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On
Sept. 26 the Democrat-controlled Congress passed its second blank check
for war in Iraq. Three days later in a debate between leading
Democratic presidential candidates, Clinton, Obama, and Edwards were
each asked to commit to withdrawing all U.S. troops from Iraq by 2013
if elected president. All said that they could not.
Since
the invasion of 2003 numerous antiwar groupings have poured their
resources and energy into projects that rely on the Democratic Party to
end the war. But while the Democrats have won a majority in both houses
of Congress - and Bush has been demonized in the eyes of most Americans
- the war has only escalated.
The
coalition Americans Against Escalation in Iraq (AAEI), which counts
MoveOn.org and SEIU among its membership, is the clearest example of a
trend that calls for unifying behind the Democratic Party and turning
all fire against Republican politicians in order to pressure them into
pulling support for the war.
The
strategy assumes that the Democratic Party is doing its best to end the
war, and that it only needs more political strength (read: “seats in
Congress”) and Republican support to force a withdrawal vote.
The
coalition’s campaign manager and Washington Director for MoveOn, Tom
Matzzie, told The New York Times Magazine that the war will end only
when a group of Republicans “walks down to the White House and says,
‘You have got to get us out of this mess.’ “
This
position is more than a little curious considering how the newly
acquired control over Congress gives Democrats the ability to cut
funding of the war without a single Republican vote. Democratic
Senators can filibuster any bill that comes through with as little as
41 votes and Pelosi can use her position as speaker of the House to
prevent a war budget from even reaching the floor. Preventing further
funding in May or September would have forced the Bush administration
to pull all troops out with the remaining funds.
The
AAEI coalition works practically hand in glove with the Democratic
Party. As The New York Times observed in a May 6 article, AAEI and its
related organizations are “heavily funded by foundations close to the
Democratic Party and are being largely directed by Democratic Party
strategists.”
The
Times quoted a spokesperson for Senator Reid’s office, saying that AAEI
“helps us reverberate a unified message outside the Beltway.” These
groups give voice to a message we're trying to get outside."
Indeed,
for AAEI and like-minded organizations, projecting the Democratic Party
line is essential to ending the war in Iraq. They have even gone so far
as to help Democrats portray votes for war as votes for troop
withdrawal:
After
they took Congress in 2006, Democrats proposed a bill to fully fund the
war while including non-binding timelines for withdrawing some troops
from Iraq later on. When the bill was vetoed, Democrats maintained that
they had no choice but to pass an even laxer bill!
Rather
than criticize the Democrats’ maneuver, MoveOn.org argued that voting
against their war-funding bill was in fact a “vote for a war without
end.”
While
many became frustrated with the Democrats after this charade,
AAEI/MoveOn propaganda helped shape the perception that the Democrats
had in fact voted against the war.
Is “electoral pressure” effective?
Others
such as Code Pink and the leadership of United for Peace and Justice
have advocated approaches that combine support for some Democrats with
pressure on others to end the war. This approach, too, remains
dependent upon the Democrats.
Code
Pink’s strategy, like AAEI’s, assumes that the war will end when
politicians are cajoled through electoral pressure into legislating or
ordering an end to the war. This in turn assumes that politicians
derive their power from their ability to win votes from their district
and that they will act when this ability is threatened.
Nancy
Pelosi certainly exhibits little fear from her San Franciscan
constituents. As early as November 2004, a ballot proposition calling
on the federal government to “bring the troops safely home now” was
passed by 63 percent of San Francisco’s voters. Yet the war has roared
on for nearly three more years, and despite her powerful position
Pelosi has only showed interest in cynical maneuvers.
Other
referenda calling for immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq were passed - often with a two
thirds majority - in counties throughout Massachusetts, Illinois, and
Wisconsin in 2006. Clearly, politicians like Pelosi have more pressing
concerns than whether the voters in their district would approve their
actions.
Pelosi
and her colleagues are tied to the ruling class. They are dependent not
only upon campaign finances but on political support from their party,
from corporate media outlets and their advertisers, from fanciers who
shape the fate of their districts’ economy, and from countless elite
institutions. They have a concrete interest in seeing the powers of
U.S. imperialism expand - even when the expansion occurs under the hand
of a rival party.
