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[Jeff
Mackler is the National Secretary of
Socialist Action and a national antiwar leader for the past 45 years.
For more information, visit www.socialistaction.org, jmackler@lmi.net http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/09/10/18621526.php]
Alexander
Cockburn’s Sept. 4-6 “CounterPunch Diary“ hit piece against the U.S. antiwar movement, “Deeper
into the Tunnel,” merits the serious attention of all antiwar fighters
and organizations. This is not so much because of the spurious
accusations he hurls against Socialist Action and this writer, as well
as others whose socialist politics offend him, but rather because of
his serious misunderstanding of what it takes to build a
united-front-type, democratic, and effective antiwar movement.
Here
we are speaking of a movement powerful enough to organize a massive and
successful challenge to the ongoing and expanding U.S. imperialist wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan as well as the ongoing U.S. support to the Israeli
occupation of Palestine.
Cockburn’s
newfound libertarian bent, cheap-shot politics of denunciation, ad hominem assertions, and factual distortions are no
substitute for the present discussion and debate over effective
strategies and tactics to counter the warmakers,
force them to “Bring the Troops Home Now!” and accede to the movement’s
powerful demand, “Money for Human Needs, Not War!”
I
begin this response to what Cockburn describes as the “craven behavior
of the leadership of the October 17 anti-war protest in San Francisco”
with Cockburn’s own words: “On August 29, the October 17 Coalition
voted to endorse a protest at the Westin-St. Francis, one of the city’s
flashier hotels, the following Friday where San Francisco Congresswoman
and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was to be honored with a $100 a plate
breakfast. But by the end of the day the October 17 coalition
leadership got cold feet when it learned that the host of the breakfast
was none other than the San Francisco Labor Council.”
Cockburn
continues for emphasis, “There’s nothing new here. Genuflections to the
Labor Council has long characterized San Francisco’s anti-war movement
leadership when it comes to determining its public agenda.” Cockburn’s
fury is unremitting, as his memories or misinformed sources summon him
back to the 10-year battle against U.S. intervention in Central America and the Caribbean in the 1980s and early
‘90s.
Says
Cockburn, “In the spring of 1985, Israel was in its fourth year of
occupation of Lebanon after an invasion that had
been publicly supported by the AFL-CIO with no dissent from San Francisco’s labor bureaucracy. The
main organizer of both of those marches (1985 and 1988) was Socialist
Action. In its newspaper this group regularly boasted of its
anti-Zionism and solidarity with the Palestinian cause. Nonetheless, in
this instance Socialist Action promptly turned into Socialist Inaction.
The group was adamant about not allowing any demand that referred to
the Middle
East
to be added to the Mobilization’s program. The limp excuse: ‘labor will
walk.’” Cockburn adds: “It was considerably more difficult
for Socialist Action and its allies to ignore the Palestinian intifada in 1988 but again they rose to the
challenge, managing to appease the Labor Council by doing so. This
required Socialist Action to cancel a general meeting of anti-war
activists that quite likely would have led to the addition of a demand
for an end to Israeli occupation.”
“Today,”
Cockburn surmises, “we find the very same Socialist Action leader, Jeff
Mackler, longer of tooth but no closer to
socialism, taking unilateral action to prevent the picketing of the
Labor Council breakfast for Pelosi.”
For
the record, the date of the meeting in question was August 15, not
August 29, and the name of the organization mobilizing in the San
Francisco Bay Area against U.S. wars and against U.S. support to the
Israeli Occupation of Palestine is the October 17 Antiwar Coalition, a
new formation that is a component part of an effort to unify in action
a badly-divided movement. To date, some 150 antiwar groups and
prominent individuals across the country have called for antiwar
demonstrations on October 17. Each has determined its own demands,
structure, and leadership.
The
S.F.-based coalition includes Bay Area affiliates of all five major
national antiwar coalitions and networks—the National Assembly to End
the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations (National Assembly), to
which I am affiliated and help lead, the ANSWER Coalition, United for
Peace and Justice, World Can’t Wait, and the International Action Center.
Cockburn,
the CounterPunch co-editor/publisher,
objects to the fact that I set aside a motion presented by his apparent
model antiwar leader, Steve Zeltzer, whom he
praises to the high heavens. In fact, after consultation with the
coalition’s leadership, I did cancel the previously approved Nancy
Pelosi protest—a decision I stand by. Cockburn thinks it irrelevant
that Zeltzer’s motion, approved unanimously
(30-0) on August 15, failed to inform the meeting that the Pelosi
protest was to be at a Labor Day breakfast sponsored by the San
Francisco Labor Council or that our coalition was not to be merely an
endorser of the protest, as Zeltzer
originally moved, but the one and only sponsor.
