Review by ELIZABETH SCHULTE
JUST IN time for the long run-up to the 2008 presidential elections, Tom Hayden has a new book on what is the number one concern of most progressive voters—the war in Iraq. In Ending the War in Iraq, the longtime activist and Democratic Party politician outlines a strategy for what he believes it will take to end the war, but more than that, he sends a message to antiwar activists about the limits they should place on their demands. Within this, Hayden has a particularly strong warning for antiwar activists who dare to criticize the Democratic Party.
In the book, Hayden identifies eight “pillars” of the Bush administration’s policy in Iraq—which include American public opinion, Iraqi support, the U.S. media, and U.S. military capacity—that he feels are the key areas for activists to pursue in ending the war in Iraq.
But largely this book is a message to the antiwar movement that it should be willing to settle on compromises that fall short of the demand for immediate withdrawal. That might mean coming up with a proposal in which the U.S. can, as Hayden says, “save face” in Iraq without losing too much credibility internationally. According to Hayden, the success of this project will largely depend on an “inside-outside” strategy that recognizes the benefits of protest but not at the expense of electing Democrats into office.
Hayden—a founding member to the 1960s Students for a Democratic Society and author of the Vietnam-era antiwar movement’s Port Huron Statement—has personally seen the Democratic Party’s true nature on the question of war. He recalls in the introduction:
Then, as now, a president had violated a voter mandate for peace. Lyndon Johnson had indicated during his presidential campaign in 1964 that he would not send young American soldiers to Southeast Asia. Because of that promise, young radicals like myself decided on the slogan Part of the way with LBJ, knowing that the alternative was the conservative Barry Goldwater. Johnson betrayed his vow, however, escalating the conflict to a ground war by 1965.
Hayden doesn’t deny that the Democratic Party establishment leaders like Hillary Rodham Clinton are nothing like what the antiwar movement would like to see representing the opposition to the Republicans. But that doesn’t stop Hayden from covering for them.
For instance, Hayden admits that 2004 Democratic Party nominee John Kerry and his “ambivalence toward the war…disappointed thousands of activists that nonetheless worked on his campaign,” yet he supported him because he wasn’t George W. Bush. So when antiwar activism all but disappeared in the lead-up to the 2004 election, Hayden explains, “The feeling was first to dump Bush, second to claim victory for the antiwar movement, and third to hold massive demonstrations during Kerry’s inauguration.”
One problem: How could activists claim an antiwar victory if Kerry won, since he wasn’t actually running as an antiwar candidate? In other words, antiwar activists suspended antiwar actions so that “their” candidate, who wasn’t actually antiwar, could win without being challenged by antiwar protests. And, in the end, that candidate looked so much like the other candidate that he lost the election. In fact, Hayden applauds the “inner logic and sophistication of the movement” for its choice not to organize major protests at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) that year.
Hayden might better spend his time crafting an argument to his fellow Democratic Party politicians on why and how they should further the antiwar cause. However, his main criticism is directed toward antiwar voices on the left, including author Mike Davis, who offered much-needed analysis of the Democrats and their relationship to the antiwar movement in articles like “The Democrats after November” in the New Left Review earlier this year, and Anthony Arnove, author of the book Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal.
Hayden takes issue with their argument that the antiwar movement gave up its political independence in order get Kerry elected. “They were lending their energy to the campaign,” argues Hayden, “not surrendering their independence.” Hayden should try peddling that line to the Dennis Kucinich supporters who told Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman the story of having their antiwar signs confiscated by party officials at the DNC. And this was how they treated fellow Democrats, not to mention those who supported independent candidate Ralph Nader.
Hayden’s complaints are little surprise. In the summer of 2004, just months before the election, Hayden signed on to an “Open letter to progressives,” making the urgent plea to vote for Kerry because he was “the only candidate who could win against Bush.” Now, Hayden is doing the same thing, armed with sixties antiwar street credentials and a record as a Democratic politician who has a progressive voting record (even though he doesn’t expect it of others.)
Hayden rightly characterizes the Democrats’ success in the 2006 congressional elections as a mandate against the Bush agenda, and the war in Iraq in particular. He cites a pre-election USA Today/Gallup poll showing that “82 percent of likely voters said they expected the Democratic Congress to set a timetable for withdrawal, and 63 percent said they approved of such an approach.”
However, in the aftermath of their win, the Democrats have done nothing to make good on voters’ hopes. In several places, activists have registered their frustration with these do-nothing politicians, holding sit-ins in their Congress members’ offices, Republican and Democrat alike.
“Congress has the power to end this unjust war and illegal occupation of Iraq. They can stop funding it,” Rosemary Persaud, a mother of two, said in a statement after her arrest at a sit-in in the offices of Senators Chuck Grassley, a Republican, and Tom Harkin, a Democrat, in July.
I want to ask Sen. Grassley, as someone who has spent years of service investigating fraud and waste in government spending, why he sees no waste in human life as this war goes on and on, year after year. Is not a life worth more than a dollar?
Hayden could take a few pointers from these activists about how to end the war in Iraq.
