64 Comments

1. jay taber:

   amen

   20 August 2005, 9:58 pm

2. Jennie Johnstone:

   Applause! Yeah, words are worthless when you throw them at those that make no use of their natural capacity for thought. History tells a grimm tale though of this particular circumstance, fascism, which of course, we are in the throes of, the revolution, then: the pro-fascist state’s military intervention, citizens laying bleeding.

   Actually, there is a law somewhere for it to be permissable to reclaim our democracy when it has been siezed. We really need to have those military personnel with still the capacity for independent thought, to organize and challenge those that need challenging. But those allbeit well-intending subservient soldiers roboticans seem to be a well-polished gear in the corporate/government machine with little time or energy to find out the reality of the situation. 80% still support the whorporate agenda, unknowingly of course. (So sad to see innocence, character
   and strength these kids exhibit be put to use for such sleazy, salivating war profiteering pricks) So, we are more threatened by those in power in OUR country than the “terrorists” from Iraq. If only the patriots in uniform were all here to join us on a REVERSAL of present fascist tide. Then if only more than 20% (sigh) of them realized where the actual threat exists.

   21 August 2005, 3:20 am

3. john steppling:

   Couldn’t agree more. The Hayden style “rational” leftists sort of remind of me of cop groupies….they actually want the approval of the people they are, sort of, critisizing. What Ed Herman called the cruise missle left….or the tenured left…latte left…..always end up apologists for the ruling class and its entrenched hierarchies. (damn, I have to learn to spell)…anyway, the way the liberals supported the demolishing of Yugoslavia and supported the terror bombing of Belgrade (Clinton again) are the same ones who paternalistically advise “we cant just leave….we have a responsibility”. never mind 99% of Iraqis want the army of occupation gone. Reformist liberals are in many ways worse than nutzoid right wingers. As Adorno said, more than once, liberalism is the handmaiden to fascism.

   21 August 2005, 3:47 am

4. Louis Proyect:

   Excellent analysis, Stan. In a way, the right opportunism of the UfPJ and the maximalist “anti-imperialism” of the Marcyites simply reflects the lack of a Marxist pole of attraction in the USA. I think that solving the problems of the antiwar movement is inextricably linked to solving the problems of the left in general.

   21 August 2005, 8:42 am

5. Joaquín Bustelo:

   Stan –

   Awesome: you nailed this one, but good.

   My only suggestion is that there was a word mnissing in this sentence: “The only way to prepare for that is to build a powerful and militant multi-tendency REVOLUTIONARY left that transcends the NGO politics of the ‘progressives’ on the right and the sectarian (and tacticaly stupid) maximalism of the ultra-left.”

   I would have said, “build a powerful, militant and *united* multi-tendency REVOLUTIONARY left.”

   Fidel said it: “Division in the face of the enemy was never an intelligent nor revolutionary strategy.”

   Why united? Because the sane revolutionary left groups are very small: this one has a strong presence in a couple of labor projects, that one in the Black Liberation Movement, still a third one among student radicals and so on…

   This fragmentation prevents campaigns waged by these groups to have maximum effect, an introduces an impossible to ignore element of organizational rivalry if not downright sectarianism into every effort. It leads some folks, especially less experienced ones, to posture with excessively leftist rhetoric in hopes of attracting young rebels.

   The fear is that fusing with another group is going to dilute the strengths of a given political organization. Perhaps. But why assume that, on the basis of common work and experience, the comrades of former group “A” won’t convince those of former group “B,” or vice-versa. And why assume the former group “A” comrades don’t have something absolutely crucial that they can learn from fromer group “B.” Why view the weaknesses each of us from our perspective sees in the groups of others as a reason for staying apart rather than a motive to unite so that the weakness can be more rapidly overcome?

   The explanation is that we’re divided into so many groups because we don’t agree. I don’t buy it. I think a lot of the time we don’t agree *because* we are divided.

   This fight around Sep. 24 has a valuable hidden lesson. Which is that a whole series of groups and comrades with no group took essentially the same or very similar positions, pushing for a united antiwar action, pushing for Palestine to be included in the antiwar movement’s agenda but not be used as a pretext to split the movement at the service of sectarian agendas, etc.

   To me, that is the cluetrain making a delivery: we belong in the same group, there isn’t enough political space for all of these groups and the divisions, which mostly are rooted in conflicts that belonged to the Cold War epoch and don’t apply in any immediate way today, are absurd.

   21 August 2005, 10:10 am

6. Lüko Willms:

   I am really immensely glad that the inevitable, a united action on September 24 in Washington becomes reality, and about the breach which Cindy Sheehan’s courageous action in Crawford has opened. And I dare to think that the latter has contributed to the former.

   As to the “how” of the withdrawal from Iraq, I recall Fred Halstead’s account of similar discussions during the Vietnam-war-movement, where demands for immediate and unconditional withdrawal were often met with questions “But, how should that be possible”, and the activists of the SMC answered: “Very simple: on their plances and ships, just as the came to Vietnam”.

   21 August 2005, 11:07 am

7. jay taber:

   Brilliant at Breakfast cites a report that says the average national composite
   scores of the ACT college entrance exam remained unchanged from last year, at 20.9 out of 36 possible
   points, despite a record number of test-takers.

   • About half of test-takers lack at least some
   reading-comprehension skills, suggesting they would
   struggle in courses such as history, sociology or
   literature.

   • Just over half (51%) had scores high enough to
   suggest they could succeed in college-level social
   science courses.

   21 August 2005, 11:39 am

8. the burningman:

   “We have a responsibility…”

   Who are “we” again?

   21 August 2005, 12:21 pm

9. Targe Lindsay:

   Assuming that I am representative of a large segment of people who have recently seen the implications of an incipient fascist and the anything goes ruling class, perhaps my reactions might be of use…perhaps not.

   I agree with your view of a ruthless ruling class that has been taking advantage of the brown people in the periphery (your words).
   I am hopeful that Cindy Sheehan has sparked a wildfire of reaction against the war and the war party(ies), and I agree that all of the opponents of the war should forget their individual priorities and previously staked out territories in order to come together as a mass movement against the war.

   However, when I look around or talk to other middleclass people, even those who silently agree with me, I see no public reaction from about 90% of them, and since talk of revolution or radical personal action is so foreign to me, I am sure that a call such as yours will be more likely to alienate us than to galvanize us into action.

   I am afraid that you are painting yourself into a marginalized corner in spite of your profound insight and admirable dedication to stopping the empire. (I would say that fewer than one out of ten of those of the center and left of center even comprehend the idea of empire.)

   I do not have any suggestions as to the answer of waking up my kind of people, but in case you have not met with other leaders, such as Tom Hayden and those in the leadership of the Demo Party and etc, it seems to me that reaching some agreement with them in private would be more effective than castigating them in public.

   More and more people seem to be tuning into John Kaminsky and some other writers and bloggers. Perhaps meeting with them for a strategy session would make some sense.

   As someone (Lincoln?) once said, “A leader needs to look around now and then and make sure he is in front of the pack”…or something like that.

   I look for what is new on Feral Scholar every day, and am always impressed with your insights. Targe Lindsay

   21 August 2005, 1:23 pm

10. Chad:

    Cindy’s missive of August 20th speaks directly to this need for polarization:

    “I got an email the other day and it said, “Cindy if you didn’t use so much profanity … there’s people on the fence that get offended.

    And you know what I said? “You know what? You know what, god damn it? How in the world is anybody still sitting on that fence?”

    http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/082005X.shtml

    21 August 2005, 1:43 pm

11. Eli Stephens:

    More detailed criticisms of Hayden’s proposals can be found at Left I on the News here and here. Just one minor critique of this post - Cindy Sheehan’s protest is very much a “peaceful, legal” protest and NOT civil disobedience. She has not broken any laws, laid down in the middle of the road to block George Bush’s motorcade, or anything of the sort. And that’s one of the reasons that hundreds have been rushing down to join her. This is not to criticize civil disobedience, but claiming THIS “prolonged demonstration” as that is simply inaccurate.

    21 August 2005, 4:06 pm

12. m.c.:

    post-9/11 there have been two federal elections; 2002 & 2004. The recent special election w/ paul hackett in OH proves that the wh & gop is losing popular support in red state usa. i.e. the pendulum is coming back the other way.

    some cruise missile or latte liberals can’t wait to elect hillary or fellow dlc’er evan bayh in ‘08. i’m a big believer in beggar’s banquets: what about majority of the house and/or senate in the next cycle or two? and the four most populist states right now all have gop govs; ny, fl, tx, ca.
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    buddhist koan: what is the reward of patience?

    answer: more patience, (which adepts use as a window leading to the concept of the first noble truth.)

