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Subject: 	[Marxism] Pro-Obama wing of antiwar movement vows action
Date: 	Sun, 30 Aug 2009 09:52:22 -0400
From: 	Louis Proyect <lnp3 at panix.com>
Reply-To: 	Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition
<marxism at lists.econ.utah.edu>
To: 	aorta <aorta at home.nl>



NY Times, August 30, 2009
American Antiwar Movement Plans an Autumn Campaign Against Policies on
Afghanistan
By JAMES DAO

A restive antiwar movement, largely dormant since the election of Barack
Obama, is preparing a nationwide campaign this fall to challenge the
administration’s policies on Afghanistan.

Anticipating a Pentagon request for more troops there, antiwar leaders
have engaged in a flurry of meetings to discuss a month of
demonstrations, lobbying, teach-ins and memorials in October to
publicize the casualty count, raise concerns about the cost of the war
and pressure Congress to demand an exit strategy.

But they face a starkly changed political climate from just a year ago,
when President George W. Bush provided a lightning rod for protests. The
health care battle is consuming the resources of labor unions and other
core Democratic groups. American troops are leaving Iraq, defusing
antiwar sentiments in some quarters. The recession has hurt fund-raising
for peace groups and forced them to slash budgets. And, perhaps most
significant, many liberals continue to support Mr. Obama, or at least
are hesitant about openly criticizing him.

“People do not want to take on the administration,” said Jon Soltz,
chairman of VoteVets.org. “Generating the kind of money that would be
required to challenge the president’s policies just isn’t going to happen.”

Tom Andrews, national director for an antiwar coalition, Win Without
War, said most liberals “want this guy to succeed.” But he said the
antiwar movement would try to convince liberals that a prolonged war
would undermine Mr. Obama’s domestic agenda. Afghanistan, he said,
“could be a devastating albatross around the president’s neck.”

But there is also a sense among some antiwar advocates that Mr. Obama’s
honeymoon with Democrats in general and liberals in particular is
ending. As evidence, they point to a recent Washington Post/ABC News
poll showing that 51 percent of Americans now feel the war in
Afghanistan is not worth fighting, a 10-point increase since March. The
poll had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage
points.

“We’re coming out of a low period,” said Medea Benjamin, co-founder of
the antiwar group Code Pink. “But as progressives feel more comfortable
protesting against the Obama administration and challenging Democrats as
well as Republicans in Congress, then we’ll be back on track.”

The Obama administration has opposed legislation requiring an exit
strategy, saying it needs time to develop new approaches to the war.
“Given his own impatience for progress, the president has demanded
benchmarks to track our progress and ensure that we are moving in the
right direction,” a White House official said, speaking on condition of
anonymity.

The October protest schedule is expected to include marches in
Washington and elsewhere. But organizers acknowledge that it may be
difficult to recruit large numbers of demonstrators. So groups like
United for Peace and Justice are also planning smaller events in
communities around the country, including teach-ins with veterans and
families of deployed troops, lobbying sessions with members of Congress,
film screenings and ad hoc memorials featuring the boots of deceased
soldiers and Marines.

“There are some that feel betrayed” by Mr. Obama, said Nancy Lessin, a
founder of the group Military Families Speak Out. “There are some who
feel that powerful forces are pushing the president to stay on this
course and that we have to build a more powerful movement to change that
course.”

The October actions will be timed not only to the eighth anniversary of
the first American airstrikes on Taliban forces and the seventh
anniversary of Congressional authorization for invading Iraq, but also
an anticipated debate in Congress over sending more troops to
Afghanistan. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the commander of American
forces in Afghanistan, is widely expected to request additional troops,
beyond the 68,000 projected for the end of the year, after finalizing a
policy review in the next few weeks.

The antiwar movement consists of dozens of organizations representing
pacifists, veterans, military families, labor unions and religious
groups, and they hardly speak with one voice. Some groups like Iraq
Veterans Against the War have started shifting their focus toward
Afghanistan, passing resolutions demanding an immediate withdrawal of
troops from there. Others, like VoteVets.org, support the American
military presence in Afghanistan, calling it crucial to fighting terrorism.

And some groups, including Moveon.org, have yet to take a clear position
on Afghanistan beyond warning that war drains resources from domestic
programs.

“There is not the passion around Afghanistan that we saw around Iraq,”
said Ilyse Hogue, Moveon.org’s spokeswoman. “But there are questions.”

There are also signs that some groups that have been relatively quiet on
Afghanistan are preparing to become louder. U.S. Labor Against the War,
a network of nearly 190 union affiliates that has been focused on Iraq,
is “moving more into full opposition to the continuing occupation” of
Afghanistan, said Michael Eisenscher, the group’s national coordinator.

“President Obama risks his entire domestic agenda, just as Johnson did
in Vietnam, in pursuing this course of action in Afghanistan,” Mr.
Eisenscher said.

Handfuls of antiwar protestors can still be seen on Capitol Hill,
outside state office buildings and around college campuses. Cindy
Sheehan, for instance, has set up her vigil on Martha’s Vineyard while
Mr. Obama vacations there. But many advocates say a lower-key approach
may be more effective in winning support right now.

An example of that strategy is an Internet film titled “Rethink
Afghanistan,” which is being produced and released in segments by the
political documentary filmmaker Robert Greenwald. In six episodes so
far, Mr. Greenwald has used interviews with academics, Afghans and
former C.I.A. operatives to raise questions about civilian casualties,
women’s rights, the cost of war and whether it has made the United
States safer.

The episodes, some as short as two minutes, are circulated via Twitter,
YouTube, Facebook and blogs. Antiwar groups are also screening them with
members of Congress. Mr. Greenwald, who has produced documentaries about
Wal-Mart and war profiteers, said the film represented a “less
incendiary” approach influenced by liberal concerns that he not attack
Mr. Obama directly.

“We lost funding from liberals who didn’t want to criticize Obama,” he
said. “It’s been lonely out there.”

Code Pink is trying to build opposition to the war among women’s groups,
some of which argue that women will suffer if the Taliban returns. In
September, a group of Code Pink organizers will visit Kabul to encourage
Afghan women to speak out against the American military presence there.

And Iraq Veterans Against the War is using the Web to circulate episodes
of a documentary, “This Is Where We Take Our Stand,” filmed in 2008 at
its Winter Soldier conference, at which veterans from Iraq and
Afghanistan testified about civilian casualties, combat stress and other
tolls of the wars.

The group’s leaders say they do not expect many people to take to the
barricades against the administration any time soon. But that will
change, they argue, as the death toll continues to rise.

“In the next year, it will more and more become Obama’s war,” said Perry
O’Brien, president of the New York chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the
War. “He’ll be held responsible for the bloodshed.”

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