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Bush plan for a "troop surge" in Iraq ignites antiwar movement

by Eric Jackson, mainly from other media

This past November the American people voted their displeasure with Republican rule in the congressional elections, more than anything over an Iraq War that is going badly by all measures. To be sure, the voters tilted Democratic over scandals and intolerance and economic issues and a weariness with religious fanaticism as well, but nothing symbolized the American malaise so much as the failure in Iraq.

So weary were the American people just about everywhere except the Deep South with the Bush administration and the GOP on Capitol Hill that the Democrats took back both the House and the Senate without having a single or even a mainstream position about what to do with the Iraq War. That argument could be put off until later in favor of a simple and effective "we're not them" appeal.

But on January 10 President Bush has announced that he will send more than 20,000 additional troops into Iraq to simultaneously attack Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias and the whole paradigm of US politics has been shifted to a bitter struggle over an unpopular war.

This is not a rerun of the Vietnam War scenario, no matter how many comparisons are made to it. Then, opposition to the war took years to build, protesters who had been beaten, tear gassed or jailed often themselves turned to violence. Then a draft system seen as unfair fed huge and militant demonstrations, massive flights out of the country to avoid military service, widespread draft resistance and the unraveling of discipline within many units of the US Armed Forces. Now there's a volunteer army and hardly anyone in Washington is willing to talk about a draft. Now a public perception that the Iraq War is a failure has gained ground much faster than the similar judgment about Vietnam did. Now the antiwar movement isn't talking about revolution in the streets but rather bloody revenge at the polls.

Maybe more ominously for US forces, in addition to increasing desertion and refusal of orders to go to Iraq there are now open antiwar protests by active duty military personnel. One example of this was a Martin Luther King Jr. Day protest in the Norfolk, Virginia Unitarian-Universalist Church, where a group of off duty and out of uniform Navy and Marine Corps personnel, including some Annapolis graduates, called for the immediate withdrawal of US forces from Iraq.

On January 27 protesters will converge on Washington DC and march in several other US cities to protest the escalation of the Iraq War and it will be one test of strength for an infuriated antiwar movement.

Just after the Bush announcement of his Iraq plan, polls suggest that about two-thirds of Americans oppose the "troop surge." Sensing the effect that this is likely to have in next year's Democratic primaries, many politicians are beginning to modify their positions in the direction of the antiwar movement.

One of the new Democratic senators, James Webb of Virginia, grew up as an Air Force brat, is a Vietnam veteran, served as Ronald Reagan's navy secretary and is counted as one of the more moderate Democrats. In his response to President Bush's State of the Union speech, he said that:

The majority of the nation no longer supports the way this war is being fought; nor does the majority of our military. We need a new direction. Not one step back from the war against international terrorism. Not a precipitous withdrawal that ignores the possibility of further chaos. But an immediate shift toward strong regionally-based diplomacy, a policy that takes our soldiers off the streets of Iraq's cities, and a formula that will in short order allow our combat forces to leave Iraq.

As this story was written a Senate committee was debating a non-binding resolution that declares that the troop surge is "not in the national interest." At least one committee Republican, Chuck Hagel from Nebraska, said he'd vote for the resolution, which appears likely to get through the committee but will face an uncertain prospect on the Senate floor.

The antiwar movement will attempt to push the Democrats to take even stronger stands. As Iraq Veterans Against the War member Geoff Millard put it at a meeting to organize the January 27 Washington protest:

When members of Congress say that cutting funds for this war and immediate withdrawal is 'off the table' --- they are dead wrong. They don't set the table. We set the damn plates down. We set the damn forks down.

Or at least, so Millard and his fellow protesters hope. To the extent that they are disappointed, it's very likely that the antiwar movement will throw its weight behind Democratic primary candidates who say what it wants to hear next year.

That, of course, could give the 2008 GOP nominee an opening to brand the winner of a Democratic primary and caucus process a wild and irresponsible radical, or someone beholden to such people. But then, just like the antiwar movement of today isn't like that of the Vietnam era, a revival of the standard anti-antiwar pitch may or may not work in 2008 like it did for Richard Nixon in 1970 and 1972.

In Panama the Iraq War and its effect on the US military had the effect of rejuvenating the local chapter of Democrats Abroad, bringing a number of people, some of them veterans who had never before identified themselves as Democrats, into the fold last year. A number of these veterans are nothing like your ordinary antiwar protesters, but people who dedicated the best years of their lives to service in the US Armed Forces, believe in American military strength and are distressed by what they see as a series of foolhardy Iraq policies that have harmed the institutions they love and short-changed many a returning veteran.

The divisions of US society, both between Democrats and Republicans and within the Democratic party, can now be seen in the American community here, which for decades had been more Republican than Democratic but has now shifted not only over the war but also due to widespread perceptions that the United States has become increasingly corrupt and authoritarian, economically weaker and less respected by other countries during the Bush era. The political situation, which is hard to measure in any case because of the difficulties in counting US votes from abroad according to the countries from which they are cast, is undoubtedly fluid regardless of Democratic gains last year.

Look for the argument over the Iraq War among Panama's American community to play itself out on the Internet and in our local chapters of Democrats Abroad and Republicans Abroad over the coming months.

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Iraq War "troop surge" jump-starts antiwar movement
Panama absent from Correa's inauguration
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