[Peace-discuss] Pleonastic Anti-War Peace Movement?

Mon Jan 25 13:47:07 CST 2010

My suggestion to the effort to re-new the peace movement is that they begin calling the current middle east conflagrations "Obama's Wars".  Every time George W Bush is blamed, all sense of personal responsibility for the current foreign policy disaster's by the Obama administration is lost & confused in the minds of his supporters. 

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> Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2010 11:36:21 -0600
> From: galliher at illinois.edu
> To: peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> Subject: [Peace-discuss] Pleonastic Anti-War Peace Movement?
> 
> 	January 25 2010
> 	The Anti-War Peace Movement Needs a Re-Start
> 
> America Needs a Patriotic, Broad-Based and Politically Independent Opposition to 
> War. By Kevin Zeese
> 
> In his first year President Obama broke several war-making records of President 
> George W. Bush. He passed the largest military budget in U.S. history, the 
> largest one-year war supplementals and fired the most drone attacks on the most 
> countries. He began 2010 asking for another $30 billion war supplemental and 
> with the White House indicating that the next military budget will be $708 
> billion, breaking Obama’s previous record.
> 
> While some commentators on MSNBC hailed Obama as the peace candidate, he has 
> done more for war in a shorter time than many other commanders-in-chief. U.S. 
> attacks on other countries are not challenged in any serious way even if they 
> result in consistent loss of innocent civilian life. It is not healthy for 
> American democracy to allow unquestioned militarism and put war budgets on a 
> path of automatic growth despite the U.S. spending as much as the rest of the 
> world combined on weapons and war.
> 
> Anti-war opposition has failed and needs to begin anew. The peace movement which 
> atrophied during the election year now must re-make itself.
> 
> What would successful anti-war peace advocacy look like?
> 
> The vast majority of Americans widely opposes war and wants the U.S. to focus 
> its resources at home. Their initial reaction to wars and escalations, before 
> the corporate media spin propagandizes them in a different direction, is to 
> oppose war. But, these views are not reflected in the body politic and certainly 
> not in the DC discourse on war. Rather than anti-war opposition being 
> broad-based, it has been a narrow. It is a leftish movement that does not 
> include Middle America or conservatives who also see the tremendous waste of the 
> bloated military budget and the militarism of U.S. foreign policy.
> 
> Being opposed to war is not considered mainsteam in American politics. 
> Opposition to war and support for peace needs to become a perspective that is 
> included in political debate on the media and in the Congress. It is currently 
> excluded. Successful anti-war advocacy needs to be credible and well organized 
> so it cannot be ignored. This begins by recognizing the broad, legitimate 
> opposition to war and the long-term anti-war views of Americans across the 
> political spectrum.
> 
> There is a long history of opposition to war among traditional conservatives. 
> Their philosophy goes back to President Washington’s Farewell Address where he 
> urged America to avoid “foreign entanglements.” It has showed itself throughout 
> American history. The Anti-Imperialist League opposed the colonialism of the 
> Philippines in the 1890s. The largest anti-war movement in history, the America 
> First Committee, opposed World War II and had a strong middle America 
> conservative foundation in its make-up. The strongest speech of an American 
> president against militarism was President Eisenhower’s 1961 final speech from 
> the White House warning America against the growing military-industrial complex.
> 
> In recent years the militarist neo-conservative movement has become dominate of 
> conservatism in the United States. Perhaps none decry this more than traditional 
> conservatives who oppose massive military budgets, militarism and the American 
> empire. Anti-war conservatives continue to exist, speak out and organize. Much 
> of their thinking can be seen in the American Conservative magazine which has 
> been steadfastly anti-war since its founding in 2002 where their first cover 
> story was entitled “Iraq Folly.”
> 
> Of course, the left also has a long history of opposition to war from the Civil 
> War to early imperialism in the Philippines, World Wars I and II through 
> Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. It includes socialists, Quakers, social justice 
> Catholics and progressives. Indeed, the opposition to entry into World War I was 
> led by the left including socialists, trade unionists, pacifists including 
> people like union leader and presidential candidate Eugene Debs, Nobel Peace 
> Prize winner Jane Addams and author and political activist Helen Keller. This 
> movement was so strong that Woodrow Wilson ran a campaign to keep the U.S. out 
> of the Great War (but ended up getting the U.S. into the war despite his 
> campaign promises). Opposition to Vietnam brought together peace advocates with 
> the civil rights movement, highlighted by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s 
> outspoken opposition to the war.
> 
> Uniting anti-war opposition is an urgent initial step to developing strong 
> anti-war, peace advocacy. The cost of U.S. militarism in lives and dollars has 
> become so great that Americans who oppose U.S. militarism need to join together 
> to create an effective opposition to the military industrial complex that 
> profits from war. Yes, there will be disagreements on other issues but when it 
> comes to war and American empire there is broad agreement that needs to be built on.
> 
> A successful anti-war peace movement cannot give up the flag of patriotism. It 
> needs to grab hold of America’s patriotic impulses and show the United States 
> can be the nation many imagine us to be – leading by positive example, helping 
> in crisis, being a force for good, rather than propagating military dominance 
