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President
Barack Obama’s
nationally televised speech on Dec. 1 at the West Point Military
Academy announcing that 30,000 more U.S. combat troops would be sent to
Afghanistan served to open a small crack in the wall of deference to
the president that has to date prevailed in the antiwar movement and
limited its power. Obama’s assertion that his
troop surge, as with President Bush’s Iraq surge before him, would be
followed 18 months later with the “beginning”
of a withdrawal of all U.S. troops, has been met with
nearly unanimous opposition from antiwar activists.
“Surge”
has become the polite codeword for mass slaughter—for the world’s most
powerful nation destroying one of the world’s poorest. It is code for
the use of super-technology and now 100,000 troops and additional
mercenaries to continue an eight-year war against a few al-Qaida forces and a rag-tag group of Taliban
fighters, whose growing support and control over large swaths of the
country, despite their regressive social views, is directly
proportional to the hatred of the Afghan people for the U.S. occupiers.
Eighty-five percent of Afghanis oppose the U.S. war and occupation.
Despite
a gesture to his liberal supporters in rejecting an “opened-ended”
commitment to Afghanistan and the corrupt Hamid
Karzai government, Obama
made clear that “conditions on the ground” would be the determining
factor as to when or if the U.S. would withdraw.
Meanwhile,
plans are underway to beef up CIA funding for covert actions in Pakistan and Afghanistan to locate “enemy”
encampments and pass on the information to Nevada facilities that direct
lethal Predator drone aircraft flying two miles above the earth to
attack and destroy any target.
Obama’s special diplomat for the region, Richard Holbrooke, similarly announced that the previously
secret negotiations with the Taliban would now be placed on the front
burner as part of the U.S. strategy to simultaneously
negotiate and murder. From the beginning, the issue for U.S. imperialism has never been
whether the Taliban—who the U.S. supported, financed, and
armed in the past—must go but rather whether they would accede to U.S. demands for increased
control and influence in Afghanistan.
The
antiwar movement’s response to Obama’s
escalation was immediate and angry, but far from what is needed to
offer a decisive challenge to the U.S. warmakers.
“Day After” protests were organized across the country, but their size
and scope differed little from the Oct. 17 nationally coordinated
protests that totaled 5000 in 54 cities—which had been initiated by the
National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations.
In San Francisco and Los Angeles some 300 mobilized on Dec.
2, the day after Obama’s speech. Two New York City protests each drew some 150
activists; 200 took to the streets in Boston, with smaller numbers in
most other cities.
A
number of antiwar groups and activists have been shaken by Obama’s Bush-like saber rattling. Some 34 of them
were joined by major Out Now! coalitions and
networks in drafting an effective open letter to Obama
demanding an “end to the U.S. wars now” and expressing
strong opposition to the U.S. escalation.
Similarly,
some 100 activist groups and individuals set Dec. 12
as a protest in Washington, D.C.’s Lafayette Park. Their new coalition, End
US Wars, states on its website, “It’s high
time Obama, Pelosi, and Reid heard a clear
message from a resurgent antiwar movement demanding no
escalation and an immediate pullout of all US forces from Afghanistan and Iraq, including an immediate
halt to Predator drone attacks and CIA operations in the region. Come
to the rally and let our voices be heard!” [emphasis
in original].
The
antiwar movement still has some ground to cover in order to close the
gap between the mass majority antiwar sentiment and its expression in
the streets. For the time being, lingering illusions in Obama combine with the hammer blows of the economic
crisis to retard the movement’s progress.
The
same must be said for virtually every social movement. The
economic crisis has momentarily stunned large numbers of workers, who
have yet to conclude that trillion-dollar war budgets and
multi-trillion-dollar bank bailouts have been made at their expense,
and must be challenged in the workplaces and streets of the nation. The
present crop of labor misleaders, which is unmatched in its
subservience to the boss class in the modern era, has contributed to
the delay in class-struggle challenges to capital’s deepening assault.
But
even here important cracks are appearing that bode well for future
mobilizations. “We need to stop the war in Afghanistan and focus the nation’s
attention on the fight for jobs, education, health care and pensions,”
said a November resolution approved by the Wisconsin AFL-CIO. Another,
calling for a March on Washington for “Peace, Jobs and Health
Care Justice,” not war, was unanimously
approved by the Troy, N.Y., Labor Council. The San
Francisco Labor Council similarly called for a Solidarity Day III
national labor mobilization linking the billions wasted on war to the
need for a massive program for jobs, education, and health care.
The
Nov. 21-22 San Francisco meeting of the Coordinating Committee of the
National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations
was optimistic about prospects for a reversal of the present malaise.
It approved an all-out effort to build the bi-coastal Washington, D.C., San Francisco, and Los Angeles antiwar protests called for
March 20, the seventh anniversary of the Iraq War. The National
Assembly will mobilize to demand “Close All Military Bases and Bring
the Troops Home Now from Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan! as
well as for its traditional demands opposing U.S. support for the Israeli occupation
of Palestine and for massive funds for
jobs, human needs and the environment.
In
an effort to bring new forces into the movement, the National Assembly
is organizing a campaign to win the broadest possible labor and student
endorsement and support for March 20. The recent student strike at Berkeley and other University of California campuses makes it clear
that many students understand the distorted priorities of a government
that cuts billions from education while spending billions on war.
The
National Assembly’s “Call to Action,” entitled “For a United Antiwar
Movement to End the Wars Now,” states, “We
urge support [to March 20] for these critical demands: “Increase
Spending by Hundreds of Billions for Jobs, Health Care, Education,
Housing and the Environment! End U.S. Wars, Occupations and
Corporate Bailouts Now and Use the Money to Meet Human Needs!” This
sharp focus and linkage of the economic crisis to the government’s
obscene military spending is aimed at engaging labor and its allies as
active participants in the March 20 mobilizations.
The
March 20 actions were initiated by the ANSWER Coalition, which has
urged other groups to issue their own mobilization calls. The National
Assembly voted to use the opportunity to deepen its efforts to forge a
democratic, united, mass action, “Out Now!” and independent movement,
in which diverse antiwar components come together in periodic open
conferences to decide the movement’s strategy and tactics. As with the
labor movement, the democratic participation of the antiwar movement’s
activist ranks is critical to their empowerment and to the emergence of
a new generation of militant and experienced fighters.
For
further information, contact the National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and
Occupations at: natassembly.org, natassembly@aol.com, (216)
736-4704.
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