[Peace-discuss] What needs to be said…

[C. G. Estabrook]

The illusion is to hold that a nice Democrat will save us.  How do you "apply 
anti-war electoral pressure to the least belligerent of the presidential 
candidates"?  By hoping that Obama is only saying what he is "to get elected"?

I admit that it's sometimes worth voting against a presidential candidate -- 
e.g., in a swing state (but not Illinois) it might be worth voting against McCain.

As to those "congressional representatives who have come out strongly for ending 
occupations and military spending" -- did you see what they did this week? The 
following is from JTA:

======================

The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a resolution strongly 
defending how Israel has repelled rocket attacks.

The non-binding resolution, passed 404-1 on Wednesday, was substantially 
rewritten since its introduction in January to include a strident defense of 
recent Israeli tactics in the Gaza Strip.

New passages include one saying that "those responsible for launching rocket 
attacks against Israel routinely embed their production facilities and launch 
sites amongst the Palestinian civilian population, utilizing them as human 
shields" and "the inadvertent inflicting of civilian casualties as a result of 
defensive military operations aimed at military targets, while deeply 
regrettable, is not at all morally equivalent to the deliberate targeting of 
civilian populations as practiced by Hamas and other Gaza-based terrorist groups."

More than 100 Palestinians and three Israelis have been killed since last 
Wednesday...

==========================

The sole vote against? Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas)... --CGE


Morton K. Brussel wrote:
> The options available to those truly against the Iraq, Afghan and other 
> imperial wars are sorely limited. The option Solomon softly proposes is 
> to apply anti-war electoral pressure to the least belligerent of the 
> presidential candidates. This to me is "sage", if not sanguine. 
> Demonstrations, protests, lobbying, anti-recruitment actions, etc., all 
> are supposedly for this purpose, in that we have no viable anti-war 
> presidential candidates. Some congressional representatives who have 
> come out strongly for ending occupations and military spending should be 
> supported as part of this effort.
> 
> What else do you propose? What is Solomon's illusion?
> 
> 
> On Mar 7, 2008, at 2:21 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> 
>> Sage, maybe, but perhaps not entirely free of illusion.  We've seen 
>> for example how effective "grassroots pressure" has been with the 
>> Democrats who were given control of Congress in 2006.  "Democrats won 
>> the 2006 election largely thanks to public disgust with the Iraq war," 
>> as Paul Krugman writes today in the NYT, and they proved pretty 
>> impervious to "grassroots pressure" as they went on to support the war.
>>
>> In fact, the leading astro-turf group, AAEI, with its millions from 
>> party funders and its mission to co-opt the anti-war movement for the 
>> benefit of the Democrats, has just re-emerged under a new name.  
>> Prwatch.org writes as follows:
>>
>> Campaign to Defend America, a group spun off by Americans Against 
>> Escalation in Iraq, is behind McCain: McSame as Bush, a TV ad 
>> attacking presidential candidate John McCain. Campaign to Defend 
>> America "is among anti-war and left-of-center groups that have pledged 
>> a multimillion-dollar effort to target McCain and congressional 
>> Republicans on the consequences of the Iraq war on the U.S. economy. 
>> ... [T]he Campaign to Defend America has received at least $1.4 
>> million from The Fund for America, a nonprofit group set up last year 
>> by John Podesta, a former chief of staff for President Clinton; Anna 
>> Burger, the secretary-treasurer of the Service Employees International 
>> Union; and Rob McKay, a California philanthropist (and chair of the 
>> Democracy Alliance). The Campaign to Defend America is headed by Tom 
>> Matzzie, the former Washington director of the liberal activist group 
>> MoveOn.org. Among Fund for America donors are multimillionaire 
>> financier George Soros." The Center for Investigative Reporting has 
>> created a chart illustrating the liberal money and connections behind 
>> the Campaign to Defend America.
>>
>> --CGE
>>
>> Morton K. Brussel wrote:
>>> /
>>> /…when a war based on lies is opposed because too many Americans are 
>>> dying, the implication is that it can be made right by reducing the 
>>> American death toll./
>>> /
>>> /
>>> /When a war that flagrantly violated international law is opposed 
>>> because it was badly managed, the implication is that better 
>>> management could make for an acceptable war./
>>> /
>>> /
>>> /When the number of occupying troops is condemned as insufficient for 
>>> the occupying task at hand, the White House and Pentagon may figure 
>>> out how to make shrewder use of U.S. air power -- in combination with 
>>> private mercenaries and Iraqis who are desperate enough for jobs that 
>>> they're willing to point guns at the occupiers' enemies./
>>> /
>>> /
>>> /
>>> /…The best way to avoid becoming disillusioned is to not have 
>>> illusions in the first place. There's little reason to believe that 
>>> Obama is inclined to break away from the routine militarism of U.S. 
>>> foreign policy. But it's plausible that grassroots pressure could 
>>> pull him in a better direction on a range of issues. He seems to be 
>>> appreciably less stuck in cement than the other candidates who still 
>>> have a chance to become president on January 20, 2009./
>>> /
>>> /
>>> This is from *Norman Solomon's* sage reflections, at 
>>> http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/78638/
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
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