While public opinion against the war is mounting everyday, there has been debate within the halls of power over what direction to take in the occupation of Iraq. Many are hoping that the Democrats will end the occupation, and beginning to pin their hopes on the 2006 elections. The Call for World Can’t Wait ( Drive Out the Bush Regime! puts it clearly: ‘There is not going to be some savior from the Democratic Party. This whole idea of putting our hopes and energies into “leaders” who tell us to seek common ground with fascists and religious fanatics is proving every day to be a disaster, and actually serves to demobilize people.As the Bush regime is clearly having trouble continuing its occupation of Iraq, and debate is breaking out in Congress, we must ask ourselves what it will take to stop not only the war, but the whole disastrous course the Bush regime is taking us. This will require massive resistance of millions of people taking independent political action (as laid out in our Call), and demanding ‘Bush: step down, and take your whole program with you.’We want to encourage people everywhere to debate these questions ( from chat rooms, classrooms, work, political discussions, and holiday gatherings ( and start organizing to drown out Bush’s State of the Union speech in massive protest. And, to give more substance to the above paragraph from our Call , below are several articles:
12/20: “The Democrats are stepping up, I’m not stepping back” [click here]
12/8, antiwar.com: “Bird-dogging Hillary Clinton, The Antiwar Movement Steps Up” by Joshua Frank
12/5, http://rwor.org/home-e.htm: On the newfound criticisms by some Democrats of aspects of the Iraq war” by Bob Avakian
Revolution newspaper titled ‘Iraq: Turmoil Among the Warmakers, Challenge For the People’.
CommonDreams.org: War-Hawk Republicans and Anti-War Democrats: What’s the Difference?
by Cindy Sheehan
Tell us what you think, and write or forward articles relevant to this debate. Send to feedback@worldcantwait.org
The Democrats are stepping up, I’m not stepping back
By Fred Akman December, 2005
Senior at Western Guilford High School.
In recent months, the Democrats in DC have finally begun to take a stand against the war, torture, and spying on American citizens (courtesy of The Patriot Act). In the Senate and House democrats are trying to get in their 2 cents on the issues, and the citizens are supposed to be breathing a sigh of relief and sitting back and saying ‘finally, the âliberals’ are going to bring this country back to the center’, and some people are thinking that to themselves.
PATRIOT ACT:
After the attacks of September 11th, an act was passed through Congress called the Patriot Act. The act supposedly is to allow the government better access to ‘possible terrorists’. In reality, it allows the government to monitor citizen’s phone calls, emails, even the books being checked out in public libraries. Being very large in length, and being given out only a few hours before it was sent to be voted on, many representatives didn’t even read the whole act. But, because this was a ‘time of crisis’, they blind fully voted in its favor.
It has only been very recently that the Democrats have started to denounce the acts of surveillance that had been taking place by government officials, most of which was on innocent civilians.
WAR IN IRAQ:
The lies that were spread out to the American people about the weapons of mass destruction that Iraq supposedly had lead the American people to believe that this war was justified, along with the lie that Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein were working together and that Saddam would give the weapons to the terrorists. The civilians didn’t know any better. In fact, the United States had actually supplied weapons of mass destruction to Iraq years ago, so as far as we knew, Iraq still had them.
The Democrats are currently stepping up and saying that those were lies and that there was never any evidence to back up those claims. While a select few officials had claimed this at the beginning of the war, they were not paid much attention by anyone, and the war proceeded as planned. Suddenly, those people and a great deal of others from the Democratic Party and even some Republicans are once again raising their voice that the War in Iraq is illegal and that we went to war under false pretenses.
TORTURE:
While many non mainstream liberal media sources have been talking about the torture in Iraq, it was only when the ‘England’ scandal broke out that people had to listen to what was happening at Abu Ghrab, Guantanimo Bay, and in Afghanistan.
Once again, the Democrats have just recently stepped up to say that it is wrong to be forcing men to stand in a circle and masturbate, have the use of dogs to induce stress, and be subject to countless other forms of torture while in the custody of the United States Military.
