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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (66833)	1/18/2003 11:19:02 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

International Answer/International Action's politics are too revolting for many on the left. >>Peace kooks - The new antiwar movement is in danger of being hijacked by bizarre extremist groups -- and most protesters don't even know it.<< salon.com >>Strange Marchfellows<< thenation.com >>One extremely energetic antiwar group is the International Action Center (IAC). It is the leading force in the coalition ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War & End Racism) which is calling the October 26 demonstrations in Washington, DC and elsewhere. (IAC and ANSWER share a New York City phone number and the latter's website features many materials from IAC.) IAC is officially led by Ramsey Clark and is largely the creation of the Workers World Party; many key IAC figures are prominent writers for WWP. WWP holds many views that we find abhorrent. It considers North Korea "socialist Korea" where the "land, factories, homes, hotels, parks, schools, hospitals, offices, museums, buses, subways, everything in the DPRK belongs to the people as a whole" (Workers World, May 9, 2002), a fantastic distortion of the reality of one of the most rigid dictatorships in the world. IAC expresses its solidarity with Slobodan Milosevic (http:// www.iacenter.org/yugo_milosdeligation.htm). There's of course much to criticize in the one-sided Hague war crimes tribunal, but to champion Milosevic is grotesque. The ANSWER website provides an IAC backgrounder on Afghanistan that refers to the dictatorial government that took power in that country in 1978 as "socialist" and says of the Soviet invasion the next year: the "USSR intervened militarily at the behest of the Afghani revolutionary government" (http://www.internationalanswer.org/campaigns/ resources/index.html) -- neglecting to mention that Moscow first had to engineer the execution of the Afghan leader to get themselves the invitation to intervene. In none of IAC's considerable resources on the current Iraq crisis is there a single negative word about Saddam Hussein. There is no mention that he is a ruthless dictator. (This omission is not surprising, given their inability to detect any problem of dictatorship with the Soviet-backed regime in Afghanistan.) There is no mention that Hussein is responsible for the deaths of many tens of thousands of Iraqi Kurds and Shi'ites. IAC's position is that any opponent of U.S. imperialism must be championed and never criticized. How do these views affect antiwar demonstrations organized by IAC or ANSWER? They do so in two primary ways. First, an important purpose of antiwar demonstrations is to educate the public, so as to be able to build a larger movement. If the message of a demonstration is that opposition to U.S. war means support for brutal regimes, then we are mis-educating the public, and limiting the growth of the movement. To be sure, some true things we say may also alienate some members of the public, and often that is a risk we must take in order to communicate the truth and change awareness. But to tell the public that they have to support either George Bush or Saddam Hussein is not true and is certainly not a way to build a strong movement. People are not wrong to be morally repelled by Saddam Hussein. An antiwar movement that cannot make clear its opposition to the crimes of both Bush and Hussein will of necessity be limited in size. The second problem with IAC-organized demonstrations is that the day-to-day practice of IAC cadre often shows a lack of commitment to democratic and open behavior. It is not surprising that those who lionize the dictatorial North Korean regime will be somewhat lacking in their appreciation of democratic practice. Does this mean that people who reject these abhorrent views of the IAC shouldn't attend the October 26 antiwar demonstrations in Washington, DC, San Francisco, and elsewhere? No. If there were another large demonstration organized by forces more compatible with the kinds of politics espoused by other antiwar activists, including ourselves, then we would urge people to prefer that one. And there is no doubt we should be working to build alternative organizational structures for the antiwar movement that are not dominated by IAC. But at the moment the ANSWER demonstration is the only show in town. And much as we may oppose Saddam Hussein, we also oppose Bush, and the paramount danger today is the war being prepared by the U.S. government. So we need to consider various questions. First, are those with antiwar views contrary to the IAC's perspective excluded from speaking? Second, what will be the primary message perceived by those present at the demonstrations and by the wider public? If past experience is a guide, IAC demonstrations will have programs skewed in the direction of IAC politics, but without excluding alternative voices. In general, the IAC speakers will not be offensive so much for what they say, but for what they don't say. That is, they won't praise Saddam Hussein from the podium, but nor will they utter a critical word about him. However, as long as other speakers can and do express positions with a different point of view, the overall impact of the event will still be positive, particularly in the absence of other options. Most of the people at the demonstration will in fact be unaware of exactly who said what and whether any particular speaker omitted this or that point. What they will experience will be a powerful antiwar protest. And most of the public will see it that way too. (As was the case during the Vietnam War too: few demonstrators knew the specific politics or agendas of demonstration organizers.) Accordingly, and in the absence of any alternative event, it makes sense to help build and to attend the October 26 demonstration, while also registering extreme distaste for the IAC, at least in our view.<< zmag.org Source linked from Little Green Footballs: littlegreenfootballs.com authoritarianopportunistswhocozyuptogenocidaldictators-forpeace.org

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (66833)	1/18/2003 11:23:33 PM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 281500

Do I think the attempt to paint the demonstrators today as dupes is a not-so-simple way to to demean the actions of folk who had the courage to brave the weather and, in some cases, a rather long trip, to declare their opposition? Yes. Do I think the attempt to use whatever the affiliations of ANSWER or any other group to characterize the entire demonstration is also a demeaning attempt to diminish the impact of a public demonstration? Of course. You guys are back to the "love it, or leave it" simplicities. I gather everyone who opposes the pre-emptive strike doctrines of the Bush administration are now "clueless." Somehow it never seems to occur to those using those terms that having "clues" has led this administration to be the most disliked US administration in the world in a very, very long time. And getting worse.