The Anti-War Movement is starting to Move Again
Posted: December 14, 2010 Filed under: Action Memo, Anti-War | Tags: anti-war, peace protest 17 CommentsMy partner and I were going to a social function last Saturday, leaving our sodden and flooded farm for a few hours and driving through the gloom of a raging downpour. On the corner outside our little town was the sign guy. This gentleman appears at odd intervals with a huge sign constructed of two by fours and signboard. The sign asks why the wars haven’t stopped.
The sign guy was standing there, holding up his sign from time to time, absolutely drenched. I said as we turned past, “Next time we see him we’ve got to stop.”
“Why?”
“So, I can find out when he’s going to be out next and go stand with him.”
“Oh, good idea!” I waved and gave a thumbs up as we passed the sign guy, and my partner honked the car horn in approval.
More people than the sign guy remember that we are still involved in two very expensive, very costly, very murderous wars. All of us here know it, and people across the country and the ‘net are starting to wake up again. Obama isn’t going to change a thing, he’s not really anti-war, and it’s time to start protesting… again.
There’s going to be an anti-war protest on Dec 16th in Lafayette park in front of the White House at 10 am. There will be military veterans and leaders of the peace movement giving speeches. I doubt the protest’ll be very big, and I don’t think it’ll get any media attention, but it’ll have happened, and, as Chris Hedges says in his Op-Ed on Truth-out this week, ‘No Act of Rebellion is Wasted‘:.
Hedges’ first paragraph got me choked up, I have to admit. He says,
I stood with hundreds of thousands of rebellious Czechoslovakians in 1989 on a cold winter night in Prague’s Wenceslas Square as the singer Marta Kubišová approached the balcony of the Melantrich building. Kubišová had been banished from the airwaves in 1968 after the Soviet invasion for her anthem of defiance, “Prayer for Marta.” Her entire catalog, including more than 200 singles, had been confiscated and destroyed by the state. She had disappeared from public view. Her voice that night suddenly flooded the square. Pressing around me were throngs of students, most of whom had not been born when she vanished. They began to sing the words of the anthem. There were tears running down their faces. It was then that I understood the power of rebellion.
He goes on to talk about the professors of languages who rebelled in 68 and who were sent to Bohemia to work on the road crews laying tar and grading road beds.
And as they worked they dedicated each day to one of the languages in which they all were fluent – Latin, Greek, Italian, French, Spanish or German. They argued and fought over their interpretations of Homer, Virgil, Dante, Goethe, Proust and Cervantes. They remained intellectually and morally alive.
For a history, language and archaeology geek like me, these words are above inspiring. But go read the rest of the article, and get ready to protest even in the smallest of ways. Because that is what has to happen.
For more information on the December 16th protest, see the website www.stopthesewars.org. I will try to find something local going on that day or at least send a few dollars their way. Maybe the sign guy will be out and I can join him.
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I found it profoundly important that Richard Holbrooke’s last words were get us out of Afghanistan.
I agree. He knew of what he speaks.
I know it’s sticky, I know we’ll leave women and others in the lurch, but it’s time to get out. Teach them how to fight and protect themselves and get out and let them decide their futures.
I think those words are going to come back a few years from now as a haunting reminder of what we lost when Holbrooke died.
Wowzers. Since they were his LAST WORDS, people should take heed.
I wonder what I’ll kick out with my last breath – probably “I love you”, “help” or the answer to the riddle of the universe.
I have the distinct feeling that my last words are either going to be ‘Randy’ (my partner), or ‘Mom’, my best friend. I’m sure it’ll be nothing profound, but then, that’s life, or the end of life, and that’s me :).
Bless him and may he rest after trying to get the message out.
Bless for expressing that powerful thought.
I am not surprised that Obama has not constructively gotten us out. Recall the Iraq extraction as such was planned by the Bush administration. The Afghanistan effort was not planned. So when he got into the war councils, he did not know how to countermand the military industrial complex. Recall in Woodwards book, he kept asking for a alternative and was not given one by the war coucil. Woodward said they stone walled him. He did not have the experience or guts to take them on. So we continue to have the status quo.
In a way this happened in previous administrations. Recall Johnson knew he should leave and did not. In a later book, Mcnamara said he knew it was a hopeless case but did not know how to get out. Nixon came in with a secret promise to end the war, carried out the silent war, while trying to work background negotiations. Water gate took Nixon out and Jerry Ford had the guts to let Vietnam fold by itself and leave.
