[Peace] News notes 2005-08-21

[Carl Estabrook]

	President Bush, noting that lots of people want to talk to the
	president and "it's also important for me to go on with my life,"
	on Saturday defended his decision not to meet with the grieving
	mom of a soldier killed in Iraq.
	--Cox News Service, August 14, 2005

	"Why should we hear about body bags and deaths and how many, what
	day it's gonna happen? It's not relevant. So why should I waste my
	beautiful mind on something like that?"
	--Barbara Bush, to Diane Sawyer, March 18, 2003

[1] This was the week when a real debate about the war seemed to appear,
owing largely to plummeting poll numbers regarding support for the
administration, and the witness of Cindy Sheehan. The week began with
amazing pieces in the leading papers: (a) the Washington Post ran an
article, clearly placed by the administration, describing the "lowered
expectations" that they now had for Iraq; and (b) the New York Times ran
Frank Rich's column titled "Someone Tell the President the War Is Over."
Of course the war is far from over, as Norman Solomon and others were
quick to point out -- Rich himself says that it's about at the point the
Vietnam war was in the spring of 1968, with five years of atrocities to go
before the American withdrawal -- but it's now clear that the
administration's policies of torture and murder (backed by the leaders of
both political parties) are on the defensive in the country at large.
The administration has responded by sending George Bush forth to defend
the war "as a way of protecting Americans from another September 11
attack, a message he will reinforce when he takes to the road next week.
'Our troops know that they're fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere
[sic] to protect their fellow Americans from a savage enemy," Bush said
... 'They know that if we do not confront these evil men abroad, we will
have to face them one day in our own cities and streets, and they know
that the safety and security of every American is at stake in this war,'
he said" [Reuters].  But more and more Americans know that that is a lie,
or rather that it's true but not in the way Bush meant it: it's the
administration's war policy that is endangering the safety and security of
every American, to say nothing of the rest of the world.

[2] "Poll after poll shows that a majority of Americans believe Iraq has
been mishandled. A Gallup poll last week showed 54 per cent believe it was
a mistake to send troops to Iraq. Bush's approval ratings have slumped to
the 30s. The analogy with Vietnam and the steady bleeding away of support
for that conflict is a strong one. 'You can see that once support for the
Vietnam war dipped below 50 per cent, it never came back' ... That has now
happened with Iraq." [Observer/UK]

[3] Alex Cockburn writes as follows about the lessons of Cindy Sheehan's
demonstration: "The aim of any serious anti-war protest is to force a
government to quit fighting, pull the troops out, come home right now. But
Sheehan is castigated in the press, by mainstream liberals as well as
mad-dog rightists, for not leaving any wriggle-room on this central point.
She says, Bring the troops home right now. How many people echo that
straightforward demand? Millions of ordinary Americans -- around 34 per
cent -- certainly do, if we are to believe the numbers in polls that also
give Bush an approval rating of only 34 per cent for his conduct of the
war.  But to be effective the opinion of ordinary people has to be
harnessed into a powerful political movement that offers energetic
leadership.  Here the picture is dismayingly cloudy. MoveOn.org, has used
Sheehan's siege of Bush as springboard to mount supportive anti-war
vigils. But what exactly is MoveOn calling for, in terms of ending the
war?  Go to the website of the Win Without War coalition, of which MoveOn
is a member along with groups ranging from the Sierra Club, to National
Organization of Women to the Methodists, Unitarians and Quakers and you'll
find a mush-mouth statement about 'a gradual, phased decrease in numbers
rather than augmenting the size of the force', plus other familiar
boilerplate about how the UN Security Council 'should authorize and
encourage the creation of an international stabilization force to assist
the Iraqi authorities with security and training of Iraqi forces.' This
leisurely agenda doesn't add up to anti-war leadership. After all, Gen.
George Casey, the US commander in Iraq, talks bluntly about 'some fairly
substantial reductions' to start next spring.  It's no secret why MoveOn
and Win Without War are so timid. Square in their field of vision is the
Democratic Party whose high-profile congressional leaders such as Hillary
Clinton and Joe Biden are calling for more troops to be shipped out to
Iraq. Push comes to shove, most of the Win Without War coalition members
won't get more than half a beat out of step with the Democrats.  Serious
resistance, of the sort Sheehan calls for, has to throw the threat of
popular sanction over both Democrats as well as Republicans. What
leadership is available for this task? The obvious candidate is the United
for Peace and Justice coalition, which mounted the huge anti-war protests
of 2003 and which has been conducting peace actions ever since.  But as it
organizes its upcoming September 24-26 rallies in Washington DC UFPJ seems
to be turning its back on the rich opportunities for mainstream organizing
offered by Sheehan and the nerveless platform of Win Without War,
preferring to dilute the Out of Iraq message with cumbersome left agendas
written by ultras from the casting couch of the Life of Brian. Anyone can
go on a vigil. It only costs the price of a candle and a solemn
expression. The price of entry into serious antiwar organizing at the
crucial moment is steeper. It requires political nerve. A substantial
coalition has to lead the way, pointed to by Sheehan, with the slogan
Bring Them Home Now.  What truly frightens governments is mutiny or the
threat of mutiny. It was soldiers shooting their officers and sailors
pushing planes off air craft carriers that prompted the Pentagon to run up
the white flag in Vietnam. Along that same spectrum is draft resistance,
and the refusal to go to war. Already that's had an effect. The Pentagon
says the reserve system is in ruins. Gold Star moms like Cindy Sheehan
could be leading sit-ins at military recruitment offices across the
country and in the home district congressional offices of Democrats and
Republicans. How about Cindy Sheehan moving Camp Casey from Crawford to
Hillary Clinton's offices in Washington or New York. Only this time the
demand would not be for a meeting but for a reversal of HRC's pro war
position which has her putting up a bill to increase US forces overall by
90,000. One of the greatest achievements of the antiwar movement in
Vietnam era was to make it untenable for a Democrat, LBJ, to run again for
the presidency, or for Hubert Humphrey to run and win on a prowar
platform. Question, would the MoveOn operation take the slightest interest
in any vigils outside HRC's offices, or those of any other prominent
Democrat? Of course not.  Cindy Sheehan frightens the right and stirs them
to venom, and she frightens the Democrats too, because she's so clear.
Contrast the timeline of Sheehan as against that of even a relatively
decent Democrat like Russ Feingold.  Feingold calls for a start to
withdrawal from Iraq maybe sixteen months from now. How many dead troops
and new Gold Star moms can you fit into that calendar. A thousand or more?
Sheehan's Out Now call should be the bright-line test for any antiwar
spokesperson."

