Will Murtha's Plan Damage The Anti-War Movement?

Representative John Murtha (D, PA) has a plan to end the war in Iraq (though at the moment he’s selling it only as a way to end "The Surge."). This plan is based on attaching conditions to Bush’s "emergency appropriation" request. It has the backing of Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the House Democratic leadership, and presumably of those significant allies within the military’s High Command with whom Murtha has legendary ties going back decades.

The Murtha plan also serves to provide cover for elected officials, especially Democrats, who are facing intensifying pressure to take strong action to end this fiasco pronto. That pressure comes from (perhaps through would be more apt) a resurgent anti-war/anti-occupation movement which is moving powerfully forward on a broad front these days. The Murtha plan is bound, and perhaps designed, to put obstacles in the path of that advance, and to change the balance of forces within the anti-war movement and its focus.

This piece will summarize the Murtha plan, touch very briefly on its actual prospects for success and then discuss its very serious implications for the anti-war movement.

THE MURTHA PLAN

I recommend that anyone wanting to understand the political terrain anti-war activists will be facing watch the video interview with him posted at MoveCongress.org a couple of days ago. It fleshes out what has been in the press about the Murtha plan, and shows the subtle thinking and the flexibility that has the Right in a foam-flecked attack frenzy.

First, let me state at the outset that I think Murtha genuinely wants to end the occupation of Iraq as soon as possible, and has for some time. He fears the enormous harm it is doing to his beloved Marine Corps and the military as a whole, and he recognizes, like many, that the occupation is lost. And unlike many politicians, he has had the guts to take a stand. His November 2005 call for complete rapid "redeployment" out of Iraq--no timelines, no benchmarks, no phased withdrawal, no residual forces—changed the terms of the debate over the war greatly and for the better. (I also liked that, when asked about what he meant by "over the horizon" redeployment, he suggested Okinawa would be a good place.)

His MoveCongress.org talk lays out a strategy based around the upcoming debate on Bush’s latest trip back to the "emergency appropriation" well—a request for $93 billion this time. In hearings in the House Appropriatioons Defense Subcommittee, which he runs, conditions will be attached to the bill.

Moreover, the most prominent conditions are couched as defense of the troops: No troops to be redeployed to Iraq without a year intervening, and then only if they are certified as being fully retrained and equipped. No more extensions of deployment (which would mean that one year, boots on the ground, would be the maximum). No more Stop Loss, the dreaded "Back Door Draft" that snatches men and women with a few months or weeks left of their service commitment and sends them back into harm’s way for another full tour.

Murtha presents this as a way to stop any further escalation of the US presence in Iraq (and with most of the remnants of the Coalition of the Willing eying the exits, the occupation is the US, a shrinking contingent of Brits, and mercenaries, period). In fact, to a military strapped for troops, with a brutal optempo, sinking morale and barrel-bottom-scraping recruiting practices, this would make anything like the current occupation impossible to sustain any longer.

What’s more, Murtha says he intends to include a clause requiring that the US announce that it will not seek permanent bases in Iraq, which rules out keeping a toehold (meaning a trigger point for re-invasion). He also talks about mandating the closing of Abu Ghraib and even Guantanamo.

The mechanisms through which all this will be enforced are unclear, but the general idea appears to be that the money will be released in batches and failure to comply with the bill’s requirements at one stage will immediately result in the sequestration of the next batch.

WHAT WILL HAPPEN?

Will this pass? We’ll see. And to go into effect, it’ll have to get the Senate’s okay too.

Would it stop the war? Quite possibly, but with a couple of very important caveats. First, almost any scenario for ending or downsizing the war other than waiting until January 2009 may well lead to a Constitutional crisis. Faced by a funds cutoff or by a veto-proof bill calling for withdrawal or a revocation of the war powers bill, Bush will try and keep the war going. Though Murtha’s strategy is gradualist, there are potentially a lot of separate trigger points for such a crisis. Second, it would take a long time to end the occupation this way, time in which the devastation of Iraq will continue unabated, troops will die and be wounded and the damage to the US itself will deepen.

