April
17 , 2006
The Wages of Consensus
Why Won't Moveon.org
Oppose the Bombing of Iran?
By NORMAN SOLOMON
MoveOn.org
sent out an email with the subject line “Don’t Nuke
Iran” to three million people on April 12. “There is
one place where all of us can agree: Americans don’t support
a pre-emptive nuclear attack on Iran, and Congress must act to prevent
the president from launching one before it’s too late,”
the message said. And: “Please take a moment to add your name
to our petition to stop a nuclear attack on Iran.”
The
petition’s two sentences only convey opposition to a “nuclear”
attack on Iran: “Congress and President Bush must rule out
attacking Iran with nuclear weapons. Even the threat of a nuclear
attack eliminates some of the best options we have for diplomacy,
and the consequences could be catastrophic.”
In
MoveOn’s mass email letter, the only reference to a non-nuclear
attack on Iran came in a solitary sentence without any followup:
“Even a conventional attack would likely be a disaster.”
“Likely”
be a disaster? Is there any U.S. military attack on Iran that plausibly
would not be a disaster?
There’s
no way around the conclusion that the signers of the letter (“Eli,
Joan, Nita, Marika and the MoveOn.org Political Action Team”)
chose to avoid committing themselves -- and avoid devoting MoveOn
resources -- to categorical opposition to bombing Iran.
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* * * *
In
preparation for this article, I sent emails to each of the four
signers of MoveOn’s “Don’t Nuke Iran” letter,
asking them:
1)
Why does the letter say nothing against a prospective non-nuclear
attack on Iran other than comment that “a conventional attack
would likely be a disaster”?
2)
Why was the petition confined to opposing a “nuclear”
attack on Iran rather than opposing any military attack on Iran?
3)
Has MoveOn ever sent out a message to the three-million list taking
a clear position against the U.S. attacking Iran (no matter what
kind of weaponry would be used)?
4)
If the answer to question #3 is “no,” why not?
A
response came on April 13 from Eli Pariser, executive director of
MoveOn. Here is his three-paragraph reply in its entirety:
“As
you know, our focus is on bringing people together around points
of consensus. We build our advocacy agenda through dialogue with
our members. Since we haven’t done any work around Iran thus
far, we saw the prospect of a nuclear attack as a good way to begin
that conversation -- something everyone can agree was nuts.
“As
I mention in the [‘Don’t Nuke Iran’] email, a
conventional attack poses many of the same risks as a nuclear one.
But just as our Iraq campaign started with a position that attracted
a broad membership -- ‘Ask Tough Questions,’ in August
2002 -- and then escalated, so we’re trying here to engage
folks beyond the ‘peace’ community in a national discussion
about the consequences of war.
“We
wouldn’t have had the membership to be able to run ads calling
for an Iraq exit today if we’d confined our Iraq campaign
to the true believers from the very beginning.”
*
* * * *
I
believe that the MoveOn decision-makers who signed the “Don’t
Nuke Iran” mass email are almost certainly aware that if they
surveyed a cross-section of those commonly referred to as MoveOn
members (people who are currently signed-up for MoveOn’s emails),
the overwhelming majority would say that they’re opposed to
an attack on Iran with any weapons -- not just nuclear weapons.
Opposition
to any bombing of Iran inherently includes opposition to bombing
Iran with nuclear weapons. But vice versa is not the case. And so
far it is (so to speak) precisely the ambiguity of confining the
MoveOn position to “Don’t Nuke Iran” that MoveOn’s
leadership has embraced.
As
MoveOn’s mass email stated on April 12, “There is one
place where all of us can agree: Americans don’t support a
pre-emptive nuclear attack on Iran, and Congress must act to prevent
the president from launching one before it’s too late.”
As
Eli Pariser wrote to me the next day, “our focus is on bringing
people together around points of consensus.”
This
approach debases the role of consensus in progressive political
organizing. It shouldn’t mean tailing the opinion polls or
waving an organizational finger in the wind; nor should it mean
taking cues from power brokers among congressional Democrats.
Nor
should a progressive organization avoid taking historically imperative
positions in real time because they might interfere with feeding
cash cows a diet of lines that seem optimum for maximizing the flow
of “the mother’s milk of politics” to pay for
ads.
The
voices in Congress denouncing the prospect of a military attack
on Iran, period, are in short supply right now. Yet as it happens,
according to a nationwide poll jointly released by Bloomberg and
the Los Angeles Times on April 13, the current inclinations of people
in the United States are about evenly divided: “Forty-eight
percent said they would support military action against Iran if
it continues to produce material that can be used to develop a nuclear
bomb, down from 57 percent in January. Forty percent oppose military
action, up from 33 percent in January.”
As
long as MoveOn’s leaders (not to be confused with MoveOn’s
email recipients) want to confine MoveOn to mobilizing against use
of nuclear weaponry in an attack on Iran, they’re actually
aiding a process that can dangerously reframe policy options --
so that some kind of military attack on Iran becomes increasingly
accepted while much of the debate shifts to arguments over whether
use of nuclear weapons in the attack should be ruled out.
Of
course the official scenarios for use of nuclear bombs are deranged
and must be condemned. At the same time, in logical and practical
terms, unequivocal opposition to bombing Iran signifies clear opposition
to bombing Iran with nuclear weapons.
Will
those who put out MoveOn’s email alerts and green light its
advertising campaigns eventually use some of the group’s resources
to promote opposition to any and all bombing of Iran? It’s
probably a matter of time -- but every day of holding back from
engaging in solid unambiguous opposition to any military attack
on Iran is a day lost that can never be regained.
The
MoveOn apparatus is the largest single online mechanism for U.S.
progressives to share information, present analysis and take action.
But no one should wait for the people who control MoveOn’s
mass email flow to come around. There are significant efforts underway
to utilize the Internet as part of efforts to prevent any attack
on Iran.
For
example, as part of broader organizing campaigns, a coalition of
groups has begun a Don’t
Attack Iran petition. And TrueMajority is promoting an equally
valuable Don’t
Bomb Iran petition.
An
April 14 letter from TrueMajority says: “Click here to send
a message to top Democrats, including Senate Democratic Leader Harry
Reid and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, insisting they speak
out loudly, now, against any plans to bomb Iran.”
That’s
a message that MoveOn.org hasn’t been willing to send.
Norman Solomon’s latest book is “War Made Easy: How
Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.” A link
to his recent public radio interview on agenda-building for an attack
on Iran is posted at: www.WarMadeEasy.com
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