It was
my view, shared by all of the above groups and virtually the entire
coalition, minus Zeltzer, that the October 17
Antiwar Coalition had the right to know exactly whose event it was
protesting. Zeltzer disagreed and later
e-mailed his displeasure to all concerned as follows: “I did not
mention that it [the Pelosi protest] was sponsored by the SF Labor
Council and should have but I did not believe that
this should make any difference since the protest was against Pelosi
and not the SF Labor Council”! [Emphasis added.]
One
can only wonder if Cockburn shared this view that our coalition’s
knowledge of what event we were to be picketing should not “make any
difference.” It occurred to me, however, as the coalition’s
co-coordinator, that I had a responsibility for full disclosure once I
learned of the protest’s target. I premised my decision on the quaint
concept that the ranks of a coalition have the fundamental democratic
right to know what they had truly voted for. It seemed elementary that
at least some, if not everyone in the coalition, would contest the
delusional contention that we were picketing “Pelosi and not the SF
Labor Council.”
Indeed,
Cockburn himself concluded that the Labor Council needed a good kick in
the butt, or as he put it, to be shaken from “its apathy on the war
questions and about its choice of Pelosi, a war supporter, as its
breakfast honoree…” Apparently he forgot to consult with Zeltzer on what the protest was about!
Cockburn
seems qualitatively less concerned with the democratic functioning of
the antiwar coalition than he is with reiterating his point that the
“antiwar movement” is dead—that is, charging “Deeper into the Tunnel.”
The “Tunnel” allusion presumably means getting closer to the Democratic
Party.
Here
Cockburn misses the central point. The October 17 mobilizations across
the country are squarely directed against Obama’s
War, the war today conducted with the full support of the Democratic
Party. Our coalition’s program, demands, and mobilization are
independent of and in direct opposition to the war policies of the
Democratic Party. Further, the construction of an independent,
democratic, and “Out Now!” antiwar movement has always stood at the
center of Socialist Action’s work. As we will see, this is not the case
with critic Cockburn, who found his way to supporting John Kerry’s
presidential run in 2004, the Democrat who trumped Bush’s “surge” by
demanding an additional 30,000 troops to imperialism’s killing fields.
While
Cockburn may mock the need for democratic functioning in the antiwar
movement, I assert that democracy is critical to the movement’s
success. We will not advance our cause by either Zeltzer’s devious tricks and maneuvers
behind the backs of the ranks or Cockburn’s twisting of the facts to
advance his false claim that our coalition is subordinate to the
Democrats.
Whether
or not to picket a Labor Council Labor Day breakfast to which warmaker Nancy Pelosi was invited was an important
but tactical question. Opportunities to protest Pelosi’s pro-war
politics and party are not infrequent in the city that she
misrepresents. Indeed, October 17 Antiwar Coalition leaflets were
distributed by coalition leaders at a Democratic Party-sponsored
“health-care reform” rally a few days before the scheduled Labor
Council breakfast. Pelosi was the scheduled keynote speaker at that
rally.
Including the labor movement
in mass protests
How
to approach the labor movement and engage its ranks—and the vast
numbers of unorganized workers as well—in the essential mass protests
that are sorely needed today is not an unimportant issue. It is a
decisive question. It seems eminently more reasonable to approach the
organized labor movement patiently and with due care, as opposed to the
prescription of the Cockburn/Zeltzer
club—that is, a mass picket line outside the Labor Council breakfast,
which would carry with it the implied demand: “Don’t pass.”
This
applies doubly to the beleaguered San Francisco Labor Council, which is
currently faced with an Andy Stern effort to disaffiliate three SEIU locals
at a monthly loss of some $17,000 in dues. Cockburn neglected to
mention that key leaders of the Council, who were also leaders of our
antiwar coalition, (unfortunately not present when the controversial
vote was taken) had gone to great lengths to express their disapproval
of the Pelosi invitation.
