| iksnizsakdet@yahoo.com 2005-08-19, 9:02 am |
| August 19, 2005
Antiwar Populism:
The Floodgates Open
Russ Feingold, Chuck Hagel, and Cindy Sheehan give voice to the
pro-peace zeitgeist
by Justin Raimondo
It's amusing to watch the utter powerlessness of the neocon attack
machine as they try - without success - to smear Cindy Sheehan.
Matt Drudge is heaving spittle at his computer screen, and Karl Rove
must be having nightmares about this courageous albeit heartbroken
housewife from Vacaville as she faces down his attack dogs and skewers
them with the sheer simplicity and moral authority of her message. Amid
all the debate and speculation - is she losing her "authenticity" as
MoveOn.org moves in on her, and the professional handlers start to
hover? - antiwar conservative Pat Buchanan had the most astute (and
timely) analysis on MSNBC's Hardballwith Chris Matthews last night:
"Something like 60 percent of the country do not believe the president
is doing a good job in leading in the war. And I think she has given a
voice and a face and a certain moral authority and authenticity to this
giant protest movement. And Norah [O'Donnel], I'm telling you, I
believe that some Democratic candidate, or some Democratic senator or
governor is going to try to step forward the way McGovern did and Gene
McCarthy did to give political leadership to this movement."
Even as Pat was speaking, his prediction was coming true: Senator Russ
Feingold (D-Wisc.), a prospective Democratic candidate for president,
was telling U.S. News it's time to set a deadline - Dec. 31, 2006 -
for withdrawing our troops from Iraq. He'll make the announcement
today, at a "listening session" in Marquette, Wisc. Said Feingold:
"I call what I am doing breaking the taboo. The senators have been
intimidated and are not talking about a timeframe. We have to make it
safe to go in the water and discuss this. A person shouldn't be accused
of not supporting troops just because we want some clarity on our
mission in Iraq."
The Democrats, Feingold avers, are too timid when it comes to
confronting the president on the war, and he's right about that: it
was, after all, two Republicans, Reps. Walter Jones (R-N.C.) and Ron
Paul (R-Texas), who took the lead in introducing a resolution calling
for the beginning of a U.S. withdrawal no later than Oct. 1, 2006
(although it was co-sponsored from the start by two Democrats, Neil
Abercrombie and Dennis Kucinich, Jones, being a Republican, was more
visible and took the most heat). With national polls showing support
for the war plummeting, it's time for the Democrats to play some
catch-up, but the party honchos are slow to realize their opportunity
- or have ideological problems with doing so. As Ari Berman, writing
in The Nation, put it:
"The prominence of party leaders like [Senator Joseph C.] Biden and
[Hillary] Clinton, and of a slew of other potential prowar candidates
who support the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, presents the
Democrats with an odd dilemma: At a time when the American people are
turning against the Iraq War and favor a withdrawal of U.S. troops, and
British and American leaders are publicly discussing a partial
pullback, the leading Democratic presidential candidates for '08 are
unapologetic war hawks. Nearly 60 percent of Americans now oppose the
war, according to recent polling. Sixty-three percent want U.S. troops
brought home within the next year. Yet a recent National Journal
'insiders poll' found that a similar margin of Democratic members of
Congress reject setting any timetable. The possibility that America's
military presence in Iraq may be doing more harm than good is
considered beyond the pale of 'sophisticated' debate."
That was then, however: this is now. Feingold has thrown down the
gauntlet to the hawkish party hierarchs, held hostage by the
quasi-neocons over at the Democratic "Leadership" Council, and the base
is enthusiastic, to say the least. The country is moving faster than
the know-it-all Democratic "strategists" and their policy-wonk camp
followers: and even one Republican presidential hopeful is quicker on
his feet. When Senator Chuck Hagel, often mentioned as a potential GOP
presidential candidate in '08, travels around his home state of
Nebraska these days, he hears little else but talk of two subjects: the
war and the price of oil. Hagel, like the markets, sees the connection
in the aura of uncertainty created by Bush's war and his reckless
foreign policy, which, he warned earlier this year, could be "worse
than Vietnam." As he told Reuters:
"In an interview, Hagel said uncertainties over Iraq and oil prices fed
off and reinforced each other. 'The mood is one of a certain sense of
unsteadiness,' he said. ... 'I think there's this steady unsure sense
about where is this all leading - the constant daily reports on Iraq,
our people being killed there, the money being spent there.'"
The real dagger pointed at the heart of the War Party isn't the
Democratic mobilization that is even now gathering to bring down the
GOP, it's the people Hagel's been talking to back in Nebraska, all of
them rock-solid Republicans. They will prove decisive in putting the
war plans of the neocons on indefinite hold:
"Hagel said even some who had previously backed Bush strongly on Iraq
now felt deep unease. 'The feeling that I get back here, looking in the
eyes of real people, where I knew where they were two years ago or a
year ago - they've changed,' he said. 'These aren't people who ebb
and flow on issues. These are rock-solid, conservative Republicans who
love their country, support the troops, and support the president.'"
