[Peace-discuss] A Plan to End the Wars

[C. G. Estabrook]

[A bit sanguine -- as Obama launches a Blitzkrieg in Afghanistan -- but that's 
perhaps the necessary attitude.  --CGE]


	A Plan to End the Wars
	By David Swanson
	Fri, 2009-07-03

There are a million and one things that people can do to try to end the U.S. 
wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and to prevent new ones in Iran and 
elsewhere, as well as to close U.S. military bases in dozens of other nations 
around the world. Certain people are skilled at or interested in particular 
approaches, and nobody should be discouraged from contributing to the effort in 
their preferred ways. Far too often proposals to work for peace are needlessly 
framed as attacks on all strategies except one. But where new energy can be 
created or existing resources redirected, it is important that they go where 
most likely to succeed.

In my analysis, we should be focusing on three things, which for purposes of 
brevity and alliteration I will call: Communications, Congress, and Counter 
recruitment / resistance. Communications encompasses all public discussion of 
the wars and impacts all other approaches, including targets I consider far less 
likely to be influenced by us than Congress, such as the president, generals, 
the heads of weapons companies, the heads of media companies, the people of 
Afghanistan, your racist neighbor, etc. If our communications strategy can 
change the behavior of any of these targets, terrific! We should be prepared to 
take advantage of such opportunities should they arise. But the first place we 
are likely to be able to leverage successful communications will be the House of 
Representatives. Counter-recruitment / resistance is another area that overlaps 
with communications but involves much else as well, and it is a strategy that we 
continue to underestimate.

COMMUNICATIONS

Our task is to communicate that:
    --the wars are ongoing and will not end without our efforts,
    --the wars must be ended,
    --the peace movement has had many successes already and should by no means 
give in to frustration,
    --the wars can be ended if a small fraction of the majority that wants them 
ended makes an effort,
    --we have to choose between warfare and healthcare / other social goods,
    --minimizing U.S. casualties will not satisfy the demands of the U.S. public,
    --neither maximizing nor minimizing foreign casualties will satisfy the 
demands of the U.S. public,
    --there is a personal cost to those who support wars and war crimes,
    --Congress members will face opposition through negative communications, 
disruption of their lives, and electoral challenges if they fund wars.

We don't have to communicate all of that in one interview on cable television, 
or violate any other laws of physics, but we DO have to communicate ALL of that. 
And getting our spokespeople on TV has to be part of how it is done. But 
primarily we need to create our own media and work with decent independent media 
outlets. Online media has developed to the point where it can influence 
broadcast and print media. And yet we are still quite capable of creating 
powerful online media. We cannot overlook the need to work with communities that 
lack internet access, or the need to use the internet to generate offline 
activities. But it is very hard to overestimate the importance to our efforts of 
the internet, and working to get more people access to it might be one of the 
most helpful efforts we can make.

We stopped Bush-Cheney from invading Iran. They intended to do so, and we 
prevented it -- largely by exposing the grounds for invading Iraq to be lies. 
There was no press conference at the White House to announce this failure of 
theirs and success of ours, but that should have no impact on our claiming a 
victory and making it known to those who require encouragement and optimism. On 
the other hand, we have allowed the wars to be spread to Pakistan with barely a 
peep of recognition, and by proxy to Gaza with only a weak and muddled response. 
And the push to attack Iran directly or by proxy remains.

We dominated the news and the elections in the United States and shifted power 
in the House, Senate, and White House to a different political party. And we 
ended up with a House, Senate, and White House that all favor continuing or 
expanding wars. But we compelled President Bush to agree to withdrawal from 
Iraqi localities by the end of last month, complete withdrawal from the nation 
by the end of 2011, and a treaty that the Iraqi people have the right to reject 
by the end of this month in a vote that would move the complete withdrawal date 
to one year from now. I still question the wisdom of our having silently 
accepted a treaty making three years of war without the consent of the U.S. 
Senate, but a better way to reject the treaty is now upon us. Our focus for the 
next month should be on insisting that the Iraqi people are permitted to vote 
the treaty up or down in a verifiable election (which, of course, means that 
they will vote it down if those voting bear any similarity to those who have 
been polled). Everyone who has expressed concern for the voting rights of 
Iranians should be required to do the same for Iraqis.

