Where’s the Anti-War Movement When You Really Need It?

[bemildred]

The expanding U.S.-led war on the so-called Islamic State, or ISIS, has largely fallen off the radar of U.S. social movements.

Many (but not all) who were active in anti-war organizing over the past decade have turned away from this conflict. The dearth of public debate is conspicuous, even as the U.S. government sinks the country deeper into yet another open-ended and ill-defined military operation. The refrain “it will take years” has become such a common utterance by the Obama administration that it slips by barely noticed.

There are many reasons for the relative silence in the face of this latest military escalation. I would venture that one of them is the sheer complexity of the situation on the ground in Iraq and Syria — as well as the real humanitarian crisis posed by the rise of ISIS, the many-layered power struggles across the wider Middle East, and the difficulty of building connections with grassroots movements in countries bearing the brunt of the violence.

But the answer to complexity is not to do nothing. In fact, great crimes and historic blunders — from Palestine to South Africa to Afghanistan — have been tacitly enabled by people who chose not to take action, perhaps because the situation seemed too complex to engage. When millions of lives are on the line, inaction is unacceptable.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/02/06/what-ever-happened-to-the-anti-war-movement/

[Warren Stupidity]

1. There is no way, and nor should there be, to build a principled opposition

against military action to suppress ISIS. We very well might, and in fact are, blundering around the region randomly supporting both the sunni jihadists trying to replace Assad with something very much like an islamic state in syria and the opposition to *some* of those sunni jihadists, a policy that is in essence a combination of mindless reaction to events and il-conceived opportunism, but the fact that ISIS is abhorrent to world civilization makes opposition to our policies impossible.

[bemildred]

2. Yep, that's the problem.

That and the fact that we cannot admit to the impotence of our military to do anything but make it worse.

[Warren Stupidity]

4. On that I disagree.

I think we can provide air support to the Kurds, along with whatever weapons they need, and let them both eliminate ISIS in their areas and establish, finally, their own recognized Kurdish state. Not going to happen of course, but it should.

[bemildred]

6. True, it's possible, but that requires judgement and thinking. nt

[merrily]

8. Bushco said the same thing about Saddam.

That Isis is awful is not in question. The question is, what do we do about it that does not compound our problems? So far, we don't seem to know.

[Warren Stupidity]

11. The situations are not really the same.

The justification for invading Iraq was not crimes abhorrent to civilization being committed by the Iraqi regime, it was a fictional imminent threat from weapons of mass destruction.

ISIS is not an established recognized state. It is a militia operating to try to establish a state carved out of or replacing existing states, based on a stated intention to establish a brutal theocracy. Aiding those opposing that effort seems like something the civilized world ought to do.

[OverseaVisitor]

3. It is Ukraine you need to watch

Russia is not fooling around.

If they send in their troops. What is US going to do. Start World war 3?

US will have only one option ... Use Nuke. Then good luck all.

The minute US say arm Ukraine... I think it is almost a certainty Russian troops will be deployed in Ukraine. Ukraine forces might not even last a day.

This is not Iraq. Might turn into another Vietnam but in Europe. Poor Ukrainian

[Warren Stupidity]

5. Ukraine will be divided. This was another poorly thought out blunder on our part.

We have no viable military options. We aren't going to use nukes. We've handed Putin a nationalist cause on a silver platter and he is taking full advantage. I have no idea how we thought this was going to play out any other way than it has.

[merrily]

7. I don't think there has been a really robust anti-war movement since the 1960s and 1970s.

Then, it didn't matter that Johnson was a Democrat, and one who was doing great things domestically to boot, and Nixon was a Republican. The war was wrong, regardless of the party of the President escalating it. Brave members of the entertainment industry, many of whom leaned left, opposed Johnson on this issue every bit as much as they opposed Nixon, putting their own careers on the line so to do.

Now, it seems that war is wrong only if it commences during the administration of a President who is not from the political party you support. And maybe not even wrong then.

Both of the two largest political parties want us to submit to whatever is imposed upon the civilian population in the name of fighting domestic and foreign terrorists and (or so it seems to me) to semi-revere the military again, even if it means resurrecting the canard that the left spit on soldiers returning home from Vietnam.

Now, erstwhile antiwar protestor heroes like Ayers, who blew up a toilet in the Pentagon, are labeled domestic terrorists with relative impunity, if not agreement. And Ellsberg is under the bus for saying the courts and government now would never dismiss the case against him because of government misconduct in prosecuting the case. (Mike Gravel who?)

For better or worse, time marches on.

[DustyJoe]

9. what happened

The only recognized anti-war activists code-pink are busy trying to arrest 90 year old ex-govt employees for a war 45 years gone and the Berkely crowd is busy stopping freeway traffic for anti-cop messages. Other than that, there is no anti-war message for any current conflicts. The started to gripe a little when the 'absolutely NO boots on the ground' going back to Iraq promise was broken, but they were quickly shut up by who knows what force.

[4dsc]

10. They quit when a democrat became president

I wonder where they went off to when President Obama was elected.

[KoKo]

12. We really need one...but it's got to be more targeted.....

It might come in the coming years and it will be more than "rag tag" groups in the USA.... It might turn Global. And, if it doesn't then I fear for all of us..