Why Cindy Sheehan needs to shut up (or at least get on point)
It was when she was speaking at the Operation Ceasefire event last weekend not about how her son died for a war that was based on lies but rather about how the Iraqi constitution needed to protect the rights of women that I began to think we might be losing some oomph here.
And then when the speaker from Alliance to End the Israeli Occupation spoke, I seriously thought we had gone off the tracks.
And today I found myself actually agreeing with a column by Charles Krauthammer, who normally I find to be a pompous asshole.
Bad Choice for an Antiwar Voice
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, September 30, 2005; Page A19
Okay, it's absurd to call the Afghanistan War "remarkably successful" but it was at least a worthwhile war, one that most of the reasonable left supported, and one that probably demands more resources to finish the job, not pullout.
Can we get the fuck rid of ANSWER too while we're at it? Though I tend to agree with most of their stuff, they're a terrible figurehead for the anti-war movement, considering 99% of the anti-war public probably has major disagreements with ANSWER's positions on non-Iraq issues.
And then when the speaker from Alliance to End the Israeli Occupation spoke, I seriously thought we had gone off the tracks.
And today I found myself actually agreeing with a column by Charles Krauthammer, who normally I find to be a pompous asshole.
Bad Choice for an Antiwar Voice
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, September 30, 2005; Page A19
A large number of Americans feel deep and understandable unease about the war in Iraq and want nothing more than to pull out. But the antiwar movement is singularly disserved by its leadership, such as it is. Its de facto leader is Cindy Sheehan...
[...]
The antiwar movement has found itself ill served by endowing absolute moral authority on a political radical who demanded that American troops leave not just Iraq but "occupied New Orleans." Who blames Israel for her son's death. Who complained that the news media went "100 percent rita" -- "a little wind and a little rain" -- rather than covering other things in the world, meaning her.
Most tellingly, Sheehan demands withdrawal not just from Iraq but also from Afghanistan, a war that is not only just by every possible measure but also remarkably successful.
Okay, it's absurd to call the Afghanistan War "remarkably successful" but it was at least a worthwhile war, one that most of the reasonable left supported, and one that probably demands more resources to finish the job, not pullout.
You don't build a mass movement on that. Nor on antiwar rallies like the one last weekend in Washington, organized and run by a front group for the Workers World Party. The WWP is descended from Cold War Stalinists who found other communists insufficiently rigorous for refusing to support the Soviet invasion of Hungary. Thus a rally ostensibly against war is run by a group that supported the Soviet invasions of Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan, the massacre in Tiananmen Square, and a litany of the very worst mass murderers of our time, including Slobodan Milosevic, Hussein and Kim Jong Il. You don't seize the moral high ground in America with fellow travelers such as these.
Can we get the fuck rid of ANSWER too while we're at it? Though I tend to agree with most of their stuff, they're a terrible figurehead for the anti-war movement, considering 99% of the anti-war public probably has major disagreements with ANSWER's positions on non-Iraq issues.
posted by bda at 2:25 PM
10 Comments:
Krauthammer is full of shit. Yes, you can build a mass movement on the basis of an anti-war movement. How does he think the left united in support of free speech, women's rights, the Chicano movement, and other important movements in the 70s?
Moreover, it was the Wobblies and the Socialists (also anti-war) who provided the creative ideas that the Democratic Party adopted under FDR to save this country and its "capitalists" during the Great Depression.
Krauthammer is spouting the same-old Ronald Reagan knee-jerk anti-Communist bullshit that keeps bubbling up in this country and impeding real reform in areas like universal healthcare, universal, quality training and education, and the development of a fair tax code that would prevent the hoarding of wealth by the privileged classes.
Just because a group or organization believes in the principles of socialism doesn't mean they supported the atrocities of Stalin, the invasion of Hungary in 56, or the repression of free speech in China at any time.
It is time to grow up and quit using the Boogey-Man criticism that a group is linked to socialists to condemn the group's ideas.
If the ideas have flaws, let's criticize the flaws. Until then, to crtiticize Answer simply because a hack like Krauthammer digs up dirty laundry is not very productive for us left-wingers.
You say:
Krauthammer is full of shit. Yes, you can build a mass movement on the basis of an anti-war movement.
On this I too disagree with Krauthammer. I believe you can build a mass movement on the basis of an anti-war movement. But I agree with him that Cindy Sheehan has ceased to be -- and ANSWER never was -- an appropriate foundation or voice or leader for a real and credible anti-war movement.
Now Sheehan is saying her son's death wasn't worth it because the Iraqi Constitution doesn't protect womens' rights? How is that on point?
The criticism of ANSWER 1) is not just from the right, many on the left suggest we need a better front, and 2) is based on far more than guilt by association.
