[Peace-discuss] MoveOn vs. the anti-war movement

[C. G. Estabrook]

[Some contributions to an off-list discussion.  --CGE]


[1] Daniel Lewart wrote:
 > ... I am deeply disturbed about our local anti-war groups affiliating
 > with MoveOn.org.  As I told Mike last night, MoveOn.org is a front for the
 > Democratic Party and does not care about ending the war.
 >
 > MoveOn.org: Making Peace With the War in Iraq:
 > http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0310-35.htm
 >
 > Anti-war groups retreat on funding fight:
 > http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0108/7949.html
 >
 > Tactical retreat by pro-Democrat fake antiwar lobbies is setting back the
 > peace movement: http://www.gp.org/press/pr-national.php?ID=18
 >
 > Peace! Dan


[2] C. G. Estabrook wrote:
 > Dan--
 >
 > I share your hesitation about MoveOn (and all the associated Astroturf groups
 > working with the same personnel and out of the same K Street building,
 > financed by the same Democratic party contributors like SEIU, etc.)
 >
 > They may in fact care about ending the war, but as you suggest they do so
 > because they think associating themselves with the two-thirds of the
 > electorate who object to the war (for whatever reason) will aid Democratic
 > party fortunes.
 >
 > In fact the Congressional Democratic parties (and Clinton and Obama) support
 > he overall war policy followed by all recent administrations in the Middle
 > East. They're simply happy to pillory the Bush administration with its
 > failures in pursuit of that policy -- notably the resistance in Iraq and
 > "AfPak."
 >
 > Move On, AAEI and their shape-shifting alternatives -- most recently (if I'm
 > keeping up) "the new Iraq/Recession Campaign, a $15 million nationwide effort
 > to end the war and refocus our priorities here at home..." -- are quite
 > conscious and recognizable attempts to co-opt the vestigial anti-war movement
 > in this country.  The same sort of thing happened ca. 1968-73.
 >
 > And they're doing pretty well. Here in C-U, WILL-AM reported this morning
 > that the demonstration at the Veterans Memorial was conducted by MoveOn; no
 > other groups were mentioned.  --CGE


[3] Michael Weissman wrote:
 > This exchange  raises questions at all levels from tactics to philosophy.
 > I'll just make a few very  incomplete comments.
 >
 > ... Although I don't know the people at the core of MoveOn, it seems very
 > strange for both of you to assert that they don't actually want to end the
 > war, except possibly for political gain. Trying to actually get something
 > done requires very tough guesses about strategy and I'm not sure why you
 > should assume that they were made in bad faith. Almost anybody's motives look
 > like some variety of shit if inspected too closely. the place where all the
 > ladders start...
 >
 > I remember 1968-1973 very well, but I don't think the lessons of it are so
 > obviously that the most intense opponents of the war (e.g. me) were always
 > right and that the more politically calculating types were always wrong.
 >
 > So I agree that it would be a huge loss if the opposition were to stay within
 > the bounds of what politicians who hope to win elections can afford to say.
 > But i don't see the evidence that moveon is insincere or that its efforts
 > won't increase the likelihood of peace, widespread health care, more
 > environmentally sustainable economics, more equitable distribution of
 > resources, etc. It's not a general voice for the Democratic Party but rather
 > for the wing most concerned with those issues.
 >
 > Your point perhaps is that we are not trying to use the war as a lever to
 > fight for real socialism. That's true, and leads to another discussion about
 > the extent to which fully socialist societies are workable.
 >
 > best,


[4] C. G. Estabrook wrote:
 > Real (or even fake) socialism is hardly the issue.  The question is, What the
 > meaning of "end the war" is (to be Clintonian about it).
 >
 > To the Democrats in Congress and the presidential candidates (and therefore
 > to MoveOn), ending the war means reducing the number of combat troops (note
 > the qualification) in Iraq.  It does not mean ending the occupation of Iraq
 > (with the world's largest embassy), closing the bases, or stopping
 > "counterterrorism" attacks by air or ground.  It does mean expanding the war
 > in AfPak (the "good war") and the military.  It's a lie, a lie made necessary
 > for the Democrats and their propaganda fronts like MoveOn because two-thirds
 > of Americans are in some way opposed to the war.
 >
 > In spite of our undemocratic election system, the rejection of the war by the
 > voters was strong enough to give the Democrats control of Congress in 2006 in
 > order to end the war. The Democrats prevaricated about their desire to do so
 > while they continued it: they could have shut it down by not voting the
 > funds. But both parties support the general policy -- US control of Mideast
 > energy resources -- that the Bush war in Iraq is part of; and they have
 > supported it in all administrations, Republican and Democrat -- even when, as
 > now, one party thinks it can use the other's failures in effecting that
 > policy against it. There is no way of "ending the war" without reversing that
 > policy.
 >
 > The parallels with 1968-73 are not close but suggestive. Nixon was elected in
 > 1968 to bring the other party's war to an end.  (He had a "secret plan" to do
 > that, he said -- more, incidentally, than either C. or O. has promised this
 > year.)  Of course he didn't -- he primarily substituted an air war for a
 > ground war. The "politically calculating types" worked hard to evoke "the
 > silent majority" for the Nixon-Kissinger plan, while the most intense
 > opponents of the war pointed out that the US was responsible for a missive
 > crime.
 >
 > During the Nixon administration more that 70% of Americans came to regard the
 > war in Vietnam as not "a mistake" but "fundamentally wrong and immoral." The
 > US nevertheless effectively won the war, though it didn't achieve its maximum
 > war aims, by destroying a peasant society and killing millions of people.
 > And Iraq is far more important to the US that Vietnam ever was.
 >
 > Americans who really want to end the current war want the government for
 > which we are responsible to stop killing people in Iraq -- and in
 > Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestine and Iran.  The only way that can be done is
 > by the removal of the American military and military support from those
 > places.  Demanding that is a necessary but hardly sufficient condition for a
 > real anti-war movement, not just one that changes the personnel administering
 > the war, as in 1968.  --CGE


[5] Michael Weissman wrote:
 > You have some good points but the paragraph [on '68-'73]  is entirely
 > disingenuous. obviously by 'politically calculating types' in the antiwar 
movement
 > i meant the Moratorium people, Bobby Kennedy types, etc, not Nixon. And no one
 > voted  for Nixon as an antiwar candidate, despite his promises. The Nixon-
 > Obama analogy completely reverses the actual picture of their political roles.
 > Humphrey-Clinton wouldn't be too far off. But I guess they say that anybody
 > who can remember the 60's wasn't there.