> and hegemony. A successful anti-war movement needs to be a place where veterans, 
> from grunts to generals, can openly participate, share their stories and explain 
> the lessons they learned from American militarism. While the left has been able 
> to include the lower level grunts and officers, it has not been a safe haven for 
> generals and admirals who have become opposed to extreme militarism. A safe 
> place, a patriotic, broad-based anti-war movement, will allow more former 
> military to speak out in a cohesive and effective manner.
> 
> And, a patriotic anti-war peace movement will also be able to attract the 
> support of business leaders who recognize that war undermines the American 
> economy as well as hurting national security, undermining national and 
> international law and weakening the U.S. economy. When the United States is 
> spending one million dollars per soldier in Afghanistan it is evident to anyone 
> focused on the bottom line that a teetering U.S. economy cannot afford the cost 
> of war.
> 
> Indeed, a well organized anti-war movement will have committees not only 
> reaching out to military and business, but to academics, students, clergy, 
> labor, nurses, doctors, teachers and a host of others. Outreach and organization 
> needs to be an ongoing priority. And, organization must be designed around 
> congressional districts so it can have a political impact. This demonstrates one 
> reason for the need for a right left coalition; the anti-war movement cannot 
> allow “red” states or districts to go unorganized.
> 
> Successful anti-war advocacy will also need new tactics. The government and 
> media have adjusted to 1960s tactics. Mass marches and disruption of Congress 
> reached all time highs during the build up and fighting of the Iraq war but with 
> little effect. The government has learned how to handle these tactics and avoid 
> media attention. There certainly will continue to be roles for these tactics but 
> they cannot be central and more is needed.
> 
> Anti-war advocates need to use voter initiatives and referenda to raise issues 
> that legislators will not confront. This strategy is a way to break though the 
> power of the military industrial complex and bring issues to the people. It 
> forces a public debate and pushes voters to confront how extreme militarism 
> affects their lives. The U.S. has already spent a trillion dollars in Iraq and 
> Afghanistan when care for the wounded and lost productivity is included the cost 
> is more than doubled. In a decades long “Long War” military expenditures will 
> cripple the U.S. economy. Effective opposition to war will show how the cost of 
> war affects every American’s life.
> 
> Around the world other tactics have been successfully deployed on issues that 
> U.S. advocates are not well organized enough to deploy. These include general 
> strikes where people take off work for hours or days to send a message that the 
> people are organized in opposition to government policy. Similarly slow downs in 
> the nation’s capitol that bring the business of government to a halt demonstrate 
> that the people will not let the business as usual go on without interruption. 
> We can see the beginnings of such efforts in the U.S. peace movement in Cindy 
> Sheehan’s “Peace of the Action” that recently protested drones at the CIA and 
> seeks to block the business of Empire in the nation’s capitol in 2010.
> 
> Finally, and of critical importance, is for the anti-war peace movement to be 
> truly non-partisan and politically independent. Recently peace activists have 
> been drawn into silence when John “Anybody but Bush” Kerry ran a campaign where 
> he called for escalation of the Iraq War and expansion of the military. And, 
> when candidate Obama promised to escalate the Afghanistan war, attack Pakistan, 
> only partially withdraw from Iraq and expand the U.S. military – many in the 
> peace movement remained silent or criticized his policies but promised to 
> support him anyway. The peace movement needs to protest candidates from any 
> party who call for more militarism, larger military budgets and more U.S. troops 
> and demand real anti-war positions for their votes.
> 
> Movements cannot stop and start for elections, nor allow party loyalty to divide 
> them. They must continue to build through the election. Indeed, elections can be 
> prime opportunities to build the movement and push candidates toward the 
> anti-war peace perspective. Peace voters must be clear in their demands: end to 
> the current wars, no more wars of aggression and dramatic reductions in the 
> military budget so that it is really a defense budget not a war budget. This 
> does not mean leaving the U.S. weak and unable to defend itself, but it should 
> not be a budget that allows aggressive misuse of the U.S. military as the 
> primary tool of foreign policy.
> 
> Developing an effective anti-war peace movement is a big task that will take 
> years. U.S. Empire can be traced back to the late 1800s and President Eisenhower 
> warned America of the military industrial complex fifty years ago. The U.S. is 
> currently engaged in a “Long War” supported by neocons, neo-liberals and 
> corporatist politicians. The pro-militarist establishment has deep roots in both 
> major parties and undoing the military machine will take many years of work. 
> Advocacy against war and militarism needs to be persistent; constantly educating 
> the American public that war undermines national security, weakens the rule of 
> law and contributes to the collapsing economy. We need to show how investment in 
> militarism rather than civil society undermines livability of American 
> communities, weakens the economy and puts basic necessities like education and 
> health care financially out of reach.
> 
> The facts are on the side of the anti-war peace advocates, now we must build 
> organizations that represent the patriotic, anti-militarist impulses of the 
> American people.
> 
> Kevin Zeese is executive director of Voters for Peace (www.VoterForPeace.US).
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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