Today's Stories

June 26, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
Who's Actually Winning in Iraq?

June 25, 2008

David H. Price
The Minerva Consortium: Social Science in Harness

Stephen Soldz
The Torture Trainers and the APA

Andy Worthington
Six Years Late, Court Throws Out Gitmo Case

Marjorie Cohn
Scalia Cites False Information in Habeas Dissent

Joanne Mariner
What Boumediene Means

Ralph Nader
Starving AMTRAK

Robert Weissman
High Flyers and Soaring Inequality

Christopher Brauchli
Blackout at the EPA

Suren Pillay
A Picture of Things to Come?

Seth Sandronsky
UC Workers Avert Walkout

Website of the Day
Obama Talkin' White

June 24, 2008

Ishmael Reed
Obama: the Big Let Down

P. Sainath
They've Got the World by the Belly

Nikolas Kozloff
Charlie Black's Play Book: McCain Needs Another 9/11

Gregory Kafoury
Obama's Rightward Lurch

Betty Shamieh
Fear of Flailing: Erica Jong's "Arabs and Other Animals"

Mike Whitney
Gas Price Gouging: Don't Blame the Saudis

Andy Worthington
Italy's Forgotten Prisoners in Guantánamo

Bill Christison
Towards a World Parliament

Philippe Marlière
Spoiling Sarko's Euro-Show

Website of the Day
Who Owns You?

June 23, 2008

Michael Hudson
How Should the Middle East Invest Its Oil Profits?

John Ross
Killing Farmers with Killer Seeds

Peter Montague
Environmental Enron: the Clean Coal Con

Ramzy Baroud
Gaza's Dying Children

Robert Fantina
McCain, Racism and the Supreme Court

Robert Weitzel
A MAD Foreign Policy: America's Irrational Defense of Israel

David Macaray
The Supreme Court's Hostility to Organized Labor

Howard Lisnoff
Where's the Anger?

Richard Rhames
Grieving Mr. Gotcha: Russert, GE and Neutron Jack

Gail Dines
Penn, Porn and Me

Tim Matson
Bright Ideas for Storms and Blackouts

June 21 / 22, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The Russert Send-Off

Jeffrey St. Clair
Adventures in the Endangered Skin Trade

Pam Martens
A Secret Oil Gusher Inside Citigroup

Mike Whitney
The Game is Over: an Interview with Michael Hudson on the Economy

Chris Floyd
Torturegate

Tim Wise
The Ugly Side of Disaster: Katrina and the Midwest Floods

Paul Craig Roberts
A Totally Lawless Regime

Michael Winship
How Countrywide Leveraged Washington

Ron Jacobs
Vietnam Blues

Ramzy Baroud
Palestine in the American Imagination

Alan Farago
The Off-Shore Drilling Scam

Michael Yates
Paul Krugman on Race: Ignorant and Disingenuous

Dave Lindorff
Keeping America Safe: Prosecuting Children as Terrorists

Bernard Chazelle
Why Israel Won't Accept a Two-State Solution

Linda Mamoun
Mearsheimer and Walt in Tel Aviv

Jo-Shing Yang
Dying of Hunger, Dying of Thirst

Robert Jensen
Fear and Hope on a Runaway Train

Website of the Weekend
Slavery By Another Name

June 20, 2008

Robert Oscar Lopez
Brownout in Black Camelot: Obama and Latino Voters

Paul Craig Roberts
John Yoo, Totalitarian

Bouthaina Shaaban
The Real Arab AIPAC

Bill Quigley
The Big Lock-Up

Moshe Adler
Is Cuba Done With Equality?

Patrick Cockburn
An End to Iraq Contractor Immunity?

Andy Worthington
John McCain, Torture Puppet

Norman Solomon
Health Care and the Ghosts of War

Martha Rosenberg
Can Wyeth Fool American Women Twice?

June 19, 2008

Ralph Nader
Why Won't Corporations Take On Big Oil?

Chellis Glendinning
Techno-Fascism: Every Move You Make

Neve Gordon
Learning to Drive in Rafah

Dave Lindorff
Killing the News in Iraq

Sheldon Richman
Habeas Corpus Saved--Barely

George Bisharat
Obama's Missteps

Jackie Corr
Dear Mr. Kilowatt

Farzana Versey
Will Gorkhaland Become a Reality?

Website of the Day
Trouble on the Range

June 18, 2008

Nicole Colson
Hunger and Humiliation in the Belt-Tightening Economy

Rev. William E. Alberts
The "F" Word and the White Press

Vijay Prashad
Obama's Genuflections to the Swing Lobby

Parvez Ahmed
Oil Prices, Market Regulation and the Election

Bob Moss
Judicial Warfare in Boumediene

Dave Lindorff
The Elephant in the Room

David Wilson
Bush in London

June 17, 2008

Conn Hallinan
The Brain Trauma Vets

Wajahat Ali
Chomsky Speaks: On Iran and Iraq

Marjorie Cohn
Reviving Habeas Corpus

Uri Avnery
Two Professors: Mearsheimer and Walt in Israel

David Macaray
Adversarial Relationship

Rannie Amiri
Forgotten Lives in a Forgotten War

Website of the Day
Pentagon Money

June 16, 2008

Uri Avnery
An Apology

Corey D. B. Walker
The Racial Politics of Symbols

Howard Lisnoff
Files Upon Files

Dennis Loo
2008 Elections: Of Whales and Worms

Paul Craig Roberts
Obama and the Fall Into Tyranny

June 13 / 15, 2008

Douglas Valentine
McCain: War Hero or Go-To Collaborator?