    Paz e Armonia

    21 August 2005, 8:55 pm

13. peggy:

    Stan, civil disobedience is good. We should do it more, and en masse. But I feel you are just on the edge of advocating armed insurrection. When you talk about bleeding bringing down the beast, whose blood are you talking about? Because, if it’s our blood or Iraqi blood or Haitian or whosever blood, you know the beast likes that blood; it feeds on that blood. If you mean making the beast itself bleed, how are we going to do that enough to bring it down? If we merely wound it, we will just anger it, as the right-wing response to Cindy Sheehan demonstrates. Serious massive civil disobedience will certainly result in bloodshed (ours, not the beast’s). The only harm to the beast will be increased international opprobrium, and we already know how much the current beast cares about that, which is not a whit. Nevertheless, I and countless other gray-haired grannies would be happy to put ourselves on the front line, suffer beatings, imprisonment, and all the rest, IF we believed that our sacrifice would result in changing not just the mask but the real face, eyes and heart of the United States for the better. Can you make us believe? Because if you can’t, we will just go on quietly living our lives as liberals, trying politely to help others be happy who otherwise might suffer, and indulging in cafe latte when it suits us.

    21 August 2005, 9:15 pm

14. Dennis O'Flaherty:

    Stan — just dug into “Full Spectrum Disorder” and I can already tell I am going to be sorry when it’s finished. Incredibly refreshing to read a flat-out, no equivocation treatment of our military adventures as an ongoing payment of the ruling clique’s maintenance bills by everyone else in American society. Was it some bright spark in ruling circles who first invented the notion of compromise and consensus as the only proper mode for political discussion in the U.S.? Has to be. Reading your comments about polarization all I can say is “righteous!” When the ruling class wants to pull all your teeth and claws before they’ll do politics with you, what’s a better answer than some real good, solid polarization? Them and us is the only way to see this situation, so it’s no wonder that the Karl Rove brigade fly so hysterically to accusations of “preaching class warfare” whenever anyone (like Paul Krugman, that most moderate and peaceable of “Class Warriors”) points out the crooked books-cooking of the governing machine.

    I served as a peacetime marine in 1958 and 1962 and thought that I had received an invaluable education in real life … little did I realize what lay ahead! Still, consciousness can definitely be raised by military experience and the real task for all of who’ve seen that in war or peace is to try to figure out some way to channel the crazed confusion of the kids who are coming back from Iraq now. Have you read “The Last True Story I’ll Ever Tell” by John Crawford? This one can really make you weep — goofy frat kid’s unit gets sucked deep into the shit in Iraq and as far as this reader can see the misery and craziness he brought back with him have absolutely noplace to go — he was totally naive about political reality when he went, came back that way, and remains that way. These guys need nelp to make them understand the reality of the machinery that put them there, but everything seems to conspire to keep their ideological constructs at something like the level of reality TV. I am very grateful for what you’re offering but I wish there was some way to make it more widely accessible. Keep going! a new fan, Dennis O’Flaherty

    21 August 2005, 9:19 pm

15. Comandante Gringo:

    Excellent analysis here. You deserve a medal for something, Goff.
    ;P

    This, and the reality it describes, almost makes the thankless job of being a ‘pointman’ for years and years, and bearing the brunt of oppression — while the above-describes “passive-aggressives” around you make petty little careers out of their hypocritical little stances (being unfairly labelled ‘ultra-Left’ is the least of it) — almost makes it all worth it.
    Almost.

    Now if we could only actually organize effectively against the vigilantes/pigs on a day-to-day street level… Because it’s definitely later than most people still think.

    21 August 2005, 10:55 pm

16. Janet W:

    Interesting analysis, but the question, as ever, remains: what to do? My name for UFPJ long ago became: United For Picking our noses and Jawboning. I call ANSWER “the demo people.” (Or, “We need volunteers so we can organize a massive turnout so we can feel like Lenin speaking to the masses at the train station — what fun” people. Forget giving money or time to them. The people I’m looking to listen to, send money to, help, etc. are the vets; the families (especially the mothers) of dead, injured and currently deployed soldiers; the young people who are at highest risk of becoming dead meat for this war; and others like them. People who don’t use the word “revolutionary” or “empire” or “the left” but who know what and whom they love, and what and whom they oppose and despise. And who are beginning, at long last, to bestir themselves in significant numbers.

    For myself, I pledge to keep on my vigil at the SF Federal Bldg. that I began to do in October 2001 (remember what happened THEN?), but to do other things differently. I never want to go to another f****** panel discussion on the war again. I never want to keep quiet when some person in some position of “authority” at some peace/nuclear issues, etc. NGO starts to blather and evade, ever again. I never want to send money to an organization without knowing for damn sure it is going toward ending the war against Iraq.

    Back in the 70s. living in Rome, I said to an Italian friend: “Non credo in questa rivoluzione.” I don’t believe in this revolution that will ascend from burning streets, suddenly, and remake human nature and society. I don’t believe in this “thing”, like some consumer item that hasn’t come on the market yet but will be awesome when it does. I don’t believe in a solution of all earthly problems. I don’t believe in the coming of the (radical, leftie?) Messiah.

    I do believe in the power of “ordinary” people to say enough is enough already, and to push back against those who treat them with brazen cruelty and contempt. Where that will go… we’ll see. I plan to be part of it, on Sept. 24 and until I die.

    21 August 2005, 10:59 pm

17. john steppling:

    Can I ask what “maximalism” is?

    22 August 2005, 2:50 am

18. Stan:

    To Peggy, “bleeding” is a metaphorical term, like “beast.” No calls for adventurism from this quarter. My firearms are still oxidizing in the closet. (-:

    On maximalism, it’s probably a made-up term, but anyone who has gone to some of these demos has seen it. The theme may be US Out of Iraq (on this you can count on almost half the US population knowing where Iraq is, something about the justifications for the US invasion, something about how those were lies, etc etc. But alongside that, you hear three-minute speeches and see hundreds of signs that say “US & Isreal, Hands Off Palestine,” US & Brazil, Hands Off Haiti,” US Out of the Philippines,” “US, Hands Off Venezuela,” “US Out of Diego Garcia,” “US Out Of Nigeria,” and “Nationalize US Banks.”

    Actually, I personally support all those goals. But a broad mass moilization designed to focus its political impact at one key point — like the war in Iraq — is not united around all these issues, because people broadly (1) are still completely bewildered about Palestine and Venezuela and still in the grip of bourgeois public narratives about them, and-or (2) couldn’t tell you where most of these places are on a map. There is a mismatch between the strategic goal of breaking US aggression in a critical place for years to come where it is already being weakened (Iraq), and a PROGRAM that is explicitly socialist (a term no more than one tenth of one percent of the populaiton even understands, and that many — after having it simplistically explained to them through John Birch cirricula in their elementary schools — fear). Maximalism fails to recognize the dialectic between maximal program and minimal involvement and minimal program and maximal involvement. It is also tactically stupid, but it is motivated by recruitment agendas of sects who are so convinced of their historical role as the vanguards of the next revolution that they will tear apart other left formations and mass movements if necessary to pursue that agenda.

    Maximalists know very well that the vast majority of the US population wouldn’t know the Palestine or Haiti issue if it bit them in the ass. Their purpose is to prove that their Program is purer and more revoltuionary than the other sects… and the target audience consists of those who are already mobilized around progressive political projects. That’s why these sects (one of whom I used to affiliate with) are always looking for the “franchise.” We want the Palestinian franchise, the Haitian franchise, the Black nationalist franchise, the reproductive rights franchise, the LGBT franchise, et al. (The fact that these cts are led almost exclusively by “white” males is not something that gets enough examination, IMO.)

    I wrote a piece for MRZine on the philosophical idealism that underwrties ultraleftism at http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/goff290705.html if anyone is interested (It’s actually on this blog somewhere, too — sorry I’m rushing).

    Didin’t mean to go on this long on maximalism, which John probably got within three words. Trying to do too many things at once.

    I do not claim any particualr rigor in the preceding remarks, and admit freely that they are off the top of my head.

    To all… I wil continue to snap-check the site and moderate comments in, but will have little time to reply for the next couple of weeks it seems. Not trying to dis anyone; I’m just trapped in this troublesome space-time continuum.

