How Obama Took Over the Peace Movement

by John Stauber — March 27, 2009 - 2:00pm
  • Topics: Afghanistan, Politics, War / Peace
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    John Podesta's liberal think tank the Center for American Progress (CAP) strongly supports Barack Obama's escalation of the US wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is best evidenced by Sustainable Security in Afghanistan, a CAP report by Lawrence J. Korb. Podesta served as the head of Obama's transition team, and CAP's support for Obama's wars is the latest step in a successful co-option of the US peace movement by Obama's political aides and the Democratic Party.

    CAP and the five million member liberal lobby group MoveOn were behind Americans Against Escalation in Iraq (AAEI), a coalition that spent tens of millions of dollars using Iraq as a political bludgeon against Republican politicians, while refusing to pressure the Democratic Congress to actually cut off funding for the war. AAEI was operated by two of Barack Obama's top political aids, Steve Hildebrand and Paul Tewes, and by Brad Woodhouse of Americans United for Change and USAction. Today Woodhouse is Obama's Director of Communications and Research for the Democratic National Committee. He controls the massive email list called Obama for America composed of the many millions of people who gave money and love to the Democratic peace candidate and might be wondering what the heck he is up to in Afghanistan and Pakistan. MoveOn built its list by organizing vigils and ads for peace and by then supporting Obama for president; today it operates as a full-time cheerleader supporting Obama's policy agenda. Some of us saw this unfolding years ago. Others are probably shocked watching their peace candidate escalating a war and sounding so much like the previous administration in his rationale for doing so.

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    What about Islamism

    Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on May 15, 2009 - 4:35pm.

    ZIonism is a problem but Islamism is not? Has the left forgotten the connection between Islamism and Oil Parasitism? Has the left forgotten the slogan NO BLOOD FOR OIL? Countries like Saudi Arabia have been funding Islamic fundamentalists to ensure that no one notices their own reactionary regimes and how much they profit from over-priced oil.

    Has anyone even bothered to read the history of Islamic imperialism and how the Muslim Arabs enslaved Africans for centuries before the Europeans got involved?

    African Americans need to know the real history of the Islamic empires and slavery. African Americans have no interest in joining hands with their ex-slavemasters - Christians or Islamists.

    For African Americans, Obama is the best president they could have dreamed off - all this bashing just shows that the "left" still doesn't understand what it means to have been an enslaved black.

    Many blacks have delusions about Islam. But some of us who are better educated have no illusions. That is why we are still with Obama.

    Comments at Antiwar.com

    Submitted by John Stauber on April 8, 2009 - 8:08am.

    Interesting analysis [http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2009/04/07/progressive-warmongers/ on antiwar.com].

    Laura Flanders weighs in...

    Submitted by John Stauber on April 3, 2009 - 5:55am.

    At her Nation [http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion/423643 blog]

    CAP Hangs with the Neocons

    Submitted by John Stauber on April 2, 2009 - 6:44pm.

    Kudos for [[Jeremy Skahill]] for his work on on this [http://www.prwatch.org/node/8317 coming out party] for CAP's report.

    CAP's Matt Yglesias weighs in...

    Submitted by John Stauber on April 2, 2009 - 1:37pm.

    [[Matt Yglesias]] of the [[Center for American Progress]] has criticized this article of mine, and an interesting bunch of comments follow on his site. Check it out [http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/03/cap_iraq_and_afghanistan.php here].

    If the Aflac duck ever gets laid off...

    Submitted by Mutternich on April 2, 2009 - 2:59pm.

    ...doubtless he'll find a new gig with "AfPak."

    And maybe the nation we're trying to build isn't really Afghanistan but Pipelineistan:

    http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175050/pepe_escobar_welcome_to_pipelineistan

    At least it seems to go farther in explaining our hanging in there for so many years, and our disappointment with our less tenacious NATO allies, than "They attacked us and killed 3,000 Americans!"

    Obama the anti war candidate?

    Submitted by Anonymous on April 1, 2009 - 9:39pm.

    I never once saw Obama as anti war, even though he claimed to be aganist the war in Iraq but continued to vote to fund it. Now he is doing a "surge" in Afghanistan, does that sound familiar????

    single health care

    Submitted by Anonymous on April 1, 2009 - 3:29pm.

    How about joining with Dr. Dean. Since he, too, was not invited, he must be doing something right!
    Many physicians have seen the hand writing on the wall and are supporting single payer as is the CA nurses association.

    ...

    Submitted by Anonymous on April 1, 2009 - 7:46am.

    There are more kinds of lefties than you think. I for one favored intervention in Afghanistan in the 1990s. After 9/11, I thought it was a mistake to conflate the two - terrorism & Afghanistan policy, and especially with everyone so emotional and whipped up - but I still fundamentally supported tackling the Talibani nutcases. Invading Iraq is still stupid, according to this logic, monumentally stupid in a way that invading Afghanistan is not. I mean, one is a failed state, the other just a repressive but fully functioning state. The difference could not be more clear and a calculus of intervention should treat them separately.

    You may not like this logic, but I have noticed it is somewhat widely spread among liberals, and it was explicitly endorsed by Obama. Don't suppose people were fooled - many knew exactly what they were voting for. I did. And those who question his commitments to pacifist causes - I think you have no idea how difficult it is to reverse a major foreign policy commitment. Being president is not about "I believe this so let it be so" - no, being president is about sustained commitment to public persuasion and coordinating public policymaking. Governing is delicate regardless of the topic but no topic more delicate than war. Rather than judge on an all-or-nothing basis, look for incremental dismantling of the Iraq war infrastructure and foreign policy groundwork to blunt this sort of thing from happening in the future, to the extent that it is possible.

    The System is not in crisis--the System IS the crisis.

    Submitted by Anonymous on April 2, 2009 - 4:47pm.

    The point is that Obama postured himself as THE candidate for "CHANGE you can believe in."

    Playing kowtow to neo-Zionists--via AIPAC largesse lining DC pockets, proferring a "No comment," to the wholesale slaughter of Gazans (known then--and confirmed now--as the targeting of the civilian population), adding 21,000 troops to the 38,000 in place in Afghanistan (although he did, indeed, threaten to do as much), the purposefully open-ended engagement in Iraq, the re-marketing--and prolonging--of rendition, the temporizing on Guantanamo's closing, hiring Geithner and Summers to address the economic meltdown with cosmetic make-overs to the neo-liberal agenda underwriting Wall Street, all but abandoning the EFCA issue to corporate interests--via K Street tactical warfare: this is DC legerdemain shored up by the corporate media, i.e., its biases, selective focusing and so-called "concision," and bold-faced deceptions.
    Obama knew full well that he could rely upon this muddling of issues by the MSM (and still does, in fact)--to whatever degree--to keep the rank-and-file off balance. The margin of doubt manifest in those who feed at the MSM disinformation trough--and the all-important moment of hesitation--inhibits those who would that this polyarchy be dismantled in favor of the only democracy functioning in any meaningful sense of the term: a PARTICIPATORY democracy.
    The System is not in crisis: the System IS the crisis, i.e., it cannot be "rehabilitated," which is what, e.g., Bernanke, Summers, and Geithner are desperately trying to impose upon us: neo-liberalism, redux. Obama is a rhetorician and a careerist--NOT a leader. To put it into context: what would Dr. King's response have been to the wholesale slaughter in Gaza for twenty-two days? His outrage would have been immediate, unremitting, and unequivocal.
    What did we get?: a soundbite. Jay Leno, indeed. Too cute.
    "CHANGE you can believe in"? Try this instead: "Truth in advertising."