[4] Cindy Sheehan: "I got an email the other day and it said, 'Cindy if
you didn't use so much profanity ... there's people on the fence that get
offended.' And you know what I said? 'You know what? You know what, god
damn it? How in the world is anybody still sitting on that fence?' If you
fall on the side that is pro-George and pro-war, you get your ass over to
Iraq, and take the place of somebody who wants to come home. And if you
fall on the side that is against this war and against George Bush, stand
up and speak out."

[5] "The Army is planning for the possibility of keeping the current
number of soldiers in Iraq -- well over 100,000 -- for four more years,
the Army's top general said Saturday ... [Gen Peter] Schoomaker's comments
come amid indications from Bush administration officials and commanders in
Iraq that the size of the U.S. force may be scaled back next year if
certain conditions are achieved. Among those conditions: an Iraqi
constitution must be drafted in coming days; it must be approved in a
national referendum; and elections must be held for a new government under
that charter" [AP].

[6] A joint statement from ANSWER and United for Peace & Justice: "The two
major antiwar coalitions that have initiated and organized for a massive
antiwar March on Washington for September 24 have agreed to organize a
joint rally followed by a joint march. Both coalitions will organize under
their own banners, slogans and with their own literature for the September
24 demonstration. The joint rally will begin at 11:30 am at the Ellipse in
the front of the White House. We urge everyone around the country to unite
and come out for the largest possible antiwar demonstration on September
24."

[7] "A U.S. satellite has detected signs that North Korea recently
restarted a reactor that could be used for the extraction of material to
make nuclear warheads, a Japanese newspaper said on Sunday. The
surveillance satellite detected steam coming out of a boiler connected to
a building housing the five-megawatt reactor at Yongbyon, Asahi Shimbun
said, quoting unnamed sources related to six-way nuclear crisis talks,
including a senior U.S. official." [Reuters]

[8] "The Southern New York District Court of Appeals [heard this week]
government arguments in favor of barring the release of 87 photos and four
videotapes depicting detainee abuse by U.S. military forces at Abu Ghraib
prison. And over the weekend, unsealed court documents relating to the
ACLU's suit seeking release of the images revealed that Joint Chiefs
Chairman Gen. Richard Myers opposes their release because they may incite
riots in the Middle East, much as Newsweek's earlier reports of Quran
defilements at Guantanamo Bay did. Funny thing, this, because back in May,
Myers explicitly denied any connection between Afghani riots in Jalalabad
and the Newsweek report. So, to review: We must suppress damaging
information about the war effort because we run the risk of repeating a
mistake that we never made in the first place" [wonkette.com].

[9] "A Utah television station is refusing to air an anti-war ad featuring
Cindy Sheehan ... The ad began airing on other area stations Saturday, two
days before Bush was scheduled to speak in Salt Lake City to the national
convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars."

[10] The WP reports today that "Shiite and Kurdish militias, often
operating as part of Iraqi government security forces, have carried out a
wave of abductions, assassinations and other acts of intimidation,
consolidating their control over territory across northern and southern
Iraq and deepening the country's divide along ethnic and sectarian lines."
No where does the article allude to the fact that these death squads were
encouraged by the Pentagon, under the name the "Salvador option."

[11] Recently releasesd documents show that State Department experts
warned before the invasion of Iraq about lack of plans for post-war Iraq
security.  But the Washington Post story on the matter omits what the
documents also show: that the Bush administration began planning for
post-Saddam regime change began as early as October 2001 [National
Security Agency].

[12] "Another mother who has journeyed to Crawford, Celeste Zappala, wrote
last Sunday in New York's Daily News of how her son, Sgt. Sherwood Baker,
was also killed in April 2004 -- in Baghdad, where he was providing
security for the Iraq Survey Group, which was charged with looking for
W.M.D.'s 'well beyond the admission by David Kay that they didn't exist.'
As Ms. Zappala noted with rage, her son's death came only a few weeks
after Mr. Bush regaled the Radio and Television Correspondents'
Association banquet in Washington with a scripted comedy routine featuring
photos of him pretending to look for W.M.D.'s in the Oval Office. 'We'd
like to know if he still finds humor in the fabrications that justified
the war that killed my son,' Ms. Zappala wrote." [F. Rich]


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	    C. G. Estabrook <www.newsfromneptune.com>
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