Monday, October 30, 2006
KILLED
BILLIONS OF YOUR TAX DOLLARS SPENT MADE THIS POSSIBLE.
OUST YOUR LOCAL BUSHNIK!
Monday, October 23, 2006
Sunday, October 22, 2006
desperation
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Republican's Chances -- Checks and Balances
Republican Chances
Well, now, my friends. It is about 3 weeks until the elections and time to take stock.
I’ve recently tried, and I honestly can think of nothing that I have in common with Newt Gingrich – nothing I know about, anyhow, but he did make a remark somewhere recently that I agreed with, even found very good. He said that the Democrats should adopt the following as an election bumper-sticker: HAD ENOUGH?
So, what have we had? Well, lot’s of exposed hypocrisy, that’s what. Jack Ahbrahamoff (Or however you spell his name, the Jack and the last three letters are the key things to remember). He was the lobbyist who represents what Republicans really stand for. He was not alone and he and other of his kind were deeply involved with many Republican Senators and Congressmen.
Tom DeLay, once characterized as a “shiver looking for a spine to crawl down,” the Republican leader. Corruption, inc.
Oh yeah, Mark Foley, the guardian of youth from pedophiles on the internet, a Republican pedophile congressman who resigned, but not until after the three or more years the Republican leadership covered up his sins. (To his credit, he didn’t have sex, he claims, with any of the male pages until that page was 21 years old. He just “set things up,” that’s all.)
Denny Hastert, the ex-wrestling coach, who is speaker of the house says he knew nothing about this, especially during the last three years. Maybe he was busy watching wrestling matches?
Oh yeah, the book about the Xtian right. It seems the administration thought of the evangelicals as “nut cases.” They could be right, especially since these “nut cases” still keep voting for these pedophiles, hypocrites, and money servants at the rate of 99%. I guess Jesus likes that sort of thing?
Oh yeah, Iraq. Now over 3,000 U.S. soldiers dead and about 650,000 Iraqis and nearing a trillion dollars on expenses. Colin Powell now admits that he was against it from the start. By the time this President is out of Office, it will have been more than twice the time since “Mission Accomplished” than the entire JFK administration.
Hurricane Katrina? Brownie later said that if he had claimed “terrorism,” maybe Bush would have acted in time. Since it was just humans who were affected, how could a Republican official be concerned?
Oops, I forgot. Where is Scooter Libby? You know, Dick Cheney’s boy? The exposure of a CIA agent? National Security has its limits, I suppose.
Afghanistan? Now serving heroin to 90% of the world. The Taliban is back.
Bin Laden says Hi.
Oh, I forgot “Mukaka” Allen. He is reported by several sources to have used the “N” word profusely and sincerely. He says we should forget about it because on of his relatives was Jewish once.
Oh yes, to be objective, the Republicans say that all of the above was the fault of the Democrats. Right. Sorry, but that hurts my Mukaka, gotta go.
So, how will Americans vote in November? When we have the votes counted, it will tell us a great deal about their wisdom – or lack of it.
Later,
Charles
Monday, October 16, 2006
summary of republican achievements
*ZNet | Social Policy*
*Who Killed My Democracy? On Republicans, Cheese, Mice, Rats, and
Littlepeople
Challenging Times for the War Party in Power*
*by Paul Street; October 15, 2006*
These are dangerous times for the U.S. war party in power. Its
messianic-militarist administration is mired in a disastrous
occupation that has killed many hundreds of thousands of Iraqis
and thousands of Americans. The reasons that it has given for
this terrible undertaking have been revealed as transparently false.
More than half the U.S. population now says the war on Iraq is
NOT morally justified. According to a recent New York Times/CBS
poll, a majority of the population now rejects administration’s
efforts to link the war on Iraq with the so-called “war on terror.”
According to a CNN poll in August, 60 percent of the population
opposes the war. Sixty one percent believe that some troops
should be removed before the end of the year and 57 percent want
a timetable for full withdrawal.
