Move It Back Into the Streets-Stop the War Now!
By Ron Jacobs
A little more than twenty-six years (November 14-15, 1969), the streets of Washington, DC and San Francisco, CA were filled with a million protesters against the US war in Vietnam. These protests, known as the National Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam, had been preceded by a national Moratorium Against the War on October 15 the same year. The politics of the protesters ran from pacifists to liberals to hardcore anti-imperialist radicals bent on revolution. According to permanent war architect and advisor Henry Kissinger, the sight of so many protesters in the streets of DC caused the Nixon White House to reconsider its pending decision to nuke Hanoi, Vietnam. Furthermore, the pitched battles between police and some ten to twenty thousand protesters intent on storming the South Vietnamese Embassy on November 14th, 1969 and the Justice Department building the following day led Nixon's Attorney General John Mitchell to compare the scene to Russia's October revolution. While Mr. Mitchell was obviously exaggerating the situation, the comment itself is an indication of the level of paranoia then present among the rulers in Washington.
Another indication of the rulers' fears was also taking place in Chicago that fall. This was the conspiracy trial of the Chicago 8. Without going into too much history, let it suffice to say that this trial was an attempt by the State to destroy the antiwar and Black liberation movements in the United States. While this trial did not reach its intended goal in the courtroom—indeed, the men were not convicted of the conspiracy charges although they did get convicted for a number of other political crimes—the repression that the trial was a part of did temporarily diminish the numbers involved in those movements.
I mention this historical moment not because I believe that the US antiwar movement against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are operating from a similar position of strength—indeed, today's movement is far from that. Sure, we've elected Democrats in an election that most everyone from Nancy Pelosi to General Abizaid believes was a statement against those wars, and we could even convince ourselves that it was pressure begun by certain elements among the antiwar voices that caused the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld. But, that's about it. Once again, if we look back to Fall 1969, we discover that Richard Nixon dismissed General Hershey, the head of the Selective Service in September 1969 in an attempt to make it appear that he was listening to his critics. Meanwhile, here in 2006, incoming chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee Charles Rangel has stated that he will reintroduce his bill that would restart the military draft. (Of course, he says he is doing this to prevent other wars from starting using a circular reasoning that if the rich have to send their kids to war, they won't be as gung-ho about starting them. This rationale has been proven wrong in the past, since it tends to be working class soldiers that end up fighting while the rest end up elsewhere.) The war continues, much as the Vietnam war did after the aforementioned protests. In fact, George Bush recently commented during his visit to Vietnam that the basic mistake made by the United States during its murderous campaign in Vietnam was that it quit before victory was achieved.
Now, I don't know about you, but that statement sounds awfully dangerous to me. If Bush and his advisors (civilian and military) truly believe this and are willing to say so in public, then we are even further from a withdrawal of US forces from Iraq than every politician in DC thinks (or hopes) we are. At least, back in 1969, Richard Nixon was telling the US people that he was working on a withdrawal plan that he called "Peace With Honor." Of course, that turned out to be a lie, as the invasion of Cambodia proved a mere five-and-a-half months later. George Bush and Dick Cheney aren't even pretending that they want US forces to withdraw from Iraq. In their minds, anything short of their definition of victory is surrender. General Abizaid recently backed these two men on this when he told Congress that setting any kind of withdrawal date or timeline would not be a good idea.
More:
http://www.altpr.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=679&mode=nocomments&order=0&thold=0
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