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

[C. G. Estabrook]

Swanson writes, apparently quite accurately, that the Lee bill "would deny 
funding for an escalation in Afghanistan if actually passed by the House and 
Senate and signed by the president."

Again we have a gesture, pro forma, in terms of a bill impossible to pass when 
fewer votes can prevent the passage of any bill funding the war.  What can the 
motive be for taking an ineffective route, except support for the 
administration's overall policy by acceptance of its terms for debate? --CGE


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
> 
> 
>