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

[C. G. Estabrook]

"...prohibits funding for *more* troops..." -- so funding for troops at the 
present level is not affected.  That might count as "no escalation" but it 
certainly doesn't defund the war.


Robert Naiman wrote:
> Swanson has it wrong (not for the first time.) The Lee bill, whose
> co-sponsors are featured on the site, which urges callers to support
> it, prohibits funding for more troops.
> 
> 
> On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 2:19 PM, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu> wrote:
>> [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
> 
> 
>