[wvns] Social Opposition, Political Impotence
US ME Wars: Social Opposition, Political Impotence
James Petras
www.palestinechronicle.com/story-070707133043.htm
"You cannot win the peace unless you know the enemy at home and
abroad," -- US Marine Colonel from Tennessee.
Everywhere I visit from Copenhagen to Istanbul, Patagonia to Mexico
City, journalists and academics, trade unionists and businesspeople,
as well as ordinary citizens, inevitably ask me why the US public
tolerates the killing of over a million Iraqis over the last two
decades, and thousands of Afghans since 2001? Why, they ask, is a
public, which opinion polls reveal as over sixty percent in favor of
withdrawing US troops from Iraq, so politically impotent? A journalist
from a leading business journal in India asked me what is preventing
the US government from ending its aggression against Iran, if almost
all of the world's major oil companies, including US multinationals
are eager to strike oil deals with Teheran? Anti-war advocates in
Europe, Asia and Latin America ask me at large public forums what has
happened to the US peace movement in the face of the consensus between
the Republican White House and the Democratic Party-dominated Congress
to continue funding the slaughter of Iraqis, supporting Israeli
starvation, killing and occupation of Palestine and destruction of
Lebanon?
Absence of a Peace Movement?
Just prior to the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003 over one million
US citizens demonstrated against the war. Since then there have been
few and smaller protests even as the slaughter of Iraqis escalates, US
casualties mount and a new war with Iran looms on the horizon. The
demise of the peace movement is largely the result of the major peace
organizations' decision to shift from independent social mobilizations
to electoral politics, namely channeling activists into working for
the election of Democratic candidates – most of whom have supported
the war. The rationale offered by these 'peace leaders' was that once
elected the Democrats would respond to the anti-war voters who put
them in office. Of course practical experience and history should have
taught the peace movement otherwise: The Democrats in Congress voted
every military budget since the US invaded Iraq and Afghanistan. The
total capitulation of the newly elected Democratic majority has had a
major demoralizing effect on the disoriented peace activists and has
discredited many of its leaders.
Absence of a National Movement
As David Brooks (La Jornada July 2, 2007) correctly reported at the US
Social forum there is no coherent national social movement in the US.
Instead we have a collection of fragmented 'identity groups' each
embedded in narrow sets of (identity) interests, and totally incapable
of building a national movement against the war. The proliferation of
these sectarian 'non-governmental' 'identity' 'groups' is based on
their structure, financing and leadership. Many depend on private
foundations and public agencies for their financing, which precludes
them from taking political positions. At best they operate as
'lobbies' simply pressuring the elite politicians of both parties.
Their leaders depend on maintaining a separate existence in order to
justify their salaries and secure future advances in government agencies.
The US trade unions are virtually non-existent in more than half of
the United States: They represent less than 9% of the private sector
and 12% of the total labor force. Most national, regional and
city-wide trade union officials receive salaries comparable to senior
business executives: between $300,000 to $500,000 dollars a year.
Almost 90% of the top trade union bureaucrats finance and support
pro-war Democrats and have supported Bush and the Congressional war
budgets, bought Israel Bonds ($25 billion dollars) and the slaughter
of Palestinians and the Israeli bombing of Lebanon.
The Unopposed War Lobby
The US is the only country in the world where the peace movement is
unwilling to recognize, publically condemn or oppose the major
influential political and social institutions consistently supporting
and promoting the US wars in the Middle East. The political power of
the pro-Israel power configuration, led by the American Israel
Political Affairs Committee (AIPAC), supported within the government
by highly placed pro-Israel Congressional leaders and White House and
Pentagon officials has been well documented in books and articles by
leading journalists, scholars and former President Jimmy Carter. The
Zionist Power Configuration (ZPC) has over two thousand full-time
functionaries, more than 250,000 activists, over a thousand
billionaire and multi-millionaire political donors who contribute
funds both political parties. The ZPC secures 20% of the US foreign
military aid budget for Israel, over 95% congressional support for
Israel's boycott and armed incursions in Gaza, invasion of Lebanon and
preemptive military option against Iran.
The US invasion and occupation policy in Iraq, including the
fabricated evidence justifying the invasion, was deeply influenced by
top officials with long-standing loyalties and ties to Israel.
