[Peace-discuss] Raimondo more credible than flacks for the Democrats

[Robert Naiman]

You wrote:

>Peace Action does seem to be an honorable exception to the sordid record that Raimondo >describes.  But his comment on Peace Action seems strictly accurate, if not fulsome.  It's >quite true that "Peace Action is not making a whole lot of noise about this, in spite of the >issue’s relative importance. They are confining their opposition to an online petition." Some >"accusation."

But Peace Action is not "confining their opposition to an online
petition," and anyone that bothered to talk to any of the national
organizations working on Afghanistan would know that. That's my point
- you can't trust what Raimondo writes, because he clearly doesn't do
any investigation before he writes. You seem to judge him according to
whether what he says conforms with your ideological predispositions,
not according to whether what he writes is true.

On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 12:58 PM, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu> wrote:
> I suppose Raimondo is here denied the title "real journalist" because of his
> inability to find those oh-so-hard-to-see "encouraging signals" from the
> administration "with respect to Afghanistan and Pakistan."  He sees instead
> what
> is the case -- Obama's policy is "more aggressive and violent than Bush's,"
> as Chomsky points out.
>
> As a principled rather than merely "pragmatic" opponent of the war, Raimondo
> is
> certainly right to say, "I am truly at a loss to describe, in suitably
> pungent
> terms, the contempt in which I hold the 'progressive' wing of the War Party,
> which is now enjoying its moment in the sun. These people have no
> principles:
> it's all about power at the court of King Obama, and these court policy
> wonks
> are good for nothing but apologias for the king's wars."
>
> Propagandists for power like MoveOn and outright fakes like the well-funded
> Astroturf campaign "Americans Against Escalation in Iraq" have been around
> for a while.  The craven failure of "real journalists" to expose the nature
> of these front groups has been a great help in the Democrats' (and Obama's)
> co-option of the anti-war movement -- while they remain in fact quite
> pro-war.  Honest journalists might have pointed out what was happening -- as
> Raimondo did.
>
> Peace Action does seem to be an honorable exception to the sordid record
> that Raimondo describes.  But his comment on Peace Action seems strictly
> accurate, if not fulsome.  It's quite true that "Peace Action is not making
> a whole lot of noise about this, in spite of the issue’s relative
> importance. They are confining their opposition to an online petition." Some
> "accusation."
>
> It's also true but perhaps irrelevant to Raimondo's critique that Peace
> Action proposes "ending the Iraq and Afghanistan occupations, preventing a
> war on Iran, abolishing nuclear weapons and reducing the military budget."
>  His target is the soi-disant liberal groups who don't hold those positions.
>
> Springing to the defense of "Peace Action," which was not condemned, is
> perhaps a way of avoiding the accuracy of Raimondo's expose of the liberal
> groups -- which so many "real journalists" continue to do.
>
> Chomsky says that when he wrote bout math, mathematicians wanted to know if
> he got the right answer; when he wrote about history, historians wanted to
> know where he got his degree. Similarly, when you write about 'progressive'
> warmongers, you're told you're not a "real journalist"...  --CGE
>
>
> Robert Naiman wrote:
>>
>> PKM is too nice to point out that a real journalist would have
>> investigated
>> before making this accusation against Peace Action.
>>
>> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: paul kawika martin [Peace
>> Action] Date: Wed, Apr 8, 2009 at 11:37 AM Subject: ‘Progressive’
>> Warmongers
>>
>> I appreciate Mr. Raimondo writing about the left's response to
>> Afghanistan.
>> He states "Peace Action is not making a whole lot of noise about this, in
>> spite of the issue’s relative importance. They are confining their
>> opposition
>> to an online petition."  I can see why one might say that with a cursory
>> look
>> at our website.  We don't necessarily publicize all of our work for
>> various
>> reasons.  For over 50 years Peace Action has been opposing U.S.
>> imperialism
>> at nearly every turn despite that the abolition of nuclear weapons was our
>> founding issue.  While we are not necessarily a pacifist organization,
>> historically we have opposed military action in places where others were
>> silent such as Vietnam and the Balkans.  Peace Action was one of the few
>> organizations to vociferously oppose invading Afghanistan in the first
>> place.
