The
Anti-War Movement Needs
The Right Policy
And The Right Message
By Kevin B. Zeese
& Bill Curry
08 July, 2006
Countercurrents.org
Bill Curry was the executive Director of Freeze Voter. He was State
Comptroller in Connecticut and twice Democratic nominee for governor
there. He was Counselor to the President in the Clinton White House.
He's now a political columnist for the Hartford Courant. His column
appears every Sunday.
Kevin Zeese: Are there lessons from the Nuclear Freeze for anti
war activists today?
Bill Cury: One reason the
Freeze was so effective was we had the right policy, which is different
from and more important than having the right 'message'. That policy
was a bilateral, verifiable freeze on the development, manufacture and
deployment of nuclear weapons. Freeze activists weren't just against
the arms race. They had an alternative whose first step was logical
and clear. We were successful in organizing because our very powerful
idea did so much of our organizing for us.
Some of the left is simply
and purely pacifist. I doubt that will ever be the majority opinion
in America. People want above all to be safe. The framers of the Nuclear
Freeze showed people they could be not just safe but indeed safer by
resort to reason, diplomacy and the rule of law.
Bush knows how badly we want
to be safe. He said he had a plan to make us safe. His manipulation
of our fear- or Rove’s, or Cheney’s manipulation of it -
was brilliant. Those opposing the war must do a better job of showing
people how to feel safe and live unafraid.
KZ: What is the root
of Western conflict in the Middle East?
BC: One of Bush’s favorite
lies is the "they hate us for our freedom" lie. The truth
is while Islamic extremists disdain the consumerism and sensuality of
western culture, they don't sit around reading the Federalist Papers
"hating our freedom." They think they are fighting for their
own.
Our long time friendship
with Israel and our support of Arab oligarchs is the reason we’re
so much on their minds. It is why they’re so able to propagandize
against us in the Arab world. Were we to reduce our thirst for oil and
thus our dependence on Arab regimes and were we somehow to end the Israel/Palestine
crisis the Al Quaeda recruiting pool would begin drying up.
Bush is entirely correct
that the terrorists’ tactics are evil. But his depiction of our
foes as a mindless monolith of pure reactive evil is a false, foolish
paradigm. It is self destructive not least because it prevents us from
seeing their real motives and purposes.
KZ: What are your
thoughts on America’s unilateral use of military force?
BC: If Bush's cowboy unilateralism
isn't your preferred means of conflict resolution you need an alternative.
There is evil in the world and there are times-- Rwanda, Darfur -- when
military intervention, is a necessity. But whose job is that? It's the
job of the community of nations, which practically speaking means the
U.N.
The question isn’t
whether the U.N. is up to the task. It isn't. It’s broken. The
question is whether we want to kill it or fix it. Bush and Bolton seem
ignorant enough, if not to kill it, then to further undermine it. They
have catastrophically bad judgment, but you knew that. The question
is whether we’re ready to defend multilateralism, and in particular
the U.N., and ready as well to put on the table a plan for curing its
manifest weaknesses so it can do the job it must do in the world.
This war has exposed the
limits of unilateralism and militarism and the cost of each in money,
respect and human life. The triumphalist ‘neoconservative’
view of the U.S. as ‘the last superpower’ arose when nation
states, including ours, were under siege from both globalization and
devolution and when our own military power could no longer protect us
as it once had from, among other things, threat of terrorism.
The U.S. must recognize that
our security lies in the rule of law – in a transition from an
era of unilateral superpowers to one of multi-lateral conflict resolution.
Someone must stand up and announce that a shoot first foreign policy
is un-American and doesn’t work either. Of course it is a hard
thing to explain to a country so afraid.
The Democrats are most afraid
of all. In part they’re afraid of the Republican propaganda machine—hey,
who wouldn't be-- but their fear also arises from their own inability
to devise and explain an alternative theory of national security.
KZ: What should the
Anti war movement be doing?
BC: Policy comes first.
The anti-war movement should
acknowledge how hard it is to get out of Iraq. I'm proud I opposed the
war from the beginning. One reason I did so was I knew how hard getting
out would be. (That's why they call it a quagmire.)
We must address not just
when to get out but how. The truth lies between those who say our leaving
will bring a bloodbath and those who say our staying is the main cause
of it. Bush meant to export democracy to Iraq but succeeded only in
importing terrorism to Iraq. But his hubris and ineptitude do not excuse
us from the duty to get as close as we can to a peaceful resolution
of the war we brought upon them.
