The War is Over, Let It Begin
January 27, 2007: Between 200,000 and a half million people were
assembled in Washington, DC. They were joined by tens of thousands more
in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, London and other cities around
the world. Their reason for disrupting their lives that weekend was
simple. They opposed the US-led and financed war on the people of Iraq.
They were sick of the killing done in their name. The protests were
similar to previous protests against the war. A rally. A march. Then
everyone dispersed.
The DC march was also politically similar to previous marches. The
January 27 date had been originally reserved by the left-liberal antiwar
network calling itself United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ). ANSWER, the
other group organizing against the US wars, then had agreed to working
with UFPJ in order to make the largest possible showing on that date.
This was despite some very sharp political disagreements between the two
organizations.
I took a bus from Asheville, NC to that protest.
It was one of seven
very full coaches from that small city in the mountains. When we arrived
at the New Carrolton Metro stop around 7:30 in the morning the parking
lot was already full of buses from cities and towns up and down the US
East Coast and from as far away as Cleveland and other points west. The
Metro system was running extra trains, and it seemed like everyone
riding those trains was going to the protest.
After disembarking and imbibing a couple cups of coffee, I headed to
the Mall. On the way I ran into several friends from various places and
exchanged greetings and conversation. The ultra-right group Free
Republic had a couple dozen folks hanging out on the grass in one of
DC’s traffic circles harassing protesters and questioning everything
from their manhood to their politics. I joked to a friend I was with
that being called a communist never bothered me since I pretty much
considered myself one anyhow.
I couldn’t tell you what the speakers said that day. I wasn’t really
listening that closely. Most of the signs that people were carrying were
provided by UFPJ and ANSWER. Most of them simply called for the troops
to be brought home immediately. Most of the speakers didn’t mention
Washington’s adjunct war in Afghanistan and neither did the pre-printed
signs. Some protesters did carry signs demanding an immediate end to
that war, too. I asked a friend of mine whose organization had been
involved in planning the protest why the war in Afghanistan was not
being mentioned. His answer was that the leadership of UFPJ could not
agree as to whether or not they opposed that war. His organization had
argued to include a demand for immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan as a
key demand but had been voted down. The reason given by the leadership
was that such a demand might diminish the size and message of the
protest. His take was that the leadership of UFPJ was too interested in
maintaining good relations with the Democratic Party, especially with
the presidential elections coming up.
Since that January day there has not been another large antiwar
protest. Several smaller ones took place in the following years, but
even the larger ones that took place at the Pentagon and in New York
City had little or no effect. UFPJ fell apart and many of its members,
including elements of the leadership, allowed themselves to be
hoodwinked into campaigning for Barack Obama, preferring to believe that
campaigning for his presidential hopes would be a more effective way to
end the imperial wars of Washington than actually organizing against
those wars. We all know how that idea turned out.
But wait, they say, the war in Iraq is over. My response is that this
is partially true. Very few US GIs are dying there any more and most of
them have indeed been removed from that country. Some of them have been
sent to Afghanistan and some have been sent to one of the other 737
military bases the Empire maintains around the globe. Many more have
been sent back to the streets and hometowns of the United States to work
out the demons they are now possessed with, thanks to their war
experiences.
Meanwhile, in Iraq the number of bombings is increasing as various
groups fight over turf and control while the democracy and freedom
promised by George Bush and heralded by Barack Obama continues to be a
figment of some DC speechwriter’s pen. The world’s largest CIA station
outside of Langley, VA. operates at will from Baghdad, stirring up
trouble in Iraq, Iran, Palestine and other nations in the region while
the US client state in Tel Aviv continues to ramp up the war rhetoric
against Iran while tightening its grip on the people of the West Bank
and Gaza (and the political system of the United States).
Let’s not forget Saudi Arabia, whose autocratic monarchy just purchased 84 F-15s at the cool price of approximately $25 billion.
Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, the guerrilla war waged by the Taliban and
other anti-occupation forces continues, as does the
close-to-$200-million-per-day US effort to destroy that resistance. Over
the Afghan mountains the people of Pakistan wonder if they will be the
next targets of US ground troops while US-armed drones fly and kill
almost daily into some areas of that country.
There is no group of protesters in the United States currently
addressing this. The Occupy Wall Street movement, for all of its
positives, has yet to loudly and clearly make the connection between the
war industry’s role in the plights they protest against. This is partly
due to the organizational structure of Occupy (in fact, unlike many
other Occupy camps the DC and Oakland Occupy groupings have worked hard
to make this connection), but another reason for this failure is the
lack of antiwar organizing in the Occupy movement. The sole remaining
national antiwar network–the United National Antiwar Coalition–has been
holding the torch in the years since its inception in 2008 and is
currently organizing protests against the May meetings of global capital
and its army (the G8 and NATO) in Chicago. Indeed, this coalition of
political, religious and labor organizations is holding an organizing
conference the weekend of March 23rd in Stamford, CT that will focus on
these protests.
Despite recent pronouncements by the Obama administration and the
Pentagon that the US military is going to shrink, the occupations and
wars of the Empire will not just disappear. neither will its aspirations
for full-spectrum-dominance. The new Pentagon Plan, titled “Sustaining
US Global Leadership:Priorities for 21st Century Defense” has as its
goal “protect(ing) the broad range of U.S. national security interests…
(maintaining) the free flow of commerce… preventing Iran’s development
of a nuclear weapon capability… standing up for Israel’s security… (and)
continu(ing) to place a premium on U.S. and allied military presence in
– and support of – partner nations in and around this (the Middle East)
region.”
Despite its claim that the US military will no longer be depended on
to occupy and “build” nations, a key element of this plan is “to assure
access to and use of the global commons….” In other words, to go
wherever capital demands the military goes, then the military will go
there and stay there until capital’s work is done. A close reading of
this document will tell the reader that nothing has changed and the
military remains ready and happy to do Wall Street’s bidding. All of
which balances out to the continued domination of the war-based economy.
Ron Jacobs is the author of The Way The Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground. He recently released a collection of essays and musings titled Tripping Through the American Night. His latest novel The Co-Conspirator's Tale, is published by Fomite. His first novel, Short Order Frame Up, is published by Mainstay Press. Read other articles by Ron.