Alexander Cockburn
Change, What Change?

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Politics of Timber Theft

Peter Linebaugh
On Wat Tyler Day

Ishmael Reed
The Colossus: Sonny Rollins, Take One

Joe Bageant
Old Dogs and Hard Time

Harry Browne
Ireland Shows the Way!

Andy Worthington
The Supreme Court's Gitmo Decision: What Does It Mean?

Jeff Sharlet
The F-Word

Binoy Kampmark
They Gassed Us: Agent Orange in OZ

Alan Farago
His Little Piece of the Pie

Brian Cloughley
America the Detested: the Pakistan Airstrikes

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
How to Stretch Gasoline

Reza Fiyouzat
Oil and Racism

Patrick Bond /
Richard Kamidza
How Europe Underdevelops Africa

David Yearsley
Music in the Rubble

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Thank You, Dennis Kucinich!

Ronnie Cummins
Don't Panic; Go Organic

Dan Bacher
Bush Tries to Raid Salmon Disaster Funds

Michael Dickinson
Jesus in Megiddo Prison

Seth Sandronsky
My Father's World

Poets' Basement
Tu Fu / Rexroth

Website of the Weekend
Torture and the American Psyche

June 12, 2008

Judith Levine
As Cranes Fall and People Die

Patrick Cockburn
Amid Iraqi Fury, U.S. Offers Concessions on Military Bases

Saul Landau
The Iraq War Becomes Suicidal

Christopher Brauchli
Bush Bling-Bling: Government by Crony

Norman Solomon
Deadly Diplomacy

Helen Redmond
Why Can't We All Get KennedyCare?

Laura Carlsen
No Rest for the Working Poor

Jeremy R. Hammond
Threats Against Iran Escalate

Anne Landman
Pinkwashing: Can Shopping Cure Breast Cancer?

Website of the Day
Fire in Watts

June 11, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
Why Oil Prices Are So High

Ralph Nader
Wall Street Gamblers

Joshua Frank
Why I Can't Support Barack Obama

Clifton Ross
Conversation in Miami: the Neoliberal Left and Socialism

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad
Whatever Happened to "Democracy Now?"

Stephen Lendman
Exposing Pentagon and CIA Corruption

Diane Farsetta
Talking Back to Bill O'Reilly

Ron Jacobs
The Sixties Painted Black

Deborah Rich
Hay Belly Nation: the FDA and the O-Word

Hop Wechsler
A Friend of Women? My Bill Clinton ... and Ours

Website of the Day
A New Path to the Waterfall

June 10, 2008

Alan Farago
John McCain and the Company He Keeps

James G. Abourezk
Deadly Fallout From Obama's Groveling Before Israel Lobby

Saree Makdisi
Banned in the U.S.A. (Almost)

Malini Johar Schueller
A Picture From Beirut

John Ross
Killing Foods, Killing People

Wajahat Ali
Rumi and Sufism

Peter Morici
Bernanke Aggravates Recession Risks

Jordan Flaherty
Inside Angola Prison, Louisiana's Last Slave Plantation

Gary Macfarlane
Collaboration on the Clearwater: Is It Legitimate?

Joanne Mariner
The Gitmo Trials: an Inglorious Start

Website of the Day
The End of the Clinton Machine?

June 9, 2008

Uri Avnery
No, I Can't: Obama, Israel and AIPAC

Nikolas Kozloff
McCain & the Republican Insitute: Promoting Iraqi Occupation for "a Million Years"

Allan Nairn
Drawing Your Last Breath Hungry

Dennis Loo
Threats on Iran and the "Batterer's Defense"

Harry Browne
Irish Euro Vote Comes Down to the Wire

C. Hand
U. S. Bid to Hike Iran's Gas Prices Seems Doomed

Peter Morici
An Unsustainable Trade Deficit

Kenneth Couesbouc
A Ripe Time for Inflation

Martha Rosenberg
The Inconvenient Senator Grassley

James L. Secor
Chinese Superstition or Unconscious Oracle?

Website of the Day
Pay Bo Diddley!

June 7 / 8, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Obama Goes Over the Top

Ishmael Reed
How Miles Davis Changed My Life

Jeffrey St. Clair
What a Miner's Life is Worth

Nikolas Kozloff
Meet the King the Beers: John McCain and Latin America

Dave Lindorff
The High Cost of a Single War-Like Remark: Oil Prices, Israel, Iran and the U.S.

Robert Fantina
When Truth is the Casualty

Conn Hallinan
Iran and Rumors of War

Neve Gordon
The Occupation and the Politics of Death

Tom Barry
The Deterrence Strategy of Homeland Security

Patrick Irelan
Raiding the Packing House

Tim Wise
Your Whiteness is Showing

David Ker Thomson
The Hard Question

Joshua Frank
"Socialist" Wins Republican Nomination in Montana

David Yearsley
Disaster Music

James T. Phillips
1968: Year of the Rat

Joe Allen
The Real Bobby Kennedy

P. Sainath
Making Life Brighter in Kondapur

David Macaray
Should Unions be More Democratic?

