"Ending the War in 2009" by Tom Hayden

[David Zephyr]

Ending the War in 2009
By Tom Hayden

Let me tell you what the supporters of endless occupation are worried about. A Washington think tank, the Center for a New American Security, whose board includes Madeline Albright, Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon recently warned that:

"The transition from President Bush is getting more and more problematic as the American people continue to lose confidence in the Iraq War and step up their pressure on candidates from both parties. If no bipartisan consensus is reached before the Democratic and Republican primaries, the next president will likely be elected principally on a 'get out of Iraq' platform. The political space to do otherwise is shrinking by the day."

Contrary to their worries, I thought: What a great prospect, that the American people through the democratic process can force the end of this war, can discredit the neo-conservatives agenda, can defeat the Bush-Cheney legacy, can rebuke hawkish mentality in both parties, and can drive the discussion of our future. I have written Ending the War in Iraq to hasten this possibility.

The conventional thinking that led us into quagmire is the same conventional thinking that says today that while it was a mistake to invade in 2003 it would be a bigger mistake to ever leave. These are not just White House flacks or Bush administration dead-enders, but friends we respect such as James Fallows has written –

"I have come to this sobering conclusion. The United States can best train Iraqis, and therefore best help itself leave Iraq, only by making a long-term commitment to stay."

Too many are governed by the paradigm that we can never “stand down” until the Iraqis themselves "stand up", that we have to fight the insurgency to create space for the Iraqi government to become stable enough to secure itself, and only then can we leave.

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.

The illusion is that we are preventing a sectarian civil war when the reality is that, in the best British tradition, we have been fomenting and feeding a civil war which will fragment, subdivide and eliminate the basis of Arab nationalism in Iraq.

The intellectual proponent of this division is Stephen Biddle of the Council on Foreign Relations, an on-the-ground adviser to Gen. Petraeus. Biddle writes that the US should support both sides in the civil war. We should arm the Sunnis to gain leverage against the very Shi’a we put in power, and we should increase the Shi’a ability to create mass violence as an incentive for the Sunnis to compromise on their demand to end the occupation. This was written in Foreign Affairs magazine in 2006.

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.”

All this is against current law, the Leahy Amendment of 1997 which expressly forbids US military assistance to governments or security forces that are known to be human rights violators. Why is this provision being ignored? Is it like the claim that violence is going down in parts of Baghdad, because there are fewer people for the death squads to kill. Will a day come when there will be no more human rights violations because there will be no more Iraqis with human rights to violate?

Fortunately, a few members of Congress – Maxine Waters, Barbara Lee, Lynn Woolsey – and one liberal think tank, the Center for American Progress, want to stop our taxes going for torture. Their HR 3134, just introduced, would require the end of all funding of the Iraqi army and police forces unless expressly approved by a vote of Congress. We need the media and groups like the clergy and the ACLU to pay attention to this developing issue. Americans may be uneasy about immediately cutting off funding for American troops in the field, but would be opposed to taxes going for secret torture chambers and ethnic cleansing.

There is a gaping hole in the major peace proposals from Baker-Hamilton to Feingold-Reid to Clinton and Obama. All the discussion is about withdrawing combat troops while leaving thousands of American troops as trainers and advisers to these feuding sectarian and dysfunctional Iraqi security forces. This is not a recipe for ending the war, but for turning it into a low-visibility, lower-casualty conflict like Afghanistan.

Partial troop reducaions may diminish public attention during the election year – that will be partly up to us – but are unlikely to alter the course of the war. It is hard to imagine fewer American troops, embedded as trainers and secret commandos, succeeding militarily where 162,000 could not.

So what’s the answer? In the debate on Capitol Hill, I favor setting a withdrawal deadline, which is the only way to begin the shift away from a military model to a conflict resolution model. But a deadline is not enough. I interviewed former CIA director John Deutch about a rational exit plan, and he stressed two essentials: <1> that the US has to decide to withdraw, which it has not, and <2> he stressed diplomacy with Iran, which he called the only country that could cause trouble during our withdrawal. He was implying negotiations with Iran to obtain what Richard Nixon once called a "decent interval" for the US to leave Vietnam.

We should call for a shift from warmaking to peacemaking through a diplomatic offensive, declaring a firm intention to withdraw all American troops and bases on a one-year timetable, which would create an immediate incentive for engagement on the part of Iran, Syria, the Arab League, the Europeans, Russians and Chinese, the UN. No one has an interest in joining the US in the occupation; everyone has a interest in minimizing a power vacuum as we leave. The issues to be resolved will be humanitarian assistance to 3-4 million refugees, economic reconstruction, and protection of all Iraqis from unrestrained vendettas. America should offer to assist by appointing a peace envoy and offering billions in reconstruction. The horrific damage cannot be undone but can be contained and mitigated.