>> Since then, we have continued to raise our voice on the issue, perhaps not
>> as
>> much as we would have liked, as working to stop and end the occupation of
>> Iraq, prevent a war on Iran, thwart new nuclear weapons and reacting to a
>> plethora of insane Bush policies has consumed scarce resources.  Some of
>> our
>> activists and colleagues have been to Afghanistan, have offices on the
>> ground
>> and plan to go again to talk about the plight of Afghans and to push for
>> nonmilitary solutions. Being in the heart of the beast in Washington, DC,
>> this year Peace Action's national office has, with help from other
>> organizations, put together a list of nearly 60 leaders, and held a
>> meeting
>> with 33 of them, to share resources and strategize the best ways to change
>> Afghanistan policy.  We have reached out to conservative groups that agree
>> with us like The CATO Institute.  We organized 20 organizations to send a
>> letter to congress asking them to sign former presidential candidate, Rep.
>> Ron Paul's (D-TX), letter to President Obama asking him to reconsider
>> escalation in Afghanistan.  15 Representatives signed the letter. We have
>> been pressuring congress to oppose the occupation; to go to Afghanistan
>> and
>> talk to diverse Afghan voices and NGOs other than those pushed by the
>> administration, the Pentagon, the Dept. of State and the Afghan
>> government;
>> to ask the right questions in hearings with the right witnesses; to stop
>> or
>> investigate Air and Predator drone strikes and night raids that tend to
>> kill
>> and traumatize innocent civilians; and provide more funding for Afghan-led
>> humanitarian and development aid and for demining of the United States'
>> and
>> others' land mines and cluster munitions. Our affiliates and other local
>> groups have been pressuring congress too.  Additionally, they have been
>> protesting, holding vigils and educating the public on Afghanistan.  Our
>> largest and most powerful affiliate, Peace Action West, has been working
>> with
>> Robert Greenwald of Brave New Films, who recently returned from
>> Afghanistan,
>> to speak out against escalation, pressure congress for serious public
>> hearings with progressive voices, publicize segments of his upcoming
>> documentary -- Rethink Afghanistan -- and organizing grassroots groups in
>> the
>> west. Last Saturday, on the anniversary of MLK's Riverside church speech
>> against the Vietnam war and his assassination, United for Peace and Justice
>> (UFPJ) organized a 10,000 person -- including Peace Action members and
>> affiliates -- march against the war in Afghanistan and for more money at
>> as
>> well as other issues that surrounded the NY stock exchange. As I write,
>> Peace
>> Action affiliates and chapters and members of UFPJ are meeting with
>> Members
>> of Congress in their district, during this congressional break, to demand
>> an
>> end to the Afghanistan war and other issues.  This is part of coordinated
>> days of actions going on now from the 6th to the 9th.  A good web search
>> will
>> find that Peace Action, our affiliates and colleagues have been in
>> numerous
>> newspapers, on radio and TV shows, speaking out against occupation and
>> escalation, including countless mentions in The Nation.
>>
>> And yes, we also have a petition, which you can find here:
>> http://www.Peace-Action.org.  Raimondo is right the petition is not a whole
>> lot of noise, but perhaps the above rises above a whisper.  I certainly
>> know
>> many progressives who have been or have become against the occupation of
>> Afghanistan.  I think as public opinion continues to sway on the issue, we
>> will see other groups follow our lead.  We welcome other organizations to
>> join us as we are up against great resources.  My guess is that the budget
>> of
>> all the military bands dwarfs that of the peace movement an perhaps other
>> progressive movements.  I look  forward to working with others on Peace
>> Action's main priorities for this year:  ending the Iraq and Afghanistan
>> occupations, preventing a war on Iran, abolishing nuclear weapons and
>> reducing the military budget.
>>
>> [responding to:]
>>
>> http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2009/04/07/progressive-warmongers/
>>
>> ‘Progressive’ Warmongers
>>
>> Liberals rally 'round Obama's war
>>
>> by Justin Raimondo, April 08, 2009 Email This | Print This | Share This |
>> Comment
>>
>> As President Barack Obama launches a military effort that promises to
>> dwarf
>> the Bush administration’s Iraqi adventure in scope and intensity, the
>> "progressive" community is rallying around their commander in chief as
>> obediently and reflexively as the neocon-dominated GOP did when we invaded
>> Iraq. As John Stauber points out over at the Center for Media and
>> Democracy
>> Web site, the takeover of the antiwar movement by the Obamaites is nearly
>> complete. He cites MoveOn.org as a prime but not sole example:
>>
>> "MoveOn built its list by organizing vigils and ads for peace and by then
>> supporting Obama for president; today it operates as a full-time
>> cheerleader
>> supporting Obama’s policy agenda. Some of us saw this unfolding years ago.