WHY THEY ARE DOING IT:
So why is it that only recently have the democrats and a few republicans started to voice their disgust at these things? Is it because they have just now found out about them? No. it is because A) there is a mass movement amoung the American people saying that this is unacceptable, B) President Bush’s approval ratings have plummeted, and C) the only main concern of the majority of the suits in Washington is to keep their job and be re-elected. That is why now, the American people are saying ‘no this isn’t right’, and the officials are trying to climb on board. Rather than stopping these things from happening while bush was on top, they were just worried about the next election, and if the president’s approval rating is good, then the people like him, if they don’t cause any trouble and follow him, the people will like them too.
So, the argument is that the ‘pendulum’ is swinging back from the right wing and back to the center. This is wrong. The entire center of the country has been pushed to the right, so the center is in fact still under the classification of the conservatives.
We cannot look for a savor in the 2008 elections to win the presidency. Or in the 2006 elections to take back control of the congress. The democrats have proven that they aren’t strong leaders, like all the other politicians, they are more concerned with getting re elected and keeping their jobs that they are too afraid to actually do their jobs, which is to help the American people (or so we am told) .). Most of the Democrats voted to go to war. They voted to pass the Patriot Act. And they sat by idly while people were openly being tortured and the Republicans justified it.
Bird-Dogging Hillary Clinton |
by Joshua Frank |
One has to be pleased that the antiwar movement is taking shape. Finally the target isn’t just George. W. Bush and gang. Last night at a chic Manhattan fundraiser for Hillary Clinton, antiwar activists staked out the senator and vowed to do so until she changes her position on the war. Sen. Clinton released a letter last week that clarified her (non) position on Iraq. She said she wouldn’t accept any timetable for withdrawal and won’t even embrace a “redeployment” of U.S. troops along the lines of Rep. Murtha. “I take responsibility for my vote, and I, along with a majority of Americans, expect the president and his administration to take responsibility for the false assurances, faulty evidence and mismanagement of the war,” Clinton wrote in her lengthy letter that amounted to nothing short of denial for her own culpability in the mess. |
http://www.counterpunch.com/walsh12052005.html
What Did the Democrats Know and When Did they Know It?
The Lies of John Edwards
By JOHN WALSH
The apology of John Edwards, former Senator and 2004 Democratic vice presidential candidate, for voting for the Iraq war in 2002, has been widely praised. But his apology is based on a lie, one that other Democrats are likely to embrace and one which will serve their ambitions but hide the truth. We should have no illusions about this, for to believe otherwise is to set ourselves up for the continuation of Bush’s war by a Democrat.
Edwards declared in an op-ed column in the Washington Post on November 13, 2005: “The argument for going to war with Iraq was based on intelligence that we now know was inaccurate. The information the American people were hearing from the president — and that I was being given by our intelligence community — wasn’t the whole story. Had I known this at the time, I never would have voted for this war.” Sounds simple enough. “Had I known then what I know now, etc.” Poor John Edwards was deceived. But was he? How was it that 21 other Democratic Senators and 2 Republicans were not deceived and voted against the war?
Part of the answer arrived in another op-ed the Washington Post one week later, November 20, 2005, by another former Senator, Bob Graham, entitled: “What I knew Before the Invasion.” Like Edwards, Graham was a member, in fact the chair, of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee in the period leading up to the war and on October 11, 2002 when the vote on the war on Iraq was taken. In a nutshell, Graham tells us that everyone on that committee knew that Bush was lying about weapons of mass destruction. Graham begins like a good, loyal Democrat, telling us that his colleagues were deceived, at least “most” of them. But he then tells us that the Senate Select Intelligence Committee knew better. Here are some of Graham’s words:
On the newfound criticisms by some Democrats of aspects of the Iraq war:An immoral and unjust act should be opposed because it is immoral and unjust. To criticize it only for failing to succeed is the stance of a scoundrel, and worse.-Bob Avakian, Chairman, Revolutionary Communist Party, USA
11/19 – today’s reason to drive out the Bush regime
“There is not going to be some savior from the Democratic Party. This whole idea of putting our hopes and energies into “leaders” who tell us to seek common ground with fascists and religious fanatics is proving every day to be a disaster, and actually serves to demobilize people.”