The president rejects these policy choices as naïve
“appeasement” – so-called “cut and run” – even while he insists
that the war is being fought on behalf of the idea that
government should reflect the “will of the people.”
Meanwhile, the Republicans’ regressive, hyper-plutocratic
domestic policy is highly unpopular. It stands in sharply and
ironic contrast to its claim to be leading the nation in a war
to save civilization and to advance core “democratic” values.
That policy is a big part of why wages, benefits, and incomes
continue to stagnate for ordinary Americans. It is linked also
to an endemic, increasingly transparent political corruption
that has especially dirtied Republican hands.
The already rich are getting transparently richer than ever, the
poor are getting poorer and the middle is still just scratching
by while the president pours untold billions into the illegal,
mass-murderous, falsely sold and unpopular invasion of
Mesopotamia.
The in-power Republican right seems unable to shake the image of
failure hung on it by Iraq and Hurricane Katrina even with a
mild economic expansion and the surprising lack of a major
terror attack on U.S. soil since 9/11.
No wonder a big majority of the population now says that the
country would be better off if the current war party in power
was removed from office. Even with the well-known nothingness of
the corporate-neoliberal Democrats, the defeat of the
Republicans in November seems at least possible. If that
happens it could open the door to some very serious
investigations and proceedings against the Cheney-Rove cabal.
Be More Like Mice, Little People
It’s time, perhaps, for the Republicans to call on the services
of Dr. Samuel Johnson, author of Who Moved My Cheese? In that
corporate-anthropomorphic masterwork that became a runaway
bestseller at the end of the last millennium, Dr. Johnson helped
millions of Americans move beyond the negative thoughts and
feelings they harbored over the loss of their jobs, earnings,
lives and communities to the inexorable workings of the
corporate economy. His book received rave reviews and gushing
critical praise from such noted literary authorities as IBM,
Exxon, Proctor & Gamble, General Electric and their friend the
U.S. Army,
In Johnson’s story, four characters lived in a giant “maze.”
Two of these characters were mice. One of the mice was named
“Sniff.” The other mouse was named “Scurry.”
The “maze” was Johnson’s clumsy metaphor for the capitalist
marketplace, which he conflated with material life and “the way
things are” in the real world.
Two of the characters were “littlepeople,” no bigger than mice
but endowed with reasoning and language capacities of humans.
The first littleperson was named “Hem.” The second was named “Haw.”
Once upon a long time, the story went, “Sniff,” “Scurry,” “Hem,”
and “Haw” used to get their “cheese” – Johnson’s over-obvious
metaphor for jobs and incomes – at “Cheese Station C.” The
“cheese station” was Johnson’s over-obvious metaphor for the
workplace.
The mice and the “littlepeople” had come to rely on “Station C”
to provide with material security and a place in society. One
traumatic day, however, for reasons that were unclear, the
“cheese” ran out. There was no more “cheese.”
This was Johnson’s clumsy metaphor for corporate downsizing and
deindustrialization, and the disappearance of jobs.
When the “cheese” left, the mice instinctively knew what to do.
They went out into the maze and sniffed and scurried around for
– what else? – “new cheese”
They didn’t worry about other mice left behind or the mouse
community in general. They went out to get “cheese” for themselves.
The “littlepeople” responded in a more problematic and – to use
a favorite term from the New Age 1990s – dysfunctional way,
reflecting the fact that they possessed critical faculties and
moral sensibilities. Like many over-entitled humans, they
wasted emotional, intellectual, and physical energy feeling
angry at the disappearance of their “cheese.” They spent an
inordinate amount of time and effort discussing an irrelevant
and useless question: “Who Moved My Cheese?” They lost precious
vigor fretting over pointless moral abstractions related to the
irrelevant issue of who controlled and abused the “maze” (market).
They questioned authority and sought fairness, futile endeavors
that prevented them from getting to the real and only thing that
mattered: “finding new cheese.” They worried about the fact
that they had purchased homes and built families and communities
in the vicinity of “Cheese Station C.” They became concerned and
anxious over the meaning of lost jobs/cheese for littlepeople in
general.
They needed to be more like the mice.
