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On
the eve of the Oct. 27 mass demonstrations against the war in Iraq,
reports from across the U.S. indicate that antiwar organizing is on the
rise.
New
coalitions have been formed that often include formerly opposed or
competing groups. This development bodes well for future organizing,
opening the door wide to the inclusion of significant new forces in the
movement. An impressive layer of local, state, and national trade
unions have endorsed, far exceeding labor participation in recent
years.
Contingents
of military veterans - including soldiers returned from Iraq - also
plan to take part in the actions.
The
Oct. 27 regional antiwar mobilizations, initiated by the United for
Peace and Justice coalition, are now scheduled for some 11 U.S. cities
(see www.oct27.org).
The
political temperature of the growing antiwar movement rose dramatically
after it became clear that the orchestrated September congressional
"debate" would be little more than a bipartisan rubber stamp
for the Bush administration's request for an additional $200 billion to
continue the war indefinitely.
The
virtually zero opposition in Congress was a major factor accounting for
the outpouring of tens of thousands of outraged protesters who
converged on Washington, D.C., on Sept. 15 to demand an immediate end
to the U.S. slaughter and the cessation of all funding for the war.
At
least 50,000 attended the Sept. 15 event, according to the ANSWER
coalition (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), the mobilization’s
initiator. Few, if any, among the rally’s sponsors and endorsers had
predicted a turnout anywhere near that magnitude.
Sept.
15 was marked by the spirit and energy of a new generation of
radicalizing youth, including many Blacks from the Washington, D.C.,
area. In this respect the impressive mobilization broke new ground for
a movement that is sinking deeper roots into the social fabric of U.S.
society.
Five
days later some 50,000 protesters, mostly Black, converged on Jena,
La., in solidarity with the Jena 6 students, whom state and local
officials sought to railroad to jail in a racist frame-up.
The
explosion of youth in Washington and in Jena are indications that the
gap is closing between the mass sentiment against war in Iraq and
racism at home and their expression in mass actions in the street.
“Progressives” collapse in Congress
The
House of Representatives vote on the "Continuing Resolution"
to fund the war saw just 17 "liberal" Democrats voting
"no." The so-called Congressional Progressive Caucus, the Out
of Iraq Caucus, and all other feigned congressional critics of the war
bent instantly to a wave of the ruling-class wand by Democratic Party
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. With few exceptions, they abandoned their pseudo-antiwar
position paper that had been signed by 83 members of Congress.
The
House resolution shocked more than a few liberals when it included a
condemnation of the Democratic Party-oriented MoveOn.org group for its
New York Times ad describing Gen. David H. Petraeus as "General
Betray Us." This lampoon was more than the posturing
"antiwar" Democrats could endure. They quickly acceded to
Republican charges impugning their patriotism and condemned their own
MoveOn kin by a vote of 341-79.
MoveOn's internet focus, in direct collaboration with Democratic
Party leaders, has been to harass vulnerable Republicans in order to
help pave the way for their replacement with liberal Democrats.
Meanwhile,
with a vote of 76-22, a "Sense of the Senate" resolution concerning
war against Iran, drafted by Senators Lieberman and Kyl, was approved
as an amendment to a Defense Authorization Bill. The resolution states
that "it should be the policy of the United States to combat,
contain, and [stop] the violent activities and destabilizing influence
inside Iraq of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, its
foreign facilitators such as Lebanese Hezbollah, and its indigenous
Iraqi proxies."
In
language akin to that of the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act, which opened the
door to the present Iraq War, the resolution authorizes "the
prudent and calibrated use of all instruments of United States national
power in Iraq, including diplomatic, economic, intelligence, and
military instruments, in support of the policy described in paragraph 3
[above] with respect to the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran
and its proxies."
Again,
the Democrats, this time in the Senate, climbed on board to join the
corporate media's chorus of unsubstantiated and saber-rattling
accusations that Iran was providing military aid to Iraq and thereby
interfering with the war effort of the U.S. "coalition"
against the Iraqi people.