The Democrats: “Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”
After Democratic Congressman John Murtha’s speech calling for withdrawal of US troops from Iraq for military strategic reasons, Republicans pushed for a vote on an immediate troop withdrawal from Iraq. It was soundly defeated 403 to 3 – despite all the anti-war rhetoric coming from many of the Democrats these days, only three out of the 202 Democrats in the House decided to vote for the resolution supporting a immediate troop withdrawal from Iraq. Murtha himself voted against the resolution, as well as other leading House Democrats like Dennis Kucinich.*
Some Congressional Democrats complained that this resolution was pushed by the Republicans to force them between a rock and a hard place, and it’s absolutely true – because there wouldn’t be a “hard place” if the Democrats were really against this war! This vote has clearly showed the Democratic Party’s position on the war and immediate withdrawal, and also shows why we CANNOT rely on the Democrats to do anything but capitulate when push comes to shove. It’s up to us!
The World Can’t Wait, Drive Out the Bush Regime!
Bush Step Down, and Take Your Whole Program With You!
*Source: house.gov
Vegetarian Between Meals
This War Can’t Be Stopped by a Loyal Opposition
By JEREMY SCAHILL
The refrain of the Democrats about being misled into supporting the invasion of Iraq has become really tired. And someone other than the White House smearmongers needs to say it: The Democrats cannot be allowed to use faulty intelligence as a crutch to hold up their unforgivable support for the Iraq invasion. What is DNC Chair Howard Dean’s excuse? He wasn’t in Congress and didn’t have any access to Senate intelligence. Still, on March 9, 2003, just days before the invasion began, Dean told Tim Russert, on NBC’s Meet The Press, “I don’t want Saddam staying in power with control over those weapons of mass destruction. I want him to be disarmed.”
During the New Hampshire primary in January 2004, which I covered for Democracy Now!, I confronted Dean about that statement. I asked him on what intelligence he based that allegation. “Talks with people who were knowledgeable,” Dean told me. “Including a series of folks that work in the Clinton administration.”
A series of folks that work in the Clinton administration.
How does that jive with the official Democratic line that they were misled by the Bush administration? Sounds like Howard Dean, head of the Democratic Party, was misled by….the Democrats. Dean’s candor offers us a rare glimpse into the painful truth of the matter. As unpopular as this is to say, when President Bush accuses the Democrats of “rewriting history” on Iraq, he is right.
None of the horrors playing out in Iraq today would be possible without the Democratic Party. And no matter how hard some party leaders try to deny it, this is their war too and will remain so until every troop is withdrawn. There is no question that the Bush administration is one of the most corrupt, violent and brutal in the history of this country but that doesn’t erase the serious responsibility the Democrats bears for the bloodletting in Iraq. As disingenuous as the Administration’s claims that Iraq had WMDs is the flimsy claim by Democratic lawmakers that they were somehow duped into voting for the war. The fact is that Iraq posed no threat to the United States in 2003 any more than it did in 1998 when President Clinton bombed Baghdad. John Kerry and his colleagues knew that. The Democrats didn’t need false intelligence to push them into overthrowing Saddam Hussein’s regime. It was their policy; a policy made the law of the land not under George W. Bush, but under President Bill Clinton when he signed the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act, formally initiating the process of regime change in Iraq.
Manipulated intelligence is but a small part of a bigger, bipartisan 15-year assault on Iraq’s people. If the Democrats really want to look at how America was led into this war, they need to go back further than the current president’s inauguration.
