[Peace-discuss] The half-dead anti-war movement

[Morton K. Brussel]

I disagree with Carl's propositions, and somewhat with Paul Street's.  
I don't believe the "peace-movement" has been co-opted by the  
Democrats. This is just frustrated talk with no firm evidence  
presented except with reference to MoveOn.org and the politics of the  
Democratic party, a party never associated with the real anti-war  
movement as I perceive it. The major anti-war organizations that I  
know about (UFPJ, ANSWER, many others that appear in my emails) are  
still demanding a total end to the US occupation and war in/on Iraq,  
now.

The basic problem as I see it is that the American populace, even  
those now nominally "against the war", are not sufficiently enraged,  
engaged, or hurt by Iraq events, and have been impervious to calls  
for real militantcy. This public is annoyed by the "mess" of the war,  
its mismanagement, but has not reached the level of anger required to  
make itself heard effectively in the halls of power, and I suggest  
that that is not the fault of those who are indeed enraged by  
administration/government actions perpetrating our wars. What Carl  
and Street are suggesting is really that the middle-of-the road (on  
war issues) Democrats and independants are being manipulated by the  
Democratic party leaders.

Yes, it is true that the Democrats seek to use the public annoyance  
with the war (and other administration actions) for their own self- 
serving political ends. And it is true that if in the next political  
campaigns, the voting public has only a "choice" between Dems and  
Pubs, then antiwar feeling will favor the Dems as somewhat more  
critical of the war than the Pubs.

The problem of the anti-war movement is its inability to light a fire  
under an irritated but immobile--nonmilitant public, and perhaps that  
has led to discouragement and the consequences thereof. The inability  
to light an adequate fire has been due firstly to the dampening  
effects of the mass media, which ignores antiwar positions, and even  
pushes what is happening in the middle east to its back pages while  
headlining administration claims and diverting the public  
consciousness. Secondly, the ineffectiveness of the antiwar forces is  
due to a complicit political party system, Pubs and Dems. There is no  
real opposition force in government, a so-called real loyal  
opposition. This indicates a profound and fundamental faultline in  
our system of government. Only a great upheaval can change this. The  
Iraq war/occupation is not such an upheaval (yet).

--mkb

P.S. If Carl and Paul Street or others have suggestions as to how to  
mobilize the public into an effective anti-war, anti-imperialist  
stance beyond what they are already doing or trying to do, I would be  
glad to hear it, and so would, I believe,  ANSWER or UFPJ and other  
antiwar organizations.


On Sep 9, 2007, at 2:30 AM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:

> This piece is three weeks old, but the the situation it describes  
> has only grown worse.  The end of the summer sees the almost  
> complete co-option of the anti-war movement by the Democrats and  
> the corresponding neutralization of last fall's antiwar votes.
>
> The "anti-war" position has been re-formulated to mean support for  
> Democrats in electoral politics -- while excluding the demand for  
> withdrawal from Iraq, including "critical support" for Israel, and  
> maintaining silence on the administration's proposed attack on  
> Iran. That's hypocrisy and betrayal of a pretty sophisticated sort.
>
> It illustrates the truism that "...American politics ... consists  
> of the manipulation of populism by elitism."  Although the  
> Democratic party is well to the right of the American electorate  
> (as are the Republicans), they have manged to harness the the  
> majority antiwar sentiment for their own purposes and successfully  
> rein it in.  Any criticism of the general policy of American  
> control of the Middle East -- supported by both Republicans and  
> Democrats for generations -- has been quietly suppressed.
>
> "The half-dead 'antiwar movement's' cringing captivity to the  
> imperial Democrats is clear in the following pathetic comment from  
> Moira Mack, a spokesperson for Americans Against Escalation in  
> Iraq: 'we are in a good position when leaders are debating the best  
> way to bring our troops home rather than whether or not to bring  
> them home.'"  --CGE
>
> =======================================
>
> 	Democratic Iraq Betrayal:
> 	Treachery on the Campaign Trail
> 	by Paul Street
> 	August 15, 2007
>
>
> Following in the footsteps of similarly pseudo-progressive and  
> corporate-imperial Democratic politicians like Bill Clinton, the  
> current crop of leading Democratic presidential candidates can be  
> counted on to make what Edward S. Herman calls “populist and peace- 
> stressing promises and gestures that are betrayed instantly on the  
> assumption of power” (Edward S. Herman, “Democratic Betrayal,” Z  
> Magazine, January 2007).
>
> Sometimes, however, the skids of betrayal are greased in advance of  
> the attainment of the presidency, with no small assistance from a  
> weak and myopic Left and power-worshipping “liberal” media.
>
>
>
> Look, for example, at an interesting article that appeared on the  
> first page of the most recent Sunday New York Times.  “Even as they  
> call for an end to the war and pledge to bring the troops home,”  
> Times reporters Jeff Zeleny and Marc Santora note, “the Democratic  
> presidential candidates are setting out positions that could leave  
> the United States engaged in Iraq for years” (Jeff Zeleny and Marc  
> Santora, “Democratic Field Says Leaving Iraq May Take Years,” New  
> York Times, 12 August, 2007. p. A1).
>
>
>
> “May take tears?” Interesting...A review of the leading Democratic  
> presidential candidates’ campaign remarks about Iraq over the last  
> six months leaves what Zeleny and Santora call “little ambiguity in  
> their message: If the president refuses to end the war, they  
> will” (Zeleny and Santora).
>
>
>
> Lately, however, those “anti-war” candidates are saying something  
> rather different.  John (“Support the Troops, End the War”) Edwards  
> is citing the need to "prevent genocide" as a reason to keep US  
> troops in Iraq.
>
>
>
> Barrack (“It’s Time to Bring the Troops Home”) Obama says that the  
> need to provide "security for American personnel" and to "train  
> Iraqis" will require maintaining a military presence in Iraq.
>
>
>
> Hillary (“I’m Sorry, it’s Over...if this president does not end the  
> war, I will") points to the need to fight terrorism and stabilize  
> the Kurdish section of Iraq as justifications for keeping the U.S.  
> military in Mesopotamia into the next presidency.    “These  
> positions,” Zeleny and Santora observe, “suggest that the  
> Democratic bumper-sticker message of a quick end to the conflict —  
> however much it appeals to primary voters — oversimplifies the  
> problems likely to be inherited by the next commander in chief.”
>
>
>
> Zeleny and Santora’s Sunday Times article is disturbing in at least  
> four ways.  The first depressing thing is their suggestion that the  
> desire for a rapid U.S. withdrawal from Iraq is limited to the  
> nation’s Democratic primary voters.  In reality, the majority of  
> all Americans support an expeditious U.S. withdrawal.
>
>
>
> The second problem is the Times’ unsurprising failure to  
> acknowledge that the leading Democratic presidential candidates’  
> duplicity on Iraq is thoroughly predictable in light of the richly  
> bipartisan nature of the U.S. Global Dominance Project. As Tuft's  
> University political scientist Tony Smith noted in the Washington  
> Post last March, there's little if any real foreign policy  
> difference between the Republicans and the Democrats when it comes  
> to "doctrinal questions." The leaders of both parties are equally  
> committed to U.S. world supremacy. Both wings of the narrow- 
> spectrum U.S. party system strongly embrace U.S. interventionism,  
> militarism and (when "necessary") unilateralism in the name of  
> spreading "democracy" and "free markets."
>
>
>
> If anything, the "neoliberal" Democrats' main foreign policy claim  
> is that they can do a better job of conducting this imperialist  
> foreign policy than the "neoconservative" Republicans. "We are the  
> better, more effective and competent Men and Women of Empire" is  