    22 August 2005, 7:19 am

19. observer:

    Stan… you’ve disassociated from FRSO?

    22 August 2005, 10:45 am

20. Stan:

    No. I used to belong to the CP some years ago. I still enjoy friendships with some of those folks. But the insidious dynamic of belonging to such groups has to do wiht a couple of things: (1) The demand for ideological conformity on virtually every issue, or to keep quiet and toe the line when you disagreed (the issues of the Democrat Party and liberal-feminism [there was hostility to more radical feminisms] were the straws that broke that camel’s back for me)… and (2) the weird compeition to promote one line in opposition to other lines among pools of potential recruits — which is what the papers do… they promote a strict line and tend to gloss over or evade facts and analyses that create difficulties with those lines — and it is this competition to win over recruits to OUR line that sets up the sectarian wars that “non-recruitables” find inpenetrably arcane and off-putting.

    Freedom Road is not a party. It’s an organization of organizers who identify themselves as revolutionary socialists. The vast majority of their work is in mass organizations. Shared values are mass-line as a strategic method, a commitment to “refoundation” which is similar to but not identical with “regroupment” as articulated by Soli and others, and issues that we regard as strategically central, i.e., the analysis of “racism” as a system of national oppression (”white” for FR is not a race, but a reactionary national identity, eg), and (more recently to my great satisfaction) the centrality of the struggle against patriarchy as a *precondition* for effective class unity. Within those shared values that define the organization, there is a great deal of controversy that is never suppressed or hidden from the outside world. The reason there is little friction around these issues as a rule is that most of the energy of the members is put into the mass work — which conditions tend to clarify better than schemas.

    Part of the notion of “refoundation” that is controversial for some on the left (aside from the national question, but related to it) is “transformation” of the organization itself — which privileges the incorporation of women, young folks, and oppressed nationalities into the organization wiht a goal of 50-50-50, that is, at least 50% women, at least 50% under 30, and at least 50% oppressed nationalities. They are within 10% of each of those goals, so there is an “exclusionary” bias in operation as part of this “affirmative action.” They are also working to bring the membership that identifies as other-than-heterosexual above the 25% range. Like I said, some consider this controversial. I personally support it. But that’s a long conversation that I haven’t the time for right this minute.

    22 August 2005, 11:27 am

21. nuttymango:

    Why Bushco sent us to Iraq,

    Title: Dead Wrong, a CNN (yeah for real) documentary on the Iraq war. Col. Wilkeroson blows the whistle now. Good on him. maybe he can make up for not blowing the whistle earlier. Sixth one down on the page. Spread it around. “CNN Presents: Dead Wrong.avi”

    http://liberaltorrents.allhyper.com/

    22 August 2005, 1:15 pm

22. peggy:

    Stan, thank you and thank you again for stressing that the movement to get our troops out of Iraq must be be a one-issue movement - OUT OF IRAQ NOW - and nothing else. If we start tagging on other messages, no matter how much you and I agree with those messages, we will alienate other people who do not agree with those messages, and we will lose them and the movement will fizzle out.
    However, one massive demonstration is not going to be enough. Remember the march on Washington to rid the world of nuclear weaponry? A million people joined. It was huge. But the outcome was nothing.
    In addition to demonstrating, we have to continue to harass and expose recruiters, and provide sanctuary and help for troops who come home to stay, only to be ordered back to the front. If it is logistically possible, we should facilitate desertion. Yes, it is illegal. But that, as someone pointed out, is civil disobedience. And we should not go to jail (supposedly in civil disobedience you accept the legal penalty for your actions - but times have changed). It does not help to pack the prisons - they are already packed. If we allow ourselves to be imprisoned, we will just be feeding the already bloated beast.
    On the fragmentation of the left - it is not just the American left that succumbs to this malady. More than one very serious armed insurgency overseas has been so afflicted. When you are really, non-metaphorically, at war, it is said that you have to have total top-down command in order to be effective at war-making. This means you cannot have democracy at the same time, and you end up killing your own best, most capable people, those who are able to make their own decisions without being told what to do. Because at some point those people are going to disagree with their commander, and maybe disobey, and maybe defect to the enemy and give him information. So you kill them, merely for disagreeing with you. It is tragic. Maybe one of the internal contradictions of institutionalized warfare? But I’ve wandered off-topic.

    22 August 2005, 3:18 pm

23. Steve:

    Have a look at what happened in Utah.

    These are Police Officers?

    Police raid rave party in Spanish Fork Canyon
    Salt Lake Tribune - Aug 21 11:21 PM
    About 60 people were arrested Saturday night when police officers busted an illegal rave in Spanish Fork Canyon. Those arrested were cited on a variety of charges including the possession of illegal narcotics, weapons violations, DUI, illegal consumption of alcohol by a minor, disorderly conduct, assaulting a police officer and drug distribution. The youngest of those cited was 15 years.

    Police shut down major rave near Diamond Fork Provo Daily Herald - Aug 22 12:19 AM
    Police in Utah County pulled the plug on a major rave party Saturday night in Spanish Fork Canyon as the underground event threatened to get out of control.The Utah County Sheriff’s Office learned Saturday at noon that an area promoter had planned a rave party for later that night at Child’s Ranch, a site just inside the Diamond Fork area of Spanish Fork Canyon.

    Those do NOT look like police officers beating up on the kids. And a source inside the Utah government reports that this action was undertaken out of fear that the Rave would be used to rally support for the protest against Bush’s Utah visit. Is this enough? Need we wait to have another Kent State where American children are gunned down by other Americans in uniforms? Or can we finally see what this government has become? Take a good look at this video. This is the image of the USA the rest of the world sees. This is the Neocon dream for America.

    This is a Quicktime Video. Cameras were confiscated but some kids got film out.

    http://www.angrymobclan.com/facism.mov

    Additional Info.
    Sun Aug 21st, 2005 at 22:30:30 PDT

    UTAH RAVERS TREATED LIKE TERRORISTS! EVOL INTENT’S ACCOUNT OF THE INCIDENT!

    Last night, I was booked to play an event about an hour outside of Salt Lake City, Utah. The hype behind this show was huge, they presold 700 tickets and they expected up to 3,000 people total. The promoters did an amazing job with the show.. they even made slipmats with the flyers on them to promote in local shops.

    So, we got to the show around 11:15 or so and it was really cool. It was all outdoors, in a valley surrounded by huge mountains. They had an amazing light show flashing on to a mountain behind the site, the sound was booming, the crowd was about 1500 people thick and everything just seemed too good to be true really. Well…

    At about 11:30 or so, I was standing behind the stage talking with someone when I noticed a helicopter pulling over one of the mountain tops.

    continued . . .
    http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/8/22/13030/7546

    22 August 2005, 8:02 pm

24. Hubris Sonic:

    Stan,
    Thanks for your thoughts, they are refreshing and clarifying.

    23 August 2005, 9:12 am

25. Danielle L'Hommedieu-Lati:

    The column is gaining strength. New leaders on the scene. Where’s the rally point? Who’s doing CasCube? Capt. Danielle

    23 August 2005, 2:21 pm

26. Stan:

    OBJ in DC. Serial RPs — watch for the upcoming Bus Tour. CasCube coordinated through the blogosphere.

    All the way, Ma’am.

    23 August 2005, 4:45 pm

27. m.c.:

    I’ve just been watching CNN video clips of the past few days. I swear this gang has never had any genuine plan, they seem to have made Every Thing up as they’ve gone along. The syndrome of that fool we all have met sometime in our lives who posesses a 9 for cleverness & a 3 for wisdom & intelligence.

    When LBJ got in trouble in the polls in 1967 & 1968 with Eugene McCarthy nipping at his heels, giving boilerplate speeches at military bases were the only places where he was safe from scorn. Any medium-sized city mayor could do no worse than the current occupants right now. A few more months of poll #’s like this and more gop pols are going to join the likes of Chuck Hagel, Ron Paul, and Walter Jones. The two rules of politics: Rule#1 is win reelection; & Rule#2 is to remember Rule#1.

    We could do a lot worse than Russ Feingold. He was the only US Senator who voted against the Patriot Act. I believe even Paul Wellstone voted for it or abstained. Question: why need a act when organized crime and white collar financial crime figures have been gone after for decades with RICO statutes?

    Let’s hope Feingold goes more public and vocal & a sidenote to Howard Dean; you’ve got a choice: do you want to be remembered as helping to make history or sitting on the fence?