Iraq: Turmoil Among the Warmakers, Challenge For the People
Revolution #024, November 27, 2005, posted at revcom.us
Shortly after September 11, 2001, Bob Avakian, the Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, spoke soberly to the efforts that had been launched by the imperialist ruling class to “reshuffle the deck” of world power in the wake of 911 and to radically remake U.S. society itself.1 He went deeply into the ramifications of the imperialists’ “wild ambitions,” while speaking to the ways in which the things they were launching could cause them real problems.
“All of this,” he said, “comes together and mixes wildly–that’s why I call it a cauldron of contradictions–to produce a lot of potential for things to go in many different directions and even to get out of their control.”
The recent intense conflicts within the U.S. ruling class point sharply to that potential–and underscore the challenge facing people opposed to imperialism.
The Cauldron Simmers
The war in Iraq, to understate the case, is not going well for the U.S. imperialists. The resistance to the U.S. occupation within Iraq has spread and grown more capable. The conflicts between the many different political, ethnic and class forces within Iraq show little sign of resolution, and the puppet Iraqi army is still not able to fight on its own. In response, the U.S. has escalated its tactics of wholesale terror directed against the Sunni Muslim population as a whole, which is the main (though not the only) base of the insurgency. Making all this worse–from the imperialist standpoint, that is–is the increasingly widespread and sharp sentiment against the war within the U.S. itself. And interplaying with that is a growing disaffection and anger within the army itself.
All this is causing intense concern within the U.S. ruling class. To get a sense of what is bothering some of these forces, it is worth quoting at some length the editorial “A Timetable for Mr. Bush” that appeared in the New York Times
“The ultimate Iraqi nightmare, which continually seems to be drawing closer, is a violent fracturing of the country in which the Kurdish north and Arab Shiite southeast break away, leaving the west, dominated by Arab Sunnis, an impoverished no man’s land and a breeding ground for international terrorism. . .
The consequences of such a breakup would be endless and awful: civil war, the persecution of minority populations in the new states, an alliance between the Shiites and Iran, and a complete breakdown of American moral and military influence in the Middle East. [emphasis added]”
Please note and note well that nowhere in this editorial does the Times even profess to be bothered by the wholesale slaughter that continues to be carried out against the Iraqi population, the ongoing torture, the recent revelations of the criminal use of white phosphorus against civilians, and all the rest of the horror that goes with imposing tighter U.S. domination. No, what has them bothered is the breakdown of “American moral [sic] and military influence.”
Faced with the intensifying discontent and anger among the people and the restiveness within the ruling class, Bush has gone on the offensive. He has forcefully reasserted his “vision” of a world dominated by the U.S. and, in particular, a Middle East radically transformed in such a way so as to deepen and ensure that domination. [See Revolution # 22, “Bush Calls for Endless Borderless War Without Limits,” for an in-depth analysis of Bush’s speeches in this period.] And he has increasingly accused the opposition of encouraging “the enemy” and demoralizing the troops.
In giving these speeches mainly on military bases and to military families, Bush is trying to do three things. First, he is attempting to firm up his base in the army; second, he is trying to win back sections of the American people by waving the banner of “supporting the troops”; and third, he is signaling to other forces within the ruling class that he does have a base in the army, and that he will not hesitate to use it should it come to that. That in itself is very heavy, and a sign of how deep the contradictions run.
Nonetheless, contradictions within the ruling class have continued to simmer. Much of this has been taking the form of Democratic congressmen raising questions about the intelligence that was used to justify the U.S. invasion. Last week, the Senate passed a resolution that called for regular progress reports on Iraq from the Administration and a “period of significant transition to full Iraqi sovereignty.” Neither the criticism of pre-war intelligence handling nor the call for progress reports got to the heart of the question: that of the war itself and its utterly unjust and immoral nature. And neither track exposed how the U.S. forces are escalating their savagery in the face of the stubborn resistance. But while this was mainly posturing–both Republicans and Democrats attempting to look like they were “doing something” in the face of an increasingly acute crisis, while essentially keeping things going on the same track–there was a secondary element within it of expressing concern that things were spinning out of control.