The neoconradio screamers and the Fox News bleach blondes are always
carrying on about how it's "the Left" and "the leftists" who are
driving rising antiwar sentiment across the country, but if you look at
the polls, it just isn't true. Paul Hackett, an Iraq war veteran and a
Democrat running in a heavily Republican district, almost beat the GOP
candidate in a special congressional election in Ohio, winning 48
percent of the vote, against the 52 percent won by Rob Portman, the
Republican incumbent in 2004. The Republicans are running scared on the
war issue, and GOPers are defecting from the ranks of the War Party in
droves:
"'There is just no enthusiasm for this war - nobody is happy about
it,' said Rep. John J. Duncan Jr., R-Tenn., who opposes the war. 'It
certainly is not going to help Republican candidates, I can tell you
that much.' Rep. Wayne Gilchrist, R-Md., who originally supported the
war but has since turned against it, said he had encountered 'a lot of
Republicans grousing about the situation as a whole, and how they have
to respond to a lot of questions back home.'"
The president, however, doesn't have to respond to any questions: he
lives in a bubble, where anyone who contradicts him is summarily exiled
or otherwise intimidated into silence. Word is out that the Bush White
House is beginning to resemble the place during the last days of
Richard Nixon: "Buy beleaguered, overworked White House aides enough
drinks," says one wag, and
"They describe a president whose public persona masks an angry,
obscenity-spouting man who berates staff, unleashes tirades against
those who disagree with him and ends meetings in the Oval Office with
'get out of here!' In fact, George W. Bush's mood swings have become so
drastic that White House e-mails often contain 'weather reports' to
warn of the president's demeanor. 'Calm seas' means Bush is calm while
'tornado alert' is a warning that he is pissed at the world."
The War Party is clearly facing a "tornado alert" this summer, as Cindy
Sheehan focuses the nation's attention on the tragic unwillingness of
the leaders of both parties to confront the Iraq debacle. The mother of
a fallen soldier wants to know why her son had to die - for a lie.
Bush, says Hagel, is faced with a growing "credibility gap," but if the
Democrats don't get up to speed on this issue, they, too, will be hurt
by rising skepticism of our interventionist foreign policy and not only
as it applies to Iraq.
Wartime often transforms party labels, rendering traditional political
categories of "left" and "right," "liberal" and "conservative"
similarly meaningless. We seem to be at the beginning of some such
transformative phrase.
Amid all the debate, the name-calling, and the obfuscating fog of
charges and counter-charges, what is clear to ordinary folks -
Republicans as well as Democrats and independents - is that there are
two wings of the War Party, represented by the leadership of both
"major" parties. That's how we got into this mess to begin with, and
only a break with the political patterns of the past can get us out.
What is developing is a populist rebellion of the grassroots against
the bipartisan pro-war elites, made possible by the emergence of a new
antiwar majority in this country. Half of all Americans now believe the
president "misled" - i.e., lied - them into war. A majority want
out of Iraq within the next year. A third want out now.
The War Party, however, is not going to give up quite so easily.
Arrayed against this antiwar "people power" personified by Cindy
Sheehan is the institutional power and majesty of the pro-war
Establishment. They control the party machinery, major redoubts in the
media, and most of all, the vast egos of major party politicians who
are loath to admit they were wrong. The pro-war politicos don't have to
have the majority behind them: they need only manipulate the levers of
power and tip the balance in their favor.
As long as they can keep the people - and the voters - corralled
inside the two-party system, the authors and enablers of this criminal
war will probably continue in power, defying the antiwar majority.
Working against them, however, is the enormous pressure brought to bear
by the emotional, financial, and military costs of this war, which
could finally cause the dam to break, unleashing the floodgates of
antiwar sentiment in America. On that day, the entire structure and
rationale for our interventionist foreign policy will be swept away,
and the two major parties could count among the casualties. By 2008, as
the war escalates out of control and the full measure of the disaster
that's befallen us becomes apparent, we should be ready for a
Hagel-Feingold peace fusion ticket. (Feingold-Hagel? Whatever!)
Yet it would be foolish to put our trust in politicians, of either -
or any - party, and that's why grassroots demonstrations of
opposition to the war are absolutely essential. The movement started by
Cindy Sheehan and her supporters around the country - 1,500 vigils
held on Wednesday, with more to come - is taking off like a rocket,
and we at Antiwar.comencourage our readers to attend and show their
support. What's more, we need to build the antiwar demonstrations being
held Sept. 24-26: what's needed is a massive mobilization that includes
not only the usual suspects but also antiwar conservatives, military
folks and their families, libertarians, and just plain ordinary people
who don't necessarily want to sign on to a whole laundry list of
leftist causes. Tell the ideologues to leave their hobby horses at
home: it's time to get serious about ending this war before it
escalates beyond the power of anyone to rein it in.
I have long advocated more creative ways than demonstrations, with the
requisite placards and crowd-pleasing speeches, of protesting this war.
Two years ago I offered up the idea of holding teach-ins across the
nation, so as to educate the American public about the possibly quite
horrific consequences of invading Iraq. Well, we have all been teaching
ourselves by simply reading the daily headlines from Iraq and watching
the slaughter on television, as that "liberated" country comes apart at
the seams - and the new rulers usher in a tyranny that is different,
and in some ways worse, than the one that preceded it.
It isn't too late, however, to educate ourselves about how we got
involved in this quagmire, and who exactly dragged us into it. We are
learning more about that every day and will doubtless face new
revelations in the future. Let's organize this process of
self-education, and do more than carry placards: it's time to start
educating the American public about how we got where we are today and
how we can extricate ourselves from this enormous tragedy. Either we do
that, or the disaster overtakes us...
-Justin Raimondo
Find this article at:
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=7009
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