A Plan to End the Wars

There are a million and one things that people can do to try to end
the U.S. wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and to prevent new
ones in Iran and elsewhere, as well as to close U.S. military bases in
dozens of other nations around the world. Certain people are skilled at
or interested in particular approaches, and nobody should be
discouraged from contributing to the effort in their preferred ways.
Far too often proposals to work for peace are needlessly framed as
attacks on all strategies except one. But where new energy can be
created or existing resources redirected, it is important that they go
where most likely to succeed.

In my analysis, we should be focusing on three things, which for
purposes of brevity and alliteration I will call: Communications,
Congress, and Counter recruitment / resistance. Communications
encompasses all public discussion of the wars and impacts all other
approaches, including targets I consider far less likely to be
influenced by us than Congress, such as the president, generals, the
heads of weapons companies, the heads of media companies, the people of
Afghanistan, your racist neighbor, etc. If our communications strategy
can change the behavior of any of these targets, terrific! We should be
prepared to take advantage of such opportunities should they arise. But
the first place we are likely to be able to leverage successful
communications will be the House of Representatives.
Counter-recruitment / resistance is another area that overlaps with
communications but involves much else as well, and it is a strategy
that we continue to underestimate.

COMMUNICATIONS

Our task is to communicate that:

--the wars are ongoing and will not end without our efforts,

--the wars must be ended,

--the peace movement has had many successes already and should by no means give in to frustration,

--the wars can be ended if a small fraction of the majority that wants them ended makes an effort,

--we have to choose between warfare and healthcare / other social goods,

--minimizing U.S. casualties will not satisfy the demands of the U.S. public,

--neither maximizing nor minimizing foreign casualties will satisfy the demands of the U.S. public,

--there is a personal cost to those who support wars and war crimes,

--Congress members will face opposition through negative
communications, disruption of their lives, and electoral challenges if
they fund wars.

We don't have to communicate all of that in one interview on cable
television, or violate any other laws of physics, but we DO have to
communicate ALL of that. And getting our spokespeople on TV has to be
part of how it is done. But primarily we need to create our own media
and work with decent independent media outlets. Online media has
developed to the point where it can influence broadcast and print
media. And yet we are still quite capable of creating powerful online
media. We cannot overlook the need to work with communities that lack
internet access, or the need to use the internet to generate offline
activities. But it is very hard to overestimate the importance to our
efforts of the internet, and working to get more people access to it
might be one of the most helpful efforts we can make.

We stopped Bush-Cheney from invading Iran. They intended to do so,
and we prevented it -- largely by exposing the grounds for invading
Iraq to be lies. There was no press conference at the White House to
announce this failure of theirs and success of ours, but that should
have no impact on our claiming a victory and making it known to those
who require encouragement and optimism. On the other hand, we have
allowed the wars to be spread to Pakistan with barely a peep of
recognition, and by proxy to Gaza with only a weak and muddled
response. And the push to attack Iran directly or by proxy remains.

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