[Peace-discuss] Neocon triumph

[C. G. Estabrook]

The important point about this article is that it properly descries, 
from a pro-war viewpoint, the fundamental split in what we far too 
hastily call the antiwar movement.

On the one side are those who are saying (a) that the war is 
fundamentally wrong and immoral, not a mistake; (b) that the resistance 
is justified; and (c) the US military (and mercenaries) must be removed. 
  On the other are those (including most of the Democrats) who say (a) 
the war was a blunder and was mismanaged, but (b) we can't allow the 
terrorists a victory, and so (c) the US military must withdraw only as 
some stability is achieved.

These opinions are not diverse but contradictory.  The real political 
argument in the country is over which one Americans will come to believe.

Ricky quite rightly writes, "Nobody asks a mass murderer if he is 
'winning' his killing spree. And nobody says, when someone breaks into 
their house and starts smashing up things and hurting people, well, he 
was dead wrong to invade, but now that he's there he can't just leave. 
No, we want the troops out now, and we should not support any candidate 
on the other side."  --CGE


Morton K. Brussel wrote:
> 
> ... The antiwar movement is aware of its 
> weaknesses. Its diverse elements suggest diverse solutions, which cannot 
> be readily effected. The "analysis" of the article is no help. 
>> ...
>> 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. 
>>
>> 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 <mailto:elake at nysun.com>