ANTIWAR MOVEMENT : A reawakening begins in Crawford

CINDY SHEEHAN’S decision to camp outside Bush’s ranch until he agrees to meet with her has brought new energy and focus to what had been a fairly invisible antiwar movement. As the Washington Post reported, “Sheehan’s case has echoed as her grievances merged with what polls show is growing dissatisfaction with the war.”

The timing of her vigil couldn’t have been better chosen.

As the resistance continues unchecked in Iraq, and we approach another false turning point-this time, a new Iraqi constitution, cobbled together inside the heavily fortified Green Zone-Bush’s popularity continues to sink.

One recent CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll shows that only 44 percent now support Bush’s decision to go to war. Fifty-four percent, according to a recent Gallup poll now say that sending troops to Iraq was a mistake, up from 46 percent last March.

Indeed, the Bush administration is now, as a recent Washington Post report suggests, “significantly lowering expectations of what can be achieved in Iraq.”

The vigil is bringing into focus the complete arrogance of a president who is so out of touch with popular unease over the war that he won’t even walk down his own driveway to talk to a grieving mother.

Answering questions as to why he won’t meet with Sheehan, Bush actually said, “I think it is also important for me to go on with my life, to keep a balanced life.” Spoken like a president who takes five-week vacations while mothers’ sons die.

Sheehan’s simple message, “I’m the mother, he was my son, and Bush sent him into a war based on lies,” speaks to the tens of thousands of families who have loved ones fighting in Iraq. And now it is a message that is being spread across the country.

An article in the Oakland Tribune reports, “As Sheehan’s story grabbed headlines nationwide, ‘Camp Casey’ grew consistently throughout the week from two lawn chairs to a small village of tents and camper vehicles. A man from Fort Worth, Texas, donated cases of water. Others sent sandwiches and fruit.”

Camp Casey has attracted other people in Sheehan’s position:

Jean Prewitt, 54, of Birmingham, Alabama, came to be with Sheehan and share in her grief. Prewitt’s son, Kelley Prewitt, 24, died in April 2003 while driving an ammunition truck that was ambushed by insurgents.... “I wasn’t against the war when Kelley got killed. And it didn’t change my mind for six months after his death,” said Prewitt in a thick Alabama drawl. “But my mind changed with proof of the war’s lies,” she said.

Camp Casey has already sparked hundreds of local solidarity vigils that will help draw new forces into the antiwar movement who have been inspired by Sheehan’s actions and angered by Bush’s inaction. And Sheehan’s example will spur many more members of military families, Iraq veterans, and soldiers to speak out.

In Sheehan’s speech (in this issue, page 13) at the recent Veterans for Peace convention, she told the audience that “Fifty-eight percent of the American public are with us. We’re preaching to the choir, but not everybody in the choir is singing. If all of the 58 percent started singing, this war would end.” The protest she has initiated is exactly the kind of singing that the movement needs in order to build its profile and give expression to the mass sentiment that is turning against the war.

The timing of this is also important because it will help build momentum for the first major antiwar demonstration in many months-September 24, in San Francisco and Washington, D.C. Both Camp Casey and the September 24 demonstrations offer opportunities to put the movement back into the antiwar movement-and every activist must take advantage of them.

THE DEMOCRATS

Outflanking Bush on the right

IF JOHN Kerry’s “tough on terrorism” posture in last year’s election campaign wasn’t evidence enough of the Democratic Party’s total commitment to projecting American power abroad, leading Democrats are making sure to underscore the point.

Now the Democrats have concluded that Kerry’s problem is that he wasn’t gung ho enough, and that the Democrats need to show more “backbone.”

According to Tim Roemer, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana, Kerry lost the election “because we did not have a compelling national-security message.”

Leave aside for a moment, that if anything, Kerry lost the election because his positions on the key questions on voters’ minds-crucially, the war in Iraq-was indistinguishable in many respects from Bush.

Plans are now underway to “rebrand” the party: “Democrats have begun to develop a more aggressive foreign policy,” reported the Boston Globe on August 14, “that focuses heavily on threats they say are being neglected by the Bush administration, while avoiding taking a contentious stance on Iraq.”

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton calls for building “the strongest military in the world,” former President Bill Clinton favors adding 80,000 more troops to the military, and House minority leader Nancy Pelosi criticizes Bush for not doing enough to stop North Korea and Iran.

A recent report by leading Democrats calls, among other things, for the U.S. to apply more military pressure in its negotiations with the two countries, including “the possibility of repeated and unwarned strikes.”

This (not really so new) bellicose posturing is underscored by the party’s open commitment to unilateral military action. In the words of Senator Joseph Biden, ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: “Force will be used-without asking anyone’s permission-when circumstances warrant.”

According to the Globe report, “While Democrats criticize President Bush for mistakes in Iraq, the party is neither calling for a pullout nor pushing for an escalation.”

In short, they are positioning themselves to be critical of Bush’s foreign policy from the right.

This may be dressed up as something new, but it is a policy almost completely indistinguishable from Kerry’s, who criticized Bush for not “getting the job done” in Iraq, and for coddling North Korea and Iran.

The Democrats are presenting themselves as an alternative to Bush. But not to the majority of people in the U.S. who think the war on Iraq was a mistake and want the troops to come home. Rather, they are appealing to the ruling class-based on the argument that they can more effectively promote American imperialism abroad than Bush and Co.

When this is combined with the Democrats’ failure to oppose Bush’s Supreme Court nominee, John Roberts, and Democrats like New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson declaring a state of emergency along the border in order to position himself as tough on “homeland security,” the rightward drift of the Democrats comes clearly into focus.

Groups like Progressive Democrats of America are trying to rehabilitate the Democrats as an alternative to Bush, ironically, at the very moment the party is trying to display its imperial teeth.

Some Democrats are, it is true, beginning to make noises about the Iraq War. That is a welcome development, because it shows that the combined pressure of the impasse in Iraq and growing opposition at home is having an effect. It’s a mistake to think that the Democratic Party can be a vehicle to advance the antiwar movement’s aims. A dozen John Conyers resolutions about the Downing Street memo aren’t worth anything when the party’s chief foreign policy spokespeople are firmly prowar. This is a party to which no activist sincerely committed to bringing the troops home should offer his or her support.

http://www.isreview.org/issues/43/editorials.shtml