Anti-War Movement in the Age of Obama
Stephen Shamir
It appears that most liberal opponents of the wars in the Middle East/ Central Asia have ceased their opposition with the Obama presidency. The liberal Democrats who abhorred Bush's
war policy (and most grass roots liberal Democrats did vehemently oppose the
Bush war policy although this was not always the case with liberal politicians
and media figures) apparently were simply opposed to wars led by
Republicans. As Byron York, a conservative,
writes in the first article below: "For many liberal activists,
opposing the war was really about opposing George W. Bush. When Bush
disappeared, so did their anti-war passion." Anti-war protest leader, Cindy
Sheehan, agrees completely, stating: "The 'anti-war' 'left' was used by
the Democratic Party. I like to call it the 'anti-Republican War' movement."
Obama is perceived as a liberal, a man of peace, and
a charismatic figure, which enables him to get away with things that had been
impossible for Bush the Younger. Thus Obama
can say such things as the war in Afghanistan is "fundamental to
the defense of our people" and not be savaged by the former critics of the
war. This is not to say that the former anti-war people have become
cheerleaders for war. Rather, they have become largely indifferent to
it. Their attention has been largely diverted to the health care issue, the
economy, the environment, or some other liberal cause. This political indifference
has given Obama a virtual freehand in military
policy. The most dangerous possible development is war with Iran , which is sought by Israel and its Lobby.
Escalating American involvement in Afghanistan
along with the continued American occupation of Iraq allows for incidents with Iran (or incidents blamed on Iran ) that could lead to war.
If Obama keeps sagging in the polls--due to the
health care reform issue, a continuing problematic economy, and other domestic
difficulties- - an aggressive foreign policy might likely be seen as a necessary
political ploy. Even if war is not the deliberate goal, an
aggressive policy, such as a naval blockade of Iran to enforce an embargo of
various supplies (proposed in Congress in 2008), certainly brings a high risk
of all-out war. .
The liberal Obama would seem to better able to expand
the wars than the conservative Bush. As Justin Raimondo
has written: "it occurs to me that only Barack Obama, who won the White House in large part due to his opposition
to the Iraq war, could take
us to war with Iran ,
and rally liberals and much of the left behind it." http://original. antiwar.com/ justin/2009/ 07/16/obamas- war-signals/
This represents the Nixon-goes-to- China analogy. Just as Nixon with
his anti-Communist bona fides had more political leeway to negotiate with Communist
China than a liberal Democrat, the liberal man of peace Obama
is better positioned politically to expand the wars in the Middle East/Central Asia than Bush the Younger, who was perceived as a warmonger. (To counter this argument, it might be
pointed out that liberal Democrats did attack Lyndon Johnson over Vietnam .
However, despite Johnson's success in pushing through liberal domestic
legislation, he was never the darling of American liberals and certainly did
not have the charismatic appeal of Obama.)
This scenario will not fully come to pass until Obama
actually involves the US in
war with Iran .
But while a war with Iran
is certainly politically feasible, the question is whether Obama
would actually take such an option since the national security and foreign
policy elites outside the orbit of the Israel Lobby are against such a risky
venture.
http://www.washingt onexaminer. com/politics/ For-the-Left_ -war-without- Bush-is-not- war-at-all- 8119694-53506047 .html
For the Left, war without Bush is not war at all
By: Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent
August 18, 2009
Remember the anti-war movement? Not too long ago, the Democratic party's most loyal voters passionately opposed the war in Iraq .
Democratic presidential candidates argued over who would withdraw American
troops the quickest. Netroots activists regularly
denounced President George W. Bush, and sometimes the U.S. military ("General Betray
Us"). Cindy Sheehan, the woman whose soldier son
was killed in Iraq , became a
heroine when she led protests at Bush's Texas
ranch.
That was then. Now, even though the United States still has roughly 130,000 troops
in Iraq, and is quickly escalating the war in Afghanistan -- 68,000 troops
there by the end of this year, and possibly more in 2010 -- anti-war voices on
the Left have fallen silent.
No group was more angrily opposed to the war in Iraq than the netroots
activists clustered around the left-wing Web site DailyKos.
It's an influential site, one of the biggest on the Web, and in the Bush years
many of its devotees took an active role in raising money and campaigning for anti-war
candidates.
In 2006, DailyKos held its first annual convention,
called YearlyKos, in Las Vegas . Amid the slightly discordant
surroundings of the Riviera Hotel casino, the webby activists spent hours
discussing and planning strategies not only to defeat Republicans but also to
pressure Democrats to oppose the war more forcefully. The gathering attracted
lots of mainstream press attention; Internet activism was the hot new thing.