> the basic claim. Such was the essence of the John F. Kerry  
> "Reporting to Duty" campaign in 2004.
>
>
>
> Currently, Smith notes, aggressive militarist neoliberals (Hillary  
> Clinton is an especially dangerous example) are probably more  
> influential within the Democratic Party than aggressive militarist  
> neoconservatives are inside the Republican Party. By Smith’s candid  
> account:
>
>
>
> “Although they now cast themselves as alternatives to President  
> Bush, the fact is that prevailing Democratic doctrine is not that  
> different from the Bush-Cheney doctrine...Many Democrats, including  
> senators who voted to authorize the war in Iraq, embraced the idea  
> of muscular foreign policy based on American global supremacy and  
> the presumed right to intervene to promote democracy or to defend  
> key U.S. interests long before 9/11, and they have not changed  
> course since. Even those who have shifted against the war have  
> avoided doctrinal questions.”
>
>
>
> “But without a coherent alternative to the Bush doctrine, with its  
> confidence in America's military preeminence and the global appeal  
> of ‘free market democracy,’ the Democrats' midterm victory may not  
> be repeated in November 2008. Or, if the Democrats do win in 2008,  
> they could remain staked to a vision of a Pax Americana strikingly  
> reminiscent of Bush's” (Tony Smith, “It’s Uphill for the Democrats:  
> They Need a Global Strategy, Not Just Tactics for Iraq,” Washington  
> Post, 11 March 2007, available online at www.washingtonpost. com/wp- 
> dyn/content/article/ 2007/03/09/AR2007030901884_ pf.html).
>
>
>
> The Democrats’ mealy-mouthed waffling on Iraq is predictable in  
> light also of what a still left Christopher Hitchens once (in his  
> 1999 study of Bill and Hillary Clinton) called “the essence of  
> American politics. This essence, when distilled, consists of the  
> manipulation of populism by elitism. That elite is most  
> successful,” Hitchens explained, “which can claim the heartiest  
> allegiance of the fickle crowd; can present itself as ‘in touch’  
> with popular concerns; can anticipate the tides and pulses of  
> opinion; can, in short, be the least apparently  
> elitist.” (Christopher Hitchens, No One Left to Lie to: the Values  
> of the Worst Family [(New York: Verso, 2000], pp. 17-18).
>
>
>
> The leading Democratic presidential candidates are walking the  
> standard timeworn U.S. tightrope between their captivity and  
> commitment to standard elite agendas (including imperial agendas)  
> and their need to win enough popular support to gain and maintain  
> power.
>
>
>
> The third alarming thing about the Sunday Times article is Zeleny  
> and Santora’s accurate observation that “antiwar advocates have  
> raised little challenge to such positions by Democrats...Four years  
> after the last presidential race featured early signs of war  
> protest, particularly in the candidacy of Howard Dean,” Zeleny and  
> Santora note, “a new phase of the debate seems to be unfolding,  
> with antiwar groups giving the Democrats latitude to take positions  
> short of a full and immediate withdrawal.”
>
>
>
> The half-dead “antiwar movement’s’” cringing captivity to the  
> imperial Democrats is clear in the following pathetic comment from  
> Moira Mack, a spokesperson for Americans Against Escalation in  
> Iraq: “we are in a good position when leaders are debating the best  
> way to bring our troops home rather than whether or not to bring  
> them home” (Zeleny and Santora, p.A15).
>
>
>
> The fourth problem is the absence of any discussion of ways the  
> U.S. might meet what the Times calls “America’s responsibility to  
> Iraqi civilians” (Zeleny and Santora, A15) other than maintaining a  
> bloody, widely hated colonial invasion.    Given the shockingly  
> narrow moral and ideological parameters of acceptable debate in  
> U.S. political culture, it is unthinkable that “our” “liberal”  
> press and presidential candidates would honestly acknowledge the  
> United States’ obligation to pay reparations to Iraq as  
> compensation for decades of devastating, mass-murderous U.S. assault.
>
>
>
> Those candidates and that press naturally accept as unassailable  
> doctrine the basic precept that the invasion of Iraq was launched  
> for the good of Iraqis and in pursuit of noble and idealistic goals  
> of freedom and democracy.  Never mind that the occupation is widely  
> and accurately understood around the world to be a brazenly  
> imperialist effort to deepen U.S. control of super-strategic Middle  
> Eastern energy resources and to advance the arch-plutocratic Bush  
> agenda at home and abroad.
>
>
>
> It’s all unmentionable.  Such, alas, is the profound moral and  
> ideological poverty of the dominant political culture in the  
> failing imperial-state “homeland” of the “world’s greatest democracy.”
>
>
>
>
>
> Veteran radical historian, journalist, and activist Paul Street  
> (paulstreet99 at yahoo.com) is a Left commentator in Iowa City, IA.  
> Street’s latest book is Racial Oppression in the Global Metropolis:  
> A Living Black Chicago History (New York: Rowman & Littlefield,  
> 2007). Street is the author of Empire and Inequality: America and  
> the World Since 9/11 (Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2004), Segregated  
> Schools: Educational Apartheid in the Post-Civil Rights Era (New  
> York, NY: Routledge, 2005), and the semi-weekly Empire and  
> Inequality Report.
>
>       ###
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