Will it lead to impeachment? It would be foolhardy to predict that now.

Will it help position the Democrats for the 2008 elections? Funny you should ask. By not choking off funding for the war now (or when the 2008 emergency appropriation comes up), they get to run against Bush and his failed war all over again. Never mind the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi men, women and children who will die between now and then. Never mind the tens of thousands of troops who will be killed or wounded.

THE ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT’S PLAN

Before it does anything whatsoever to bring the end of the war closer, this approach has the potential to do real damage to the anti-war movement. That movement, let me underline, is on a roll. The January 27 demo was large and determined and far broader than generally understood, campuses are stepping up, resolutions against the war are in play at the state level instead of just in cities, local activities are doing very well. And there has been intense focus on Congress and stopping the funding as the key to stopping the war.

Therein, of course, lies the rub. Congress has been the focus of anti-war strategy for a long time now, as activists and everyday people alike realized that how intent Bush administration was on "staying the course" (and possibly rolling double or nothing in Iran). Mass disapproval and indeed seething anger were not gonna change much of anything in the White House. Congresscritters on the other hand are clearly more susceptible to mass pressure, especially after the wholesale rubbishing of Republican candidates in the November election.

Thus lobbying, petitions and other pressure tactics have been intensified even more than demonstrations and broadly-directed educational activities. Some organizations like Progressive Democrats of America and Military Families Speak Out have mobilized to really bear down on this, supported by United For Peace and Justice and other groups in the mainstream of the anti-war movement. One whole new effort, the Occupation Project, sponsored by the Committee for Non-Violent Action, represents a bold ramping up of this approach. They’ve been occupying Congressional offices, demanding that the Senator or Representative targeted agree to vote against the "Emergency Supplemental"--in the case of those who’ve declared their opposition to the occupation but done squat, to put their money where their mouths are.

Absent a serious worsening of the situation on the ground in Iraq, it has been a long shot that we would be able to cut off the funding this time. On the other hand, all it would take would be defeat of the $93 billion appropriation by a simple majority vote in either house. No need to get the same bill agreed to by both houses, to beat back a filibuster in the Senate, to overturn a presidential veto. One more "No" than "Yes" vote, and that’s that (or rather, here comes the Constitutional crisis).

TWO PLANS COLLIDE

The Murtha strategy and its adoption by the Congressional Dems knock this topsy-turvy. First off, it gives pro-war, waffling, and anti-war but gutless elected officials an out: "I’d love to vote against Bush’s request, but we are using the appropriation to turn the tide and start bringing the war home." It may even increase pressure on the more principled souls who have voted against emergency appropriations in the past to fall in line now.

(How much pressure will depend on how smart the Republicans play this. Suppose that they can stay united on voting against Murtha’s booby-trapped version. Suppose further that they put their opposition in terms of not getting in the way of the troops—after all, at this point nobody’s likely to rally behind, "We can’t tie the President’s hands." Too many people would like to see his feet tied, too, and wired to the engine block of a 1947 DeSoto and dropped in the Potomac. How many Dems will vote "No" if it means joining the Republicans in trying to block the Murtha plan?)

Second, it sets up the folks who have been working hardest on pressuring Congress to defund for a big, fat demoralizing hit.

Third, and more broadly, if the Democrats and a bunch of Republican allies go with the Murtha approach, gradualism becomes the order of the day. We will be back to politicians and pundits talking about timetables and phased withdrawals and benchmarks and all the rest of the think tank nonsense we had to fight to sweep away in 2003 and 2004. Once again we will have to blaze a path our way through thickets of policy wonkery to keep to the fore the simple demands that more and more people in this country are uniting around: Stop The Occupation! Bring Them Home Now!

