The harder part of the Iraq War: getting out

I was on a conference call Wednesday morning (today PDT) moderated by Charles Knight of the Project on Defense Alternatives discussing the report of the Task Force for a Responsible Withdrawal from Iraq. The conference included Congressmen Jim McGovern (D-MA) and John Tierney (D-MA) and other involved in the Task Force. The Executive Summary and the full report are available online.

As McGovern (D-MA) explained, there has been inadequate planning for an actual withdrawal from Iraq, both on the part of the administration and of Congress. He says that Congress can't get estimates from the Pentagon on what withdrawal would take. He noted that war supporters tend to respond to the mention of withdrawal by just yelling, "Bloodbath!" He characterized his approach as one of seeking to withdraw from Iraq "quickly, carefully and generously".

I thought during this call about the projection-style arguments that war fans make, saying that the war critics "never talk about" the bad things that would happen if the US withdraws. This call and the Task Force report was mainly devoted to dealing in a practical way with the risks involved with withdrawal. As Marc Lynch of George Washington University put it during the call, there are real risks if we start to withdraw and real risks if we stay. It would be far more accurate to say that the administration and other war supporters like to pretend that there are risks only in withdrawing, not in staying.

McGovern supports a short-term renewal of UN mandate for a brief period. That would be a constructive alternative to the current attempt by the Cheney-Bush administration to negotiate a status-of-forces agreement, the latter of which he thinks could lead to a "US commitment to endless war".

In response to a question from me, Caleb Rossiter, Counselor to Congressman William Delahunt (D-MA), Chairman of the Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights and Oversight, stressed that the "status of forces" agreement being negotiated by the Bush administration is not like most "status of forces" agreements, which deal with the legal status of US forces in another country. He characterized the agreement under negotiation as a status-of-forces agreement "on steroids". What he meant was that the agreement Bush is trying to conclude involves approval of US troops engaging in combat, which would require Congressional approval to be legally valid.

Rossiter emphasized that although Executive agreements and even agreements approved by Congress can be ended, that it would be a "diplomatic disaster" for the US to make such an agreement and then renege on it shortly afterward. For that reason, he said that it's important that any such agreement not be concluded until the next President, who will have to implement the agreement is elected.

Chris Toensing of the Middle East Research and Information Project noted that Barack Obama recently telephoned the Iraqi Foreign Minister, Hoshyar Zebari, and told him that if Bush concludes an agreement like the one Rossiter called a status-of-force agreement-on-steroids, that his administration could not be bound by it. (See Obama Speaks With Iraqi Foreign Minister ABC News Online (n.d) and Mr. Zebari's Message Washington Post editorial 06/18/08.)

This is a good sign that Obama is maneuvering to avoid being locked in by the outgoing Bush administration via such an agreement. This also is a good sign to me that Obama is willing to take some political risks for his promise to withdraw (most) American troops from Iraq. This could open him up to criticism from the McCain camp for interfering with official diplomacy. Which to an certain extent, it is, though it's fully justifiable in this case. It's much better than the secret diplomacy practiced, say, by the Nixon campaign in 1968 to stall the Paris peace talks with North Vietnam. (I would also add the dealings of the Reagan administration with Iran over the hostages in 1980, though that is not so clearly documented or so widely accepted as Nixon's obstruction of the peace talks in 1968.)

Congressman Tierney used the term "responsible redeployment". He didn't put it quite this way but one of my favorite quotes the last few years was from a column written by Congressman McGovern and former Sen. George McGovern (no relation), "Wars are easy to get into, but hard as hell to get out of." (Withdraw from Iraq Boston Globe 06/06/05) When they wrote that column, we had been in Iraq for not quite two-and-a-half years. If Obama gets elected - or, entering complete fantasy land for a moment, if McCain gets elected and suddenly reverses himself and commits to quick withdrawal - getting out will be a very complicated process, literally more complicated than getting in. Though the prospects for a beneficial result are far greater.

Tierney used the common Democratic argument that the Iraq War has diverted troops and other resources from the Afghanistan War and Pakistan, where American interests are more clearly at stake. I noticed, though, that he at least qualified his commitment to placing more emphasis On Afghanistan and Pakistan by saying that some troops from Iraq should be redeployed there, specifically saying not all of them or even a majority of them. And he said they should be used specifically for mentoring and training Afghan troops and police.

In response to a question from David Isenberg of the Asia Times, there was a discussion about the necessity to engage Iraq's neighbors diplomatically to stabilize the situation as the US withdraws, including Iran and Syria.

McGovern stressed that part of the goal is to "elevate the discussion in Congress" about what countries need to be involved to attempt to avoid worst-case scenarios and give hope to the Iraqi people. An essential element of the withdrawal is the kind of active diplomacy with Iraq's neighbors that the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group recommended.

Brian Katulis of the Center for American Progress noted that we need less "photo-op diplomacy" and more serious engagement and follow-up.

Toensing stressed that engaging the neighbors in the context of withdrawal would be a different context than engagement in the context of indefinite American presence. He thinks the negotiations should be under the UN aegis, not just unilateral US diplomacy.

As Knight and Carl Conetta of the Project on Defense Alternatives commented, on the concept of a role for a UN peacekeeping force for an interim period, it would have to be in the context of some kind of a much more unified Iraqi government and a much more meaningful reconciliation among the contending Iraqi parties. A UN peacekeeping force is only feasible if there is widespread agreement among contending parties that an intermediary is needed, a very different situation than what we now have in Iraq.

Toensing talked about normalizing relations with Iran, saying it would be an end-point of wide-ranging negotiations with Iran over various issues and would be a component of a grand bargain with Iran over the range of issues, not least of which are Iran's nuclear program and support for regional terrorism.

I enjoyed the response to a question from Gary Brecher, "The War Nerd", about whether withdrawal would open up the Democrats to being discredited by attacks for Rush Limbaugh and the Republicans. McGovern responded, "I don't give a damn what Rush Limbaugh says". And said we shouldn't exaggerate Limbaugh's influence. Interestingly, McGovern said that his House colleagues, even the war supporters, are looking for a way out of Iraq.

Brian Katulis of the Center for American Progress talked a bit about the mechanics of negotiating internal reconciliation agreements. It would require American engagement with the various parties but would have to be done with careful consideration for the Iraqi political process, including the provincial elections this year and the national election next year. He emphasized that the next administration would need to pursue this early.

Toensing said that the administration understanding's of national reconciliation, as well as that of the Maliki government, involved everyone going along with what the Maliki government wants. (Kind of like the Republicans' and our Big Pundits' idea of "bipartisanship".) The Task Force concept is for a much more wide-reaching reconciliation with all significant parties, excepting the "nihilistic" terrorist groups.

McGovern said it would be great if that kind of discussion that occurred on the call could happen on the House of Representatives. He said the antiwar movement has an obligation to discuss these issues in a way that starts to give people more specific ideas about the practical feasibility of withdrawal.

Toensing mentioned at the end that US Labor Against the War has brought three groups of Iraqi trade unionists to the US as a way of bringing Iraqi voices more to the attention of the American people.

Tags: antiwar movement, brian katulis, caleb rossiter, carl conetta, charles knight, chris toensing, gary brecher, iraq war, jim mcgovern, john tierney, marc lynch

Will Rush say they are "phony" military families?

It doesn't fit with the war cheerleaders pretensions or with the lazy conventional wisdom of the punditocracy. But it's consistent with other surveys. From Bush loses ground with military families by Faye Fiore Los Angeles Times 12/07/07:

Nearly six out of every 10 military families disapprove of Bush's job performance and the way he has run the war, rating him only slightly better than the general population does.

And among those families with soldiers, sailors and Marines who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan, 60% say that the war in Iraq was not worth the cost, the same result as all adults surveyed. ...

Patience with the war, which has now lasted longer than the U.S. involvement in World War II, is wearing thin -- particularly among families who have sent a service member to the conflict. One-quarter say American troops should stay "as long as it takes to win." Nearly seven in 10 favor a withdrawal within the coming year or "right away."

Military families are only slightly more patient: 35% are willing to stay until victory; 58% want the troops home within a year or sooner. (my emphasis)

When people ask, where is the antiwar movement, that's where it is. And when people complain about the lack of antiwar demonstrations, why do you need demonsrations when a big majority of the American public has long since soured on the Iraq War? Only one fourth of the public, probably less than the hardcore white fundamentalist vote, agree with the Cheney-Bush position of staying until victory, i.e., forever.

Tags: antiwar movement, iraq war

Iraq War: Has it become a fine old conflict?

Jessica Mitford was quite a character. Probably beset known for her book on the funeral business, The American Way of Death (1963), she was a British aristocrat who spent many years in the American Communist Party. Her sister Unity Mitford was a good buddy of Adolf Hitler. Jessica's brother-in-law through her sister Diana was Sir Oswald Mosley, head of the British Union of Fascists. Ha! And you thought holiday dinners with your family get contentious! Jessica also wrote a memoir about her years in the Communist Party, called A Fine Old Conflict (1977). It's done with a light touch, which the title reflects. She said she sang the English version of the Internationale, which has a line, "'Tis the final conflict", and for years she thought that line was, "It's a fine old conflict."

I thought of that when I saw the TPM video linked below, showing the latest round of Iraq War triumphalism. We're more than half way done with the fifth year of this thing, with no end in sight. So it's acquired rhythms of its own that have become almost familiar. This is the end of the calendar year, so we hear various projections that the number of troops may be drawn down substantially next year. This has become almost as much an annual ritual as turkey for Thanksgiving.

