snit snat wrote:
>
> I think, as Carrol has repeatedly argued, the point isn't that protests
> will change policy. Rather, the shorter term goal is twofol:
>
> 1. To keep up active protests so people have organizations to which they
> turn (and join) when they, too, decide they've had enough.
>
> 2. To build a social movement and, more importantly, build a party around
> anti-war organizing.
This is good. Let me expand it just a bit.
Sometimes protests _do_ change policy. But they have to be large and growing, and that doesn't happen overnight. Three and a half years ago some people on the list complained when I argued that the anti-war movement couldn't have an immediate effect. Those complaints were repeated, only louder, when the Iraq War began. Even when they are of moderate size, if they are widespread and persistent enough, they almost certainly make decision makers nervous. Of course the government never takes recipes from the protest movements (which is one of the reasons it is so silly to harp on the alleged need to compose such recipes), but they do feel the pressure and make decisions with that in mind.
For example: I think that turning over Iraq to a "multilateral" or "U.N." force would if any thing make conditions there worse. But suppose we really _did_ want that "solution." How would we create pressure for it: by demanding Troops Out Now! Period -- NOT by demanding . The trouble with academics, journalists, and Reformists is that they make such fucking flabby reformers. It will be equally disastrous in the defense of Social Security to put forth complex "positive" proposals. The only hope is for as much disturbance and yelling as possible saying "No change!"
Nothing "The Left" (even if such an entity existed) can say or do, nothing journalists can say or do, will move the government in the short range. Attempts to do that only generate despair and futility. The Iraq War is going to go on for at least two years, no matter what kind of resistance we build to it, no matter what slogans we organize about. But the slaughter there can go on much longer unless in the next two years both in the u.s. and around the world anti-war protests grow much larger and (gradually) more militant. The demand for _instant_ militancy _or_ the demand for "positive proposals" both ignore the way mass movements actually work. They both lead to despair. The effort to elect Kerry was in a way a demand for more-or-less instant and "reasonable" influence. It produced despair. So will Chuck0's urgings. I said a year or two ago that I thought there was a significant resemblance between Chuck0 & Nathan Newman. It's this need for shortterm results (new people in office or more hell on the street RIGHT NOW).
Carrol