People want politicians with
the courage of their convictions. First you have to have convictions;
courage may follow. Rudderless Democrats follow public opinion. Their
foreign policy establishment is so paralyzed by cautious me-too-ism
it can’t propose a plan. So others must. Here are some possible
components:
We must negotiate with the
new government a withdrawal timetable as requested by all factions at
their Cairo summit. This is not ‘imposing a timetable’ but
honoring our allies who, however much they really meant it, felt compelled
by Iraqi public opinion to seek a time-table for withdrawal. There can
be performance measures for all parties but there's no getting around
the fact when our own allies request a timetable it falls to us to respond.
There must be wider negotiations
as well. Since our soldiers are in their country we’re obliged
to talk to all sides. It may even help us figure out who they are and
what they want, two topics on which the administration continues to
appear appallingly ignorant.
We must renounce any preferential
treatment in the sale of Iraqi oil as well as any proposal to establish
permanent military bases there. Many see these as our true motives for
intervening. President Bush has sworn it isn't so, that we seek only
to end tyranny and establish democracy. It’s an improbable claim;
most of the world, not only the Arab world, thinks it preposterous.
Still, we should take him at his word and call him on it.
Message comes second.
The Democrat political establishment
is even worse than its foreign policy establishment. Once there is a
plan the question arises of how to communicate it. This is what is called
‘message’ by those who haven’t any.
A big problem is the Democratic
establishment’s inability to talk to men. Culture critics have
long warned of the negative role models propagated by gangsta rap. What
of the model of middle aged white men on couches shouting at TV screens,
unable to distinguish among sports contests, video games and actual
war? Democrats fear this stereotype. Bush plays to it. Someone must
stand up and talk to American men in the language of adults, the language
of reason, respect, responsibility, restraint. Our entire nation must
learn the rules of civil discourse. Someone out there has to be brave
enough to get real and say it out loud.
KZ: Doesn’t
Bush want to stay in Iraq?
BC: Yes. But as I said, the
President has staked what remains of his reputation for candor on the
idea that it is a blood libel even to accuse him of such a thing. So
call him on it.
The history of the age of
oil tells us military bases aren’t connected to stable oil supply
in the way all presidents of the period believed. When it's to their
advantage to join OPEC in raising prices or imposing an embargo our
supposed best friends go right along. On the other hand when they need
the money our worst enemies are more than happy to sell us the oil.
It turns out as much security as there may be in the superpower/client
state relationship there’s far more in the simpler, less expensive
one of buyer and seller. Our growing economic insecurity regarding oil
has little to do with military security and lots to do with the fact
we're no longer the only consumer game in town-- the Saudis sell more
oil to th Chinese- and that our demand continues to grow as supply dwindles.
KZ: Is there reason
for optimism in Iraq?
BC: I’m not optimistic
about democracy taking root there soon. We don’t know how to plant
it and they don’t know how to grow it. You may think exporting
democracy is to the Bush family what importing olive oil was to the
Corleone family; that is, mostly a cover for other more profitable lines
of work. I don't go quite so far. But I do think the Corleones knew
a lot more about olive oil than the Bushes know about democracy.
People forget that Bush the
elder was the first of his family to go into the business. When he was
exporting democracy to Russia and Eastern Europe he sent folks over
to explain how to get democracy up and running: privatize everything,
deregulate everything, and get the governments in the black, like, yesterday.
The problem was Bush thought
a free society was just a free market in the style of Friedrich Hayek.
He didn't understand that a free market is a creature of democracy,
of developed civic institutions from the common law to the commercial
code to central banks and federal regulators. He thought exporting democracy
and exporting his favored style of capitalism meant about the same thing.
And so the new free markets were free for alls. What emerged, along
with some inspiring stories of democratic heroism, were some of the
great thugocracies in world history.
You know the saying: Those
who don't know the history of the Bushes are condemned to repeat it,
and so we do. It's hard to be optimistic that people with no grasp of
democracy can transplant it. What we can hope for is that we find a
way to end the bloodshed and establish domestic tranquility in Iraq
and then get back to the business of making our own democracy something
we’re again able to export by the sheer power of its example.
Bill Curry writes a regular
column for the Hartford Courant. You can read his columns at: http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/columnists/hc-curry,0,1946929.columnist
Kevin Zeese is director of
Democracy Rising (www.DemocracyRising.US) and a candidate for U.S. Senate
in Maryland (www.ZeeseForSenate.org).