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International Socialist Review Issue 39, January–February 2005

The Future of the Antiwar Movement

By MEREDITH KOLODNER

Meredith Kolodner is a member of the International Socialist Organization in New York City.

A YEAR ago, Bush’s popularity ratings reached an historic low, much of it driven by problems related to the occupation of Iraq. In the spring, it seemed as if every State and Justice Department expert was denouncing the administration’s handling of the invasion and the occupation. Then, graphic photos of torture at Abu Ghraib splashed across every front page around the globe.

On top of that, the claimed rationale for the U.S. invasion of Iraq–rooting out weapons of mass destruction–turned out to be an act of mass deception. Civilian casualties were also mounting: August was bloodier than April, and U.S. soldiers’ deaths climbed over the 1,000 mark, with an average of thirty-five injuries per day. A respected British journal, the Lancet, published an independent study showing 100,000 Iraqi deaths since the invasion began,1 and the Iraqi resistance wouldn’t allow the newspapers to bury the story beneath campaign gossip.

Equally striking, however, was the muted response of the antiwar movement. The outrage–especially around the Abu Ghraib torture scandal–was palpable among ordinary people in and out of the movement, but somehow the only visible sign of antiwar sentiment during those long months was a hot day in August when tens of thousands marched outside of the Republican National Convention. Armed with mountains of evidence, and a public that was growing increasingly uneasy about the costs and aims of the war, the peace movement nonetheless seemed paralyzed. Bush stumbled, then regained his footing, the presidency, and the ability to destroy the cities of Iraq–in order to "save" them.

Many believe that the main failure of the antiwar movement during the election season was its inability to get rid of Bush. A post-election set of "Talking Points" distributed to nine hundred member groups by the antiwar coalition United For Peace and Justice, concluded the following about the impact of Bush’s victory:

The result will be that around the world people will see Americans as complicit in our government’s wars and other violations. We citizens of empire in this country failed to defend the interests of the subjects of empire in the rest of the world, who are denied even the illusion of a vote. We are all less safe as a result.2

The blame for this defeat, assessed in numerous articles on left-wing web sites, in newspaper editorial pages, and progressive magazines, was placed mostly on the weak message of Democratic challenger John Kerry, combined with the conservatism of "red-state" dwelling Middle America.

A question that has been harder to answer, or even to ask, was why there was no organized visible response to the myriad crises and catastrophes that went on in Iraq during those months? Public opinion polls often showed a majority believed that invading Iraq had been a mistake and the justification for war had been based on lies.3 Far from being an isolated minority, the antiwar movement had the potential ear of millions.

Where did the antiwar movement go?

The antiwar movement was quiet because it plunged itself headlong into the Kerry campaign. The rationale was that ending the occupation under Kerry would be easier than under Bush. No one much liked Kerry, and few at the core of the movement wore Kerry buttons or attended his rallies. But almost everyone did whatever they could to defeat Bush. In practical terms, that meant campaigning for Kerry, whether through get-out-the-vote efforts, leading campaigns against the independent candidacy of Ralph Nader, or "voter education" that skirted the boundaries of non-profit organizations’ tax-free status. At times, people were so busy campaigning for Kerry that there was literally no one around to organize rallies, press conferences, or other visible actions in response to the various horrors unfolding in Iraq.

But the problem was more than simply where the movement was putting its resources–election campaigning versus protesting. ABB–"Anybody But Bush"–meant that the most important thing to do was to get Bush out. Followed to its logical conclusion, it meant that any serious criticism of Kerry would play into Bush’s hands, weaken the candidate, and result in Bush’s reelection. Any criticism of Kerry for not actually being against the war would have put a spotlight on the disjuncture between Kerry’s position and that of the antiwar movement. Further, anyone paying close attention, or a reporter with even a marginal amount of curiosity, might have asked, "If you are against the war, why are you supporting Kerry instead of Nader?"

If the candidate had been antiwar, there might have been more room to blend the movement with the campaign. But garnering the support of people against the war is a delicate business when the candidate voted for it–not to mention the fact that he was also spending a good deal of time trumpeting his own war record in Vietnam, supporting the Patriot Act, and giving advice on how to strengthen and win the occupation. The very slogans of the movement "End the Occupation," "Bring the Troops Home Now," and "Money for Jobs Not for War" were in complete contradiction to the positions of the Kerry campaign. Author Naomi Klein–who defended the ABB position4– wrote at the time,

As I write this, days before the Republican convention, the plan for the demonstration seems to be to express general outrage about Iraq, to say "no to war" and "no to the Bush agenda." This is an important message, but it’s not enough. We also need to hear specific demands to end the disastrous siege on Najaf, and unequivocal support for Iraqis who are desperate for democracy and an end to occupation.5

It is no mystery, then, why the protest in front of the Republican National Convention (RNC), as impressive and important as it was, lacked a sharp antiwar message. Indeed, the demonstration failed to target the April invasion and mass murder in Fallujah or the siege of Najaf. Supporting a prowar candidate had tied the antiwar movement in a political knot.