The good news this time is that The Surge is succeeding. Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina claims it's "the most successful counterinsurgency operation in military history." (Graham sees stunning progress in Iraq by Bruce Smith AP/The State 11/26/07.

Of course, in CheneyWorld, these things have meanings that are not easily apparent to the rest of us. Success means violence is down, you see. So we have to keep lots of troops there to keep the success going. But when violence goes up, that's also good news and a sign of success, because that shows that The Terrorists are desperate, and we have to keep lots of troops there to keep the success going.

It reminds me a lot of a boss I had that was known for his fascinating but quirky stories. This is a slightly sanitized version of a story he told me to illustrate how you have to go about dealing with staff attorneys:

Always remember, if you ask an attorney, "Can I steal money?", he'll say, "Yes, go ahead and do it, and we'll find a way to get you off".

But if you ask an attorney, "Can I steal money from this particular account?", he'll say, "Yes, go ahead and do it, and we'll find a way to get you off".

So, you see? It's all in how you ask the question!

Come to think of it, working with him probably was good training to understand some of today's bizarro Republican talk. He had lots of other good sayings like, "I'm caught between a hard rock." And, "Don't burn your bridges before you build them."

It was four years ago in December that we had the stunning success of capturing Saddam Hussein-Hitler. Bush's poll ratings spiked, loyal war fans talked about what a great victory it was, and every day in every way things were getting better and better in Iraq. Remember when Holy Joe Lieberman solemnly scolded Howard Dean for suggesting that Saddam's capture wouldn't make any difference in the insurgency? What kind of mangy hippie was Dean to even think such a thing?

Trent "ah'm for the white man!" Lott just announced his retirement from the Senate on Monday. So it's only appropriate to recall the sober advice that historic statesman was giving on the Iraq War in October 2003 to The Hill:

Honestly, it's a little tougher than I thought it was going to be," Lott said. In a sign of frustration, he offered an unorthodox military solution: "If we have to, we just mow the whole place down, see what happens. You're dealing with insane suicide bombers who are killing our people, and we need to be very aggressive in taking them out."

That's the way real white men fight a war, you see. When "we just mow the whole place down", that shows them A-rab Muslim how much superior our white civilization and Christian religion is to their backward, violent habits and beliefs.

But outside the fog of white supremacy where Trent Lott's mind seems to dwell, even then there was an active antiwar movement, including soldiers and there families. Suzanne Goldenberg reported on the latter in Dissent on the home front: families of US soldiers in Iraq lead anti-war protests Guardian 10/25/03. Of course, Republicans war lovers like Ole Trent were insisting even then that they were the only ones "supporting the troops". but Rush Limbaugh hadn't yet announced that antiwar members of the service were "phony soldiers".

Those were the good old days, when the war was still young. Paul Krugman commented in a column of 10/28/03 A Willful Ignorance New York Times):

According to The New York Times, President Bush was genuinely surprised to learn from moderate Islamic leaders that they had become deeply distrustful of American intentions. The report on the "perception gap" suggests that the leader of the war on terror has no idea how badly that war — which must, ultimately, be a war for hearts and minds — is going.

Mr. Bush's ignorance may reflect his lack of curiosity: "The best way to get the news," he says, "is from objective sources. And the most objective sources I have are people on my staff." Two words: emperor, clothes.

Other things in Krugman's column bring back memories of the early days:

Yet that moral punctiliousness is curiously selective. Last year the Bush administration, in return for a military base in Uzbekistan, gave $500 million to a government that, according to the State Department, uses torture "as a routine investigation technique," and whose president has killed opponents with boiling water. The moral clarity police were notably quiet.

Why is aiding a brutal dictator O.K., while trying to understand why others don't trust us — and doing something to create that trust — isn't? Why won't the administration mollify Muslims by firing Lt. Gen. William Boykin, whose anti-Islamic remarks have created vast ill will, from his counterterrorism position? Why won't it give moderate Muslims a better argument against the radicals by opposing Ariel Sharon's settlement policy, when a majority of Israelis think that some settlements should be abandoned, and even Israeli military officers have become bitterly critical of Mr. Sharon?

Oh, those innocent times, when American involvement with torture was thought to mean giving money to dictators who do it.

And the Christian General Boykin? Who could forget him and his helpful reminder that we were gonna beat them there Muslims because our God is bigger than theirs.

Actually, on the torture things, people who had actually been paying attention knew that something was rotten in CheneyLand on that score even at this time in 2003, even though the Abu Ghuraib scandal didn't blow until 2004. Americans working closely with the Northern Alliance warlords in Afghanistan in 2001 had not necessarily shown a lot of concern for our allies massacring prisoners of war. The treatment of "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh was also not exactly by the book, as those who paid attention to the case realized. But the whole Guantanamo Gulag was already set up. And the "enemy combatant" category had been created to evade the laws of war. The Cheney-Bush administration had made it clear they didn't intend to follow the Geneva Convention in their grand War Against Terrorism.

There was also a torture case in which Lt. Col. Allen B. West faced court-martial and eventually pleaded out to a fine and early retirement in late 2003 for torturing an Iraqi prisoner. The reaction among the Freeper crowd was a grim reminder that there was a definite core of authoritarian support among the public for torture. A letter-writer to Stars and Stripes hit on some basic principles that apply in such cases, that would have saved the US a lot of trouble if characters like Dick Cheney and Rummy had applied them (West went too far by Walter Irwin Stars and Stripes European/Mideast editions 12/04/03):

When Lt. Col. West interrogated a person allegedly involved in planning an attack, took that person outside the detention facility, placed a gun next to his head and pulled the trigger twice, he crossed the line. Lt. Col. West himself became a terrorist. Lt. Col. West may have had inside information about a possible attack, but he should have left it to the experts to obtain that information and put his troops on higher alert.

Taken as a whole, the actions of Lt. Col. West were along the same lines as the war criminals of Japan, Germany and Italy in World War II. Some were arrested, tried, convicted and even executed for their actions. They were guilty of murder, torture, inhumane treatment of prisoners, and stepping outside the rules of war. Lt. Col. West stepped across the line. He admits it and seems proud of it.

If an interrogator put a gun next to a suspect’s head and asked questions, the suspect would say something, regardless of whether it was true or not, just to save his life. Lt. Col. West obtained some information. But how was he to know if it was truthful or not? (my emphasis)

The torture issue was out there. There were no lack of warning signs. But the Republican controlled Congress, which meant they were loyal lackeys of the White House. So they did nothing.

The CIA had referred the outing of Valerie Plame to the Justice Department. The Establishment press steadfastly tried to ignore the story, because a big part of the story was the shameful complicity of the mainstream press in that Karl Rove political hit job, which could have (and may actually have) cost lives. But it would turn out to be one of our most important windows into the cynical scam by which Cheney and Bush got up their war with Iraq.

Other problems were also there for those who made some effort to dig out the news. Mercenary firms were placing a lot of people in Iraq, with uncertain prospects for their effects. Bumbling on the part of Jerry Bremer's CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) was already visible, though we had no idea of the level of political hackery, incompetence and corruption that was really going on. But tips of the iceberg were appearing. Serious deficiencies in the initial planning were no secret by then, having been documented by, among others, the Army itself in the Third Infantry Division (Mechanized) After Action: Operation IRAQI FREEDOM.

David Rieff described some of the problems already encountered in Blueprint for a Mess New York Times 11/02/03:

Historically, it is rare that a warm welcome is extended to an occupying military force for very long, unless, that is, the postwar goes very smoothly. And in Iraq, the postwar occupation has not gone smoothly.

I have made two trips to Iraq since the end of the war and interviewed dozens of sources in Iraq and in the United States who were involved in the planning and execution of the war and its aftermath. It is becoming painfully clear that the American plan (if it can even be dignified with the name) for dealing with postwar Iraq was flawed in its conception and ineptly carried out. At the very least, the bulk of the evidence suggests that what was probably bound to be a difficult aftermath to the war was made far more difficult by blinkered vision and overoptimistic assumptions on the part of the war's greatest partisans within the Bush administration. The lack of security and order on the ground in Iraq today is in large measure a result of decisions made and not made in Washington before the war started, and of the specific approaches toward coping with postwar Iraq undertaken by American civilian officials and military commanders in the immediate aftermath of the war.

Despite administration claims, it is simply not true that no one could have predicted the chaos that ensued after the fall of Saddam Hussein. In fact, many officials in the United States, both military and civilian, as well as many Iraqi exiles, predicted quite accurately the perilous state of things that exists in Iraq today. There was ample warning, both on the basis of the specifics of Iraq and the precedent of other postwar deployments -- in Panama, Kosovo and elsewhere -- that the situation in postwar Iraq was going to be difficult and might become unmanageable. What went wrong was not that no one could know or that no one spoke out. What went wrong is that the voices of Iraq experts, of the State Department almost in its entirety and, indeed, of important segments of the uniformed military were ignored. As much as the invasion of Iraq and the rout of Saddam Hussein and his army was a triumph of planning and implementation, the mess that is postwar Iraq is a failure of planning and implementation.

Things were seriously screwed up then, despite all the happy talk. And the notion of establishing a permanent American presence in Iraq or achieving some Second World War-style "unconditional surrender" in Iraq today is fantasy.

But the war goes. Are we going to be listening to Lindsey Graham making similar fool declarations in 2011? We will if the Republican Party has its way. Because they're clueless about how to bring this thing to a decent end, which has long since come to mean, "minimizing the disaster".

Here's the TPM video:



Tags: antiwar movement, antiwar protest, david rieff, iraq war, jessica mitford, paul krugman, lindsey graham, trent lott

State Dept. staff protesting against Iraq assignments

Juan Cole has taken up the cause of career diplomats who are objecting to involuntary assignment to Iraq.