Fast forward to last weekend, when YearlyKos, renamed
Netroots Nation, held its convention in Pittsburgh . The meeting
didn't draw much coverage, but the views of those who attended are still, as
they were in 2006, a pretty good snapshot of the left wing of the Democratic party.
The news that emerged is that the wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan
have virtually fallen off the liberal radar screen. Kossacks
(as fans of DailyKos like to call themselves) who
were consumed by the Iraq war when George W. Bush was president are now, with Barack Obama in the White House,
not so consumed, either with Iraq or with Obama's
escalation of the conflict in Afghanistan. In fact, they barely seem to care.
As part of a straw poll done at the convention, the Democratic pollster Stanley
Greenberg presented participants with a list of policy priorities like health
care and the environment. He asked people to list the two priorities they
believed "progressive activists should be focusing their attention and
efforts on the most." The winner, by far, was "passing comprehensive
health care reform." In second place was enacting "green energy
policies that address environmental concerns."
And what about "working to end our military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan "? It was way down
the list, in eighth place. Perhaps more
tellingly, Greenberg asked activists to name the issue that "you,
personally, spend the most time advancing currently." The winner, again,
was health care reform. Next came "working to elect progressive candidates
in the 2010 elections." Then came a bunch of
other issues. At the very bottom -- last place, named by just one percent of
participants -- came working to end U.S. involvement in Iraq
and Afghanistan .
It's an extraordinary change in the mindset of the left. I attended the first YearlyKos convention, and have kept up with later ones, and
it's safe to say that for many self-styled "progressives," the war in
Iraq
was the animating cause of their activism. They hated the war, and they hated
George W. Bush for starting it. Or maybe they hated the war because George W.
Bush started it. Either way, it was war, war, war.
Now, not so much.
Cindy Sheehan is learning that. She's still protesting the war, and on Monday
she announced plans to demonstrate at Martha's Vineyard ,
where President Obama will be vacationing.
"We as a movement need to continue calling for an immediate end to the occupations
[in Iraq and Afghanistan ]
even when there is a Democrat in the Oval Office," Sheehan said in a
statement. "There is still no Noble Cause no matter how we examine the
policies."
Give her credit for consistency, if nothing else. But her days are over. The people
who most fervently supported her have moved on.
Not too long ago, some observers worried that Barack Obama would come under increasing pressure from the Left to
leave both Iraq and Afghanistan .
Now, it seems those worries were unfounded. For many liberal activists,
opposing the war was really about opposing George W. Bush. When Bush
disappeared, so did their anti-war passion.
------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- ------ http://www.washingt onexaminer. com/opinion/ blogs/beltway- confidential/ What-happened- to-the-antiwar- movement- -Cindy-Sheehan- responds- 53628177. html
Washington
Examiner
What happened to the antiwar movement? Cindy Sheehan responds.
By: Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent
After my column, "For the left, war without Bush is not war at all," appeared
Tuesday, I got a note from Cindy Sheehan, the anti-war activist who was the
subject of so much press coverage when she led a protest against the Iraq war
outside then-President George W. Bush's ranch in Texas. This is what the
note said:
I read your column about the "anti-war" movement and I can't believe
I am saying this, but I mostly agree with you.
The "anti-war" "left" was used by the Democratic Party. I
like to call it the "anti-Republican War" movement.
While I agree with you about the hypocrisy of such sites as the DailyKos, I have known for a long time that the Democrats
are equally responsible with the Republicans. That's why I left the party in
May 2007 and that's why I ran for Congress against Nancy Pelosi in 2008.
I have my own radio show, "Cindy Sheehan's Soapbox," and I was out on
a four-month book tour promoting the fact that it's not about Democrats or Republicans,
but it's about the system.
Even if I am surrounded by a thousand, or no one, I am still working for peace.
Sincerely,
Cindy Sheehan
After receiving the email, I asked Sheehan to give me a call, so I could verify
that the note in fact came from her. She did, and we discussed her plans
to protest next week in Martha's Vineyard ,
where President Obama will be vacationing.
"I think people are starting to wake up to the fact that even if they
supported Obama, he doesn't represent much
change," Sheehan said. "There are people still out here who
oppose the war and Obama's policies, but it seems
like the big organizations with the big lists aren't here."
I asked Sheehan about the fact that the press seems to have lost interest in her
and her cause. "It's strange to me that you mention it," she
said. "I haven't stopped working. I've been protesting every
time I can, and it's not covered. But the one time I did get a lot of
coverage was when I protested in front of George Bush's house in Dallas in June. I
don't know what to make of it. Is the press having a honeymoon with Obama? I know the Left is."
