Join the Debate; Build and Sharpen the Resistance!
The Urgent Need for Decisive and Principled Leadership in the Anti-War Movement
By Debra Sweet
UNITY in the antiwar movement: SAVE these dates: Monday October 5; Saturday October 17; Friday March 19, 2010
I was among the World Can't Wait supporters attending the National Assembly to End the Occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan this weekend in Pittsburgh. Read the proposal World Can't Wait brought. I'm glad to be able to say that out of the Assembly came a vote and intention to support a two-week period of mass, united actions against the occupations from October 3 - October 17, 2009. Based on support of most of the participants, a demand was added to "end war crimes, including torture."
This action period includes Monday, October 5 as a mass protest and non-violent civil resistance action in Washington, at the US House offices and the White House to mark the US occupation of Afghanistan, which begun that week in 2001. The period culminates with Saturday October 17th regional and local actions against the wars. October 17 is the 40th anniversary of the famous Vietnam Moratorium in 1969 that Daniel Ellsberg referred to as so huge that it forced Richard Nixon to shelve plans to nuke Vietnam.
Let’s Take a Cold, Hard Look at What We’re Facing
By Dennis Loo
Those of us who want to see justice – the prosecution and conviction of torturers, the ending of the wars upon Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, the rolling back of the surveillance state and the blowing away of the smell of fascism in the air - are up against a beast.
Despite a majority of Americans expressing their sentiments by voting, including defeating Bush in 2000 and 2004 and Obama’s 2008 election on a platform of “change,” these wars on the people - here and abroad - go on.
Despite being an African-American who has seen the world and who asserts the “audacity of hope,” Obama is continuing to shield the Bush war criminals from punishment, is escalating the wars upon Afghanistan and Pakistan, and is institutionalizing measures, such as the stripping of habeas corpus rights and the indefinite detention of people for crimes they might commit even after they’ve been acquitted: unmistakable markers of a tyranny.
A Plan to End the Wars
by David Swanson
There are a million and one things that people can do to try to end the U.S. wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and to prevent new ones in Iran and elsewhere, as well as to close U.S. military bases in dozens of other nations around the world. Certain people are skilled at or interested in particular approaches, and nobody should be discouraged from contributing to the effort in their preferred ways. Far too often proposals to work for peace are needlessly framed as attacks on all strategies except one. But where new energy can be created or existing resources redirected, it is important that they go where most likely to succeed.
In my analysis, we should be focusing on three things, which for purposes of brevity and alliteration
I will call: Communications, Congress, and Counter recruitment / resistance. Communications encompasses all public discussion of the wars and impacts all other approaches, including targets I consider far less likely to be influenced by us than Congress, such as the president, generals, the heads of weapons companies, the heads of media companies, the people of Afghanistan, your racist neighbor, etc. If our communications strategy can change the behavior of any of these targets, terrific! We should be prepared to take advantage of such opportunities should they arise.
World Can’t Wait Steering Committee Proposal: “End U.S. Wars, Occupations, and Torture for Empire -- Now!”
October 5/6 2009: World Can’t Wait proposes that we of the anti-war movement move forward with the message “End U.S. Wars, Occupations, and Torture for Empire -- Now!” These are now Obama’s wars. Act on the anniversary of the US invasion of Afghanistan:
1) The whole anti-war movement should descend on Washington DC Monday, October 5 – yes, a week day -- with this message, in solidarity with the plan of Witness Against Torture, The National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance, Peace Action, Vets for Peace, the Atlantic Life Community, and the War Resisters' League to protest continuing torture (particularly at Bagram) at the Obama White House, supporting a March of the Dead planned by the Activist Response Team, with a variety of “stop business as usual” actions of non-violent resistance to occupations and torture for empire, focusing on both the White House and Congress. This is a time for the powers in Washington to see and hear these urgent demands.
2) Tuesday October 6(the actual anniversary of the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan) will be a national day of decentralized actions, particularly in high schools and organized by students, to resist military recruiters.
1) The whole anti-war movement should descend on Washington DC Monday, October 5 – yes, a week day -- with this message, in solidarity with the plan of Witness Against Torture, The National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance, Peace Action, Vets for Peace, the Atlantic Life Community, and the War Resisters' League to protest continuing torture (particularly at Bagram) at the Obama White House, supporting a March of the Dead planned by the Activist Response Team, with a variety of “stop business as usual” actions of non-violent resistance to occupations and torture for empire, focusing on both the White House and Congress. This is a time for the powers in Washington to see and hear these urgent demands.
2) Tuesday October 6(the actual anniversary of the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan) will be a national day of decentralized actions, particularly in high schools and organized by students, to resist military recruiters.
Join the Debate; Build and Sharpen the Resistance!
Six months into the administration of Barack Obama: the unjust wars continue, and further confrontations loom. Millions of people dead, uprooted and displaced; new military offensives begin in Afghanistan, and a military occupation in Iraq is presented as “withdrawal”. Guantanamo and Bagram remain as hellholes of the systematic torture the U.S. has developed as routine policy, and the architects and perpetrators of this barbarism remain at large. Obama and his top officials refuse to release further evidence of the war crimes committed by his predecessors, or to prosecute the criminals.
An important juncture has been reached. How to advance and build a massive and powerful movement that can put an end to the wars and torture, the rendition and spying; who are the forces in society to be reached and relied on, what form must the actions of the people take to truly shape and influence society, how should demands and slogans be framed, how can the broadest number of people possible be brought into determined resistance?
On this page are two articles, with proposals from the Steering Committee of World Can’t Wait, and from David Swanson of After Downing Street. They demand close study; they demand that people come to grips with their ideas, plans and proposals.
We are publishing them both in the interest of stimulating a debate over the way forward, and encourage people to join in this debate by posting their ideas and thinking on this site. We are looking forward to your insights and comments, and we are looking forward to joining together to build our common efforts to end the unjust wars and the torture as powerfully and as quickly as possible.