Meanwhile,
in their continuing effort to keep the still wedded-to-the-Democrats
component of the antiwar movement on a tight string, the new version of
the Congressional Progressive Caucus's (CPC) "antiwar"
statement now reads: "We will oppose any bills or amendments
brought to the House floor henceforth that pertain specifically to
bringing our troops and military contractors home, but do not include
in their text a clear timeline and date certain for the redeployment of
U.S. troops and military contractors from Iraq."
For
those who believe that the Democratic Party "lesser evil" is
the major vehicle for stopping the war, the change was painful. The new
CPC demagogy eliminated the word "all" in regard to U.S.
troops as well as the previous January 2009 (highly qualified and
therefore meaningless) deadline.
House
Speaker Pelosi, nevertheless set on posturing the Democrats as the
antiwar party as the 2008 elections draw near, appeared soon after on
CNN television claiming that she was powerless to stop the war funding
because she lacked the necessary two-thirds vote to override a
presidential veto.
Rabbi Lerner’s revelation
The
issue of Congress's technical requirements to stop all Iraq War funding
was brought into bold relief when Rabbi Michael Lerner, a liberal
Democrat and the "left" Zionist publisher of Tikkun magazine,
posted on his website his edited transcription of a private Aug. 29
telephone conference call that included Democratic Party-oriented
"leaders" of the antiwar movement. The article was titled
"Strategizing with Leaders of the Antiwar Movement."
Lerner's
revelation had less to do with any important divisions in this section
of the antiwar movement than it did with his anguish over the failure
of the Democrats to present a credible antiwar stance.
It
did not go over well with Democratic Party officials. Most embarrassing
was the fact that a leading conference-call participant, Congressman
Jim Moran (D-Va.), soon afterwards voted for President Bush's
war-funding resolution - although he had pledged to his conference-call
cohorts to do the opposite.
Participants
in the telephone conference included Mark Johnson, president,
Fellowship of Reconciliation; Dan Nejfelt, Faith in Public Life;
Nichola Torbett, Network of Spiritual Progressives (NSP); Dot Maver,
Dept. of Peace; Medea Benjamin, Code Pink; Leslie Cagan, UFPJ; Rick
Ufford-Chase, Christian Peace Witness for Iraq; Michael Lerner, Network
of Spiritual Progressives/Tikkun; Dave Belden, Tikkun magazine;
Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey (D-CA); Tim Carpenter, Progressive Democrats
of America; Jean Stokan, Pax Christi; and Congressman Jim Moran (D-VA).
See Tikkun's Sept. 7, 2007, posting for the transcript.
Lerner's
aim in making public these deliberations was to highlight his view,
which he argued vociferously during the call, that it was not true that
House Speaker Pelosi lacked the power to stop the war, as she had
claimed on CNN.
Lerner
repeatedly insisted that another mechanism was open to the Speaker
other than overriding a presidential veto. This, he insisted, along
with others on the call, was for Pelosi to simply refrain from bringing
any funding bill before the Congress, a power that she possessed as
Speaker. Absent such a bill, the war could be ended, Lerner insisted.
The
responses from Congress members Woolsey and Moran, however, made it
absolutely clear that what was involved was far from a technical
matter. When their efforts to avoid a direct answer to Lerner's
question failed, Moran felt compelled to state that the Democrats were
really not opposed to the war at all and that any maneuver that might
be proposed to block war funds would be destined to defeat at the hands
of the Democrats themselves.
The
best that Moran could offer was that the assembled activists look to
the 2008 presidential elections, a proposition that was not disputed by
anyone present. Indeed, the
transcript revealed that this wing of the movement sees itself
qualitatively more as a pressure group on the reactionary pro-war
Democratic Party than it does as the leadership of a mass social
movement whose aim is not to beg but to force both capitalist parties,
and the ruling-class power that lies behind them, to get out of Iraq.
This
simple proposition, central to all successful struggles for fundamental
social change throughout history, was key to ending the Vietnam War.
The forced U.S. withdrawal, a victory for all humanity, took place
while Republican Richard Nixon was president. What follows is a brief sample of the conference call
exchanges:
Moran: “In all fairness, until we get a Democratic
president, until we get a president who is committed to ending the
war.”
