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Hearing Townes Van Zandt, "Pancho and Lefty"
Iraq War: Tom Hayden on antiwar strategy
Tom Hayden, who has been a prominent student and antiwar activist, including participating in the civil rights movement in Mississippi in the early 1960s, and who was a California state representative for several terms, has some ideas for the antiwar movement post-election. And, yes, war-lovers, he was married to Jane Fonda, the actress and born-again Christian who is still a favorite hate-figure for good prowar Republicans.
Believe it or not, ole Chuckie himself praised Jane Fonda's religious conversion and referred to her as "my sister" in a 2000 Soapbox rant: An Open Letter to Jane Fonda. Boy, I wonder if his publishers at Regnery know about that! A guy who wants to be thought of as the Nashville guru of Patriotic Correctness presumably wouldn't want to advertise his spiritual solidarity with Jane Fonda.
Anyway, Hayden lays out his ideas at some length in How to End the Iraq War AlterNet.com 11/23/04 (also available at CommonDreams.org). He summarizes near the end:
In short: pinch the funding arteries, push the Democrats to become an opposition party, ally with anti-war Republicans, support dissenting soldiers, make "Iraqization" more difficult, and build a peace coalition against the war coalition. If the politicians are too frightened or ideologically incapable of implementing an exit strategy, the only alternative is for the people to pull the plug.
Where do mass demonstrations and civil disobedience fit into this framework? Certainly Bush's inauguration will be an appropriate time to dissent in the streets. Nationwide rallies are an important way to remain visible, but many activists may tire if they see no strategic plan. The civil disobedience actions at Bechtel, the San Francisco financial district, and the Port of Oakland in early 2003 come closer to the strategy of pressuring the nerve centers of war. Care will have to be taken during such militant actions to send the clearest possible message to mainstream public opinion.
One strong aspect of Hayden's long essay is that he talks about the ways in which the election of Bush to a second term means that opponents of the war will be able to focus on a more direct criticism of the the Iraq War than would have been possible in practice under a Kerry administration. And that means making things like this clear:
By any moral or economic accounting, we now are worsening the lives of Iraqi since the fall of Saddam. We have turned innocent young Americans into torturers in places like Abu Ghraib. When going into battle, we close hospitals first. We make sure that television and newspapers are not "able to show pictures of bleeding women and children being taken into hospital wards" – this reported on Veterans Day in the Times. Not even our friends like us anymore, whether we are tourists in Europe or diplomats at the United Nations.
This is not a throwaway rhetorical point. Part of the strength of Bush's overall message - it's become fashionable to call it a "narrative" - is that we are spreading democracy and freedom with our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The reality is that its an ugly, brutal and unjustifiable mission to try to spread democracy - even if one believes that is truly the Bush administration's goal - by attempting to bomb, shoot and torture another country into accepting an American-imposed version of democracy and freedom. It was a foolish and doomed undertaking in Vietnam, and the same if true in Iraq.
And it's time to stop chasing fantasy strategies about bringing in some other countries into our Potemkin coalition to bail out the administration's failed project: "Ending this bloodbath is the most honorable task Americans can perform to restore progressive priorities and our respect in the world. We have passed the point for graceful exit strategies," he writes.
Hayden talks about issues like how to approach international coalition building, draft resistance and electoral strategies. I agree with his point on the larger "narrative" of war critics, as well. The current bipartisan consensus on the so-called "war on terrorism" is a destructive thing. It may sound like sixties nostalgia to use a phrase like "false consciousness." But the current attitude of the Republican Party toward the GWOT (global war on terrorism), largely seconded by the Democrats in its general rhetoric, creates a false picture of the threats the United States faces from the jihadist groups like Al Qaeda:
Both parties now are trapped in the vicious cycle of the "war on terrorism," just as they were caught up in the Cold War, be it the nuclear arms race, opportunistic alliances with dictators, and McCarthyite suppression of domestic critics. Only the Sixties peace and civil rights movements could finally shatter Cold War thinking at that time. It will take another such movement today to restore America's respect in the world, take steps towards global justice, and in the process possibly prevent another 9/11 attack.
