[Peace-discuss] NoEscalation.org: Can the Peace Movement Reach President Obama?

[C. G. Estabrook]

[This is fine as far as it goes, but as David Swanson points out below, 
"Blocking Escalation (Is) Not Good Enough." He writes, "United for Peace and 
Justice and a new anti-escalation coalition have both refused to host a list of 
congress members committed to voting No on war funding or even escalation 
funding."  We seem to have another example -- there have been too many in recent 
years -- of presumed war opponents working within the limits of allowable debate 
established by liberal war-makers. (Remember "Americans Against Escalation in 
Iraq," the Democratic party front group?) The administration should be opposed 
from the Right and the Left and condemned for its war policy. --CGE]


Why is it that every time we elect "peace" candidates we defund the peace 
movement, stop calling for an end to wars, and limit our demands exclusively to 
opposing war escalations?

In 2006 we voted into Congress the candidates who looked most likely to end the 
war in Iraq. We congratulated ourselves on a job well done. Then we mildly urged 
them not to escalate the war they'd been elected to end, and they escalated it 
anyway.

In 2008 we voted into Congress and the White House the candidates who looked 
most likely to end the war in Iraq. Candidate Obama promised to pull out two 
brigades per month for sixteen months. Here we are in month 10 and that 
withdrawal has yet to begin. And what in the name of all that is true, good, and 
free-of-hope are we doing about it? Not a god damned thing.

Meanwhile Obama promised, much less noisily, to escalate a war in Afghanistan 
and has done so with no resistance, even as the American people have (at least 
in polls) turned against it. Now party leaders in Congress have given Obama the 
go-ahead for a larger escalation, and what have we done?

To begin with we've accepted the terms of the debate that our government 
officials always impose on us following an election: Are you for an escalation 
or do you think the current troop/mercenary levels are adequate? There is no 
room in that debate for arguing that the entire enterprise is illegal, barbaric, 
self-destructive, and must be immediately replaced with civilized acts of aid 
and diplomacy.

Of course we should oppose an escalation, just as we should prefer a "public 
option" to no healthcare reform at all. But self-censoring our demand for 
single-payer shifts the debate so far right that we can't even pass a public 
option. And self-censoring our demand for an end to wars shifts the debate to a 
point where the middle ground becomes an escalation of half the largest size 
anyone proposes -- and the war in Iraq is not even mentioned.

Well-meaning peace groups are pointlessly urging us to lobby the president, and 
are publicly whipping congress members on the following items: sponsorship of a 
bill that would require some sort of non-binding exit plan for Afghanistan if 
actually passed by the House and Senate and signed by the president, and 
sponsorship of a bill that would deny funding for an escalation in Afghanistan 
if actually passed by the House and Senate and signed by the president. But 
getting either of those bills through the Senate is going to be significantly 
more difficult than getting the House to stop funding the wars, and thus far no 
organizations have begun building a public list of House members committed to 
voting No on war money.

In June, because all the Republicans were voting No on the war money for their 
own crazy reasons, we only needed 39 Democrats to vote No to block it, and we 
managed to get 32. We could easily line up 39 right now if we worked at it. Then 
we could begin building from there in the direction of 218. Even if all you 
wanted to oppose was escalation, the way to actually do so would be to build a 
whip list of House members committed to voting No on war funding bills that did 
not limit troop levels in Afghanistan to the desired level. Nobody is doing 
that. The next supplemental spending bill will probably come by spring, and 
it'll come sooner the greater the escalation, but peace coalitions tell me they 
think it's smarter not to prepare for such fights ahead of time.

FireDogLake, which hosted our whip list in June, is fully immersed in healthcare 
struggles. United for Peace and Justice and a new anti-escalation coalition have 
both refused to host a list of congress members committed to voting No on war 
funding or even escalation funding. So, I'm going to provide, not a replacement 
for the anti-escalation campaigns, but a necessary addition to them. I'm going 
to post a list at the top of http://afterdowningstreet.org and encourage you to 
ask these 32 heroes from back in June (plus a very short list of Republicans) 
whether they are committed to voting against further funding for the wars in 
Iraq and Afghanistan. Please phone them at (202) 224-3121 and post your 
responses on the website.

Tammy Baldwin
Michael Capuano
John Conyers
Lloyd Doggett
Donna Edwards
Keith Ellison
Sam Farr
Bob Filner
Alan Grayson
Raul Grijalva
Michael Honda
Marcy Kaptur
Dennis Kucinich
Barbara Lee
Zoe Lofgren
Eric Massa
Jim McGovern
Michael Michaud
Donald Payne
Chellie Pingree
Jared Polis
Jose Serrano
Carol Shea-Porter
Brad Sherman
Jackie Speier
Pete Stark
John Tierney
Nikki Tsongas
Maxine Waters
Diane Watson
Peter Welch
Lynn Woolsey

Ron Paul
Walter Jones

http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/47250


Robert Naiman wrote:
> If there were ever a time when the peace movement should be able to
> have an impact on U.S. foreign policy, that time should be now. If
> there were ever a time for extraordinary effort to achieve such an
> impact, that time is now.
> 
> National peace advocacy organizations are launching such an
> extraordinary effort. At the joint website noescalation.org, we're
> posting the phone numbers of every Congressional office, and what is
> known so far about where they stand on the proposal to send 40,000
> more U.S. troops. We're asking Americans to call Congressional offices
> and search the media for information on where each Member of Congress
> stands. And we're asking for that information to be reported back to
> the website noescalation.org.
> 
> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/noescalationorg-can-the-p_b_329878.html
> 
> http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/10/22/102552/68
> 
> http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/47234
> 
> http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/node/378