[Peace-discuss] Fwd: Now Obama's in, is anti-war anti-racism activism out?

[Stuart Levy]

On Thu, Nov 06, 2008 at 01:11:52PM -0600, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> [I received the following note from an interested observer of AWARE. --CGE]

Good point -- yes, we should say something.

I'm not sure what past position statement Jeff might be finding
lacking now -- for better or worse, all that should have changed
in a long time on the anti-war.net main page has been the passage of events
and minor additions to the sidebar.

We should talk about this at AWARE this Sunday.

I don't think I'd want to put it in the style Jeff suggests.
Better, we could quote some of Obama's own words.  He's actually said some
pretty good things at times -- especially when he was running against
Clinton and trying to draw the support of the Left.  Like

   "I will end this war. We will not have a permanent occupation and
    permanent bases in Iraq.  [...] If we are going to send a signal
    to the Iraqis that we are serious, and prompt the Shia, Sunni, & Kurds
    to actually come together & negotiate, they have to have clarity about
    how serious we are. It can't be muddy or fuzzy. They've got to know
    that we are serious about this process."

   "I don't want to just end the war, but I want to end the mindset
    that got us into war in the first place."

   (and, on negotiating with adversary countries like Iran or Venezuela)
   "Strong countries and strong presidents meet and talk with
    our adversaries.  We shouldn't be afraid to do so.
    We've tried the other way. It didn't work."

Am I being selective in choosing these quotes?  Sure.  But so are we all.
The purpose is to reflect the President that we would like him to be --
and -- more to the point -- that many Americans probably already
expect him to be.  And after all, he *did* say these things,
during this campaign season, so why not hold him to them?


I agree that we need to protest Obama's promotion of war in
Afghanistan and Pakistan.  He has been consistently wrong there.

The other thing I'd like to call on our Pres. Elect to do:
publicly repudiate the Bush signing statements, and the notion that the
President has the power to use them to rewrite the law.  If he's
said anything on that subject I've missed it.


> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: Now Obama's in, is anti-war anti-racism activism out?
> Date: Wed, 05 Nov 2008 19:41:42 -0600
> From: J.B. Nicholson-Owens <jbn at forestfield.org>
>
> Has AWARE's Obama tiffs been settled in favor of opposing his positions on:
>
>   - continued occupation of Afghanistan
>   - continued occupation of Iraq
>   - continued saber-rattling against Iran
>   - war with Pakistan
>   - shuffling troops around (possibly augmenting low troop levels with
> more mercenaries?) instead of bringing all troops, American
> corporations, and mercenaries home
>   - supporting the death penalty while noting its racist application
>
> It's my understanding that President-elect Obama holds all of these
> positions and that an anti-war anti-racism group would oppose all of them.
>
> The AWARE website isn't clear that they actually oppose what Obama
> stands for.
>
> Maybe it's too soon to expect updates.  Also, I didn't bother to dig
> into the email list archives (I figured I'd find debates-in-progress
> there).  I looked at the front page of http://www.anti-war.net/ and
> nothing particularly anti-Obama-war-ish stood out.  I could have
> overlooked something.
>
> It would be great to know that it doesn't matter who continues the war,
> or who continues to give the state an exception on killing for
> punishment: AWARE will oppose them.  I miss the cogent truly anti-war
> anti-racism position statement I copied and linked to from my blog some
> months ago.
>
> Thanks.
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