Cagan: “That may be a long time before we get that.”
Carpenter: “We'd have to be on the phone for a lot longer for
that discussion.”
Moran: “That's for sure. But the president gets to veto
anything that gets to his desk. It's inconceivable that we could
override such a veto. The reality is that this war is going to continue
as long as the person in the White House wants it to continue. And that's what happened with
Johnson, and Nixon, and throughout history. We're going to have a national
referendum, and it's going to be in 2008. We've got to elect somebody
who's absolutely committed to end this war, and honestly, that's the
only way we are going to achieve that objective.”
Aside
from Moran's fundamentally flawed view that presidents "throughout
history" decide social policy, Moran neglected to reveal which
Democratic Party candidate he had in mind who was "absolutely
committed" to ending the war. Indeed, in the 2004 presidential
campaign effort, Moran, and all other Democrats, backed billionaire
John Kerry, despite his support for the war and despite Kerry's
insistence that the U.S. send 40,000 more combat troops to Iraq than
the number proposed by George Bush.
War and the crisis of capitalism
The
issue of war funding did not end with the $200-plus billion earmarked
for Iraq following the Petraeus hearings. On Sept. 27 the Senate voted
to increase the federal debt limit to $9.815 trillion, an increase of
$850 billion, an amount exceeding the largest debt in world history and
a reflection of the overall crisis of U.S. capitalism. Interest on this
debt is, as usual, paid to U.S. banking institutions, which, like the
military-industrial complex, derive unprecedented profits from
government war spending. The
same bill granted the Bush administration an additional $9 billion for
the Iraq War as well as authority to tap into another $70 billion as a
"bridge fund" for the U.S. occupation. The Senate vote on
this measure was 94-1. Democrats Clinton, Obama, and Biden did not
vote. The House vote on the same measure was 404-14.
Dissenter
and presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich made the record for the
liberals so as to make sure that his party's election-time charade had
a faint echo of reality. All shell games every once in a while allow
their gullible victims to find a real pea under the shells in order to
fool them into thinking they have a chance of winning. Kucinich, who
rejects immediate withdrawal from Iraq, is currently the “pea” in the
ruling-class shell game.
In
contrast to those who waste their energy and talent on pressuring
either ruling-class war party to end the war, a broad range of
important forces have recently added their weight to the movement.
Among the most important are the growing number of Iraq veterans, who
have learned by bitter experience that the war they thought was being
fought to defend the U.S. against terrorist attacks was a lie from
start to finish.
The
deep revulsion against the Iraq War, now approaching its fifth bloody
year, coupled with its continuation and threatened extension to Iran by
a bipartisan Congress, today coincides with a continuing downturn in
the U.S. economy. Increasingly, Americans understand that the seemingly
never-ending wars are fought for the corporate profits of the few and
are counter-posed to the well-being of working people at home.
War
for oil, the commodity whose continuing use poses a threat to the very
existence of the human race and all other species, makes no sense to a
people who are coming to understand that government lies are the rule,
not the exception.
The
conjuncture of increasing bipartisan attacks on every aspect of our
lives and the slaughter of innocent people around the world in the
interests of the elite few has opened the door to the organization of
unprecedented resistance and the emergence of new and powerful forms of
mass struggle.
The
critical question facing the antiwar movement today is its capacity to
chart a course that is independent of and in opposition to the twin
parties of war, racism, and corporate greed.
In
the run up to the 2004 elections, the spectacle of sincere antiwar
activists subordinating their movement to the Democratic Party - the
historic “graveyard” of social movements - demoralized and demobilized
the movement for a considerable period. Should the lesser-evil syndrome prevail once again, it
will have disastrous consequences for people in the U.S. and around the
world.
Antiwar
fighters need to continue to build on their impressive progress toward
achieving unity while reaching out to include new forces in the
movement. And simultaneously, they must fight for the movement's
political independence from the Democrats.
To
the extent that these goals are achieved, activists will take a giant
step toward attaining the power to stop the dreaded murderous Iraq War
in its tracks – and be able to turn their attention to advancing social
interests at home.
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