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

Wed Feb 14 22:28:12 CST 2007

I read Hayden's peculiar apology about the invasion of Lebanon when it 
printed in CounterPunch and thought that it raised questions of its own 
-- e.g., does Hayden see himself as a victim of the untenable 
Mearsheimer-Walt thesis? -- but the accounts I cited were primarily to 
point out Hayden's differing positions on ending the Iraq war.  As the 
columns show, he's moved in eighteen months from "shredded platitudes 
about internationalizing the occupying force" through de-escalation and 
re-deployment.

What counts as an antiwar position?  Hayden's mind seems to have changed 
on that in a relatively short time.  But when Obama is touting himself 
as an anti-war candidate, it seems important to say what an antiwar 
position actually is.

De-escalation and redeployment, as in Obama's bill, is primarily a 
rhetorical strategy to convince the American public that the general USG 
policy in the ME should continue.  That policy includes the maintenance 
of control over Iraq, with the world's second largest known oil 
reserves, and of bases in the midst of the world's major energy 
supplies, so that the US will continue to exercise strategic power and 
influence over its major rivals in a tripolar world -- (1) US-dominated 
North America, (2) Europe, and (3) Northeast Asia.

Against that, a real anti-war position would call for a complete US 
withdrawal -- all troops, mercenaries, and corporations -- and the 
evacuation of the bases and the billion-dollar embassy.  Further, as 
Chomsky says, "US policy should be that of all aggressors: (1) pay 
reparations; (2) attend to the will of the victims; (3) hold the guilty 
parties accountable, in accord with the Nuremberg principles, the UN 
Charter, and other international instruments."

In fact, Hayden's present position may now be fairly close to this.  But 
it's vital to distinguish it from what the media are currently calling 
anti-war positions. --CGE

Robert Naiman wrote:
> 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
>> >
>> _______________________________________________
>> Peace-discuss mailing list
>> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
>> http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/peace-discuss
>>