Capitalist
politicians must keep in mind, moreover, that an effective defender of
the establishment - with plentiful friends in the right places - could
later find himself or herself rewarded by being appointed a key advisor
to this or that office, a successful CEO, or even at the helm of the
World Bank.
The
Vietnam War did not end through electoral pressure - let alone through
replacing pro-war politicians with antiwar ones. Before any
congressional vote or executive order to withdraw troops was made in
Washington the soldiers themselves developed a resistance to the war
that reached such a height that by 1971 top Pentagon brass declared
their= own ground troops a liability in the war effort.
The
growing rebellion among U.S. soldiers (which the Pentagon compared to
the Russian Revolution) not only made waging the ground war impossible
but threatened to cripple the military’s ability to wage future
operations.
This
troop rebellion did not sprout from a vacuum, but grew alongside the
mass movement at home. It was the mass movement that supplied the
necessary political and social base to foster widespread troop
resistance. By the time the
ground war began to crumble, the military was drafting legions of young
men who had opposed the war before boarding the bus to basic
training.
The
mass movement in the U.S. not only contributed to ending the war in
Vietnam, (a contribution that was only possible because of the heroic
struggle of the Vietnamese themselves) but weakened the U.S. war
machine to an extent that prevented it from using ground troops in any
serious fashion for nearly 30 years.
This
was only possible with the formation of a movement that was independent
from ruling-class institutions. Officials make concessions to the
extent that they fear growing independent organization arising around
the demands of working people - though even then they hope to frame their
concessions in a manner that will demobilize and domesticate the
movement.
Kucinich: A left prop for Democrats
Many
antiwar activists with some hope for Democrats hold up Dennis Kucinich
as an opponent of two-faced hawks like Pelosi, and as a friend of the
struggle. But rather than help
build the movement, “opposition” candidates like Kucinich serve to
bring credibility back to the pro-war Democratic Party and derail the
development of independent antiwar politics.
Kucinich
openly uses the authority he builds among opponents of the war to bring
clout to the party’s chosen war candidate. After losing Democratic
primaries with abysmal percentages in 2004 (he won 1% of the vote in
both Iowa and New Hampshire), Kucinich proclaimed before the National Urban
League convention that "with the same passion and commitment I
demonstrated in my own campaign for president, I intend to reach out on
behalf of the Kerry-Edwards ticket to unite our party with all those
who may have felt left out.”
When
asked by Ruth Conniff of The Progressive what he thought about Kerry’s
consistent support for the war (and intention to send thousands more
troops) Kucinich replied:
"This war belongs to George Bush, and we're not going to
insist John Kerry take the burden of the war until he's in the White
House. If John Kerry desires to take a new position on Iraq when he
becomes president, he'll have the support of the grassroots."
While
Kucinich’s marginalization by every ruling-class institution -
including his own party - makes his chances of winning the presidency
lower than those of Ralph Nader, his presence pervades movement
activities and media. He safely protects the prestige of the Democratic
Party and its program among leftists without granting significant
visibility to the struggle.
While
winning back support for his party, Kucinich advances a discretely
pro-war position. Instead of calling for a complete, immediate
withdrawal of U.S. troops, Kucinich wants to keep the door open for a continued
occupation. Like every other war supporter, Kucinich employs fears of
sectarian violence to justify maintaining a foreign presence.
He
calls for the UN to continue the occupation, arguing that “any Sunni
revenge impulses can be held in check by international peacekeepers.”
Despite the Orwellian lingo, this might not be such an encouraging
thought to Iraqis who remember the UN from its horrific assault in 1991
that crippled their infrastructure and killed more than 100,000 people;
or from the its sanctions that killed half a million children.
According to Kucinich’s plan, just
when could we be sure it would be safe to leave the Iraqis to
themselves? What would ensure
that the occupiers don’t employ the same divide-and-conquer tactics
used in every other occupation?
Kucinich’s
call for continuing the occupation under slightly altered auspices
preserves the racist and imperialist assumption that Iraq should be
ruled by anyone other than the Iraqis. There is no fundamental
difference between the stated intentions of this plan and those of the
Bush administration. The call by Kucinich criticizes the current
strategy without opposing the war itself.
Rather
than entangle ourselves in the false hopes and distortions of the
upcoming 2008 elections, opponents of the war must build our own
organization through independent, democratic action that gives no
ground to the prejudices or interests of the war machine.
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