The Crack Widens
But even that small crack could not be tolerated by the Bush Regime, lest it begin to widen beyond the intent of even the Democratic politicians. So Bush, Cheney and their minions continued on the counteroffensive in a series of speeches that not only defended the war, but attacked any criticism at all as undermining the troops and “emboldening the enemy.”
Then John Murtha, a very right-wing Democratic congressman with ties to the military, put forward a resolution for U.S. withdrawal in six months. Murtha framed his move entirely in terms of the toll that the war was taking on the army: “The threat by terrorism is real, but we have other threats that cannot be ignored. We must prepare to face all these threats. . . The future of our military is at risk. Our military and our families are stretched thin. . . Many say the Army is broken.” That is a rather sharp statement! Murtha went on to say that his “most important point” was that “incidents have increased from 150 a week to over 700 in the last year. Instead of attacks going down over a time when we had additional more troops, attacks have grown dramatically. Since… Abu Ghraib, American casualties have doubled.”
All this was made more significant by who Murtha is and who he speaks for. According to David Gergen, a former adviser to four different presidents, Murtha is “very close to a lot of generals in the army. . . and when he speaks many think they are hearing the voice of those generals.” Murtha, in other words, is a gung-ho servant of imperialism who serves as a mouthpiece for some forces in the army. He backed the war from the beginning and is only now criticizing it on the basis that it has been and is being poorly led, and damaging larger imperialist interests in general, and the stability and effectiveness of the army in particular.
The regime hit back hard. The House Republican leadership then took Murtha’s proposal, changed it to call for immediate withdrawal, and put it on the floor for an immediate vote. This was extremely unusual–bills are supposed to go through hearings in sub-committee and committee before coming on to the floor. Murtha likely counted on that, and may have mainly intended to use the bill to argue for changes in how the troops were deployed, equipped, and so on. There is a whole school of thought, which includes many leading Democrats as well as the influential Arizona Republican (and war criminal) John McCain, that calls for more troops to “do the job right.”2
But the Bush crew, and the Republicans more broadly, sensing that the dynamics were going against them, tried to turn this against their critics by demanding that people either vote for immediate withdrawal or not. One Republican Congressman said essentially that now other politicians are not going to be able to say they were misled, or continue to criticize–they had to go on record, and if they voted for the war, they basically had to shut up.
The House then voted down the resolution to withdraw by 403 to 3–with even Murtha voting against it!
Think about it: 403 to 3. What the hell kind of “opposition” is that?
Their Interests–And Ours
Friday’s vote made very clear there is no real sentiment in the ruling class for an immediate end to the war. There is no dispute over militarily dominating Iraq and the Middle East more broadly; rather there is a dispute over how to best do that. This is not an argument between those for imperialism and those against it. This is nothing but slaveholders arguing how best to maintain and expand slavery; nothing but mass murderers, torturers and war criminals arguing over “the right mix” of each.
Right now Bush’s main critics within the ruling class are arguing, from different angles, that he a) put more focus on more effective military domination of Iraq, b) more forcefully and attentively restructure the Iraqi puppet government, and c) more effectively mystify and mislead the American people into backing, or at least tolerating, the war. This is why McCain reiterated his call for more troops in Iraq, in a very highly publicized recent speech; this is why the Times editorial called for Bush to “set clear goals” for the Iraqi government to get into firmer control, and made a number of concrete proposals as to what the Iraqi government must do to that end; this is why even pro-war politicians and columnists complain that Bush is “not communicating well.” But the overarching ruling class consensus right now is that there is no alternative–again, from the vantage point of imperialism–to the continued military occupation and domination of Iraq, despite the risks and real costs to their interests, as pointed to by people like Murtha.
Yet immediate withdrawal is the only just thing, the only thing in accord not only with the interests of the great majority of people in both Iraq and the U.S., but increasingly with their sentiments. Friday’s Lou Dobbs show on CNN ran a poll of its viewers–and Lou Dobbs is far from liberal–on what the U.S. should do in Iraq. Dobbs said that they had an overwhelming response and that 11% voted to do whatever was necessary to win, 2% voted to “stay the course,” and 87% voted for immediate withdrawal! Lou Dobbs, of course, can rig his polls any way he likes–and polls in general are set up to create, rather than reflect, public opinion–but that kind of number at minimum amounts to someone like Dobbs raising very serious concern that “the public is being lost.” It also poses a huge opportunity–and, as we shall speak to, a very significant challenge–to those who are burning to change this society in a progressive direction.