Pat Lang and Philip Carter do not sympathize with the diplomats' protest. Lang argues that for the Foreign Service proper, "They are not members of the uniformed services, but nevertheless are actually something more than mere employees. Like soldiers they are sworn to their duty when commissioned."

Carter advises them to "suck it up folks". And he makes the point, "Rarely have we seen clearer evidence in support of the statement that 'America is not at war; only America's military is at war'." But Cole also has a valid practical point:

... [T]ypically embassies in war zones are shut down by the secretary of state and the president for precisely this reason. Foreign Service Officers are civilians. They are not combat personnel and cannot perform combat duties. Indeed, if they had any military aspect it would doom their entire mission and make them useless.

At the risk of sounding like a Mugmump on the issue, I think there is validity in both perspectives. The State Department civilians have valid objections to being sent to the Green Zone in Baghdad. But Foreign Service personnel do have an obligation to accept hazardous assignments when needed, and they do have the option to quit their jobs if they strongly object, though quitting can have a big financial impact on both current income and pensions.

That's why it makes sense to me to see this incident as a particular kind of antiwar dissent. People not only have perfectly sensible practical personal concerns about very hazardous duty in a war zone. They also have concerns about taking on such duty in a situation where they are unlikely to contribute much beneficial, and may even object to the very nature of their assignment. Cole argues that they are being sent there to serve as "a shadow colonial administration of Iraq, which is not their job".

So, when activists from the 60s are wringing their hands over the supposed lack of an antiwar movement, this is one more place to look for it.

Tags: antiwar movement, antiwar protest, iraq war, juan cole, patrick lang, phil carter

More tempations to headbanging

Headbanging in the Tollhaus, Passau, Germany

It's not only politicians that give me that old headbanging urge.

Several years ago, I took a course in Genesis taught by a professor who was also a rabbi. She illustrated some theological point with a humorous line, "The Jews are the people who can't take 'yes' for an answer."

I thought of that when I read this TomDispatch.com article by Tom Engelhardt, The Bureaucracy, the March, and the War: American Disengagement 10/28/07. Don't get me wrong. Engelhardt has been one of the best commentators on the Iraq War, and he has provided us access to a wealth of solid analysis from his guest commentators at TomDispatch.com. I normally agree with him on most issues, bless his heart. (To use that Deep South pre-criticism phrase.)

But this piece really is a case of someone not being able to take "yes" for an answer. Short version of Engelhardt's article: Sure, 70% or so of the American people are opposed to the Iraq War and want to get out as soon as possible; but where's the antiwar movement?

My short answer is, the antiwar movement is the 70% of the people that oppose the war.

Taking it in a bit more detail, Engelhardt recalls the demonstrations against the Vietnam War back in the day, and he thinks those were way cool. And the anti-Iraq War demonstrations of 2002-3 reminded him of that, and he's bummed that he's not seeing those mass demonstrations any more.

This is where I find Tom Hayden's perspective from his long experience in both electoral politics and popular protest to be particularly helpful. In his book Ending the War in Iraq (2007), he devotes a full chapter (58 pages) to looking at the real existing antiwar movement, which neither the Establishment press nor those looking at today's world through a haze of excessive '60s nostalgia seem to be able to recognize. The chapter is titled, "What Noble Cause? The Rise of the Antiwar Movement, 2001-2007".

Best of all, Hayden in his book rags repeatedly on John Mueller, the political scientist whose very flawed analysis of what generates opposition to wars in the United States is a staple of both those who want to debunk the power of antiwar movements and of air power zealots who use his findings to justify maximizing civilian casualties in a target country in order to supposedly minimize American military casualties.

Hayden does cite Mueller's article The Iraq Syndrome in Foreign Affairs Nov/Dec 2005 for its factual information on public opinion on the Iraq War. But he also makes clear that the "conservative" John Mueller is off the tracks in his notion of what a "movement" really is in the real world of politics. Hayden writes:

[T]he question is how, not whether, the peace movement participated in shaping antiwar opinion between 2003-07. The numbers of anti-Iraq War protesters in the streets - 100,000-500,000 at least eight times in five years, plus ten million globally on one occasion—are comparable to the numbers during the 1965-68 period of Vietnam. Mueller, [Mike] Davis, and others arbitrarily exclude electoral campaigns from their definition of movements; but if one considers the grassroots participation in the Dean, Kerry, Kucinich, Lamont, and other local campaigns, plus antiwar ballot initiatives in San Francisco, Chicago, and Vermont; and if one adds 165 city council resolutions passed against this war within a broader definition of "movement," then this has been a movement of historic proportions. (my emphasis in bold)

No one who is seriously concerned about how damaging the Iraq War is to the United States and the Middle East is likely to think that even a majority antiwar movement like we have today is going to be good enough until the US is out of that war. And we're are a long way from that point still. But it is important to recognize progress when it occurs, and the shift in public opinion against this war is real progress in more ways than one.

Amazingly, Engelhardt cites both Mueller's faulty theory about what drives American public opinion on war and Mueller's statement of why that theory is hosed, though neither Engelhardt nor Mueller seem to recognize it:

As John Mueller, an expert on public opinion and American wars, pointed out back in November 2005, Americans turned against the Iraq War in a pattern recognizable from the Vietnam era (as well as the Korean one) - initial, broad post-invasion support that eroded irreversibly as American casualties rose. "The only thing remarkable about the current war in Iraq," Mueller wrote, "is how precipitously American public support has dropped off. Casualty for casualty, support has declined far more quickly than it did during either the Korean War or the Vietnam War." He added, quite correctly, as it turned out: "And if history is any indication, there is little the Bush administration can do to reverse this decline." (my emphasis)

Mueller's argument is that American casualties and only American casualties make the US public turn against a war. The only reason he finds it "remarkable" that "support has declined far more quickly than it did during either the Korean War or the Vietnam War" is that he was proceeding from the false assumption that American casualties and only American casualties make the US public turn against a war.

I've commented on Mueller's detailed argument on this point in the post linked above, and also about how the polling data on the Second World War also don't fit his assumption.

Mueller was correct about support for the war not springing back. Mueller has a better handle on what drive public support for a war than Dick Cheney and George Bush seem to have. But talk about setting the bar low...

Hayden summarizes his argument about the nature of the real existing antiwar movement as follows:

...[W]hile the new post-'60s antiwar movement is given little credit as a factor in turning public opinion against the war, it is a powerful force. On eight occasions the movement has produced over 100,000 protesters in the streets, including three in which more than a half-million turned out to demonstrate. Public opinion has shifted against this conflict more rapidly than it did during the Vietnam War. At least 165 city councils and state legislatures have passed referendums against the war. Internet activism far surpasses the membership drives of antiwar groups in the '60s. The 2003-04 Howard Dean presidential campaign was in many ways similar to Eugene McCarthy's unsuccessful bid for the White House in 1967-68. And in November 2006, for the first time in U.S. history, American voters resolutely marched to the polls to reject an ongoing war.

Yet to many people, including activists, this war seems unstoppable and the opposition movement marginal or irrelevant. This is in part due to the media, but also to the Pentagon's strategy of lessening the direct impact of Iraq on the lives of most American citizens. There is no draft, we pay no direct taxes, the casualty rate of U.S. troops is one-fifteenth that of Vietnam. The perception of political impotence is also affected by anachronistic paradigms that contain romantic images of clashes in the streets of Chicago and the like. Bloggers against the war simply are not as dashing and photogenic as young men burning their draft cards in Central Park.

But this argument should be turned upside down: It is remarkable that the antiwar movement has become a catalyst of public opinion given all the resources expended on selling the Iraq War as cheap, easy, and non-intrusive in the lives of most Americans. It is a mistake to define the antiwar movement as narrowly confined to the streets, as political activism since the 1960s has opened up a space for working within a previously closed system. Bloggers and "netroots" have further developed this space, in a literal sense, through online activism.

It is necessary to write the antiwar movement into the history of this time. (my emphasis)

Shoot, I think us bloggers are pretty "dashing", but that's a topic for another day.

Tags: antiwar movement, antiwar protest, iraq war, john mueller, tom engelhardt, tom hayden

Street heat: nationwide antiwar actions this coming Saturday, Oct. 27

The United for Peace and Justice (UPJ) coalition is sponsoring antiwar events on Saturday, Oct. 27, including "regional demonstrations" in Boston, Chicago, Jonesborough, Los Angeles, New Orleans, New York, Orlando, Philadelphia, Salt Lake City, San Francisco and Seattle. They are calling it a National Mobilization to End the War in Iraq. Check out their Web site for more details. They plan other "solidarity events", as well.

This is a video by Robert Greenwald promoting the UPJ action:



Tom Hayden endorses the UPJ action in Neocons Surge Against Antiwar Movement Antiwar.com 10/22/07. Hayden is scheduled as a featured speaker in San Francisco. His article is particularly interesting in that he looks at the focused effort right now by the prowar crowd to demonize and marginalize groups and individuals prominently identified with opposition to the Iraq War.

Hayden is still a living horror to the culture war crowd. Not only was he a very visible national leader of the student movement in the 1960s. He was a defendant in the Chicago 8 show trial staged after the police riot in Chicago around the 1968 Democratic National Convention that became an iconic moment to the law-and-order conservatives. (Iconic and ironic, because the demonstrators that the culture war crowd loved to hate were protesting against the Democrats at that convention.) And if that weren't enough, he was married for years to (gasp, choke) Jane Fonda!!!