It’s
true that the present bureaucratized labor movement will not be
transformed overnight into a democratic fighting instrument of the
working class. But it is equally true that the fight to win the active
support of organized labor for mass protests to “Bring the Troops Home
Now!” is important—extremely important. Yes, there is a contradiction
in the S.F. Council supporting the Democratic Party, as do virtually
all labor organizations in the country, while at the same time
supporting mass mobilizations against the same party. While labor’s
political break with the class enemy is not on the agenda today, the
value of its involvement in action in the streets in opposition to the
policies of capital cannot be underestimated.
Cockburn’s
sleight of hand in describing the Council’s record understates the
facts. The San Francisco Labor Council not only opposed the 1991 Gulf
War—at the request of this writer and the mass-action coalition
organized by the Cockburn-condemned Mobilization for Peace, Jobs and
Justice—but it organized a contingent of 10,000 Northern California
workers to march against that war.
More
recently, the International Longshore and
Warehouse Union initiated a one-day strike and closed down all West
Coast ports from Canada to Mexico. They struck for a single
demand, “U.S. Out of Iraq and Afghanistan.” In 2006 five million
immigrant workers shook the nation with a May Day strike against
proposed reactionary anti-immigrant legislation.
In
all these cases the same contradiction prevailed. The ever-deepening
capitalist offensive moved millions of workers to the streets. They
protested the reactionary policies of the Democrats and Republicans
although the leaders of these mobilizations remained committed to the
illusion that the warmongering and anti-immigrant Democrats
offered a way out.
This
contradiction will not be resolved overnight and especially not by
tricking honest antiwar fighters with devious motions to expose the
S.F. Labor Council today and request its support tomorrow. I should add
that we have recently been informed that the San Francisco Labor
Council will support our October 17 action and make a good faith effort
to mobilize Labor Council affiliate support for it. This is the same
and rather unique Council that has supported virtually all major
antiwar demonstrations in the Bay Area for the past 40 years.
A
further note should be of interest here. Cockburn was perhaps not
informed that the S.F. Peace and Freedom Party, which had also endorsed
the Pelosi protest, revoked its endorsement when informed that it was
directed against the S.F. Labor Council. Cockburn might not have known
that S.F. Peace and Freedom was also Zeltzer’s
party and that it had disassociated itself from Zeltzer’s
motion.
Palestine and the united front
Cockburn
found it convenient to ignore the fact that the October 17 Antiwar
Coalition in San Francisco included in its several demands one that
stated, “End U.S. support for the Israeli occupation of Palestine!”
That demand, along with “U.S. troops out of Iraq, Afghanistan and
Pakistan!“ “Money for jobs, pensions,
healthcare, housing and education not wars and corporate bailouts!” and
several others, were proposed by this writer.
These were also the demands recommended to the antiwar movement for the
October 17 local and regional protests initiated in Pittsburgh by the
summer conference of the National Assembly to End the Iraq and
Afghanistan Wars and Occupations. They were duly considered by the
coalition and adopted unanimously.
Unfortunately,
historian-journalist Cockburn felt that this was insufficient for me to
atone for my “sins” of 25 years ago. I judged at that time, along with
hundreds of others in a coalition that I had helped to found—the
Mobilization for Peace, Jobs and Justice—that the united-front-type
mass-action movement that was needed and possible at that time could
not be effectively built with the formal inclusion of
a Palestine demand.
Coburn,
a bit of a red-baiter when it suits him, prefers to place the responsibility
for this decision solely on me and Socialist Action rather than on the
regular mass meetings of 300-500 activists and organizations—including
all seven Bay Area Central Labor Councils and 100-plus union
presidents, faith-based groups, and scores of others—who democratically
voted to do so.
Then
as now, Mr. Zeltzer and a few of his cohorts
cast the handful of dissenting votes. Then as now, Zeltzer
believed that the construction of a united-front mass-action coalition
against imperialist war was subordinate to the need to denounce the
union bureaucracy, that a movement that included all his demands was
preferable to the mobilization of the working class and its allies to
prevent U.S. intervention in Central America.
Cockburn’s
view was not that of the Salvadoran FMLN and Nicaraguan FSLN of the
1980s, whose representatives always supported our coalition and used
its mass-action rallies to defend their right to self-determination.
They understood the constraints on our movement at that time. And likewise,
the Palestinian fighters understood the centrality of the Central
American revolutions in progress, which were in the immediate gun
sights of U.S. imperialism. Some 400,000 Guatemalans, 80,000
Nicaraguans, and 80,000 Salvadorans lost their lives at the hands of
U.S.-backed death squads and armies in these struggles.