So the top Democrats speak out against Bush “around the edges,” for two reasons. First, they do hope to influence the policy. Second, they need to convince people that they, the Democratic leaders, are doing the most that is reasonable to oppose the war.
Bob Avakian has compared the ruling forces in society to a pyramid, with the top Republicans and Democrats contending at the apex.
“Who are the people that [the Democrats] try to appeal to(not that the Democrats represent their interests, but who are the people that the Democrats try to appeal to at the base, on the other side of this pyramid, so to speak? All the people who stand for progressive kinds of things, all the people who are oppressed in this society. For the Democrats, a big part of their role is to keep all those people confined within the bourgeois, the mainstream, electoral process. . . and to get them back into it when they have drifted away from–or broken out of–that framework. Because . . . [the Democrats] just sell out these people every time–because they don’t represent their interests. They represent the interests of the system and of its ruling class. But they have a certain role of always trying to get people who are oppressed, alienated and angry back into the elections. You know: “Come on in, come on in(it’s not as bad as you think, you can vote, it’s OK.” This is one of the main roles they play. But the thing about them is that they are very afraid of calling into the streets this base of people that they appeal to, to vote for them. The last thing in the world they want to do is to call these masses of people into the streets to protest or to battle against this right-wing force that’s being built up.3“
Right now, there are intense pressures pulling on the pyramid. On the one hand, there are sharpening differences within the ruling class over how best to deal with real difficulties in carrying through their murderous imperialist war. On the other, there is the widening gulf between the Democratic Party leadership, which supports the war (as evidenced by the 403-3 vote), and the people they claim to lead (and are supposed to corral), who grow more sharply opposed to the war by the day.
So the top Democrats speak out against Bush “around the edges,” for two reasons. First, they do hope to influence the policy. Second, they need to convince people that they, the Democratic leaders, are doing the most that is reasonable to oppose the war.
But that is a lie. The Democratic leaders are not doing the most that can be done to oppose the war; again, the vast majority support the continued occupation of Iraq. They are in fact working to demobilize and detour the real opposition to the war and keep it confined within very limited terms; they want to blunt the demand for immediate withdrawal into a plea for some phased withdrawal that couldn’t even begin until imperialist interests are secured. They aim to keep things politically under control, while the imperialists maneuver and bludgeon their way through a situation that grows more difficult and dangerous for them by the day.
Two Contending Dynamics
The Democratic politicians aim to divert the growing sentiment to END the war NOW and to constrain the limits of the debate and blunt the edge of people’s anger. They, and their supporters, pose lining up behind them against action from below demanding an end to the war, and to the whole program of which it is a part. Yet it is only mass struggle, on its own terms, that can compel progressive change.
There is a bitter lesson here in the 2004 elections. There had been a huge antiwar groundswell both before the war and then at the Republican Convention in August. But people were persuaded to pour that energy into backing Kerry–Kerry who, while posing as the “moderate alternative” to Bush, nevertheless firmly supported the war and played up his military qualifications as potential “commander-in-chief.” The dynamic set in where people essentially abandoned the stands they held most essential–including their opposition to the war–in the name of being realistic and reasonable.
That was, and is, a deadly dynamic.
We need to bring a whole different dynamic into play, particularly as the “election season” begins to gear up. We need a dynamic where the people who OPPOSE the war, along with people who oppose all the other depradations of the Bush Regime and the whole fascist direction of society, act in their own interests and for their own demands, in a mass political way. We need a dynamic where the people against this regime, by dint of their numbers and determination, compel every other force in society to respond to them. This in fact is the only “realistic and reasonable” course–that is, if you wish to change the reality of a war without end, borders or limits, and an increasingly fascist social order at home that corresponds to and reinforces that.