Since he also served as a California state legislator, he has an unusual breadth of experience in politics informed as well by a lifetime of research. So I find his perspective well worth paying attention to, even when I don't agree with him on particular points. He has a book out, Ending the War in Iraq (2007) that, among other things, discusses the role that the antiwar movement has played in shaping public opinion on the Iraq War.

I'll probably post more about his discussion on that point - especially since he agrees with me on the flawed analysis of political scientist John Mueller about antiwar sentiment in the US :):) - but he's particularly good in describing what he calls the "inside/outside" dynamic of public opinion on major issues. Even politicians who tend to opposed the war in Iraq still need continuous pressure from the base on those issues to get them to do the right thing. That's just how representative democracy functions.

That pressure is also called "street heat", though the term shouldn't be restricted to literal marches in the streets. It just means public pressure.

We've seen an excellent example of street heat at work just this week. Prowar partisans have been eagerly trying to discredit MoveOn.org because they dared to blaspheme against the sacred person of our Saviour-General David Petraeus. But this week, MoveOn announced that it would encourage grassroots pressure on Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to support Sen. Christopher Dodd's filibuster against the telecom immunity bill. Within hours, both had signed on for the filibuster.

The Dick Cheneys of the world haven't turned our entire government into a Potemkin democracy yet. And public opinion matters. Especially when it generates the right amount of street heat on politicians and elected officials.

For those who follow the sectarian politics around such things, International ANSWER and the "World Can't Wait" group are apparently encouraging parallel events, though they don't seem to be formal participants in the UPJ coalition. UPJ's Web site provides a list of its participating organizations.

Tags: antiwar movement, antiwar protest, iraq war, tom hayden

You want me to read what?

Antiwar.com 10/05/07 promotes the article War With Iran? Who Decides? from a John Birch Society journal

I know the various sayings: politics makes strange bedfellows, the enemy of my enemy is my friend and yadda, yadda.

But the John Birch Society is a crackpot group of rightwing promoters of hate and bigotry.

So I wasn't thrilled to see at Antiwar.com an article highlighted from a Bircher journal, The New American. The "About" Web page for that journal explains:

In addition to political topics, The New American also publishes articles about economics (from a free-enterprise perspective of course!), culture, and history. It is published by American Opinion Publishing, a wholly owned subsidiary of The John Birch Society.

I've posted before about how Antiwar.com is a "libertarian" site with philosophical affinities to the neo-Confederate LewRockwell.com crew.

I've cited articles on numerous occasions from Antiwar.com, and I expect to continue to do so. The same page that featured the Bircher article link also links to a number of current news articles on war-related matters and to articles by Norman Solomon, Ted Rall and Tom Engelhardt, none of whom are close to the Birchers' worldview. The Antiwar Radio feature there has some very impressive guests, including Juan Cole, Wesley Clark, Chalmers Johnson, Gareth Porter, Ray McGovern, Andrew Bacevich and others who are not associated with some crackpot far-right ideology.

So I encourage people to use Antiwar.com for the resources it provides, as I will continue to do.

But front-paging the John Birch Society? This makes me really wish that there was a comparable site run by real liberals or Greens or Catholic antiwar activists that was providing this service. Because Antiwar.com is also a site where articles by rightwingers from LewRockwell.com and now the Birchers are presented favorably to new audiences and have an additional route to mainstreaming their far-right ideas.

Antiwar Radio also features the occasional "libertarian" guest, like the following:

William Norman Grigg, publisher of TheRightSource, and author of the blog Pro-Libertate, discusses America’s descent into an authoritarian fascist state, our current system’s similarity to the way things are in China and Cuba (executions, slave labor, new prisons in waiting, etc.), the Prison-Industrial-Complex, the economics of the corporate warfare/police state, its origins in the Civil and Indian wars, the solution of laissez faire, the militarization of domestic police, the American civic religion of force that makes it all possible and the push for a North American Union. (my emphasis)

The "North American Union" is a popular bugaboo right now for the black-helicopter nativist crowd.

Far-right Congressman Ron Paul is a real favorite at Antiwar.com. Scott Horton at Antiwar Radio can't seem to do an interview with anyone lately without making a plug or two for "Dr. Ron Paul" and his wise thoughts. As Dave Neiwert has pointed out, Ron Paul has been notable over the years for his role in helping to mainstream themes from the far-right gutter to the "respectable" bosom of the Republican Party. Despite his being one of the few overtly antiwar Republicans in Congress, I've always been very suspicious of Paul's Presidential candidacy and even of his antiwar position. One of the reasons he gives for opposing the Iraq War is that he says it was authorized by and is being fought on behalf of the United Nations, a perennial bogeyman of the far right. (That anti-UN sentiment is very much mainstream Republicanism now.)

But the UN did not authorize the invasion of Iraq. In a weird, mirror-image kind of way, he's defending the false claims of Bush and Tony Blair in 2003 that their invasion of Iraq was in defense of UN resolutions.

The Bircher article that Antiwar.com front-paged is also lavish with the Ron Paul quotations. Not surprising: the Birchers like his crackpot economic ideas, too.

I know, "it takes all kinds," and all that. Some isolationist and "libertarian" types do sometimes have decent analyses of some aspect of the Iraq War or US foreign policy. But rightwing isolationism, whether it's the Old Right brand or the paleo-conservative or the neo-Confederate or the clean-shaven-lets-legalize-dope libertarian variety, is based on the same kind of nationalism and nativism that Dick Cheney's unilateralism is. No one should kid themselves about where that perspective leads, even if it agrees with the liberal/left position on the Iraq War or some other particular issue.

Politics make strange bedfellows, true. But that doesn't mean we have to let them take the covers.

And you may want to look twice and three times at articles from Antiwar.com by authors you don't immediately recognize when they talk about anything to do with Israel or Jews. The Birchers don't much like them either.

Tags: antiwar.com, antiwar movement, isolationism, john birch society, ron paul, scott horton

Treason-baiting and today's Republican Party

Benedict Arnold, whose name is synonymous with "traitor" in the United States

Saint John McCain the Maverick says of the MoveOn.org ad criticizing our Saviour-General David Petraeus:

It's disgraceful, it’s got to be retracted and condemned by the Democrats, and MoveOn.org ought to be thrown out of this country. (From McCain To MoveOn: Get Out ABC News 09/14/07)

The Republican treason-baiting kicked up into a new level with the Republicans theatrical outrage over the MoveOn.org ad criticizing our Saviour-General David Petraeus. McCain's little "love or leave it" crack there is only one instance.

David Kurtz at TPM reports on Giuliani Uses Petraeus in Attack Ad 09/15/07, and Tim Russert made Benito Giuliani's ad a major topic on Meet the Press Sunday morning. What his ad tries to do is link Clinton to the MoveOn.org ad, which to her credit she has so far chosen not to condemn. (See also Pentagon: Rudy Ad's Use Of Petraeus Image Done "Without His Consent" by Greg Sargent TPM Election Central 09/15/07.)

This was the obvious link-up the Republicans were intending to make during the Petraeus hearings: condemn the MoveOn.org ad, link the ad to Democrats and then use it as what Josh Marshall calls a "bitch slap" issue. The idea is to bring up some controversy like this and demand that the Democrats either apologize for something for chant the Republican Party line over it.

It's a risky strategy, because if the Dem responds by ramming it back down the Republicans throats, the Reps look bad. A classic instance of that would be Bill Clinton in one of his debate with Old Man Bush in the 1992 Presidential campaign. The Reps were spreading the McCarthyist rumor that Bill Clinton had once worked for the Soviet KGB spy agency. Clinton confronted Old Man Bush with it directly in a debate when Bush alluded to it, and Bush wound up having to then try to shrug it off. That pretty much killed that particular slander dead.

But if the Dems respond to the "bitch slap" by scolding the Reps for bad manners and demanding an apology from them, or if they apologize the way the Reps want them to, or if they declare themselves in favor of the Republican position, they wind up looking weak and the Reps score a point. An example of caving completely would be liberal pundit Mark Shields on the PBS Newshour this past Friday:

The activist antiwar wing of the Democratic - I won't even call it the Democratic Party, because they're not Democrats, but particularized by MoveOn.org this week, with it's just offensive and tasteless full-page ad in the New York Times, playing a pun on General Petraeus' name, "General Betray Us."

I think, in a strange way, it did two things. One, it gave the Republicans something to talk about all week, rather than trying to defend the president's policy, which many of them are uncomfortable doing. But it also may very well liberate the Democrats, that they don't - from that antiwar base. And they say, "Look, I think there's a chance of a compromise." (my emphasis)

That's just goofy. First of all, no one had brought this up in the interview, at least as broadcast; Shields brought it up out of the blue. Then, unless Shields had somehow personally endorsed the ad, he could have simply said he wasn't involved with the ad but that it was ridiculous for the Republicans to be huffing and puffing about it when their own Party up to and including the President had been treason-baiting war critics for years.

And this isn't new, either. In Rumsfeld Strikes Back at Critics of U.S. Effort on Terror New York Times Online 09/08/03, Douglas Jehl reported:

Mr. Rumsfeld did not mention any of the domestic critics by name. But he suggested that those who have been critical of the administration's handling of the war in Iraq and its aftermath might be encouraging American foes to believe that the United States might one day walk away from the effort, as it has in past conflicts.

"We know for a fact that terrorists studied Somalia, and they studied instances that the United States was dealt a blow and tucked in, and persuaded themselves that they could in fact cause us to acquiesce in whatever it is they wanted to do," Mr. Rumsfeld said.

