[Peace-discuss] Organizing against escalation?

[C. G. Estabrook]

"Click through the leftish or progressive websites these days and you’ll find 
endless alarums about the renascent right, the brownshirt threat, the massed 
stormtroopers of Glenn Beck. You won’t find too much practical organizing 
against Obama’s escalation in Afghanistan."

	September 4-6, 2009
	CounterPunch Diary
	Deeper Into the Tunnel
	By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

As General Stan McChrystal plans his march on Washington to demand more troops 
in Afghanistan the antiwar movement lies on the sidewalk, as inert and forlorn 
as a homeless person in the rain at a street corner, too dejected even to hold 
up a sign. This is at a time that as Mark Ames has just pointed out, “Obama is 
doubling down in Afghanistan with more troops deployed now than the Soviets ever 
had.” Yes, add up US troops and contractors and you get a US invasion of 
Afghanistan bigger than the Soviet force at its peak.

Is there any sign of life in a movement that marshaled hundreds of thousands to 
march in protest against war in Iraq?  Ah, but those were the Bush years. Now we 
have a Democrat in the White House.

One person hasn’t tossed aside her peace sign. Cindy Sheehan sees war as war, 
whether the battle standard is being waved by a white moron from Midland, Texas 
or an eloquent black man from Chicago. But when she called for protesters to 
join her on Martha’s Vineyard to stand outside Obama’s holiday roost for four 
days at the end of August there was a marked contrast to the response she got 
when she rallied thousands to stand outside Bush’s Crawford lair.

As John Walsh described it here last week, “the silence was,  as Cindy put it in 
an email to this writer, ‘crashingly deafening.’  Where are the email appeals to 
join Cindy from The Nation or from AFSC or Peace Action or “Progressive” 
Democrats of America (PDA) or even Code Pink?   Or United for Peace and Justice. 
And what about MoveOn although it was long ago thoroughly discredited as 
principled opponents of war or principled in any way shape or form except 
slavish loyalty to the ‘other’ War Party.  And of course sundry ‘socialist’ 
organizations are also missing in action since their particular dogma will not 
be front and center.  These worthies and many others have vanished into the fog 
of Obama’s wars.”

Before he joined Sheehan on Martha’s Vineyard, Walsh says he contacted several 
of the leaders of the “official” peace movement in the Boston area – AFSC, Peace 
Action, Green Party of MA (aka Green Rainbow Party) and some others.  Not so 
much as the courtesy of a reply resulted from this effort - although the GRP at 
least posted a notice of the action.

Click through the leftish or progressive websites these days and you’ll find 
endless alarums about the renascent right, the brownshirt threat, the massed 
stormtroopers of Glenn Beck. You won’t find too much practical organizing 
against Obama’s escalation in Afghanistan.

Take the craven behavior of the leadership of the October 17 anti-war protest in 
San Francisco, the first scheduled  to be held in the Obama era. In the 
nuts-and-bolts details  of organizing and endorsements, the saga tells us much 
about the spavined state of the antiwar movement.

On August 29, the October 17 Coalition voted to endorse a protest at the 
Westin-St. Francis, one of the city’s flashier hotels,  the following Friday 
where San Francisco Congresswoman and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was to be 
honored with a $100 a plate breakfast. But by the end of the day the October 17 
coalition leadership got cold feet when it learned that the host of the 
breakfast was none other than the San Francisco Labor Council...

Full story at <http://www.counterpunch.org/>.