>> Others are probably shocked watching their peace candidate escalating a
>> war
>> and sounding so much like the previous administration in his rationale for
>> doing so."
>>
>> Picking up on this in The Nation, John Nichols avers that several antiwar
>> groups arenot toeing the Afghanistan-is-a-war-of-necessity line, including
>> Peace Action, United for Peace and Justice, and the American Friends
>> Service
>> Committee, yet there is less to this than meets the eye. Naturally, the
>> Friends, being pacifists, are going to oppose the Afghan "surge" and the
>> provocative incursions into Pakistan: no surprise there. Peace Action is
>> not
>> making a whole lot of noise about this, in spite of the issue’s relative
>> importance. They are confining their opposition to an online petition. As
>> for
>> UFPJ, their alleged opposition to Obama’s war is couched in all kinds of
>> contingencies and ambiguous formulations. Their most recent public
>> pronouncement, calling for local actions against the Af-Pak offensive,
>> praises Obama for "good statements on increasing diplomacy and economic aid
>> to Afghanistan and Pakistan." Really? So far, this "diplomacy" consists of
>> unsuccessfully finagling the Europeans and Canada toincrease their
>> "contributions" to the Afghan front – and selling the American people on
>> an
>> escalation of the conflict.
>>
>> Although energized and given a local presence nationwide by a significant
>> pacifist and youth contingent, UFPJ is organizationally dominated by
>> current
>> and former members of the Communist Party, USA, and allied organizations,
>> and
>> you have toremember that Afghanistan is a bit of a sore spot for them.
>> That’s
>> because the Kremlinpreceded us in our folly of attempting to tame the wild
>> warrior tribes of the Hindu Kush and was soundly defeated.
>>
>> The Soviet Union did its level best in trying to accomplish what a number
>> of
>> liberal think-tanks with ambitious agendas are today busily concerning
>> themselves with solving the problem of constructing a working central
>> government, centered in Kabul, which would improve the lot of the average
>> Afghan, liberate women from their legally and socially subordinate role,
>> eliminate the drug trade, and provide a minimal amount of security outside
>> the confines of Kabul – in short, the very same goalsenunciated by the
>> Bush
>> administration and now the Obama administration. The Kremlin failed
>> miserably
>> in achieving its objectives, and there is little reason to believe the
>> Americans will have better luck.
>>
>> In retrospect, the Soviet decision to invade and create a puppet
>> government
>> propped up by the Red Army was arguably a fatal error, one that delivered
>> the
>> final crushing blow to a system already moribund and brittle enough to
>> break.
>> The domestic consequences inside the Soviet Union – the blowback, if you
>> will
>> – sounded the death knell of the Communist system and revealed the
>> Kremlin’s
>> ramshackle empire in all its military and moral bankruptcy.
>>
>> What is to prevent the U.S. from courting a similar fate, at a time when
>> our
>> economy is melting down and the domestic crisis makes such grandiose
>> "nation-building" schemes seem like bubble-think at its most hubristic?
>>
>> That’s where the pro-war progressive think-tanks come in: their role is to
>> forge a new pro-war consensus, one that commits us to a long-range
>> "nation-building" strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan. These are the
>> Center
>> for a New American Security, explicitly set up as home base for the
>> "national
>> security Democrats" who make up the party’s hawkish faction; Brookings;
>> and,
>> last but not least, the Center for American Progress, which was an oasis
>> of
>> skepticism when Team Bush was "liberating" Iraq, and a major critic of the
>> occupation. Now the leadership of CAP is making joint appearances with the
>> neocons over at the newly christened Foreign Policy Initiative and issuing
>> lengthy white papers outlining their Ten Year Plan [.pdf] for the military
>> occupation of Afghanistan.
>>
>> Not only that, but they are moving to the front lines in a battle against
>> Obama’s antiwar opponents, with the Nichols piece – which merely reported
>> growing opposition to Obama’s war on the Left – eliciting a testy response
>> from CAP honchoLawrence Korb and one of his apparatchiks. In it, the
>> CAPsters
>> aver, wearily, that none of this is new – the "schism" within the
>> "progressive community" over Afghanistan is "long-standing" – and they
>> remind
>> their audience that the release of CAP’s latest apologia for occupying
>> Afghanistan is hardly precedent-setting. After all, their two previous
>> reports supported precisely the same position, which was taken upby Obama
>> during the 2008 campaign: Iraq was the wrong war, Afghanistan is the
>> "right"
>> war, and the Bush administration diverted vital resources away from the
>> latter to fight the former. Now that Obama is doing what he said he’d do all
>> along – escalating and extending the Long War on the Afghan front – CAP is
>> supporting him. It’s as simple as that.
