Ending the Iraq War: current prospects

Tom Hayden has an unusual accumulated perspective on the politics of the Iraq War. He was one of the most prominent of the self-identified radical leaders of the 1960s and participated in the civil rights, student and antiwar movements of that time. He was one of the defendants in the Chicago 7 show trial, where the defendants successfully turned a bogus prosecution into a meaningful political event. And won.

He was married for years to Jane Fonda and served as an assemblyman from Santa Barbara in the California legislature for numerous terms. So he has extensive experience in community activism, protest politics and the regular political process. Plus, he's been called every name in the book, so he developed a thick skin for criticism long ago.

So I pay attention to what he has to say about the Iraq War, which he has also been actively opposing. A recent post of his addresses Ending the War in 2009 Huffington Post 09/07/07.

One observation he makes that I think is not made enough is that the anti-Iraq War movement is no longer a minority. We're the majority and have been for a while. If nothing else, his post is valuable in detailing the various ways in which the antiwar movement today has had real successes. Among them, he points out that last year's election "was the first in our history when the American voters turned out a Congressional majority over a war in progress." (Unfortunately, the sentence in the post has what must surely be a typo, because it says "2004 election".)

I also think this is an important point: "The peace movement is suffering from success, not failure. There can be an identity crisis when marginalized people suddenly find themselves in the majority, but that is where we are."

And this is an unusual moment in American politics, in that the calendar presents a number of near-term possibilities for war opponents to have a major impact on the political process. As Hayden puts it:

The year 2009 will be decisive. This week comes the debate over the surge. Next week the president's recommendations. Then the elusive search among the politicians for bipartisan consensus. Then the appropriations bill, then the new request for next year's war funding, then the presidential primaries, all of that in the next six months. Then in April, comes the projected breaking point for the armed forces, when some troop withdrawals will have to begin or tours of duty extended to intolerable lengths. Then the political conventions in the protest-friendly cities of Denver and Minneapolis, and then the campaign itself.

Step by step, we all need to ensure that ending the war is the issue on which the elections turn.

Not least among the antiwar movement's advantage right now is that the potential exists "of having the best-funded peace movement in our history".

Hayden makes this observation about the current situation of the Iraq War, giving his own perspective on a set of facts on which many others have focused:

The truth being denied is that we have funded, equipped, and trained a Frankenstein monster, and now multiple frankensteins, and they are indeed standing up. In any other conflict, the Iraqi regime and security forces would be called a police state. Yet we remain in denial because the truth would undermine the war's very rationale.. Even today, a prestigious military commission headed by General Jones reports that the Iraqi police force is hopelessly sectarian and should be scrapped. The media denial is evident in the coverage: the ninth paragraph on page 8 of the New York Times, the 25th paragraph on page 8 of the LA Times.

This is not new news. The Baker-Hamilton report last year said that the Iraqi police "routinely engage in sectarian violence, including the unnecessary detention, torture and targeted execution of Sunni Arab civilians."

The illusion is that the sectarian militias are outside the Iraqi state and must be reined in, when the reality is that the biggest militias are inside the interior ministry, inside the army, police and secret prisons, particularly the Badr Brigade which belongs to SCIRI, the dominant party in the ruling coalition we put in power. Nineteen billion of our tax dollars have been spent on building the Iraqi security system.

It gets worse. As encouraged by Gen. Petraeus a few years ago, at least 190,000 American-made AK-47s and 370,000 small arms sent Iraq are unaccounted for, most of them without serial numbers. This mass distribution of weapons was deliberate, not accidental, according to the GAO and Special Inspector General. (my emphasis)

This dysfunction in our English-language mainstream media is something that we have to keep continually in mind.

Years ago, Hayden did a book about how the American Indian Wars continued to affect the way Americans approach foreign wars in important ways. He returns to that theme briefly with this observation:

The much-touted Petreaus plan to further divide Iraq by helping Sunnis fight other Sunnis in Anbar and Diyala provinces is little more than Kit Carson's plan to arm the Ute mercenaries against the Navajo over a century ago. I make the comparison because the Sunni fighters on the US payroll are even called the "Kit Carson Scouts."

The ugly fact is that Cheney and Bush have the votes right now to block an outright Congressionally-imposed withdrawal deadline for the Iraq War, though it still makes a lot of sense for the Democrats to force votes on the issue. Every time the Republicans have to go on record in a high-profile vote for or against the war, it will increase the pressure on members from more competitive districts to join the Democrats on that vote or the next one.

The Democrats will be under tremendous pressure from the Establishment press and from many of their corporate donors to support something less ambitious that substantial policies to end American participation in the Iraq War and to address the traumatic aftermath in the Middle East. The antiwar majority of the public needs to keep the pressure on them to actually push for ending the American role in this war.

That should include Democratic Presidential candidates starting to address the foolishness of expecting an unconditional surrender outcome and instead start promoting the notion of a far more pragmatic understanding of success in "small wars" like the one in Iraq.

Tags: antiwar movement, establishment press, iraq war, mainstream media, mainstream press, tom hayden