[Marxism] Is the Anti-War movement in decline

[Joaquin Bustelo]

I don't have a lot of answers about what to do about the current state of
the antiwar movement. I do want to take up some of the comments that have
been made.

Eli stresses that those who view themselves as opposing the war don't
necessarily call for immediate withdrawal. That's true, but the media rarely
if ever presents that as an alternative. It hasn't been widely thought
through by a broad layer of people. But regular people who are opposed to
the war are for getting out. They may have been bamboozled by the media and
bourgeois politicians into thinking this is some incredibly complicated
operation that will take a lot of time, but they want out. 

Eli presents this as part of a general argument that antiwar sentiment is
squishy soft, and easily reversed. I don't think it is true. He says, "even
if 57 percent did favor immediate, total withdrawal, that still wouldn't
make them part of the 'antiwar movement,' because, unfortunately, American
sentiment can be a mile wide and an inch deep, ready to be reversed at the
first hint (or claims) of 'success' of the 'surge.'"

Actually the evidence is in on this, in the form of a CNN poll taken the
first weekend of November, and which found opposition to the war at the
highest level ever, 68% opposed and 31% in favor, despite the bombardment of
the last couple of months about how the surge is working. I think people are
past caring. They're sick of this war.

I also don't think that there is a huge difference in sentiment specifically
over Afghanistan. I think most people view it as the same war, and they want
it to end.

The fact that antiwar sentiment is now the big majority and firmly
entrenched is very important. The Nixon administration withdrew ground
troops from Vietnam basically because the army had been broken as an
effective fighting force. There are, as yet, very few reports that what
happened to army morale in Vietnam is happening in Iraq and Afghanistan, but
there were ALSO very few such reports during the Vietnam War.

It is pretty clear that the gung-ho army of the Iraq invasion is no more: I
don't believe there's anyone fighting in the field motivated to take heroic
risks for "the mission" -- whatever it might be. But whether and how this
army will collapse as any sort of effective fighting force is an open
question. 

In Vietnam, it took the form of units refusing to carry out orders, either
openly --in a few cases-- or simply lying about how far in the bush they had
gone to look for the Vietcong. And in the repeated fraggings of officers
that the grunts viewed as irresponsible. 

In the more urban Iraq environment, we know that at least some avoidance of
contact with the enemy has been going on (it was reported in an article
referred to on this list a few weeks ago), but how generalized it is we
don't know, and it seems to me likely that this is something that is more
difficult to do in Iraq than in Vietnam.  

As for the antiwar movement, I think the decline in the U.S. is in some ways
a rational response to lived experience, and in some ways the predictable
outcome of the policies that the leading forces have followed. 

Protests --even the most massive-- cannot stop the government from doing
something it wants to do, although they might lead --eventually-- to
divisions in ruling class circles and a political crisis. But barring that,
the obvious "escalation" of the protests is the one the American people
actually carried out last November -- change the policy by changing those
running the government.

People need to understand just how HARD it is to change the composition of
the Congress. The big majority of districts are so gerrymandered that an
opposition party challenge has next to no chance of success. The incumbents
have tremendous advantages, and in a given election only a few dozen
Congressional seats --10% or less-- are actually "competitive." In the
Senate, only one third of the seats are up for election at any given time.
Given those things, and the natural advantage of incumbency, the swing to
the Democrats last November was dramatic.

The problem is, of course, that the choice was between a shamelessly pro-war
party and a shamefacedly pro-war party. The antiwar movement, along with
other social and protest movements, needs a POLITICAL expression, but that
has not emerged, and the experience with trying to use the Democrats as a
substitute has been a most unhappy one. Then couple that with the majority
wing of the antiwar movement in essence telling people there is no such
need, the Democrats will do, and the ANSWER wing in essence ignoring the
problem, and the feeling people have that there is nothing they can do
becomes quite understandable. 

Like I said, I'm not sure what can be done about this situation. But that is
how I see it.

Joaquin