[Peace-discuss] What is the current state of the anti-war movement?

[C. G. Estabrook]

Ten years after the US invaded Afghanistan, the anti-war movement in 
America looks remarkably similar to what it was in 1972 - ten years after the 
US invaded South Vietnam. In each case, more than two-thirds of the 
American public oppose the war, but the press and 'educated opinion' - hence 
the ideological institutions, notably the universities - support it.  Our rulers' 
task, in cases 40 years apart, is therefore to make sure that democracy is 
ineffective. 

The American ascendency is in fact more effective at doing that now than they 
were then: they learnt something from the earlier experience. (See, e.g., 
Crozier et al., The Crisis of Democracy [1975] - the crisis being that allowing  
democracy in the US would interfere with elite plans.) But they also learnt that 
the US public will not allow things like the carpet-bombing in Vietnam: note 
the secrecy (from the US public of course - they're not secret from Afghans, 
Pakistanis, Somalis, Yemenis et al.) of Obama's drone attacks. 

There are other differences. The wars are very different: Vietnam was not 
important to the US except as a demonstration war - an illustration that 
countries are not to be allowed to develop independently, without 
coordinating their economies with US control. (And the US established the 
point by killing 4 million Asians, despite those who claim the US lost in 
Vietnam: its complete war aims were not achieved, but the important point 
was made clear to all - look at the SE Asian economies today.)  

Afghanistan ("Pipelinistan") is much more important to the US elite than 
Vietnam ever was. It's the keystone of the region that the US State Department 
in 1945 said contained "the world's greatest material prize" - Mideast oil. 
Today the US government is threatening, invading, and occupying countries 
from North Africa to the Indian subcontinent, and from Central Asia to the 
Horn of Africa - a vast circle with a 2,000-mile radius - the Greater Middle 
East. (The US military calls it "Central Command.) Control and not just access 
to those energy resources is what the US government demands: the US in fact 
imports very little oil from the Mideast, but control gives the US government 
an unparalleled advantage over its oil-hungry rivals in Europe and Asia. We're 
killing people in the Mideast and North Africa because China needs oil, and 
our government wants to control where they get it. Our government says that 
we're conducting these vastly expensive wars to stop terrorism and protect 
civilians; but it's obvious that, instead, we're killing civilians and creating 
terrorists. 

Finally,  the US is a very different country today. In 1972 it was a wealthy and 
prosperous society, with a self-confident middle class. Forty years of 
Neoliberal counter-attack to "the Sixties" have seen wages and standards of 
living stagnate or decline, even before the crisis of 2007/8 - out of which the 
rich 1% prospered and the 99% declined even further. 

And in these circumstances, the US population is subject to the greatest 
propaganda manipulation in history, because of the failure of US propaganda 
in the 1970s, when 70% of Americans saw the Vietnam war as "fundamentally 
wrong and immoral", not "a mistake."  In his My Struggle (1925/6), "Adolph 
Hitler suggested that the Germans lost the First World War because they could 
not match Anglo-American propaganda achievements, and he vowed that 
next time Germany would be ready. It had a big impact on future 
developments" [Noam Chomsky].

Barack Obama wrote in The Audacity of Hope that "the greatest casualty of 
that [Vietnam] war was the bond of trust between the American people and 
their government."  (Paul Street remarks, "as if the deaths of millions of 
Indochinese and 58,000 U.S. GIs were secondary and as if popular American 
skepticism towards the designs of the U.S. foreign policy establishment isn't a 
sign of democratic health.") Obama sees  his job accurately as to restore that 
"trust between the American people and their government" in regard to his 
war-making as well as his exploitative economic policy - although his account 
of the war is a lie. 

The first task of the anti-war movement in 2011 is to overcome its co-option 
by the Democrats in the elections of 2006 and 2008, and dispel the 
propaganda fog of the Obama administration. Obama's killing in the Mideast 
and Africa is more widespread, efficient, and brutal than Bush's ever was.  The 
anti-war movement must make that clear to the American people.   

Regards, CGE

---- Original message ----
>Date: Mon, 26 Sep 2011 19:33:43 -0500
>From: Karen Medina <kmedina67 at gmail.com>  
>Subject: [Peace-discuss] What is the current state of the anti-war 
movement?  
>To: Peace-discuss List <Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
>
>peace-discuss,
>
>What is the current state of the anti-war movement?
>AWARE has been asked to write an article on this topic, and I am
>curious as to what people think the current state is.
>
>-- karen medina
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