Rahul Mahajan: Collapse of the Antiwar Movement

[Zhade]

http://www.empirenotes.org/10042004commentary.html

The occupation is a disaster and nobody outside of the extreme right wing is able to support it. The United States has repeatedly attacked entire towns because of the supposed presence of a handful of wanted people (taking Israeli methods of collective punishment and expanding them dramatically) and committed a serious of shockingly sadistic abuses on innocent Iraqis in their custody. When, in late April, Bush was forced to defend his “Mission Accomplished” stunt of the year before, he said, “Well, at least there’s no torture chambers, rape rooms, and mass graves in Iraq.”

Except, of course, for the torture chambers, rape rooms, and mass graves.

Across the political spectrum, people know that we were right and they were wrong. Yet there has hardly been a peep out of the antiwar movement. There RNC protest was great, but it was basically an anti-Bush protest – there wasn’t even any messaging about the just-concluded offensive against Najaf in which probably 2000 or more people were killed.

There are many reasons for this collapse of the antiwar movement, but I’ll focus on two.

{More...}

He's got a point.

[alphafemale]

1. Because saying "We told ya' So" Isn't necessary

It's Obvious.

Continually pointing it out would be bad form.

[lostnfound]

5. "Continually pointing it out" is exactly what's required

Elaborating on and interpreting CURRENT events in the framework of "we told you so" is probably exactly what captures the attention of the sleeping masses.
Give people a consistent framework for understanding current events. That's why RW people watch FOX news -- it tells them what to think, constantly couched within a consistent framework of a few (very few) RW principles. In a bizarre way, they feel empowered to have an opinion simply because they can remember what to say.

I think Rahul has a point here.

[bluestateguy]

2. Well I hope Mr. Mahajan is proud of himself

Had he and his teacher, Robert Jensen, supported Al Gore in 2000, and not Ralph Nader, there would be no need for an anti-war movement today.

I mean what did he expect when he voted the way he did in 2000?

[lostnfound]

6. I think Mahajan lives in Texas so how he voted was irrelevant

Taking swipes at him over 2000 is a bit unfair and counterproductive.

[Catch22Dem]

10. I think the larger point of the above post

Is a great deal of the anti-war movement is comprised of former Nader supporters. Had they not thrown their vote away in 2000 in protest of the two party system, we might not be in this mess. Had a prominent Texan gotten behind Gore, it might have influenced a Nader voter in a swing state to do the same. However, this is neither here nor there.

You're right, the author has an excellent point.

[lostnfound]

13. Nice response. nt

[anarchy1999]

9. Dear bluestateguy, you are misinformed. Jensen was not Rahul's

teacher, they were colleagues of like mind on the campus of UT. Rahul ran for Governor in Texas in 2002 and I don't believe Texas mattered at all in 2000. Rahul has never expected anything but what this country has been delivering for years. Read any essay either one of them have ever written, go a step further and purchase one of their books. Rahul was in Fallujah of April of this year during the US's major campaign to wipe out the insurgents.

How dare you slam him in the manner in which you have just done when you obviously know just about nothing of what he speaks?

Sorry for the tirade, but when it comes to Rahul and Jensen be careful where you tread, unless you can show me you know them well.

on edit:

Having not read his essay before I stood up for him, now that I have, I stand more firmly than ever behind him and Jensen. He speaks the truth always, usually harshly, but always the truth, as does Jensen.

Check yourself before you wreck yourself.

[Zhade]

14. Had the Republicans not STOLEN THE WHITE HOUSE...

Nader this, Nader that.

Why not try blaming the criminals who actively stole the highest office of the land? Maybe it's easier to scapegoat Nader than deal with the fact that the White House was seized in a bloodless coup, but it sure as hell doesn't deal with the actual problem: that the White House was seized in a bloodless coup.

Keep banging that "Nader cost us" drum, and you ignore the very real fact that the guy who lost (even with Nader's small influence) took power illegally.

When you blame Nader, you make the BFEE smile at the fact that its plan worked perfectly.

[Demit]

3. his first reason the movement collapsed is b/c of the drive to elect

Kerry; the second is that it "dumbed down" its antiwar message, in protest actions, to "bring the troops home now".

I've never been reflexively antiwar. I certainly was against the war in Iraq, from the beginning. But we are there. That's the reality. It seems that bringing the troops home is part of being antiwar, so I don't understand the author's point that that is somehow off message.

And if he doesn't see that electing Kerry is better than electing Bush, for people who are antiwar--well, I for one don't see what his point even is...

[mahina]

4. What he doesn't seem to understand is that the structure is not composed

of weekly meetings. Now it is webbased, and it is not going away.
All those folks protesting in the streets and getting arrested in NYC were saying to * WE WILL NOT BE SILENCED.
Thanks God for them.

[Hekate]

7. You're both so right

TY Wendy and Mahina for expanding on the article; for some reason the link won't work for me.

The author kind of reminds me of one of the participants in my local peace listserve: intelligent, but too young and caught up in ideology to have the long view and seemingly unable to keep the overarching goal in mind -- which is to depose the Naked Emperor, because unless and until we accomplish that we are stuck with everyone else in the junta plus all the people they appointed to muck things up in DC.

My impression is that those of us who oppose Bush and who oppose the war in Iraq have fanned out to pursue our aims in other ways than protesting in the streets. There's only so much street theater you can do before it starts losing all its impact and the next step is violence, which I refuse to participate in. Since the invasion of Iraq I've saved my marching for special occasions, like the March for Women's lives in Washington DC, and a few anniversary marches locally that are coordinated with national/international efforts.

