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

[C. G. Estabrook]

You're purposely straining at the Peace Action gnat to cover your swallowing of
the liberal pro-war camel.  Peace Action's behavior was a small sidelight to
what Raimondo was writing about: you choose to ignore his point, for obvious 
reasons.

Discussing "antiwar groups [who] are not toeing the 
Afghanistan-is-a-war-of-necessity line," he mentions first Peace Action, and 
says (accurately) that they are "not making a whole lot of noise about this." 
That's true: not even many readers of this list knew what Peace Action's 
position was.

It's a sign of desperation to try to charge Raimondo with not doing "any 
investigation before he writes" -- because, of course, you can't refute what he 
says about CAP, etc.  As anyone who reads his frequent columns knows, his 
accounts are consistently more trustworthy than those of liberal war-supporters 
who cry up the administration's "encouraging signals ... with respect to 
Afghanistan and Pakistan."  Right.

I don't in fact share an ideological position with Raimondo, as you well know
(not that it matters).  But his account is more accurate than that of, say, 
those who supported the Democrats' war-funding bills.  We used to speak of 
"labor-fakers," who claimed to support labor and didn't. Now I suppose we should 
speak of "peace-fakers."  --CGE


Robert Naiman wrote:
> 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.
>>> ...