Todd Archer wrote:
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> Granted. So what could be said in a sound-bite or on a placard that could
> contain those concepts (ie SH was unpopular, but so was the invasion and the
> occupation, but please don't up and leave or else there might be more
> chaos)? "U.S. OUT NOW!" seems to be verboten with this info.
>
Liberals in the anti-war movement (by "liberals" I mean those self-identified as such) seem to be much less bothered by difficulties with this slogan than do most (non-active?) leftists. The slogan has triumphed totally within the active anti-war movement, and the internal debate has moved on to matters of implementation, of keeping the movement and its structure alive and active until the next big public upsurge, etc. Not one of the many liberals I have talked to in the last 6 months has had any difficulty at all with the slogan. (Though liberals, and I think they are correct in this, usually prefer the version, "Bring the Troops Home Now!")
One woman in the local group has a brother in Iraq, and she has two equal worries: a) the usual worry of harm physically, now or later, and b) she is acutely aware (and says it shows in his letters) that duty in an army of occupation destroys one 'spiritually' or 'morally,' and she hates seeing that happen to her brother.
One simply can't organize around any more complicated a central slogan. No one ever has. No one ever will. Complications are settled in the kind of writing Kelley (in opposition to most) argued for in the Postmodern Prince thread and in individual or small group conversation. But at a strategic level for the anti-war movement there simply is no alternative to this slogan of Out Now.
Carrol