In addition, the Boston Social Forum, which drew over 2,000 leftists and progressives into more than 500 meetings, panels, and discussions and opened just days before the Democratic National Convention, broke with global social forum tradition by refusing to organize any sort of protest in conjunction with its meeting. Initially planned in part as a challenge to the Democrats, it instead functioned to siphon dissent off of the streets and keep it in the realm of debate.

Moreover, the global social forum movement that elsewhere has had important debates about the role of political parties within it, concluded that the most enthusiastic proponents of war and neoliberalism have no place in the movement. In Boston, however, there was widespread agreement that the Democrats, in all their prowar, pro-corporate globalization glory, were the only option in 2004. In fact, the one actual antiwar presidential candidate, Ralph Nader, was prevented from speaking on the main plenary, while long-time progressive activist Eric Mann used most of his plenary speech to tear apart Nader and his running mate, Peter Camejo. Meanwhile, Democratic Party "progressives" such as Robert Reich (formerly Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Labor) were given spots at some of the largest venues to pitch voting for Kerry. Failed Democratic Party candidate Dennis Kucinich spoke on panels in several different sessions, ending most speeches with a call to elect Kerry and "give him a chance."

Did the elections help to build the antiwar movement?

Some antiwar advocates believe that the election season was of benefit to the movement. Tom Hayden wrote that the fact that "much of the energy of the peace and justice movement flowed into presidential campaigns" was a positive thing. He argues, "As a result millions of people have become engaged politically on grassroots levels, many for the first time. The peace and justice message was heard more widely than before."6

Medea Benjamin is a long-time global justice activist, founder of the antiwar women’s group "Code Pink," and a member of the Green Party. She was central to the successful effort of the ABB camp inside the Green Party rejecting Ralph Nader as their candidate in favor of David Cobb, who advocated a vote a for Kerry in the "swing states." Benjamin agrees with Hayden that the Anybody But Bush strategy was beneficial for the movement. She argues, "I thought that joining in the massive effort to defeat Bush…was the right thing to do. I just wish we’d done it more effectively.… There’s a lot of hope, just on the electoral front alone, where millions more people got involved with politics."7

It is true that there was a massive get-out-the-vote effort that involved a major mobilization among liberals and activists. But mobilization for what? This "activism" was a diversion from, rather than a builder of, the antiwar movement. As the antiwar movement slipped into the pocket of the prowar candidate, a real antiwar message became more and more difficult to find within the public debate that surrounded the election. The antiwar movement, rather than forcing the issue of the war onto the table, permitted Kerry to take it off the table, thus narrowing the political debate on the war to one over how to pursue the war and not whether or not to oppose it. As a result, thousands of activists who stumped for Kerry are bewildered and confused.

Kerry fights for a prowar position

Kerry’s campaign strengthened support for the "war on terror" and damaged arguments for immediate withdrawal from Iraq. By offering him support, the antiwar movement aided this process.

Kerry told viewers of the first presidential debate, "I have a better plan to be able to fight the war on terror by strengthening our military, strengthening our intelligence…. I will hunt down and kill the terrorists wherever they are." As Bush went on the offensive to defend his foreign policy, Kerry countered by criticizing the way the war in Iraq was conducted. He called for the strengthening of the occupation and for more resources to be put into the so-called war on terror. During the first debate he declared, "I’m not talking about leaving [Iraq]. I’m talking about winning." And he chastised Bush later, saying, "What I want to do is to change the dynamics on the ground. And you have to do that by beginning to not back off Fallujas and other places and send the wrong message to the terrorists." Shortly after Kerry’s defeat, Bush implemented Kerry’s advice on Fallujah, with deadly consequences.

But Kerry went further than simply arguing that he could have fought and won the war more effectively, often implying that his combat experience in Vietnam equipped him for this task. Kerry argued that the war in Iraq had distracted the U.S. from its real mission–the war on terror. His argument was that Afghanistan was a just war since al-Qaeda had cells there, whereas the U.S. should have used a combination of sanctions and an "international coalition" to threaten war in order to bring down Saddam Hussein, since he was not directly responsible for the attacks on September 11.

