[NYTr] Iraq: the Gift That Keeps on Bleeding

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Counterpunch - Aug 21, 2007
http://www.counterpunch.org/stauber08212007.html

Iraq: the Gift That Keeps on Bleeding

If Democrats Won't Stop the War, Perhaps Iraq Vets Will

By JOHN STAUBER

Shortly after the November 2006 election the Democracy Alliance, an
exclusive group of about 100 Democratic Party millionaire activists,
met in Miami, Florida. Members and their guests heard their keynote
speaker and liberal legend Mario Cuomo, former New York governor,
analyze the Democratic Party in the wake of its stunning electoral
victories that had given Democrats control of the US Congress. Cuomo
criticized the Democratic Party for lacking vision, big ideas and a
winning political argument. His recipe for future Democratic victories
was simple: "You seize the biggest idea you can, the biggest idea you
can understand. And this is what moves elections."

Cuomo then dared to voice an inconvenient truth: "Now it's 2006 and
we're all rejoicing. Why? Because of Iraq. A GIFT. A gift to the
Democrats. A lot of whom voted for the war anyway." The former New York
governor challenged his partisan audience, "If Iraq is not an issue,
then what issues do we have to talk about? Where does that leave you?
It leaves you in the same position you were in in 2004 ­ without an
issue. Because you have no big idea."

The story of Cuomo's speech is from the concluding pages of Matt Bai's
new book "The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers and the Battle to Remake
Democratic Politics." Bai writes, "An uncomfortable silence hung over
the ballroom. No one had yet expressed the situation quite that
crassly, although everyone knew it was an accurate accounting."

The Argument is an important book but Bai muffed the title. He should
have titled it "The Gift," because as Cuomo points out it was primarily
the political gift of voter anger and revulsion over a horrific,
continuing war that caused them to oust Republicans.

And how have the Democrats treated their gift now that they control
Congress? The Democratic House and Senate have continued to fund the
war while posturing against it. For example Hillary Clinton, who
pollsters regard as the Democratic frontrunner for her party's
presidential nomination, told the New York Times that when she is
elected she would keep troops in Iraq but run a smarter operation. The
public's opinion of Congress has plummeted with no end in sight to the
bloody occupation.

Bai's book is the first since the 2006 election to examine the new
power alliance within the Democratic Party composed of the
organizations referenced in his long subtitle. They include the
"billionaires" such as George Soros and other members of the Democracy
Alliance; the major liberal "bloggers" such as "Netroots Nation" guru
Markos Moulitsas Zúniga with his Daily Kos blog and the Yearly Kos
conventions; and, the related "battlers" re-making the Democratic Party
such as Howard Dean the party chair. Bai devotes an entire chapter to
MoveOn, the Netroots money and messaging machine controlling an email
list of 3.3 million Americans built in large part on their opposition
to the Iraq war. MoveOn's political action committee has become one of
the top contributors of money to Democratic candidates.

These various players participated in the recent Yearly Kos bloggers
convention in Chicago, a partisan event that FOX's Bill O'Reilly
attacked and most of the Democratic presidential candidates attended.
My organization, the Center for Media and Democracy, organized an
unofficial last minute event at the Yearly Kos, a "Coffee with the
Troops" featuring the leadership of the Iraq Veterans Against the War
(IVAW). Extensive video of our event can now be viewed on YouTube.

We organized our event because in my opinion there was a lack of
opportunity at the Yearly Kos for meaningful discussion and debate of
how bloggers can best help end the Iraq occupation. Markos himself and
his co-author Jerome Armstrong identified opposition to the war in Iraq
as the over-arching issue uniting Netroots activists, writing in their
2006 book Crashing the Gates. As one of the IVAW soldiers told me in
advance of our Coffee with the Troops, "we need bloggers to interview
and tell the stories of Iraq veterans; it's essential to publicizing
the truth about this war."

Leaders of the new Democratic power alliance examined in The Argument
spoke prominently at Yearly Kos, including Andy Stern of labor union
SEIU and Tom Matzzie the chief lobbyist for MoveOn. In January these
two groups and others had launched Americans Against Escalation in Iraq
(AAEI), directed by Matzzie. Some fifteen million dollars has
reportedly been spent by this lobby effort that failed to first prevent
Bush's "troop surge," and then failed to stop the Democratic Congress
from funding the war.

The AAEI has hired over 100 young organizers for its "Iraq Summer"
campaign that is hounding targeted Republicans in their districts, but
avoiding any similar tactics against pro-war Democrats. Matzzie and
MoveOn's pollster Stanley Greenberg shared a panel at the Yearly Kos
convention examining how Democrats are doing in the polls. Matzzie
exudes gung-ho confidence that AAEI's tactics will bring about a
"responsible" conclusion to the war.

Iraq Veterans Against the War speaking out during our event expressed a
different opinion. "What will end this war?" asked Aaron Hughes, an
Illinois National Guardsman who drove trucks in Iraq in a mission he
once supported. "I'm not waiting for an election to end this war. We
elected candidates to Congress and we really had faith that funding
would be cut and they played this line that said 'we can't cut funding
because that would mean we are not supporting the troops.' Excuse me?
We can't keep listening to these politicians and believing in them. We
need to listen to each other."

As you can imagine, for Hughes and other Iraq veterans the war is
something less than a "gift." At our Yearly Kos event, Hughes and his
IVAW colleagues -- Garett Reppenhagen, Josh Lansdale and Geoffrey
Millard ­answered questions for more than an hour. These vets study how
the Vietnam War was ended, and they well know the power of their words
and actions.

IVAW was founded in 2004 and today it is a rapidly growing, grassroots,
independent anti-war group with members active in 43 states and
deployed on bases in Iraq. These rank and file soldiers are not
partisans; they are Americans who have seen first hand the greatest
political betrayal of our lifetime, the US attack on Iraq and the long
occupation.

Iraq Veterans Against the War are not the concoction of a liberal think
tank or PR firm; they have very little funding; they are not avoiding
criticism of Democrats; and they are not playing political games trying
to bank-shot Democratic candidates into the White House and Congress in
2008. They are in open non-violent revolt against US foreign policy,
criticizing politicians of all stripes who would exploit the war for
political gain.

Many IVAW soldiers are on active duty opposing the war openly and at
personal risk; such is their conviction. On Saturday August 18, 90 IVAW
soldiers demonstrated in St. Louis against a recruiting exhibit at a
business expo, conducting the largest single action yet organized by
anti-war veterans of Iraq. IVAW is stepping up its "truth in
recruitment" efforts this September.

Watch the YouTube video of Iraq Veterans Against the War speaking out
at Yearly Kos. Go to the IVAW website at http://www.IVAW.org and
contact them directly. Support our troops' own opposition to the war.
These American soldiers are determined to end the war. For them it has
never been a "gift." They are not waiting for an election, nor should
anyone else.

[John Stauber is Executive Director of the Center for Media and
Democracy in Madison, Wisconsin and co-author of Weapons of Mass
Deception and The Best War Ever. He can be reached at:
john at prwatch.org ]