[Peace-discuss] retraction

Sun Jul 29 21:09:34 UTC 2018

I had an idea for what to do about this.

But the Friends Committee for National Genocide shut it down.

So don't ask me what to do about the genocide in Yemen.

Ask the Friends Committee on National Genocide. They're responsible for the
genocide in Yemen now.

Robert Naiman
Policy Director
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
naiman at justforeignpolicy.org
(202) 448-2898 x1

On Sun, Jul 29, 2018 at 2:15 PM, Robert Naiman <naiman at justforeignpolicy.org
> wrote:

> “The most revolutionary thing one can do is always to proclaim loudly what
> is happening.”
>
> I don't know if it's the most revolutionary thing, but it's certainly not
> a bad place to start.
>
> One thing I have noticed in the past is, certain stories seem to get
> locked in, and then seem impossible to dislodge, and then cause harm in the
> future.
>
> Like, "the 'surge' in Iraq worked." That became a Washington-true thing,
> even though there was plenty of evidence in mainstream press at the time
> that it wasn't true.
>
> Then, when the people who wanted a "surge" in Afghanistan wanted a "surge"
> in Afghanistan, they said: see, it's just like Iraq. The surge worked in
> Iraq, the surge will work in Afghanistan. Then nobody could really get in a
> word edgewise for "actually, the surge didn't really work in Iraq," because
> by that point, "the surge in Iraq worked" was Washington-true.
>
> When the anti-Russia thing started in the Obama Administration, I made a
> triage decision. I figured, I'm just one guy here, I have to focus
> somewhere. Russia has a big military, Russia has nuclear weapons, Russia
> has a seat on the UN Security Council. This anti-Russia thing is stupid,
> but Russians will be good enough ok. Yemenis don't have these things,
> Palestinians don't have these things, Iranians don't have these things. I
> will focus on the people who don't have these things, trying to protect
> them from the U.S.
>
> But then the anti-Russia thing got locked in, and turned out to be more
> harmful than I imagined.
>
> If I had the opportunity for a do-over, I would have spoken up more
> vigorously against the anti-Russia thing at the time it was being hatched.
> That was the best time to try to stop it.
>
> But regardless of that, we should "proclaim loudly what is happening."
> That is never wrong. And we don't know when the thing might turn.
>
> I remember when Reagan bombed Libya, there was a small demonstration in
> front of the White House, and there was a story on NPR about it. Like, ha
> ha ha, some goofy people are against this, let's go see what they have to
> say, just for fun. So the reporter interviewed some woman from the American
> Friends Service Committee. And the reporter said: polls show only 17% of
> Americans are against this. What do you think about that?
>
> And the woman from AFSC said:
>
> "Our job is to make the 17% more visible."
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Robert Naiman
> Policy Director
> Just Foreign Policy
> www.justforeignpolicy.org
> naiman at justforeignpolicy.org
> (202) 448-2898 x1
>
>
>
>
> On Sat, Jul 28, 2018 at 3:42 PM, Estabrook, Carl G via Peace-discuss <
> peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:
>
>> Too bad about Lee & Khanna.  But can't a single voice (or a few) be
>> dismissed as a malcontent, and irrelevant? (Look what was done to Ron Paul.)
>>
>> There wasn't a lone voice in Congress in 1968 regarding Vietnam (or later
>> Cambodia). There was a national mood, in Congress, and out of it, that
>> something was very wrong. The sort of thing Bernie Sanders should be saying
>> now.
>>
>> Fifty years ago that was led by student protest. Universities have had
>> two generations to scotch that, and they've been successful. They were
>> taken by surprise in the '60s, and they won't let that happen again. (Cue
>> Steve Salaita.)
>>
>> Perhaps BLM et al. can be the new catalyst. Black Agenda Report
>> consistently exposes the warmongering, even of a black president &
>> Congressional caucus. BAR is not misled by identity politics, which the
>> Democrats particularly want to use to distract from their neolib & neocon
>> policies - more war and more inequality.
>>
>> In regard to the current US wars, we surely need people who follow Rosa
>> Luxemburg’s advice, from a century ago: “The most revolutionary thing
>> one can do is always to proclaim loudly what is happening.”
>>
>> --CGE