Of course our government is following the absolute opposite course from that proposed by Deutch, and even has drawn up contingency plans for a possible escalation to Iran. Many of the neo-conservatives continue to push, as in Vietnam, for escalation as the solution to quagmire.

It is here that the force of public opinion really matters in the coming year, and election year when public opinion becomes most important to decision-makers.

I find that the peace movement has been misunderstood and underestimated these past five years.

This is partly because we are governed by past image of peace movements as strictly outside protests in the streets as during Vietnam. But those were times of deep exclusion, when many could not vote and were structurally outside the institutions. The image of a defiant draft-card burner or bleeding demonstrator remains in our heads when in reality the typical resister today is an outraged blogger.

Not that we haven’t been in the streets. On nine occasions, more than 100,000 people have assembled, several times in numbers closer to 500,000.

Nearly 200 city councils and legislatures have voted to oppose the war.

Public opinion came to view Iraq as a mistake more rapidly that the public did during Vietnam, according to Gallup surveys.

Cindy Sheehan and other military families have neutralized the old claims that the peace movement is against the troops.

Howard Dean shocked the Democratic Party when he became the Eugene McCarthy of 2003.

Michael Moore shocked everyone when his Farenheit set unprecedented box office records in 2004.

Robert Greeenwald’s videos and YouTube spots reach hundreds of thousands of people.

Fifty thousand people listen to Amy Goodman’s and Juan Gonzales "War and Peace Report" every morning in LA.

The Dixie Chicks stood their ground in Texas, defeated blacklisting, and still aren’t ready to make nice.

Members of MoveOn.org contributed $180 million to candidates in 2003-2004.

The 2004 election was the first in our history when the American voters turned out a Congressional majority over a war in progress.

Whether impeachment happens or not, the Bush Administration is being impeached in installments – Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Libby, Gonzales – they have failed to make Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame the Daniel Ellsbergs of this war.

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.

I can hear some of you asking, How can we consider ourselves successful when Iraqis and Americans are dying every minute, when the juggernaut continues, when, when the system that produced Iraq is gearing up for Iran? All I can ask is that you not let the suffering break you, not let the suffering push you down ineffective roads, but turn the pain into a controlled and strategic rage that creates ripple effects towards justice.

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.

Activists need to apply people pressure to the pillars of the policy: the pillars of public opinion, the pillar of budget funding, the pillar of military recruitment, the pillar of international support. The keys are simple.. Build the memberships of our local campaigns. Persuade more voters to demand rapid withdrawal as a condition of their support. Meet and confront military recruiters before they take more of our children. Reach our and form coalitions for a progressive budget. Whatever the candidates say, the war in Iraq cannot be sustained as these pillars – voter support, infinite funding, ample troops and reserves - continue to crumble and fall. As the costs, including the costs of protest and a persistent public opinion, finally outweigh the perceived benefits, I believe the cold and rational elements of the establishment will decide to cut their losses.

Big donors – those who contribute many millions to the so-called 527 independent issue committees – can make a huge difference in ending the war this time instead of avoiding the issue as they did in 2004. This year the independent committees can fund television, radio, and grass-roots campaigns to force the issue in targeted precincts all across the country. There is the potential of having the best-funded peace movement in our history.

A peace movement that can make a real difference by door-knocking and phone calls to impact close elections, protests against recruiters trying to take our children, and building coalitions with all the groups like teachers and health care workers whose needs are ignored by the $200 million per day that goes to war.

A peace movement that not only demands but deserves an alliance with environmentalists because the center of the fight against global warming is the war over the oil fields of the Middle East.

A peace movement that demands and deserves an alliance with labor and consumers because the center of the fight for fair trade and against corporate privatization is Iraq where all government protections are being stripped away before the coming of the US and British oil companies.

A peace movement that demands and deserves the support of all believers in democracy because the makers of war and the National Security State are the greatest threat to our civil liberties today.

And finally, a peace movement that encourages the lessons of this war in order to prevent future undemocratic aggressions whether in the Middle East or Venezuela.

Iraq is the focal point for confronting the great issues of our future. The fight is on. As Bobby Sands, the Irish hunger striker used to say, everyone has a part to play, and our reward will be seen in the smiles of the children.

[H2O Man]

1. Great article!

I'm only half-way through, but wanted to nominate this. It is an important article. Thank you for posting it!

(Now, back to reading ....)

[H2O Man]

2. part 2 ....