B.R. Gowani
Experience and the Two-for-One

Fred Gardner
What Happened (at the DA's Office)

Peter Harley
Technology to the Rescue? Kurzweil and the Human Machines

Michael Dickinson
Surrender the Bones of Geronimo!

Jen Roesch
Where are the Real Women in Sex and the City?

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Landau, and Buknatski

Website of the Day
Partying with the Waltons

June 6, 2008

Frank Barat
An Interview with Ilan Pappé and Noam Chomsky on the Future of Israel / Palestine

Patrick Cockburn
U.S. Extorts Iraq to Approve Military Deal

Gary Leupp
Cheney Enrages Iraqis Over Security Deal

James Abourezk
Name That Terrorist

Peter Morici
Recession Grips the Jobs Market

Faheem Hussain
What is NATO Doing in Afghanistan?

Andy Worthington
Guantánamo's Britons Go on Hunger Strike

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
How Will Musharraf Go? Impeachment or Safe Exit?

Dave Lindorff
Congress Needs to Defend Itself

Website of the Day
Backstage with Bo Diddley

June 5, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
Bush's Secret Deal Would Ensure Permanent U.S. Occupation of Iraq

Sharon Smith
Hillary's Wreckage

Nikolas Kozloff
Obama's Electoral Dilemma: Latinos or Reagan Democrats?

Linn Washington, Jr.
Police Brutality and Cover-Up in Philly

Omar Barghouti
60 Years of Nakba, 41 Years of Occupation ...

Scott Pellegrino
Jim Crow Radio: Bob Grant's Lifetime Achievement Award

John Walsh
Obama Woos AIPAC

Dan Bacher
The Parching of California

DC Larson
Nazi Rockers ... F-Off

Robert Jensen
Masculine, Feminine or Human?

Website of the Day
Ohio Cops Attack Long Walkers

June 4, 2008

Eric Walberg
Princess Patricia and the Taliban

Gary Leupp
Iran and EFPs: Chronology of a Lie

Ralph Nader
Disenfranchised Youth

Dave Lindorff
Of Whiners and Poor Losers

George Wuerthner
Farm Economics

Victor M. Rodriguez
The Puzzle of Race and Politics

Remi Kanazi
Why a Cultural Boycott of Israel is Needed

Stephane Luçon
Renault's Romanian Fairyland Suspended

Farzana Versey
The Tablighi Jamaat Movement

Laray Polk
The Militarization of Space

Website of the Day
Red State Rebels

June 3, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts /
Lawrence M. Stratton
Legislating Tyranny

Mike Whitney
The Withering Economy

Steve Early
San Juan Showdown

Manuel Otero
Why Hillary Won Puerto Rico: the View from the Colony

George Bisharat
The Hope of a Victimized People

Nikolas Kozloff
Obama's VP Quandry

Dan Bacher
Death on the Salmon Highway

Website of the Day
Censoring Bill Knott?

June 2, 2008

Uri Avnery
The Olmert Scandal

Nikolas Kozloff
Obama's Latino Problem Getting Worse

Allan J. Lichtman
Revisionist History: Bush, Borah and Hitler

Malini Johar Schueller
The Color of Randomness: Returning to the US From Beirut Via Syria

Robert Weissman
What's Driving Skyrocketing Oil Prices?

Peter Morici
Bailing Out Wall Street

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Don't Get Burned: How to Protect Yourself From Raytheon's Pain Gun

John Ross
Celebrating Catholic Fanaticism in Mexico

Ahmad Al-Akhras
Encounters with the Watch List

Website of the Day
Man on Earth

May 31 / June 1, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The Worst is Yet to Come

Jeffrey St. Clair
Arkansas Bloodsuckers

Gary Leupp
How McClellan Prettifies Bush

Stan Cox
Broken Agriculture

Rannie Amiri
Lebanon: the Domino That Wouldn't Fall

P. Sainath
A Guaranteed Day's Work--in the Fields, at 110 Degrees, for $2 a Day

Binoy Kampmark
Going Bankrupt in Vallejo

Robert Fantina
Bush, Rice and McClellan

Seth Sandronsky
Will There be Water Riots, as Sacramento Goes Dry?

Corporate Crime Reporter
Death Penalty for Bush?

Anthony DiMaggio
Gaming the Ghetto: Grand Theft Auto IV, Racist Media and the Concrete Jungle

Karl Grossman
A Half-Trillion for Nukes

Matt Reichel
From Vegas to the Heartland and Back Again

Paul Myron Hillier
Of Gas and God

Andy Worthington
Suicide at Guantánamo

David Yearsley
And the Winner is ... Wayne Shorter

Daniel Cassidy
Free Lunch

Charles Thomson
If Hitler Had Been a Hippy ...