The other advantage of our having shifted the partisan balance in our 
government, even without fundamentally altering our government's approach to 
war, is that we no longer have to do so. We can now move on to replacing pro-war 
Democrats with pro-peace Democrats (or Independents, Greens, Republicans, 
Libertarians, etc.) The claim that we should keep quiet about peace in order to 
elect Democrats who will then (contradictorily) give us peace can no longer be 
made and can no longer get in the way. And the advantage of having elected a 
president of a different party, without having fundamentally changed anything, 
is that the claim that a new president will give us peace can now be replaced by 
consideration of whether we should look to presidents at all, or Congress 
instead, to do such things.

We kept the occupation of Iraq smaller than it would have been and prevented 
other invasions through the success of counter-recruitment efforts and 
resistance within the U.S. military. Bush-Cheney having pushed the military to 
the breaking point is not a story of their incompetence or love for war and 
empire. It is a story of our efforts pushing back against theirs. The United 
States will always push the military to the breaking point until we succeed in 
countering the current militaristic agenda, but our job (one of them) is to make 
what is available to be pushed smaller.

We need to discuss our successes because nobody else will, and because 70 
percent of Americans basically agree with us and do nothing about it, largely 
because many people do not believe they have the power to change anything. We 
have been building organizations and websites and Email lists for these past 
several years, and we have been achieving some successes and coming very close 
to more. Yet, a common response to "Will you gather signatures on this petition 
for peace?" is "We've tried that before and it didn't end the war." But it did 
expose the war lies. It did force Alberto Gonzales out. It did come within 7 
votes just last month of -- at least temporarily -- stopping the war funding. 
And while doing all of these things, the same old tired tools can also build 
larger organizations, and have been doing so. I'm sure people told abolitionists 
not to print another newspaper because they'd printed one before and slavery was 
still around. Yet abolitionism was advancing despite not a single slave yet 
being freed. And we are advancing, but it is crucial to know where. We must 
absolutely put our signatures and our time and our money into those 
organizations that oppose war regardless of political party, and NOT into those 
organizations that claim to oppose war only when it allows criticism of a 
particular political party. (Here's a list of which is which: 
<http://afterdowningstreet.org/32heroes>. The list cannot possibly be complete, 
of course, and I apologize for whomever I have left off the list of heroes, but 
the major organizations are all here, listed as either heroes or frauds.)

Just as we should continue to push the corporate media while focusing on 
building our own, we should continue to push the pseudo-peace organizations to 
do better, but we should focus on building those organizations that have 
consistently taken a principled stand and pushed with skill and intelligence 
(even if not with success) for peace.

"Healthcare Not Warfare" should be our cry (following the example of Progressive 
Democrats of America), along with "Housing Not Warfare," "Jobs Not Warfare," 
"Schools Not Warfare," etc. We have to force recognition of the financial choice 
before us. In that choice we find a solution to the healthcare debate that is 
almost too easy to be believed, but deadly real. And we find a solution to the 
misconception that war does not impact the "Homeland." This is a discussion that 
should discuss the current wars as part of an expansion of military bases around 
the world, bases that make us less safe but cost us over $100 billion every 
year. The discussion should include the non-war military budget and the 
trade-offs involved. We should work harder to build alliances with people and 
groups focused on advocating for all the things we cannot pay for because we pay 
for weapons and wars.

But our communications strategy should be dominated by our true central reason 
for opposing wars, not any secondary reason that we imagine will move someone 
else. If wars are made cheaper and more efficient we will still oppose them, and 
that is a real possibility. If American casualties are reduced, we will still 
oppose wars, and that is the case at the moment. If smart decisions in military 
terms replace comical blunders, we will oppose wars all the more, and that may 
be happening. Fundamentally, we oppose wars because they kill people and they 
are part of hostile occupations that make people around the world hate and 
resent our nation. When a group like Brave New Films documents the impact of our 
war on the people of Afghanistan, we should promote those films as far as we are 
able. When an election leads to the corporate media humanizing the people of 
Iran, we should highlight that and ask why, if we do not want them killed by 
riot police, we should want them killed by bombs.