Moreover,
although the united-front mass mobilizations of that period focused on
the immediate threat of U.S. intervention in Central America, they hardly excluded the
active and full participation of the Palestinian movement. They joined
our mass actions, were prominently represented on our speakers’
platforms and were more than encouraged to participate with their
contingents, banners, and placards. The cause of the Palestinian
struggle was advanced, not retarded, for the simple reason that it was
incorporated into powerful mass mobilizations that engaged in action
qualitatively more forces than would have been the case had our
coalition been sharply divided.
Yes,
we could have marched down the street with a full “revolutionary”
program and a hardy few behind us. We chose instead to bring along
hundreds of thousands whose participation informed them, far better
than any slogan or demand, that we represented the majority, that the
government did not represent us, that we were independent of them, that
we had power, that we were not an isolated few but the conscience of
the nation. This is the stuff that makes history—not rhetoric. Mass
action empowers those who engage in it. It opens the gap wide between
government lies and the people’s truth. It is the essence of the united
front.
Today,
much of the antiwar movement has included a key Palestine demand. One can only wonder
what is to be gained by attacking Socialist Action for fighting for its
inclusion. I confess to Cockburn’s “accusation,” that Socialist
Action’s newspaper regularly championed the Palestinian cause. I would
add that we were virtually alone in championing the historic
Palestinian demand for a democratic and secular Palestine with the
right of return. We rejected and still reject a “two state solution” as
a violation of the Palestinian right to self-determination.
Then
as now, Socialist Action denies the legitimacy of the Zionist state—as
our movement did since 1948. Such a Zionist, colonial, racist settler
state would be codified, along with the establishment of a
Bantustan-like Palestine, essentially under Israeli control, should the
“two-staters” have their way. That was not
the position of “two-state” Alexander Cockburn in the 1980s, and
perhaps today as well.
Contrary
to Cockburn’s allegations, Socialist Action’s support to the
Palestinian revolution was not limited to articles in our press. We
took the cause of the Palestinian people to as broad an audience as
possible and through a variety of vehicles. During the 1982 Sabra and Shatila
massacre of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians at the hands of Israel
and the neo-fascist Lebanese forces it aligned with, we led an
international solidarity campaign that reached scores of countries, and
we helped publish a full-page, $50,000 ad in the New York
Times entitled, “End All Aid To Apartheid Israel!” Coupled
with our conscious efforts to include the Palestinian community in the
mass actions during those years to the maximum extent possible, our
record exceeds anything that Cockburn and his past or present sideline
critics ever dreamed of.
The
antiwar movement in the 1980s, as with all social movements, had its
own peculiarities. Some 17 national unions had joined the Labor Committee
for Democracy and Human Rights in Salvador led by trade unionist David
Dyson. It was not uncommon in those times for the movement against U.S. intervention in Central America to receive support,
funding, and active participation by trade-union leaders and members,
who were motivated by the fact that the U.S.-backed Salvadoran
dictatorship’s death squads regularly murdered trade unionists, and who
were still fresh from the experience of mobilizing against the Vietnam
War.
Similarly,
the Salvadoran government’s murder of Archbishop Oscar Romero and the
related slaughter of Cleveland nuns based in that country
brought a cry of outrage and mass mobilization from the Catholic Church
and others in the religious community.
The
anti-nuclear weapons movement, demanding, “Freeze and reverse the arms
race!” was likewise energized when Ronald Reagan’s secretary of state,
Gen. Alexander Haig, threatened to use
nuclear weapons against the USSR. Similarly, the South African
government’s racist apartheid polices were hated in every corner of the
progressive movement. As a result, demands on the U.S. government relating to all
these issues were based on social foundations capable of mobilizing
tens of thousands in the streets, thus exposing the contradiction
between what the American people demanded and what the government
delivered.
Although
the formal inclusion of a demand on Palestine was not possible at that
time, we struggled to find a myriad of ways to integrate the fight for
Palestinian self-determination into the mass mobilizations that were on
the order of the day. We did not denounce the movement in progress and
stand apart from it, as is Cockburn’s preference today.
Socialist
Action’s modest forces were not capable of overcoming the reactionary
prejudice against the Palestinian people and the prettification of the
Zionist colonial settler state of Israel. Had we made Palestine the
dividing line between us and the forces that were prepared
to mobilize, we would have lost the united-front coalitions that were a
prerequisite for the mass challenge to imperialist war. Rather than
abandon the Palestinian cause, as Cockburn charges, we found numerous
ways to include it and advance the process of educating those who were
not yet prepared to understand its importance.
