A national anti-war coalition (of which I am a steering committee member) debated and voted (thrice) on the issue in question here. After a divided meeting last December, steering committee members were asked to vote for either of the two following positions:
Position 1
* Bring the U.S. troops home now. * Iraqi sovereignty must be reestablished immediately. * The Iraqi people, not foreigners, should make the decisions about the future of their country, including security. If the Iraqis decide, the international community -- such as the United Nations or the Arab League -- should help in that process, in accordance with international law. Iraqis should decide the structure of their economy and control Iraq's reconstruction. The corporate invasion of Iraq must be ended and the privatizations laws passed under the occupation repealed. Labor and human rights should also be guaranteed. * The United States should pay for the reconstruction of and reparations to Iraq, in accordance with international law.
Position 2 * Bring the U.S. troops home now. * Iraqi sovereignty must be reestablished immediately. * The Iraqi people, not foreigners, should make the de'isions about the future of their country, including security. Iraqis should decide the structure of their economy and control Iraq's reconstruction. The corporate invasion of Iraq must be ended and the privatizations laws passed under the occupation repealed. Labor and human rights should also be guaranteed. * The United States should pay for the reconstruction of and reparations to Iraq, in accordance with international law.
The only difference between the two positions is that Position 2 does not include this sentence: "If the Iraqis decide, the international community -- such as the United Nations or the Arab League -- should help in that process, in accordance with international law."
The voting period was January 12-20, 2004. 32 steering committee members voted, with the following result: 21 votes for Position 1, 10 votes for Position 2, 1 abstention (which counted as no vote), and 1 vote for "Either Position" (which was not counted). 1 steering committee member voted after the deadline (so the vote was too late to be counted), and 5 did not vote. As neither position won the two thirds majority, the coalition's position remained the same as the simple old demand before the December 2003 meeting: End the Occupation of Iraq Now.
The matter stood there until April 2004, when the administrative committee decided to ask the steering committee members to vote on the question again. The steering committee members were instructed to vote either Yes, No, or Abstain on the following new position -- let's call it Position 3:
* Bring the U.S. troops home now. * Iraqi sovereignty must be reestablished immediately. * The Iraqi people, not foreigners, should make the decisions about the future of their country, including security. Iraqis should decide the structure of their economy and control Iraq's reconstruction. The corporate invasion of Iraq must be ended and the privatizations laws passed under the occupation repealed. Labor and human rights should also be guaranteed. * The United States should pay for the reconstruction of and reparations to Iraq, in accordance with international law. * The United Nations and other international organizations should refuse to endorse or collaborate with the U.S. occupation of Iraq. But once the U.S. ends its occupation, if representative sectors of Iraqi society invite it, the UN, backed by other international bodies such as the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference, should help the Iraqis establish mechanisms through which to choose their own leaders and reclaim sovereign control of their own country.
Keep in mind that the only bone of contention was the fifth point.
The voting period was May 6-17, 2004. This time, the results were 22 Yes votes, 7 No votes, with no abstention. Therefore, Position 3 received more than the required two thirds majority and became the coalition's official position.
The debates and votes concerning the decision mattered to some degree to the coalition's steering committee members and organizations of which we are delegates, but did either the debates and votes or the resulting new position affect the coalition's member organizations that do not have their delegates represented in the steering committee or the broader anti-war movement or the US public in general in any way? I don't think they have, and, to my knowledge, few people noticed the change anyhow.
The change might have made some difference if the coalition had taken public actions and organized political campaigns backing the most prominent presidential candidate -- Ralph Nader -- whose position on Iraq more or less coincides with the coalition's newly adopted position (without getting into legal trouble with the FEC, that is), but the coalition mainly focused on AnybodyButBush-themed actions (while in spare time calling on John Kerry to take an anti-war stand on Iraq, which of course went ignored by Kerry), so the new official position had no electoral or social movement vehicle to bring it to the US public's attention.
What is ironic about all the debates about how to end the occupation of Iraq is that anti-war organizers and activists who insisted (and may still insist) on a plan for UN peace-keeping to replace the US occupation by and large have not and will not back the only presidential candidate whose position is essentially the same as theirs, focusing instead on AnybodyButBush-themed actions that are thought to further the fortune of Kerry, the candidate whose position is diametrically opposed to theirs. -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>