Responses to MoveOn.org’s Support for the $100 Billion Funding for the Iraq War

As the Bush regime escalates the Iraq war and plans a new war on Iran, whether or not the millions of people who oppose this are told to fall in line behind the dictates of a Democratic Party leadership that continues to allow Bush to carry out his conquest of the Middle East is absolutely critical.  Simply put, this war will not end and the Bush regime will not be driven out unless millions of people step out of putting our hopes in a Democratic savior in ’08 or counting on Congress to do the right thing, and start mobilizing in massive resistance.  In order to help distinguish these two different roads, WorldCantWait.org is featuring two responses to MoveOn.org’s support for House Democrats’ bill passed on Friday, 3/23, giving Bush $100 billion for the Iraq war.

Howard Zinn Replies to MoveOn’s support for the supplemental

MoveOn.org Versus Its Members by David Swanson

For background on the passage of the funding bill, see “Democrat’s Victory Means More Iraqi Deaths: End
the War Now — Impeach! Impeach! Impeach!” by Sunsara Taylor

Howard Zinn Replies to MoveOn’s support for the supplemental

“I’m
disappointed in MoveOn. We are not politicians, we are citizens. Let
the politicians advocate half-way measures if they choose, but only
after they have felt the full force of citizens who speak for what is
right, not what is winnable in a shameful timorous Congress. Timetables
for withdrawal are not only morally reprehensible in the case of a
brutal occupation (would you give a thug who invaded your house,
smashed things up, and terrorized your children a timetable for
withdrawal?) but logically nonsensical. If our troops are preventing
civil war, helping people, controlling violence, then why withdraw at
all? If they are in fact doing the opposite — provoking civil war,
hurting people, perpetuating violence — they should withdraw as
quickly as ships and planes can carry them home. If Congress thinks it
must compromise, let it. But we should not encourage that. We should
speak our minds fully, boldly and say what is right, whatever they
decide to do..

“I would add this: To me it is tantamount to the
abolitionists accepting a two-year timeline for ending slavery, while
giving more money to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act.

“There is
an understandable predisposition for reasonable people to compromise,
but there are compromises which are real, and others which are
surrenders. See the new movie THE WIND THAT SHAKES THE BARLEY. The
Irish rebels were offered a compromise, which gave them the Irish Free
State, something palpable, a ledge to stand on from which to fight for
more, which they have done. There is nothing palpable in this
“compromise,” only a promise whose fulfillment is in the hands of
George Bush, and meanwhile funds the ongoing slaughter in Iraq.”

MoveOn.org Versus Its Members

True Majority was a late addition to the list. The organization
polled its members. Did they favor the Pelosi bill to fund the war but
include various toothless restrictions on it, or did they favor the Lee
plan to use the power of the purse to end the war by the end of the
year? Needless to say, True Majority’s membership favored the Lee plan.

MoveOn polled its membership without including the Lee alternative,
offering a choice of only Pelosi’s plan or nothing. Amazingly, Eli
Pariser of MoveOn has admitted that the reason MoveOn did this was
because they knew that their members would favor the Lee amendment. The
following is from a report on Salon.com:

“Pariser defends his e-mail. He says that the group already knew
that its members would have supported Barbara Lee’s plan, but whatever
MoveOn did, it would never have passed. What MoveOn didn’t know was
what its members thought about the Pelosi plan. ‘The choice that we
needed to make as an organization was, Do we support this thing or
not?’ Pariser says. ‘And so I think the e-mail was a very fair
presentation of the choice that was actually in front of the
organization.'”

Pariser is simultaneously admitting that he knew his members favored
the Lee amendment to quickly end the war by defunding it, and claiming
that he did not know whether his members preferred Pelosi’s weak
anti-war gestures to nothing at all. This makes no sense. Are we
supposed to imagine that Pariser honestly believed there was some
chance that his membership would read his praise for Pelosi’s bill and
then vote for nothing at all instead of supporting it? Of course not.
The point of the poll was to allow MoveOn to announce that its
membership supported Pelosi rather than Lee. Yet Pariser admits that he
did not offer MoveOn’s membership a choice of Lee’s plan because he
knew they would vote for it.

