[R-G] Stan Goff: JOINT DEMO, SHEEHAN, MOVEON, HAYDEN

[Tim Murphy]

Feral Scholar (Stan Goff Blog) - Aug 20, 2005 
http://stangoff.com/index.php?p=175 


Feral Scholar: 


JOINT DEMO, SHEEHAN, MOVEON, HAYDEN 


I normally don't post ad hoc to the blog, but I feel compelled to 
between babysitting a grandchild, meeting deadlines, coordinating 
antiwar Iraq veteran activities, and going to all-day planning 
meetings. There are three things that occur to me as being related, 
and I make no promise to describe that relation in any depth... only 
to suggest some connections and solicit more collective wisdom. 


(1) The UFPJ/ANSWER decision to conduct a joint action on September 24th. 
(2) The role of Moveon.org in Cindy Sheehan's action in Crawford, TX. 
(3) Tom Hayden's proposed "exit strategy" from Iraq. 


At every public event I have attended for the last two years - all of 
them being related to opposing the war - I have invariably run into 
someone speaking with a thoughtful, sensitive, reasonable inflection 
about the need to "reach out to the other side" and help stop the 
polarization that is creeping into American society. And I have had to 
practice my best diplomacy to respond... because if I said what I want 
to say how I want to say it every time I hear this bullshit, I would 
look like a bully. People who adopt these "reasonable" tones are often 
skilled passive-aggressives who could easily make anyone who opposes 
them look like a bully. I suspect they also often have agendas. 


Let me say now with no equivocation, I endorse polarization. Deep, 
wide, disruptive, knock-down-drag-out polarization. That's what social 
upheaval looks like, and upheaval is exactly what we need. 


But not the kind that was creating an idiotically divided antiwar 
demonstration for September 24th. That kind of polarization, where the 
left organizes a firing squad by forming a circle, is destructive of 
only one pole. I'm not going to go into any depth here about the 
respective faults of the two groups - one very broad and 
administratively unweildy, with certain leaders that will cling to the 
pantlegs of the Democratic Party until they die, and one agile as only 
a top-down rule-or-ruin sect-led outfit can be, with leaders who seem 
unable to resist proposing maximalist programs in every venue in order 
to woo social sector "franchises." There... I talked shit about both 
of them, as they both deserve. Enough. Broad is good. Agile is good. 
Opportunism, in any guise, is bad. 


What is being organized on September 24th is immensely important, far 
more important than either of the "leading" groups, and their 
dcecision to bury the hatchet is an indication that the clamoring of 
many dedicated leftists who put the needs of the movement before those 
of some fetishized organization has had an effect. We need a united 
left, and we do not need any formation out there claiming to be the 
only true prophets any more than we need social-democratic 
majoritarians. Otherwise the polarization will be a massively 
organized, well-funded (and need I point out, well-armed) right-wing, 
and a fragmented fratricidal left. 


Not good. 


The steady degeneration of the Energy War, the growing public 
disillusion with the serial pronouncements of "progress," and the 
catalyst of the Cindy Sheehan drama in Crawford, have thrown a monkey 
wrench into the propaganda machine, but more importantly, the 
"radical" position on the war, unilateral and immediate withdrawal, 
has been legitimized. And it wasn't accomplished with a policy fight, 
with lobbying, or even with a "peaceful, legal" demonstration. It was 
accomnplished with civil disobedience. 


Cindy's protest was civil disobedience! She was told not to. She did. 
She was told to leave. She didn't. She is also going to refuse to pay 
her taxes. 


When this kind of action captures the public imagination, there is 
always the threat that people will be awakened to politics as a 
struggle for social power that can be taken out of the 
electoral-legislative corral. 


Aside from plain opportunism and the whiff of funding oppportunities, 
Moveon, a thinly-veiled front for the Democratic Party first conceived 
in defense of the murderous Bill Clinton, whipped into Crawford with 
money and media experts to "support Cindy" because there is no entity 
that has more to fear from her out-0f-the-box message than the 
bourgeois charlatans of the Democratic Leadership Council. To her 
great credit, Cindy has finessed this very well, using the resources 
wihtout accepting anyone's strings to dance around the core message - 
Bring Them Home Now. Those of us who know her know that Cindy is no 
"average middle-aged mom." She is an extremely intelligent woman with 
the heart of a pro boxer. 