    23 August 2005, 8:18 pm

28. Jennie Johnstone:

    What is so disapointing is that the main stream media barely cover these immense protests. If they do, it’s usually done in a demeaning way. Millions protested worldwide on the dark day of November 3rd 2004. You had to turn to alternative media to find out about it. We who would choose to find out, merely are assured our cause is just. The people that really need to find out WON’T. I suggest we all go to web sites and download copies from credible sources, photos and articles that tell of the attrocities in Iraq. As horrible as it may seem, there are ample photos of things unspeakable of children (maimed, or worse) Also, it wouldn’t hurt to make copies of the 14 characteristics of fascism. One unembedded journalist I find with powerful and shocking messages of reality is Dahr Jamail.

    I urge every one to arm themselves with these things. Then, go to supermarkets or any other public parking places, and put these under windshield wipers. Talking to people is not very effective,and a waste of time and emotion. Even if the end result is not of each and every individuals transformation, there is no doubt that it will make many confront themselves on their stance on the war. This no doubt will have some annoyed, but so the hell what! This will be a violent awakening for many. No police.

    We have to be the media now. The main stream media is the war merchant. (actually!) This has got to be done in a massive effort. If every one knows what’s really going on, there’s actual hope. I thinke it’s important for the material to be in large print and hopefully brief, but if it’s lengthy it better be easy to read.

    24 August 2005, 1:28 am

29. Dennis O'Neil:

    Several people have commented on the practicality of immediate withdrawal from Iraq, with Stan’s observations the most pertinent. I just want to add an observation made by Tom Barton, who produces GI special: “All you have to do is tell the troops they are free to leave however they can. In three days, there won’t be a GI or Marine left in the country.”

    24 August 2005, 5:35 am

30. Richard Manning:

    I suppose I’m a member of the Latte Left – I’m Canadian too.

    The central problem in Iraq as I see it is that there are simply no trusted sources of good information about what is going on there. Some of this is to be expected given the dictum that truth is the first casualty of war, but really, how are people supposed to form an opinion? The answer of course, is that the administration does not want people forming their own opinions, and has executed possibly the most brilliant and all encompassing propaganda campaign the world has yet seen.

    But I’ve heard enough to know that this administration is deceitful, manipulative, incompetent, and completely removed from reality. If you ran an organization and learned that someone working for you had these qualities, you would fire them as soon as possible. You would not wait for them to tie up loose ends, nor would you let them stay for a while if the project they were working on seemed to be going well. You would immediately have security escort them from the building, because deceit and incompetence trumps all.

    So aside from the moral issues about the war or its impact on global security and human rights, the chief reason for leaving NOW is that you simply cannot trust the administration to extricate itself. I can’t think of a more persuasive reason that would appeal to a sizable number of Americans. The evidence of incompetence and deceit is mammoth, and there are more than enough examples to offend virtually every American who chooses to see them.

    The right is prepared for this though and I expect we will see more pressure exerted on Bush to dump Rumsfeld prior to the mid-term elections. This president needs a scapegoat if he really wants to save his doctrine for “pre-emptive” wars.

    Here is the second reason for leaving Iraq now. Bush can’t be given the time and opportunity to salvage his idiotic and morally bankrupt doctrine.

    24 August 2005, 11:57 am

31. Bob Reed:

    Hi Stan,

    It’s almost always thought-provoking to read your comments, whether I agree with them or not.

    I can appreciate what you’re trying to say about “polarization”, up to a point. I certainly don’t think there’s any use in bending my own stance of fervent opposition in an effort to do “outreach” to the other side on an issue as clear-cut as the Iraq war.

    But I can’t bring myself to entirely write off the other side- even members of the so-called “Republican base”- as beyond hope, too intransigent to change their minds, and thus foredoomed to “enemy status.” I think you may be underestimating the value of continuing a dialogue with someone on the other side of the fence, under circumstances of mutual respect.

    Here’s my personal experience. I’m a cab driver who shares my car with another driver- he works the day shifts, and I work nights. We’ve known each other for around a year and a half now. He’s almost exactly the same age as myself. He’s a stone hillbilly working-class guy with a limited education, and I’m an intellectual with a college degree. He’s a recovering drug addict who’s part of one of those quasi-fundamentalist Christian ministries that I tend to view as part salvation, and part madrassa. I’m a Bruce Cockburn Christian myself, not about to be bamboozled into a right-wing party line masquerading as a spiritual teaching. And he’s sold on George Bush, the Terror War, and the Iraq invasion- or at least he used to be. Meanwhile, I’ve known where the Bush Crime Syndicate is at for years. And we had to learn how to get along.

    Believe me, it wasn’t easy at first. We often got into shouting matches over politics when it came to drive each other home at the end of our shifts. This guy had the real hard-line stereotypes about dissenters from the Bush program being Anti-Americans, traitors, and Leftists. For what it’s worth, I’m none of those things. I’m a Weberian pro-capitalist, and George Bush is the traitor, not me. And I had to school him about that. Did he listen? Only sometimes. Other times he’d literally be sticking his fingers in his ears, and shouting to drown me out. I seriously considered finding another driver to switch off with, several times. The very idea of speaking to him again upset me a few times, because he was so simultaneously ignorant, convinced, obdurate, and passionate in his devotion to what I viewed as a blinkered concept of patriotism. I found myself seriously considering that this was the very same mentality of the “good German” Hitler supporters in the 1930s. But although I thought about it, I didn’t cut him dead and swear eternal enmity against him, and I’m glad that I didn’t.

    The thing is, we found that despite our differing political views, we like each other. We share a lot of the same taste in music. He plays the guitar and has a good singing voice. He’s devoted to his wife and his son, and he puts up with his slacker 20something stepsons, even though he’s unable to discipline them and they pay him minimal heed. He’s a responsible person who’s honest to the bone. I walk into his duplex, and it looks like a miniature vesion of an Architectural Digest showpiece, in it’s own unassuming way. He’s a great person. It’s simply that his politics have been known to be incoherent and wrongheaded, even though I think he has a good heart.

    The fact is, after a while I did compromise with him- sort of. He wanted an agreement to refrain from bringing up political topics in the cab at all when we were together. I resolved to put a lot less emphasis on the topic, simply in the interest of cultivating our friendship. At that point we were all yelled out anyway, and we both knew approximately where the other stood on the questions of Bush and the Iraq War. But simply in the natural course of time, politics still comes up as fodder for conversation, and I avail myself of the opportunity to make the most pointed and pithy observations I can on current events.

    I don’t view the de-emphasis on political debating as a compromise from weakness, for me. It was plain to me that he was the one who had the emotional investment in maintaining a defended stance. So instead of insisting on continuing heated, polarizing confrontations, I simply made brief, telling observations from time to time- ridiculing the Establishment media, putting in a good word for “Democracy Now” and recounting some of their news stories and interviews, reminding my firend in various ways that the Iraq War he got wasn’t at all the one that he had been expecting, and chiding him that as an old carny he should have known better than to be taken in by George W. Bush’s “Mr. Haney” swindles. It’s proved a lot more effective than constantly harping on the issues. And we often have a lot better time harmonizing to the oldies anyway.

    But the important thing is, I haven’t felt any pressure to modify any of my opinions to accomodate him. And over time, he’s beginning to listen, and to open up his mind some.

    The first thing that tipped over was his hostility to the anti-war protestors. He found that the tape couldn’t play any more, because I confound the stereotype in too many ways. For one thing, I’m his age. For another, I don’t present the image of a sheltered latte liberal yuppie pushover. I have about 7 more years of driving cab than him. And, as I’ve noted, we’re both personable sorts who get along fine as working partners.

    That was a victory for our side right there. Because the moment he found that he couldn’t demonize the antiwar movement and the anti-Bush dissentes, he had to grant them space for their opinions. He was reminded that respect for diversity of opinion is one of the saving graces of a non-totalitarian society, as well as being part of the mythos of American patriotism. From that point on, the political struggle became more about the rational merits of a given position than a crusade to annihliate the traitorous opposition. And ever since that point, he’s slowly been coming around. I was telling him about Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay atrocities and their cover-up by the Establishment media months before any of the stories got notice on television. (I keep warning him about the perils of the idiot box.) In a low-key way, I keep giving him the scoop on a lot of news that he at first thought amounted to lies and “anti-American propaganda”- but over time my track record has been a lot better than the right-wing talk radio goons who he originally thought had the final wisdom.

