A Plan to End the Wars

We dominated the news and the elections in the United States and
shifted power in the House, Senate, and White House to a different
political party. And we ended up with a House, Senate, and White House
that all favor continuing or expanding wars. But we compelled President
Bush to agree to withdrawal from Iraqi localities by the end of last
month, complete withdrawal from the nation by the end of 2011, and a
treaty that the Iraqi people have the right to reject by the end of
this month in a vote that would move the complete withdrawal date to
one year from now. I still question the wisdom of our having silently
accepted a treaty making three years of war without the consent of the
U.S. Senate, but a better way to reject the treaty is now upon us. Our
focus for the next month should be on insisting that the Iraqi people
are permitted to vote the treaty up or down in a verifiable election
(which, of course, means that they will vote it down if those voting
bear any similarity to those who have been polled). Everyone who has
expressed concern for the voting rights of Iranians should be required
to do the same for Iraqis.

The other advantage of our having shifted the partisan balance in
our government, even without fundamentally altering our government's
approach to war, is that we no longer have to do so. We can now move on
to replacing pro-war Democrats with pro-peace Democrats (or
Independents, Greens, Republicans, Libertarians, etc.) The claim that
we should keep quiet about peace in order to elect Democrats who will
then (contradictorily) give us peace can no longer be made and can no
longer get in the way. And the advantage of having elected a president
of a different party, without having fundamentally changed anything, is
that the claim that a new president will give us peace can now be
replaced by consideration of whether we should look to presidents at
all, or Congress instead, to do such things.

We kept the occupation of Iraq smaller than it would have been and
prevented other invasions through the success of counter-recruitment
efforts and resistance within the U.S. military. Bush-Cheney having
pushed the military to the breaking point is not a story of their
incompetence or love for war and empire. It is a story of our efforts
pushing back against theirs. The United States will always push the
military to the breaking point until we succeed in countering the
current militaristic agenda, but our job (one of them) is to make what
is available to be pushed smaller.

We need to discuss our successes because nobody else will, and
because 70 percent of Americans basically agree with us and do nothing
about it, largely because many people do not believe they have the
power to change anything. We have been building organizations and
websites and Email lists for these past several years, and we have been
achieving some successes and coming very close to more. Yet, a common
response to "Will you gather signatures on this petition for peace?" is
"We've tried that before and it didn't end the war." But it did expose
the war lies. It did force Alberto Gonzales out. It did come within 7
votes just last month of -- at least temporarily -- stopping the war
funding. And while doing all of these things, the same old tired tools
can also build larger organizations, and have been doing so. I'm sure
people told abolitionists not to print another newspaper because they'd
printed one before and slavery was still around. Yet abolitionism was
advancing despite not a single slave yet being freed. And we are
advancing, but it is crucial to know where. We must absolutely put our
signatures and our time and our money into those organizations that
oppose war regardless of political party, and NOT into those
organizations that claim to oppose war only when it allows criticism of
a particular political party. (Here's a list of which is which: http://afterdowningstreet.org/32heroes
The list cannot possibly be complete, of course, and I apologize for
whomever I have left off the list of heroes, but the major
organizations are all here, listed as either heroes or frauds.)

Just as we should continue to push the corporate media while
focusing on building our own, we should continue to push the
pseudo-peace organizations to do better, but we should focus on
building those organizations that have consistently taken a principled
stand and pushed with skill and intelligence (even if not with success)
for peace.

"Healthcare Not Warfare" should be our cry (following the example of
Progressive Democrats of America), along with "Housing Not Warfare,"
"Jobs Not Warfare," "Schools Not Warfare," etc. We have to force
recognition of the financial choice before us. In that choice we find a
solution to the healthcare debate that is almost too easy to be
believed, but deadly real. And we find a solution to the misconception
that war does not impact the "Homeland." This is a discussion that
should discuss the current wars as part of an expansion of military
bases around the world, bases that make us less safe but cost us over
$100 billion every year. The discussion should include the non-war
military budget and the trade-offs involved. We should work harder to
build alliances with people and groups focused on advocating for all
the things we cannot pay for because we pay for weapons and wars.

But our communications strategy should be dominated by our true
central reason for opposing wars, not any secondary reason that we
imagine will move someone else. If wars are made cheaper and more
efficient we will still oppose them, and that is a real possibility. If
American casualties are reduced, we will still oppose wars, and that is
the case at the moment. If smart decisions in military terms replace
comical blunders, we will oppose wars all the more, and that may be
happening. Fundamentally, we oppose wars because they kill people and
they are part of hostile occupations that make people around the world
hate and resent our nation. When a group like Brave New Films documents
the impact of our war on the people of Afghanistan, we should promote
those films as far as we are able. When an election leads to the
corporate media humanizing the people of Iran, we should highlight that
and ask why, if we do not want them killed by riot police, we should
want them killed by bombs.

There is enormous potential, but uncertain, value in seeking to end
and discourage wars by holding war criminals accountable for their
crimes. Those working to end torture are right to emphasize that we
tortured in order to generate false justifications for war, even after
the war had begun. Those working to end war should emphasize that we
tortured people in order to support the lies that at least one of the
wars, and arguably all of them, is based on. Every war crime for which
we are able to hold anyone accountable by exposing their crimes,
unelecting them, impeaching them, finding them liable in civil suits,
and prosecuting them at home or abroad, should be discussed as part of
the ongoing wars. Congress members should understand that we consider
their funding of wars to constitute a war crime. And they should
understand that we require them to place peace before party.

