http://news.yahoo.com/s/thenation/20050619/cm_thenation/73614 Katrina vanden Heuvel Sat Jun 18,10:37 PM ET "We see this as the beginning of the end," said Tom Andrews, a former Democratic representative from Maine who is executive director of the antiwar group Win Without War. "It's the very beginning of a new wave of activism on this war. There's a real sense that something is beginning to move."--Los Angeles Times, Friday June 17, 2005 Earlier that day, a friend and longtime antiwar activist left me a voice mail message. Just ten days earlier he told me that he was more depressed about our politics than at anytime in the last 40 years. "Hello, this is..." he said. "I was in Washington yesterday at the rally and at the Conyers hearings. And since I laid a heavy statement on you last week, I just wanted to make a correction. It's finally over. My despair is over. Something has happened these last ten days that has revived the antiwar issue. It has to do with public opinion polls and casualties and Republicans like Walter Jones and more Democrats standing up. I won't say how optimistic I am. But something is coming together--you can feel it." You can feel it. *Every day brings news of public opinion turning against the occupation--and the President's conduct of the war. Last week, a Washington Post-ABC News poll showed that for the first time since the war began, more than half of the public believes the US invasion has not made the US more secure; and nearly 40 percent described the situation there now as analagous to the Vietnam War. A new Gallup survey finds that almost 60 percent of Americans say the US should withdraw some or all of its troops from Iraq, the largest number in that category ever. And for the first time, most Americans say they would be "upset" if President Bush sent more troops. Gallup also found that 56 percent now feel the war was "not worth it," and 73 percent consider the number of casualties unacceptable. * Every day brings news of more Democrats coming forward, standing up and introducing "exit strategy" resolutions. (Though, as of yet, leadership isn't coming from the leadership.) Lynn Woolsey forced a Congressional vote on bipartisan legislation that would have asked Bush to submit a plan to Congress explaining the outlines of an exit strategy from Iraq. Senator Russell Feingold has introduced a nonbinding resolution calling on the Bush Administration to set specific goals for leaving Iraq. In the House, the International Relations Committee last week voted overwhelmingly, 32 to 9, to call on the White House to develop and submit a plan to Congress for establishing a stable government and military in Iraq that would "permit a decreased US presence" in the country. Congresswomen Maxine Waters (D/CA)--along with 41 Congressional progressives, including Woolsey, John Lewis, Charles Rangel, Jim McGovern, Rush Holt, Marcy Kaptur and Jan Schakowsky--has just formed the "Out of Iraq Congressional Caucus." Its sole purpose, Waters says, "is to be the main agitators in the movement to bring our troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan." And Rep John Conyers' impassioned efforts to bring attention to the Downing Street Memo--on Thursday he held hearings on Capitol Hill and then delivered to the White House letters that contained the names of more than 560,000 Americans demanding answers to questions raised by the British memo--has reenergized and refocused opposition to the war. While the Administration and its allies in Congress are trying to make it seem as if these new initiatives merely reflect Democrats' reading of the polls, I say--bring it on. Let's welcome more Democrats--and sane Republicans--giving legislative expression and voice to the majority of Americans who want to see our Iraq policy changed. (In fact, according to the recent Gallup poll, Congress appears to be lagging behind the public on the issue: Some 72 percent of Democrats, 65 percent of independents and 41 percent of Republicans say they favor a partial or complete withdrawal.) *Every day brings news of another Republican signing on to the bipartisan resolution introduced last Thursday by Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC)--the man who brought us "Freedom Fries"--and Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii). That resolution calls for the Bush Administration to announce a plan for the withdrawal of all US forces from Iraq by the end of the year and to initiate the plan as soon as possible. Maverick Congressman Ron Paul (R/Texas) is already a sponsor, Jim Leach (R/ Iowa) signed on Friday and Howard Coble (R/North Carolina) is considering adding his signature. (With 2006 midterms fast approaching, more Republicans will be hearing from constituents who are growing uneasy about the war. And more GOP members up for reelection may start sounding like Jones, who said in an interview with ABC's George Stephanopolous last weekend that he votes his conscience first, his constituents second, and his party third.) But much hard and grinding organizing work remains ahead. On Monday afternoon, Abercrombie and others are going to sit down with Congressman Jones and other House members to discuss options to advance the resolution and build activism against the war. They'll be supported by a national coalition, that includes Win Without