This is already happening. Tom Hayden has jumped out with a convoluted plan that amounts to dumping the current puppet government and somehow getting the Iraqis to set up a new one. These puppets would then demand that the US withdraw all troops within six months to a year. Oh yeah, and the new regime will also establish a cease-fire among the militias and call an international conference to "fill the vacuum." And people like him claim it’s "not realistic" to demand that the US government just end the occupation!)

Fourth, it has the potential to drive a wedge into the critically important movement of Iraq veterans and active duty troops who are speaking out against the war. With Iraq Veterans Against the War and the Appeal For Redress leading the way, more and more soldiers are coming to the anti-war side. Murtha’s approach, cast as it is as a defense of the troops and a way to enhance their capacity to fight, thus making it eassier to isolate those who attack the occupation as insane and unjustifiable and call for its immediate end.

Finally, it gives a big boost to the more reformist Beltway-based opponents of the war, as opposed to the left, progressive, pacifist, and just plain fed-up folks who are the rank and file of the peace movement. They will again claim a disproportionate share of resources and media attention. Meanwhile, grassroots opponents of the occupation will get discouraged or quickly grow more radical (the latter being just fine with me, but concerning if it comes at the expense of weakening or sidetracking the anti-war movement.)

What do readers think of this take on developments, and what do you think should be done about it? I’ll save my few suggestions about how the anti-war movement might respond to this turn of events for a later post, but as a sneak preview let me leave you with two words: Iraq Moratorium.

[crossposted at DailyKos]

Read more!

Today In DC: This One Counts!

[Some thoughts on the current conjuncture, triggered by reading the FRSO/OSCL statement,
"Deepen the Struggle to Defund the War"]

Who here hasn’t felt the momentum and intensity growing as today’s demonstration against the occupation of Iraq drew closer? I think this reflects many people’s sense, perhaps unconscious, that we are in a very unusual situation. In fact, popular mobilizations right now have the potential to have far greater impact than they might normally.

Briefly, the powers-that-be in the US are finally starting to face the fact that they are in a box--they can’t afford to leave Iraq and they can’t afford to stay in Iraq. And they can’t find anyone with a relatively painless plan to get them out of the box. The dilemma is reflected in the new Congress, where the Democratic majority wants to appear strongly anti-Bush, anti-escalation, even anti-war, but is unwilling—so far--to take decisive action to bring the troops home.

With no program for ending the debacle claiming big momentum so far, it’s up to us, the people of this country, to take the initiative. Our demands will be heard, because they cannot at this point be subsumed into or co-opted by mealy-mouthed, half-stepping, hidden-agenda-laden political projects. If we mobilize broadly and struggle intelligently we can shape in significant degree how this issue gets debated, resolved and brought to a close.

How do we come to be in this interesting conjuncture?

The wholesale rejection of the Republicans in November, fueled more than anything else by a rejection of the war and occupation, created a set of expectations in broad sections of the people that now things would have to change. These expectations were further fed by the dumping of Rumsfeld and the media ballyhoo around the Iraq Study Group report, a complex and worthless plan aimed mainly at covering Bush's ass while it steered him toward a draw-down of troops.

But as the year ended, the Dems showed no signs of doing anything substantive toward ending the war, and Bush was treating the report with evident scorn, increasing popular unease.

Then three things hit hard within a ten day span. First, the botched execution of Saddam (a reminder that the "goal" of dumping him was a worthless one). Second, the death of the 3000th US troop.

Finally, Bush's announcement of "the surge." November’s "anti-war" majority in the 2006 elections had somehow morphed into an escalation in practice. This galvanized broad sentiment that something must be done to stop him and start ending the occupation.

All of this has put the Congressional Democrats in a bind. Their plan was to do the "First 100 Hours" thing of spending January passing popular legislative gimmes, and let Iraq slide as long as possible. Instead, they have been forced to face the issue squarely and watch their big legislative program rendered a sideshow. Now they, along with many Republicans in Congress, are scrambling to figure out what to do.