ANSWER publicly (on its website) supports:
Ending what it describes as the colonial occupation of Palestine.
Ending US threats of action against North Korea.
Pulling US troops out of the Phillipines
Pulling US troops out of Puerto Rico
I submit that we risk alienating people by not focusing on JUST the war in Iraq.
As Michelle Goldberg has written in Salon:
"One reason I've focused on ANSWER is that I believe they help the right discredit the millions of citizens who oppose Bush because they hate what he's doing to America, not because they hate America itself."
I agree.
The "dirty laundry" is dirty and is cause for concern. As Goldberg wrote in Salon:
That's because the politics of the group behind it, the International Action Center, are anathema to most Americans -- including the vast majority of people who oppose a U.S. war on Iraq. IAC opposes any action against Saddam, including containment. "It is the position of the International Action Center that Iraq, as part of its self-determination, has the right to a military force sufficient to defend itself," says a 1999 statement. Its Web site is a cornucopia of empty lefty hyperbole that boils down to the notion that, as Richard Becker, IAC's western region co-director writes, "No one in the world ... has a worse human rights record than the United States."
Its call for the "workers movement here in the heartland of imperialism" to rise up is not a message that will stir great numbers of Americans. Neither is the ideology of the group behind the Oct. 6 protest, Not In Our Name, which was started and is being run by founders of a New York-based radical activist group called Refuse & Resist, who are closely tied to the Maoist-inspired Revolutionary Communist Party.
Yet as extreme as these groups are, they remain the two most prominent ones organizing large-scale antiwar protests. Though they've been cagey about the fanatical aspects of their agenda -- most of IAC's Iraq organizing is done through a front group called ANSWER -- Gitlin says, "the capacity of this movement to grow depends on what it has to say," and what these two groups have to say may alienate even people horrified by Bush's war mongering.
The International Action Center and the Revolutionary Communist Party aren't just extremists in the service of a good cause -- they're cheerleaders for some of the most sinister regimes and insurgencies on the planet. Once people realize this, it could easily discredit any nascent antiwar movement, unless a more rational group moves to the forefront.
The IAC, which is particularly active on college campuses, was founded by former attorney general-turned-radical anti-imperialist Ramsey Clark, who, as Gitlin points out, is also a member of the International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic. It's a group that has close links to the Workers World Party (IAC's spokesman, Brian Becker, also churns out communiqués for the party's newspaper) and is a staunch defender of North Korea. An IAC dispatch from Pyongyang reads: "The army-first policy has guaranteed a strong, healthy, well-disciplined fighting force despite several years of arduous conditions for the people of socialist North Korea. It represents a sacrifice the people are proud of, and their respect for those in uniform is unmistakable, as is the élan of the fighting forces ... The land, factories, homes, hotels, parks, schools, hospitals, offices, museums, buses, subways -- everything in [North Korea] belongs to the people as a whole."
http://www.salon.com/politics/feature/2002/10/16/protest/
There's also some excellent coverage of this problem in The Georgetown Voice of all papers:
http://www.georgetownvoice.com/media/paper246/news/2003/01/30/Cover/In.The.AntiWar.Movement.Is.Only.One.A.n.w.e.r.Right-355471.shtml?page=1
But even if the coalition is "broad-based," that doesn't change the fact that its leadership puts a radical face on the organization, critics say. Chuck Munson is a longtime D.C. activist who has been involved with the Mobilization for Global Justice and the Anti-Capitalist Convergence and currently runs the website infoshop.org. Munson stressed that simply labeling ANSWER a "front group" for the Workers World Party is misleading, but did claim that "their organizational goals revolve around promoting the best interests of the [WWP]."
In any case, Munson claims that the leaders' politics are nevertheless detrimental to the anti-war effort as a whole, as war supporters use ANSWER's political background to smear the peace movement. "The skeletons in their closet add lots of negative baggage to the peace movement," Munson said. "The pro-war side is already mentioning the WWP's long-standing support for anti-U.S. dictators."
Democrat wars are good.
Republican wars are bad.
Rich people are bad, unless they are Democrat rich people.
Only issues liberals care about are good.
Conservatives are bad because we say so.
We hate Bush because he's in the white house. What do you mean we need an actual reason?
We shouldn't be in iraq because it wasn't a democrat who started that war. The point of being anti-war after all is to uproot the guy in power. If it were bill clinton we would say good things about it.
Bombs with a D are good R bombs are bad. Oh but F-bombs are good on TV unless we have a democrat running in a conservative state.
Hey we didn't complain about carpet bombing kosovo. That was a mission of misdirection.. i mean mercy yeah.. whew! No dog wagging here. Nope... *tail wagging*
We were saving muslims thats good. Christians and jews? Thats bad unless a democrat authorizes the mission.
hypocrites!!! PPPPBBBT
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