[Peace-discuss] Neocon triumph

Wed Oct 24 17:43:21 CDT 2007

>This piece is intended to deflate the anti-war movement, and is written
from the perspective of those who support present government policies.

This may be true; but it does not preclude the fact that many of its
observations about the anti-war movement today may indeed be accurate.  If
so, then they do represent issues and problems that the anti-war movement
needs to address if they are to be an effective organized force which is
able to force the politicians to take action rather than furnishing merely
lip service.

> Its affirmations as to what the "people" want, and would accept may, or
may not, be valid. 

Of course this can be said about any observation, statement of conclusions,
or the evidentiary basis for any polemic. J

>The mass media has a major effect and responsibility for the difficulty of
mobilizing militant opinion against the war; this piece ought  to be
regarded >in that light. 

True; but that was also the case during the 1960's as well.  During that
period, the press did not give positive press to the anti-war movement until
around 1968 or 1969 when Walter Cronkite came out against the war. 

From: peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net
[mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Morton K.
Brussel
Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2007 11:06 AM
To: C. G. Estabrook
Cc: Peace Discuss
Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Neocon triumph

This piece is intended to deflate the anti-war movement, and is written from
the perspective of those who support present government policies. Its
affirmations as to what the "people" want, and would accept may, or may not,
be valid. 

The mass media has a major effect and responsibility for the difficulty of
mobilizing militant opinion against the war; this piece ought  to be
regarded in that light.  

On Oct 24, 2007, at 10:31 AM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:

[The upmarket New York Sun assesses the antiwar movement.  --CGE]

          End of a Movement

          BY ELI LAKE

          October 24, 2007

          URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/65135

The People. United. Can in fact be defeated. Well not exactly, but this must
be what America's anti-war movement is thinking as Congress and the
president iron out the funding for the war with no danger of the Democrats
attaching a withdrawal date to the bill. The Dems don't have the votes.

It's enough to deflate the spirits of our nation's most hardened pacifists.
Take Medea Benjamin, the leader of Code Pink, an association of mainly
senior citizen women who dress up and shout slogans at Congressional war
hearings. In an interview in the current issue of Mother Jones, Ms. Benjamin
said that she doubted that the troops would be withdrawn even within a
year's time. "Well, I think it's kind of silly to talk about it because it's
just not going to happen," she said. Code Pink now is hoping to end the war
by the end of 2008.

It's an extraordinary statement for the leader of an organization that
produced a YouTube ad last month featuring women in pink jockey outfits
riding Democratic leaders of Congress like they were horses. The narrator
tells the viewer: "With your help we can dominate Congress with peacemakers
and finally end this illegal, immoral and unconstitutional occupation."
Apparently the plan for peacemaker domination has run into some snags.

As the Hill newspaper reported on October 19, the legislative representative
of American Against Escalation in Iraq, John Bruhns, a former Army Sergeant
who participated in the 2003 invasion, has left the organization. "I feel
I've done all I can," he told the newspaper. "I can't continue to attack
members of Congress to pass legislation that isn't going to get passed."

Mr. Bruhns had worked on something the anti-war movement called "Iraq
Summer," an initiative aimed at getting 50 Republicans to break with the
president on the war. That goal seemed plausible in July when the former
chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, John Warner, was
threatening to vote with Democrats on withdrawal dates. But in September Mr.
Warner said that arguing for some troops to come home by Christmas barely
changed the ayes and nays in the senate.

The anti-war movement has not even managed to get any of the big three
Democrats running for president to embrace their goal of an immediate
withdrawal. Gone are John Edwards' rhetorical excesses of the spring,
promising not to leave even Marines to guard the new American embassy in
Baghdad.

Today Mr. Edwards, like Senators Obama and Clinton, concede that in their
administration there will still be some troops in Iraq in 2009, probably
between 50,000 and 70,000. Also, the Democratic party's professional
agitators must know that Mrs. Clinton will sprout wings and talons and
screech for the blood of every Iranian terrorist as soon as she receives her
party's nomination, faster than you can say, "Sistah Souljah."

The peaceniks need only blame themselves for their failures. They are asking
Americans to believe not that the war was a blunder, so much that the war
was a sin; that the decapitators and car bombers of innocents are a
resistance; that the army seeking to prevent ethnic cleansing today is in
fact responsible for it. [That is what the "peaceniks" are saying, and
they're right.  --CGE]

In 2006, writing about how the antiwar movement was conducting its own
diplomacy in London and Amman to meet members of the "Sunni Resistance,"
anti-war writer Robert Dreyfuss summed up the moral equivalency that
afflicts so many in his quarter.

"Who are the good guys and who are the bad guys in Iraq?" he asked. "Are the
good guys the U.S. troops fighting to impose American hegemony in the Gulf?
Are the good guys the American forces who have installed a murderous Shiite
theocracy in Baghdad? Are the good guys the Marines who murdered children
and babies in Haditha in cold blood?"

Leaving aside the deficient moral reasoning of the case the protestors make,
their story of the war also makes for terrible politics. Most Americans do
want to end a war they believe America is losing, but they don't suffer from
the delusion that Iraqis would be better off if the Shiite and Sunni death
cults took power after our soldiers left.

It is a prospect the activists for now would rather not broach. Kevin Martin
of Peace Action in Mother Jones said it wasn't even for the "peace
community" to come up with a contingency plan to prevent competitive
genocide after a withdrawal. "In my organization and the umpteen antiwar
coalitions that I am in, this is in no way a priority that we think about or
talk about," he said.

Later on he added, "We are not responsible for dreaming up a perfect world.
We are responsible for trying to end the damn war and putting the political
pressure on our government, which is extremely difficult when you have a
feeble Congress and a dictator president."

He is right that his current struggle is "extremely difficult." It is
extremely difficult to expect most Americans to believe that their president
is a dictator and that their soldiers are no different than terrorists. The
fact that Congress is not buying this pack of lies however is evidence not
of the legislature's feebleness, but of the nation's strength.

elake at nysun.com

October 24, 2007 Edition

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