- You can tell in five-minutes channel surfing how Cindy
Sheehan frightens the pro-war crowd. One bereaved mom from Vacaville, camped
outside Bush's home in Crawford, reproaching the vacationing President
for sending her son to a pointless death in Iraq has got the hellhounds
of the right barking in venomous unison.
-
- Christopher Hitchens attacked Cindy Sheehan, of course.
Called her a LaRouchie! Why? No reason given. He obviously reckons "LaRouchie"
is one of those let-her-deny-it slurs, like "anti-Semite". Let's
suppose Hitchens was writing in similarly nasty terms about Hitchens. He'd
probably remember that in 1999 Edward Jay Epstein publicly recalled a dinner
in the Royalton Hotel in New York where Epstein said Hitchens had doubted
the Holocaust was quite what it's cracked up to be. In Epstein's memory
Hitchens belittled the idea that six million Jews died, said the number
was much less.
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- So, under Hitchens' rules of polemical engagement, was
does that make Hitchens? A holocaust denier, a guy who has Faurisson and
David Irving's books under his pillow. A Jew hater, or--if you believe
his sudden discovery (privately denied by his own brother on at least one
occasion) at a mature age that his mother was Jewish--a Jewish self-hater.
Of course Hitchens revels in Cindy Sheehan's denial that she said in an
email that her son died in a war for Israel. Hitchens writes that this
denial makes her "a shifty fantasist". What would Hitchens, who's
an on-the-record admirer ("a great historian") of the work of
Nazi chronicler David Irving say about Hitchens' shifty denial of Epstein's
recollection? What fun he would have with the witnesses the panic-stricken
Hitchens, well aware that "holocaust denier" is not part of the
resume of a Vanity Fair columnist, hastily mustered for his defense, a
woman and a man present at that famous dinner in the Royalton. One his
close friend, Anna Wintour, the present editor of Vogue and the other,
Brian McNally, a longtime friend and business associate.
-
- What a truly disgusting sack of shit Hitchens is. A guy
who called Sid Blumenthal one of his best friends and then tried to have
him thrown into prison for perjury; a guy who waited till his friend Edward
Said was on his death bed before attacking him in the Atlantic Monthly;
a guy who knows perfectly well the role Israel plays in US policy but who
does not scruple to flail Cindy Sheehan as a LaRouchie and anti-Semite
because, maybe, she dared mention the word Israel. She lost a son? Hitchens
(who should perhaps be careful on the topic of sending children off to
die) says that's of scant account, and no reason why we should take her
seriously. Then he brays about the horrors let loose in Iraq if the troops
come home, with no mention of how the invasion he worked for has already
unleashed them.
-
- From Hitchens to Bill O'Reilly, who has a voice as soft
as soap in a shower stall when it comes to whispering lewdly down the phone
to a female employee about loofah-uses, but who howls about Sheehan's low
character in her refusal to pay federal taxes that might put more money
the Pentagon's way.
-
- Listening to O'Reilly and even mainstream pundits, you'd
think tax-resistance was a fresh and terrible arrival on the shores of
American protest, instead of a form of resistance as old as the Republic.
-
- But the notion that tax-resistance somehow marginalizes
Sheehan as an "extremist" does highlight an important point.
The aim of any serious anti-war protest is to force a government to quit
fighting, pull the troops out, come home right now.
-
- But Sheehan is castigated in the press, by mainstream
liberals as well as mad-dog rightists, for not leaving any wriggle-room
on this central point. She says, Bring the troops home right now.
-
- How many people echo that straightforward demand? Millions
of ordinary Americans--around 34 per cent--certainly do, if we are to believe
the numbers in polls that also give Bush an approval rating of only 34
per cent for his conduct of the war.
-
- But to be effective the opinion of ordinary people has
to be harnessed into a powerful political movement that offers energetic
leadership.
-
- Here the picture is dismayingly cloudy. MoveOn.org, has
used Sheehan's siege of Bush as springboard to mount supportive anti-war
vigils. But what exactly is MoveOn calling for, in terms of ending the
war?
-
- Go to the website of the Win Without War coalition, of
which MoveOn is a member along with groups ranging from the Sierra Club,
to National Organization of women to the Methodists, Unitarians and Quakers
and youll find a mush-mouth statement about "a gradual, phased decrease
in numbers rather than augmenting the size of the force", plus other
familiar boilerplate about how the UN Security Council "should authorize
and encourage the creation of an international stabilization force to assist
the Iraqi authorities with security and training of Iraqi forces."
-
- This leisurely agenda doesn't add up to anti-war leadership.
After all, Gen. George Casey, the US commander in Iraq, talks bluntly about
"some fairly substantial reductions" to start next spring.
-
- It's no secret why MoveOn and Win Without War are so
timid. Square in their field of vision is the Democratic Party whose high-profile
congressional leaders such as Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden are calling
for more troops to be shipped out to Iraq. Push comes to shove, most of
the Win Without War coalition members won't get more than half a beat out
of step with the Democrats.
-
- Serious resistance, of the sort Sheehan calls for, has
to throw the threat of popular sanction over both Democrats as well as
Republicans. What leadership is available for this task? The obvious candidate
is the United for Peace and Justice coalition, which mounted the huge anti-war
protests of 2003 and which has been conducting peace actions ever since.
-
- But as it organizes its upcoming September 24-26 rallies
in Washington DC UFPJ seems to be turning its back on the rich opportunities
for mainstream organizing offered by Sheehan and the nerveless platform
of Win Without War, preferring to dilute the Out of Iraq message with cumbersome
left agendas written by ultras from the casting couch of the Life of Brian.
-
- Anyone can go on a vigil. It only costs the price of
a candle and a solemn expression. The price of entry into serious antiwar
organizing at the crucial moment is steeper. It requires political nerve.
A substantial coalition has to lead the way, pointed to by Sheehan, with
the slogan Bring Them Home Now.
-
- What truly frightens governments is mutiny or the threat
of mutiny. It was soldiers shooting their officers and sailors pushing
planes off air craft carriers that prompted the Pentagon to run up the
white flag in Vietnam. Along that same spectrum is draft resistance, and
the refusal to go to war. Already that's had an effect. The Pentagon says
the reserve system is in ruins.
-
- Gold Star moms like Cindy Sheehan could be leading sit-ins
at military recruitment offices across the country and in the home district
congressional offices of Democrats and Republicans. How about Cindy Sheehan
moving Camp Casey from Crawford to Hillary Clinton's offices in Washington
or New York. Only this time the demand would not be for a meeting but for
a reversal of HRC's pro war position which has her putting up a bill to
increase US forces overall by 90,000. One of the greatest achievements
of the antiwar movement in Viertnam era was to make it untenable for a
Democrat, LBJ, to run again for the presidency, or for Hubert Humphrey
to run and win on a prowar platform. Question, would the MoveOn operation
take the slightest interest in any vigils outside HRC's offices, or those
of any other prominent Democrat? Of course not.
-
- Cindy Sheehan frightens the right and stirs them to venom,
and she frightens the Democrats too, because she's so clear. Contrast the
timeline of Sheehan as against that of even a relatively decent Democrat
like Russ Feingold. Feingold calls for a start to withdrawal from Iraq
maybe sixteen months from now. How many dead troops and new Gold Star moms
can you fit into that calendar. A thousand or more? Sheehan's Out Now call
should be the bright-line test for any antiwar spokesperson.
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- www.counterpunch.org
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