[Peace-discuss] Why Obama has to do that...

[C. G. Estabrook]

John--

You and I both know how burdensome it is to be right when we're surrounded by 
fools and poltroons.  (We just disagree on who they are...)

The draft indeed has something to do with it.  That's why I support a draft 
today, over against a mercenary army of the poor (the regular army) and a 
mercenary army of the middle class (Blackwater, SAIC, etc.)

But remember that, when there was no draft, Reagan wanted to put the US military 
into central America -- on the model of what his model, JFK, had done in SE Asia 
-- and was unable to do so, because of the anti-war movement of the 1980s.  That 
movement didn't come from America's clapped-out "left" but from the anti-war 
movement that had taken "the Long March through the institutions": the 
opposition to the Reagan wars in central America came from churches, the source 
of the "accompaniment" movement, and it was more successful than the anti-war 
movement against Kennedy & Johnson.  The foreign policy of he Reagan 
administration was driven underground -- hence Iran-Contra.

That shows that a successful anti-war movement is possible without the draft, 
altho' a draft would help.  The American ruling class really doesn't want to 
disturb the only force it really fears, the American majority.  --CGE


John W. wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 4, 2008 at 4:18 PM, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at uiuc.edu 
> <mailto:galliher at uiuc.edu>> wrote:
> 
>     Stuart---
> 
>     I have no trouble agreeing with the principles you put forth but
>     more difficulty accepting the conclusions you draw:
> 
>     [1] Politicians are not "divinely consistent." True.
> 
>     [2] We are not oracles.  Also true, altho' I'm not quite sure what
>     you take to be the essence of that oracularity that is being denied
>     to us. AFAIK oracles are classically ambiguous and misinterpreted. I
>     haven't thought that anything I've written on these matters has been
>     particularly ambiguous, but it does seem that I've failed to make
>     myself clear to some of our colleagues.  (And I do have to admit
>     that, since I read Edith Hamilton's "Mythology" at an impressionable
>     age, I've felt some sympathy for Cassandra -- always right, never
>     believed...)
> 
> 
> Yes.  My goodness, yes.  I can attest from personal experience that it 
> is indeed a heavy, heavy cross to bear.
> 
> 
>  
> 
>     [8] Regarding "how to sustain an organized movement" -- today it's
>     the absence, not the presence of an anti-war movement that has to be
>     explained.  The largest anti-war demos in human history occurred
>     before the invasion of Iraq, and three-quarters of Americans say
>     they disapprove of the war.  So  why -- in contrast to 40 years ago
>     -- no movement?
> 
> 
> Very, very simple.  Today there's no draft.  Self-interest, in the form 
> of self-preservation, played a HUGE role in the anti-war movement of the 
> 60s, much as we wanted to pretend that our dissent was purely 
> ideological and moral.