War, MoveOn.org, The National Council of Churches, True Majority, Sojourners, Working Assets and the National Organization of Women, which is planning a grassroots outreach campaign encouraging Members of Congress to sign onto the newly introduced bipartisan resolution. These organizations are going to be concentrating on those members of Congress who should be particularly susceptible to constituent demand about the war. (As Tom Andrews of the invaluable Win Without War group says, "Take it from one who has been there, in Congress loyalty to one's party leaders and president stops at the 'waters edge' of the voters at home.") "A prairie fire of activism has started," Andrews argues. "Our job now is to fan these flames and get a conflagration of opposition spreading across the country. We are working with our member groups as well as others on a range of action options to build momentum over the next several months. These will include a major action in Washington in September with what I hope will include a complementary Internet based component. Between those marching in DC and those joining through the Internet around the country I am certain that we could have a million Americans demonstrating against the Bush war in September." The combination of dropping poll numbers, the grinding images of chaos and violence in Iraq, the daily news of young Americans dying in what seems a senseless war and the increasingly active and visible opposition of constituents is bad news for the president and his Congressional allies. This really can be the beginning of the end of a disastrous war and a bankrupt national security strategy.
Get bent, regardless of your stance on the war, the worse thing at this point is "quitting" This should be visible even to the staunchest Hillary lovers on this board. Im tired of reading a thousand different liberal articles insinuating the same thing every week. This was never going to be easy.
Hillary and her lovers will do so (i.e., stay the course) at their own perils. US needs to learn from its own history. After the US troops withdrew from Vietnam, anything terrible happened? None. To the contrary, communism dwindled. Vietnam is trying to befriend with US, and moving towards capitalist economy just like China. Saddam is gone. Time to let Iraqis sort out the mess themselves. If US doesn't think it gets enough cheap oil, can always launch another war.
Hillary has supported this war more steadily than some prominent Republicans. The only thing more obvious than your knee jerk responses is the fact that you don't read the paper. And since that's clear, here's a tip: While Hillary has not advocated such a thing, a majority of Americans now oppose this war and advocate cutting troop levels or withdrawing entirely. It's not a liberal position -- it's an American one.
You seem to hate Hillary without knowing her position. Batman has already given you some info on that. I will say it again. Hillary is a WAR SUPPORTER. She has never advocated getting out of Iraq. Looks like you are the Hillary lover in this thread, oooooooooooh
"We see this as the beginning of the end," said Tom Andrews, a former Democratic representative from Maine who is executive director of the antiwar group Win Without War. "It's the very beginning of a new wave of activism on this war. There's a real sense that something is beginning to move."--Los Angeles Times, Friday June 17, 2005 Methinks that I will wait until December 2006 before I make (or not) a statement like the above. The only time politicians really listen is election time or maybe even as late as the day after a lost election.
As someone who has participated in a number of anti-war protests I found this column very thought-provoking- No One to Demonize By Harold Meyerson Washington Post Wednesday, June 22, 2005; A21 In the absence of an antiwar movement, the American people have turned against the war in Iraq. Those two facts, I suspect, are connected. There was a very real antiwar movement early on. In the months before, during and immediately after our invasion, hundreds of thousands of Americans took to the streets to oppose the intervention. Then chaos, followed by insurgency, enveloped Iraq, and the need for a constable to restore some order became indisputable. Those who had opposed the war -- this columnist included -- argued that the occupation would be less of a lightning rod if conducted by an international force under U.N. aegis. But the Bush administration insisted on U.S. control (a decision that grows less explicable with each passing day), and other nations with real armies made clear that they wanted no part of what was becoming a bloody occupation. Confronted with a choice between U.S. occupation and chaos, millions of Americans -- chiefly liberals and Democrats -- who'd been against the war decided to give occupation a chance. In the streets, demonstrations dwindled; in Congress, Democrats (save for a handful) did not call for withdrawal. With unprecedented discipline, Democrats who had opposed the war lined up behind the candidacy of John Kerry, whose position on the war was muddled at best. The question of the occupation fell off the liberal agenda. At the Take Back America conference, a national gathering of liberals held this month, the issue barely came up at all. In Iraq, however, the