[6] Joe Futrelle wrote:
 > Let me be very clear. Regardless of the intentions of people involved in
 > MoveOn, it serves to legitimize the Democratic party in the eyes of anti-war
 > progressives, while at the same time the leadership of the Democratic party
 > shows no signs of supporting anti-war policies.
 >
 > I don't think any responsible anti-war organization can support the
 > leadership of the Democratic party or any candidates that defer to that
 > leadership. In fact is is the responsibility of anti-war organizations to
 > criticize any political leaders who support "the war or terror", "the war on
 > drugs", the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the idea of a war on Iran.
 >
 > To respond to one of your points, Michael, I submit to you that strategic
 > choices should be evaluated on their effects, not their intended effects, and
 > any organization that consistently makes the same "mistakes" should be
 > treated either as an ineffective organization or one that is not being
 > upfront about its motives and goals. Those kind of organizations should at
 > the very least not be leading or setting agendas for a coalition, until they
 > get their acts together / come clean.


[7] Michael Weissman wrote:
 > ... Of course, this point is very generally applicable to all sorts of
 > organizations, since none have succeeded in key goals, e.g. preventing or
 > ending the Iraq war. To pick a positive example, when the Vietnam war ended
 > it wasn't clear which of many organizations, other than the NLF, deserved the
 >  most credit.


[8] C. G. Estabrook wrote:
 > The "organization that deserved the most credit for ending the Vietnam war,"
 > so to speak, was the American expeditionary force in Vietnam, which revolted.
 > The US found out what the French had found out before them in Vietnam, that
 > it's difficult to run a colonial war with a conscript army.
 >
 > If the USG had been able to field a reliable military after 1973, the war
 > would have continued.  Hence the ending of the draft and the generation-long
 > attempt to overcome the "Vietnam syndrome" and build a "new army" (not really
 > on display until the invasions of Panama and Somalia).  And now an anti-war
 > public lacks that effective way of bringing war crimes to an end.
 >
 > Meanwhile, the Reagan military policy had to go underground (Iran-Contra) or
 > into the sky (Star Wars).  The Reaganites came into office announcing that
 > their foreign policy would be "the war on terror" and wanted to put a
 > Vietnam-style expeditionary force into Central America -- and found that they
 > couldn't. The massive killing for which they were responsible was carried out
 > by death squads and comparador armies -- what the present foreign policy
 > establishment called "the Salvador Option," and wanted to use in Iraq.
 >
 > Note that MoveOn et al., like the media in general, ignored the Winter
 > Soldier hearings last weekend.  Some anti-war group. --CGE


[9] C. G. Estabrook wrote:
 > I agree that I can think of no better example of "politically calculating
 > types" than the fake liberal Robert Kennedy, a worthy predecessor of MoveOn.
 >
 > But "no one voted for Nixon as an antiwar candidate"?! The drugs must have
 > kicked in at some point, Mike, because your memory is off here. The "secret
 > plan" was the principal plank in the Nixon platform, and even the liberal
 > anti-war movement that McCarthy fronted refused to vote for Humphrey as the
 > continuator of the war.  (Though Kennedy BTW did try to co-opt that: given
 > his early association with Sen. Joe McCarthy, it was said that he "waited
 > fifteen years to come out against McCarthy -- and then picked the wrong
 > one.")
 >
 > Nixon's principal opponent for the Republican nomination (Reagan) was a
 > supporter of the war, as was his major third-party opponent (Wallace), who
 > wanted to use nuclear weapons in Vietnam.  There's no question that
 > opposition to the war beat Humphrey.  In the campaign Humphrey tried to say
 > his position was different from Johnson's only at the end, and only then did
 > he begin gaining in the polls.  People against the war didn't vote for him.
 > acnt war, or the other way around,
 > is the triumph of hope over experience (as Dr. Johnson said of second
 > marriages); at best it's Freud's "narcissism of small differences"...  --CGE


[10] Michael Weissman wrote:
 > In retrospect, I don't feel so great about the contempt I felt for Kennedy
 > and his supporters. Despite his ugly history and shabby treatment of
 > McCarthy, he could have won and he probably would have ended the war much
 > sooner. With several hundred thousand Vietnamese lives lost/year, that might
 > have been a good thing.
 >
 >> .  There's no question that opposition to the war beat Humphrey.  In the
 >> campaign Humphrey tried to say his position was different from Johnson's
 >> only at the end, and only then did he begin gaining in the polls.  People
 >> against the war didn't vote for him.
 >
 > true, but that's because we were too pure, not because people seriously
 > thought Nixon was the peace candidate. War opponents voted for fringe
 > candidates or didn't vote. Also something where I have doubts if we did the
 > right thing. although Humphrey really was disgusting.
 >
 >> And preferring Obama to Clinton on the present war, or the other way
 >> around, is the triumph of hope over experience
 >
 > we all need some triumph of hope over experience. and we all practice that,
 > to different degrees in different ways. You're sure that you don't?

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