What Now for the Peace Movement? by Howard N. Meyer
Please see here a posting from Howard N. Meyer
Sent: Wednesday, March 16, 2005
Subject: What Now For The Peace Movement?
I was deeply disappointed to read Quinn's analysis. To use all that verbiage and not to mention International Law and the need for elevating citizen consciousness about it is disappointing,-- but not surprising since she is reflecting a similar deficiency in the peace movement that should be a target of "Peace Studies" to correct. I suggest that you send your supporters this message and the text of the attachment.
I do not fault Quinn personally: she fairly represents the ignorance, illiteracy and lack of a clue as to the missing element in all anti-war and anti-imperialist effort.
The World Court tried to educate us in the Nicaragua case twenty years ago. The message has been wasted. Latin American activists and educators should be foremost in trying to bring that message that war is illegal save in legitimate self defense North American's populace about the I C J and the debt we owe the American Peace Movement of a century ago, for its role in bringing to world consciousness the need to respect International Law and independent judicial action to eliminate the "scourge of war which....... has brought untold sorrow to mankind."
< that quote from the U N Charter should remind us that the U N itself has failed to heed the message that was supposedy to be given by the U N Decade of 1990-2000>
Howard N Meyer
author THE WORLD COURT IN ACTION.
----- Original Message -----
From: Ciuddes Educadoras América Latina
To: Ciudades Educadoras America Latina
Sent: Tuesday, March 15, 2005 9:30 AM
Subject: What Now For The Peace Movement?
For your information:
Educating Cities Latin America International Affaires Department Municipality of Rosario - Argentina
Professor Alicia Cabezudo, Director ce_americalat@rosario.gov.ar
What Now For The Peace Movement?
Amy Quinn
March 09, 2005
TomPaine.com
Polls in recent weeks show a full 59 percent of Americans are now in favor of withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq. But they're not acting on this view, in part because they worry about the potential for even greater chaos following a U.S. exit. The task for the peace movement--responsible for the huge public demonstrations against a war in Iraq in the days prior to March 19, 2003--is speaking to these concerns as it mobilizes untapped public sentiment against the occupation.
In the six months leading up to the invasion of Iraq, the United States erupted in a display of citizen dissent not seen since the Vietnam War era. Now, almost two years later, the majority of the American public view Iraq as a train wreck. Yet! public outrage about this war's seemingly endless tragedy has remained largely under the radar.
To turn up the volume and power of voices calling for an end to the U.S. war and occupation, the same organizations behind the massive rallies of 2003 and 2004 are planning a fresh strategy for engaging the public in constructive action on Iraq.
With the backdrop of an escalating war that's ravaging Iraq, destabilizing U.S. communities, and sowing seeds of resentment against the United States around the world, United for Peace and Justice--the nation's largest peace coalition--assembled 500 delegates over President's Day weekend in St. Louis to chart a roadmap for the next year to bolster and build the U.S. peace and justice movement. The assembly whittled dozens of proposals from member groups down to a powerful action plan to bolster the movement to end the war. A set of priorities emerged that maximizes the White House vulnerabilities generated by the Iraq War and sets a proactive agenda of alternatives to the Bush administration's belligerent policies.
Building A Plan
First, the assembly affirmed that we must broaden and deepen our base to catalyze public sentiment for bringing the troops home to reach a tipping point. According to a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll taken after the Iraq elections, 59 percent of the public believes the United States should pull its troops out of Iraq in the next year. Yet the ranks of those actively demanding that the president produce an exit strategy from Iraq are slim. The peace movement must find fresh ways to stir untapped allies so that, in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, our conscience leaves us "no other choice" but to act.
Second, we must support and amplify the pressure coming from within the ranks of the military. Military families and veterans hold the moral aut! hority to successfully communicate with the U.S. public the reality on the ground in Iraq and the disillusion soldiers are facing. Iraq War veterans and military families need help putting a human face on the 1,500 soldiers who have been sent to their graves and the thousands more who are suffering the physical and mental scars of war. It's also crucial to expose how the war has dangerously overextended the U.S. military, the National Guard and our military reserve units.
Third, we must seize on Bush's greatest vulnerability-- the war's astronomical cost, set to surpass $200 billion in the coming weeks. Bush's mounting deficit from reckless war spending is already squeezing out community programs that serve millions.
And fourth, we must expose the hypocrisy of Bush's war of liberation and present viable alternatives to promote genuine democracy and economic sovereignty in Iraq.