"The United States is not going to do that; President Bush is not going to do that," he said.

But, he went on: "To the extent that terrorists are given reason to believe he might, or, if he is not going to, that the opponents might prevail in some way, and they take heart in that, and that leads to more money going into these activities, or that leads to more recruits, or that leads to more encouragement, or that leads to more staying power, obviously that does make our task more difficult."

Similar points were made by President Bush in his address to the nation on Sunday night in regard to Somalia and an attack on a Marine Corps barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1983. Mr. Bush said that terrorists had asserted "that that if you inflict harm on Americans, we will run from a challenge," adding, "In this, they are mistaken." (my emphasis)

The speech to which that article refers was Bush's address to the nation on 09/07/03, in which he said:

There is more at work in these attacks than blind rage. The terrorists have a strategic goal. They want us to leave Iraq before our work is done. They want to shake the will of the civilized world. In the past, the terrorists have cited the examples of Beirut and Somalia, claiming that if you inflict harm on Americans, we will run from a challenge. In this, they are mistaken.

... And for America, there will be no going back to the era before September the 11th, 2001 - to false comfort in a dangerous world. We have learned that terrorist attacks are not caused by the use of strength; they are invited by the perception of weakness. And the surest way to avoid attacks on our own people is to engage the enemy where he lives and plans. We are fighting that enemy in Iraq and Afghanistan today so that we do not meet him again on our own streets, in our own cities.

Bush's comments were fear-mongering rather than treason-baiting, though he has long since started indulging in the latter. And Rummy in this case was putting the treason-baiting spin on the framing that Bush laid out there.

A spokesman for House Republican leader John Boehner this past week responded to criticism of his minimizing the significance of American soldiers' sacrifices of life and limb by treason-baiting the Democrats: Boehner Spokesman: Dems Are Criticizing "Small Price" Because They Want America's Defeat by Greg Sargent, TPM Election Central 09/15/07.

I listened to about an hour and a half on CSPAN Sunday of the 09/14/07 prowar rally in Washington sponsored by the Gathering of Eagles prowar group. It was nominally a "Rally in Support of Troops". And some of the speakers I heard did mostly talk about the sacrifice and service of soldiers.

But in reality, it was a rally supporting the Cheney-Bush policy of endless war in Iraq. And from the speakers I heard, they think the main way to do that is to stigmatize war critics in the nastiest ways.

"Buzz" Paterson of the Move America Forward pro-Cheney-Bush group and author of the book, Dereliction of Duty: The Eyewitness Account of How Bill Clinton Compromised America's National Security (2003). His speech was straight treason-baiting. Specifically referring to Bill Clinton, Paterson ranted against "leftist politicians". He told the approving crowd, "They hate their country. They're Communists."

He ranted for most of his short speech about "treason" and got a call-and-response thing going where he listed the names of various "leftist politicians" with the crowd responding "Treason!" He named Dick Durban, Howard Dean, Harry Reid, "Teddy" Kennedy, and Jack Murtha.

Basically, the speakers didn't talk much about specifics, not even Kimberly Kagan (Robert's wife) who addressed the crowd saying the Army had cleared terrorists from Baghdad and Fallujah and several other spots in Iraq. But they made it clear that their main argument for the Cheney-Bush policies was to stigmatize and incite hatred against war critics.

These people who support the Cheney-Bush war policies are very much a minority in the United States. What the hell makes them think that only their small minority are patriotic Americans? And are they taking their speeches from clippings of John Birch Society pamphlets?

This is the nightmare vision of American life and politics that Dick Cheney more than any other single individual resurrected from the Nixon administration and carried it farther: an endless war, an Executive trampling on the Constitution and a Presidential administration orchestrating the stigmatizing of war critics as traitors and subversives.

The Scalia Five's decision in 2000 that put Dick Cheney and George Bush into the Presidency affected American history in enormous ways.

Tags: antiwar movement, authoritarianism, buzz paterson, gathering of eagles, iraq war, john boehner, move america forward, prowar movement, republican party, treason-baiting

Treason-baiting and Republican projection

Joe McCarthy, another political saint high in the pantheon of today's Republican Party

Dave Neiwert, one of the leading journalistic experts in the far-right and on how its messages become mainstreamed into the Republican Party, writes in Identifying the enemy at his Orcinus blog on 09/11/07:

Everywhere you turn, it seems, Republicans are repeating what's clearly going to be their main theme for the 2008 election: Democrats are traitors. They want us to lose in Iraq because they hate Bush so much they're willing to let the terrorists win. Next thing you know, Al Qaeda's gonna be blowing up the Peoria mall.

For understandable if regrettable reasons, Democrats have been reluctant to proceed on the assumption that the Republican Party has become an authoritarian organization that no longer considers itself legitimately constrained by the law or the Constitution, much less long-established political conventions.

This is not the same as saying that the Republicans are able to operate completely outside the Constitution and the law. But it does mean that they are willing to do so. And they have succeeded to a stunning extent in areas like launching a preventive war in Iraq, implementing an illegal and sadistic torture program whose only real purpose is to spread terror among the target populations, Executive secrecy, massive warrantless spying, blatant defiance of Congress, the outing of Valerie Plame. The full list would be much longer.

But they are going to have to face the fact that such treason-baiting in very likely to be a main part of the Republicans' political strategy all the way through the 2008 elections and beyond. And we all need to understand what a damned ugly strategy it is.

Neiwert has often pointed out that one characteristic of today's Republican Party is a remarkable degree of projection. Ordinary hypocrisy is presumably as old as politics itself. But it has become striking that when Republican spokesmen official and unofficial accuse the Democrats of indulging in some kind of particularly unworthy political tactic, it's very likely that the Republicans themselves are intending to indulge in that very tactic in a massive way.

The Republicans in the "Pet Crock" hearings (Petraeus and Crocker) this week almost to a person indulged in theatrics about how much they were shocked! shocked! that MoveOn.org had questioned the absolute integrity and all-round wonderfulness of our Saviour-General Petraeus in an ad in the New York Times. Wonky Muse gives an able summary of the controversy and its political context in this post.

The Reps focused their partisan outrage in particular on the ad's play on the Saviour-General's name: General Petraeus or General Betray Us?. An image and PDF file of the ad is available at the linked MoveOn.org site, along with there own defense of the ad, which continues in Our ad on General Petraeus.

Here I want to talk about this particular instance of projection. So first, this is the entire body of the MoveOn.org's text:

General Petraeus is a military man constantly at war with the facts. In 2004, just before the election, he said there was "tangible progress" in Iraq and that "Iraqi leaders are stepping forward." And last week Petraeus, the architect of the escalation of troops in Iraq, said, “We say we have achieved progress, and we are obviously going to do everything we can to build on that progress.”

Every independent report on the ground situation in Iraq shows that the surge strategy has failed. Yet the General claims a reduction in violence. That’s because, according to the New York Times, the Pentagon has adopted a bizarre formula for keeping tabs on violence. For example, deaths by car bombs don’t count. The Washington Post reported that assassinations only count if you’re shot in the back of the head — not the front. According to the Associated Press, there have been more civilian deaths and more American soldier deaths in the past three months than in any other summer we’ve been there. We’ll hear of neighborhoods where violence has decreased. But we won’t hear that those neighborhoods have been ethnically cleansed.

Most importantly, General Petraeus will not admit what everyone knows: Iraq is mired in an unwinnable religious civil war. We may hear of a plan to withdraw a few thousand American troops. But we won’t hear what Americans are desperate to hear: a timetable for withdrawing all our troops. General Petraeus has actually said American troops will need to stay in Iraq for as long as ten years.

Today, before Congress and before the American people, General Petraeus is likely to become General Betray Us.

You can check MoveOn.org's own links above for their defense of their ad.

Here's my basic take on this flap. To repeat what Wonky Muse said in my own way, I wouldn't have picked that "betray us" theme around which to organize the ad. But I'm not going to be mealy-mouthed about this. I not going to criticize them for it or claim that it was inappropriate.

And in the marketing world in general, an advertisement that people think is obnoxious can be very effective in its purpose if it generates "buzz". And since virtually every Republican Member of Congress I heard this week at the hearings either mentioned the ad specifically or alluded to it, anyone who listened to that or read the news reports about it heard that some people thought there was real reason to question the Saviour-General's credibility.

My own guidelines in looking at things like this would be roughly as follows:

• Though the Republican Party has lately been re-defining words like "torture" to mean what they want them to mean at the moment, anyone not afflicted with RepSpeak can clearly distinguish the difference between the concept of "betraying trust" and "committing treason by giving aid and comfort to an enemy of the United States". This isn't comma-dancing, it's plain American English. The "aid and comfort" phrase is a well-known part of the US Constitution defining treason.

• Accusations of treason (aid and comfort to an enemy) should never be used lightly in politics. That's one reason the Constitution defines a very high bar on legal charges of treason, to discourage that very thing.

• Accusing the other party or the opposing candidate of "betraying" the public trust is common as dirt. See below for a dramatic instance.

• Despite the fact that accusations of "treason" are all-too-often used carelessly, there have been real cases of treason in American history, from Benedict Arnold to the officials responsible for blowing Valerie Plame's CIA cover for the cheapest of political purposes. Unionists and Jacksonians often referred to advocates of secession prior to the Civil War as "traitors", and in many cases the usage was entirely legitimate. When real acts of treason are occurring, there's nothing wrong with calling it by its real name.