>>
>> Still, it’s perhaps perplexing to those who followed the debate over the
>> Iraq
>> war to see CAP in the vanguard of the War Party. Or, as Korb & Co. put it:
>>
>> "Given our organization’s (and our personal) long-standing assertion that
>> a
>> U.S. military withdrawal from the war in Iraq was and is a necessary
>> precondition for Iraq’s competing parties to find a stable power-sharing
>> equilibrium, perhaps it comes as a surprise to some that we would ‘now’
>> call
>> for such a renewed U.S. military, economic, and political commitment to
>> the
>> war in Afghanistan."
>>
>> Well, yes, now that you mention it, this cheerleading for Obama’s war is a
>> bit of a turnaround for CAP and the Washington "progressive" community.
>> Their
>> Stalinesque about-face – which recalls the disciplined hypocrisy of
>> Communist
>> cadre who were just as fervently antiwar in the moments before Hitler
>> invaded
>> Russia as they were pro-war every moment since – requires some
>> explanation.
>> Korb, however, is not very forthcoming. He does little to refute
>> objections
>> to the occupation of Afghanistan, which would seem to reflect the very
>> same critique leveled at Bush’s conquest of Iraq. Yet we get relatively
>> little out
>> of him, except the bland assertion that "Afghanistan is not Iraq." Not
>> convinced yet? Well then, listen to this: "Unlike the war in Iraq, which
>> was
>> always a war of choice, Afghanistan was and still is a war of necessity."
>>
>> There, that ought to quiet any qualms about embarking on a 10-year or more
>> military occupation and a hideously expensive "nation-building" effort in
>> a
>> country that has defied would-be occupiers for most of its history.
>>
>> One searches in vain for a reasoned rationale for the Afghan escalation,
>> or
>> even a halfway plausible justification for lurching into Pakistan, either
>> in
>> Korb’s brief and dismissive piece for The Nation or in CAP’s latest [pdf.]
>> 40-plus page defense of the administration’s war plans. The latter is long
>> on
>> sober assessments of how difficult it will be to double-talk the American
>> people into supporting another futile crusade on the Asian landmass, and
>> it
>> has plenty of colorful graphics, including one showing how much they want
>> the
>> U.S. troop presence to increase over the next few years. Yet this "war of
>> necessity" concept is never explained beyond mere reiteration, although
>> there
>> are a few subtle hints. At one point, the CAP document, "Sustainable
>> Security
>> in Afghanistan," declares:
>>
>> "Al-Qaeda poses a clear and present danger to American interests and its
>> allies throughout the world and must be dealt with by using all the
>> instruments in our national security arsenal in an integrated manner. The
>> terrorist organization’s deep historical roots in Afghanistan and its
>> neighbor Pakistan place it at the center of an ‘arc of instability’
>> through
>> South and Central Asia and the greater Middle East that requires a
>> sustained
>> international response."
>>
>> If al-Qaeda has "deep historical roots" in Afghanistan and Pakistan, then
>> they run far deeper in, say, Saudi Arabia – where most of the 9/11
>> hijackers
>> were from. If we go by Korbian logic, that merits a U.S. invasion and
>> decade-long military occupation of the Kingdom.
>>
>> Is it something in the water in Washington, or is it just the water-cooler
>> in
>> CAP’s D.C. offices?
>>
>> Yes, by all means, let us examine the "deep historical roots" of al-Qaeda,
>> which originated in what Korb obliquely refers to as "the anti-Soviet
>> campaign." Thiscampaign was conducted by the U.S. government, which armed,
>> aided, and gave open political support to the Afghan "mujahedin," who were
>> feted at the Reagan White House. Supplied with Stinger missiles and other
>> weaponry, which enabled them to drive the Red Army out, al-Qaeda developed
>> as
>> an international jihadist network in the course of this struggle, which
>> later
>> turned on its principal sponsor and enabler. None of this, of course, is
>> mentioned by the authors of the CAP report.
>>
>> Shorn of sanctimony and partisan rhetoric, what the advocates of Obama’s
>> war
>> are saying is that Afghanistan and Pakistan are Osama bin Laden’s home
>> turf,
>> and the 9/11 terrorist attacks give us the right to militarily occupy the
>> country, in perpetuity if necessary, in order to prevent a repeat.
