[Peace-discuss] Call for co-sponsors Tom Hayden Talk March 30

[Robert Naiman]

Tom Hayden has recanted and apologized for his horrible role in
Lebanon for 1982, and invoked it as a warning to other politicians.
One can still have issues with him, of course, as with anyone, and
this can be distinguished, as Carl notes, from whether it is a a good
idea to co-sponsor his talk, which I think it is, because he is a
crowd-gathering and media-attracting denouncer of the war and
occupation and opponent of attacking Iran. But it's also worth noting
his recantations:

I Was Israel's Dupe
http://www.counterpunch.org/hayden07202006.html

Things Come 'Round in Mideast
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-hayden/things-come-round-in-mid_b_25654.html

(Full disclosure: Hayden is on the board of Just Foreign Policy.)

On 2/14/07, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at uiuc.edu> wrote:
>
> I have no objection to co-sponsorship, but I do suggest we look
> carefully at the actual positions of those who are suddenly finding it
> appropriate to label themselves anti-war.
>
> We have the slippery Barack Obama proclaiming himself the anti-war
> candidate, when he's not, at all.  See his bill, which he calls "The
> Iraq War De-escalation Act of 2007": he supports the achievement of
> Bush's war aims by means of tactical readjustment.  And according to
> Anne Miller, the head of New Hampshire Peace Action, he refuses to vote
> against the supplemental appropriation for the war.
>
> Hayden's views on the war seems to have changed a good bit recently,
> too, and we perhaps should be only a bit disquieted by Gore Vidal's jibe
> from long ago: "Tom Hayden is the kind of politician who gives
> opportunism a bad name." We might be able to judge how his views have
> changed in his upcoming talk if we note what Alex Cockburn wrote about
> him in CounterPunch a year and a half ago:
>
> ============
>
> Right now there's a big argument going on about exit strategies and
> schedules from Iraq. Cindy Sheehan and many say Out Now. Then the
> responsible politicos say, Be realistic. Start to leave at the end of
> '06. Stan Goff took a few lusty swings at Tom Hayden on this site
> <http://www.counterpunch.org/goff08252005.html>, on this very matter of
> scheduling. He got attacked as being (a) nasty and abusive, and (b)
> being divisive and unrealistic.
>
> I wrote Stan a note, as follows:
>
> "Jesus Christ, this is like being suffocated by a dead ostrich. There's
> nothing wrong with vigorous invective. The left doesn't get places often
> because it's way TOO polite, too reluctant to air differences, too
> polite about people like Tom Hayden when they are selling a pwog
> Democrat line.
>
> "Tom has done some good things and he's done some bad things. In 1982 I
> wrote in the Village Voice that in the National Gallery in Washington DC
> there are 134 portraits of Benedict Arnold. None look alike. All
> resemble Tom Hayden. Why did I write that? Because Tom Hayden and Jane
> Fonda flew to the advance Israeli positions from which the Israeli
> gunners were indiscriminately (NYT reporter Tom Friedman's word,
> censored at the time) shelling Beirut, to show solidarity with Israeli
> forces and to bolster Tom's political position in California. People who
> raised the issue of justice for Palestinians were told year after year
> that it was a 'divisive' issue to raise, would rock the boat, set the
> cat among the pigeons, cause ructions. So the Democratic Party never has
> dealt with it.
>
> "I haven't the slightest idea what Tom H says now about Israel and
> Palestinians, but like hundreds of others prominent in the DP through
> 70s and 80s, he cost us all, most of all the Palestinians, very dear by
> his prudence. I looked at the PDA site last week and saw a parcel of
> shredded platitudes about internationalizing the occupying force. You
> were quite right to make fun of that kind of blather. This
> 'internationalization' line reminds me of the prudent line back in 2002
> and 2003, before invasion, when a lot of people wrapped up the antiwar
> message in talk about a UN force. Very polite, and totally unrealistic,
> since the UN is a wholly owned subsidiary of the US.
>
> "We aren't, thank God, a fascist country here, like Germany was in WW2,