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I THINK YOU ARE INCORRECT IN MANY WAYS ON YOUR ASSESSMENT. THE ONE THAT STANDS OUT THE MOST IS THAT WE HAVE MADE IRAQIS LIVES WORSE. LAST TIME I CHECKED THE INSURGENTS WERE THE ONES DOING THAT BY MURDERING CITIZENS, BLOWING UP PIPELINES ETC.,ETC. , ETC. . MAYBE IT WASN'T LEGAL TO INVADE IRAQ BY INTERNATIONAL STANDARDS. BUT A MAJORITY OF THE PEOPLE WELCOMED US WITH OPEN ARMS AND I CAN NEVER FORGET THE PICTURES ON T.V. IN THE LATE 80'S OF THE KURDISH WOMEN AND CHILDREN LAYING ON THE STREETS OF THEIR VILLAGE DEAD FROM WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION. THESE PEOPLE WERE GASED BECAUSE SADAAM HAD TO MAKE A EXAMPLE OF THEM. YEA WE TORTURED PRISONERS (WHICH WASN'T RIGHT AND I'M AGAINST) AND THE BIGGIEST VOICES AGAINST IT WERE THE ARAB COUNTRIES THAT TORTURE PEOPLE TO DEATH EVERY DAY OF THE YEAR. WHY DOES THE WORLD OVERLOOK EVERYTHING THE ARABS DO AGAINST HUMAN RIGHTS BUT WHEN THE US OR ISRAEL DOES MAKE A MISTAKE WE ARE BURNED AT THE STAKE? YES THE WORLD IS A MUCH BETTER PLACE WITHOUT SADDAM. WE WILL NOT LEAVE LIKE VIETNAM WE HAVE A JUST CAUSE AND THE PEOPLE DO WANT THE FREEDOM WE ARE FIGHTING FOR. LIKE IT OR NOT WE ARE THERE AND OUR TROOPS NEED OUR SUPPORT NOT TO BE CALLED BABY KILLERS,SPIT ON AND DISRESPECTED IN EVERYWAY LIKE TOM'S ANTIWAR MOVEMENT DID TO OUR BRAVE SOLDIERS WHO ONLY FOLLOWED THE LAW AND WENT UNLIKE A LARGE AMOUNT OF HIS MOVEMENT. YOU ALL OUGHT TO BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELVES. SUPPORT OUR TROOPS AND WELCOME THEM HOME WITH OPENED ARMS.
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I know that Fox News/Republican Party style is just to make it up new as we go along. But the reason given by the administration for the war was those horrible weapons of mass destruction - the nuclear weapons program (actual nuclear weapons, according to Dick Cheney), chemical weapons stockpiles, biological weapons stockpiles, sneaky little planes that could drop the stuff on the United States. The WMDs that didn't exist.
The Congressional war resolution authorized war under two conditions, both of which had to be met: that there was no diplomatic solution available to rid Iraq of its WMDs (the ones that didn't exist), and that Bush demonstrate clearly that Iraq was connnected to anti-American terrorism and specifically to the 9/11 attacks. Though the Republican Congress never had a thought about enforcing their own war resolution against Bush the Magnificent, Liberator of Peoples and Hooder of the Unrighteous, he violated the war resolution with his invasion of Iraq on both counts.
Here's a hint, mrdad3: The Republican leaders of today don't actually give a flying fig about the freedom or human rights of the Iraqis or Afghans or any other foreigners; they mostly just toss that stuff out to con those who want to be conned. - Bruce -
Bruce,
You are forgetting that both of these countries that we have freed from their tyrannical rulers wanted to be free before we went in and made it happen for them. It was because they lacked the means and not the will to be free from both of these evil governments.
Most of the terrorists we are fighting in Iraq are not soldiers as we know them or even Iraqi citizens. Many of these insurgents are being recriuted from out side of Iraq. The trouble is there are just as many radical clerics that want control of the country as there are clerics that side with the Iraqi Interim Government and want the elections to go ahead as scheduled.
You can keep spewing your Anti-Bush and Anti War rheteric all you want, but what we are doing in Iraq is justisfied and the correct thing to do. You can sit back here and spout you crap that undermines and belittles the work that our troops are doing in Iraq in the name of World Freedom and Democracy.
1/2/05 9:05 PM
By the way, WHY DID YOU THINK YOU HAD TO SHOUT THE ENTIRE COMMENT?
- Bruce