This is the most important thing I've read on DU in a long time. I hope others recommend it, and share it with other people.

Again, thank you for posting it.

[David Zephyr]

3. Thanks, Tom just sent it to me and I thought it should be posted at the DU.

I think it's an optimistic message of what we can all do to end the war...and if anyone can speak with authority about ending a war, it's Tom. Thanks for your kind words, H20 Man.

[H2O Man]

4. Port Huron Statement .....

"We are people of this generation, bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably to the world we inherit..."
-- Tom Hayden; June 15, 1962

This man has been a voice of reason for many years. DUers would do well to read this essay closely, and keep a copy of it -- it should serve as our blueprint for the next 14 months. And college students should take the time to read his Port Huron Statement. It still holds up.

[seemslikeadream]

5. Reading it now

Thanks :hi:

[seemslikeadream]

6. REMEMBER BOBBY SANDS

WHEN IRELAND LIVES I DO NOT DIE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGKppV9S_2k

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxLQfcde18U

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUQ1YjU-FLA



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8D_uN-73S0

Bobby Sands MP
Larry Kirwan

My name is Bobby Sands, MP
Born in the city of Belfast
Divided by religion
I grew up fast

I was stabbed and I was spat upon
My family run out of its home
There was only one solution
Turn the whole system upside down

But the system had other ideas
I got lifted for carryin' a gun
In a trial without a jury
I got fourteen years from the judge

Screws beat me regularly
But they couldn't break me because
I had the love of my comrades
And a burnin' faith in my Cause

Still I left a girl outside pregnant
Married her while on remand
Now I got a son and a pain in my heart
When he doesn't recognize his old man

Your soul's on ice oh oh oh oh
But they can't stop the desire
To break on out oh oh oh oh
When your heart is on fire

We wouldn't wear their convict clothes
So they stripped us to the bone
Threw in some threadbare blankets.....

And when they jeered us about our nakedness
As we slopped out down the halls
We wouldn't come out of their prison cells
We smeared shit on their prison walls

Stuck in an eight foot concrete box
With a bible, a mattress
And the threat of violence every day....

Can I make it through these fourteen years
Will my son remember my face
I don't blame her for the separation
But for Christ's sake let him keep his name

Your soul's on ice oh oh oh oh
But they can't stop the desire
To break on out oh oh oh oh
When your heart is on fire

Five simple things we ask of them
Five simple things denied
But Thatcher will not compromise....

I ask my Mother's permission
To finally break her heart
We have come to a decision
......Hunger Strike

Three comrades starve behind me
I pray to God that my
Death will lead to compromise....

I can no longer see your face
My bones break through my skin
I'm goin' back to Belfast City
You can't cage my spirit in

Your soul's on ice
But they can't stop the desire
To break on out
When your heart is on fire



Ballad of Bobby Sands

Come gather round me one and all
My song to you I'll sing,
In memory of a brave young Irishman,
Who would not concede defeat,
From his stand would not retreat.
I sing of the gallant Bobby Sands,
Bobby Sands.
Yes I sing of the late great Bobby Sands.

He organised the hunger strike
To win and change, reform,
To stop the evil tyrants in their craze,
To regain the five demands
He took his young life in his hands
For the betterment of comrades in Armagh
And in the Maze
Armagh and the H-Blocks of the Maze.

They tried to break your spirit
But no way could they succeed,
The phoenix in your heart they tried to quell
With their beatings, degradation,
All in vain totheirfrustration,
For the more they tried, the more you would rebel
You would rebel,
With dignity your principle did swell.

But freedom was to come to you
On a rain soaked Tuesday morn
From the heavens tears of patriots were shed
With the joy that you are free
To walk with Tone and Connolly,
Forever live the name of Bobby Sands
We shall endear
Your name, to foe shall always threaten tear.

So to all you people
My song to you I've sung
In memory of a brave young Belfast man
Who would not concede defeat,
From his stand would not retreat.
I sing of the gallant Bobby Sands,
Bobby Sands.
Yes I sing of the late great Bobby Sands.

[seemslikeadream]

7. everyone has a part to play, and our reward will be seen in the smiles of the children.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ut9PHoleBH8

[Peace Patriot]

8. I continue to be mind-boggled by the Left's blindness to the e-voting coup.

The most revolutionary thing you can be doing is right down the street at your local county registrar's office, demanding vote counting that everyone can see and understand.