They needed to abandon grievance, drop their crippling concern
with justice. They needed to get off their fat littlepeople
buts and realize that life and the maze aren’t fair. They
needed to realize that the marketplace entitles you to nothing
in the way of steady earnings, meaningful work, material
security, and community. They needed to get back into the maze
and find new jobs – any job, anywhere – as soon as possible for
themselves.
They needed to stop worrying about any littlepeople other than
themselves. They needed to stop wondering who runs and profits
most from “the maze.”
They needed to move on.
In Johnson’s fable, one of the littlepeople – “Haw” – gets it.
Unlike “Hem,” “Haw” learns to accept the great core “life”
lessons of classic bourgeois doctrine. He understands that it is
a great error to think that people have rights entitling to
anything more than the privilege to try their luck in the market.
It is a fundamental mistake, “Haw” realizes, to believe that
mere people have any kind of place in society and a right to
live or work with and around other people they care about in any
specific location.
“Haw” learns to drop the human rights fallacy and to get on with
“life.” He learns to stop thinking and feeling in accord with
obsolete “old beliefs” like social justice. He agrees to be more
like a mouse when life – the marketplace – hands him a raw deal.
He learns that resistance is futile. He learns to stop
questioning mysterious corporate power and to jump in accord
with the dictates of hidden capital.
He is cheerfully assimilated into the mindless, hyper-mobile
terror of the global, corporate-neoliberal Animal Farm.
He gets his sniffing and scurrying sneakers on, runs out into
the “maze,” and is rewarded with “new cheese.”
Along the way he leaves a number of messages posted the serve as
what Dr. Johnson calls “The Handwriting on the Wall” for his
recalcitrant throwback friend “Hem,” who just can’t let go of
the old entitlement beliefs.
The messages include the following:
“Movement in a New Direction Helps You Find New Cheese”
“The Quicker You Let Go of Old Cheese, the Sooner you find New
Cheese”
“It is Safer to Search for New Cheese Than to Remain in a
Cheeseless Situation”
“Old Beliefs Do Not Lead You to New Cheese”
“Change Happens: They Keep Moving the Cheese”
“Move With the Cheese and Enjoy It”
Republican Book Proposals for Fall 2006
Millions of grateful readers were enlightened by this marvelous
corporate-anthropomorphic fable, which helped “littlepeople”
stop questioning state-capitalist authority and get on with
personal and animal survival in a neoliberal era when people
realize that ideas of justice and community are no longer
helpful or relevant.
Doc Johnson helped grease the wheels of corporate globalization.
I think the Republicans should hire Johnson or some like-minded
Orwellian to produce a series of quick fables to help keep the
rabble in line during and after the upcoming mid-term elections.
Here are two possible titles and story lines they might wish to
pursue between now and the upcoming elections:
Who Sent My Son Off to Get Maimed in an Imperial Oil War?
Plot: two chipmunk families and two littlepeople families
experience the agony of their sons being blown up by angry
squirrels predictably resisting an illegal, imperial, and
murderous invasion of their oil-rich nation that was ordered by
big powerful Ratpeople named Dick, Bush, and Rummy.
The Ratpeople sent the sons and hundreds of thousands of other
troops off to the squirrels’ nation after some angry ferrets
hijacked some planes and flew them into buildings in the nation
run by the Ratpeople.
The Ratpeople told the chipmunks and the littlepeople that the
ferrets’ criminal action justified invading the squirrels’
nation. They did everything it could to blur the distinction
between squirrels and ferrets. For a while, many of the
chipmunks and littlepeople had a hard time distinguishing
squirrels from ferrets.
The Ratpeople also lied about the dangers posed to chipmunks and
littlepeople by the squirrels’ nation. It claimed that that the
squirrels possessed significant “weapons of mass destruction”
that it was going to share with the angry ferrets and use
against the littlepeople and the chipmunks.
Later, after all the lies were exposed and it was shown that
650,000 squirrels had needlessly died, the Ratpeople said it was
too late to call off the invasion. Anyone who wanted to end
this mass-murderous action, they said, was an
anti-littlepeople/anti-chipmunk coward who likes to “cut and run.”