• Democratic speakers and writers have not often called it "McCarthyism", and maybe that word has become as overused as "the example of Munich" to the point it doesn't actually mean much to most readers and listeners. But pretty much since September 12, 2001, Republicans from Anne Coulter and Rush Limbaugh to John Ashcroft and George Bush have frequently accused war critics and Democratic opponents of the aid-and-comfort type of treason. It's sleazy as all hell But they've been doing it and they're going to keep on doing it.

• As Robert Scheer says in the quote we highlighted this week at The Blue Voice, "So, ambassadors and generals lie. Get used to it." Pretending that generals are somehow holy men beyond question is not "supporting the troops" or "respecting the military": it sticking your head into a part of your body that doesn't admit light.

• To paraphrase Scheer, I would also say, Republicans and their media flacks are going to call Democrats traitors and weak on defense no matter what. Get used to it. But don't ignore it. It's how today's Republican Party acts.

• Given that reality, unilateral rhetorical disarmament by Democrats and war critics is not advisable. That doesn't mean we have to be stupid or sleazy about it. But war critics who think being nicey-nice is going to stop the Republicans from slinging sleaze should probably stop trying to criticize the war. But the Reps are going to try to stigmatize anything and everything you say that departs from the Cheney-Bush line or (for the moment) that sounds even mildly critical of our Saviour-General Petreaus.

Back in February of 2004, elected President Al Gore said the following of sitting President George W. Bush before a group of Tennessee Democrats:

He betrayed this country! He played on our fears. He took America on an ill-conceived foreign adventure dangerous to our troops, an adventure preordained and planned before 9/11 ever took place.

I didn't criticize Gore for this at the time; on the contrary, I highlighted it on my blog. Despite my expectations at the time, Gore's statement didn't seem to create a whole lot of rending of clothing and gnashing of teeth by our Patriotically Correct Republicans. Presumably that's because it was very clear in the context that he was referring to a betrayal of trust.

But Gore also knows, I'm very sure, that tricking your own country into an unnecessary war acting with malicious motives can be and has been considered an act of treason in the other sense, as well. Again, in the context, it was clear he was referring to a betrayal of trust. But still, Gore's 2004 declaration that Bush "betrayed this country" was a stronger statement than MoveOn.org's "Petraeus/Betray Us" wordplay.

Getting back to the projection phenomenon, the Republicans' strong emphasis on how supposedly reprehensible it was for MoveOn.org to suggest that the Saviour-General would "betray us" even in the sense of betraying the public trust - and again, that's clearly what the ad means - is a very strong indication that the Republicans' treason-baiting against the Democrats and war critics is only going to intensify.

In Ted Olson and the pushovers 09/12/07, Neiwert explains how the Establishment media facilities this ugly strategy:

Why is it that foulmouthed left-wing bloggers seem to be the only people who have noticed that there's a peculiar set of political rules ruling the Beltway, particularly within media circles, these days?

Here's what we've noticed: For some reason, Democrats must be the model of decorum and civility and moderation and bipartisanship when it comes to governing; any deviance from this script brings on fainting spells and finger-wagging. Meanwhile Republicans can be as vicious and nasty and ruthless and nakedly partisan as they please, and their "toughness" is merely celebrated.

Jane Hamsher in In Defense of MoveOn - No More Arrows in the Back Huffington Post 09/13/07 argues against head-ducking and timidity in the face of this kind of phony theatrical outrage by the Republican defenders of Scooter Libby and Karl Rove outing Valerie Plame. Specifically, she raps the titular head of the Democratic Party, John Kerry, on the knuckles for doing a duck-and-cover routine on this one:

I'm sorry, John Kerry, but you don't help the right wing out. Ever. Now they've got Diaper Dave Vitter out there leading the battle cry, trying to reclaim himself by introducing resolutions to denounce MoveOn. Does Kerry really not know how it works at this point?

Dave Neiwert in the Ted Olson post linked above characterized the Democratic response to the Republicans histrionics over the MoveOn.org ad as having been "to cower and run from their own best advocates." And he continues:

These, then, are the Bush Rules in action: Only Democrats have to be civil. "Bipartisanship" means acceding to the conservative agenda. And Republicans can be as vicious as they like, because then we'll just call it "toughness" or, if it's really ugly, "just a joke."

You'd think by now that Democrats would have figured out they're being played for patsies, that the calls for "civility" are just an obfuscatory demand for capitulation and a cover for the right to indulge in the lowest and meanest kind of discourse. But judging from the past week's events, it's clear they haven't.

Here are links to a couple of articles to which Wonky Muse's post referred where the Republican projection strategy is on display:

MoveOn's McCarthy moment by Peter Feaver Boston Globe 09/11/07

MoveOn and McCarthy New York Sun editorial 09/13/07

Tags: al gore, antiwar movement, iraq war, moveon.org, petraeus, treason-baiting

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

The Vietnam War and the "culture war" in Louisville KY (and for God's sake - or at least our own - can we stop "losing our innocence"?)

Windsor Ruins, Mississippi. No, its not in Kentucky - but it's very Southern and Lost Cause-y (Photo: Galen Parks Smith/Wikipedia Commons)

John Ernst and Yvonne Baldwin write in the February 2007 Journal of Southern History about "The not so silent minority: Louisville's antiwar movement, 1966-1975.". (Consumer advisory: this is one of my long posts for the weekend.)

They discuss the stay-forever position taken by the state's Republican Governor on the Vietnam War and how it connected with the Republican Party's emerging "Southern Strategy". I was particularly intrigued by his speculation on the influence of Lost Cause ideology about the Civil War on Southern men's thinking about war in general:

Louie B. Nunn, who in 1967 became Kentucky's first Republican governor in twenty years and who embodied America's "silent majority," the "decent, law-abiding, constructive citizens who form the heart and conscience of our nation." Nunn claimed to have given Richard M. Nixon the famous phrase that identified Nixon's political base and helped bring him victory in the 1968 presidential election. Nixon won that close contest, in part, because Americans like Nunn wanted an honorable end to the Vietnam War and the social turmoil the conflict caused at home.

Nunn, a World War II infantry veteran, viewed Vietnam through a martial, patriotic, southern lens. "Once we were in it," he asserted, "we had to finish it with honor." Nunn spoke for most Kentuckians and southerners, including Senators Herman E. Talmadge and Richard B. Russell of Georgia. Like Nunn, Russell stated that "national honor" was the issue and that America could "not shrink from defending it." This sense of honor permeated southern culture. Since the late nineteenth century, when the Lost Cause ideology began to glorify the Civil War record of both Union and Confederate soldiers, thus salving the sting of defeat for the South, fighting for America had been a means for southern men to assert their heritage and manhood. Not surprisingly, a Gallup poll in May 1967 revealed that southerners supported the Vietnam War in greater numbers than other Americans. Southerners accounted for almost one-third of the soldiers who fought in Vietnam and about 28 percent of the American soldiers who died there. At the height of the Vietnam War, four out of five American army generals hailed from the South, including the commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam from 1964 to 1968, South Carolinian William C. Westmoreland. Bardstown, Kentucky, produced one of the war's most famous officers, Lieutenant General Harold G. "Hal" Moore, coauthor of We Were Soldiers Once ... and Young. Kentucky lost more than one thousand young people in the conflict and, along with five other southern states, voted in 1968 for Nixon, whose political strategy of stressing "law and order" and patriotism ended the longtime "Democratic stronghold" in Dixie. (my emphasis)

It can scarcely be stressed enough that when you see a phrase like "social turmoil the conflict caused at home" in that context, that the Republican Southern Strategy viewpoint, and its California version that Ronald Reagan had employed in winning his governor's race the year before Nunn, merged the image of "Vietnam" (i.e., the Vietnam War), dirty [Cheney]ing pot-smoking hippies, and uppity rioting black people into one image of horror for frightened white suburbanites.

We shouldn't let this history of the Vietnam War and of Southern military service lead us to make unfounded assumptions about today. The last poll I saw that broke down opinions on the Iraq War by region showed as much opposition to the war in the South as in the rest of the country.

Looking at antiwar activists in the city of Louisville, Ernst and Baldwin write:

Louisville was home not only to [Boxing champion Muhammad] Ali, the nation's best-known dissident, but also to social justice proponents, civil rights advocates, and a growing peace community. Anne and Carl Braden, Dr. George Edwards, and Suzy Post, in particular, addressed the issues of race and class that Ali represented, and, through coalitions and networks that linked young radicals and middle-aged activists, they fashioned an antiwar movement in Louisville that adds depth to historians' understanding of the southern response to the Vietnam War. Middle aged, middle class, well educated, and white, like other southern activist leaders such as Tennessee minister Will Campbell, the dissenters in Louisville joined other teachers, clerics, homemakers, and lawyers to become a vocal minority in cities all across the South. In Atlanta, Austin, Chapel Hill, Columbia, El Paso, Houston, Knoxville, Little Rock, Memphis, Nashville, New Orleans, and Tallahassee, they provided counsel and often afforded a degree of protection from the legal system that the younger generation of soldiers and protesters could have received nowhere else. More than sympathizers and boosters, the older men and women often set the agenda for reform as they mentored and sheltered soldiers, draft evaders, peaceniks, and other young people who opposed the American presence in Vietnam. (my emphasis)

Reminding us of the "culture war" link the Republicans made, they write, "Governor Nunn pledged to rid the state of the Bradens, who directed the Southern Conference Education Fund (SCEF), an interracial civil rights organization."

"Rid the state of the Bradens". Wow!

The George Edwards mentioned there was a Christian minister who had been a conscientious objector in the Second World War. He actively counseled draft evaders, knowing that he was breaking the law in doing so. They quote Anne Braden describing him as "the most militant pacifist you ever saw".

