Today's
Stories
April 19, 2006
Christopher Reed
Secrets of the Garden of Bliss
April 18, 2006
Paul Craig Roberts
How Safe is Your Job?
Eric
Wingerter
Washington Post vs. Venezuela
Juan Santos
What Immigrants Need to Learn from
the Black Civil Rights Movement
Greg
Weiher
The Zarqawi Gambit Revisited
Sam Bahour
Is Hamas Being Forced to Collapse?
Behzad
Yaghmaian
In the Gaze of New Orleans
Website of
the Day
The
FBI and the Jack Anderson Files
April 17, 2006
Kevin Zeese
An Interview with the First Arab-American
Senator: Jim Abourezk on Bush's Lies and the Dems' Complicity
Uri Avnery
Olmert the Fox
Norman Solomon
Why Won't Moveon.Org Oppose the Bombing
of Iran?
John Ross
A Real Day Without Mexicans?
Laila al-Haddad
The Earth is Closing in on Us: Dispatch
from Gaza
Jeffrey Blankfort
A Tale of Two Members of Congress
and the Capitol Hill Police
Website of the Day
Dixie
Chicks: Not Ready to Back Down
April
15 / 16, 2006
Jeffrey
St. Clair
How Star Wars Came to the Arctic
Ralph
Nader
Remembering Rev. William Sloan Coffin
Thaddeus
Hoffmeister
The Ghost of Shinseki: the General Who Was Sent Out to Pasture for
Being Right
Kevin Prosen
/ Dave Zirin
Privilege Meets Protest at Duke
Thomas
P. Healy
Taking Care of What We've Been Given: a Conversation with Wendell
Berry
Kristoffer
Larsson
Are 40 Percent of All Swedes Anti-Semitic?: Anatomy of a Statistical
Flim-Flam
Fred
Gardner
Continuing Medical (Marijuana) Education
Edwin Krales
New York's Katrina: the Hidden Toll of AIDS Among Blacks and the
Poor
Brian
Cloughley
Don't Blitz Iran: Risking the Ultimate Blowback
John Holt
Walking Off Vietnam with Edward Abbey's Surrogate Son
Seth
Sandronsky
What Billionaires Mean By Education Reform: Oprah, Bill Gates and
the Privatization of Public Schools
Rafael Renteria
Making It Plain About New Orleans
Michael
Ortiz Hill
In the Ashes of Lament: an Easter Meditation
William A.
Cook
An Israel Accountability Act
Gideon
Levy
Shooting Nasarin: a Story About a Little Girl
Andrew Wimmer
Stopping the Bush Juggernaut: a New Citizens Campaign
Madis
Senner
Talking Points for Easter Weekend: Jesus Didn't Lie, Mr. Bush
Michael Kuehl
The Sex Police State: Women as "Rapists" and "Pedophiles"?
Mark
Scaramella
When Even God Can't Follow His Own Commandments: the Timeless Scarcasm
of Mark Twain
Nate Mezmer
187 Proof: Living and Dying Hip-Hop
Jesse
Walker
Playlist
Poets' Basement
Engel, Laymon and Subiet
Website
of the Weekend
Pink Serenades Bush
April
14, 2006
Col.
Dan Smith
Candor or Career?: Why Few Top Military Officials
Resign on Principle
Saul Landau
Ho Chi Minh City Moves On Without Regrets
Stan
Cox
The Real Death Tax
Kevin Zeese
Hersh vs. Bush on Iran: Who Would You Believe?
Brian
McKinlay
Bad Times for Bush's Buddies
Howard Meyers
Dwarves, Knives and Freedom: Bush, Jr. is No LBJ
Ishmael
Reed
The Colored Mind Doubles: How the Media Uses Blacks
to Chastize Blacks
Website of
the Day
Asshole: a Film Strip
April
13, 2006
CounterPunch
News Service
Powell's "Bitch"?
Norman
Solomon
The Lobby and the Bulldozer
Stanley Heller
Time to Shake Up the Peace Movement
Jeff
Birkenstein
Bush and Freedom of Speech
Evelyn J.
Pringle
Not So Fast, Mr. Powell
Michael
Donnelly
The Week the Bush Administration Fell Apart
Kamran Matin
Synergism of the Neo-Cons: What's Going On In Iran?