Rather than become upset at the terrible injuries suffered by
their sons and the lies that caused them, the chipmunk families
mate to produce new soldiers that the Ratpeople can use in
future illegal wars.
One of the two littlepeople families had worked hard to secure a
lot of cheese in the maze. It agrees to send another one of its
sons in the quest to kill more squirrels and control their
oil. It is rewarded with a big tax-cut from the Ratpeople and
gets a mimeographed letter of thanks from the Rat named Rummy.
The note says “thank you for sacrificing your son’s legs in our
noble effort to free and control the squirrels.”
On the day that this family sent its second son off to kill and
free squirrels, it put up a number of large posters saying:
“It is Safer to Kill and Die than to Remain Alive and Not Kill”
“Change Happens: They Keep Switching the False Reasons for
Their Illegal War”
“Unjust Wars Happen and There’s Nothing You Can Do About it”
“The Quicker You Let Go of Peace and Freedom, the Sooner You
Will Find Peace and Freedom”
“Absurdity and Lies Happen: the Ratpeople Know What They Are Doing”
“Move With the Empire and Enjoy It”
“Old Beliefs Will Not Give Us Global Dominance”
“These Colors Don’t Run”
“Movement in a New Direction Means Fighting Islamic Squirrel and
Ferret Fascism in the Streets of Our Own Country”
“Freedom Isn’t Free”
“United We Stand”
“Support the Troops”
“Love is Hate; War is Peace”
“I am Chipmunk, Hear Me Chirp”
“Some People Think Too Much”
The other littlepeople family does not turn out so well. It
clings to the dysfunctional notion that its injured son was
maimed for no good reason other than to enact the deceptive,
vile, and vicious Ratpeople’s imperial agenda. It can’t let go
of the idea that their son deserved better from “their” government.
It fails to move forward and enjoy life’s opportunities because
of its obsession with the pointless question: “Who Sent My Son
to Get His Legs Blown Off in an Illegal, Imperial and Racist Oil
War?”
As the story ends, it appears that the second family is going to
lose its savings and sanity in pointless, self-destructive
efforts to stop the illegal and murderous occupation and to
unseat the nasty Ratpeople from power. It is crippled by its
attachment to the preposterous notion that it is somehow
entitled not to have its children maimed in criminal and
unnecessary wars.
Who Flooded and Abandoned My City?
Plot: two dog families and two littlepeople families experience
the agony of having their city flooded and losing their homes in
the wake of a tropical storm whose worst consequences could have
been prevented if the federal government run by super-wealthy
Ratpeople had paid adequate attention to maintaining levees and
to emergency preparedness. The city is called Old Metropolis.
The hurricane is called George.
After the city is flooded, the Ratpeople government is unable
and/or unwilling to rescue hundreds of thousands of trapped dogs
and littlepeople for days and days.
Part of the problem is that the governing Ratpeople gave other
wealthy Ratpeople huge tax cuts that reduced government’s
capacity to meet human needs. Another part is that the
governing Ratpeople believe that government has no legitimate
role to play other than fighting wars, repressing dissent, and
paying corporate welfare transfers to other rich and powerful
Ratpeople.
Rather than become upset at the terrible policy actions and
beliefs of the Ratpeople, the two dog families just shake their
mains and lick their wounds. They stay in a cheap federal
kennel for a couple of months and move on in search of a new
doggy treats.
They realize that their homes in Old Metropolis are gone and
that that is the way things go when big storms like Hurricane
George happen. Life isn’t fair.
They find new food, treats, and toys in another metropolis far
away. They are happy to live their new dog lives.
One of the littlepeople families takes its cue from the
contented canines. It leaves the old metropolis behind and never
looks back. A family therapist tells them it would be
self-defeating to spend time and emerging thinking about what
happened to them and other littlepeople and dogs and why.
Those sorts of questions, it learns, are beyond their legitimate
spheres of influence, concern, and understanding. It was
dysfunctional and draining, they determine, to reflect on such
matters.