situation clarified. What had looked like a choice between occupation and mayhem was something even grimmer: The mayhem proceeds, and will proceed, occupation or no. It will doubtless grow worse if we pull up stakes, but our presence has failed to guarantee stability in politics or daily life. More than two years after Saddam Hussein's statue was toppled, the drive from downtown Baghdad to the airport is still a crapshoot with death. Absent a discernible trajectory of progress, the American people are giving up on the occupation. In last week's CBS News/New York Times poll, 59 percent of respondents said the war was going badly, and just 37 percent approved of President Bush's handling of Iraq. A Gallup poll showed six in 10 Americans favoring full or partial withdrawal of U.S. forces. These figures already match the polling in the middle and late years of the war in Vietnam -- even though that war was fought with vastly higher casualties and a conscript army. In a series of polls taken in November and December of 1969, the Gallup Organization found that 49 percent of Americans favored a withdrawal of U.S. forces and 78 percent believed that the Nixon administration's rate of withdrawal was "too slow." But there was one other crucial finding: 77 percent disapproved of the antiwar demonstrations, which were then at their height. That disapproval was key to Nixon's political strategy. He didn't so much defend the war as attack its critics, making common cause with what he termed the "silent majority" against a mainstream movement with a large, raucous and sometimes senseless fringe. When Nixon won reelection in a landslide, it was clear that the strategy had worked -- and it has been fundamental Republican strategy ever since. Though the public sides with the Democrats on more key issues than it does with Republicans, it's Republicans who have won more elections, in good measure because the GOP has raised its ad hominem attacks on Democrats' character and patriotism to a science. Which is why, however perverse this may sound, the absence of an antiwar movement is proving to be a huge political problem for the Bush administration, and why the Republicans are reduced to trying to turn Dick Durbin, who criticized our policies at Guantanamo Bay, into some enemy of the people. The administration has no one to demonize. With nobody blocking the troop trains, military recruitment is collapsing of its own accord. With nobody in the streets, the occupation is being judged on its own merits. Unable to distract people from his own performance, Bush is tanking in the polls. And with congressional Democrats at least partly muting their opposition to an open-ended occupation, it's Bush's fellow Republicans -- most prominently, North Carolina's Walter Jones -- who are now calling our policy into question. The lesson here for liberals and Democrats is not that they should shun oppositional politics -- after all, they confronted Bush head-on over Social Security and prevailed. My hunch is that candidates in the 2006 elections -- not to mention, 2008 -- who call for putting a date on U.S. withdrawal from Iraq will be rewarded at the ballot box. But it will probably help such candidates, and certainly confound the Bu****es, if antiwar activists forget about the streets and focus on the polls. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/21/AR2005062101361_pf.html
Well I think - and a few others have pointed out on this BBS - that the "silent majority" still remain silent on the Iraqi war at this time is primarily due to the fact there is no draft yet. I bet all the silence will broken out once the millitary recruiting reaches a crisis (now they are only doing crying wolf).
it is very strange you never EVER see Bush, Rumsfeld or any GOP official, club, meeting, organization - call for their followers to enlist
The war will go on till the working class folks stop enlisting in a needless war. The ideologically committed neocons, many of whom have gone to college and have good jobs, will not pick up the slack, so the military will tell Bush or his successor to stop. Except for the latest puppets, the Iraqis want us to leave, too. It is higly unlikely that the eventual Iraqi government will be much more friendly to neocon interests than Sadam if we had worked with him, instead of threatening him and trying to depose him. Like Sadam, the eventual government will sell us their oil at market prices. Eventually they will moderate as we are seeing Iran, if we stop provoking them. Except for the tremendous waste of lives and money it will turn out about the same as if we hadn't invaded. Hopefully the Iraqi fiasco, like Vietnam, will beat back the war mongerers for another generation. However, the drive for the military industrial complex to earn profits and develop new toys, as well as the paranoia of those who see a Hitler or Stalin in every third world dictator, will still remain a threat to American and world security.
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/bush/cheneymeetthepress.htm "I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators." - dick cheney - meet the press - 3/03 MR. RUSSERT: The army’s top general said that we would have to have several hundred thousand troops there for several years in order to maintain stability. VICE PRES. CHENEY: I disagree.