    Long story short? He’s off his feed about Bush. He’s turned sour on the Iraq War. He hasn’t come around completely, but he’s starting to get it. So are a lot of other people who formerly held the same views as himself. So I’m of the mind that if those of us in possession of the objective facts and consistent moral integrity can find a way to smuggle the truth through someones defenses without insulting them or turning them off, the Karl Roves and Rush Limbaughs of the world can’t fool all of the people all of the time.

    Even people of inherent good will can be very stubborn, especially when they’ve been bamboozled by misdirections, appeals to maintaining inflexible loyalty under the guise of moral principle, and just plain fake news. And they’re often insecure about the prospect of changing their minds, because they mistakenly view doing that as an admission of inadequate intelligence. So when I argue politics and current events, I often make the observation to my opponents that the people who are really treating them as if they’re stupid are the people who lie to them and flatter them. Confronted with facts to replace formerly accepted lies, changing one’s mind isn’t weak-mindedness, it’s wising up. And I make the point that the reason I botther to differ with them is because I think they’re smart enough to grant a valid point once they’ve mulled it over for a while.

    On the other hand, there are also the intractable cases in the Bushista camp- people so pompously self-convinced, so hypocritically hard-hearted, so averse to considering dissenting viewpoints that they virtually demand polarization.

    Consider http://www.mensnewsdaily.com/blog/malven/

    …yet despite the overt evidence of bloodthirsty extremism on that site- “nuke Mecca”- somehow I can’t bring myself to feel all that threatened by such people at this point. Perhaps it’s because I live in a mostly liberal region of the country…are there really part of America where such profascist jingosim is defining the political consensus reality? Given that we still haven’t broken the serve of the Bush regime and the War Party, am I under-estimating the opposition by treating blogs like that as unconscious parody?

    Anyway, all the best, Stan, you’re my favorite Marxist intellectual- the one I have the toughest time arguing with when I read you, especially on issues like the future of global resource distribution. I’ll have to check into the writings of this Rosa Luxemburg you’re always on about, some time…anyway, time for this fellow to travel…oh yeah, one more thing- a book recommendation, The Demon Lover: The Roots Of Terrorism, by Robin Morgan, a feminist tract on males, violence, and the terroist impulse.

    24 August 2005, 11:13 pm

32. RPM:

    Wow Bob, what a fabulous post! I’d like to think that people like your friend, who can be very loyal and patriotic, have hard limits on how much bullshit they will endure from anyone. If and when someone pushes them across that line they will be utterly unforgiving. One of their biggest fears is being mocked, hoodwinked or taken advantage of, especially by politicians.

    25 August 2005, 9:30 am

33. m.c.:

    “Any measurement, any standard you apply to this, we’re not winning(in Iraq). Now, what’s the definition of not winning? If you just, for example, secure the road from the Baghdad airport to downtown Baghdad…”

    U.S. Senator(R-Nebraska) & Vietnam Veteran(Sergeant, US Army infantry 1967-68; 2 Purple Hearts) Chuck Hagel in an interview on ABC’s, This Week, 8/21/05.

    25 August 2005, 4:39 pm

34. Stan:

    I just received an email from Tom Hayden. Here is his letter, and my reply:

    LETTER:

    Stan, I thought you might support this proposal, or at least understand it. The proposal is offered as a way to implement the meaning of “out now” in a way that will draw more support. It’s not offered as an alternative to the agenda of the movement, but a complement.

    You say we don’t need an exit strategy, that our military commanders can order it done in thirty days. And you call my suggestion unrealistic/ Have you tried your argument on the undecided public?

    Look, I used to say we made up a lie to invade so we can make up a lie to withdraw. I found the listeners wanted a little more substance.

    I am not arguing that we should rely on the Democratic Party. I am arguing that we should become a complicating factor for hawks in congressional districts, and that we need a vocal peace faction in Congress. Why are thousands of people descending on Washington to protest if they don’t intend to move the politicians?

    My strategy is people power against the pillars of the policy: undercut Bush in public opinion, funding, troop recruitment, alliances, etc. The work is carried out at the grass roots level, as the protests in Idaho and Utah have shown. But hearings in Congress like Conyers’ on Downing Street and Woolsey on exit strategy are useful steps.

    The tone of your article concerns me most. It is full of rage. We shouldn’t be turning on each other. I support and admire what you’ve written before, and the work you do. I hope you will take another look at the proposal. TOM

    REPLY:

    Tom,

    I appreciate you writing on this, but my argument still stands. I appreciate you laudatory remarks about me. I love to be loved, Tom. But I oppose you on this.

    My anger is with the patronizing tone that you have taken toward us for our “unrealism.” I’ve seen this movie before. As for sounding this message out, I have received around 300 emails in the last two days on this, and all but about 4 of them were supportive. They aren’t mad at you. They are rightfully fed up with parliamentarianism… which as a student of history you know has never accomplished a single radical transformation until a mass movement has threatened to destabilze the whole shithouse.

    My son just came back from is second hitch over there, and they are telling him he will go back again by January. So I might be attracted to the notion of some Congressional fix that will stop this one, now, and let everything return to normal, except for a couple of things.

    First, normal is why we are seeing a generation that includes my son being done to what I and others were done to in Vietnam. We ended one war, but we did not end the system that breeds war. Second, normal that ends the Iraq war (in however many years) through some plan that fails to also destabilze the whole system here in the imperial core means that Jaydin, my grandson of 32 months now, and who I love more than any creature who draws breath on this planet, will be part of the next generation to go. I didn’t manage to keep Jessie out of uniform, but I goddamn well intend to try and keep Jaydin out.

    So it’s not rage you are hearing when you psychologize my writing, Tom. It’s love. My own experience as part of that last generation to get thrown into the charnel house of capital alomost rendered me incapable of experiencing love… but circumstances offered me a measure of redemption, and I intend to use it to my very last breath to fight alongside millions of others for the utter destruction of this system, root and branch. Stopping this predation and plunder in Iraq is just the first step for some of us.

    And the reality is that this quick-fix you are advocating will not shorten the war itself. It will prolong it. It is, right this minute.

    Tom, if you offer a plan that is genuinely unilateral, I’m there. I’ll camp on David Price’s Congressional porch until they drag me off in handcuffs to fight for it, and I’ll call you a national hero. But this “plan” is no such thing. Neither you nor the Democrats nor the whole US government have the slightest right to negoitate anything with a single Iraqi. The US invaded THEM. The authority of the US is competely illegitimate, and any claim to it is racist to its very core. Making a policy proposal palatable by ignoring (1) the imperial nature of the US government and the class to whom it belongs and (2) the anti-Arab racism that underwrites liberal “concern” for post-occupation Iraq, is unacceptable. There is one and only one moral alternative here. Leave.

    I agree we have to move politicians. Where we diverge is on the question of how. But that is a very big divergence and goes to the heart of where we want this movement to go. I do not believe in lobbying… at least not the lobbying that involves respectfully approaching elected officials and asking them to support this and that. This leaves the power relation between pols and proles exactly the same. But when we are leveraging their inseucurity and making demands, and they are FORCED by the situation WE create to move, then that relation has changed. This is Direct Action Organizing 101.

    Every time one of these elected officials (or you) comes back with one of these dithering proposals that says we will leave when this or that condition prevails (over which “we” have no control), we (the we in which I include myself) are going to chant the same naive-by-your-account mantra… NOW. Leave NOW. Your proposal says we have to create certain conditions in Iraq first. This is the point where I rely on scatological remarks as part of my critique. Neither you nor the entire United States government has the ability to make these conditions appear. Moreover, the reality — since you are so wedded to what is realistic — is that the US state has a distinctive class character that is unmentionable in polite political discourse that renders it genetically incapable of (1) promoting anything resembling popular democracy anywhere (in fact, quite the contrary, it has to stamp it our wherever it finds it) and (2) being responsive to the real needs of people here in the US.

    No for some realism of my own. Mass times velocity equals momentum. There was a point not that long ago when over 90% of the American public had been stampeded by the lies of our ruling class into supporting the notion that we had to attack Iraq. Those lies were propagated by Republican and Democrat alike. Lately, over 60% of that same polity says this is a very bad idea, and over 30% have come to share our position about NOW…. that is, unilateral and unconditional withdrawal. Cut and run; the faster the better. That’s why Walter (of Freedom Fries fame) Jones here in Jesse Helms country is wavering.