Their article also reminds us that when Bush and his followers accuse war critics of betraying American by aiding the enemy, they stand in an ugly tradition from the Vietnam War and desegregation days:

Southern hostility toward war resisters frequently provoked confrontations. In Tallahassee, for example, conservative Florida State University fraternity brothers and "jocks" pelted activists with rocks and tossed them in the student union fountain. In Texas the Ku Klux Klan harassed a woman after the local newspaper revealed that her son-in-law was an exile in Canada. Her complaints about a break-in, shattered windows, slashed tires, and crank calls failed to alarm local police, who advised her to move since the local "organization" did not "take kindly to draft dodgers."

Brave defenders of the white race often showed their version of "patriotism" in such courageous ways. I wonder how many of those brave souls had volunteered to fight in the Vietnam War themselves? Threatening wimmin while safe at home in Texas is much more their style. Fine Christian white men, those guys.

They don't give a lot of details about the antiwar movement at Florida State University. But it's worth noticing that Florida State was not an "elite", Ivy League school. It was one of those state colleges that attracted a disproportionate number of working-class kids. And they had an active antiwar movement, active enough to catch the attention of the frat boys and and some jocks who were there enjoying their draft deferments, most of them having (like Dick Cheney) "other priorities" than going to war. But these brave patriots were able to muster the courage to gang up on some nonviolent demonstrators - they probably had to git likkered up first - and toss them into the campus fountain. Shoot, they takes nearly as much courage as fightin' them Vietcong in the jungle. That shore makes yuh proud to be an Amurcan, don't it?

Actually, despite "culture war" dogma, working class voters were more opposed to the Vietnam War than wealthy ones. And the campus antiwar movement was more active on more heavily working-class compuses like Kent State University than at the "elite" institutions.

In 1967 Austin antiwar leader George Vizard died of gunshot wounds in what police termed a grocery holdup. Texas peace organizations disagreed and called his death a "political murder." Three years later a coalition of Houston activists, including the John Brown Revolutionary League, the Houston Committee to End the War, Communications for Peace, and the University of Houston Student Mobilization Committee, accused the city's police of "protecting" Klan members who perpetrated bombings, shootings, and arson.

In those days, there was military conscription (the draft) in the US. And, unlike today, Canada's laws offered a measure of asylum to draft resisters. Antiwar activists used the opportunity:

Edwards, Post, and the Bradens risked criminal prosecution for operating a kind of Underground Railroad that assisted young Kentuckians as they sought to avoid military service in the jungles of Vietnam. Throughout the South, like-minded "conductors" did the same. Kevin Vrieze, a draft evader from Texas, found help from "Houston to Austin to Tulsa to St. Louis to Detroit, and finally to Windsor in Canada." Clerics, teachers, homemakers, and pacifists formed the core of the network. As Newsweek columnist Stewart Alsop noted, "the more middle-class and middle-aged the better," because such individuals did not draw the attention of federal and local authorities with the same regularity as did their younger, more radical counterparts.

Individuals and organizations throughout the South assisted, to varying degrees, dissident soldiers. For example, the Quaker House in Fayetteville, North Carolina, hosted weekly meetings for a Fort Bragg organization named GIs United Against the War in Vietnam. The Bradens went a step further. They had a printing press in the basement that soldiers used for an underground GI newspaper called FTA and subtitled Fun, Travel, Adventure, drawing from a military recruitment slogan. One of the first newspapers edited exclusively by GIs, "It was called FTA," noted Anne, and "What it really stood for was 'Fuck the Army." Despite nearly constant federal surveillance, the Bradens' home in the city's West End served as SCEF headquarters and became a "second home" for some of the soldiers from Fort Knox.

Ernst and Baldwin also describe other aspects of the antiwar movement that were also prominent in the South, like antiwar coffeehouses (decades before Starbucks!)and soldier's "underground" newspapers (the 1960s and 1970s equivalent of blogs). They write:

[A]n estimated three hundred GI underground newspapers appeared during the Vietnam era, but most lasted a year or less. Dissidents at Fort Knox and Fort Campbell, Kentucky, published at least half a dozen, including Flag-In-Action, Napalm, EM 16, In Formation, Spread Eagle, and People's Press. Perhaps the two most famous GI newspapers, both FTA and Fort Jackson's Short Times ran fairly regularly from 1968 through 1972...

Active-service GIs and veterans, including Vietnam veterans, were very much a part of the antiwar movement and became even more so as time went on.

The following is also an important point for those who argue - to my mind, in an astonishingly misguided way - that the antiwar movement of those days strengthened support for the war:

Like many of the GI coffeehouses, the one in Muldraugh proved extremely controversial, enjoyed a relatively brief life span, and thus on the surface could be judged a failure. Coffeehouses, however, served a significant purpose. They became way stations for young draftees and deserters on the Underground Railroad to Canada and fueled the growing GI movement by bringing civilian and military activists together.

It shouldn't be so hard to understand that the purpose of a protest movement is to protest. Ultimately, the goal is to produce constructive results. But as long as the protesters represent a minority, which the Vietnam War opponents did for much longer than the Iraq War critics had to face, a key part of their job is be a pain in the rear. And on the other end of the metaphor, to get in people's faces and make them think about what they are supporting.

Although what we remember as the activist women's movement of those days was a more widespread phenomenon of the 1970s than the 1960s, the antiwar movement was an important contributor to changing consciousness on sex-role issues and offered an opportunity and challenge to those who were interested in raising those issues. In the following passage, they remind us of the heavy hand of "respectability" and how that tyranny-of-the-majority social conformity affected the activists in various ways:

Like [famous pediatrician and antiwar activist Benjamin] Spock, Post believed in solidarity among the various groups that opposed the war even as they took on other social justice causes, and she faced the same challenges that he did in getting the antiwar organizations to work side by side with civil rights activists already radicalized by the struggle. Ironically, black war protesters encountered the same dilemma as they weighed coming out against Vietnam and thus possibly alienating their grassroots supporters. Both sets of dissidents risked antagonizing the government and being tarred with the brush of communism. Respectability was important, especially to middle-aged activists who recalled the spectacle of McCarthyism. They too risked losing everything if they went too far. Suzy Post enjoyed a certain level of respectability because of her socioeconomic status. "I came out of the great white Jewish middle class," Post noted. "My husband was a very successful trial lawyer so I could operate within that community with a kind of authority and legitimacy." Post described her work and the antiwar stance of her colleagues, including the Bradens and Edwards, in ethical terms. "It was a moral issue and it grew in the churches. Most of the people with whom I worked really didn't have a political perspective," she recalled, "they had a moral perspective." This absence of political perspective divided "traditional" antiwar women like Post from the younger generation of "radicals" who criticized the older women for their "false consciousness" and urged them to abandon the roles of mother and wife and demand instead to be treated equally by the government as citizens. (my emphasis)

This is part of why the whole discussion today about how Democrats need to show they respect religion seems so bizarre to me. Respect religion? "Putting God back in the public square"? Religious convictions and the moral considerations growing from them were a major part in the civil rights movement and the antiwar movement that contributed so much to shaping the Democratic Party of today. 95% of that talk about Democrats needing to emphasize religion is just rightwing white fundamentalists trying to claim God's sanction for militarism, neosegregationism and hostility to science. It's really amazing that such a brainless theme ever caught on as part of our political dialogue.

But the South was still emerging from the era of de facto segregation. And the social repression of dissident ideas still was taking its toll in notable ways. As Ernst and Baldwin write, "Martial patriotism, fear, and racism thinned the antiwar ranks in Dixie and prevented some who privately opposed the war from demonstrating publicly."

But there were demonstrations in the South, including in the "border state" of Kentucky. They describe the events of 1969 commemorating the one-year anniversary of Martin Luther King's assassination:

The King anniversary also sparked a demonstration in Louisville. To honor him and support the so-called Black Six (six African Americans who at the time faced trial over their alleged involvement in riots in Louisville in May 1968), about two hundred civil rights advocates, most of them blacks, started marching from Louisville's West End toward the county courthouse, the site of a scheduled memorial service. Coming from the other direction, down Broadway, 130 LPC demonstrators, primarily whites, marched to acknowledge King's antiwar contributions. The streets were full of people. According to Anne Braden, neither group had secured a permit to march, and neither was aware of the other's plans. "It was pure coincidence," Braden recalled, and no one had "enough sense on either side to call up and make some contacts." By chance, both groups hit Fourth and Broadway at the same moment and "overflowed" into the street. The police, probably fearing a recurrence of the May 1968 disorders, "quickly blocked the street to vehicles while the marchers clapped, sang and chanted their way" to the courthouse. At first, the blacks shouted, "Freedom, Freedom!" and the whites shouted, "Peace, Peace!" as they walked. Soon, however, they shouted both slogans in unison and raised a black flag. In a 1999 interview, Braden mused over what the movements could accomplish when they came together. "You took over Fourth Street," she asserted, "nobody could have stopped them, and nobody tried." Before the demonstration ended, Braden ran into George Edwards on the street. The two had at times disagreed over the Black Power movement because its supporters' advocacy of racial separation disturbed him. As their paths converged, Braden asked, "What do you think about that Black Power now? He just laughed," she recalled.