Gary Corseri
A Dream Deferred: Activism and the Arts

Wajahat Ali
Sex and the City Through a Man's Eyes

Ron Jacobs
Robins Weep

Poets' Basement
McNeill and Davies

Website of the Day
Last Charge of the Light Horse

May 30, 2008

Bassam Aramin
Here's the Truth You've Been Running From

Andrew Cockburn
Petraeus' Iran Obsession

Saul Landau
How We Got Into This Mess

Nikolas Kozloff
Meet South America's New Secessionists

Robert Sandels
Turning Back the Clock on Cuba

Dave Lindorff
Talk is Cheap

Martha Rosenberg
Raiding Big Meat; Arresting the Wrong People

Harvey Wasserman
Lieberman & McCain: Linking Internet Censorship and Atomic Reactor Terror

Doug Giebel
A Plague on Both Your Houses (of Congress)

Shaun Harkin
The Trial of the Raytheon 9

Website of the Day
The Once and Future Environmental Movement

May 29, 2008

Jeffrey St. Clair
Bill Clinton and the Rich Women

Nikolas Kozloff
Puerto Rico, Obama and the Politics of Race

Col. Dan Smith
Deceiving the Dead

Karl Grossman
The Most Lucrative Incentive for Nuclear Power in the History of the United States

William S. Lind
Inside the Washington Game

Robert Weissman
What to do About the Price of Oil

Dave Lindorff
Why Puerto Rico Won't Matter

David Macaray
A Union Fable

Chris Genovali
Fear and Loathing in the Northern Rockies

Laura Carlsen
Mexico's Battle Over Oil

Website of the Day
Support Antiwar.com

May 28, 2008

Wajahat Ali
The Libertarian Dark Horse: An Exclusive Interview with Ron Paul

Ralph Nader
What's Really Driving the High Price of Oil?

Brian McKenna
Why I Want to Teach Anthropology at the Army War College

Corporate Crime Reporter
Why Vincent Bugliosi Wants to Prosecute George W. Bush for Murder

Brian Cloughley
The Attack on Damadola

Eric Walberg
Opium for the Masses from Afghanistan

Michael Dickinson
Raytheon's Pain Ray: Coming to a Protest Near You

Ijaz Khan
Opening Windows in Pakistan

Website of the Day
Older Than America

May 27, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
In Her Mind She's Killed Before: the Plot to Assassinate Ralph Nader

Greg Kafoury
Is Obama Turning (Further) Right?

Jean Bricmont
Western Delusions

Tim Wise
Farrakhan is not the Problem

Ricardo Alarcón
Puerto Rico's Turn

Stephen Soldz
APA Supports Psychologist Engagement in Bush Regime Interrogations

Andy Worthington
The Guantánamo 16

Alan Singer
Vapid, Stupid and Insulting: Chuck Schumer Speaks to the Graduates

Richard Neville
Storm in an A-Cup

Susie Day
Gone with the W

May 26, 2008

Uri Avnery
The Syrian Option

Bill Quigley
War Immemorial Day

Col. Dan Smith
Retreating from Hell: a Different Memorial Day

Cindy Sheehan
Why Memorial Day is a Double-Whammy for Me

Marjorie Cohn
Hillary's Assassination Politics: Her Last Shot?

Fred Gardner
Does the VA Care?

Raymond J. Lawrence
Pain Pays: Getting Rich at NY Presbyterian Hospital

Harvey Wasserman
Mugging the Election System

Moncia Benderman
Truth Matters

David Rovics
In Praise of Utah Phillips

Website of the Day
Fox News Jokes About "Knocking Off" Osama and Obama

May 24 / 25, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Death-Wish Hillary Primes Manchurian Candidate

Jeffrey St. Clair
Yellowstone: How Sununu Shrank the Ecosystem

Barbara Rose Johnston
Dam Legacies, Damned Futures

Nikolas Kozloff
U.S. Fourth Fleet in Venezuelan Waters

Adriana Kojeve
The Environment and the 2008 Elections

Robert Fantina
Justice Department's Revelations on Torture

Dave Lindorff
Bush's War on Children in Iraq

David Yearsley
The War on Kitsch

Nelson P. Valdés
The Buying of "Democracy" Agents in Cuba

Kathleen M. Barry
Celebrating Ethnic Cleansing

John Ross
Mexico's Narco Opera Reaches for High Point

Allison Kilkenny
Apathy Doesn't Live in Bronx

Fred Gardner
Orangeburg, 1968

Elizabeth Schulte
Can the Whole World be Fed?

Daniel Gross
Remembering the Wendy's Massacre: the Dangerous Side of Retail Work

Christopher Brauchli
The Search for a Token Right-winger

Richard Rhames
A Nation of Sheep

Daniel Cassidy
My Mother

Poets' Basement
Davies, Klipschutz and Willson

Website of the Weekend
Happy Birthday, Bob

May 23, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
War Abroad, Poverty at Home

Alan Farago
The Radical Extremists of the Building Industry

Conn Hallinan
Ballots and Bullets: From Beirut to Bolivia

Mark Engler
The World After Bush

George Wuerthner
Cars and Cows: Living Large in America

Kamran Matin
The Kurds and American Neo-Imperialism

Sandy Boyer /
Shaun Harkin
The Long Incarceration of Pol Brennan

Robert Weitzel
A "Holey" Instrument of Peace in Iraq

Cindy Sheehan
An Uphill Battle

Liaquat Ali Khan
Pakistan's Futile Constitutional Amendment

Website of the Day
A Message from the Moral Compass of the McCain Campaign

May 22, 2008

Vijay Prashad
Racist Grammar

Joanne Mariner
A Military Commissions Cheat Sheet

Sharon Smith
60 Years of Apartheid

Jeff Birkenstein
Disaster Redux: Some Early Thoughts on the Earthquake in China

Brendan McQuade
From Obama to the PRTs in Iraq

Peter Morici
The Sorry State of the Banking Industry

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Restoration Boulevard

Dave Zirin
What I Want to Ask Mary Tillman

Ron Jacobs
CPR for the Antiwar Movement

Stephen Lendman
Immoral Hazard

Website of the Day
Hagee: God Sent Hitler to Drive the Jews to Israel

May 21, 2008

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Gothic Politics of Hillary Clinton

