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ISR Issue 56, November–December 2007



EDITORIAL

LIBERAL ANTIWAR STRATEGY

Failure's no success at all

THE POLITICS of the main national antiwar coalition, United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ), may not be the only reason the antiwar movement remains fairly small after more than four years of war, but it is an important contributing factor.
UFPJ had kept a low profile before the 2006 vote—as in 2004, when it rejected holding an explicitly antiwar mobilization, instead joining protests against the Republican National Convention in New York City, while tailoring its message to fit in with the prowar campaign of John Kerry. Nevertheless, the Democrats’ victory was seen by UFPJ as a vindication of its strategy of “[building] a bipartisan peace bloc in Congress that can set the date for troop withdrawal and force Bush and the Pentagon to end the occupation,” Judith Le Blanc, a UFPJ national co-chair and leader of the Communist Party USA, wrote in the People’s Weekly World.

But this strategy makes the movement a hostage to the politicians. Thus, when the “peace bloc in Congress” caved last May and voted for the Bush administration’s demand for $120 billion in war funding, the renewed confidence of UFPJ activists turned to demoralization. At the UFPJ national assembly in June, delegates expressed a sense of isolation, despite the reinvigoration of local activism following the November election.

Many activists felt betrayed by the Democrats’ failure to stand up to the Bush administration, but UFPJ’s failed strategic orientation—of tailoring its activities and mobilizations to a Democratic Congress it expects to at least limit, if not end, the Bush administration’s ability to prosecute the war—remained unexamined and unchanged. It appears undeterred from pursuing its amicable relationship with Democrats, however miserably that strategy failed in 2004 with prowar neoliberal candidate John Kerry.

UFPJ’s third national assembly on June 22–24 prioritized “engaging in the 2008 electoral season to project a peace and justice agenda.” No decision was made on how to proceed in the strong likelihood that no major candidate offers a peace and justice agenda. If past practice is any indication, UFPJ can be expected to go into hibernation to weather the contradictions of the coming election—as it did in 2004, to the detriment of the antiwar movement. Indeed, those contradictions are already on full display.

UFPJ called for regional antiwar mobilizations on October 27—an anticlimactic date, since it follows Congress’s recent debate (and approval) of war funding. Yet UFPJ promises the protests will show the “breadth and depth of antiwar sentiment” across the United States. At press time, this remains to be seen.

The approach to the regional protest in Chicago was certainly problematic. Organizers for the Midwest regional protest boasted that invited guest speakers include Senators Obama and Richard Durbin and Chicago Mayor Richard Daley. Some organizations (including the 8th Day Center for Justice, International Solidarity Movement, and the International Socialist Organization) revoked or withheld their endorsements, while Students for a Democratic Society has called for an anti-imperialist feeder march. All cited the same misgivings:

• Mayor Richard Daley opposed the Chicago City Council’s passage of a September 2005 resolution for a rapid withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. In addition, Daley approved police arrests of more than 800 Chicago antiwar protesters on the night the U.S. invaded Iraq in March 2003. Under Daley, Chicago schools have become the most militarized in the nation—the only city to use public school facilities to host U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine academies.

• Durbin has consistently voted for Iraq War funding, including the October 1 vote for an additional $150 billion dollars for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Along with Clinton, Durbin also voted for an amendment September 26 that designates Iran’s Revolutionary Guard as “an international terrorist organization,” paving the way for a U.S. military attack.

• Obama, while currently touting his 2002 antiwar credentials, has consistently voted to fund the Iraq War (the one exception occurring this past spring, when passage was already assured).

October 27’s Chicago organizer Carl Davidson refused to cave to this growing dissension among antiwar activists alarmed at the direction of the demonstration. Davidson replied to his critics on Chicago Indymedia, “I’ve repeated, time and again, that we are building a left-center coalition around ‘out now’ and related slogans, and if you are in agreement with that basic orientation, welcome aboard.”

A “left-center coalition” might or might not work for the next Democratic Party nominee (Gore and Kerry, using “triangulation” politics, both failed to motivate voters desiring a genuine departure from the political status quo). But it certainly spells disaster for the antiwar movement, which is dangerously close to rendering itself irrelevant.

As the Iraq occupation approaches its fifth anniversary, the politicians responsible must be held accountable, from both major political parties. Otherwise, the next stop is 2013—and beyond—and more Iraqis and U.S. troops will pay the price.
The liberal antiwar strategy has been a complete disaster for the antiwar movement. Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey (D-Cal.) admitted as much when she told liberal antiwar activists on an August 27 conference call of the difficulties she was having convincing fellow Democrats of her views (she favors phased withdrawal and “redeployment”): “Now people start asking: ‘Why aren’t people on the streets?’ And I say that they are on the streets, they’re on their blog, and they’re communicating.”

It is not just a question of subordinating protest to lobbying, but of the whole political trajectory of organizations like the UFPJ that flow from their commitment to “winning over” the Democratic Party (and therefore to not alienating it)—a failure to connect the war in Afghanistan with the war in Iraq, for example; a reluctance to move beyond liberal chidings of Israel; and a refusal to speak of Iraqi self-determination.

Alexander Cockburn cites Lawrence McGuire, a North Carolinian now teaching in Montpellier, France, who made this insightful observation:

I was reading a recent piece by Phyllis Bennis, she talked about the “U.S. military casualties” and the “Iraqi civilian victims,” and it struck me that the Grand Taboo of the antiwar movement is to show the slightest empathy for the resistance fighters in Iraq. They are never mentioned as people for whom we should show concern, much less admiration. But of course, if you are going to sympathize with the U.S. soldiers, who are fighting a war of aggression, then surely you should also sympathize with the soldiers who are fighting for their homeland.

Key to reviving the antiwar movement will be the building of a new Left that is independent of the twin parties of war and is willing not only to take the actions necessary to build a mass movement that can put real pressure on the politicians, but to make the political connections between the war in Iraq and Israel’s wars on the Palestinians and Lebanon; the war abroad and the war at home on Muslims and working-class living standards; the war on Iraq with the total “war on terror”; and stands square on the side of Iraq’s right to resist.
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