As argued above, their confusion reflects the confusion in ruling class circles, where the ugly truth can no longer be ducked. The high and mighty cannot afford the catastrophic defeat of leaving Iraq and all that lovely oil and the global power a hand on that spigot carries with it. But they can't afford to stay and become global pariahs while their crisis of legitimation at home deepens and their military rolls toward the breaking point. Finally, like Congress, they have no unity on a way forward.

In such a situation the role of the people becomes key, and our ability to shape the course of events greater.

Let me draw three conclusions from this rough-hewn analysis.

First, this is a time for unstinting activity. However successful January 27 turns out to be, people must redouble anti-war activism at a local level. It would be most desirable if United for Peace & Justice (UFPJ) or a "supergroup"-style coalition like the one assembled at the call of US Labor Against the War in Spring 2006 were to put out a call for an Iraq Moratorium. One day a month where millions of people do something, as much as they are individually prepared to do, against the war, even if that's just signing a petition or calling a Congressional office. Collective actions like vigils or teach-ins are better, militant actions like high school blowouts or building occupations better still (though here clarity around why some person or institution is a target is particularly important).

Second, the target at the moment is Congress. The current situation, with various proposals being floated and entered as bills, is okay for a few more days, but there is a grave danger that "bipartisan compromise" will produce only toothless non-binding resolutions. Never mind holding Congressional feet to the fire, we must run a blowtorch across their soles, demanding a cutoff of funds for the occupation and/or a binding termination of the war powers act or a similar constraint on continuing the occupation. The militant campaign being waged in Scaramento to force Representative Doris Matsui (D) to do the right thing is one impressive model for such an effort.

Third, any resolution of this before 2009, which would be a delay for which history will not forgive us, will involve a final confrontation with the Bush administration. Though not yet the most likely scenario, a real rather than symbolic Congressional stand—be it rescinding war powers or defunding or something else--would doubtless become a Constitutional crisis, as the Preznit refuses to comply. Things could move very quickly toward impeachment, resignation, a "health crisis" or some other resolution if a majority gels in ruling circles that the guy is simply too great a liability to have around for another two years. That said, the main focus at present must remain on Congress and on the demand to end the occupation and bring the troops home now. Slogans and organizing around impeachment help prepare the terrain for a showdown as Bush and his regime grow more isolated, but we still have to win the immediate battle to get to that one.

There’s more to be said on tactics, outreach, slogans and other vital questions, but I have a 5:15 ayem bus to catch...

Read more!

Ten of Thousands March for Sean Bell

Yesterday, I joined some tens of thousands of New Yorkers in a solemn demonstration demanding justice for Sean Bell, the unarmed 23-year-old Black man gunned down by NYC cops while leaving his bachelor party, less than 12 hours before his wedding.

And it was one hell of a demonstration. Tens of thousands of us—I’m pretty good at counting marches but this one was just too damn big—strode down Fifth Avenue past the iconic Rockefeller Center tree in the middle of all the Christmas shopping hoo-hah. The media keep calling it a silent demo, because it was announced as one. Not hardly—plenty of chants and unison counting up to 50, the number of shots in the fusillade that killed Sean Bell and wounded two friends in his car.

A few observations follow—add your own in the comments, please.

1. The march was overwhelmingly Black, 80-85%, I’d say. The African American turnout was likely slightly lower because of a solid turnout from Africans and Haitians. Also significant, it was not a particularly young demonstration—there were plenty of kids and junior high students there with parents or grandparents, and even some high school kids seemed to be in family mode. I would say the bulk of the crowd ranged in age from 35 to 70, and judging by signifiers like neat dreads, kofis, and mudcloth jackets, they were folks who had actively identified with the upsurge of the Black Liberation Movement in the ‘60s and ‘70s. There were banners from unions, church groups, NAACP chapters, the National Action Movement, and so on, but the number of folks from unions and churches exceeded the organized contingents by an order of magnitude or two. This was a noteworthy chunk of NYC’s Black working class on the move.