    So if the momentum is heading to the left (the NOW position), why in the world would we choose this particular moment to introduce a more equivocal position to become a new point of reference? Your proposal does NOT draw more support to the “out now” position. First, and this is no mere technicality, your proposal is not an “out now” position. Second, we are already drawing more support every day… as the polls show. Your proposal only draws more support from one quarter. Nervous Democratic Party officials. And why — when Congress is reacting on its own to catch up with this momentum — would we try to turn the initiative over to them now by diverting an increasingly militant and mobilized antiwar movement into parliamentary horse-trading? I can only think of one reason. To blunt that momentum.

    Here is my love-and-rage response: Fuck that!

    I have no idea how this war will end, and I have no doubt that the actual end will be overdetermined in bafflingly complex ways. But I am an activist in the Bring Them Home Now! campaign, and you know what? When we were plodding along, beating our brains out to push this campaign along on pennies, duct tape, and bailing wire, building MFSO and VFP, and midwifing GSFP and IVAW, Moveon and their ilk found us to be anathema. But we stuck to our position, through a lot of struggle with people who are articulating the same thing you are now — which is NOT an “out now” position — and our patient persuasion along with the breakdown of the cover-story and the dreadful progress of the war started people moving our way. They just needed someone to catalyze them, then Cindy encamped in Crawford, the media reacted, and suddenly they, you, and everyone else shows up with a bunch of NGO-whiteboy “strategies” (and most dangerous of all, money) to instruct us all in the virtues of parliamentary pluralism.

    And it will work, Tom, and that’s the most fucked up thing about it. These appeals will take advantage of people’s undying hopelfulness about a mythical “America” of which they are yet to be disabused, and their anxieties about mass movements, and you and others will succeed in draining some of the militance and focus out of this movement. As a result, not only will you preserve the whole wicked system for a bit longer, but more immediately you will end up prolonging the war itself.

    I don’t have the power to stop that. The only power I have right now is to name it. So I am.

    Yours for a new future,

    Stan

    25 August 2005, 5:17 pm

35. lin:

    “The tone of your article concerns me most. It is full of rage.” As if there was something wrong with that! Rage is the only appropriate reaction to the current situation. What we don’t need is another calmly-speaking, reasonable-sounding Liberal telling us to stop being so angry, please. I will stop being angry when we have real peace. Rage on, Stan!

    26 August 2005, 7:55 am

36. kevser:

    Hey
    Just came across your site and am very impressed with its clear thinking, plain speaking and intellectually honest analysis.
    My own motto is: there is no such thing as an overreaction when it come to confronting fascism.
    Get those working class kids home now!

    26 August 2005, 9:50 am

37. Anna Frances:

    Amen too! Thanks a lot,Stan!

    26 August 2005, 4:26 pm

38. Consumer:

    Tom Hayden, your DP pimps are calling. Go to them, they await. We don’t need your message of reconcilliation, especially if you’re reconcilling with that den of vipers; we don’t need your realism, especially if your realism involves our people shooting and getting shot by their people. The Democratic Party is nothing but a bunch of soulless sell-outs. You want a message, a plan? Here’s what it is. Get out of Iraq NOW. Now, and not a day later.

    26 August 2005, 8:42 pm

39. McGee:

    HI Stan,

    Thanks for your work! How about a bumper sticker with a VFP logo and ‘Iraq in Arabic spells VIETNAM’ ?
    Get that on enough cars and I think even Joe Six-Pack would be getting the message…

    27 August 2005, 12:52 am

40. McGee:

    Hi Stan,

    Just a note to add to my previous suggestion re bumper sickers. Iraq IS Vietnam - here we are (AGAIN!) invading a culture thousands of years older than ours and pretending we’re going to bring THEM democracy, freedom or whatever. “When will they ever learn….”

    27 August 2005, 1:09 am

41. DF:

    A Cash-Flow, Financial Institute Boycott Plan:

    JOIN THE B.U.S.H. BOYCOTT!

    On (selected date) 2005,
    let’s send George Bush our united message!

    B.ring
    U.nited States
    S.oldiers
    H.ome from Iraq now!

    HERE’S HOW!

    On (selected date) withdraw a small amount of CASH from
    your bank, savings & loan, credit union, or ATM. ($5, $9.11, $10, $20)

    Do NOT spend, lend, or invest this CASH.

    Inform the teller or bank manager that you will redeposit the CASH
    when all United States soldiers are withdrawn from Iraq.

    If you’ve withdrawn your CASH from an ATM, simply write B.U.S.H.
    BOYCOTT on an ATM bank envelope and put it in the ATM slot.

    Phone, fax, or email George Bush, government officials, and the
    media about your participation in the B.U.S.H. Boycott. Let them
    know that this CASH has been pulled out of circulation, and it won’t
    be spent, lent or invested until all United States soldiers have
    been withdrawn from Iraq.

    president@whitehouse.gov

    vice.president@whitehouse.gov

    http://www.congress.org/congressorg/home/
    (Contact your representatives!)

    http://www.tvbroadcasters.com/usnets.html
    (A list of television networks, nationwide)

    http://www.ipl.org/div/news/browse/US/
    (newspapers, by state & city)

    Email everyone you know who opposes the war on Iraq and ask them to
    participate in the B.U.S.H. BOYCOTT.

    WITHDRAW CASH AND WITHDRAW FROM IRAQ!

    Withdrawing cash from circulation would wake up the U.$. government because of pressure from businesses. It would take multiple boycott dates for businesses to feel the pinch. Cash withdrawn from circulation could not be used. Messages to politicians, media is essential.

    The actual action is quite simple. When I withdrew cash in December of this year at my bank ($9.11), I explained to the bank teller that I was withdrawing it because of Bush’s illegal war on Iraq and that I’d return it to the bank when the war was over and the U.S. troops were home. I asked to speak to the bank manager and explained why I was withdrawing the cash. Both people I spoke with were very supportive of my action.

    My cash remains in a drawer at home. Had I done this monthly, since December, I’d have $91.10, cash out of circulation. If five million dedicated activists had also participated in a cash-flow boycott during this same time period, there would be a significant flow of cash stopped. Banks/Savings and Loans/ATM’S have only so much CASH on hand. When they run low, it has to be delivered. They would feel the pinch.

    I understand that people are doubtful about this action. But, it’s such a simple thing to do. It takes very little time. It’s just a matter of getting it started. Finding a group, a spokesperson is essential. When enough people join in, when the cash-flow slows, then politicians will begin to listen to our demands.

    George Bush & CO speak the language of $$$, of profits. They are obsessed with their monetary gains. $$$ is THEIR POWER A Cash-Flow boycott is something that would certainly grab their attention and let them know that the progressive, pro-peace movement means business.

    It just seems that the time is ripe for this action.

    Thank you!

    DF, mom, educator, activist
    CA, USA
    ps4erth@yahoo.com

    27 August 2005, 8:12 am

42. Jon B:

    Civil disobedience, as much as I’d like to see a mass movement, I just don’t SEE it.

    I live in Michigan a marginally blue state with the highest unemployement in the country with a deep union history, yet getting people in even deep blue Detroit to attend an anti-war (or during the presidential campaign, anti-Bush) rallies is a hard slog. I imagine this is true in many parts of the country.

    It can be east to explain why, but hard to understand how to change it.

    Why?
    I’m of the opinion that mass complacency has set in. We’ve been TVed to death. We’ve been cornered into accepting our lot in life. People can look around their living space and see so-called success, multiple TVs, computers, game systems, masses of things/knick knacks/collectables, street playthings, yet seem to ignore the plies of debt thinking the former balances the latter. No one feels secure in their occupation anymore, unions have become both pariah organizations and powerless.

    The military draft doesn’t exist, so that is a huge difference from the Viet Nam War. This causes the college crowd to ignore a war they won’t have to worry about getting involved in, they can continue to party on. Further, parents of that college crowd also don’t have the war draft worry. Then deeper further, friends and other family don’t have some sort of empathy to that college crowd. During the presidential campaign there was this belief that Bush would reinstate the draft, in retrospect the Bushies have no interest in a draft just for the reasons I’ve mentioned in this paragraph, as Rumsfeld said, “You go to war with the military you have.”

    Polls today show that a majority of Americans now see the Iraq War as a mistake and that it was started by lies about WMDs, yet where is the mass vocal outrage? It’s missing because it hasn’t personally touched a mass of Americans.