There's a huge amount of work to be done, and we are doing it every day. There are people doing counter-recruitment activities around high schools and colleges; people who began working for Dean or Kucinich are now working for Kerry; every progressive interest group in the nation by now has its own action list online, and they can generate enormous numbers of emails and phone calls regarding everything from legislation to proposed federal judges, to attacks on the environment to threats on civil liberties by the USA PATRIOT Act.

Military families and veterans across the country are drawing attention to the ways in which the Bush admin does NOT support the troops -- by cutting funding for veterans' programs, closing veterans' hospitals, ignoring the plight of the wounded from the National Guard, failing to provide appropriate equipment to soldiers in the field; and finally, by simply bearing witness to "the true cost of war" by erecting visual displays such as 1,000+ crosses planted in the sand at a popular beach, or an equal number of boots placed neatly in a major plaza, or -- as happened just this past weekend -- marching from Arlington National Cemetery to the White House bearing a thousand "coffins."

We've been quite active I think, and if Bush makes it to a second term it won't be for lack of our trying.

Hekate

[Zhade]

17. Couple of things...

One, here's the link for you, since it gave you trouble upthread (DU does that at times).

Second: if you know anything about Rahul Mahajan, you'll realize he's way more involved than most of us in this issue. He's reported from inside Iraq - indeed, from inside places like Fallujah - and knows firsthand the reality of the continuing occupation.

He's operating less from an ideologically-driven stance, and more from a practical "the war and occupation was and is wrong, and has to end, because it's getting thousands and thousands of innocent people killed, tortured, and maimed" stance.

[Zhade]

15. Well, Kerry's slightly better, but...

...then there's the "we shouldn't have backed down in Fallajuh" nonsense. No, John, we never should have bombed Fallujah in the first place.

At this point, we simply can't tell how Kerry will handle the (reminder: illegal) occupation until he's in office. So I'm holding my tongue in the hope that Kerry will get us out quickly.

However, as many very hardcore Kerry supporters have maintained since the primaries, Kerry is NOT an anti-war candidate. He's also not an anti-occupation candidate.

We can all hope, however, that he is an anti-torture, anti-carpet bombing, anti-privatization-of-Iraqi-assets candidate - which I think is Mahajan's overall point: just saying "bring the troops home now!" does not account for all the reasons why we must do so (torture, carpet bombings, cover for mass privatization aka theft) and does not address how to stop those things from happening while the troops remain in-country.

I'd like to hear Kerry's plans to stop the mass privatization. I'd like to hear his plans to prosecute those who derided and overrode the Geneva Conventions against torture (Rumsfeld, I'm looking in your direction). I'd like to see him say that the 14 military bases he clearly knows about and seems to disagree with will be shuttered.

And, of course, I realize he won't say any of this, at least until he's in office. But he needs to take action on these things once he does get into office, or he WILL hear about it.

[teryang]

8. Bring the troops home now

We can lose ten years from now after slaughtering additional tens of thousands of lives and wasting additional hundreds of billions in treasure or we can leave now.

[Aidoneus]

11. having placed their trust in the hands of hypocrites and liars,

the so-called "mainstream" of the movement was of course bound to collapse. The Democratic Party will not save the day (well actually, they will, for the very people that should be fought and resisted, and that's the problem), the UN is bought off and docile as usual, France and Russia are not preparing their white horses, etc etc.. turns out those "kooks" and "fringe radicals" were in the right after all ('right' as proper, not 'right' as..you get it), who'da thunk'a that?

[Demit]

12. this is interesting. I guess you're saying all the powers-that-be are bad

and at fault in their various ways and that's probably true. But how realistic is it call for throwing them all out en masse? And replace them with what?

Am I understanding your position correctly? It just seems to me that the work to be done is fixing the institutions, holding them to account, reminding them of their original core missions (like the UN). No?

[FlemingsGhost]

16. We are too busy working to remove Bush from office.

At every turn, we have bucked the trend:

Protested BEFORE the start of the war. Remained completely PEACEFUL throughout. For every pair of feet in the street, there are thirty fingers on keyboards. We refuse to give them an excuse to make us out to be as "all that is wrong with this country and the Democratic Party."

Besides, we were right. Yet, we are mature enough to know that saying, "I told you so," isn't going to comfort widows and grieving families.

We are more focused and disciplined than in past movements, and it is killing them. Choke on it, fascists ...

(on edit: typo)

[Zhade]

18. Unfortunately, our silence is also killing Iraqis and Afghanis.

Not to mention Haitians, and Venezuelans, and...

My fervent hope is that we one-up the anti-war protests held during Viet Nam, and not fall asleep thinking all is right with the world once Kerry comes into power.

After all, the occupation we (correctly) deride as brutally illegal under b*sh will remain just as brutally illegal under Kerry, perhaps with a bit less death. The fact that Kerry buys into the "War on Terror" bullshit meme (we laugh when b*sh pushes the WoT, because we correctly underline that you can't wage war against a tactic) doesn't fill me with a lot of hope, but I'm more than willing to give Kerry the chance to chow me otherwise, since I KNOW b*sh won't.

[FlemingsGhost]

19. These are the actions of my government. Not me.

We are focused on addressing the root of the problem, not the symptoms. And just as the rise of fascism continually reinvents itself, so must the manner in which we combat it. And we are doing just that, my friend.

I have yet to be "silent" regarding the war. That will not change with John Kerry in office.