The Democrats are already grooming a few 2008 candidates, including 
the execrable Hillary Rodham Clinton who has already stated her 
intention to beef up the war against Southwest Asia. Let's not forget 
that her husband presided over an Iraqi holocaust that George W. Bush 
is still trying to match. The Republicans are secure for now with 
their white nationalist popular base. An active and increasingly 
militant left is a more immediate threat to the Democrats - who have 
prospered from Repubilican reaction for decades now by capturing 
social bases that feel they have nowhere else to go. That dilemma is 
real, but it is also predicated on the notion that to "go there" we 
need to contain ourselves in electoralism and pluralist policy fights 
that are engineered by corporations and NGOs. 


That's why Sheehan and others who propose the radical option of simply 
leaving Iraq are now being surrounded by the friendly faces of 
"progressives" who will try and redirect this newfound mobilization 
along acceptable paths. 


Enter Tom Hayden with his "proposal" for disengagement in Iraq. The 
logic is - antiwar Congresspeople cannot advance their agenda without 
an alternative to the fake "exit strategies" of the right. Of course, 
this is just another Moveon proposal. Nothing unilateral about it, and 
no demand for immediate withdrawal. Moreover, it depends on actions 
taken by Iraqis that the US will ultimately have no control over 
unless it is coercive. This plan is no less racist in its implications 
than the Republican myth of democracy-implants. It still calls for 
outsiders (including possibly the CIA!) to broker the withdrawal and 
oversee the "reconciliation" of those troublesome brown people. Sorry, 
Tom. This is bullshit. Just because you ask for guarantees of no 
permanent US bases and no preferential US contracts does not erase the 
fact that you have taken self-determination off the board and are 
attempting to redirect the demand (yet unmet!) for a political 
decision to leave into a policy debate. 


Let me just say something about how to withdraw. This is my plan, and 
it requires nothing of the Iraqis. 


The National Command Authority orders all US forces redeployed out of 
Iraq within one month and out of the theater in two months. Any 
commander that fails to meet the deadline will be summarily relieved, 
and replaced with a commander that will thereby be placed on a shorter 
timeline. I can promise anyone who has no experience of the military 
that this is perfectly feasible, and that with that kind of command 
emphasis, the mission can and will be accomplished. 


But the movement that will hopefully put hundreds of thousands in the 
streets of DC in September has not yet achieved the goal of forcing 
this political decision to be made. Politics as an exercise of popular 
power will be sidelined if it takes up the issue of HOW to leave Iraq. 
It's a bullshit issue designed to stand us down, and put us back in 
the box. 


At the same time, we have to pay attention to how the right-wing is 
attacking Cindy Sheehan. Something we have to be very clear about is 
that these attacks are only commensurate with the threat they percieve 
her to be. When it is necessary, the reactionaries will be unleashed 
by the entire dominant class to whatever is necessary to preserve 
their power. They will slander us; they will jail us; and they will 
kill us, if that's what they believe is necessary. I don't know why so 
many people so stubbornly ignore this historically demonstrable fact. 
The only way to prepare for that is to build a powerful and militant 
multi-tendency REVOLUTIONARY left that transcends the NGO politics of 
the "progressives" on the right and the sectarian (and tacticaly 
stupid) maximalism of the ultra-left. 


The most important task over the next month - at least from where I am 
standing - is to use the momentum created by the Cindy Sheehan 
breakthrough at Crawford to ramp up the largest possible demonstration 
against the war for September 24th in Washington DC. Psuedo-leftist 
"exit strategies," blaming Republicans for the war (instead of the 
entire dominant class), or trying to turn this into a recruiting 
opportunity for small leftist sects, are obstacles to this process. 
Turning this war into a political liability will do more for every 
form of resistance to imperialism in every location around the world, 
as well as the internal colonies of the US, than all the policy fights 
or all of the pristinely perfect left-maximalist programs in the 
world. 


Persuasion doesn't bring down the beast. Bleeding does. The US 
withdrawal from Iraq will be one of the biggest victories for genuine 
people's movements, here and abroad, since the US was forced out of 
Vietnam. 

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