So the real issue. War is like hospitals, easy to get in but sometimes damn hard to get out. My personal Vietnam experience was being in Madison during the war protests. I was full time support staff and part time student. One time the National Guard was mobilized because the protests were getting out of hand. It is erie to to to work in the Engineering Research Building having mobilized State National Guard with empty rifles, but fixed bayonets. Hellcoptors flying overhead. One of my classes was in the economics building. You could not get to class in the front main entrance, but easily if you went in the side entrances. Classes were held.
I have the view that Obama does not know how to get out. Recall he had the European Foreign Affairs subcommittee (including NATO). Biden had the full committee. Obama did not hold one meeting under that sub committee, hence no experience in terms of NATO. Now he needs NATO which is pulling out along with the Canadians.
More over he is trying to use a full military nation building model when the Terrorists are cells which mold into the populations. He is trying to bring a early centery country to to the moder centry. That takes years.
So – when Holdbrook says get out, I have the view that Obama politically does not know how to get out. His weak results in Financial reform and Health Care shows he does not have the knowledge for the right solution. More over he does not seem to have a clue in terms of dealing with the terrorists except for drones and airport scanners. Remember the Red Coat Brits complained about the Revolutionary army blending into the population.
So – will history repeat itself. Do we have to have a different president to get out? Will the next president be a Nixon or Jerry Ford? Or will we have Obama with no knew idea’s, In both cases I think we will be having economic problems to preclude us conducting the war.
I would say, yes, we’re going to need a different president to get out.
Obama is so ignorant it’s frightening. Notice I did not say stupid, I doubt he is. But he’s ignorant and seems wilfully so. He had no idea going in how to get out of a war, and he has none now. He can’t hold his own with the Generals and their imperial corporate backers, as you said.
I’ve come to the opinion that he’s paralyzed with fear. He’s over his head so deep that he’s not even drowning, he’s drowned. He had no experience, no abilities and it shows in everything, from his handling of his campaign promises (all unfulfilled) to walking away during a news conference.
We are so screwed.
In the meantime, we just have to protest. Everything, it seems, needs to be protested. It’s so disheartening and wearying, but it’s got to be done.
The walking away from the news conference was an astonishing moment for me. It truly represented how out of sync he is. You are right, he has drowned.
He’s waiting for the tax benefits for the rich to land on his desk to sign and then he’s headed to Hawaii. I keep wondering what the issue is with Camp David?
Hi Sima,
My mood lifted for the first time today as I read your post. We must protest. I love Chris Hedges, and will go read the whole post right now. Thank you!
I felt the same way when I read the Hedges’ post. Yea, it’s dire in that we do have to protest and rebel and really, working within the two corrupt parties will not get us what we want. But it gives a path forward, a difficult one, but a path nonetheless.
It’s like Sanders’ speech primed me for action, and Hedges’ post sent me in the direction I need to go. I knew this somewhere in me anyway, but now I see it fairly clearly.
Even if protesting takes the form of just not doing what the government wants, it’s still a protest, and it’s still effective eventually. For example, pulling your own vegetables from the soil, passing them to friends and family, selling them on the corner, or simply saying to friends and family, ‘No, I don’t agree and this is why’, these are all little points of rebellion, which when added up make a difference.
Sima – Could I suggest that the protesting has to come in the form of exposing the facts versus violence. That is the magic of this blog – its participants do not seem to be proponents of ranting and raving. They bring information to the cloud
Did you see in the Huggington article that the administation was saying that Holbrooke was joking. Let me say: my wife and I have been in surgery wards for heart, colen cancer, breast cancer, hip / knee implants and brain tumors. Not once in all those eincidentces did one joke. You tend to think about things that are important to you because you might not survive.
That said, we need to remember that next spring the seeds need to be planted
Yes, protest doesn’t have to be violent. In fact, I won’t do that. Violence is not the way forward. But resistance, that is the way forward.
Want me to register my farm? No. I won’t. If enough of us won’t, the government plan falls through.
Want me to shut up about the wars? No. I won’t. If enough of us yell, we will be heard and the tide against the war will drown the warhawks.
All those kinds of things will work, in the end. I fully expect violence from the other side. I just pray we aren’t the focus of it.
The interesting thing now is who will replace Holdbrook – who would want that job?
And who has the skills to do it? Sobering. I really hope the job didn’t contribute to his death. I’m afraid it probably did, though.
I am wondering this myself…do you think John Kerry will be the one?