[Peace-discuss] Anti-war movement

[Morton K. Brussel]

I don't know how to tackle Alex Cockburn; he says and has said things  
that others have not said, usefully. On the other hand he often goes  
off on weird tangents. George Monbiot has written about this,  
persuasively I believe, especially in regard to the global warming  
issue, an issue on which Cockburn has no expertise. The article below  
by Cockburn is a good example of the pluses and minuses of Cockburn's  
thoughts. I believe it to be disturbed.

He runs on about the forceful anti-intervention movement  in the time  
of Reagan in contrast to the ineptitude of the anti-war movement  
today, without saying that that movement too was ineffective -- in  
stopping the Nicaraguan Sandinistas from being defeated.

He berates Phyllis Bennis for not praising the Iraqi resistance.  
Perhaps he has a point, but then he gives reasons, promptly  
dismissed, why perhaps she does not. And he writes a paragraph in  
quotation marks without attribution.

He writes:

"It looked as though just such a vibrant left antiwar movement was  
flaring into life in 2003. But many of its troops have either veered  
into 9/11 kookdom, or whining about global warming or nourished an  
often unspoken resolve to vest all hopes in a Democratic presidency  
after 2008. The bulk of the antiwar movement has become subservient  
to the Democratic Party and to the agenda of its prime candidates for  
the presidency in 2008, with Hillary Clinton in the lead."

These assertions show his irresponsible, indeed despicable, aspects.  
Perhaps "many of its troops"  means 1%, 2%, 5%,…?. He has no proof of  
any of these statements. They come out of hot air (global warming?).  
I agree with Monbiot that he is not to be trusted, on anything, even  
when he makes statements I can't disagree with.

--mkb




On Jul 15, 2007, at 10:10 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:

> [Alex Cockburn in CounterPunch has some observations relevant to  
> our discussion, at tonight's AWARE meeting, of the state of the  
> anti-war movement:
>
> "...while two-thirds of all Americans oppose the war in Iraq and  
> want the troops to come home, the antiwar movement is pretty much  
> dead ... though there was no draft in the Reagan years, there  
> certainly was that very lively political culture of anti- 
> intervention in the 1980s.  It looked as though just such a vibrant  
> left antiwar movement was flaring into life in 2003. But many of  
> its troops have either veered into 9/11 kookdom, or whining about  
> global warming or nourished an often unspoken resolve to vest all  
> hopes in a Democratic presidency after 2008. The bulk of the  
> antiwar movement has become subservient to the Democratic Party and  
> to the agenda of its prime candidates for the presidency in 2008,  
> with Hillary Clinton in the lead ... nothing at all has happened  
> since the Democrats rode to victory in November courtesy of popular  
> revulsion in America against the war..."  --CGE]
>
>     Bastille Day Weekend Edition
>     July 14 / 15, 2007
>
>     "The mighty are only mighty because we are on our knees. Let us  
> rise!"
>     --Camille Desmoulins
>
>     "A person came in and announced the taking of the Bastille, the  
> governor of which is beheaded, a crowd carries his head in triumph  
> through the city. Yesterday it was the fashion at Versailles not to  
> believe there were any disturbances in Paris. I presume today's  
> transactions will induce a conviction that all is not perfectly  
> quiet."
>     --Gouverneur Morris, a framer of US Constitution, at the Royal  
> Gardens of Versailles, July 14, 1789
>
>     "If I could have found 2,000 men filled with the anger that  
> tore my heart, I would have placed myself at their head, stabbed  
> Lafayette to death, burned the despot in his palace and impaled our  
> odious representatives on their benches. When I proposed this to  
> Robespierre, he listened to me in horror, paled and remained silent."
>     -- Jean-Paul Marat, L'ami du peuple.
>
>     "One must frighten those who govern; one must never frighten  
> the people."
>     -- Antoine Saint-Just
>
>     Support Their Troops?
>     By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
>
> Lawrence McGuire, a North Carolinian now teaching in Montpellier,  
> France, organized a meeting of antiwar Americans and various  
> interested French parties there at which I spoke last fall. Since  
> then, we've been discussing off and on the strange fact that while  
> two-thirds of all Americans oppose the war in Iraq and want the  
> troops to come home, the antiwar movement is pretty much dead.  
> McGuire raises the matter of direct solidarity with Iraqis fighting  
> the US presence in Iraq. In other words, support their troops:
>
>     "I was reading a recent piece by Phyllis Bennis recently. She  
> talked about the 'US military casualties' and the 'Iraqi civilian  
> victims' and it struck me that the grand taboo of the antiwar  
> movement is to show the slightest empathy for the resistance  
> fighters in Iraq. They are never mentioned as people for whom we  
> should show concern, much less admiration.
>
>     "But of course, if you are going to sympathize with the US  
> soldiers, who are fighting a war of aggression, than surely you  
> should also sympathize with the soldiers who are fighting for their  
> homeland. Perhaps not until the antiwar movement starts to some  
> degree recognizing that they should include 'the Iraqi resistance  
> fighters' in their pantheon of victims (in addition to US soldiers  
> and Iraqi civilians) will there be the necessary critical mass to  
> have a real movement."
>
> Now there are many obvious reasons why the direct solidarity with  
> resistance fighters visible in the Vietnam antiwar struggle and the  
> Central American anti-intervention movement has not been visible in  
> the movement opposing the Iraq war. The "War on Terror" means --  
> and was designed to mean -- that any group in the US with  
> detectable ties or relations with Iraqi resistance movements would  
> be in line for savage legal reprisals under the terms of the  
> Patriot Act. Another important factor: The contours of the Iraqi  
> resistance have been murky and in some aspects unappetizing to  
> secular progressive coalitions in the West, or so they virtuously  
> claim.
>
> But such cavils were familiar in the Sixties and Eighties too as  
> huge chunks of the solidarity movement found endless reasons to  
> distance themselves from the Vietnamese NLF or the Nicaraguan FMLN.  
> That said, ignorance about the Iraqi resistance is somewhat  
> forgivable. This time there has been no Wilfrid Burchett reporting  
> from behind the lines, and that has had consequences of the kind  
> McGuire sketches out above.
>
> The personal aspect of international political solidarity is not  
> just the stuff of nostalgic anecdote. In the late 1980s the Central  
> American resistance was constantly among us here in the United  
> States in physical form. While Daniel Oretega and Rosario Murillo  
> worked the Hollywood liberal circuit, the sanctuary movement  
> sheltered militants and sympathizers in churches across the country  
> and defied federal efforts to seize them. Labor organizers from El  
> Salvador traveled across North America from local to friendly  
> local. I can remember being at a picnic of a union local striking a  
> door factory in Springfield, Oregon, southeast of Eugene, where a  
> man from a radical labor coalition in El Salvador got a cordial  
> reception from the strikers and their families as they swapped  
> stories of their respective battles.
>
> The other day I found in a box of old papers in my garage a  
> directory to "sister cities"-towns in the United States that had  
> paired with beleaguered towns in Nicaragua, regularly exchanging  
> delegations. The directory was as thick as a medium-sized telephone  
> book. There were hundreds of such pairings and many were the  
> individual pairing they led to. People's Express, the "backpackers'  
> airline," as it used to be called, would shuttle demure sisters in  
> the struggle from Vermont or the Pacific Northwest to Miami, for  
> onward passage to Managua and a rendezvous with some valiant son of  
> Sandino or oppressed Nica sister liberated by North American  
> inversion from the oppressions of Latin patriarchy.
>
> Today there is no draft, a prime factor in stocking the Vietnam  
> antiwar movement. This absence of the draft is certainly a major  
> factor in the weakness of the antiwar movement. But though there  
> was no draft in the Reagan years, there was certainly was that very  
> lively political culture of anti-intervention in the 1980s.
>
> It looked as though just such a vibrant left antiwar movement was  
> flaring into life in 2003. But many of its troops have either  
> veered into 9/11 kookdom, or whining about global warming or  
> nourished an often unspoken resolve to vest all hopes in a  
> Democratic presidency after 2008. The bulk of the antiwar movement  
> has become subservient to the Democratic Party and to the agenda of  
> its prime candidates for the presidency in 2008, with Hillary  
> Clinton in the lead.
>
> To describe the antiwar movement in its effective form is really to  
> mention a few good efforts -- the anti-recruitment campaigns, the  
> tours by those who have lost children in Iraq -- or three or four  
> brave souls -- Cindy Sheehan, who single-handedly reanimated the  
> antiwar movement last year and now vows to run against house  
> speaker Nancy Pelosi unless the latter stops blocking impeachment  
> proceedings, or the radical Catholic Kathy Kelly, or Medea Benjamin  
> and her "Code Pink" activists occupying Hilary Clinton's office and  
> ambushing her for youtube.
>
> A simple question: Has the end of America's war on Iraq been  
> brought closer by the recapture of the US Congress by the Democrats  
> in November 2006? The answer is that when it comes to the actual  
> war, which has led to the bloody disintegration of Iraqi society,  
> the deaths of up to 5,000 Iraqis a month, the death and mutilation  
> of US soldiers every day, nothing at all has happened since the  
> Democrats rode to victory in November courtesy of popular revulsion  
> in America against the war. I don't think there is much of an  
> independent Left in America today, if there was, then Lawrence  
> McGuire's statement about the lack of solidarity with the Iraqi  
> resistance wouldn't be so obviously on the mark.
>
> The American people are largely against the war, to the huge  
> embarrassment and distress of the Republican and Democratic  
> leadership. So does it matter that there's not much of an antiwar  
> movement? Very much so. It's how the left down the years has  
> learned its internationalist ABC.
>
>    ###
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