Nikolas Kozloff
U.S. Military Bases in South America

Alan Farago
Miami, Cuba and the Presidential Campaign

Dave Lindorff
Big John and the Scary, Scary Iran Threat

David Model
Genocide in Iraq?

Eric Walberg
Afghanistan: Who is the Enemy?

Franklin Lamb
Lebanon Gets a President

Kenneth Couesbouc
Tax Against Tyranny

Website of the Day
Child Labor and War-Affected Children: a Photo Essay

May 20, 2008

Ralph Nader
A Trip Inside Google

Uri Avnery
With Friends Like These

Patrick Irelan
The Empire and the Fleet

Ray McGovern
Come Out, Admiral Fallon, Wherever You Are

David Macaray
The UAW Strike Against American Axle

Chris Genovali
Big Oil on the Water: Skating Around the Tanker Issue

Ibrahim Fawal
Birmingham, Israel and the Nakba

Christopher Ketcham
Let Us Now Praise Famous Suicides

Andy Worthington
Guantánamo Trial Delayed

Martha Rosenberg
Merck is a Repeat Offender

Website of the Day
Defend the Students Who Pied Tom Friedman

May 19, 2008

Saul Landau
Cuba Will Live

Paul Craig Roberts
The Metamorphosis of the Conservative Movement

Brian McKenna
Brotherly Love in Philly's Badlands

Patrick Cockburn
City of the Dead: Mosul on Lockdown

B. R. Gowani
The Central Problem Pakistan Needs to Tackle

Dr. Trudy Bond
Psychologists and Torture: If Not Now, When?

Cindy Sheehan
Whose War is It?

John Mohawk
The Warriors Who Turned to Peace

Remi Kanazi
When Free Speech Doesn't Come for Free

Robert Day
I Get a Horse

Website of the Day
Evolve or Die

Subscribe Online

Flashes of the Future

Which Way Forward for the Antiwar Movement?

By ASHLEY SMITH

I HAVE been asked to lay out the political rationale for a mass action strategy for the antiwar movement. To do so we must begin with the horror the United States has brought to the Middle East. The United States has nearly destroyed Iraq. Its invasion and occupation of a country of 27 million people has led to the deaths of well over 1 million Iraqis, the expulsion of 5 million refugees and internally displaced civilians, and the near complete wreckage of the economy. Nearly 70 percent of the population is unemployed.

The invasion and occupation outranks the worst horrors of European imperialism as one of the great war crimes and examples of state terror. The U.S. assault on Sadr City and Basra shows that with each passing day they commit atrocity upon atrocity.

But as Max Elbaum argued on his panel last night, far from fulfilling Bush’s neoconservative fantasies of U.S. domination over the Middle East, the invasion has, in the words of General William Odom, led to the “greatest strategic disaster” in U.S. imperial history. Why? Because the Iraqi people resisted the occupation and put a stop to the other regime changes from Syria to Iran the United States had planned.

The U.S. occupation is a failure. It is one of three failed wars Bush has conducted—Iraq, Afghanistan, and his proxy war carried through by Israel against Lebanon. The cost of these disastrous wars has led Bush into enormous deficit spending that has exacerbated the economic crisis the United States and world have entered.

Like some cursed mortal from ancient Greece, Bush suffers from a reverse Midas touch as everything he touches turns to lead. His popularity has plummeted from nearly 90 percent in the aftermath of 9/11 to now 28 percent. The only politicians who are less popular are in Congress; their approval rating hovers at about 22 percent. The majority of Americans have turned against the war and the Bush agenda.

Yet neither Bush nor the Democrats have a plan for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq. Last night Stephen Zunes and Max Elbaum laid out the reasons. The war was not about weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, liberation, or democracy. These were all smokescreens for the real ambitions of U.S. Empire in the Middle East. In truth, the Iraq war was part of a long-term and bipartisan plan to lock in U.S. dominance over a unipolar world order. Their goal in the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq was to secure control over the key areas of the world energy system in the Middle East and new energy sources in Central Asia.

By dominating these regions the United States aimed to lock in their advantage against rising energy-dependent competitors, especially China. This imperial ambition explains their tenacity in the face of the utter failure of their invasions and their overwhelming lack of popular support.

Complicity of Democrats and corporate media

Too often this imperialism is passed off as a product of Bush and the Neocons. In reality, the Democrats voted for these wars and continue to vote for the funding even going so far in the most recent proposed bill to give Bush billions more than he requested. They also opposed immediate withdrawal in favor of redeployment that would leave thousands of “anti-terrorist” troops in Iraq, effectively extending the occupation in the guise of ending it. And neither Hilary Clinton nor Barack Obama could guarantee that they would even be able to implement this plan by the end of their first term.