    Beyond that, no one is protesting the war in Afghanistan. This has long shifted from getting Bin Laden to propping up the US installed Karzai regime. The Afghanistan War is a mistake as well, but doesn’t resonate with hardly anyone on the left. I’m sure it bothers some like left peace religions, but there is no movement to end that war whatsoever. Afghantistan has become a rerun of the Soviet invasion.

    Change?
    It takes the masses to experience a downturn of some sort. The economy staggers along for most people, but somehow they survive and feel somewhat comfortable, at least in their minds. I beleive the Bushies believe that peak oil has either arrived or will very soon. That’s really what the two wars are about. Yet, gas prices continue to rise despite the wars. Rising gas prices piss people off and the Bushies can’t stop the price rises. The new bumper sticker/talking point should be “Blood for oil and pay at the pump.” The link of oil to the war should point out that it still won’t make a damn difference. When gas passes that psychological $3 price, there will be anger in the town. Before Bush leaves office we will probably see $4 or $5 a gallon. We will be seeing economic problems we haven’t experienced in quite a while. I cheer the rising oil prices, Americans will wake up. That has all the possibilites of the mass movement that is needed to not only end the wars, but to go much further, a progressive era.

    At least that is my hope.

    27 August 2005, 8:41 am

43. Stan:

    I think you may be a victim of television, too - no offense. there is actually very substatial resistance to the war, and to the war in Afghanistan, too. But it is not broadcast through the corporate echo chambers of CNN and Fox.

    There is more mobilized resistance to the war in Iraq today than there was to Vietnam when the US withdrawal began.

    They WANT us to feel demoralized, because then we wait for these kinds of magic milestones to do our job for us.

    27 August 2005, 10:58 am

44. pick of the litter:

    I am just discovering your site because of a link provided by Jon B from the Tom Hayden article reader’s forum on In These Times. Thank you for being so articulate and resolute in an “Exit NOW” approach to the debacle in Iraq. ITT is also featuring a story “Radioactive Wounds of War” by Dave Lindorff and this author is having to defend the truth of his report against a gov’t hack out to discredit the reality of radioactive poison. Incredible are the lengths that warmongerers will go to defend toxic warfare. see http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2298/P40/

    I just have to say that the post I enjoyed reading most here was the Comment by Bob Reed — 8/24/2005 @ 11:13 pm. Such a relatable story, I am sure most of us have friends and/or family who swallow Bush bullshit uncritically. The book Bob recommends looks worthy of checking out too.
    I can relate to “peggy”’s posting(s) too. I think militant revolutionary talk is alienating.
    Your response to Hayden’s letter is great. “Exit Now” is the best course. Keep beating those drums.

    27 August 2005, 12:31 pm

45. John Francis Lee:

    The present regime will be in power until 20 Jan 2009. They will not only stay in Iraq through that date, they will also widen the war, attacking Iran and/or Syria, guaranteeing chaos in the Middle East and massive blowback, that’s terror, in Israel and America.

    Our only opportunity to stop them is to pack the Congress with anti-war Representatives who are committed to defunding the war. No money no war.

    The way to do that is to make sure that every party’s primary campaign in every district has someone running on the written pledge not to vote one more dime for any war in the Middle East. Not in Iraq, not in Palestine, not in Iran, not in Syria. Then to win as many party primaries as possible, giving ourselves the best chance of having an anti-war candidate to elect in the general.

    Then show up dawn to dusk to watch the votes and duck to dawn to count them, because we all know the state of the electoral process in the USofA right now.

    This is our last chance to elect Republicrats, Demoplicans, Greens, Independents, Liberals, Conservatives, whatever… all members of a virtual anti-war party.

    If we don’t make it in 2006 we will be done. Electronic tallying, that is the elimination of ballots, makes votes invisible. All that’s left is the Chesire Cat’s smile. 12% of the ballots were invisible in 2000; 18% invisible in 2002; more than 30% invisible ballots in 2004.

    Do the arithmetic : 45% will be invisible in 2006 and nearly 70% in 2008.

    Stop the war, stop the terror, get back the vote. It’s now or never.

    28 August 2005, 9:07 am

46. Doug Nielson:

    Comment by Eli Stephens — 8/21/2005 @ 4:06 pm: Just one minor critique of this post - Cindy Sheehan’s protest is very much a “peaceful, legal” protest and NOT civil disobedience. She has not broken any laws…

    My response: You are correct that there is not a strong civil disobedience component to this encampment. But I bet they could find a statute against camping in ditches if they wanted to.

    28 August 2005, 1:04 pm

47. Stan:

    In reply to John - The US will not attack Iran. An attack on Iran would ignite a general rebellion in Iraq’s south that would render the occupation of Iraq untenable.

    You massively overestimate the capacity of the US military. It is already stretched beyond its sustainable capacity.

    28 August 2005, 2:15 pm

48. peggy:

    In my next incarnation, I want to be a vulture. Vultures are my favorite birds. A vulture can consume enough botulism toxin to kill forty guinea pigs. A vulture attacks and poisons its enemies by vomiting on them. Right now I wish I were a vulture so I could vomit all over the right-wing media and the anti-Cindy protesters who have attacked with such a barrage of ugly words this poor woman who has not done anything at all wrong. I want to be a whole flock of vultures, I want to be all the vultures in the world so I can vomit prodigiously on all those slimy people who have gratuitously attacked Cindy. Then when all those people have died from my vomit, I want to eat them all up and fly to the White House and vomit their poisonous remains on Bush and Cheney. It would feel so good to do that.

    28 August 2005, 3:50 pm

49. m.c.:

    {What’s the Saying: Th Truth is the first casualty of war}

    Report: More journalists killed in Iraq than Vietnam
    Sunday, August 28, 2005; Posted: 4:09 p.m. EDT (20:09 GMT)

    PARIS, France (Reuters) — More journalists have been killed in Iraq since the war began in March 2003 than during the 20 years of conflict in Vietnam, media rights group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said on Sunday.

    Since U.S. forces and its allies launched their campaign in Iraq on March 20, 2003, 66 journalists and their assistants have been killed, RSF said.

    The latest casualty was a Reuters Television soundman who was shot dead in Baghdad on Sunday, while a cameraman with him was wounded and then detained by U.S. soldiers.

    The death toll in Iraq compares with a total of 63 journalists in Vietnam, but which was over a period of 20 years from 1955 to 1975, the Paris-based organization that campaigns to protect journalists said on its Web site.

    During the fighting in the former Yugoslavia between 1991 and 1995, 49 journalists were killed doing their job, while 57 journalists and 20 media assistants were killed during a civil war in Algeria from 1993 to 1996.

    RSF listed Iraq as the world’s most dangerous place for journalists. In addition to those killed, 22 have been kidnapped. All but one was released. Italian journalist Enzo Baldoni was executed by his captors.

    The first media fatality was in the opening days of the fighting, when cameraman Paul Moran, of the Australian TV network ABC, was killed by a car bomb on March 22, 2003, RSF added.

    Two other journalists have been missing since March 2003 and August 2004.

    28 August 2005, 5:34 pm

50. Mike S:

    Hello Stan–

    I’ve been to your site nearly every day since I read Full Spectrum Disorder about 6 months ago. I’ve been a marxist my entire adult life, but in the closet since joining the military in 97. I was an 80s teen who couldn’t imagine the bad old US doing another vietnam scale invasion (Iraq I must of slipped my mind that day). Anyway, being in the military has kept me quiet, but the situation is now beyond any individual time tables for end-of-enslistment, I need basic stability for my family first, etc., etc. My analysis, reading list and rhetoric has never been “on the fence,” but in my behaviour I guess I have been, and for far too long. I don’t have the funds to join everyone in DC on 9/24, but I’m joining veterans for peace, sending money to you guys come the first of the month, writing letters to editors, putting together fact sheets for windshield flyers, using my rhetorical skills to convince anyone close to me about the righteousness of this one issue, and as soon as I get some money in my account (the leit motif of this here comment) I’ll be pulling $20 out of circulation.

    Your site and its participants have been an ongoing inspiration to get me off my duff (read virtual/passive activism of internet, Democracy Now, World Link) and out on the street.

    Thanks all.

    29 August 2005, 3:45 am

51. Consumer:

    Re: the Reuters soundman getting shot by a US sniper, check out the following story from Yahoo news.

    http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050828/wl_mideast_afp/iraqunrestmedialead

    There are some discrepancies, for instance, the survivor claims the soldiers left Khaled still alive in the street and refused to give him water. Then another Reuters reporter shows up to find Khaled dead in the car seat. Anyway, given this outfit’s history of killing journalists, it’d be no surprise if Khaled et al. had a history of working on stories harmful to the occupation.

