[Peace-discuss] David Swanson: Admit It: Things Are Going Well

Tue Sep 17 15:44:34 UTC 2013

 From David Swanson, a good article to bring up on AWARE on the Air. (Is 
it happening today? I'm not sure whether I can attend but will try, if 
it's on.)

"[...] The point is that war was popularly rejected.

Why does this matter?  It's not a case for optimism, or for pessimism.  
I continue to have very little use for either bit of self-indulgence.  
The forces that press for more wars have not gone away.  Neither have 
they been empowered.  The point is that those who nonsensically proclaim 
that stopping wars is impossible cannot get away with saying that anymore."

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	[ufpj-activist] Admit It: Things Are Going Well
Date: 	Sun, 15 Sep 2013 22:39:19 -0400
From: 	David Swanson <davidcnswanson at gmail.com>
To: 	ufpj-activist <ufpj-activist at lists.mayfirst.org>

  Admit It: Things Are Going Well

By David Swanson
http://warisacrime.org/content/admit-it-things-are-going-well

/When something goes right
Oh, it's likely to lose me
It's apt to confuse me
It's such an unusual sight
/?Paul Simon

Larry Summers has proven unacceptable to oversee the continued 
destruction of the U.S. economy.  The U.S. public has successfully 
rejected proposed missile strikes on Syria. My Congressman was among the 
majority who listened.  Today was beautiful.  The Orioles won.  The 
Cowboys lost.  The University of Virginia avoided losing by not 
playing.  My family is expecting a new baby.  I've finished a new book 
<http://davidswanson.org/warnomore>, which Kathy Kelly has written a 
beautiful foreword for.  I have a sense that if the universe were right 
now campaigning on "hope and change" I might seriously consider voting 
for it.

I'm also pretty sure that if everything in my personal life were going 
slightly to hell and Larry Summers were crowned king of Wall Street, and 
the Dallas Cowboys were to win (darn them!), my sense of this moment in 
the movement against U.S. militarism would remain essentially the same.  
A major victory has been won, and we need to claim it and celebrate it.

Imagine the euphoria -- or don't imagine it, just remember it -- when 
this country elects a new president whose main redeeming feature is that 
he isn't the previous president. For personality fanatics that's big 
stuff.  And there are big parties.  For policy fanatics -- for those of 
us interested in seeing policies change rather than personalities -- 
that kind of moment is right now.  We need some parties, and if 
spontaneity is beyond us, perhaps we can use the International Day of 
Peace on September 21st for a combination celebration / discussion 
during which we explain to ourselves that it really is OK to celebrate.

Yes, many people in this country and around the world are suffering 
horrible tragedies in their personal lives and as a result of public 
events.  Yes, the horrors in Syria, as in many other places, continue.  
Yes, the CIA is arming terrorists in Syria.  Yes, the president whose 
missile strikes we prevented is taking credit for that restraint, just 
as he would have taken credit for the carnage had we not stopped him -- 
and he's threatening to bring the missile strikes back. Yes, if we let 
down our guard for a moment, the president and Congress and the CIA will 
do their worst.  Yes, the danger for Iraq and Libya really loomed large 
after they had given up nuclear and chemical weapons, not before.  Yes, 
lots of people opposed bombing Syria because they didn't think Syrians 
deserved such favors.  (No, I'm not making that up.)  Yes, the corporate 
media is pretending that the threat of war brought peace, ignoring the 
successful insistence on peace by the people of the world.

But that's why we have to celebrate what really happened.  We have to 
announce it.  The point is not to take credit.  No one person or group 
did this.  People espousing a variety of ideologies did it.  And they 
did it over many years.  Millions contributed.  The point is that war 
was popularly rejected.

Why does this matter?  It's not a case for optimism, or for pessimism.  
I continue to have very little use for either bit of self-indulgence.  
The forces that press for more wars have not gone away.  Neither have 
they been empowered.  The point is that those who nonsensically proclaim 
that stopping wars is impossible cannot get away with saying that anymore.

You know the types.  They show up at meetings, wait for the 
question-and-answer period, and then give a speech on how everything is 
utterly hopeless.  Those speeches should be laughed away within the 
first five seconds now.  And the many, many people who had begun ever so 
slightly to take that defeatist nonsense seriously can now be relieved 
of that weight.  The danger now is not of being a sucker who proclaimed 
good news just before a genocide.  The danger is of joining in the 
foolish campaign of the war propagandists by pushing the lie of 
powerlessness on people just after they prevented a war.

Do we still have to prevent a war again this week? Of course, we do 
<http://warisacrime.org>.  Do we have to take on the larger task of 
organizing peace and preventing crises? We do 
<http://davidswanson.org/outlawry>.  Do we need to build a movement for 
the abolition of war that reaches beyond opposition to each immediate 
war proposal? You'd better believe it 
<http://davidswanson.org/warnomore>.  But this is what we wanted in 2001 
and 2003.  Well, some of us did -- that's the point.  We're larger now, 
even if it's not made visible.  As long as we went on failing to prevent 
wars, people could say we'd never prevent them.  There's no science or 
logic behind such an assertion, but it still has power in it.  Or it 
did, until now.  Now we can claim with equal validity that we'll stop 
every single war proposed from here on out.  Of course we might or we 
might not, but we know that it's up to us, that it depends on what we 
do, that little steps that appear useless at the time can help, and that 
changes to our culture can outweigh changes to the Pentagon budget, the 
global climate, crises in capitalism, or any other supposedly 
unstoppable force.

After World War I, people in the United States understood the need to 
eliminate war.  Again, after Vietnam, many understood it almost that 
much.  They developed the Vietnam Syndrome, a level of healthy 
resistance to more wars lamented as a disease by Washington.  Now we're 
moving back in that direction.  War resistance is the health of the 
people.  We're not developing a syndrome.  We're developing an 
immunity.  We've been vaccinated against war.  We're not as allergic to 
the propaganda <http://warisalie.org> as we once were.  We're war 
resistant, and our task is to compel those in power not to lament our 
syndrome this time, but to share in our contagious good health.

-- 

David Swanson's books include "War Is A Lie <http://warisalie.org/>." He 
blogs at http://davidswanson.org <http://davidswanson.org/> and 
http://warisacrime.org <http://warisacrime.org/> and works for 
http://rootsaction.org <http://rootsaction.org/>. He hosts Talk Nation 
Radio <http://davidswanson.org/taxonomy/term/41>. Follow him on Twitter: 
@davidcnswanson <http://twitter.com/davidcnswanson> and FaceBook 
<http://www.facebook.com/pages/David-Swanson/297768373319#>.
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