Website
of the Day
"Don't Be Afraid of the Neo-Cons"
April
12, 2006
Vijay Prashad
Resisting Fences
Alan
Maass
The Suicide of Anthony Soltero
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Insane First Strike Policy: If You Don't Want to Get Whacked,
You'd Better Get Your Nation a Nuke ... Fast
Ron
Jacobs
Resistance: the Remedy for Fear
Ramzy Baroud
The Imminent Decline of the American Empire?
Randall
Dodd
How a Wal-Mart Bank will Harm Consumers
Missy Comley
Beattie
The Boy President Who Cried "Wolf!"
P. Sainath
The Corporate Hijack of India's Water
Website of
the Day
"The System is Irretrievably Corrupt"
April
11, 2006
Al
Krebs
Corporate Agriculture's Dirty Little Secret: Immigration
and a History of Greed
Lawrence
R. Velvel
The Gang That Couldn't Leak Straight
Sonia Nettinin
Palestinian Health Care Conditions Under Israeli Occupation
Willliam
S. Lind
The Fourth Plague Hits the Pentagon: Generals as Private Contractors
Robert Ovetz
Endangered Species in a Can: the Disappearance of Big Fish
Pratyush
Chandra
Nepalis Say, "Ya Basta!"
Grant F.
Smith
The Bush Administration's Final Surprise?
Laray
Polk
Loud, Soft, Hard, Quiet: Marching Through Dallas for Immigrant Rights
Francis Boyle
O'Reilly and the Law of the Jungle: How to Beat a Bully on His Home
Turf
José
Pertierra
A Glimpse into the Mindset of Terrorists: Posada Carriles, Orlando
Bosch and the Downing of Cubana Flight 455
Website of
the Day
The Dead Emcee Scrolls
April
10, 2006
Ralph
Nader
Tinhorn Caesar and the Spineless Democrats
Heather Gray
Atlanta and the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Uri
Avnery
The Big Wink
Joshua Frank
Big Greens and Beltway Politics: Betting on Losers
Seth
Sandronsky
Immigration and Occupations
Michael Leonardi
The Italian Elections: "Reality is No Longer Important"
Evelyn
Pringle
Did Bush Pull a Fast One on Fitzgerald?
Tom Kerr
FoxNews Does Ward Churchill
Lucinda
Marshall
The Lynching of Cynthia McKinney
Website of
the Day
Brown Berets
April
7 -9, 2006
Alexander
Cockburn
If Only They'd Hissed Barack Obama
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Saga of Magnequench: Outsourcing US Missile
Technology to China
Patrick
Cockburn
The War Gets Grimmer Every Day
David Vest
The Rebuking and Scorning of Cynthia McKinney
Dave
Lindorff
The Impeachment Clock Just Clicked Forward
Gary Leupp
"Ideologies of Hatred:" What Did Condi Mean?
Elaine
Cassel
The Moussaoui Trial: What Kind of Justice is This?
Saul Landau
Vietnam Diary: Hue Without Rules
James
Ridgeway
"This is Betty Ong Calling": a Short Film
Ron Jacobs
Why Iran was Right to Refuse US Money
John
Walsh
Kerry Advocates Iraqization: Too Little, Too Late
Ramzy Baroud
The US Attitude Toward Hamas: Disturbing Parallels with Nicaragua
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush Finds Democracy Has Its Limits
Todd Chretien
What the Pentagon Budget Could Buy for America
Jonathan
Scott
Javelins at the Head of the Monolith
John Bomar
What They're Saying About Bush in Arkansas
Michele
Brand
Iran, the US and the EU
Ronan Sheehan
Remember When the Irish First Met the Chinese?
Mickey
Z.
Let Us Now Praise OIL
Don Monkerud
March of the Bunglers
Michael
Dickinson
The Rich Young Man: a Miracle Play
Website
of the Weekend
The Case Against Israel and Munich: Compare and Contrast
| April
19 , 2006
From Antiwar to Peace to Democracy
Movement Blues
By MIKE FERNER
Not
a day too soon the antiwar movement has begun a desperately needed
discussion.
