[Peace-discuss] Re: Why do people believe in Congress?

[Tom Mackaman]

  With all due respect, I think that those who advocate peace through  pressuring the Congress and the two parties should draw up a balance  sheet of recent history.  What have your efforts  achieved?   It is not a matter of "ignoring" Congress and the  Democratic Party, but of exposing them for what they are--agents of war  and American imperialism.  The notion that these hidebound  defenders of militarism can be made into tools of peace is mistaken,  and frankly dangerous.  The price paid in blood for the failure of  the perspective of protest and pressuring Democratic politicians as a  means of fighting war has been high.  It has failed to stop the  invasion of Iraq and to end the brutal occuapation.  It will not  prevent an attack on Iran...  It is absolutely critical that those  who want peace reflect on recent experiences!
  
  Here is a letter I wrote which was published in the DI not so long ago on this question:
  
Congratulations to Eric Naing for being one of the few commentators to note   the striking paradox of an increasingly “irrelevant” peace movement floundering   
at the very moment the American population is increasingly and overwhelmingly   opposed to war.  But Naing doesn’t follow this observation through to its logical   conclusion.  
  There are two simple questions that those who want peace should ask.  First,   what is the cause of the war? Second, how can it be stopped?  In the end there   are only two ways to answer.     
  
The first is the prevailing viewpoint of the liberal and radical protest groups   such as UFPJ, ANSWER, and MoveOn. They essentially view the war as a colossal   mistake authored by the Bush administration with the assent of a hoodwinked   Democratic Party and American populace.  It follows then, in answering the   second question, that the war can be stopped through a process of pressuring   
politicians and protesting the perceived apathy or ignorance of the masses.    
  
We in International Students for Social Equality answer those  questions in a diametrically opposed way.  The eruption of  American militarism is no mistake. There is a method to the madness:   the US ruling elite is attempting to offset the long-term decline  of US capitalism vs. its rivals in Europe and Asia by seizing markets  and strategic advantage.  It follows from this analysis that the  only way to stop the war is to build an international movement of  students and the working class against the very source of  war—-capitalism and the nation-state system.  
  
What Naing sees as the silliness of the protest milieu is in fact an expression of   the hopelessness of pressuring the Democratic Party, which, minor tactical   differences aside, is every bit as committed as the Republican Party to   dominating the Middle East and Central Asia.   
  
Tom Mackaman  
International Students for Social Equality
  
       
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