FOR NEW YEAR’S 2010:
RESOLVE, RESOLVE, RESOLVE
It’s not a very happy new year for the antiwar movement. The headline on Tom Engelhardt’s latest Nation column says it all: “Why War Will Take No Holidays in 2010.” The full piece (www.thenation.com/doc/20100111/engelhardt) presents the reasons why we are unlikely to see much progress toward peace in the next twelve months.
Yet between the lines there is another point: the work we do this year lays the crucial groundwork for breakthroughs in 2011 and beyond. That idea can and should spur heightened resolve to work hard, work smart, and come out of the upcoming difficult year in better shape than we are today.
AFGHANISTAN: “DOWNWARD SPIRAL” CANNOT BE HALTED
This perspective applies first to the Afghanistan war, where President Obama’s escalation is now underway. The latest Washington Post/ABC News poll indicates that this so-called “surge” is supported by 58% of the U.S. public. But for a large portion of that 58% such support is extremely thin, dependent on the hope that escalation will “show good results.”
But it won’t. Figures as highly placed as Thomas Johnson, a professor of national security affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School and Thomas Mason, a retired Foreign Service officer previously assigned to a high post in Afghanistan, cut to the chase. “There isn’t the slightest possibility that the course laid out by Barack Obama in his December 1 speech will halt or even slow the downward spiral toward defeat in Afghanistan,” they write in Foreign Policy magazine. www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/12/10/sorry_obama_afghanistans_your_vietnam
In other words, Afghans will keep dying, U.S. troops will keep dying, huge amounts of money will continue to be spent, reports of Afghan government corruption will continue to surface, and the to-be-expected reports of “progress” from one general after another will ring more hollow with each passing month. In this context, an antiwar movement that consistently gets its message out there that this war is hopeless, wrong, costly, and heightens rather than reduces the threat of terrorism can make a difference. Step-by-step public opinion can be turned. And if creative ways are found to show how this resource-devouring war prevents addressing the economic hardships that are the front-burner issue for the country’s majority (and the environmental crisis that is spurring so many youth to action), changed public sentiment can become a powerful political force.
(The same message needs to be sent regarding Iraq. The end of 2011 is officially the deadline for the U.S. to totally withdraw, but that is far from a done deal. Witness The New York Times report on recent remarks by Robert Gates: “The defense secretary… expects that some U.S. forces might remain in an advisory capacity in Iraq after 2011. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised to see agreements between ourselves and the Iraqis that continue a train-equip-and-advise role beyond the end of 2011,’ Mr. Gates said.”)
ON GAZA WAR ANNIVERSARY, ISRAEL THREATENS “HARSHER” ACTIONS
It is likely even more uphill to change U.S. policy in ways that would open the door to a just settlement to the Israel-Palestine conflict. On the ground Israel is ramping up land seizures and repression: its military shot and killed six Palestinians Dec. 27 and the next day its government announced the construction of nearly 700 new Jewish-only housing units in occupied East Jerusalem. And on the anniversary of its Gaza War – in which 1,400 Palestinians were killed – Israeli officials made no bones about what lies ahead. The New York Times reported Dec. 25 that “officials and experts familiar with the country’s military doctrine say that… Israel will likely find itself fighting another, similar kind of war. Only next time, some here suggest, Israel will apply more force. ‘The next round will be different, but not in the way people think,’ said Giora Eiland, a retired major general and former chief of Israel’s National Security Council. ‘The only way to be successful is to take much harsher action.’
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