Cockburn
is correct in stating that Socialist Action believed in the 1980s that
“labor would walk” if a Palestine demand were added. Sadly,
many other groups that were critical to the movement would have done
the same. How to deal with this fact of political life was what was
under consideration. Cockburn and his cohorts considered the same
equations and concluded that the united front and mass action to defend
revolutions in progress and immediately threatened with U.S. intervention were of little
consequence.
Today,
Cockburn chooses to howl at Socialist Action once again. He rejects my
judgment that “the time bomb was ticking” in San Francisco He mockingly
quotes me to make his point. He rejects my view in the same e-mail to
wit: “Had we not acted as we did, we might have lost the coalition or a
good portion of it.” Unfortunately, he offers no proof to substantiate
his rejection.
For
Cockburn, proof is unnecessary. But for me, the choice was obvious. I
had consulted with all the major forces in the coalition and all were
opposed to the Pelosi Labor Council protest. Had we pressed forward
with the protest, we would have lost the fragile unity and coalition
that is so sorely needed today. We would have also risked the formal
support of the S.F. Labor Council and all other councils in the Bay
Area for the October 17 action.
Today
the October 17 Antiwar Coalition remains united, and with it the
prospect remains of organizing a sizeable demonstration against Obama‘s and Pelosi’s war in the most difficult of
times for the U.S. antiwar movement and other social movements.
Mass action vs. individual
action
Cockburn
opens his Sept. 4-6 “CounterPunch Diary”
tirade against the antiwar movement and Socialist Action with a long
quotation from his libertarian co-thinker John Walsh. Walsh, who today
speaks from the CounterPunch platform,
slams sectors of the antiwar movement, including its pro-Democratic
Party and more reluctantly antiwar components, for not joining Cindy
Sheehan in her call for a Martha’s Vineyard protest against Obama’s wars—the same kind of protest that Sheehan
initiated at George Bush’s Crawford, Texas, residence. Walsh attributes
the “deafening silence” (the title of his CounterPunch piece)
that Sheehan asserts was the reaction to her Martha’s Vineyard call, to the subordination
of the movement to the Democratic Party.
There
is significant truth to this view. The Obama-mania
factor—that is, the massive but now diminishing illusion that an Obama presidency would bring an end to U.S.
imperialist wars—has served to dampen the immediate potential to
realize the majority sentiment against the war in mass mobilizations
against it. But there are other factors involved in the movement’s
decline in the past several years that have been fruitfully analyzed by
many.
They
include the momentary paralysis of millions in the face of
unprecedented attacks stemming from the current capitalist economic
crisis, and the demoralization of many in the movement who should know
better, resulting from the apparent absence of a national liberation
movement in Iraq and Afghanistan that shows promise of a united
anti-imperialist struggle based on a program of social liberation.
As
important as the latter is, socialists and other longtime antiwar
fighters understand that the potential for the emergence of such a
movement in the Middle East can best be realized by the
forced withdrawal of imperialist troops. Or, put another way, the
defeat of the world’s greatest superpower at the hands of the oppressed
people of the Middle East and the U.S. antiwar movement would open the
door wider than ever to the unification of the imperialist-divided
forces inside Iraq and to the emergence of social forces capable of
reorganizing and strengthening the present resistance on a more advanced
social and political basis.
In
the meantime, the vast majority of Iraqis and
Afghanis despise the U.S.
intervention and have every reason to fight back with any means at their
disposal.
Cockburn’s
championing of Cindy Sheehan’s heroic and individual example, however
meritorious, serves no useful purpose when it is counterposed
to the building of united-front-type formations aimed at mobilizing
millions. However important the individual in history might be, the
collective and massive actions of the many have proved to be history’s
mechanism for every progressive social change—anti-capitalist
revolutions included.
Indeed,
Cockburn tips his hand when he cites and publishes libertarian John
Walsh as a source of justified dismissal of the antiwar movement, which
Walsh charges as refusing to announce and support the Sheehan protest.
Says Walsh in CounterPunch:
“However,
not everyone has failed to publicize the event. The Libertarians at
antiwar.com are on the job. And its editor in chief Justin Raimondo wrote a superb column Monday on the
hypocritical treatment of Sheehan by the ‘liberal’ establishment.