>> ------------------------------
>> *From:* Peace-discuss [peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net] on
>> behalf of Robert Naiman via Peace-discuss [peace-discuss at lists.chambana.
>> net]
>> *Sent:* Saturday, July 28, 2018 3:02 PM
>> *To:* C G Estabrook
>> *Cc:* Peace-discuss List
>> *Subject:* Re: [Peace-discuss] retraction
>>
>> I don't know. I would like to think that we can push for the introduction
>> in the House and Senate when they return in September of bills invoking the
>> War Powers Resolution to force floor votes on ending U.S. participation in
>> the Yemen war. I think we could win a floor vote in the House, and I think
>> that would be a big deal. Maybe we could even win a floor vote in the
>> Senate, and that would be an even bigger deal. But I am worried that we
>> won't be able to build enough pressure to make this happen, given the
>> dominant mood in Washington now that the only things that people should
>> care about are things that help one team or the other in election
>> mobilization.
>>
>> But one thing I am pretty sure of is that we would much be better off now
>> if we had replaced Dennis Kucinich in the House as an anti-war champion, a
>> leader of anti-war efforts, on the Democratic side when he left DC in 2012.
>> And that, belatedly, we should try to figure out who the new Dennis
>> Kucinich can be. I'm sure it's not Barbara Lee. I'm sure it's not Ro
>> Khanna. But who it is I don't yet know.
>>
>> I'm trying to write something about this...
>>
>>
>>
>> Robert Naiman
>> Policy Director
>> Just Foreign Policy
>> www.justforeignpolicy.org
>> naiman at justforeignpolicy.org
>> (202) 448-2898 x1
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Jul 28, 2018 at 2:27 PM, C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss <
>> peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:
>>
>>> What are effective ways now to demand Congress end that war? And the
>>> others?
>>>
>>> The US is making war in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, and
>>> of course Syria, as well as Yemen. Thousands of U.S. troops are killing
>>> people in these countries, and more than a quarter of a million are
>>> stationed in a thousand US bases on foreign soil, most of them ringing
>>> Russia and China. The 70,000-members of the U.S. ‘Special Operations
>>> Command’ are active in no less than three-quarters of the countries of the
>>> world. Their activities include kidnapping (‘rendition’), torture, and
>>> murder.
>>>
>>> But the US government - cannier now than 50 years ago - has actively
>>> avoided the rise of popular outrage. By 1969 about 70% of the public had
>>> come to regard the war in Vietnam as “fundamentally wrong and immoral,” not
>>> “a mistake,” largely as a result of the impact of student protest on
>>> general consciousness. And that mass opposition compelled the business
>>> community and then the government to stop the escalation of the war.
>>>
>>> But the propaganda shield is more sophisticated now, from Russiagate to
>>> Trump Derangement Syndrome.
>>>
>>> What Is To Be Done? —CGE
>>>
>>>
>>> On Jul 28, 2018, at 2:07 PM, Robert Naiman via Peace-discuss <
>>> peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:
>>>
>>> I wouldn't have argued with Carl so strongly about the proposition that
>>> the world would be better off or worse off if Dems take the House if I had
>>> not believed at the time that Dems would help us end the U.S.-Saudi war in
>>> Yemen. I agree with him completely about the horrible ick of Dems becoming
>>> the anti-Russia party. I was quite certain that was outweighed by the
>>> possibility of ending the war in Yemen, which has pushed millions of human
>>> beings to the edge of starvation, and will push ten million more to the
>>> edge of starvation by the end of the year if it is not stopped.
>>>
>>> I don't believe that anymore. I don't believe anymore that Dems are
>>> going to help us end the war in Yemen. I believed that because that's what
>>> I was told by people whom I had good reason to trust. But they reneged. So
>>> now that's an open question for me; maybe they will, maybe they won't, but
>>> I have no basis for believing that they will.
>>>
>>> Thus, I don't care anymore if Dems take the House.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>
>>>
>>>
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>>>
>>
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>
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