avoided, as they previously  
> did to evade an open declaration against the occupation. It was a  
> rather strange coincidence, they apparently came out against the  
> occupation as congressional Democrats began to openly consider a  
> phased withdrawal from Iraq. Indeed, I can't even confidently say  
> when it happened, the announcement gently brushed the public  
> consciousness, most assuredly lacking the Zen-like prospect of  
> transformation associated with a butterfly moving its wings.
>
> Yet again, instead of providing leadership, the "action team" is  
> actually an impediment, a barrier that MoveOn.org members must  
> overcome to have their true opinion expressed. There is an old  
> saying, "History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce."  
> In this instance, we can more accurately say, "History repeats  
> itself, ever more ludicrously." People with even longer memories  
> about the mendacity of MoveOn.org recall how it created a safe  
> harbor for congressional Democrats before the Iraq war, by stating  
> that the war was wrong, unless authorized by a UN resolution.
>
> By doing so, MoveOn.org accomplished two critical objectives: (1)  
> allowing congressional Democrats to support the war in the unlikely  
> event that Bush obtained a UN resolution; and, more importantly,  
> (2) allowing congressional Democrats to engage in the hypocritical  
> display of supporting the occupation as a purportedly grim  
> necessity while parading their pre-war credentials of opposition.  
> As already noted, MoveOn.org members eventually rebelled against  
> such transparently cynical politics, but it took a long time for  
> them to overcome the political manipulation of the "action team",  
> if they did so at all, given the yellow light of cautious approval  
> from congressional Democrats for a change in policy.
>
> Hence, with Iran, we hear the same nonsense, MoveOn.org needs to  
> educate and consult. A national discusssion is needed. Nonsense,  
> because MoveOn.org is clearly an organization run from the top  
> down, purveying the illusion of mass participation. Liberals love  
> to bash ANSWER as some kind of Maoist/Stalinist/Trotyskite  
> vanguardist organization (an organization with which I have had no  
> personal experience, being philosophically more of an anti- 
> globalization, direct action type), but isn't it odd that they have  
> no problem with MoveOn.org, an organization that actually operates  
> consistent with such an approach? Meanwhile, let's hope that we  
> don't live through the entirety of an incomprehensibly violent war  
> in the Middle East, provoked by conventional airstrikes upon Iran,  
> before MoveOn.org completes the charade of a "national discussion".
>
> 	###
>
>
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