Democrats betray the anti-war movement (PR5)

As May drew to a close an emotionally and physically exhausted Cindy Sheehan announced that she had left the Democratic Party and would also abandon her tireless activism against the continuing war in Iraq and retreat to private life. Sheehan, whose son died in combat in Iraq, had become one of the most widely recognised opponents of both the war and the Bush administration over the course of the past three years.

Sheehan’s abandonment of the anti-war movement reflected her deeply personal sense of betrayal at the shameless capitulation by the Democratic majority in the US Congress. In May, the vast majority of Democrats in the Senate, and one third of their membership in the House of Representatives, voted to ratify $120bn (£60bn) to sustain the occupation and the “surge” of 20-25,000 American troops. The promised timetable for withdrawal has simply disappeared and September could see the total military presence swell to 200,000, the highest level since the start of the invasion.

In a press statement explaining her decision, Sheehan spoke of the vitriolic abuse she had endured since leaving the party from people who had previously held her up as an icon of anti-war activity. This was only so long as she limited her protests to Bush and the Republican Party. Once she started to hold the Democratic Party to account, she began to lose their support.

The May vote, justified by the Democrats’ leading lights on Capitol Hill as protecting “our troops”, provoked a dramatic backlash among many activists who had naively believed that the defeat of the Republicans in last November’s elections would pave the way to a swift withdrawal. Cable network MSNBC’s leading liberal commentator, Keith Olbermann, denounced the vote as a “shameful, bipartisan betrayal”, while Eli Pariser of MoveOn.org said his group would work against Democrats “who ran on ending the war, but vote for more chaos and more troops.” In response to this backlash, the Senate majority leader rushed to announce that fellow Democrats would be relaunching efforts to dramatically curb funding for the war before the summer recess in Washington.

The Democrats’ cave-in to Dubya comes at a time when the Bush administration’s poll ratings remain at record low levels, with nearly 60% of the population now believing that the US should have never gone to war in Iraq. Two thirds of those surveyed for the New York Times and CBS News say they want a definite date for the withdrawal of US troops.

The Democrats are facing pressure from their electoral base. So much so that Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton, the two main contenders for the presidential nomination, made a big show of being part of the “principled” opposition of just 14 senators who voted against increased war spending. House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, also voted against, in an act of breathtaking hypocrisy, since she was one of the principal authors of the Democrat’s capitulation.

Whilst the Democrats may not be totally impervious to the discontent of their supporters, the May vote demonstrates yet again the true nature of the Democratic party as the second party of US imperialism. Despite the widespread recognition that Iraq has become a morass, withdrawal would prove too much of a humiliating climb down, with long term consequences of historic proportions for US imperialism. The Democrats will not risk such a scenario.

The trade union bureaucracies have poured millions and millions of dollars into Democratic coffers. Despite this, they have very little to show for their money other than a modest, phased increase in the national minimum wage. It is the same on migrant rights. Despite control of both houses, the Democrats could not even deliver what was at best a shoddy compromise reached with Republicans on immigration. The proposal agreed – although it would in fact have substantially strengthened the enforcement of border controls and exacted staggering fees from “illegal” workers seeking a path to US citizenship – did give some concessions to migrant workers in the USA. As a result the most xenophobic sections of the Republicans, and some Democrats, have refused to support it.

As far as the war is concerned, only one potential presidential candidate, Dennish Kucinich, has been a consistent opponent of the Iraq war, calling for an immediate end to all funding. Needless to say, he gains very limited media coverage and, despite generating some enthusiasm on university campuses, he has no hope whatsoever of gaining the party’s nomination.

All this points yet again to the need to create a new and altogether different party in the US, with roots in the struggles of the union-organised minority of the US workforce, based on a clear programme for, not only the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of US troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, but the overthrow of the very system which generates such squalid and blood-soaked imperialist ventures. The bitter lessons of recent months should lead every militant and anti-war activist to campaign for such a party as an alternative to the ever more “barren marriage” between US progressives and the Democrats.

The Democrats’ capitulation may have driven Sheehan away from activism, but the anti-war movement, though often fragmented and sectarian, is far from a spent force. The Memorial Day weekend immediately after the Congressional vote saw hundreds of protests, large and small, across the US. In Oakland, California, dockers honoured a “picket line” set up by local anti-war activists, stopping traffic at this major port for two straight shifts.

Despite Bush’s victory on war spending, the ground is shifting in mainstream politics, as illustrated by the reaction to the Democrats’ capitulation. Their surrender has been greeted by an outpouring of anger, not least from liberal individuals and organisations that were quickest to defend the Democrats in the past. There is also a rebellion brewing in the base of the Democratic Party.

Such an outcry would have been unheard of even one year ago. Then, the reasoning of liberal organisations was that the anti-war movement needed to wait until a Democrat was in the White House — and that would require tailoring the movement’s message so that its Democratic “allies” weren’t exposed to attack by Republicans. A year ago, both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama voted for Bush’s war spending without conditions, along with all but one member of the US Senate. Large parts of the anti-war movement were silent about this. The outrage voiced this time around is a consequence of mounting pressure from outside Washington: the landslide vote against Bush’s Republicans last November, the steady growth in anti-war sentiment, and the beginnings of a new confidence to take action against the war.

For some activists, the war spending vote will be a turning point. Many others will be angered by the Democrats’ betrayal, but will continue to see them as the main alternative to Bush’s war policies when it comes to the 2008 election.

However, the key for the movement is the current shift to the left in US politics which has created the potential for much larger numbers of people to take an active stand against the war. Anti-war protest and organisation has been lagging behind the overwhelming sentiment against the war, as many of those who opposed the war have relied on the Democrats as the only “realistic” way of stopping Bush. Now the tide has turned decisively against the Bush administration, and the Democrats are showing in action that they won’t lead the way. Anti-war activists need to look outside Washington to end the occupation of Iraq. They need to build anti-war groups, organise protests, get trade unionists to block war supplies into order to turn the vast sentiment against the war into active opposition.

G R McColl

Mon 08, October 2007 @ 19:43