Wolfowitz and Feith, numbers 2 and 3 in the Pentagon, are life-long
Zionists, who lost security clearance early in their careers for
handing over documents to Israel. Vice President Cheney's chief
foreign policy adviser in the planning of the Iraq invasion is Irving
Lewis Liebowitz ('Scooter Libby'). He is a protégé and long-time
collaborator of Wolfowitz and a convicted felon. Libby-Liebowitz
committed perjury, defending the White House's complicity in punishing
officials critical of its Iraq war propaganda. Libby-Liebowitz
received powerful political and financial support from the pro-Israel
lobby during his trial. No sooner did he lose his appeal on his
conviction on five counts of perjury, obstructing justice and lying,
than the ZPC convinced President Bush to 'commute' his prison
sentence, in effect freeing him from a 30 month prison sentence before
he had served a day. While Democratic politicians and some peace
leaders criticized President Bush, none dared hold responsible the
pro-Israel lobby which pressured the White House.
The Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations (PMAJO) –
numbering 52 – and their regional and local affiliates are the leading
force transmitting Israel's war agenda against Iran. The PMAJO,
working closely with US-Israeli Congressman Rahm Emmanuel and leading
Zionist Senators Charles Schumer and Joseph Lieberman, succeeded in
eliminating a clause in the budget appropriation setting a date for
the withdrawal for US troops from Iraq.
In contrast to the successful vast propaganda, congressional and media
campaigns, organized and funded by the pro-Israel lobbies for the war
policies, there is no public record of the big oil companies
supporting the Iraq war, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon or the
military threats of preemptive attacks on Iran. Interviews with
investment bankers, oil company executives and a thorough review of
the major Petroleum Institute publications over the past seven years
provide conclusive evidence that 'Big Oil' was deeply interested in
negotiating oil agreements with Saddam Hussein and the Iranian Islamic
government. 'Big Oil' perceives US Middle East wars as a threat to
their long-standing profitable relations with all the conservative
Arab oil states in the Gulf. Despite the strategic position in the US
economy and their great wealth ''Big Oil' was totally incapable of
countering their political power and organized influence of the
pro-Israel lobby. In fact Big Oil was totally marginalized by the
White House National Security Advisor for the Middle East, Elliot
Abrams, a fanatical Zionist and militarist.
Despite the massive and sustained pro-war activity of the leading
Zionist organizations inside and outside of the government and despite
the absence of any overt or covert pro-war campaign by 'Big Oil', the
leaders of the US peace movement have refused to attack the pro-Israel
war lobby and continue to mouth unfounded clichés about the role of
'Big Oil' in the Middle East conflicts.
The apparently 'radical' slogans against the oil industry by some
leading intellectual critics of the war has served as a 'cover' to
avoid the much more challenging task of taking on the powerful,
Zionist lobby. There are several reasons for the failure of the
leaders of the peace movement to confront the militant Zionist lobby.
One is fear of the powerful propaganda and smear campaign which the
pro-Israel lobby is expert at mounting, with its aggressive
accusations of 'anti-Semitism' and its capacity to blacklist critics,
leading to job loss, career destruction, public abuse and death threats.
The second reason that peace leaders fail to criticize the leading
pro-war lobby is because of the influence of pro-Israel 'progressives'
in the movement. These progressives condition their support of 'peace
in Iraq' only if the movement does not criticize the pro-war Israel
lobby in and outside the US government, the role of Israel as a
belligerent partner to the US in Lebanon, Palestine and Kurdish
Northern Iraq. A movement claiming to be in favor of peace, which
refuses to attack the main proponents of war, is pursuing irrelevance:
it deflects attention from the pro-Israel high officials in the
government and the lobbyists in Congress who back the war and set the
White House's Middle East agenda. By focusing attention exclusively on
President Bush, the peace leaders failed to confront the majority
pro-Israel Democratic congress people who fund Bush's war, back his
escalation of troops and give unconditional support to Israel's
military option for Iran.
The collapse of the US peace movement, the lack of credibility of most
of its leaders and the demoralization of many activists can be traced
to strategic political failures: the unwillingness to identify and
confront the real pro-war movements and the inability to create a
political alternative to the bellicose Democratic Party. The political
failure of the leaders of the peace movement is all the more dramatic
in the face of the large majority of passive Americans who oppose the
war, most of whom did not display their flags this Fourth of July and
are not led in tow by either the pro-Israel lobby or their
intellectual apologists within progressive circles.
The word to anti-war critics of the world is that over sixty percent
of the US public opposes the war but our streets are empty because our
peace movement leaders are spineless and politically impotent.
-A regular contributor to PalestineChronicle.com, James Petras is a
Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Binghamton University, SUNY, New
York, USA, and adjunct professor at Saint Mary's University, Halifax,
Nova Scotia, Canada. He is a revolutionary and anti-imperialist
activist and writer. He has worked with the Brazilian landless
workers' movement and the unemployed workers' movement in Argentina.
He is currently a member of the editorial collective of Canadian
Dimension. Petras is the author of numerous books and articles.
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