We should learn from the way that both the Bush regime and the Democrats, in their different ways, are showing fear in the face of the alienation of the people and even within parts of the army itself. Why are they scrambling? Why are they lashing out, both at the people and at each other? What are they scared of? Well, they are scared of many things right now, but not the least of their fears is the anger and resistance of the people they rule right here. They are scared that we will realize our own potential power– if and as we dare to get out from under their control, and take mass independent political action, in our own interests and, more than that, in the interests of the world’s people. They are scared that people, in the words of the Call to drive out the Bush regime, will “refuse to be ruled in this way.”
The question right now is not whether to vote or not. It is whether to rely on voting, or instead to pour your energies into winning over and rallying millions to their true interests, channeling their discontent into a course that will not once again betray them, but will result in really changing the direction of society and the course of history. It is whether to seize politically on the cracks that are beginning to appear and, through mass independent political action from below, open them up into a whole different future, or whether to allow ourselves to be gathered back into the fold and reduced to another passive “pressure group,” as the authors of this war figure out how to patch up those cracks and continue their reign of white phosphorus and secret torture cells.
Very immediately, the urgent challenge is to throw in everything to mount massively powerful protests at the time of Bush’s State of the Union address in January, forcefully demanding that Bush himself step down and take his regime and his whole program–including this brutal and reactionary war–with him. Protests massive enough, and determined enough, to make nothing less than this the central political question in the country.
We must meet this challenge.
NOTES:
1. “The New Situation and the Great Challenges,” by Bob Avakian, at revcom.us.
2. This would almost certainly require a reimposition of the draft, which Murtha, by the way, supports but which would almost surely intensify the opposition to the war among the people.
3. “The Coming Civil War and Repolarization for Revolution in the Present Era”, p. 3.
Published on Tuesday, October 4, 2005 by CommonDreams.org |
War-Hawk Republicans and Anti-War Democrats: What’s the Difference? |
by Cindy Sheehan |
(excerpts):
The War-Hawk Dems I met with were equally, if not more, disheartening. Although my meeting with Sen. Clinton (D-NY) went well, I don’t believe she will do anything to alleviate the suffering of the Americans in Iraq or the Iraqi people. I don’t believe that sending more troops is the solution, it will only aggravate an already untenable situation. We met in NYC with Sen. Charles Schumer’s aide, who told us that the Senator thinks the occupation of Iraq is a “good thing for America” but he wouldn’t elaborate on why. The aide was asked if the Senator had a vested interest in keeping this war going, because the Senator is certainly not stupid enough to believe that this misbegotten, misadventure in the Middle East is good for anyone. I don’t think the people of Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi would agree with the Senator that this illegal occupation is a “good thing.”
The “Anti-War” Dems perplex me the most, however. Except for the good guys, like the members of the Out of Iraq Caucus and a few Senators, the Dem party line is that we must allow Iraq a window of two months time and after the referendum on the constitution this month and the parliamentary elections in December, it will be time to attack the failed policies of George and his cabal of liars.
In my meeting with Howard Dean, he told me that the Iraq issue was “hard” and the new Dem “Contract with America” is going to have 10 points and the first one is going to be “Universal Health Care.” I told Mr. Dean that if the Dems didn’t come out strongly against the war and against George’s disastrous policies, we were going to become irrelevant as a party (which is already happening) and the “hard” issue should be the one that is worked on the hardest! I’ll admit that the issue doesn’t seem so hard to me: George and his sycophantic band of criminals lied to the world; too many people are dead for the lies; too many people are in harm’s way for the lies; it is time to bring our troops home. I am just hoping against hope that the war is on the Dems’ contract somewhere. George is always pulling out the old saw that what he does in sending our children to die and kill is “hard work.” I hate to see that same adjective used to describe bringing them home. The war issue is not complicated: wrong to invade and wrong to stay. Bring our troops home. Simple.