My own undergraduate alma mater, Millsaps College in Mississippi, even comes into their account:

Anne Braden's brainchild, the SSOC, a predominantly white group meant to complement SNCC, enjoyed some early success fighting for civil rights and other social justice causes, but it derailed on the Vietnam War. Organized in 1964 by delegates from fifteen southern colleges, the SSOC spread throughout the region and even reached into the Deep South. For example, in a Jackson, Mississippi, apartment, five SSOC activists calling themselves "The Army" produced an underground newspaper titled KUDZU and, with the help of Millsaps College students, distributed the publication at local high schools and at Mississippi State University. Headquartered in Nashville, just several hours from Louisville, the SSOC collaborated with the SCEF to set the agenda for the southern antiwar movement. The SCEF occasionally met in Nashville and lent cars to SSOC members, who in turn promoted the Louisville-based organization. The two groups worked together to create a new organization, the Southern Committee Against Repression (SCAR), and they initiated the Southern Movement News Service, a clearinghouse for coordinating the region's underground papers and movement newsletters. (my emphasis)

Ah, I can feel the old school spirit!

Now, this is a really strange twist. As weird as it seems now - and as weird as it should have seemed then - antiwar activists actually tried to use neo-Confederate symbolism to make their point. What influence people like those around today's neo-Confederate and isolationist LewRockwell.com group and Web site may have had in that, I don't know. I do recall Molly Ivins saying that she recalled that white supporters of the civil rights movement that she was around in Texas also looked by to Confederate heroes as some kind of model of honor. But that is weird. The best thing you can say about it is that it shows the absurd degree to which phony Lost Cause versions of history permeated the South. Ernst and Baldwin write:

The SSOC, backed by the SCEF and other groups, reached its peak in early 1969. Although an internal crisis soon splintered the group, it organized a four-day southern protest of the Nixon inauguration in Washington, D.C. The protesters chose a site near the White House at the statue of Union general William Tecumseh Sherman, whose scorched-earth tactics during the Civil War sought to break the South's spirit. The site symbolized "Yankee Imperialism and the colonial status of the South," claimed the young activists, who co-opted historical memory to allege that northern capitalists victimized southerners and Vietnamese alike.

The group's antiwar philosophy centered on "southern distinctiveness," which inspired some members and offended others. Some SSOC leaders admired the work of historian C. Vann Woodward and invited him to address the group. They also lionized southern progressives like Braden and began to emphasize white Confederates' "positive" traits of "bravery, loyalty, and devotion." "Not for slavery," they claimed, but for dedication to their families and homes. As one activist observed, "no revolution is gonna happen" without whites, and to recruit them the SSOC must examine "those very things that make Southerners what they are and build on them--using the symbols and peculiarities by which they have been taught to identify themselves." The Confederate flag reemerged as an important symbol, and rebel yells broke out at antiwar demonstrations where the SSOC "call[ed] for southerners to 'secede' from the war."

In June 1969 the southern identity issue imploded at a meeting near Edwards, Mississippi. SCEF representative Carl Braden attended, along with a number of SDS activists. Weakened by internal power struggles and eager to garner support in the South, SDS targeted SSOC members who rejected the Confederate symbolism, a move that, to the dismay of the Bradens, hastened the SSOC's self-destruction. (my emphasis)

Good grief! "Bravery, loyalty and devotion"?!? Couldn't these presumably mostly well-intentioned white activists have figured out that those alleged qualities were being exercised in support of slavery, white supremacy and treason? Well-intentioned or not - during that period it became routine to blame stuff in the movement you didn't like on police provocateurs, and that wasn't entirely paranoid - that business of opposing the war to defend the tradition of Suthun honuh handed down from the good ole white boys of the Confederacy, well, that was just whacked.

That's the Ron Paul school of war criticism.

When prowar fantasists today or airhead journalists start wondering why there's no huge demonstrations against the war, I always want to ask them why aren't we seeing mass demonstrations by those who support the war? Today's situation isn't entirely comparable in that regard to the Vietnam War days, because the Iraq War became unpopular among the majority years ago. If they're serious about reviving support for the Iraq War, the shrinking prowar minority should be demonstrating and getting in people's faces in the streets. But that would be more sacrifice than most war fans are willing to make in support of the Front Line Struggle Against The Terrorists on which they tell us the future of American civilization hangs.

But the prowar zealots had a bit of a time rounding up activists in Louisville in those days, too:

Some pro-war demonstrations occurred in Louisville. A rally in October 1967 produced a seemingly improbable combination: the Concerned Citizens Committee, the Total Effort for America Committee, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Committee for the Continuation of War for the Sake of Love and the Preservation of Peace. A year later the school board denied Edwards's request to speak at a meeting on behalf of the Louisville Peace Council. Edwards wanted to propose that peace advocates receive "equal time with military recruiters" in the high schools. Following the meeting, a parents' group, numbering about thirty, heckled Edwards while the press interviewed him. Some yelled "traitor," and many wore campaign paraphernalia promoting the 1968 presidential bid of George Wallace. In December 1969 a handful of individuals picketed outside the Atherton High School auditorium as Dr. Spock spoke. Their signs read "Free speech or treason?" "Dr. Spock--leader of loud-mouthed minority," and "Enter Hanoi Annex." Many of the city's residents, intensely anticommunist, held traditional southern values and strong religious convictions that supported the notion of duty and service to one's country, and as late as 1970, even if they were not willing to take to the streets to support the war, approximately two hundred parishioners walked out on an antiwar sermon at Fifth Street's Cathedral of the Assumption. (my emphasis)

I wonder how many of those 200 walkouts were white. About 200, I would guess. One might also wonder if any of them were bothered at all in that situation by the fact that Jesus was, uh, a pacifist. I'm guessing around zero on that one.

Perhaps the most incredible thing from today's perspective is that back then, there were Republicans - yes, actual members and officeholders of the Republican Party! - who were seriously critical of the Vietnam War. And not in the John Warner - oh, I'm going to wring my hands and mutter about my deep concern and always vote for the Cheney-Bush positions on any and all matters relating to the war - kind of way. No, I mean actual war critics:

The divergence of opinion over the war extended to politics and created some heated discussion among the state's leading Republicans. U.S. senator Thruston B. Morton, a native of the city, joined his influential counterpart, Senator John Sherman Cooper, early on in advocating American withdrawal from Vietnam, a position the former mayor of Louisville, U.S. representative William O. Cowger, severely criticized. Cowger accused Morton, a moderate Republican, of flip-flopping due to a growing "shift of public sentiment against the war." Analysts agreed, and Morton's 1967 turnaround became national news. Congressional colleagues considered the old national Republican Party chair (1959-1961) a "weathervane," a political professional, and a potential vice presidential candidate for the 1968 election. Gene Snyder, Louisville's other member of the House of Representatives, also became dovish, asserting in 1969 that America "ought to pack up and come home." (my emphasis)

Can you imagine, even imagine any Republican member of Congress other than the nativist, ultra-right, John Birch Society whacko-type Ron Paul saying something like that today? "We ought to just pack up and come home from Iraq?" Man, the times they have a-changed.

Now, I'm not making this up. Republican Senator John Sherman Cooper really was a leading critic of the Vietnam War. Even more exotic from today's viewpoint, he was part of a long-extinct species called "liberal Republicans". Yes, I know it sounds as mythical as a gryphon or a cyclops or something. But there is substantial evidence that sober-minded scholars credit than such creatures really did once exist. And, no, I'm not drunk or indulging in recreational drugs. Although I may have just had one too many cups of coffee.

At the end of their article, Ernst and Baldwin revisit the Lost Cause theme. I've been convinced for a while that this "never retreat, never surrender" notion about the Iraq War is related in some way to the Lost Cause dogma. I'm not sure if such a thing could ever be conclusively demonstrated. But here's their take on it:

With Vietnam, however, "history," in C. Vann Woodward's words, had "begun to catch up with Americans," and the war would not go away. As Woodward noted, the South's defeat in the Civil War created a unique southern experience, making the region emblematic of the entire nation as Vietnam stripped away the country's sense of innocence and "invincibility." Perhaps the entire nation came to grips with the idea of the Lost Cause and, as the U.S. sought national meaning and redemption, came to better understand why southerners, in an effort to exorcise their old demons, proudly sent more than their share to Southeast Asia. While Vietnam may have helped the nation understand the South's commitment to militarism, the conflict also stimulated the work of modern social justice activists like the Bradens, George Edwards, and Suzy Post. Though advocates of peace and progressive causes had always been a small minority in the South, this generation of activists was a vocal one, and a modern giant, Muhammad Ali, served as a symbol of its significance. (my emphasis)

I have to ask, though, how many times do Americans have to collectively lose our viriginity? Or, "lose our innocence", as the pundits like to put it. Weren't the Mexican War and the Civil War and Indian Wars enough times to lose our innocence? If not, there was the Spanish-American War which gave way to the godawful "small war" in the Phillipines. Then "we" lost our innocence again in the massive, mostly completely senseless slaughter that we know as the First World War. Then we lost our innocence again with the Vietnam War. Or was the Korean War the next loss of innocence? I lose track. Then there were the John and Bobby Kennedy assassinations and the King assassination that took away our national innocence yet again. By the time 9/11 came along, our innocence was ready to be lost again. Soon I'm sure we'll found out that our remarkably resilent innocence was sacrificed again in Iraq and then in Afghanistan.

I hate all these "national character" metaphors anyway. Individuals have characters. Nations make collective decision and do things.

Maybe "we" could collectively make a deal with the cosmos, or the karmic force, or whatever entity will deal with us over it. "We" agree to give up "our" innocence forever, never ever to have it back again. And in return, The Force will allow us to not ever have to spread our innocence to other lucky nations in the world by invading their countries and bombing, shooting and torturing them into being innocent like us.

Deal?

Tags: antiwar movement, antiwar protest, john ernst, lost cause, millsaps college, vietnam war, yvonne baldwin war, yvonne baldwin