[Peace-discuss] People of the Cave (Qur'an 18:9-26)

[C. G. Estabrook]

	Is the Antiwar Movement Waking Up?
	Not quite yet…
	by Justin Raimondo, August 31, 2009

Like Rip van Winkle, it seems that the American antiwar movement is – finally – 
waking up, although, like the original Rip, it doesn’t seem to have changed its 
idle ways. "A restive antiwar movement," avers the New York Times, "largely 
dormant since the election of Barack Obama, is preparing a nationwide campaign 
this fall to challenge the administration’s policies on Afghanistan." Just how 
restive, however, is a matter of some ambiguity.

No real national protests have been called by any significant antiwar grouping. 
Instead, we are to be treated to scattered local protests. The Times reports 
that, in response to the administration’s announcement that they’re sending 
20,000 more troops to Afghanistan,

"Antiwar leaders have engaged in a flurry of meetings to discuss a month of 
demonstrations, lobbying, teach-ins, and memorials in October to publicize the 
casualty count, raise concerns about the cost of the war, and pressure Congress 
to demand an exit strategy."

Oh, but there’s a slight problem: that old reliable "lightning rod for protest," 
George W. Bush, is gone, replaced by a liberal icon whom "progressives" are 
loath to criticize. Antiwar organizers, we are told, "face a starkly changed 
political climate from just a year ago," but what the article fails to mention 
is that this change has taken place among a very narrow group of people. 
Progressives who were jumping up and down denouncing Bush’s war are silent – and 
even, in the case of groups like VoteVets, enthusiastic supporters – when it 
comes to Obama’s wars.

Yet the real change, and far more significant, is the one taking place in the 
population at large, among Republicans as well as Democrats. A new Washington 
Post/ABC News poll finds, for the first time, that a majority of Americans think 
the Afghan war is "not worth it." The breakdown is even more ominous for the 
Obamaites: of the antiwar contingent, 41 percent feel strongly, while on the 
other side, only 31 percent feel that way. The belief that the U.S. and its 
dwindling band of allies can reasonably expect to win the war is similarly wavering.

What support the president has managed to maintain on this issue has a soft 
underbelly highly vulnerable to continued bad news from the battlefield – which 
is one reason why the administration has hired the Rendon Group, whose marketing 
job for Ahmed Chalabi worked out so well, to vet "embedded" reporters in 
Afghanistan. The Obama crowd, like its predecessors, knows full well the value 
of controlling the narrative. Now if only they can declare a "cyber-emergency" 
and seize control of the Internet, as Jay Rockefeller’s bill envisions!

Yet not even that would succeed, I’ll wager: the American people are sick and 
tired of constant wars, and it doesn’t matter if the commander in chief is a 
Democrat, a Republican, or a Vegetarian.

This is a reality the War Party has had to contend with ever since the Founders’ 
time, and as our old republic morphed into an Empire, it has been increasingly a 
problem for our rulers. Americans have a natural antipathy to meddling in the 
affairs of other peoples, a sentiment often derided as obstinate "isolationism" 
by our all-knowing elites, who, of course, know better. More bad news for the 
War Party: hostility to overseas adventurism is amplified in times of economic 
trouble, when it seems – to any ordinary person, that is – as if we have enough 
problems to deal with right here at home. Why, they want to know, are we 
engaging in "nation-building" in Afghanistan, of all places, when our own 
country seems to be literally falling apart at the seams?

This is precisely why the New York Times piece rings so hollow when it gets to 
enumerating reasons for the general lack of enthusiasm among progressives for 
opposing the Afghan war: you see, "The health care battle is consuming the 
resources of labor unions and other core Democratic groups."

Is it really necessary to point out that funding for the healthcare programs 
these groups say they want is being diverted into the Afghan money pit? 
Congressman Ron Paul, the libertarian Republican whose anti-interventionist 
views set him apart from the other GOP presidential contenders, rightly argues 
that if we would "just get rid of the Empire" we’d have enough to subsidize 
healthcare for every American – and then some.

Of course, Rep. Paul, being a libertarian, opposes government-subsidized 
healthcare, but I’m just sayin’ – if American progressives really, really want 
these programs, then why aren’t they fighting for them by demanding an end to a 
war that will wind up devouring any chance for a fiscally feasible national 
healthcare system?

The reason, I believe, is because, as Jon Soltz, leader of VoteVets.org, puts 
it, "People do not want to take on the administration. Generating the kind of 
money that would be required to challenge the president’s policies just isn’t 
going to happen."