Even worse, the Democrats have often positioned themselves to the right of Bush in the campaign against their next target in their battle for Mideast imperial dominance—Iran. Hilary Clinton just last week promised to “obliterate Iran” if it attacked Israel. She targeted not just the government but also the entire nation, a threat that can only be called a genocidal. While not sharing Clinton’s Bushite bluster, Obama has stated, "launching some missile strikes into Iran is not the optimal position for us to be in" given the ongoing war in Iraq. "On the other hand, having a radical Muslim theocracy in possession of nuclear weapons is worse." Obama has also promised that military strikes on Pakistan should not be ruled out if "violent Islamic extremists" were to "take over." And both have called for an increase of U.S. troops in occupied Afghanistan, the occupation they view as good and right.

Far from dissenting with this bipartisan imperial project of the so-called War on Terror, the corporate media has loyally parroted it. The corporate media has in fact been exposed as, for all intents and purposes, state-controlled in a manner reminiscent of Stalin’s Izvestia. As the New York Times reported, the Pentagon handpicked the military experts that the major media outlets used for “informed” opinion in support of the war on Iraq. One of the experts went so far as to say that he felt like a Pentagon puppet carrying their line right onto the pages and screens of the corporate media.

Antiwar public opinion

Despite this imperial unanimity of both corporate parties and their media, the U.S. public has overwhelmingly turned against the war and is increasingly moving to the left on most issues. Over 67 percent want to end the war. Sixty percent of troops wanted to be out of Iraq by 2007. Twenty-three percent of Americans want an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops. And as the Pew Research Center documents, workers have moved dramatically to the left, the most left-wing they have been since the last upsurge in the early 1970s. These facts conclusively dash the myth of a “right-wing America” that many even on the Left believe.

The media, however, squelches these opinions as well as the developing forces of the antiwar movement. For example, the corporate media conducted a virtual blackout of Iraq Veterans Against the War’s (IVAW) amazing Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan. In reality the corporate media, we must recognize, is owned by the same corporate power that led the war charge into Iraq.

Far from expressing this overwhelming antiwar sentiment, the presidential candidates either oppose it or attempt to co-opt it. John “McCentury” McCain threatens to keep U.S. forces in Iraq for 100 years if that’s what it takes to “win.”

Now Obama and Clinton, in order to get elected, have had to posture as antiwar. But, in truth, both oppose immediate withdrawal. Both are for retaining “anti-terrorist” forces of thousands after “withdrawal.” Both are hawks on Iran. Both are unflinching advocates of Israel’s occupation of Palestine. Both are for increased intervention in Afghanistan. They are in fact presenting themselves to the real power brokers, the American ruling class, as competent managers of the empire. While they may have this or that tactical difference with Bush, they share his commitment to U.S. dominion in the world system. They boast that they can do this more effectively.

We already have tested the Democrats and found them wanting. The American public swept them into power in Congress in 2006 with the expectation that they would end the war or cut the funding. Instead they have continued to fund the war and offered only verbal opposition to Bush.

Antiwar strategy

As a result, an enormous gap has opened up between, on the one hand, the people and, on the other, the corporate politicians and the corporate media. The question we confront in this situation is what strategy the antiwar movement should pursue to win our demand for immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq.

The mass action strategy remains the only viable means to win. It will take the mass mobilization of workers, soldiers, and students in solidarity with the resistance of occupied people. Stephen Zunes was right last night when he invoked the mass struggles that it took to end the Vietnam War—rebellion of the troops; campus strikes; mass demonstrations; and large-scale civil disobedience. Given the stakes for U.S. imperialism in the Middle East, it will take an even more militant mass movement to drive the United States out of the region.

Now the mass action strategy is very different from the dominant liberal strategy in the antiwar movement and the common sense of the vast majority of people opposed to the war. Co-chair of United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ), Judith LeBlanc describes this strategy as “creating a peace block in Congress.” The argument is essentially that yes, we should build the movement, yes, we should call demonstrations—but all with an aim of electing Democrats who are thought to be the vehicles, the means, of ending the war.

Inevitably then, the Democrats, who have been pro-war, begin to shape the demands and protests of the antiwar movement. Demands and issues and speakers that might offend the so-called “peace block” get dropped. Protests that might step on the toes of the Democrats don’t get called. During the elections the movement gets funneled into the election in the vain hope that the Democrats will do what they say they will not do—bring an immediate end to the war.

 The main antiwar coalition, UFPJ, has thus demobilized the movement. UFPJ opposed united mass demonstrations on the fifth anniversary of the war, saying they would never work with the other antiwar coalition, ANSWER. Nearly every email I get from UFPJ is about phoning congress, voter registration and education, or lobbying.

The combination of the pull of the election on mass antiwar sentiment and UFPJ’s liberal strategy of orienting on Democrats has precipitated a crisis in the antiwar movement. At a national level, it is really the weakest it has been since the beginning of the Iraq war. It is in near collapse. Even at a local level there are real weaknesses in antiwar organizations on campuses, in cities, and at workplaces. Thus there is an enormous gap between consciousness and the organized movement.