I recognized more of the white folk marching than I would have liked. Beyond usual suspects, folks turned out by their unions, and clumps of lefties, organized predominantly white contingents were few and far between. UFPJ, to its credit, was there with a big banner and a modest and well-framed flier, and there was supposed to be a NOW demo around the killing downtown at City Hall an hour earlier. If those folks subwayed up, I didn’t see ‘em.

2. Signs proclaiming “Improve Police and Community Relations” were handed out free by the NAACP and predominated, but there were plenty of homemade efforts as well. The NJ–based People’s Organization for Progress had two distinct clumps in the march (contingent integrity was very difficult to maintain in the jam-packed assembly area), but their distinctive signs—with much more direct and militant slogans--were scattered throughout the march as well. Many in the crowd addressed themselves to the officers guarding the route, and had some pithy things to say to the Black officers in particular.

3. The march screwed up holiday traffic in Midtown for hours; while the march was on, neither cars nor pedestrians could cross Fifth Avenue above 30th Street. Good! On the other hand, police containment tactics were distressingly effective. The entire march route, maybe a mile and a half, was very heavily copped out. Worse, it was lined with double layers of the interlocking metal barricades they’ve been using to keep rallies controlled and split up in recent years, and the police adjusted seamlessly to the unexpectedly large turnout by expanding the march’s right of way, once we stepped off, from one lane to the whole of Fifth Avenue. The police were unusually respectful, especially in light of the righteous anger that was being directed at them by marchers. They were scared, right up to the highest level.

4. The cops’ nervousness reflects the fact that the rulers of the city are running kind of scared themselves. And they should be—killer cops get off scot-free in NYC as a matter of course, and people are righteously sick of it. Folks are angry. Ed Koch, former mayor and current has-been columnist for give-away newspapers, made a point of complimenting Rev. Al Sharpton in his most recent outing, just as Bloomberg made a point of being photographed with him.

The problem is that after decades of the likes of Koch and Giuliani, there is a veritable thicket of laws, procedures and “safeguards” which make getting a cop behind bars for even the most outrageous shooting nearly impossible, even pretending for a moment that the city administration really wanted to. Impunity, racism and lamentable training make future Sean Bells and Amadou Diallos a certainty, and at some point the rage is likely to erupt.

Read more!

3000 Dead By Christmas? Help People Take A Stand

In the first week of December, 31 US troops died in Iraq, bringing the total to around 2,920. At the current rate, the 3,000 death will be reported sometime between Christmas and New Year's Eve. If not, it will happen in January for a certainty.

Suddenly the US death toll will be back on the front page and back on the evening news, however briefly, fueling the deep and growing anti-war sentiment among the people of this country. The Associated Press reported December 8 that its latest poll shows 71% of the country disapproving of Bush's handling of Iraq and 60% in favor of getting the troops out within six months!

The anti-war movement must develop and hone ways of tapping and harnessing this sentiment. Bush refuses point blank to listen to anyone but his "gut." The new Democratic majority in Congress, far from providing the leadership people elected them to give, shows nary a sign of fighting for an immediate end to the occupation.

That's the point of this post: armbands or pin-on ribbons, black for mourning with the number 3000 in white, will be a powerful statement of sorrow and of protest in the days after that grim milestone is reached.

If activists make these in the coming weeks, not just for their own use, but in quantity to distribute to everyday folks--in shopping districts, on campuses, in front of government buildings, at busy mass transit stops, wherever there are people in motion--many will be moved to have an armband or ribbon pinned on them. As they go about their daily routines, they will bear silent witness to the anger so many feel.

Across this country, small local groups have stood up bravely for the last four years to oppose the war, holding weekly vigils, showing anti-war films in living rooms, firehouses and church basements, writing letters to the editor, lobbying elected officials, supporting anti-war candidates. Now is a good time for them to expand that work among their neighbors, co-workers, fellow students.