It’s fascinating to watch "antiwar leaders" like Soltz – who openly supports the 
invasion and occupation of Afghanistan – move in the opposite direction from the 
rest of the country. What "people" don’t want to take on the administration? 
Why, Soltz and his oh-so-progressive friends who run Democratic front 
organizations, that’s who.

Rank-and-file progressives, however, have a very different view. The Washington 
Post/ABC News poll shows almost eight in ten self-identified liberal Democrats 
saying the war isn’t worth it, a precipitous 22 percent decline in support since 
March from that particular demographic. A development with even more potential 
significance is the lack of support among reliably pro-war Republicans: a mere 
58 percent say the U.S. is winning the war in Afghanistan. As the pollsters put 
it [.pdf]:

"The changes have not come in Obama’s base alone. Looking just by partisan 
affiliation, support for decreasing the U.S. deployment has risen by 20 points 
since January among Democrats, but also by 15 points among independents and by 
12 points among Republicans. Since March, views that the war’s been worth 
fighting have lost 14 points among Democrats, but also 7 points among 
independents and Republicans alike."

The major rationale – a purely political one, I might point out – for the Afghan 
war among Democrats, and the argument advanced by "centrists" against the 
antiwar base, is that exhibiting "weakness" in foreign policy matters opens the 
administration and the party in general to attacks from Republicans. Yet if a 
good part of the GOP’s own base is increasingly disenchanted with our Afghan 
adventure, then that excuse becomes ever less credible. This just adds to the 
irony of the "official" antiwar movement’s notorious left-sectarianism, which 
effectively excludes conservative and libertarian speakers at antiwar events and 
refuses to address the concerns of ordinary, middle-class Americans.

Contra Soltz, while money is an important factor is building an effective 
antiwar movement – we’ve just finished a particularly grueling fundraising 
drive, as I probably needn’t remind you – it is hardly decisive. What’s more 
important is the depth of commitment, and that is what seems truly lacking in 
what passes for the antiwar movement these days.

The Times cites Tom Andrews, national director of Win Without War, as saying 
"’most liberals ‘want this guy to succeed’" and fear the unfolding disaster in 
Afghanistan "could be a devastating albatross around the president’s neck." 
Whether this is a prescription for picking up the pace of liberal antiwar 
protests, in order to alert the Obama administration to the danger, or a 
rationale for inaction, so as not to have that albatross weigh even heavier 
around the Dear Leader’s neck, is not at all clear – although I rather suspect 
the latter.

A visit to the Web site of the main antiwar coalition, United for Peace and 
Justice, reveals little urgency when it comes to the Afghan war, and I note the 
only national actions scheduled for fall are being launched by groups other than 
UFPJ. Evidence of those "local actions" calling for an end to the Afghan war is 
scant: a search of their events calendar notes very few.

Of course, since UFPJ is dominated by the old Commie network – the remnants of 
the CPUSA and its social democratic split-off, the Committees of Correspondence 
– this is hardly surprising. These people have long been a drag on the antiwar 
movement, stifling the creation of a broad-based anti-interventionism in favor 
of saddling protests with the familiar litany of liberal demands. Now Obama’s 
campaign for free ice cream has totally eclipsed the ostensibly antiwar aims of 
the movement, inducing near complete paralysis.

While the "official" antiwar movement – which most certainly does not include 
this Web site – is sleepily rubbing its eyes and reluctantly responding to the 
president’s alarming escalation of the "Af-Pak" war, the determination of some 
elements of the movement is admirably unequivocal: "In the next year, it will 
more and more become Obama’s war," says Perry O’Brien, president of the New York 
chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War. "He’ll be held responsible for the 
bloodshed."

Really? While I wouldn’t hold my breath, I’d love to be pleasantly surprised. I 
should point out, however, that it isn’t just the president who makes our 
wrong-headed foreign policy, it’s the Democratic Party establishment, in 
coalition with its Republican equivalent. The entire apparatus of the party 
machinery, its leaders, and a great many of its most active foot-soldiers – 
including those in the media – are beholden to the War Party and amenable to its 
decisive influence in the world of Washington politics. As long as the 
"official" antiwar movement is merely the tail on the Democratic donkey, there 
will be no effective opposition to our war-crazed foreign policy, at least not 
in this country.

http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2009/08/30/is-the-antiwar-movement-waking-up/