We have to be honest and sober about that. The last thing we need is drunken driving in the struggle. But we also cannot be bearers of doom and gloom or give up on building a mass movement. We have to nurture the small, local coalitions in workplaces, among soldiers, and on campuses. These are the first shoots of a future mass movement.

We can organize excellent local antiwar actions and educational events. We have the powerful examples of Winter Soldier and the very successful regional conferences of the Campus Antiwar Network (CAN) as well as conferences like the one we are holding this weekend. We have to build on these new foundations in every way possible at the local level. At the same time we have to develop a strategy that can forge a stronger national movement.

Avoidable traps

In developing a new strategy there are some traps we should avoid that will prevent the development of a new mass movement. Some have wrongly argued that movement tactics like mass demonstrations are a thing of the past and no longer work. They argue we need savvy media strategies instead. Now I am in favor of using the media as best we can, but as the New York Times article demonstrated, the corporate media is the voice box of the Pentagon and the White House. It is occupied territory. The very corporate backers of the war and the two mainstream parties own the media and will be on the whole unfriendly to the movement we must build. This should come as no surprise; they have been hostile to every progressive social movement in history, at home or abroad.

Others argue that instead of mass actions we need small direct actions. Now I’m in favor of direct action and civil disobedience as a tactic in certain circumstances. After all, mass and illegal factory occupations helped build the trade unions in the 1930s. Similar tactics of mass civil disobedience like the Montgomery bus boycott and the wave of sit-ins built the civil rights movement. But direct actions that are small, secret and not oriented on winning over a sympathetic mass audience can and will backfire. Moral witness can make us feel good but fail to galvanize mass struggle.

Mass action alternative

These are not strategies but tactics. Our alternative strategy to UFPJ’s must be independent mass action. Our movement must be independent because the electoral cycle must not set our agenda. That does not mean excluding forces and people who are going to vote for the Democrats. Yet we must be clear that our movement’s goal is not electing Democrats but the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Iraq. The Democrats and the election cycle cannot shape our demands or actions. We must fight for our demands no matter who’s in office, and we must fight for our demands right through the election cycle.

Our organizing must aim for mass collective action. Why? Because that is the lesson of history. Change always comes from below through the mass mobilization of the exploited and oppressed. As Howard Zinn has said, “the really critical thing isn’t who is sitting in the White House, but who is sitting in.” Mass organizing is what built the unions, won civil rights, ended the war in Vietnam, and won abortion rights. Mass independent, collective struggle won everything we cherish today. As the great black abolitionist Frederick Douglass said, “Without struggle, there is no progress.”

That strategy in turn shapes our tactics. Our strategy of mass collective action must include a wide variety of tactics. We must be incredibly flexible in tactics, always with a mind of leading the activist minority to win over the sympathetic majority. So we should organize mass, legal demonstrations in some circumstance. In others, mass direct actions like those that shut down the World Trade Organization meetings in Seattle in 1999 are vital.

But I want to defend the tactic of demonstrations in particular since many have grown disillusioned with their utility. Demonstrations help to build the base of the movement. In the process of organizing for demonstrations, coalitions grow in size and sense of purpose. The preparation offers an opportunity for coalitions to educate new layers of activists in the politics of the struggle. On the demonstrations themselves, activists new and old feel the power of their forces. And after effective mobilizations, activists can reach out to include wider layers of new activists, thereby building larger local organization. In and of themselves, demonstrations are not adequate. But they are a decisive component for building organization for even more militant struggle.
           
Lessons of the Vietnam era

To really understand the kind of mass struggle we must aim to build, we should draw on the lessons of the movement against the war in Vietnam. It was not the president or Congress that ended that war. Instead it was the dynamic interaction of three militant mass struggles. The mass civilian antiwar movement staged mass marches, mass civil disobedience, and a wave of campus strikes that shut down the universities and colleges of the United States.

On top of that, the U.S. troops revolted against the war. As David Cortright’s Soldiers in Revolt describes, civilian activists in collaboration with vets and GIs set up coffeehouses where soldiers could organize their antiwar movement and build Vietnam Veterans Against the War. In Vietnam itself, the U.S. troops refused to fight, organizing “search and avoid” missions and even threatening their officers with fragmentation grenades to prevent officers from sending them into combat. This GI rebellion essentially paralyzed the American military in Vietnam.

Finally and most importantly, the Vietnamese people themselves forged the National Liberation Front that fought for their own emancipation. They proved especially after the Tet Offensive in 1968 that the United States and its puppet government had no support in the Vietnam and that the people were committed to driving the U.S. out of Southeast Asia. This three-dimensional, militant movement won the liberation of Vietnam.

These three interrelated movements should also give us ideas for devising the strategy of our movement. To be clear, the movement of the 1960s is not a blueprint for today and we cannot simply reproduce it. We must find our own way. But we can draw from its lessons.

In reality, we will need an even strong mass movement this time. Why? Because the geostrategic stakes for the United States in Iraq are far higher than they were in Vietnam. Former Federal Reserve Board Chair Alan Greenspan finally admitted the “unfortunate truth”:  It really is all about the region’s oil. Whoever controls that oil controls the world economy. And the U.S. has no intention of leaving Iraq or the Middle East as a whole. They want to lock in a unipolar world order against rising global powers like China as well as eliminate regional challengers like Iran and Venezuela. We thus have an even bigger fight on our hands than activists in the 1960s.