There is enormous potential, but uncertain, value in seeking to end and 
discourage wars by holding war criminals accountable for their crimes. Those 
working to end torture are right to emphasize that we tortured in order to 
generate false justifications for war, even after the war had begun. Those 
working to end war should emphasize that we tortured people in order to support 
the lies that at least one of the wars, and arguably all of them, is based on. 
Every war crime for which we are able to hold anyone accountable by exposing 
their crimes, unelecting them, impeaching them, finding them liable in civil 
suits, and prosecuting them at home or abroad, should be discussed as part of 
the ongoing wars. Congress members should understand that we consider their 
funding of wars to constitute a war crime. And they should understand that we 
require them to place peace before party.

One useful tool for mass communications is mass rallies. As argued below, our 
targets should be Congress members. National mass actions should be focused on 
Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. Local actions should target local Congress 
members. There was an action earlier this year on Capitol Hill aimed at cleaning 
up the local power plant and raising the demand for action on the climate. While 
that struggle is far from over, the march and protest suggested a useful 
approach. A large number of people, including young people, were organized to 
march and to risk arrest. But people were invited to march without risking 
arrest, thus boosting the crowd size and reducing the chances of anyone being 
arrested. This action was held on a weekday with Congress in session, and 
marched adjacent to the House office buildings. An action like this one on the 
eighth anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan, on Wednesday, October 7th, 
strikes me as the most obvious way to send a powerful message of opposition to 
wars. Combined, of course, with lobby meetings and in-district actions. And 
backed by lots of money and staff time.

Where do we get lots of money and staff time? That's where we'll need to be very 
good communicators. But there are wealthy people tired of funding politicians 
and ready to fund citizens, not to mention people with money who have watched 
Republicans prosecute and imprison top Democratic donors like Paul Minor and 
then watched the Democrats not lift a finger in their defense. There are no 
limits on contributions to peace and justice groups, and almost no limits on 
what we could accomplish if funded. More importantly, there are ways to 
influence Congress that do not require putting anyone on a bus and can be done 
largely by volunteers -- yes, in their pajamas in the basement eating Cheetos. 
Read on.

CONGRESS

While we have relatively little in the way of carrots or sticks with which to 
influence a president or a weapons maker (and influencing the military is 
discussed below), we have the ability to influence Congress members, at least 
those who represent districts rather than large states. And we have the ability 
to end the wars by succeeding only in the House of Representatives. We do not 
need to persuade a single senator or the president or any cabinet secretaries or 
any news producers. If we can do so, great. But we can end the wars by winning 
in the House of Representatives alone. This is because it takes two houses and 
the president to make a bill a law, but it only takes one house to prevent a 
bill from becoming law.

The House of Representatives is supposed to represent us and yet, on matters of 
war as on most other things, does not. Why not? Well, many flaws weaken our 
elections system, but on any given vote three major corrupting factors can 
usually be pointed to: party, media, and dollars. On an issue like healthcare, 
as on many issues, these factors should be listed in the opposite order. It is 
the dollars of corporate interests that do the greatest share of the corrupting. 
But on matters of war, party is the greatest corruptor. Of course, political 
parties are the largest funders of campaigns, so money is still right at the 
top. Members of Congress in both political parties have voted to fund these 
wars, over the wishes of their constituents, because their party leadership has 
told them to do so. Parties can promise money, committee memberships, 
chairmanships, votes on bills and amendments and earmarks, and press events in a 
member's district with cabinet members and presidents. Parties can threaten to 
withhold money, back a challenger, block measures from reaching the floor, and 
withhold chairmanships. It is very difficult and very rare for Congress members 
to oppose their parties' strong demands. But it is also rare for citizens to 
press them to do so, in part because many citizens and the groups through which 
they approach activism also take their orders from political parties.

The experience of opposing the most recent war supplemental bill, which was 
combined with funding for the International Monetary Fund, is instructive, 
especially as Congressman John Murtha has already indicated that there will be 
another war supplemental bill this year. Because all the Republicans in the 
House opposed the bill due to the IMF measure (five of them switching their 
votes to yes only after it had passed), 39 Democrats could have stopped the 
bill. This would have forced separate votes on the war and the IMF, and both 
might have passed. Certainly the war would have. But it would have created a 
serious block of peace votes in the House willing to vote for peace even when it 
mattered and the Democratic Party commanded otherwise. In the end, we persuaded 
32 Democrats to vote No (two of them only in opposition to the IMF, 30 of them 
in opposition to at least the war). So we actually did establish a block of 
peace voters. It just contained 30 people instead of 39. And of those 30 people, 
three, Dennis Kucinich, Jim McGovern, and Lynn Woolsey actually urged their 
colleagues to vote No. This gives us 30 votes we can count on if we work like 
hell to hold them, and three leaders we can work with to whip together a larger 
caucus. And while we lost this vote, we exacted a price. We compelled the White 
House and the Democratic Party leadership to spend a week working on little 
other than bribing and blackmailing Congress members. And it will take many 
weeks to fulfill all the promises made. My own Congressman, who opposed the IMF 
but voted for it, has thus far held press events promoting himself in his 
district with the House Majority Leader, with the two top environmental 
officials in the White House, and has an event scheduled here this month with 
two members of the cabinet.

