[Peace-discuss] Estabrook

[Bob Illyes]

The chambana.net listsev has been flaky recently, so if you didn't
get Carl's posting "AWARE disrespectful to Israel?" today please
read it in the archive before reading on, since the following is a
response to it.

Carl misses the point. AWARE membership has significant
differences on number of issues. A few are

1) Carl claims that Democrats (and more generally liberals) are
largely at fault for the Iraq war and occupation. Most of us do
not agree with that. Hence his attack flyer on Obama which caused
serious conflict inside AWARE and cost us some valuable members.
It also brought us much discredit in the community. I wasn't
going to bring it up, but he just did.

2) Carl claims that the American form of government is fundamentally
flawed. It is not clear what his counter-proposal is. In a conversation
at a mutual friend's house, he claimed that we have had no good
presidents, and that it is impossible that we can under the existing
system. Many of us disagree with that. I grant you that all of our
presidents were seriously flawed, but all people are, including me
and possibly even Carl.

3) Carl claims a global conspiracy behind our action in Iraq. A number
of us think this is not only wrong but simplistic, and that Israel
(which is a part of this posited conspiracy) is not our proxy (as
Carl proposes) but an independent country

I could go on, but I only listed a few because my point is that
we do not have consensus on a number of important issues. Things
that we do not have consensus on should not be in an AWARE brochure.

What disturbs me most is that both the Obama attack flyer and
the recent flyer contained material that Carl knew some of us would
strongly object to, but he put it in anyhow and then didn't run it
by a meeting before issuing it in our name. Am I imagining things,
or is there a pattern here?

There is one more difference that I should mention:

4) Most of us believe that peace begets peace and that conflict begets
conflict, and we try to make peace a way of life. Carl proposes that
conflict is necessary to bring peace, and brings that conflict into
AWARE. We are a strong voice for peace. It is important that we
don't self-destruct.

Bob