[Peace-discuss] on Kucinich and Paul

[Tom Mackaman]

Someone brought this thread to my attention. My apologies for intervening late.
   
  The point that evidently resolved the peace-discuss debate-- that all means must be used to apply pressure on the political establishment and that, in any case, presidential politics really don't matter that much-- is the basic problem. An agreement emerged that both Kucinich and Paul can be used to apply pressure to the two-party system. This begs the question: who is using whom?
   
  With Kucinich, we've got a little bit of history we can consider. All of the efforts to "use" Kucinich to change the course of the Democratic Party haven't made a tinker's dam of difference. The same arguments were made prior to 2004. Kucinich lost, as promised. He then played a shabby role at the 2004 DNC--the most militaristic and flag-waving in modern history--remaining silent while war protesters were removed from the convention and the overwhelming ant-war majority, which he claimed to represent, were silenced. From that moment until Kerry lost, Kucinich campaigned for the virulently pro-war Democratic Party platform. Kucinich, whatever his own rhetoric and intentions, is baiting another trap for 2008.
   
  There is no way of applying pressure through the political establishement to end the war. In fact, the opposite is the case. The more the population moves to the left in opposition to the war, the more the establishment moves to the right. There can be no illusion in either party yielding to protest politics. Both are dedicated to the subjugation of not just Iraq, but the entire Middle East and Central Asia. All differences are purely tactical. The ruling elite has literally staked its life on the current and proposed wars.
   
  In the Socialist Equality Party campaign one year ago, Joe Parnarauskis and our other candidates warned people that voting Democratic in 2006 would not change in the slightest way the course of the events in Iraq. Hope dies hard: people held their nose and voted Democrat all across the country. But history is our best teacher, and the hard lessons of recent years must not been suffered for nothing. It is necessary, now more than ever, to break with the two-party system and the politics of protest and build an international party of the working class against the conditions that give rise to imperialist war.    
   
  Read: "One year since the 2006 election: The Democratic Congress and the war in Iraq" http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/nov2007/dems-n07.shtml
   
  Best regards,
  Tom 
   

       
---------------------------------
Get easy, one-click access to your favorites.  Make Yahoo! your homepage.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/private/peace-discuss/attachments/20071113/490a83b1/attachment.html