Over the past years, we have -- more often than not -- lacked the coordination 
and ability to push back hard against such intense lobbying from the other side. 
This time we surprised Congress and ourselves. Key to this effort was public 
whipping. We didn't have eight different peace groups keeping their own whip 
lists of who had promised them what. We had 8,000 citizen lobbyists feeding 
their reports to one website where the whip count was kept public, and where we 
promised to thank or spank people as appropriate once they had voted for peace 
or war. Critical to this effort were all the usual off-line activities of people 
in each Congress member's district. But the public whipping was central. It 
organized and encouraged the activism. It inspired the blogging. It infiltrated 
the corporate media.

Here's a history of this campaign:
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/43292
Here's the whip list:
http://action.firedoglake.com/page/s/Supplemental

Sadly, we've barely followed through on our promises to thank and spank, 
activities for which the Backbone Campaign offers tools and assistance. We 
should be celebrating and denouncing those who came through and those who let us 
down with at least as much energy as we threatened to do so. Otherwise we lose 
our credibility, and next time will be harder rather than easier. Disturbingly, 
even some who seemed willing to threaten repercussions to Democrats for voting 
yes appeared to decide afterwards that it would be inappropriate to follow 
through, especially since some other Democrats, not to mention most of the 
Republicans, were worse and never even pretended to be with us. But we're not 
handing out prizes in the afterlife here. We're trying to move those who might 
be moved.

Now, there is another reason why the next time is almost guaranteed to be 
harder. Unless the Democrats choose to include something else as strongly 
opposed by Republicans as the IMF, most of the Republicans can be expected to 
vote Yes. There may be nine who oppose the war funding. Combining them with the 
30 Democrats gives us our block of 39 after all. (These would be the nine who 
voted No on the war supplemental before the IMF was added to it. But that was an 
easy vote. By that measure we had 51 Democrats, so these nine are not solid.) 
This means that, in a worst case scenario, we need to find -- in addition to 
these nine -- not 39 No votes, but 209 No votes, and most of them from 
Democrats. We're starting at 39 if we can hold them and need 179 more. This 
should not be considered impossible, not if we are succeeding at the 
communications strategy above and the counter-recruitment / resistance below. If 
most of the Congress members we have on our side found five more who would vote 
with them, we'd have a comfortable majority. We need to develop a system to whip 
Congress members to whip other Congress members. We also have the advantage of 
being able to tell them this time that when they told us last time that they 
were voting for the last war supplemental it was a lie.

This strategy of cutting off the funding for war, which can and should be used 
against standard military/war budget bills as well as supplementals, has always 
struck some people as a harder hill to climb than passing bills and amendments 
and resolutions that we approve of, steps that move us somehow in the direction 
of peace even while funding war. But this thinking ignores the existence of the 
United States Senate. While we can block a bill in the House, we have to pass a 
bill in both the House and Senate, and the chances of a good bill passing the 
Senate are smaller than Dick Cheney passing through the eye of a needle. There 
may be measures we want to advance in the House for communications purposes. And 
there may be measures we can persuade the House to slip into other bills the 
Senate wants to pass. But none of this should be our focus.

Bills that we might want to move in the House for communications purposes might 
include Rep. McGovern's bill requiring an exit strategy for Afghanistan, or 
legislation that turned the slogan of "Healthcare Not Welfare" into policy. A 
bill requiring that for every dollar spent on wars and military at least 25 
cents must go into a fund for single-payer healthcare would be rhetorically 
useful. You can imagine the multitude of possibilities, as well as the impact if 
such a discussion were to penetrate the healthcare debate.