Leaving aside the fact that the sanctions on Iraq in fact killed more civilians than the 1991 Gulf War and the current Iraq war combined, Kerry’s argument about the war on terror presents profound problems for the antiwar movement.

The war on terror has as its basis the idea that the U.S. is the victim of fundamentalist, mostly Muslim, often stateless forces, who seek to destroy the U.S. due to its egalitarian traditions and democratic form of government. As the National Security Strategy of the U.S. outlines, "The United States of America is fighting a war against terrorists of global reach. The enemy is not a single political regime or person or religion or ideology. The enemy is terrorism."8 The failure to challenge this framework endangers the future health of the movement. To the extent that the U.S. population accepts the idea that the U.S. was attacked because of its positive attributes, the movement will have serious difficulty explaining why the U.S. should not overthrow any number of backwards dictatorships or countries "proven" to support the "terrorists" (such as Iran). The war on terror is the short hand excuse for the U.S. to intervene when and where it likes.

Whereas prior to 9/11, some sort of "humanitarian" excuse was needed (to rescue poor Kuwait in 1991, to save starving Somalis in 1993, to free oppressed Kosovars in 1999), the U.S. now has a much freer hand to target any country that it accuses of supporting terrorism. An explicit, or implicit, reference to the haunting image of the twin towers in flames is used to silence critics. Whereas democracy in the 1950s and 1960s was being threatened by the specter of Stalin, it is now Osama bin Laden who challenges the U.S. everywhere. The war on terror not only justifies bombs and bloated military budgets, it has been used to allow some of the most extreme restrictions on civil liberties since Cold War McCarthyism clamped down on dissent decades ago. The war on terror is the parent company of all of the wars and provocations the U.S. will initiate, it is the mother of all ideologies, and it will be the undoing of all opposition if it goes unchallenged.

Although many Monday morning quarterback pundits tried to make the election into a referendum on "moral values," it was the war on terror that dominated the national debate. It has been widely emphasized that 22 percent of voters said that moral values were the number one issue in their decision, but little has been said about the 78 percent who said that Iraq, the war on terror, and the economy were the biggest factors. It was the issue of Iraq and its political backdrop of foreign policy and security that defined the 2004 election season.

The damage done by the hawkish Kerry campaign, however, was augmented by the fact that the antiwar movement for the most part ceded the public stage to Kerry, willingly giving ground on the issues of occupation and the war on terror. The so-called antiwar candidate could talk about "winning" in Iraq, and the antiwar movement simply failed to challenge him on it in any serious way. And even more tragically, this all played out as events in Iraq were opening huge questions around Iraq in the minds of Americans.

Indeed, the argument in UFPJ’s post-election assessment can’t have it both ways. If a vote for Bush has lead people around the world to "see Americans as complicit in our government’s wars," a vote for hawkish Kerry wouldn’t have sent a fundamentally different message. The argument is wrongly posed because Americans are not permitted to vote on wars–only on which candidate will carry them out.

Instead of using this opportunity to gain political ground and reach more people, shifting the climate of debate around the war leftward, the anti-war movement slipped backwards. Kerry gave Bush a free pass on Abu Ghraib, and the Left gave a free pass to Kerry. By backing Kerry, the antiwar movement got the worst of both worlds–it didn’t show itself in the streets or at the polls, and as a result, helped shift the political debate rightward. With no platform from which to speak, the prowar candidate replaced the movement as the "liberal" position on the war. And so when the city of Fallujah faced a slaughter just days after the election, the movement scrambled to respond.

The battle for public opinion

In the lead up to the Iraq invasion, the antiwar movement both built from, and influenced, fairly widespread unease about the war. Polls showed that 49 percent of the U.S. population opposed the war while 47 percent supported it. Among African Americans, opposition was at 71 percent. When people were asked about going to war without "UN or broad international support," the opposition jumped to 59 percent. Opposition stood at 60 percent if the war would result in "thousands of Iraqi civilian casualties."9

While opposition to the war declined once the bombs began to drop and in the immediate aftermath when "victory" seemed sure, the crises encountered by attempts to occupy Iraq led to renewed questioning of the war. The failure to find weapons of mass destruction, the evidence that governments lied to gain support for the war, the growth of the Iraqi resistance as well as the visible brutality against it, and the torture at Abu Ghraib together meant that from June—December 2004, (with a dip in September just after the Republican National Convention), anywhere from 45 percent to 55 percent of the public believed that it was a mistake to go to war in Iraq.

