How the Peace Movement Can Win; A Field Guide

[jaqeboy]

Hi friends,

Below please find Tom Hayden's most recent reflections on the peace
movement and our intersection with politics. Even if you don't agree
with all of his points, I hope you will find the piece thought-
provoking. I also want to thank all of you who have gone out to
candidate events and asked questions about Iraq, Iran and nuclear
weapons issues - Tom mentions New Hampshire Peace Action's bird-dog
efforts positively in the article. (To learn more about our ongoing
bird-dog efforts, visit our website at www.nhpeaceaction.org.)

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How the Peace Movement Can Win: A Field Guide
by TOM HAYDEN
[from the December 17, 2007 issue of The Nation]

The Republicans, led by George W. Bush, Rudy Giuliani and their hard-
core neoconservative hit squads, have spent millions on television
messages supporting the military surge in Iraq. They mounted a major
campaign to demonize MoveOn.org in order to derail the group's proven
ability to raise funds for antiwar messages and Democratic
candidates. During the election year, pro-war Republicans are poised
to promote staying the course in Iraq while threatening or even
instigating a war on Iran. The Democrats will have to respond with
more than an echo.

But at this point the leading Democratic contenders are reluctant to
say they would pull out all the troops from a war they claim to
oppose. In sharp contrast to Republicans, Democrats at least support
withdrawing most or all American combat troops on a twelve- to
eighteen-month deadline. Asked for exact timelines, however, the top
contenders indicate that they would put off the withdrawal of all
troops until sometime in their second term. The platform of "out by
2013" may be a sufficient difference from the Republicans for some,
but it won't satisfy the most committed antiwar voters. Asked about
the five-year estimate, Senator Hillary Clinton's spokesman on Iraq
policy, Philippe Reines, expressed surprise, but his formulation of
her views did not conflict with the idea of a long US presence: that
she wants substantial troop reductions starting immediately, without
a deadline for completion, and with a smaller American force left
behind dedicated to training Iraqis and counter-terrorism.

"It's beginning to feel like 2004," says one Washington insider at
the Center for American Progress, a think tank led by former Clinton
Chief of Staff John Podesta. CAP issued a key memo on October 31
complaining about a "strategic drift" setting in among security
strategists and the Democratic leaders they advise. The schizophrenia
consists of wanting to end the war as painlessly as possible while
running away from their anti-Vietnam past. In the triangulating
phrase of Barack Obama, one can't be seen as a "Tom Hayden Democrat"
on Iraq.

The leading Democratic contenders buy the line of a more hawkish
think tank, the Center for a New American Security, a mostly
Democratic cast of auditioning future national security advisers.
They propose the gradual, multiyear withdrawal of combat troops and
an increase in the number of Special Forces and trainers, who are
somehow supposed to train the Iraqi army and chase Al Qaeda from
Iraq. A similar proposal was made at the beginning of this year by
the Iraq Study Group, based on a December 2006 report. The dangerous,
even irrational, assumption of this thinking is that a small number
of American trainers and Special Forces can accomplish what 160,000
troops have failed to do.

Nevertheless, the proposal has understandable appeal. Bush plans to
withdraw 25,000 to 30,000 troops this spring to salvage an army at
the breaking point. If the next President withdraws another 75,000
troops in 2009, the peace movement will face the challenge of
opposing a war that appears to be slowly ending. Iraq would then
likely evolve into either an Algerian- or Salvadoran-style dirty war
or tumble toward a South Vietnam-style fiasco with American advisers
trapped in the cross-fire. But it would be mostly invisible until the
endgame if managed successfully, with American casualties declining
in a low-profile war.

Can anything be done to avert this scenario? Actually, yes. The peace
movement does have an opportunity to solidify public opinion behind a
more rapid withdrawal--regardless of what the national security
advisers think.

Peace advocates will likely have the best-funded antiwar message in
history during the coming election year. Tens of millions of dollars
will be raised for voter education and registration and get-out-the-
vote campaigns through the 527 committees, which disseminate election
messages independent of partisan candidates. The Democrats defaulted
on their opportunity to use these independent committees for a peace
message in 2004, when they muted and muddled their antiwar position.
But this time they will have to contend with the frustration of
millions of antiwar voters, and their nominee will be pledged, in
rhetoric at least, to end the war.

Backed by real resources, skilled organizers and volunteers across
the electoral battlegrounds of 2008 will be able to identify,
register and turn out voters through door-to-door work combined with
radio and television spots. Already, former MoveOn political director
Tom Matzzie is being entrusted with a $100 million fund for
independent expenditures during the 2008 electoral cycle, a
significant portion of which will go to antiwar messages. The money
will come from antiwar unions like the Service Employees
International and big-money donors like investor George Soros and
Hollywood producer Steve Bing. Podesta is personally involved in the
independent campaign as well, through a 527 entity called Fund for
America.