The family members write notes to each other and to other
families saying:
“Change Happens: They Flood the Old Food Bowl and You Have To
Move On.”
“So What if They Didn’t Pay for Adequate Flood Protection?”
“People Are Not Entitled to Being Saved From Floods by Big
Government”
“Abandonment Happens: Go with the Flow”
“The Quicker You Let Go of Old Metropolis, the Sooner you find
New Metropolis”
“It is Safer to Sniff Out High Ground Than to Remain in a Wet
Situation”
“Old Beliefs Do Not Distance You From Floods”
“Too Bad For People Who Get Stuck in Floods and Don’t Move On:
It’s Their Problem”
“Move With the Dog-Bowl and Enjoy It”
“The Color of You Skin Has Nothing to Do With How Quickly You
Can Find Dry Ground”
“When They Make Floods Happen, You Have to Cut and Run”
“Take Care of Yourself: You Could Get Flooded Anytime”
“Bow Wow!”
“Many People are Too Moral and Intellectual”
“Dogs Know the Score”
“You Can Teach and Old Wet Dog New Tricks”
The other littlepeople family is less fortunate. It can’t stop
asking and demanding answers to difficult questions relating to
structures of Ratpeople power and authority. It focuses on
related abuses that led to the devastation of their homes and
city. It becomes suicidal in its determination to fight “those
dirty Republican Rats.” It wastes resources and energy in a
futile effort to rebuild its city and society so that nothing
like what happened after Hurricane George could ever occur again.
It wallows under the spell of the great fallacy that it is
entitled to government protection from social and ecological
disaster.
It is determined to destroy itself and drag others down into the
floodwaters of anger and despair. Consistent with its dangerous
and worn-out concept of social entitlement, it campaigns against
the current war party in power.
Its vote doesn’t mean anything, however, since the hurricane had
has cleared out so many Democratic dogs from its home state that
the winner-take-all electoral count goes to the Ratpeople party.
“Who Killed My Democracy?” and Other Future Titles
I don’t think the Republicans have time to produce more than
these two fables between now and the mid-term elections.
I also don’t want to leave the impression that the Democrats
wouldn’t do well to hire someone like Dr. Johnson to produce
some good Orwellian moral fables to cover their own moral and
policy records. Many Democratic political leaders have been
less than unwilling participants in the creation of the core
corporate-imperial policies that brought us Operation Iraqi
Freedom, Katrina, and other terrible developments that reflect
poorly on the health of the democratic ideal in the United States.
After the elections, American political and economic elites of
both parties might consider producing an extended series of
further and related victim-blaming spin-offs of Who Moved My Cheese?
Titles might include:
Who Bankrupted My Government?
Who Poisoned My Ecosphere?
Who Melted My Polar Ice Caps?
Who Turned My Country into the World’s Most Unequal and
Wealth-Top-Heavy State?
Who Extended My Working Hours to the Point Where I Could No
Longer Participate in Civic Culture and Maintain Nurturing Human
Relationships?
Who Cut My Health Care Benefits?
Who Killed National Health Care?
Who Killed My Democracy?
Who Turned My Country Into a Corporate Plutocracy?
Who Slashed and/or Capped My Wages?
Who Busted My Union?
Who Stole My Retirement?
Who Slandered My Social Security System?
Who Incarcerated My Neighborhood?
Who Made Prisons the Only Growth Industry in My Rural County?
Who Segregated My Metropolitan Area?
Who Re-segregated My Schools?
Who Gentrified My Community?
Who Under-funded My Schools?
Who Reduced My Disproportionately Nonwhite Public School’s
Curriculum to Mindless and Regimented Preparation for
Authoritarian Standardized Tests?
Who Priced Me Out of Higher Education?
Who Commodified My Culture?
Who Commercially Carpet-Bombed My Children?
Who Stole My Civil Liberties?
Who Stole My Civil Rights?
Who Negated My Efforts to Advance Racial Equality?
Who Manufactured and Sold Guns to My Spouse’s Murderer?