Add the revelations about false documents and evidence of weapons of mass destruction, and the impact on consciousness became apparent. A consistent majority since April of 2004 believed that the government misled the public about existence of weapons of mass destruction and the link between Iraq and al-Qaeda.10 But it is not enough to simply reveal lies, because in fending off criticism about the factual basis for the war in Iraq, the Bush team tried to win over public opinion by changing the justification for the war. Weapons of mass destruction disappeared from the administration’s talking points, replaced with the effort to liberate the Iraqi people, bring democracy to Iraq, and the necessity of staying in Iraq to "stabilize" the situation.

Even though U.S. military and Iraqi civilian casualties were rising, and more people were coming to understand that they had been lied to, support for the central post-invasion demands of the movement–bring the troops home and end the occupation–declined. A Harris poll posed the question, "Do you favor keeping a large number of U.S. troops in Iraq until there is a stable government there OR bringing most of our troops home in the next year?" In June 2004, 56 percent wanted to bring the troops home. In November 2004, that number had shrunk to 47 percent.11 No one can look back and say with certainty what the number would be if the movement had stayed on the public stage, instead of moving inside of a campaign that argued forcefully to keep the troops in Iraq, but its absence was certainly felt in the realm of public opinion.

As important as the Bush administration’s spin control was, Kerry’s practically non-existent criticisms on issues like the Abu Ghraib scandal gave the Bush administration room to maneuver. This, in large part, explains why no heads rolled after Abu Ghraib, save for a few low-ranking soldiers. Crises brewed, boiled over, and then simmered down without, apparently, any immediate cost to the Bush administration, because the Democrats gave Bush wiggle room, and the Left gave Kerry even more.

Many had argued in the run-up to the election that we did not have to counterpose voting for Kerry and building the movement, we could do both–and further, that the election could help to mobilize the movement. But the reality was, as it has been so many times before in the history of social movements and the Democratic Party, it was a choice–either you campaign for a pro-corporate, pro-neoliberal, and prowar candidate, in which case you must mute your anti-corporate, anti-neoliberal, antiwar message–or you keep fighting. Most of the Left chose the former, and as a result we are starting from a weaker position politically than we were at when the campaign season opened.

How to rebuild

How can the antiwar movement rebuild? The strategy of lesser-evilism, or support for the Democrats, is only one of the challenges that we face, and it recedes in immediacy as we are forced to deal with four more years of Bush. It would be convenient to blame all of the weaknesses in the movement on its approach to the 2004 election, but we face broader hurdles as we regroup and figure out where to go next. One of the major reasons that the strategy of Anybody But Bush was taken up with such enthusiasm not just by the leadership of the antiwar movement, but also by the vast majority of liberals and progressives, was due to a question that was never fully answered after the global day of protest on February 15, 2003. There were those who argued that if the world marched, the leaders would listen. Millions marched on February 15, with over a half million in New York City alone–but the war happened anyway. The question looms over the movement–does protest matter? And if it matters, how does it matter and how do we organize it to change what’s happening in Iraq, and other places in the grip of the eagle’s talons?

The truth is that a mass demonstration isn’t sufficient to end a war. The Iraqi resistance, whose impact on the U.S. is far more forceful than a mass demonstration, hasn’t yet been enough to force the U.S. to leave. The U.S. took years to finally admit defeat and pull out of Vietnam–a country less strategically important than Iraq today. It was forced to do so by the combination of a mass movement at home, a unified national liberation movement in Vietnam, and the disintegration of the U.S. army as an effective fighting force. The antiwar movement will have to absorb this lesson in order to proceed on the right footing.

Iraqi resistance

The other debate is over the nature of the Iraqi resistance and how the movement should relate and react to it. It is easier for most people to oppose the invasion of a country than to oppose its occupation once it has begun. But to garner support for bringing the troops home, it is important to have an answer about what will happen when the U.S. troops pull out, especially for people who genuinely care about the fate of people in Iraq and believe that the U.S. has a responsibility to not simply destroy the country and leave. Some in the movement have solved this question by calling for a UN-sponsored occupation, but the UN’s record in Somalia, Bosnia, and Rwanda gives no confidence that an occupation under international auspices will be any less brutal than one controlled by the U.S.