After the protests in Massachusetts -- Sheehan
told me she has no idea how many people might show up -- Sheehan will be in Washington October 5, for a protest at the White House to
mark the eight anniversary of the start of the war in Afghanistan . Not only is the
president escalating the war there, she said, but he's not withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq as quickly as he originally
promised. "That's why I was opposed to him," she said.
Let Obama
be Obama?
Written by Zoltan Zigedy
for Marxist-Leninism Today
Disenchantment is setting in... Among those who describe themselves as
"progressives" (an umbrella-term re-invented to avoid the pejoration of "liberal" and to encompass liberals
and the non-Marxist left), the infatuation with
President-elect Obama has began to sour. As thousands
prepared to join the inaugural celebrations in DC, the announcement that
Reverend Rick Warren would invoke the ceremonies sparked a decided outcry from
progressive Obama supporters. The right-centrist
Cabinet appointments - earlier indications of Obama's
governing posture - were largely sloughed off by left supporters as Lincoln-esque maneuvers or practical accommodations. But honoring Warren stretched the
credulity of even the most smitten. While Warren
has shown a tad more tolerance and compassion than the worst of the evangelical
right, he is still a member-in-good- standing of the cabal of fire and brimstone
reactionaries.
Who is Obama?
Has Obama betrayed his progressive promise? Obama never made a progressive promise. The idea of Obama as a water-bearer for liberal or progressive reform
came not from Obama's mouth, but from the sheer
wishes and dreams of the left. They took the vacuity of the "change"
slogan as something more than the usual hyperbole of two-party politics despite
the fact that it is hurled at every lame duck or incumbent. They saw
rhetorical, fuzzy commitments to constituents of the Democratic Party base as
more than they have been in every previous Democratic campaign. They took
youth, energy, and elequence as a mark of liberalism
in a way not seen since the JFK campaign. In short, Obama
ran a predictable, well executed Democratic Party Presidential campaign and the
left took it to be a people's crusade.
The "democratic" component of the campaign - the internet engagement
- was seen as a departure from business-as- usual even though it was used
effectively by Howard Dean four years earlier and spawned no new, progressive
movement. It is not yet clear how the post-election internet pollings will differ from the numerous Democratic Party
postal fund-raising appeals that I receive, masquerading as polls. Republican
strategists are now planning a similar "grass roots" strategy for
coming elections. The mass mobilizations may well have surpassed previous ones,
though, as in past campaigns, the organizers asked for no programmatic
commitments or concessions. The efforts were gratefully received as
"gifts" and not leverage.
Obama has effectively postured as his political
career demanded. His social agency beginnings in Chicago coincided with the mayoral incumbency
of an authentic progressive and reformer, Harold Washington. Yet there were no
strong ties to either Washington 's
program nor his legacy.
Obama took liberal positions while dependent in his
political advancement upon the liberal Hyde Park
constituency and, at the same time, courted moneyed interests in Chicago -
interests that would boost his advancement even more. His subsequent career
generally followed these lines, balancing policy positions with constituency
and fund-sourcing. In this regard, Obama's career
parallels that of other centrist Democrats, no better or worse. But certainly
nothing in Obama's career would warrant counting him
among the Democratic Party's more progressive leaders, for example, Dennis
Kucinich or John Conyers.
In fairness, Obama has betrayed no one. His vast
centrist following and the Democratic Party Old Guard have shown no fear of Obama's perceived "progressive" agenda, an agenda
that appears to be more and more in the minds of a self-deluding left. Obama's appointments and positions have produced no panic
among big capital, which showered an unprecedented amount of financial support
onto his campaign.
Fifty-six years ago, Walter Lippmann, an astute
political observer, made similar observations about a Democratic Party nominee
named "Franklin Roosevelt". As cited in Frederick Lewis Allen's Since Yesterday:
Walter Lippmann warned those Western Democrats who
regarded Roosevelt as a courageous progressive and an "enemy of evil
influences" that they did not know their man.
"Franklin D. Roosevelt" wrote Lippmann, "is an amiable man with many philanthropic impulses, but he is not the dangerous enemy of anything. He is too eager to please.... Franklin D. Roosevelt is no crusader. He is no tribune of the people. He is no enemy of entrenched privilege. He is a pleasant man who, without any important qualifications for the office, would very much like to be President".
Lippmann's assessment of Roosevelt
before his election loosely fits our President-elect. Of course Roosevelt went
on to be celebrated as the father of the New Deal and the symbol of the US
welfare-state, such as it was. But as every careful read of the Great
Depression history shows, the New Deal reforms were the result of independent
mass pressure enabling and forcing these changes.