Who Crushed the Spiritual Health of My Nation By Investing More
Public Resources in “Defense” Than in Programs of Social Uplift?
Paul Street (paulstreet99@yahoo.com
Inequality: America and the World Since 9/11 (Boulder, CO:
Paradigm, 2004), Segregated Schools: Educational Apartheid in
the Post-Civil Rights Era (New York, NY: Routledge, 2005), and
Still Separate, Unequal: Race, Place, and Policy in Chicago
(Chicago, 2005) Street’s next book is Racial Oppression in the
Global Metropolis: A Living Black Chicago History (New York, 2007).
Friday, October 13, 2006
Tom Hayden
Click here to return to the browser-optimized
version of this page.
This article can be found on the web at
*http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060529/hayden*
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hawks for Withdrawal
by TOM HAYDEN
[posted online on May 17, 2006]
Democrats are slowly but surely uniting around a plan for military
withdrawal designed by the Center for American Progress
linked to Clinton-era Democrats and headed by former White House Chief
of Staff John Podesta.
Not all the party leaders agree. Senator Hillary Clinton continues to
posture as a military hawk. Senator Joe Biden wants to dilute and divide
Iraq into three sectarian enclaves. Neither Senator Charles Schumer nor
Representative Rahm Emanuel, who are charged with winning November's
elections, have a coherent message on Iraq, preferring themes like
"corruption" and "incompetence" to a straightforward alternative.
Despite the timidity and paralysis, however, Democrats on the campaign
trail increasingly know they must address the war. Polls show that Iraq
is dragging down ratings for the President and the Republican Party.
Democrats prefer to simply criticize the Administration's handling of
Iraq without discussing an exit plan of their own. This Democratic
approach worked brilliantly on Social Security, where Bush could find no
Democratic divisions to exploit. John Kerry's presidential campaign
tried the same approach on Iraq but discovered that Kerry was losing
both centrist and progressive voters. Today, the most common concern
voters have about the Democratic Party is whether it stands for anything.
Late last September, Lawrence Korb and Brian Katulis first floated their
plan for "strategic redeployment
The two authors have credible--that is, conservative--credentials; Korb
was assistant defense secretary under Ronald Reagan, and Katulis is
associated with the "soft power" approach of promoting security through
civic-society initiatives abroad.
Their proposal is framed in hawkish rhetoric. By occupying Iraq, they
argue, the United States is increasing the global terrorist threat.
"Strategic redeployment" redefines military withdrawal not as a retreat
but as shifting US forces to new battlefields in Afghanistan, Africa and
Asia, while basing expeditionary forces in the Persian Gulf and Kuwait
in case postwithdrawal Iraq goes the way of South Vietnam.
The purpose of an Iraq peace, in their view, is to better prepare for
other wars on the frontiers of empire and, further, to "prevent an
outbreak of isolationism in the United States."
Leaving the framing rhetoric aside for the moment, the core propositions
of the CAP paper
point to a nearly complete US withdrawal in the next eighteen months.
They are to:
§ Immediately reduce our troop presence at a rate of 9,000 per month to
a total of 60,000 by the end of 2006, and to "virtually zero" by the end
of 2007.
§ Bring home all National Guard units this year.
§ Double the number of US troops in Afghanistan, place an Army division
in Kuwait, an expeditionary force in the Persian Gulf and an additional
1,000 special forces in Africa and Asia.
§ Shift the central paradigm of Iraq policy "from nation-building to
conflict resolution."
§ Appoint a presidential peace envoy to organize a Geneva conference
under United Nations auspices to "broker a deal" on security, militias
and the division of power and oil resources.
§ Obtain international funds for Iraqi reconstruction with a greater
emphasis placed on Iraqi jobs. Use the assistance to leverage
power-sharing agreements on provincial levels.
§ Make key policy shifts, declaring that the United States seeks no
permanent bases in Iraq and "intensifying its efforts to resolve the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict."