>>
>> This argument lacks all proportion and belies the Obamaites’ appeals to
>> "pragmatism" and "realism" as the alleged hallmarks of the new
>> administration. Beneath the unemotional language of faux-expertise – the
>> technical analyses of troop strength and abstruse discussions of
>> counterinsurgency doctrine – a dark undercurrent of primordialism flows
>> through the "progressive" case for a 10-year war in the wilds of Central
>> Asia. The unspoken but painfully obvious motive for Obama’s war is simply
>> satisfying the desire of the American people for revenge.
>>
>> It is certainly not about preventing another 9/11. The biggest and
>> deadliest
>> terrorist attack in our history was for the most part plotted and carried
>> out
>> here in the U.S., right under the noses of the FBI, the CIA, and all the
>> "anti-terrorist" agencies and initiatives that had been created during the
>> Clinton years. Earlier, it was plotted inHamburg, Germany, and Malaysia,
>> and
>> the plot advanced further still in a small town in south Florida.
>>
>> Having concluded that another terrorist attack on U.S. soil is for all
>> intents and purposes practically inevitable, the U.S. government during the
>> Bush era decided to take up an offensive strategy, to go after the
>> terrorist
>> leadership in their "safe havens." The Obamaites, likewise disdaining a
>> defensive strategy, have continued this policy, albeit with a simple
>> switch
>> in locations and the application of greater resources. They have
>> furthermore
>> determined – without making public any supporting evidence – that these
>> alleged terrorist sanctuaries are located in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The
>> president has even broadly hinted that Osama bin Laden himself is in
>> Pakistan’s tribal area. One presumes we are supposed to take this on
>> faith:
>> after all, the U.S. government would never lie to us, or exaggerate the
>> known
>> facts – would they?
>>
>> The CAP report is mostly a rehash of liberal interventionist bromides,
>> paeans
>> to multilateralism (which ring particularly hollow in view of Obama’s
>> recent
>> failure to get more than a measly 5,000 European troops out of NATO), and
>> pious pledges to build clinics, schools, and walk little old ladies across
>> crowded streets even as our soulless armies of drones wreak death and
>> devastation.
>>
>> This use of robots to do our dirty work recalls the bombing of the former
>> Yugoslavia, during which American pilots dropped their deadly payloads
>> from a
>> height of 20,000 feet. Sure, it made for somewhat dicey accuracy, but
>> better
>> Serbian "collateral damage" than American casualties. The same lesson
>> applies
>> to the Af-Pak war: better a lot of dead Pakistanis than a few downed
>> American
>> pilots. The U.S. death toll is already rising rapidly enough, and the
>> shooting down of an American pilot over Pakistani territory would surely
>> draw
>> unwelcome attention on the home front, as well as cause an international
>> incident. We can’t have that.
>>
>> I am truly at a loss to describe, in suitably pungent terms, the contempt
>> in
>> which I hold the "progressive" wing of the War Party, which is now
>> enjoying
>> its moment in the sun. These people have no principles: it’s all about
>> power
>> at the court of King Obama, and these court policy wonks are good for
>> nothing
>> but apologias for the king’s wars.
>>
>> They are, however, good for an occasional laugh. I had to guffaw when I
>> read
>> the phrase "arc of instability." This is supposed to be a reason – nay,
>> the
>> reason – for a military and political campaign scheduled to continue for
>> at
>> least the next 10 years. Well, then, let’s take a good look at this "arc,"
>> which, we are told, extends "through South and Central Asia and the
>> greater
>> Middle East." From the shores of Lebanon to the mountain ranges of
>> Afghanistan, and most places in between, that "arc of instability" defines
>> the geographical extent of U.S. intervention in the region from the end of
>> World War II to the present. If any single factor contributed to the
>> instability permeating this arc, then it is the one constant factor in the
>> equation, which has been the U.S. presence and efforts to dominate the
>> region.
>>
>> What is Korb’s – and CAP’s – solution to the problem of regional
>> instability?
>> Why, more of the same. This will lead, as it has in the past, to more
>> blowback and an increase in the support and capabilities of the worldwide
>> Islamist insurgency we are pledged to defeat.
>>
>> NOTES IN THE MARGIN
>>
>> I am told that we are now enabling comments in a limited number of
>> original
>> articles, including this column. Have fun, and keep it clean.
>> _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list
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>
>



-- 
Robert Naiman
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
naiman at justforeignpolicy.org

"It's 11 AM in Washington. Do you know where your foreign policy is?"