    Although this is totally unrelated to the original topic…

    29 August 2005, 5:49 am

52. m.c.:

    I want to thank Cindy Sheehan for showing up in Crawford three weeks ago. Like Rosa Parks who refused to move to the back of the bus, Cindy represents everyday individuals who choose to make a difference. She has put a very human face on an unethical, unilateral military invasion and occupation.

    I came across this quote today: “It ain’t enough to get the breaks. You gotta know how to use ‘em.”
    ~Huey P. Long
    ~American Politician

    29 August 2005, 6:19 pm

53. Sean ahern:

    Dear Brother Goff,
    When I read your well aimed criticisms of Tom Hayden’s petition I thought of the A-10 Warthogs raining more depleted uranium shells down on Iraqis, just as more napalm and bombs were dropped on the Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotians after nixon announced his own secret plan for peace in 1968. Dithering and tentative approaches to the bi-partisan war party in Congress does not advance the struggle for peace.

    Others my age (51) have noted that this makes twice in our lifetimes that the US has laid waste to another country in the name of Democracy and “called it peace”. Cindy Sheehan wants to ask the President “what is the noble cause that my son died for?”. Tom Hayden and other elected representatives with the power of the purse should pose equally challenging questions to their fellow legislators and their constituencies. Ask them “why should we fund this unjust war even one more day?”

    How can a peace party in Congress oppose the war party in the executive and Legislative branches? The leading slogans for such an effort sound to me like “Not one more dime, Not one more day, Not one more stolen election, Troops Out Now, Bring the fight for Democracy back home” Not all that different from what we will inscribe on our banners on 9/24.

    I think Hayden and many other “white” liberal/progressive politicians as well as leftists of various stripes mean well but they’ve been down for so long, they don’t know which way is up. Their blindness is congenital beginning with the birth of white supremacy in 17th century virginia(see T.W.Allen) down to the Republican Partty’s Southern strategy from 1968 to the present. Bush was elected through the disenfranchisement of a critical mass of Black Floridians, and the fraud was given the stamp of approval by Gore and the other democratic senators.

    Lots of folks now calling Bush all kinds of names need to ask how did he get there in the first place?

    “He was elected by the american people, we are all to blame”, comes the ready reply. to this tired old bromide, which concels way more than it explains, I quote Tonto’s retort to the Lone Ranger; “what you mean we white man?”

    Let me explain why I believe that I am not off topic here and why this is a good time for the anti war movement in a very practical immediate sense to ’stop acting white’. (it’s not a color, a thing, a social constuct, a formation, a genus, species, breed or nation - it is a modus operendi or M.O. as they say in the comics to which we have appended the word “race”)

    My reasoning goes like this: Bush needs to retain control of the House in 2006. the House funds the war, can vote to impeach, conduct hearings, etc. It is completely self defeating for leftists to view the electoral arena one sidedly as a bourgeois delusion without also seeing it as a site of struggle.

    the Republican Party has become as adept at electoral fraud as any old time Democratic Party machine ever was. Just as the Old Democratic Party’s power was based on the south’s disenfranchisement of its Black citizens, with “white” concurrance, so now the same is true for the Republicans.

    The Southern strategy has delivered unprecedented control of all three branches of Government to Bushco. For ‘white’ male radicals, marxists, anarchists to prattle on about the limitations of “bourgeois” democracy whiel African Americans are denied tose rights is chauvinist and self defeating.

    To dismiss or ignore or write off as business as usual violations of the letter and sopirti of constitutional rights such as the right to exercise the fanchise, rights won throug great personal sacrifice is to dishonor one of our people’s greatest contributions to human freedom and cede consecrated ground to its foes.

    With the veterans and their families go the hearts and minds of this country. They have all pledged to defend and hup[hold the constitutions. Now when veterans and familes are questioning this war, as is their right as citizens, along with increasing numbers of their fellow americans, now is the itime for radicals of all stripes to direct their agitation at the roots of this Republican Ascendancy - racial disenfranchisement, which has so disfigured our Republic, again.

    Peace
    Sean Ahern

    31 August 2005, 10:58 am

54. Jon B:

    Stan, you apparently didn’t understand my post. Again, I live in the Detroit metro area. My state has the highest unemployment in the country, just released was the fact that Detroit citizens lead every major city in percent of people living below the poverty line. If that isn’t a recipe for unrest, I don’t know what is. Yet getting more than a couple of hundred people out to an anti-war rally in a metro area of 3 million people is near impossible. Yes, there is certainly mass opposition to the Iraq War. But it sure seems to be a very arm chair effort in my area of the country. Now, I’m encouraged by Cindy Sheehan’s part of the anti-war movement, it does seem to have added some fuel. But I’m going to reserve judgement whether it will be effective. Tom Heyden has ideas as well, there is no sense in dismissing efforts to end the war.

    Further, yes I watch TV. I’ve seen people like Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Norm Solomon (author of War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death,) among many whose opinions I can agree with. TV can provide good information, you just have work to find it. C-Span is where I’ve found those voices. But, I don’t stop at TV, I read books, magazines, the Internet and always save three hours every Sunday night to listen to my favorite talk radio host Peter Werbe, a self described anarchist who has been holding his spot for years. I urge you to visit peterwerbe.com to understand how I feel about things. His website is a good synopsis of my attitude.

    31 August 2005, 3:08 pm

55. Mark:

    In partial defense of “maximalism”, others have commented elsewhere, with some justification I would think, that by repeating deliberately extreme far-right rhetoric, forcefully and without apology, even while offending some of those who hear it, some people have established it well enough as a part of the political landscape as to make what otherwise might be considered “far right” look more reasonable, or at least “moderate” or “centrist” by contrast - and to say that people shouldn’t make a big loud issue of Palestine, for example, because too many in the mainstream wouldn’t get it, is somewhat self-fulfilling, despite the partial element of truth in it. I think there is room for people who loudly and unapologetically say what they think and what they mean in opposition to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, and regarding empire, revolution, and other not-so-homey no-no words, just as much as people who speak out from more “acceptably mainstream” positions that oppose the occupation of Iraq. Maybe some of them just want attention or ideological purity, but I wouldn’t paint with too broad a brush. Short of claiming any sophisticated strategic rationale, I would say that Palestine, empire, etc., are part of the truth, at least as I and many others honestly perceive it, and categorically blasting its expression as stupid is awfully close to some of the things the original article rightfully denounced. Oh, and even though I disagree with some things some people from ANSWER have said, the noise they made that got them somewhat grudging and dismissive media recognition was one of the early starting points I found in locating other points of view on the subject, outside my “Christian Conservative” upbringing and the “Liberal Media” and so on. Let them speak their mind, and let those who actually think they are wrong do so as well; it needn’t be reduced to an “ism”.

    31 August 2005, 5:23 pm

56. peggy:

    Letter from Moore to Bush. Timely and informative.

    http://losangeles.craigslist.com/rnr/94962307.html

    2 September 2005, 8:37 pm

57. Ed:

    Might wanna keep nutjobs like this guy off your bus:

    http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/nation/story/51DC19D72A063D2F862570B00067A5B7?OpenDocument

    6 November 2005, 7:14 pm

58. Stan:

    This is a smear job that Jimmy told me was coming a month ago. He is anything but a nutjob… and he is a friend.

    6 November 2005, 11:52 pm

59. Ed:

    By “smear job”, I assume you mean the article is false. So will your pal publicly rebut it point by point then? Will you post the rebuttal so that those of us so inclined can make up our own minds?

    7 November 2005, 1:04 am

60. Stan:

    It’s a swift boat hit piece… and yes, when Jimmy gets his rebuttal together - he now has to contact multiple sources (inferred and-or uncited in the hit piece) - I and many others will publish it. By smear job I mean it is more than false, it uses half-turth, innuendo, rhetorical setups, and maybe outright lies.

    Pretty Rovian stuff against a very courageous and decent human being. But that’s what we’ve grown to expect.

    7 November 2005, 8:38 am

61. Ed:

    Good, because someone is lying and I’d like to know who it is.

    8 November 2005, 12:13 am

62. Stan:

    Watch tomorrow’s Counterpunch. And yet more will be revealed.

    8 November 2005, 1:05 am

63. Ed:

    Thanks

    8 November 2005, 9:06 am

64. Stan:

    http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10907.htm

    8 November 2005, 5:47 pm

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