This plan poses enormous challenges. Who will make the decisions,
what will be the Iraq/Iran message, who will deliver it and by what
means? The independence of the 527 committees is based on an
organizational separation from the political parties. But the message
will likely be consistent with, if not identical to, the candidates'
message, influenced by the same hawkish consultants. Yet the peace
movement has an opening to exert its influence: it can demand a role
in the independent campaign as a condition of enlisting its legions
of local peace activists. The challenge will be to draft an antiwar
formula that unites the peace forces and progressive Democrats rather
than one that depresses vast numbers of antiwar voters.

Beyond the issue of message, there's the question of whether the
independent campaign is controlled from the top or is open to the
thousands of volunteers already devoted to antiwar efforts in their
local communities. Matzzie is a brilliant field organizer in his
early 30s, trained in the post-1960s staff-driven methods of groups
like USAction. Most of these organizers have little knowledge of
Iraq, foreign policy or peaceful alternatives to the "war on terror."
Their backgrounds tend to be in labor or consumer organizing or door-
to-door canvassing for donations. Typically, they are results-
oriented (number of phone calls made, voters identified, "hits,"
etc.) rather than community-oriented. Ideally, Matzzie will map out a
battle plan calling for cooperation where local groups already have
strong track records (like New Hampshire, Iowa and northern Illinois,
to take three examples) and new initiatives in areas lacking an
active base. A final question to be finessed is whether the
independent campaigns will invest in a long-term local strategy,
including simple things like leaving contact lists behind with local
groups, or whether they will pull up stakes and vanish on election day.

The peace movement can succeed only by applying people pressure
against the pillars of the war policy--public opinion, military
recruitment and an ample war budget--through marching, confronting
military recruiters and civil disobedience. The pillars have been
eroding since 2004. The tactics that are most likely to accelerate
the process are greater efforts at persuading the ambivalent voters.
This is where the interests of the peace movement converge with
Matzzie's operation.

A massively funded voter-identification and -registration drive and a
get-out-the vote campaign have enormous potential to tip not only the
presidential election but also the scales of public opinion. Rather
than merely pounding away at a simplistic message--Republicans
dangerous, Democrats better--such an effort would require, as a
foundation, resources to educate voters and involve them in house
meetings. The house-meeting approach allows for voter education and
participation on a scale that cannot be achieved by hit pieces or TV
spots. It is also critical for cultivating grassroots leadership
capacity for election day turnout and beyond. Voters may be persuaded
by a narrow end-the-war message, especially if Giuliani is the
Republican candidate, but they will also need the ability to answer
questions about the interconnected issues of Iraq, Iran, energy,
healthcare and the threat posed by neoconservatives.

Only in this way will the peace movement succeed in expanding and
intensifying antiwar feeling to a degree that will compel the
politicians to abandon their six-year timetable for a far shorter
one. In the worst-case alternatives, Giuliani and the neocons will
roll to a narrow victory despite a platform of promising war, or the
centrist Democrats will prevail without a mandate for rapid
withdrawal of troops from Iraq and negotiations plus containment
toward Iran.

The coming war is a political one, to be fought at home. There will
be a yearlong showdown that will determine the presidency and the
climate of opinion. If the Republicans succeed in electing the next
President, the Iraq War will continue and probably expand. If they
lose the presidency, they are already positioning themselves to
charge the Democrats with "losing" Iraq and ride that theme to a
comeback in 2012.

The key dates in this coming domestic war will be:

January 2008 onward: the budget. There will be attempts to limit or
reverse Bush's supplemental demand of $200 billion for a war that has
already cost more than $470 billion. CAP recommends a goal of cutting
the request in half. Two-thirds of Americans favor a reduction of
some kind, and 46 percent favor sharp reductions. It appears that the
best that can be hoped for in this battle is to rebuke Bush, reduce
funding for the war and make the budget vote so painful that Congress
members will never want to cast one again. There is no reason to
support $5 billion to $10 billion for the sectarian torturers
operating under cover of the Interior Ministry, for example. Already
a high-level military commission has called on Congress to scrap the
Iraqi police service as hopelessly corrupt, a position reflected in
HR 3134 put forward by Representatives Maxine Waters, Barbara Lee and
Lynne Woolsey. This simple focus on the Frankenstein monster fostered
in Baghdad might generate a movement against using taxes for torture
and thus begin to unravel the occupation.

