Think Local, Act Local

Doug Fuda has it right in this post from Anti War League blog that I found on Antiwar.com. I don't think people realize that marches on Washington is not what accomplishes change, it's happens in their own towns and states that make the change. He notes the forces of decentralization that I point out in my own book. It's the kind of thinking that's going on with these anti-war referendums in my home state of Wisconsin. I think decentralization is finally starting to spread and sink in with people, one hopes.

---Sean Scallon



Local vs. Federal --
the Antiwar Home Field Advantage

by Doug Fuda
April 1, 2006
antiwarleague.com



The American "War Party," led by the neocons and including virtually all national Democratic and Republican political leaders, is becoming increasingly isolated. Public support for their insane “war on terror” is collapsing, and opposition to their interventionist foreign policy is widespread throughout American society. Sometimes it seems as if politicians are the only remaining enthusiastic supporters of the Iraq war even as they lay the groundwork for the next war with Iran. And yet paradoxically the antiwar movement is weak and ineffective.

Here is how one report describes the current situation:

"But even as the war and occupation reach the three-year mark, even as opposition to the war has solidified, it has not translated into a true, mainstream anti-war movement. Local demonstrations are numerous but small. Some have fallen by the wayside."

In order to understand this problem it is important to look at recent history. In spite of the frightening events of September 11, 2001, and all the scare tactics about WMD, a large and diverse antiwar movement arose in America before the Iraq invasion to oppose the war plans of the US ruling elite. It turned out that the death of the "Vietnam Syndrome" (the refusal of Americans to support war) had been declared prematurely after the First Gulf War. But President Bush and the Neocon Warlords had a plan and they carried it out ruthlessly. They knew that they could rely on the assistance of the compliant corporate media and the overwhelming power of war, the ultimate social engineering project, to weather the initial storms of popular discontent. This was a severe blow to the assumptions of the antiwar movement about the power of people in the street.

The second crushing blow was the presidential election of 2004. Popular antiwar sentiment was expelled from the political arena and the antiwar movement was badly divided over how to respond to this abject failure of "politics as usual." This situation continues to this day as the so-called opposition Democrats lead the charge calling for confrontation with Iran as they prepare us for the next installment of the endless "war on terror."

In a recent article Butler Shaffer describes our quandary as follows:

"The American state does not reflect the image we have been conditioned to see. The political system and its processes are under the control of major corporate interests, whose ownership of major media outlets propagandize the public on behalf of such narrow interests. The appearance of a democracy collapses into the reality of a one-party system – the 'Establishment Party' – which, election-after-election, provides voters with choices between Tweedledum and Tweedledummer. So-called 'popular democracy' long ago faded into a plutocracy, with only the independently wealthy having a realistic chance of getting elected to high office. Nor did the election returns of 2000 – in Florida – and 2004 – in Ohio – instill confidence in the voting process itself."


What does this all mean? It means that we cannot fight the war machine by trying to change the federal government. The War Party's control is absolute in D.C., bolstered by a cheerleading media, byzantine secrecy, and massive quantities of military/industrial complex dollars. The War Machine operates on automatic pilot from inside an impregnable American "Green Zone." That's one reason why the overwhelming and growing antiwar sentiment in the US does not translate into a powerful movement. People feel there's nothing we can do, so they shake their heads and go on about their business and try to survive. The job of the antiwar movement is to adapt its strategy and tactics to give people a sense of power and hope again.

Here is Mr. Shaffer again:

"We can no longer afford the absurd delusion – brought about by our efforts to reconcile the contradictory nature of the political system – that the Constitution is what keeps the government from doing all the terrible things it does...

...the nature of the political system that has long ruled this country must be examined. At a time when decentralizing forces are bringing about the collapse of vertically-structured institutional systems; and when horizontal networks of spontaneous and autonomous order are emerging, the corpse of constitutional government needs to be laid to rest."

These "decentralizing forces" are the key for the antiwar movement for they are the only peaceful weapon which we have at our disposal which can allow us to prevail. We should employ the full force of a decentralization strategy against the warmongers and the Federal Leviathan.

Such a strategy can provide us with a new tactical standard for deciding what to do. The antiwar movement should not try to change federal policy directly; rather it must actively refuse to cooperate with it at the level where we can fight effectively -- the local and state level.

Here are some examples of things to do:

1. Actively obstruct the military recruitment of our kids. Parents, teachers and students should demand of local school officials and city government that they defy the federal "No Child Left Behind Law" and expel the recruiters from our schools even if they threaten us with a cutoff of federal funds. We must not "sell" our children to the Masters of War for federal blood money. Tell them to shove it.

2. Indict Bush and/or his accomplices. The movement to bring war crimes charges against Bush should not rely on impeachment or an International War Crimes tribunal but should turn to local and state courts and law enforcement officials and demand that they investigate the possibility of a conspiracy by federal officials to start a war of aggression.

3. Oppose federal control of state National Guard units. In Massachusetts last fall there was a signature campaign for a ballot initiative to bring home the Massachusetts National Guard from Iraq and prevent further deployment in overseas wars.

4. Refuse cooperation with the totalitarian Homeland Security project. Demand that our state and city governments and community leaders break the ties that connect out local communities and institutions to the Orwellian "War on Terror." (For example we should abolish the Fusion Centers.)

Such projects of resistance and refusal may already be underway in many places but we need to duplicate these efforts in thousands of communities and we need to make our decentralization strategy explicit. We should declare that we have a home field advantage against the War Party and that we intend to use it to peacefully but decisively dismantle the war machine.

Desperate times demand desperate measures and I agree with Noam Chomsky who recently said that “under the current U.S. policies, a nuclear exchange is inevitable.” You can't get much more desperate than that. The weak and divided antiwar movement must learn from experience in order to transform itself into a formidable organized force that can inflict real political damage on the enemies of peace. Nobel Prize winner Harold Pinter recently wrote, in referring to the US military policy known as "full spectrum dominance," that there is an "infantile insanity ... at the heart of present American political philosophy." Sensible mature Americans from all walks of life must step forward in their neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, cities and towns to challenge the local manifestations of this militaristic pathology which threatens to destroy us all. It is time to put the grown-ups back in charge before it is too late.


Doug Fuda, a Boston resident and member of the Antiwar League, can be reached at dougfuda@aol.com