A Note to the Peace Movement

[davidswanson]

From David Swanson

The peace movement has stood for peace and justice, for ending wars, preventing new ones, and building peace. Our top priority in Washington, D.C., has been ending the funding of the occupation. That work is over for the next year, because Congress has provided that funding.

We can still work against recruitment, we can still educate, we can still agitate, we can still oppose an attack on Iran. But one of our secondary priorities in Washington has been imposing a penalty for the illegal attack on Iraq in order to discourage future attacks on Iran or anywhere else. We have pushed half-heartedly for impeachment, with our main lobbying focus on cutting off the money.

Now, at the same time that the money is a done deal for another year, the possibility of impeachment is beginning to spark. After over two years of declaring impeachment "off the table," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has relented and suggested that some sort of preliminary hearing be held in the Judiciary Committee - and specifically on the impeachable offense of misleading a nation into war.

If the peace movement is not just a movement against one war or occupation, but a movement for peace, we should push with everything we've got for that hearing to happen, happen soon, and happen well. We should ask everyone who cares about peace to phone Pelosi and Committee Chairman John Conyers, as well as their own representatives, whom they should ask to introduce their own articles of impeachment.

We've been on a losing streak, brothers and sisters, and the door is cracking open toward a major victory. Let's open that door fully and lead a peaceful march of millions through it.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

1. Anyone talking about...

A March on Washington before the elections?

[EFerrari]

2. You couldn't be more right. Onward.

:kick:

[proud2BlibKansan]

3. Well you know we are doing all we can

here in Kansas.

Thanks for your inspiring work, David. It sure keeps me going! :hi:

[babylonsister]

4. Conyers - pls. phone him now at 202-225-3951! And thanks, David, for

all you've done and continue to do.

[Breeze54]

5. Please sign Dennis Kucinich's Petition to hold hearings on Impeachment!!

I've been working on both at the same time.

Nice post, Mr. Swanson! :hi:



http://impeachment.kucinich.us/petition/#

:kick: & Recommended

[ben_meyers]

6. You are preaching to the choir

and howling at the moon if you think that there is a viable "peace movement" in this country.

The only thing you can push for that will make any difference is reinstating the draft. I just don't see that many people who are going to "take to the streets" when they are not invested in a war.

The protests of the 60's had a focal point, they had conscription hanging over their heads, that's motivation.

(I say they because I had enlisted, and then got extended buy Kennedy during the Cuban Missile B.S. and hello S.E. Asia)

[EFerrari]

7. We have a draft. It's called Stop Loss. And you bet there is a peace movement.

The convenient rumors of our demise are very much exaggerated. :)

[ben_meyers]

10. I specifically said "viable peace movement"

There always is a peace movement, remember Lysistrata, and she was trying to end the Peloponnesian War, 400 BC.

[EFerrari]

11. And we still speak of her today. That's makes her still viable. n/t

[ben_meyers]

12. I'd like to see that Pew poll

given the current state of our educational system my guess would be that most people would think She invented mouth wash.

[EFerrari]

13. (Don't give the ad guys any ideas.)

:rofl:

[EFerrari]

8. I called the Judiciary Committee and asked if Dennis was going to be allowed

to make a presentation to the committee. I was told that impeachment wasn't on the agenda but that Mr. Conyers hadn't yet made a determination.

I said that after this FISA atrocity, my wish was for Mr. Conyers to pursue impeachment because the House Democrats seemed unable to stop the Bush agenda on spying, torture, the war or stripping our social programs.

The lady apologized to me for not having a better answer. I thanked her and we rang off.

[deaniac21]

9. We need to get CINDY back!

[AntiFascist]

14. K&R, Pelosi is preparing to set the table...

but we need to help prepare the meal.

The Bush Administration has been given a free ride on illegal spying. Now, to offset this, congresspeople need to punish the administration for illegally getting us into a war which will ultimately cost in the $trillions! Can anyone fathom the effects of these costs on our posterity?? And, they have the gall to push for yet another war with Iran! To top it off, the top 1% of the population, and the administration cronies are profitting incredibly from the outcome.

If nothing else, we need to do this for our children, grandchildren and successive generations.

[Psyop Samurai]

15. The truth and accountability movement IS the peace movement.

Not to disparage yours or anyone else's efforts, but a lobby to remove funding?

Please.

They all quite literally should have long since been dragged out by their necks, if necessary. I would have done it myself, but I needed a few million to back me up.

Peace don't sell. It's been propagandized as a harmless pastime for misguided do-gooders -- a "lifestyle" choice, if you will. The anger five years ago needed to be turned up about ten notches, and focused like a laser beam on the Goebbels media. That didn't happen.

Again, I am middle America... sort of. That is to say, not a longtime activist or one who's particularly "politically astute". Five years ago, I barely knew what "globalization" was, or what the fuss in Seattle had been about. I was in the street five years ago not because of some platitudes about "peace".

Number one, before the world was turned upside-down by pathological liars, it was understood by all sane people that only a blood-thirsty psychopath could be "pro-war". So the whole "pro-war" vs. "pro-peace" is an Orwellian media device. Most people will, if reservedly and with due caution, support a war in the interests of self-defense.

Of course, that is not what the Iraq invasion was. We knew quite clearly at the time. It was fraud, grand theft, mass murder, treason, and conspiracy to commit all the above. None of which crimes have been addressed in any substantive way by our Vichy government, while countless additional crimes have accrued.

All this is to say that truth and accountability IS peace. It was always so, and remains the only avenue to peace.

[EFerrari]

16. Kick