Bills that we might slip something very useful into and conceivably still get 
passed include House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer's "paygo" bill, which has 159 
cosponsors and the support of the Democratic leadership and the White House. 
This bill requires that any expense be paid for by a tax increase or a cutback 
elsewhere. But the bill makes an exception for "emergency" legislation, which is 
of course what war supplementals are claimed to be. An amendment to the paygo 
bill stipulating that no war already in progress for over five years is an 
"emergency" would, I think, effectively impose a paygo requirement on war 
supplementals. And suddenly you'd be unable to pass a war supplemental without 
explaining where the money was going to come from. In such a situation, it's 
conceivable that Blue Dogs and Republicans would join us faster than Progressives.

Congress can do other useful things as well, things that it is easier to get 
them to do. The House can pass a resolution supporting the right of the Iraqi 
people to a verifiable election this month on whether to agree to the treaty 
mislabeled a Status of Forces Agreement. The House can hold hearings on the 
subject. Advancing that issue, through Congress and elsewhere, should be our 
immediate priority. And in the back of our heads should be plans to demand a 
public vote for the people of Afghanistan.

We should also be working to sign incumbent and challenger candidates in the 
2010 congressional elections onto a platform committing them to voting no funds 
to continue wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Pakistan. It's not that we can trust 
them to keep their word. Only intense immediate pressure can control them. The 
point is to begin shaping the election in terms of how they will vote on war 
money between now and the election.

COUNTER RECRUITMENT

I've gone on at too much length to burden you with a detailed discussion of 
counter-recruitment and resistance when others can provide more expertise than 
I. The National Network Opposing Militarization of Youth at http://nnomy.org 
provides excellent resources on the crucial work of keeping recruiters out of 
schools. NNOMY is holding a national conference July 17-19 in Chicago, and you 
are invited.

Courage to Resist at http://www.couragetoresist.org provides up-to-date 
information on efforts within the US military to refuse illegal orders.

Marjorie Cohn and Kathleen Gilberd's new book "Rules of Disengagement: The 
Politics and Honor of Military Dissent" is good background, as is "Army of None: 
Strategies to Counter Military Recruitment, End War and Build a Better World," 
by Aimee Allison and David Solnit.

As Rumsfeld said, you go to war with the army you have, not the army you want. 
We must deny them the army they want. If we succeed beyond our wildest dreams 
for the next decade, at some point it might make sense to take into 
consideration the actual defense needs of the United States. At this point, the 
best thing our military could do to defend us would be to stop endangering us by 
doing everything it is doing.

COME TOGETHER RIGHT NOW

There's a national conference at which strategies to end the wars will be 
deliberated happening in Pittsburgh on July 10-12, and you should try to be 
there. The event is organized by the National Assembly to End the Iraq and 
Afghanistan Wars and Occupations at https://www.natassembly.org

I've submitted the following action proposal to the assembly and I hope to see 
you there.

ACTION PROPOSAL

Organize a mass protest march and civil resistance against war funding at House 
side of Capitol Hill on the 8th anniversary of invading Afghanistan, on 
Wednesday, October 7th. The House of Representatives is where we have the 
greatest chance of ending these wars. If we cut off the funding there, nothing 
else is needed. We can influence House members with activities in districts, 
online, in the media, and on Capitol Hill. But not on a weekend when they aren't 
there. We need to be present on a weekday and lobby them before and after we 
march. There was an action earlier this year on Capitol Hill aimed at cleaning 
up the local power plant and raising the demand for action on the climate. While 
that struggle is far from over, the march and protest suggested a useful 
approach. A large number of people, including young people, were organized to 
march and to risk arrest. But people were invited to march without risking 
arrest, thus boosting the crowd size and reducing the chances of anyone being 
arrested. This action was held on a weekday with Congress in session, and 
marched adjacent to the House office buildings. An action like this one on the 
eighth anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan, on Wednesday, October 7th, 
could send a powerful message of opposition to wars. Combined, of course, with 
lobby meetings and in-district actions. While such an action would be open to 
those willing to risk arrest and those not willing to do so, it would indeed 
fail to include those unable to participate on a Wednesday (except by making 
phone calls and holding in-district events). However, it WOULD include the 
people we intend to influence but which the corporate media cannot be counted on 
to inform of our doings over a weekend. Some members of Congress would even JOIN us.

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/plan