Making and handing out ribbons or armbands to mourn the 3000th death is a model for the kind of outreach work that needs doing. Many who agree with us will never carry a picket sign, let alone get on a bus to DC or San Francisco. The activists among us need to develop activities they can engage in with a low threshold of entry, and often that small first step--voting in a local referendum around the war, signing a postcard to a Congressman, or wearing a black ribbon--will help folks think about themselves and their responsibility to help end the occupation in a different way.

If big coalitions and groups like United For Peace and Justice, US Labor Against the War and Peace Action, progressive Internet-based forces like MoveOn.org and others get behind this push in coming days, the impact could be substantial.

Comments and suggestions are most welcome.

Read more!

March in DC Jan. 27? You Bet, But Give the Locals a Listen!

See the map? Lemme tell you where this map comes from.

Every time a big peace or global justice demonstration is called for Washington , DC (which means, lets face it, at least once and probably twice in any given year), I get my coat pulled by my friend Steve. Steve's a longtime activist in DC, and his calls and emails on these occasions tend to be impassioned. With the big United For Peace and Justice rally against the occupation coming up January 27, we had our usual conversation, which I will summarize here.

The message--and, trust me, Steve's language is substantially more colorful and detail-filled-- is a simple one. As a rule, the big national coalitions calling these demos treat DC poorly. They make the major decisions shaping their marches and rallies without consulting with the locals about logistics, let alone how to tie in DC's struggles or mobilize the community there to take part. What's worse, they insist that area activists subordinate themselves to the advance team the coalition has set up to build and run the demo.

This time I challenged Steve to come up with a better plan, one that wouldn't isolate the march in the governmental section of DC--what Steve calls the Dead Zone--where the only people around on weekends are visiting high school classes and Finnish tourists. A skilled geographer, he came up with two carefully designed march routes, but decided the blog should only try to promote the one shown above. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]

The route's merits are easy to understand. As the maps above show, it goes through the busy commercial districts bordering major Black and Latino communities. The march route passes right by several parks, which could be used for out-of-town bus drop-offs and rallies of constituent groups before joining the main march. And there are several Metro stations along the line of march, an important factor in January, as anyone who has taken part in the hypothermia-fests that are counter-inaugurals can attest.

I will close with one of Steve's more temperate observations: "People identify with the social imaginary of Washington, and engage in magical thinking--that screaming at empty buildings and each other will change the universe. The most effective part of these demos isn't the event but rather the dispersal, when participants filter into living parts of the city. I would love to see sometime a rally that chose to have the buses drop off out of towners at a number of outlying metro stops and moving through the subway system to the assembly point, which should be accessible by metro. There is a certain inertia to the pattern we see time after time, the noglobal movement broke through the set piece normalized protest senario, but thanks to traditional movement folks everything is comfortably marginalized once again."

UPDATE:

In response to complaints that the map does not give enough detail for non-DC old-timers to tell where it was going, Steve provided the following mapquest-style written route:


My proposed route goes from Malcolm X Park, down 16th Street to K Street, over to Mt. Vernon Square and down 9th, I and 7th Streets to Constitution and on to the West side of the Capitol. The written directions were generated by the software, the little dog trot around Mt. Vernon and onto I is to avoid streets that are main arteries for cars, but in areas with heavy pedestrian traffic on the weekends.

1. Go on 16TH ST ST
1.1 mile(s)

2: Turn right on K ST
.1 mile(s)

3: Go back East on K ST Mt Vernon sq
0.5 mile(s)

4.: Turn left on K ST ST
0.2 mile(s)

5: Turn right on 9TH ST ST
0.1 mile(s)

6 Turn left on I ST ST
0.1 mile(s)

7: Turn right on 7TH ST ST
0.1 mile(s)

8 Continue South on 7TH ST ST
Drive 0.5 mile(s)

9: Turn left on PENNSYLVANIA AVE AVE
0.5 mile(s) to arrive at the Capitol .

Read more!