The question that is more directly faced is the idea that if the U.S. pulls out immediately, the country could "fall into the hands of reactionary Muslim fundamentalists." While a real discussion of the state of the Iraqi resistance is beyond the scope of this article, it must be said that the Bush administration’s portrayal of the resistance as "foreign" (as opposed to the U.S. soldiers shooting at them) followers of Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein loyalists is wildly inaccurate. The idea that al-Qaeda operatives or ex-Baathists are holding an otherwise pro-U.S. population hostage is belied by the depth and breadth of the resistance–both numerically and geographically. Most independent journalists who have been in Iraq report that the resistance is extremely heterogeneous, made up of tribal, secular, nationalist, and fundamentalist elements.

But in their haste to disassociate themselves from the Iraqi resistance, some in the antiwar movement are in danger of forgetting a basic lesson of history: Occupation breeds legitimate resistance. Writer Arundhati Roy explains:

An illegal invasion. A brutal occupation in the name of liberation. The rewriting of laws that allow the shameless appropriation of the country’s wealth and resources by corporations allied to the occupation, and now the charade of a local "Iraqi government." For these reasons, it is absurd to condemn the resistance to the U.S. occupation in Iraq, as being masterminded by terrorists or insurgents or supporters of Saddam Hussein. After all if the United States were invaded and occupied, would everybody who fought to liberate it be a terrorist or an insurgent or a Bushite? The Iraqi resistance is fighting on the frontlines of the battle against Empire. And therefore that battle is our battle.

Like most resistance movements, it combines a motley range of assorted factions. Former Baathists, liberals, Islamists, fed-up collaborationists, communists, etc. Of course, it is riddled with opportunism, local rivalry, demagoguery, and criminality. But if we are only going to support pristine movements, then no resistance will be worthy of our purity. This is not to say that we shouldn’t ever criticize resistance movements. Many of them suffer from a lack of democracy, from the iconization of their "leaders," a lack of transparency, a lack of vision and direction. But most of all they suffer from vilification, repression, and lack of resources. Before we prescribe how a pristine Iraqi resistance must conduct their secular, feminist, democratic, nonviolent battle, we should shore up our end of the resistance by forcing the U.S. and its allies to withdraw from Iraq.12

The primary responsibility of the antiwar movement is to remove the occupation so that the people of Iraq have the same rights any other people should to determine what their lives, their society, and their government look like, free of bombs, bullets and American dictates. This may not always be the easiest argument to make, especially in the U.S., where the tradition of supporting "the right to self-determination" has been so weakened that even the phrase itself sounds arcane.

But regardless of the political tenor of the Iraqi resistance, or our understanding of it, it is currently this resistance that is standing between Iraq and its would-be conquerors. "It is the Iraqi resistance that will determine the future of the country," writes author and activist Tariq Ali,

It is their actions targeting both foreign soldiers and corporate mercenaries that has made the occupation untenable. It is their presence that has prevented Iraq from being relegated to the inside pages of the print media and forgotten by TV. It is the courage of the poor of Baghdad, Basra and Falluja that has exposed the political leaders of the West who supported this enterprise.13

What direction the resistance takes will be determined by the people of Iraq.

Racism

As has been true during the wars of the past century, the war in Iraq and the war on terror generally has brought with them a virulent strain of racism. The surge in anti-Arab and anti-Muslim racism has continued, unabated, since 9/11. Many Arab-Americans, Muslims, and immigrants from the Middle East live with a feeling that ranges from unease to outright fear. The witch-hunt has resulted in thousands of deportations, an unknown degree of everyday discrimination in housing and hiring, violent attacks, and the wholesale stripping of the basic rights and dignities of hundreds of prisoners (who have not been charged with any specific crime) at Guantánamo Bay, as well as untold numbers on military bases from Afghanistan to Iraq. If we do not recognize this reality and integrate a conscious campaign against it in our actions, the demonization of "being Arab" and the criminalization of "being Muslim" will not only destroy a generation, but will continue to help legitimize, in the most insidious of ways, the war on terror. Moreover, it will create a climate in which more attacks on minorities and other immigrants in general are acceptable.

Soldiers

Finally, some of the most promising cracks in the Bush administration’s efforts to prosecute the occupation have come from those who are holding its guns. From the refusal by the 343rd Quartermaster Company of the Army Reserve to obey an order they deemed a "suicide mission," to the lawsuits fighting the "stop-loss" policy of preventing soldiers whose enlistments are up from leaving the military, there are rumbles of dissent inside the U.S. armed forces. Not all of the soldiers engaging in these actions consider themselves against the war, but beginning to question the competency and fairness of commanders can lead to a process of questioning the government’s overall policy and its war aims. The ranks of military families and older and recent veterans who openly oppose the war are also growing. Groups like Military Families Speak Out, Iraq Veterans Against the War, and others are making important headway and building crucial relationships that can begin to threaten the ability of the U.S. military to function effectively.

