>----- Original Message -----
>From: "H. Curtiss Leung" <hncl at panix.com>
>> In practice and in message, there was little or no message by the antiwar
>> movement on how they were acting in solidarity with the oppressed folks
>> within Iraq.
>>
>> And that was the fatal flaw of antiwar organizing.
>
>-That's pure conjecture, and a pretty dubious one at that. Given that some
>-depressingly high percentage of the populace thinks that Saddam Hussein was
>-involved with the WTC bombings, why not say that the fatal flaw of antiwar
>-organizing was the inability to disspell this misconception?
>
>The latter was also no doubt a problem but since we were discussing why the
>warhawks managed to convey a clear message of why we should fight this war
>and there is no doubt that the "liberation of Iraq" has been a clear motive
>given for the war, it is hardly conjecture to focus on the antiwar
>movement's failure to posit an alternative method of liberation.
There was no clear rationale offered by the hawks. They've been all over the place with reasons. And the American public believes that SH was behind 9/11.
>As I said, when so much of the left is saying it's none of our business
>whether Kurds are being gassed or human rights being violated,
I guess you can't stop being a propagandist, even for a minute. Who was so indifferent to this? The controversy is over what to do about it. Almost no one defended it, or didn't care.
>\Lou Paulsen argues that there is no "example of an anti-war movement
>successfully preventing ANY U.S. imperialist war." It's hard to prove a
>negative but there is little question that the Reagan administration was
>looking to invade Central America.
But they effectively did. Who were the contras? Reagan won the war in CA, even if they didn't send in the marines.
>While it was able to significantly
>undermine the Nicaraguan revolution, partly because of mistakes by that
>regime itself that played into its hands,
Ahhh, yes, I can see Paul Berman standing at your side!
>The reality is that between those two wars, the antiwar movement failed to
>build a cohesive public education message in defense of Kurdish and Shia
>human rights and pressure for non-violent strategies that would have been
>seen as an effective alternative to war. That is a failure of both the
>groups like Workers World Party who had no human rights message at all and
>of various other peace groups that did not focus on the issue.
Are you delusional? The war happened because of WWP?
Would you have said something like "Well there are Communists in Hollywood and the unions" in the 1950s, while complaining about the "excesses" of McCarthy?
>The difference between the modern Right and the modern Left is that the
>conservatives examine their political losses and modify their message for
>the next encounter.
And they've got capital and the state behind them.
> The Left seems to think that a simplistic "no war"
>message with the same marches and same chants as they've been using for
>thirty years are all they need to convince the public.
>
>When a message has been used in the past and failed and the same tactic is
>used and fails again, the problem is not that failure is inevitable but that
>new messages and new tactics are needed.
Would you kindly reveal some of these new messages and tactics, instead of endlessly proclaiming their urgent necessity?
Doug