Many, many Americans contacted their representatives and made their arguments against the war, by calling, e-mailing, faxing, writing, lobbying in person, using civil disobedience, holding demos and vigils, etc. Regardless, Congress already passed the resolution giving Bush the power to make war on Iraq unilaterally:
***** Congress Passes Iraq Resolution Overwhelming Approval Gives Bush Authority to Attack Unilaterally
By Jim VandeHei and Juliet Eilperin Washington Post Staff Writers Friday, October 11, 2002; Page A01
The House and Senate voted overwhelmingly to grant President Bush the power to attack Iraq unilaterally, remove Saddam Hussein from power and abolish that country's nuclear, chemical and biological weaponry.
Moving the nation closer to a possible second war with Iraq, 77 of 100 senators and 296 of 435 House members voted to authorize the president to "use the armed forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq."
The president needs no further congressional approval to deploy troops, order airstrikes and wage a ground war with Iraq. "The gathering threat of Iraq must be confronted fully and finally," Bush said after the House vote yesterday afternoon . "The days of Iraq acting as an outlaw state are coming to an end."
With Congress's debate behind him, the president will focus on the United Nations. He is pressing the world body to adopt a new resolution demanding that Hussein immediately dismantle his weapons of mass destruction or face possible military action....
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A6032-2002Oct10> *****
Now, this just in:
***** UN backs Iraq resolution · 15-0 unanimous vote · Bush praises council decision · Iraq's UN ambassador 'pessimistic'
Sarah Left Friday November 8, 2002
UN security council members unanimously approve a new Iraq resolution. Photo: AP
The UN security council today voted unanimously in favour of a British and American resolution to send weapons inspectors back into Iraq, and George Bush immediately promised "the severest consequences" if Saddam Hussein fails to comply.
Seven weeks of often heated negotiations paid off for the US president, George Bush, who had hoped for concurrence from all 15 security council members to send a strong signal to Iraq. Even Syria, which had wavered over supporting a tough resolution against another Arab state, voted in favour rather than abstaining....
After the vote, the US ambassador to the UN, John Negroponte, promised: "This resolution contains no hidden triggers or automaticity with respect to the use of force. If there is a further breach, the matter will return to the council for discussion."
But Mr Negroponte made sure the council understood the resolution had not tied Mr Bush's hands. The resolution does not constrain any member state from acting to defend itself and protecting world peace and security, he said, hinting that the US could move ahead with an attack on Iraq even without the security council's approval....
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,836496,00.html> *****
At 3:27 PM -0500 11/8/02, Nathan Newman wrote:
>Some of it can be done based on self-interest and how stupid this
>war is, but some has to be combatting the idealistic hopes that
>Hitch touches on that the neoconservatives are promoting
Aside from Hitchens, yourself, and neo-cons, hardly any Americans entertain "the idealistic hopes" about the United States bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq and the rest of the Middle East, so there is no need to argue against them at length.
***** Ten Q&A On Antiwar Organizing by Michael Albert and Stephen R Shalom October 24, 2002
...Effective activism raises the social cost to elites of policies that activists wish to reverse. When that cost is raised high enough, elites begin to switch their positions to try to reduce the social costs, no longer favoring but now opposing the policy. If enough members of elite corporate and political sectors switch their priority, the policy changes.
During the war on Vietnam, many elite figures -- including politicians, prominent media people, intellectuals, CEOs, and so on -- moved from being advocates of the war to opponents of it. Of course working people and students also switched sides, for moral reasons. But with very few exceptions (such as Daniel Ellsberg or William Fulbright) when these elite figures switched from support to opposition, they did so for reasons of social cost.
The elite figures announcing a change of view almost never said, "I have come to the conclusion that invading and bombing another country into the Stone Age for reason of state and geopolitical domination is immoral, and I can't abide it any more." What they said, instead, was almost always more or less that: "Our streets are in turmoil. We are losing the next generation of our youth. The fabric of U.S. society is being torn apart. So I can no longer in good conscience support the war." In other more forthright words: "I supported the war, believing it was desirable from the point of view of the large scale geopolitical and economic interests of elites who dominate our society. However, it turns out that pursuit of the war has created this huge, angry antiwar movement, which hasn't just contented itself with protesting the war, but is tearing up things I hold even more sacred -- corporations, political authority, the whole ideological underpinning of my society. I have realized that pursuit of the war is actually creating a dynamic that on balance threatens corporate and political elite control more than extricating ourselves from the war would. So now, for that reason, I favor extrication."
That change of mind due to rising social costs is the aim of critical dissent. We need a movement broad and committed enough so its continued growth is sufficiently threatening that elites decide it is better to give in and hope that doing so dissolves the impetus to movement growth, rather than to continue with their war risking what the movement might unleash. To switch from pro- to antiwar in sufficient numbers to cause a policy change, elites must be more threatened by the movement than they are in love with their war....
<http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=45&ItemID=2527> *****
So, the question is how best to raise the social costs to the power elite, especially how best to make the anti-war movement rapidly grow _much larger and more militant_. -- Yoshie
* Calendar of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Anti-War Activist Resources: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osu.edu/students/CJP/>