> but suppose the Germans had been able to speak freely, would they have
> been talking in 1942 about a withdrawal of German forces from the Soviet
> Union beginning at the end of 1943? No, by mid-42 any sane German would
> have been saying AUS NOW. And they would have been realistic, because by
> the end of 43 most of the German soldiers were dead or captives. Do you
> want to tell all those US soldiers sent to Iraq that they should ride
> around in their Humvees waiting to get blown up till the end of 2006
> when withdrawal can commence on a schedule that preserves PDA
> credibility. If so, they'll have a lot of explaining to do, to mothers
> like Cindy Sheehan."
>
> ==============
>
> And a similar judgment from another blogger, less than a year ago:
>
> ==============
>
> Tom Hayden finds the center vital
>
> Once again Tom Hayden (a man who gives opportunism a bad name, as
> somebody once said) shows us -- at The Nation, where else -- what a very
> awful place SDS/Port Huron types can get themselves into, given enough
> time and thwarted ambition:
>
>      "Democrats are slowly but surely uniting around a plan for military
> withdrawal designed by the Center for American Progress, a think tank
> linked to Clinton-era Democrats and headed by former White House Chief
> of Staff John Podesta.
>
>      "Not all the party leaders agree. Senator Hillary Clinton continues
> to posture as a military hawk. Senator Joe Biden wants to dilute and
> divide Iraq into three sectarian enclaves. Neither Senator Charles
> Schumer nor Representative Rahm Emanuel, who are charged with winning
> November's elections, have a coherent message on Iraq....
>
>      "The core propositions of the CAP paper point to a nearly complete
> US withdrawal in the next eighteen months:
>
>          "* Immediately reduce our troop presence at a rate of 9,000 per
> month to a total of 60,000 by the end of 2006, and to 'virtually zero'
> by the end of 2007
>          "* Bring home all National Guard units this year"
>
> Okay -- but watch closely now as the re- comes into re-deploy:
>
>          "* Double the number of US troops in Afghanistan, place an Army
> division in Kuwait, an expeditionary force in the Persian Gulf and an
> additional 1,000 special forces in Africa and Asia"
>
> There's a lot more window-dressing, but this is the meat of it. So what
> does Tommy take away from this?
>
>      "All disrespect aside, there is a significant acceptance of the
> peace movement's message buried in this centrist proposal."
>
> Hey, we won! So for now
>
>      "The peace movement should also be planning now to make it
> virtually impossible for presidential candidates to campaign
> successfully in 2008 without committing to a speedy withdrawal from Iraq."
>
> Total, final, complete, absolutely no one in a helmet left by... 2009!
> That's "speedy", Tom? Why yes: anything speedier would be, as Tommy
> says, "a phantom extreme of 'immediate withdrawal.'"
>
> ... <http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org/pwogwessives/>.
>
>
> Jan & Durl Kruse wrote:
> > AWARE:
> > Siobhan from ICPJ has asked for our cosponsorship of the Tom Hayden talk
> > as listed below. Any objections or concerns? Siobhan hopes to hear our
> > response soon. Let me know ASAP otherwise I will communicate AWARE's
> > cosponsorship.
> > JAN Kruse
> >
> > On Feb 13, 2007, at 8:51 AM, Siobhan Kolar wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> >     I'm helping plan the Tom Hayden talk at Holiday Inn in Urbana March
> >     30. I was going to work on a flyer and wanted to know if your groups
> >     would want to be listed as cosponsors?
> >     The only requirement would be helping spread the word.
> >
> >     Send me an email if you are interested with your group name as you
> >     would like it to appear on the flyer, contact info and any other
> >     details.
> >
> >     I will send the flyer out soon.
> >
> >     The public talk is the night preceding the IL Coalition for Peace
> >     and Justice conference. If you haven't and want to, register at
> >     www.ilcpj.org or contact me for more info.
> >
> >     Siobhan Kolar
> >     Fox Valley Citizens for Peace & Justice
> >     Elgin IL
> >     and
> >     on behalf of Conference Planning Committee
> >     ICPJ
> >     www.ilcpj.org
> >
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