Actually, he doesn’t say that he knows Lee’s plan would have won out
over Pelosi’s. But he certainly does not know that it wouldn’t have,
and making that baseless and to my mind very unlikely claim was the
only possible point of having done the poll. The rationale that Pariser
offers is absurd. The poll could only have had one result. It served to
give cover to progressive Democrats in Congress who gave their support
to Pelosi after having intended to vote no on Pelosi’s bill unless it
included Lee’s amendment.

Now, Pariser believes he knows better than MoveOn members what is
good for them. He didn’t let them make the supposed mistake of backing
Lee rather than Pelosi, because Lee supposedly could never pass, while
Pelosi could. There are three problems with this, other than the
extreme arrogance and dishonesty. One is that, as Bob Fertik has
pointed out http://www.democrats.com/moveon-explanation-1
, even if Lee’s amendment did not pass, a vote for it would have helped
to build war opposition in Congress, Pelosi’s bill could have still
passed too, and other amendments could still have been denied a vote.

The second problem is that we have no proof that Lee’s amendment
could not have been passed. A third of the Democrats have taken similar
positions. The leadership could have brought another third on board.
And relentless pressure and threats and bribes of the sort aimed at
progressives could have brought many of the right-wing Democrats along.
And if it had failed, and the Republicans and Republican-lite Democrats
had voted down the bill, it would have been clear who stood where, and
Pelosi could have announced victory and the end of the war. The
Pentagon has more than enough money to safely bring our troops home
right away without Congress passing any bill at all.

The third problem is that it is not at all clear that voting down
Pelosi’s bill would have been worse than passing it. She would have
been forced to come back with another bill, as she will be if this one
doesn’t make it past the Senate, or Bush vetoes or signing statements
it (well, she’ll probably ignore a signing statement, but not a veto).
But starting on bill #2 could have come more quickly and with more
influence from the progressives if they had voted down the war funding
bill.

Building a serious Out of Iraq caucus is key to getting us to
another position that I suspect the majority of MoveOn members favor:
the impeachment of Bush and Cheney. Of course, MoveOn has not polled
its members on impeachment, but it won’t do so apparently until
impeachment proceedings are well underway and a successful vote for
impeachment can be safely predicted. (Though at that point, what will
be the point?)

But, how can we be sure that Pariser viewed his poll of MoveOn
members on Pelosi’s bill not as a contest between Pelosi and nothing,
but as a contest between Pelosi and Lee? Well, because Pariser told the
news journal the Politico just that:

“In the poll, MoveOn.org gave its members a choice of supporting,
opposing or being ‘not sure’ of the plan proposed by the Democratic
leadership, according to an e-mail sent to members Sunday by MoveOn.org
official Eli Pariser. It did not mention a more aggressive withdrawal
proposal backed by Woolsey, Waters and Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.).
Pariser said MoveOn.org had held out as long as possible before backing
the leadership proposal. ‘We were basically declining to take a
position as long as we could to strengthen the hand of the
progressives. We did the poll at the last time we felt we could have an
impact on the final vote.’ He said he would support the progressive
proposal if it came to a vote. ‘We’ll encourage people to vote for that
and for the supplemental,’ he said. ‘We are trying to end the war.
That’s the mandate.’

So, Pariser held off as long as possible to run a rigged poll and
announce support for Pelosi’s bill, in order not to actively work
against the Lee Amendment. But working to support the Lee Amendment
never crossed his mind, and he avoided asking his members about it
because he knew they would favor it. But the progressives were not at
that point pushing for a pretentious and meaningless vote on Lee
followed by backing for Pelosi. They were pushing for a Yes vote on Lee
and a No vote on Pelosi unless it included Lee.

If Pariser thought he knew so much about what was possible and what
was not, why didn’t he lay that case out to MoveOn’s membership? Why
didn’t he offer the choice of backing Lee’s position but make his
argument that it would be futile? Did he not trust MoveOn members to
make the right decision? That seems strange given the lines that can be
found at the bottom of a MoveOn Email:

“Support our member-driven organization: MoveOn.org Political Action
is entirely funded by our 3.2 million members. We have no corporate
contributors, no foundation grants, no money from unions. Our tiny
staff ensures that small contributions go a long way. If you’d like to
support our work, you can give now at”.”

Clearly MoveOn needs to work on distinguishing “member driven” from “member funded.”