The movement today

We are, however, far from the kind of mass movement we will need to win Iraq’s liberation. As I have said, the national movement is in sorry shape. While there are inspiring flashes of local struggle and organization, it too must be built or re-built.

This is challenged by the election year, but not in a fashion that much of the Left thinks. The pull of the election is obvious. Yet at the same time, the election is raising hope—expectations for change and a host of reforms from ending the war to addressing social inequality, racism, and sexism. I do not have hope in Obama to really address these realities, but I have hope in the people who have hopes in Obama.

We have to be patient and determined through the election year and seize opportunities at the local level. It is simply not true that we cannot do anything during the elections. For example, just last week in Boston over 600 students came to hear Noam Chomsky lecture against U.S. imperialism. There are countless other example of hopeful small actions and educational events that embody the future of the movement.

Our key task is thus to rebuild the base of the movement. We have to initiate local organizations through educational events, actions, and all sorts of events from movie screenings to local Winter Soldier hearings. While I support the upcoming National Assembly in Cleveland, I do not think we are in a position to launch a new national formation. Cleveland will be a chance for activists to share ideas and initiate collaboration, but our key emphasis has to be on building the infrastructure of the movement.

We need to organize and build antiwar organization among students, workers, soldiers, and military families. We need to build existing and new chapters of the CAN, U.S. Labor Against the War, IVAW, and Military Families Speak Out. We must build the base for a future mass movement that will likely emerge in the aftermath of the presidential elections. As in the struggle against the Vietnam War, those organizations will be necessary to mobilize the social power to compel our rulers to get out of Iraq.

Demands for the movement

A key part of rebuilding the movement is figuring out the demands around which we must organize the coming struggle. I agree with Max Elbaum, who argued last night that demands are a tactical question. We must figure out which demands are necessary for the movement and will galvanize popular opposition and action. In doing so, we should avoid the trap of single-issue dogmatism on the one hand and on the other ANSWER’s endless laundry list of demands. Neither is a guide to building the movement.

Our central organizing demand must be the immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. But we should have important subsidiary demands that are necessary for preparing the movement to confront U.S. war plans. Thus, we must demand “no war on Iran,” since they are clearly preparing for a future confrontation with Tehran.

We also must put forth a position against anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia as that clearly is the legitimating ideology of the war and is responsible for horrific oppression of Arabs and Muslims. If we hope to build bridges of solidarity with the peoples of the Middle East and if we hope to bring Arabs and Muslims into the U.S. movement, this is a necessary demand.

Finally, we must put forward class demands such as “money for jobs and education, not for war and occupation.” This can broaden the movement among sympathetic workers who see the United States wasting $3 trillion on war and occupation while New Orleans gets washed out to sea, their homes are foreclosed, and their jobs are lost amidst the recession.

I also think it is important for the left wing of the movement to argue for including opposition to occupation of Afghanistan even though we may lose it. We should be clear that the entire War on Terror is united in the minds of our rulers from Afghanistan to Iraq and we ought to oppose it across the board—especially since the Democrats are campaigning for a surge in Afghanistan. Moreover, we should argue for speakers on Palestine to show how the Israeli occupation is a crucial component of U.S. dominion over the Middle East.

Flashes of the future

While we have many challenges today, we can see the first shoots of the new movement developing in smaller or larger scale around us today. The Winter Soldier hearings captivated the entire antiwar movement and projected a new and hopeful GI and vet resistance. The ILWU (International Longshore and Warehouse Union) strike on May 1 represents a huge development where workers in an historic union are striking against the war to shut down all the ports of the West Coast, one of the busiest areas of trade in the world. We will need such class power to liberate Iraq from U.S. occupation. Also, new student activists in conferences and actions this spring displayed exciting new stirrings of youth resistance. These are early signs of forces stirring that have the social power to shut down the U.S. war machine through mass militant protest.

Through the election year we must be patient but also persistent and aggressive to cultivate each new shoot of resistance. Whoever wins this election—and I think the Democrats are likely to sweep every level of government—will have raised both people’s expectation for an end to the Bush regime and expectation for real change. However, they will preside over an economic crisis, two failing occupations, and deepening social inequalities inside the United States.

Today we must seize every opportunity to educate, organize, and act locally to establish vehicles to mobilize the growing sentiment for change; we must do so with the determination to provide an alternative means for winning change when the Democrats either fail to deliver or deliver inadequate solutions to the various crises we will confront. We do not know the timing of when people will become frustrated with the Democrats’ refusal to deliver what we want, when they will look for our alternative. No one has a crystal ball, but we must organize the bases of a future antiwar movement prepared to galvanize sentiment and lead a mass and militant resistance to the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

Ashley Smith is a member of the ISR editorial board. This is the text of a speech he delivered at the New England United Regional Antiwar Conference, April 25–26, 2008, in Boston, Massachusetts. This speech is printed in the July/August Issue of the International Socialist Review (www.isreview.org).

Now Available from CounterPunch Books!

Born Under a Bad Sky:
Notes from the Dark Side
of the Earth
By Jeffrey St. Clair

Buy End Times Now!

Click Here to Buy!

Click Here to Buy!

Click Here to Order!