One useful tool for mass communications is mass rallies. As argued
below, our targets should be Congress members. National mass actions
should be focused on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. Local actions
should target local Congress members. There was an action earlier this
year on Capitol Hill aimed at cleaning up the local power plant and
raising the demand for action on the climate. While that struggle is
far from over, the march and protest suggested a useful approach. A
large number of people, including young people, were organized to march
and to risk arrest. But people were invited to march without risking
arrest, thus boosting the crowd size and reducing the chances of anyone
being arrested. This action was held on a weekday with Congress in
session, and marched adjacent to the House office buildings. An action
like this one on the eighth anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan,
on Wednesday, October 7th, strikes me as the most obvious way to send a
powerful message of opposition to wars. Combined, of course, with lobby
meetings and in-district actions. And backed by lots of money and staff
time.

Where do we get lots of money and staff time? That's where we'll
need to be very good communicators. But there are wealthy people tired
of funding politicians and ready to fund citizens, not to mention
people with money who have watched Republicans prosecute and imprison
top Democratic donors like Paul Minor and then watched the Democrats
not lift a finger in their defense. There are no limits on
contributions to peace and justice groups, and almost no limits on what
we could accomplish if funded. More importantly, there are ways to
influence Congress that do not require putting anyone on a bus and can
be done largely by volunteers -- yes, in their pajamas in the basement
eating Cheetos. Read on.

CONGRESS

While we have relatively little in the way of carrots or sticks with
which to influence a president or a weapons maker (and influencing the
military is discussed below), we have the ability to influence Congress
members, at least those who represent districts rather than large
states. And we have the ability to end the wars by succeeding only in
the House of Representatives. We do not need to persuade a single
senator or the president or any cabinet secretaries or any news
producers. If we can do so, great. But we can end the wars by winning
in the House of Representatives alone. This is because it takes two
houses and the president to make a bill a law, but it only takes one
house to prevent a bill from becoming law.

The House of Representatives is supposed to represent us and yet, on
matters of war as on most other things, does not. Why not? Well, many
flaws weaken our elections system, but on any given vote three major
corrupting factors can usually be pointed to: party, media, and
dollars. On an issue like healthcare, as on many issues, these factors
should be listed in the opposite order. It is the dollars of corporate
interests that do the greatest share of the corrupting. But on matters
of war, party is the greatest corruptor. Of course, political parties
are the largest funders of campaigns, so money is still right at the
top. Members of Congress in both political parties have voted to fund
these wars, over the wishes of their constituents, because their party
leadership has told them to do so. Parties can promise money, committee
memberships, chairmanships, votes on bills and amendments and earmarks,
and press events in a member's district with cabinet members and
presidents. Parties can threaten to withhold money, back a challenger,
block measures from reaching the floor, and withhold chairmanships. It
is very difficult and very rare for Congress members to oppose their
parties' strong demands. But it is also rare for citizens to press them
to do so, in part because many citizens and the groups through which
they approach activism also take their orders from political parties.

The experience of opposing the most recent war supplemental bill,
which was combined with funding for the International Monetary Fund, is
instructive, especially as Congressman John Murtha has already
indicated that there will be another war supplemental bill this year.
Because all the Republicans in the House opposed the bill due to the
IMF measure (five of them switching their votes to yes only after it
had passed), 39 Democrats could have stopped the bill. This would have
forced separate votes on the war and the IMF, and both might have
passed. Certainly the war would have. But it would have created a
serious block of peace votes in the House willing to vote for peace
even when it mattered and the Democratic Party commanded otherwise. In
the end, we persuaded 32 Democrats to vote No (two of them only in
opposition to the IMF, 30 of them in opposition to at least the war).
So we actually did establish a block of peace voters. It just contained
30 people instead of 39. And of those 30 people, three, Dennis
Kucinich, Jim McGovern, and Lynn Woolsey actually urged their
colleagues to vote No. This gives us 30 votes we can count on if we
work like hell to hold them, and three leaders we can work with to whip
together a larger caucus. And while we lost this vote, we exacted a
price. We compelled the White House and the Democratic Party leadership
to spend a week working on little other than bribing and blackmailing
Congress members. And it will take many weeks to fulfill all the
promises made. My own Congressman, who opposed the IMF but voted for
it, has thus far held press events promoting himself in his district
with the House Majority Leader, with the two top environmental
officials in the White House, and has an event scheduled here this
month with two members of the cabinet.

Over the past years, we have -- more often than not -- lacked the
coordination and ability to push back hard against such intense
lobbying from the other side. This time we surprised Congress and
ourselves. Key to this effort was public whipping. We didn't have eight
different peace groups keeping their own whip lists of who had promised
them what. We had 8,000 citizen lobbyists feeding their reports to one
website where the whip count was kept public, and where we promised to
thank or spank people as appropriate once they had voted for peace or
war. Critical to this effort were all the usual off-line activities of
people in each Congress member's district. But the public whipping was
central. It organized and encouraged the activism. It inspired the
blogging. It infiltrated the corporate media.

Here's a history of this campaign:

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