Little is said in the document about Iran, except that until the United
States withdraws from Iraq, "it will not have the moral, political, and
military power to deal effectively with Iran's attempts to develop
nuclear weapons." Under cover of a multilateral Gulf Security
Initiative, Iran would be drawn into discussions with its neighbors
about its nuclear and security policies.
The paper reinforces the positions already taken by several leading
Democrats, including Representative John Murtha, the seventy-member Out
of Iraq Caucus
Senators Kerry and Russ Feingold. Senator Dianne Feinstein was the
latest to endorse its content. The document is being circulated by
Democratic National Committee chair Howard Dean as well.
Seeking the hypothetical center ground requires Korb and Katulis to
distance themselves from the peace movement, the only citizen force
actually working toward the goal of withdrawal. To do so, the authors
construct a phantom extreme of "immediate withdrawal," which they claim
will permanently destabilize Iraq and the Middle East (as if current US
policies have not already done so). As is common with Clinton-style
politics, a solid centrist reputation is built by lampooning the
progressive position.
All disrespect aside, there is a significant acceptance of the peace
movement's message buried in this centrist proposal. It is not a
proposal to keep US troops fighting until victory. There is a definite
withdrawal timeline proposed and defended--eighteen months, starting
immediately. Last year, peace groups collected tens of thousands of
petitions for an exit strategy including a US declaration that no
permanent bases are intended, a proposed paradigm shift to conflict
resolution, selection of a peace envoy and power-sharing talks with
Iraqi nationalist supporters of the insurgency. Kolb and Katulis
examined the proposal carefully, and these concepts seem to have been
incorporated into the document.
The proposal has weaknesses. First and foremost, it assumes that the new
Iraqi government and armed forces will be sustainable if the United
States begins to withdraw. There is no proposal for an interim
peacekeeping force from neutral countries, as many Iraqi insurgent
groups propose. There is no pledge to assure Iraqi sovereignty over
Iraqi oil. There is an assumption that military withdrawal will be
accompanied by a transition from "a highly centralized command to a
market-based economy." In short, the proposal envisions a kind of
devastated but safe post-Saddam Iraq integrated into the World Trade
Organization, one requiring no more combat deaths.
The current Iraqi Parliament is by no means a solid pillar of the US
occupation. Evidence is mounting that supporters of the Iraqi resistance
have established a stronghold for their views even within the
US-dominated "puppet" structure. Just this week, the Sunni vice
president of Iraq, Tarik al-Hashimy, approved talks between the
insurgents and American officials, but only on the condition that the
guerrillas not stop the fight without a "final deal." President Jalal
Talabani recently said he was negotiating secretly with seven insurgent
groups. A report
reliable Iraqi sources indicates that a majority of the Parliament's 275
members will support a one-year withdrawal deadline if the question is
put before them. Faced with this quagmire and election-year pressures,
the option of peace, or the appearance of peace, seems to have been
forced on the Bush Administration.
Iraqi army claims that it can "stand up" as the Americans leave are
beyond credibility. If the US armed forces cannot end the insurgency,
why would Iraqi security forces with sectarian loyalties and inferior
weapons be any more effective? Could Shiite forces defeat the Mahdi Army
of Muqtada al-Sadr? Impossible. Would the modest Sunni security forces
suppress the Sunni insurgents? No. Could the Kurdish /peshmerga/ hold
off the whole Iraqi resistance? No. As in Vietnam, "Iraqization" could
become a fig leaf covering the US redeployment, but then only an
agreement with the multiple resistance groups could prevent their demise.
Many in the peace movement are entitled to be affronted over the hawkish
language of the Korb-Katulis strategy paper. But profound strategic
questions are emerging for the peace movement as a whole, as a result of
the movement's relative success. A planned US withdrawal is the majority
sentiment in America, Britain and Iraq. Politicians are adjusting their
positions accordingly, if only for the sake of survival. Political
efforts to isolate and smear the movement, as well as
counterintelligence operations, have failed. In perspective, the peace
movement has contributed to constructing these formidable obstacles to
continued war:
§ An antiwar constituency that affects close Congressional races this
year and presidential calculations for 2008.