I love this piece by Tom Hayden! He has always brought the most extraordinary intelligence to the most desperately important issues of the day--in the '60s, and now. This article is brilliant. And he is SO RIGHT. The peace movement is suffering from--or perhaps confused by, or baffled by--its success! SEVENTY PERCENT of the American people oppose this war, and a significant majority--56%--have opposed it from the beginning (Feb. 03). 70% is a staggering, and, indeed, an epochal majority. That not only speaks to the amazing grass roots, word of mouth spread of information (and the internet, our new "Committees of Correspondence"), but it also speaks to the amazing resistance of the American people to relentless, 24/7 warmongering and fascist propaganda. We have much to be proud of, in our activism, and much to praise in the American people--a people that has been subjected to the most sophisticated and devious brainwashing campaign in the history of the world.

They have resisted! They are not "sheeple" (as some leftists are fond of sneering). They are good, peace-minded, justice-minded people, most Americans. But we have got to realize what the real problem is, and how, strategically, to address it. The real problem is DISENFRANCHISEMENT--deliberate, systematic, conceived and passed by the Anthrax Congress along with the Iraq War Resolution, in the same month (Oct '02). The IWR guaranteed unjust war. The "Help America Vote Act" (e-voting, run on 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations) provided the means for shoving unjust war down the throats of the American people.

It was a coup. It was done by the establishments of BOTH parties. Our own party forbade talk about the compromised, and extremely insecure and insider riggable, voting system that was fast-tracked across the country in time for the 2004 election, and its INEVITABLE result: A Bush/Cheney second term and more war! And now: An impeachment-proof, peace-proof so-called 'Democratic' Congress.

Yell all you want. March all you want. Write thousands of letters to our Congress clowns. Make all the phone calls you want. Do all the GOTV you are capable of. Raise zillions of dollars for our corrupt campaign contribution system (--right into the pockets of the war profiteering corporate news monopolies, for 15-second political ads that say NOTHING). BUT IF WE CAN'T VERIFY THE VOTE COUNTING, IT'S ALL FOR NAUGHT.

We might be able to win one here or there. Clearly, we can outvote the machines in some cases. But the power to shape the presidential election--to choose our candidates--and the power to shape a pro-war Congress, overall, is in the hands of RIGHTWING BUSHITE CORPORATIONS, in the SECRET CODE inside the touchscreen AND optiscan voting machines, and in the central tabulators--and even in the electronic scanning of absentee ballots. Congress will NOT fix this. Forget Congress. Forget a Congress that was (s)elected by Diebold and ES&S giving you back your right to vote. It ain't gonna happen. Go down to your local registrar, or to your state elections office, and demand transparent vote counting. Ordinary people still have some influence at the state/local level. Look what's happened in California on election reform--a complete turnaround for the better. That was a local and state GRASS ROOTS rebellion against Diebold/ES&S trade secret vote counting within the Democratic Party.

And whatever transparency you are able to achieve, the next most revolutionary thing you can so is to watch your election officials like a hawk, monitor registration and voting procedures closely, turn out the vote in huge numbers, and BE THERE, as well as you are able to, when people vote, and when the tabulators are whirring. Force election officials to let you and the rest of the public WATCH the computer screens. Hook up with some computer techs, and local branches of voting integrity groups, and know what to look for. Join in a parallel election, or exit polling, if you don't trust the system or its officials. HOUND-DOG them! PUT EYES upon them! Have systems in place to expose voter purges (often done against black voters) and to resist unfair challenges of registered voters, and other illegal or repressive practices, at the polling place.

The election reform movement is showing signs of snowballing. It's a no-brainer that we should have transparent vote counting, and that SOMETHING IS VERY WRONG with the vote counting system. Help this movement along. Support honest election officials; harass the dishonest, secretive and corrupt ones. Demand your rights!

KNOWING what's wrong with Bushite/Democratic policy on the war, and on everything else, and spreading that information, is a vital step toward restoring democracy, but it is perfectly useless if peoples' votes are not counted! Voting is our actual power--to control our government, to determine its course. Christ--SEVENTY PERCENT OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE oppose this war, and STILL Congress just voted to ESCALATE it, and to pour $100 billion MORE war dollars into Bush/Cheney's hands, to keep killing Iraqis until they sign over their oil rights.

Get practical! Get strategic! Our power over public officials resides in OUR VOTE. The vote counting system has been taken over by Bushite corporations with SECRET CODE. That IS what is wrong! That WAS the fascist coup. And that is what we must address--before and during the primaries and general election. And if we don't, then the Diebold/ES&S (s)elected candidates will continue to be as deaf to us next year as they are now.

[DemReadingDU]

9. morning kick, here's a link

edit to add link
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-hayden/ending-the-war-in-2009_b_63552.html

[H2O Man]

10. This is the best

thread that I've read on DU in a long time. I hope more DUers read and respond to it.