January-February 2008: presidential primaries. The Democratic
candidates have been at least shopping for the peace vote in the
early primaries, if only to differentiate their brands from the
others. Voting for Kucinich, Richardson or Gravel is a legitimate
choice to support an important voice--but not a nominee. Joe Biden's
proposal for partitioning Iraq is the most dangerous of any of the
Democratic candidates' positions and should be rejected. John
Edwards's proposal is the best of the front-runners', though it
leaves a gaping loophole for "sufficient" US troops to continue
fighting terrorists and training the Iraqi police. Barack Obama has
been sharpening and improving his position somewhat, defining a more
limited role for trainers and counterterrorism. Obama (and Edwards)
also have toughened their stand against bombing Iran. That leaves
Hillary Clinton struggling in the center, promising she will "end the
war" while leaving a scaled-down force to fight Al Qaeda, train the
Iraqis, resist Iranian encroachment and demonstrate her awareness
that Iraq is "right in the heart of the oil region." What she means
is anyone's guess, leaving her with little more than an anti-Bush
"trust me" platform. These Democratic positions may underestimate the
passionate demands of peace voters, potentially driving a significant
fraction of those voters into apathy or toward third-party
alternatives. All these candidate positions can be drawn out further
in the heat of the early primaries by sharp questioning and selective
voting by peace activists. The "bird-dogging" of candidates by New
Hampshire Peace Action is an example.

April 2008: the Bush deadline for withdrawing 25,000 troops (by not
extending their tours of duty). Unless the Administration has bombed
Iran, Bush will use this deadline to promote the Nixon-like theme
that the war is "winding down." The Democratic candidate will have to
insist that 25,000 is far too small a number of troops. This risks a
Republican attack that the Democratic position is "too extreme";
there is also the risk that Democratic candidates would fall into
Bush's trap by calling a 25,000-troop withdrawal a "positive first
step."

Summer 2008: convention protests and platforms. The time is now for
advocates and insiders to write and propose platform language that
promises to truly end the war, without the usual ambiguity that
drives activists to despair. Both conventions will be held in protest-
friendly cities, offering an outside strategy to highlight the
differences and deficiencies in the two-party debate.

Fall 2008: House and Senate races. It is perhaps here that groups
like MoveOn and Progressive Democrats of America can have the
greatest effect, by bolstering the numbers of antiwar senators and
representatives who favor terminating the war in 2009. Think: Senator
Al Franken.

November 2008-January 2009. This will be a test of whether the peace
movement will hit the streets and pressure the incoming
Administration to promptly end the war or face four more years of
deepening confrontation.

If a one-year campaign seems too long, consider Vietnam for
perspective. After the McGovern Democrats took over the Democratic
Party in 1972 only to lose the presidency, it took three long years
before Nixon's "Vietnamization" policies ended in debacle and in a
cutoff of Congressional funding. Along the way, a young Senate
staffer named Tom Daschle spearheaded a campaign to block Nixon's
funding for a secret gulag of "tiger cage" torture chambers. Like
Baghdad today, Saigon was a US-backed police state, a hideous system
abetted by 10,000 American "civilian contractors." American activists
were arrested outside the US Embassy in Saigon for distributing
leaflets against the torturers. Another 1 million educational
pamphlets were passed out in fall 1972 by local organizers in a
hundred cities. Those local groups demanded that candidates sign a
peace pledge or face the loss of critical votes.

It all seemed too little, but the pillars of the policy kept
crumbling in Vietnam and at home. In May 1973, in response to
Indochina and the Watergate impeachment crises, both houses of
Congress voted a deadline of August 15 for further funding of
American combat forces. Henry Kissinger refused to comply with any
deadlines, and his position was defeated on a tie 204-204 House vote
that allowed only a last extension of the bombing until that August.
The country was so divided that a small, determined faction was able
to tip the scales.

We are approaching a similar chasm in public opinion today. The
neoconservatives, conservatives and liberal hawks have been
discredited for their foolish 2002 belief in a quick and easy
invasion of Iraq. A beleaguered neocon minority is pressing to strike
Iran and stay the course in Iraq. Democrats, despite their electoral
majority, have not proven to be as tenacious about Iraq as the
neocons. Nor are progressive activists always as educated and focused
for battle as their adversaries. With a majority of Americans wanting
and expecting a withdrawal from Iraq, the outcome of 2008 may depend
on who has the greater will to win.

Anne Miller
Director
New Hampshire Peace Action
4 Park Street Suite 210
Concord NH 03301
anne@nhpeaceaction.org
(603) 228-0559
www.nhpeaceaction.org