It is of course not useful to try and prescribe a set of rules and politics on a living, breathing, and diverse movement. But like generations before us, these and more are the questions we face in the U.S.

The task before us is daunting, but no more so than that which faced the movement against the war in Vietnam in the 1960s. Along with the resistance of the Vietnamese people and the actions of U.S. soldiers stationed in Vietnam, that movement not only forced the U.S. to pull out of Vietnam, it prevented untold number of invasions in the years to come. We are rebuilding that tradition, in schools, in communities, and inside the armed forces. Daunting but possible, ordinary people in the U.S. and our brothers and sisters in the Middle East have the power not only to force the U.S. out of Iraq, but to challenge the U.S. government’s ability to use its military elsewhere, and by doing so to fight for a world in which people can live free from the tragedies of war and occupation.


1 "The War in Iraq: Civilian Casualties, Political Responsibilities," Lancet, October 29, 2004, available online at http://www.thelancet.com.

2 Phyllis Bennis, "Post-election Disasters Rage Across Washington and the Middle East," Institute for Policy Studies, November 18, 2004, circulated by United For Peace and Justice, November 22, 2004 as "Talking Points #25," available online at http://www.ips-dc.org/comment/Bennis/tp25postelec.htm.

3 See many poll results at Polling.com, available online at http://www.pollingreport.com/iraq.htm.

4 A widely respected figure in the global justice movement, Klein seemed to be signaling early on that she rejected the logic of Anybody But Bush. She ended her September 13 Nation column, "Bring Najaf to New York" with the statement, "There is no chance for Bush’s war agenda to be clearly rejected on Election Day, because John Kerry is promising to continue, and even strengthen, the military occupation of Iraq." But just days later, Klein came out for the Anybody But Bush strategy at a forum that drew hundreds, "Can We Do Better Than Anybody But Bush?" She said people should vote for Kerry because "The message it would send if the American people actually went ahead and reelected this guy after the bombing of Afghanistan and Iraq would be a message of such unbelievable complacency, of such unbelievable indifference to the outrage that has been expressed in every city in this world."

5 Naomi Klein, "Bring Najaf to New York," Nation, September 13, 2004.

6 Tom Hayden, "How to End the Iraq War," Alternet, November 23, 2004, available online at http://www.alternet.org/story/20571/.

7 Quoted in Elizabeth DiNovella, "Medea Benjamin Interview," Progressive, December 2004. Benjamin followed up that interview with an essay in the December 20, 2004 issue of the Nation with what seemed like a reversal. She writes, "Many of us in the Green Party made a tremendous compromise by campaigning in swing states for such a miserable standard-bearer for the progressive movement as John Kerry. Well, I’ve had it. As George Bush says, ‘Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me–you can’t get fooled again.’ For those of you willing to keep wading in the muddy waters of the Democratic Party, all power to you. I plan to work with the Greens to get more Green candidates elected to local office." This fails to come to terms with the impact of the Green Party’s collapse into the camp of the Democratic Party in 2004. Local races are important and can play a crucial role in strengthening the Left, but the challenge of lesser-evilism will reappear in any race deemed "crucial" and in which a significant third party could play the role of the "spoiler" to a Democratic Party victory. Benjamin is likely saying that she will not focus her efforts on attempts to "reform" the Democratic Party, but the matter of what the Greens do in future national races remains unanswered. If it is to become a real third party, it will need to resolve this question.

8 The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, chapter 3, "StrengthenAlliances to Defeat Global Terrorism and Work to Prevent Attacks Against Us and Our Friends," September 17, 2002, available online at http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.html.

9 Zogby International Poll, January 27, 2003, available online at http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=675.

10 See many poll results at PollingReport.com, available online at http://www.pollingreport.com/iraq.htm..

11 The Harris Poll results available online at http://www.pollingreport.com/iraq.htm .

12 Arundhati Roy, "Tide? Or Ivory Snow? Public Power in the Age of Empire," speech in San Francisco, California, August 16, 2004, available at http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=40&ItemID=6087.

13 Tariq Ali, "This is Not Sovereignty," Znet, July 3, 2004, available online at http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2004-07/03ali.cfm.

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