As a movement we are great at activism, deficient when it comes
to real organizing, and damn near devoid of long range, strategic
thinking and discussion. So congratulations to former Marine Corps
Major, Scott Ritter, for writing “The Art of War for the Antiwar
Movement,” provoking us to stop and think for a minute, and
to Cindy Sheehan, Max Obuszewski and others for responding. Here
are a few more thoughts I hope will add to our collective wisdom.
First, we needn’t fear appeals for more discipline, nor references
to strategic geniuses of any stripe – military or pacifist.
Dismissing useful methods because of their source is like spurning
modern P.R. techniques to promote peace because Procter and Gamble
Corp. uses them to sell toothpaste and deodorant.
One of the intellects Ritter mentions is Sun Tzu, whose “Art
of War” should not be dismissed because of its title. It contains
such gems as:
*
“For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles
is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting
is the acme of skill.”
*
“There is no instance of a country having benefited from
prolonged warfare.”
*
“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory.
Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”
The last is particularly relevant to today’s antiwar movement.
If anybody out there knows what our strategy is, please report
to the public address system at once. On the other hand, tactics,
like our activism, we do ‘round the clock, and re-do, and
do more next time, and try again, and...all of which is to say,
dear colleagues, that this may indeed keep us busy but A) it is
not organizing, and B) even organizing is not effective without
a coherent strategy.
In an email to peace activists around the country, Max Obuszewski,
of the National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance, refutes Ritter’s
comment that the antiwar movement “is not just losing, but
is in fact on the verge of complete collapse,” by citing
more than 600 actions around the country last month, commemorating
three years of war.
Cindy Sheehan responded to Ritter that “The anti-war movement
is not on the ‘verge of collapse’ because we are not
organized, or because we don't take a ‘warriors’ view
of attacking the neocons and the war machine…but because
the two-thirds of Americans who philosophically agree that the
war is wrong...will not get off of their collective, complacent,
and comfortable behinds to demonstrate their dissent with our
government.”
I’m encouraged to hear there were over 600 actions around
the country marking the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq,
(even though Max’s use of the word “commemorating”
says a lot about how we view our role in this struggle). And who
among us has not felt Cindy’s frustration with a system
that successfully keeps millions of our fellow citizens sitting
on their complacent butts, even when they tell pollsters they
are against this criminal war?
But even if the antiwar movement organizes 1200 actions “commemorating”
the fourth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq next year, that
is not enough. Neither is it enough if we succeed in getting millions
of our fellow citizens off their backsides to do something.
“Well, that’s easy enough for you to say, Mr. Smartypants,”
I can see already in my inbox, and you’d be right –
it certainly is easier said than done. Because what we really
need to do is:
* Reevaluate and embolden our tactics. For example, why are we
content to have 500,000 people march in the streets of Washington
on a Saturday (last September 24), but wait until everyone’s
gone home the next Monday for a polite, orchestrated civil disobedience
action? If only 10% of that half-million wanted to sit down on
Pennsylvania Avenue and stay for as long as it takes to dislodge
the criminals, shouldn’t that be part of our plans?
* Reevaluate our long term goals. For example, ask ourselves if
we’re content to be an antiwar movement – meaning
that our opponents define our existence and purpose. When the
agents of empire decide it’s time to march the nation off
to war once again, the antiwar movement reassembles activists
from a hundred different fronts, throws itself into the fray,
and works against the government’s well-oiled killing machine
until we are exhausted. Do we ever ask ourselves, as Scott Ritter
does, if we want to be more than “a walk-on squad of high
school football players…taking on the NFL Super Bowl Champions,”
or, as I painfully observed recently in Washington, a brief parade
of colorful banners and heartfelt slogans passing an empty White
House?
* Reevaluate A) the source of our opponents’ power and B)
how to neutralize it so the narrow elite is not always turning
our own government against us; so we can redirect U.S. policy
to serve the many.
As
for bolder tactics, the leadership of many antiwar groups will respond
1) we can’t risk upping the ante because grandparents from
Duluth (my apologies, Duluthians) will not participate in civil
disobedience, and 2) tradition dictates we cooperate with the police
in our own arrests. Regarding #1, I lay odds that people in this
movement have more gumption than its leaders. As to #2, I admit
I’m not an adequate student of civil disobedience theory,
but I can tell when our actions are not commensurate with the misery
our government is causing, and they are not.