§ The inability of military recruiters to achieve their quotas.
§ Domestic discontent over presidential lies, secrecy and wiretapping.
§ A budgetary crisis aggravated by the rising costs of the Iraq
occupation, including oil costs.
§ A moral stain on the US reputation around the world.
§ The steady erosion of the "coalition of the willing."
The peace movement should take some credit for this. And the peace
movement should keep the pressure on the pillars of the war policy, lest
public opinion backslide into divisions or despair. The peace movement
should also be planning now to make it virtually impossible for
presidential candidates to campaign successfully in 2008 without
committing to a speedy withdrawal from Iraq.
But there are understandable limits to what the peace movement can
accomplish in the short run, aside from forcefully expressing the
majority's desire that the United States withdraw. What are those
limits? The peace movement cannot force the US government to "withdraw
now," unless of course the insurgents suddenly overrun the Green Zone.
The peace movement cannot force the United States out of the Middle
East, though it can help pressure our government to reverse the Israeli
occupation, which our tax dollars subsidize. But with the public climate
soured over Iraq, the peace movement can mobilize opinion against
military intervention in places like Venezuela.
Movements generally have power against the system when they apply
pressure to the focal point of its weakness, in this case the dramatic
waste of lives and taxes spent on an unwinnable war conducted
undemocratically. The strong popular demand to set a withdrawal
timetable is becoming impossible for the elites to avoid. When and if
withdrawal is announced, the peace movement may face serious shrinkage
and internal confusion. The phase of negotiation tends to wear movements
down. The Paris peace talks of the Vietnam era took some seven years.
The Israeli-Palestinian negotiating process appears eternal. An
exception worth examining has been the peace process in Northern Ireland.
Besides remaining a formidable factor for politicians facing close
elections and military recruiters chasing down high school students, the
peace movement has a historic role to play every day in shaping the
public understanding of the lessons of Iraq. The lessons of this war
will "prepare the battlefield," to borrow a Pentagon term, for future
wars and political campaigns. It will determine whether the current
peace movement will be limited to a single important issue or be an
embryo of a broader progressive movement.
This is the sharpest potential difference between the peace movement and
the centrists. Both can and should collaborate on military withdrawal.
But the peace movement wants to prevent future wars, reverse the nuclear
weapons momentum, end domestic spying, divert resources to domestic
priorities and, just for starters, put an end to the pattern of "armed
privatization."
These are issues the centrists and most politicians will not touch
unless they are confronted with a future climate of opinion in which
real answers are demanded. Moderates wish the war to end so that the
"real" war against terrorism can be prosecuted more effectively.
Progressives should be making the case that the Iraq War is far from a
misguided adventure but rather the result of pursuing an anti-terrorism
approach that divides the world into camps of good and evil, just as
Vietnam was the logical outcome of cold war assumptions about a
monolithic Communist conspiracy.
The national security establishment already fears this legacy of Iraq. A
December 2005 /Foreign Affairs/ article fretted about an emergent "Iraq
Syndrome
the-iraq-syndrome.html>" that parallels the "Vietnam Syndrome" of
previous decades. Based apparently on a disease-control model, the "Iraq
Syndrome" will make Americans skeptical that having the largest defense
budget is "broadly beneficial." Other Vietnam-era themes critical of
empire have re-entered through the window of the Bush era; among them,
opposition to an imperial presidency or any notion of policing the world.
If the Vietnam era left any "syndrome" behind, it was a healthy
irreverence toward power, which shows up today in antiwar marches and
parents' opposition to military recruiting. The first President Bush
prematurely believed that the "Vietnam Syndrome" was defeated in the
Persian Gulf War, but it only remained dormant until the 2003 invasion
of Iraq.
Whether a Republican or Democrat finally withdraws American troops from
Iraq, it is crucial that public opinion remain angry and critical of the
deceptions that resulted in so many needless deaths. That is the final
victory, which only the peace movement can achieve by drawing more
Americans into questioning the nature of what Robert Lifton calls "the
superpower syndrome