“As
Raimondo points out, Rush Limbaugh captured
the hypocrisy of the liberal left in his commentary, thus: ‘Now that
she’s headed to Martha’s Vineyard, the State-Controlled Media, Charlie
Gibson, State-Controlled Anchor, ABC: “Enough already.” Cindy, leave it
alone, get out, we’re not interested, we’re not going to cover you
going to Martha’s Vineyard because our guy is president now and you’re
just a hassle. You’re just a problem. To these people, they never had
any true, genuine emotional interest in her. She was just a pawn.
She
was just a woman to be used and then thrown overboard once they’re
through with her and they’re through with her. They don’t want any part
of Cindy Sheehan protesting against any war when Obama
happens to be president.’”
With
Rush Limbaugh as a source, it must be true! Walsh continues: “Limbaugh
has their number, just as they have his. Sometimes it is quite amazing
how well each of the war parties can spot the other’s hypocrisy. But
Cindy Sheehan is no one’s dupe; she is a very smart and very determined
woman who no doubt is giving a lot of White House operatives some very
sleepless nights out there on the Vineyard. Good for her.”
Cockburn’s
source and Walsh’s libertarian disciple, Justin Raimondo,
also praises neo-fascist Pat Buchanan’s isolationist foreign policy
views while neglecting to mention that their libertarian credo espouses
“No to U.S. government intervention abroad, and no to U.S. government
intervention at home!” (see Raimondo at antiwar.com).
One
will not find website mention among these libertarian right wingers of
any demands for “Money for human needs, not war.” These free-market
laissez-faire capitalist libertarians, who originated in the
Libertarian Caucus of the Republican Party, believe that Adam Smith’s
“invisible hand” regulates all and serves all. Government must stay out
of the way, they insist. They reject outright any demands that
corporate profits or government funds be allocated to those whose labor
creates all wealth and who are daily robbed by the capitalist system.
Liberty for the reactionary social Darwinist libertarians today means
every person for themselves! Rhetoric aside, when push comes to shove
they are warhawks of the first order to boot!
Cockburn’s
last-minute advice on the 2008 elections marked a break from his 2004
admonition to support Democratic Party billionaire John Kerry, who
sought the presidency with a campaign to the right of Bush on imperialist
war and “national security” issues.
Reluctantly
rejecting a vote for Obama, he concludes his
column by condemning this “far from
socialism” writer by urging his CounterPunch devotees
to “read the portions of the Libertarian Party Bob Barr’s platform on foreign
policy and constitutional rights.” The libertarian’s
pseudo-radical anti-interventionist foreign policy, equating fascism
with socialism and ranting against all “collectivist” ideologies (See Raimondo at antiwar.com), bases itself on the view
that an unimpeded capitalist individualism is essentially humanity’s
way forward. (CounterPunch conveniently
highlights “foreign policy” within the article for an easy click to the
Libertarian Party website.)
Libertarians
increasingly find their way into CounterPunch’s pages
and website, including joining with Cockburn’s oft-stated and
dangerously reactionary view that the “Jewish Lobby,” and or AIPAC—as
opposed to the U.S. ruling class—weighs heavily
in the determination of U.S. foreign policy.
As
with all left liberals, “lesser evil” politics remain central to their
political arsenal. Cockburn is no exception. He concludes his “CounterPunch Diary” with some advice on “How Obama Can Save His Presidency.”
“Now
it should be payback time,” says Cockburn. “Obama’s
pledge to the American people [should be]: Cheney and Bush behind bars
by 2012, plus Gonzales, Yoo, Addington and the rest of the pack. We crave drama.
From Obama we’re not getting it, except in
the form of racist rallies. This is his last, best chance.”
For
lesser-evilists, Democrats always get one
more chance! For socialists and all serious antiwar activists, the
building of an independent, democratic, united, mass-action, “Out Now!”
antiwar movement is a more serious alternative—as is joining the
socialist movement to challenge the capitalist system as a whole.
I
conclude this response by cautioning readers to pay close attention to
Cockburn’s politics, an eclectic combination of self-proclaimed
“left-leaning” radicalism with an increasing dose of carefully
camouflaged right-wing libertarian demagogy. As for Cockburn’s
unsubstantiated charges of 25 years ago that Socialist Action used
bully tactics to prevent a Lebanese speaker from expressing her views
or that Socialist Action cancelled mass antiwar meetings to prevent
consideration of the Palestine issue, I suggest that Cockburn be more
careful with his sources in the future. All such accusations are
patently false.
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