As for long term goals, we can work our way towards them by not
just demanding “troops out now,” but bases out now;
paying billions for repairing the physical damage we’ve caused
and not funneled through U.S. corporations; no saddling Iraqis with
odious debt left over from Saddam Hussein’s reign; getting
the clutches of empire off the rest of the globe.
That last goal, of course, requires we determine the source of our
opponents’ power and how to neutralize it. I would hardly
be the first to suggest that our opponents – those agents
of empire in corporations and government – create political
power by concentrating economic power, and that the time-tested
mechanism for doing so is the corporation. I do, however, suggest
there is a more helpful approach to analyzing the problem and determining
what to do about it than what we typically do – which, with
all respect, rarely goes beyond trying to elect more Democrats,
or writing your Congressperson, or petitioning for impeachment,
or even protesting and getting arrested.
To get a flavor for what I’m talking about, consider the modern
environmental movement or the most recent inspiration, the greatly
energized immigrant rights movement.
Environmentalists have become experts at fighting on corporate terrain
(regulatory hearings) to reduce the crap in our air and water by
a few parts per million, or maybe even stopping a toxic waste dump
or a nuclear power plant, one at a time, until we are exhausted.
We call that success. But the corporate form continues to gain legal
rights and economic and political power, because long ago we surrendered
the fight over democratic control of energy and transportation companies,
settling instead for regulating them around the edges – a
most Faustian bargain. If we want to control energy and transportation
policies; if we want to address the root causes of pollution; if
we want to treat the disease and not just the symptom we have to
reengage the struggle of who’s in charge, not just petition
for a little less poison.
Similarly, the immigrant rights movement, regardless of its current
energy and numbers, must reduce the political power of corporations
profiting from today’s immigration policies, not just change
a few clauses in immigration legislation or elect a few promising
politicians.
How are we to redirect sufficient time and energy to this more fundamental
work, knowing that the individual fires we fight will rage out of
control any moment? By learning how to simultaneously fight fires
and do fire prevention; by taking this historic opportunity to evolve
the antiwar movement into a democracy movement.
It won’t be easy, but it will be necessary if we want to do
more than postpone the next war or end the suffering of the current
war a few weeks sooner; if we want to actually build peace. We need
the discipline to understand that reacting against injustice is
fighting fires; that fire prevention requires relearning our histories
to find out how and where power is vested; how peoples’ movements
dealt with these same problems generations ago; why we have to strip
corporations of rights they’ve usurped so we can exercise
democracy’s power to make fundamental change; how to change
our organizing to focus on fundamental goals.
Scott Ritter prophetically writes that “America is pre-programmed
for war, and unless the anti-war movement dramatically changes the
manner in which it conducts its struggle, America will become a
nation of war, for war, and defined by war, and as such a nation
that will ultimately be consumed by war.”
In more painfully personal terms, Cindy Sheehan writes, “Looking
back on my life up until Casey was killed in Iraq, on 04/04/04,
I have tried to analyze over and over again what went wrong. I knew
that our leaders were bought and paid for employees of the war machine,
and yet, when Casey came of age, he put on the uniform and marched
off to another senseless war to bring his employers that rich reward
of money and power. The warning for American mothers and fathers
is this: the war machine will get your children, if not now, then
your grandchildren. It is a hard and steep price to pay for the
certain knowledge that the people in power think of us, not as their
employers and electorate whom they swear to serve, but as their
tools to be used as cannon fodder whenever the impulse strikes them.”
If we want Scott and Cindy’s words to be more than an intellectually
stimulating, forgettable bit in our inbox, we have to learn how
to transform the antiwar movement into a democracy movement. Our
reward will be that we can finally move beyond opposing one war
after another to build the kind of peaceful, just world we deserve…and
the planet is waiting for us to create.
Mike Ferner works these ideas with the Program
on Corporations, Law and Democracy (POCLAD) and anyone who cares
to respond. He is a freelance writer and a member of Veterans For
Peace. He can be reached at: mike.ferner@sbcglobal.net.
|
Now Available
from CounterPunch Books!
The Case Against
Israel
By Michael Neumann
Click Here to Order Michael Neumann's Devastating
Rebuttal of Alan Dershowitz
Grand
Theft Pentagon:
Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror
by Jeffrey St. Clair
|