[Peace-discuss] Memo to AWARE, on our Congressional representative & work against the war

[C. G. Estabrook]

It seems as though our delegate to the House of Representatives from the 13th Illinois Congressional District will be a supporter of the continuing US war in the Mideast - regardless of which candidate is elected in 2014.

A peculiar thing happened in AWARE's Congressional district during the Bush administration: our member of Congress, elected to a safe Republican seat, reversed his position and began voting against any more funding for war in the Middle East. Timothy Johnson began voting against the war while it was still George Bush's war - before Obama became president in 2009; he even went so far as voting for a resolution on the impeachment of Bush because of the war.

Unfortunately his successor in office, the Republican hack Rodney Davis, has not continued Johnson's opposition to the war, and it seems clear that Davis' Democrat opponent next year, whoever s/he is, will also be a war supporter.

In our re-gerrymandered district (now called the 13th), the state and national Democratic party has a better chance to elect its candidate in 2014 that it did in the old 15th Congressional district. So they bought off 'independent' Democrat candidate David Gill ('independent' in the sense that the state and national party didn't give him any money to run - he did not however publicly contest Obama's war-making). The state Democrats gave Gill a six-figure sinecure in Illinois' (bankrupt) state government, obviously on the condition that he not run again, and he immediately accepted. The way was cleared for a Democratic organization candidate. 

The Democratic party found what they hope will be a bridge to electoral success in Madison County: Judge Ann Callis, who "filed her one-page statement of candidacy with the Federal Election Commission on May 7." From her early, hazy interviews, it seems that Callis has no ideas out of line with the Obama administration. (Gill at least publicly supported Medicare for all.) 

"University of Illinois physics Professor George Gollin also is considering seeking the nomination in the district that stretches from Champaign-Urbana to Edwardsville, and runs through Decatur, Springfield and parts of Bloomington-Normal," writes Tom Kacich in the News-Gazette [1].

Oddly enough, Gollin sat at the AWARE table at the Farmers' Market for a good while last Saturday, "to talk to voters," but he refused to support AWARE's position on the war.  Nor would he say that as Congressman he'd vote against funding Mideast wars, as Rep. Johnson did.   

Now Erika Harold, clearly the smartest and most right-wing of the contenders at the Republican party's meetings last year to determine a successor to Johnson, has indicated that she may challenge Davis in a Republican primary in the spring [2]. A Davis-Harold Republican primary and a Callis-Gollin Democratic primary would mean that once again the voters will be presented with little but an illusion of choice: all four support the war.

I ran for this seat (against Johnson) as a Green party candidate in 2002, and although I'm not in a position to do so again, I have suggested to the Green party that the unanimity of 'major party' candidates on the administration's global assassination policies means that a Green party candidate could be a focus for opposition - and could draw support from Obama's opponents from the Left in the Democratic party (there are some), plus anti-interventionist Ron Paul supporters, etc. (Remember that Rep. Johnson introduced Ron Paul - and endorsed him for president - at an enthusiastic rally on the UI campus last March.)

The Vietnam war wasn't ended - and two presidents driven from office in the process - because anti-war members of Congress were elected in the 1960s and '70s. The war ended because the incumbent representatives realized that Americans knew that the U.S. wars in SE Asia were "fundamentally wrong and immoral," not "a mistake," as polls determined. That was the opinion of 70% of the U.S. population from the 1960s right through the Reagan-Bush years. We have to convince people that that's true of the current wars in SW Asia as well. The Obama administration is very much afraid that we'll succeed; that's why they've instituted the most heavy-handed suppression of information about the government's wars since the Wilson administration.

--CGE 

[1] http://www.news-gazette.com/news/local/2013-05-15/tom-kacich-dems-already-touting-field-13th-race-2014.html

[2] http://www.news-gazette.com/news/local/2013-05-14/harold-moving-back-c-u-will-announce-political-plans-soon.html