Back To Movement Roots
Found! ed in 2002, UFPJ is the glue that will continue to link 1,400 organizations together around these strategies to oppose Bush's Iraq War and its domestic consequences. Since its inception, this diverse and dynamic coalition has mobilized hundreds of thousands of people through global demonstrations like the "World Says No to War" actions on Feb. 15, 2003, national actions such as the high-profile protests during the Republican National Convention in August 2004, and hundreds of smaller-scale actions that sustained opposition to this war since 2003.
What's ahead for the peace movement? For our part, UFPJ seeks to expand our base through a sustained education campaign set to launch March 24, the 40th anniversary of the first Vietnam teach-in. Simultaneous teach-ins will kickoff the campaign in Washington D.C., California, and at the site of the first Vietnam teach- in in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Our goal is to generate momentum and infrastructure for a long-term education movement that promotes fresh models for reaching beyond the choir to engage clergy, youth, immigrants and others about the real axis of evil--racism, poverty and war--set forth by Martin Luther King in 1967.
Most importantly, the teach-in campaign will speak to the large slice of the 59 percent of the public who thinks the troops should be brought home but are paralyzed with fear about the consequences for Iraq. Our task is to illustrate the facts--the longer the United States occupies Iraq, the more deadly and costly this war will be.
Coupled with the education campaign is a strategy to highlight the domestic consequence of war in our organizing. Missouri taxpayers, who hosted the UFPJ conference, for example, are on the verge of paying $1.1 billion more to fund the Iraq War once Congress passes Bush's requested $82 billion emergency Iraq supplemental funding package. Mis! souri's share of the impending budget bill could be directed, instead, to provide health care to more than 485,000 children in the state. With statistics like this in mind, the assembly backed a plan to partner with allies such as poverty groups, education advocates and health care coalitions who are leading fights to save vital programs that are getting burned by Bush's skyrocketing deficits and budget cuts. This initiative will link the mushrooming number of local fights to save essential public services and the $1.5 billion-a-week sinkhole of Iraq War funding.
Work On The Ground
UFPJ has set in motion a strategy to hold lawmakers' feet to the fire for their inertia on this failing war. The coalition is both asking Congress to cut the purse strings for military operations in Iraq and developing a nationally coordinated strategy to pressure Congress and other elected officials to bring the troops home immediately. Th! is multi-year Congressional pressure strategy--which will draw lessons from the Vietnam-er a campaign around the McGovern-Hatfield Amendment--seeks to expedite the war's end. The campaign is drawing its strength from grassroots organizing and will link street actions with other types of pressure, like direct advocacy, to make ending the war a practical priority for elected officials. With more than 1,400 local member groups from across the country representing hundreds of thousands of people, UFPJ is an untapped political powerhouse.
This muscle will also be channeled into a state-by- state campaign to halt the use and abuse of the U.S. National Guard in Iraq. Just one week after the conference, on March 1, a total of 49 Vermont towns led the charge by passing resolutions asking their state legislators and congressional delegation to investigate the use of the Vermont National Guard in Iraq. The town hall resolutions als! o called on the president and Congress to "take steps to withdraw American troops from Iraq." The campaign, spearheaded by Military Families Speak Out, will build on the Cities for Peace resolution model that led to 165 "No War" resolutions by the March 2003 invasion.
This amazing victory in Vermont, which had been in the works for months, will inspire hearings in other state legislatures and city councils toward building the political will to pass resolutions to halt the use of National Guard in Iraq. While the short-term goal is to educate local lawmakers and the public about the unfair treatment of the National Guard, the campaign will also expose the overextension of military personnel and the de facto backdoor draft that funnels low-income youth to serve in disproportionately high numbers.
In the short term, UFPJ will continue to build on what it does best: mobilize. The coalition is supporting a mass protest rally n! ear Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, N.C., on March 19 to coincide with the second anniversary of the U.S. invasion. Military families and veterans' groups are leading the effort to organize a powerful action that honors the memories of more than 50 soldiers from that base who have been killed, while demanding that the president stop sending soldiers and civilians to their graves.
On the anniversary, dozens of groups, under the leadership of the Iraq Pledge of Resistance, will urge the American public to join a campaign of "civil resistance" to ratchet up the significance and types of actions undertaken to end the war--particularly nonviolent civil disobedience.
No Choice But Action
A challenge that remains for the peace movement includes finding new ways to deepen ties with our global peace and human rights counterparts, who are key to eroding the tepid international support for the U.S. occupation. More importantly, w! e need to build better links with emerging civil society leaders in Iraq and the region. Through these alliances the U.S. peace movement can better reflect Iraqi-designed alternatives to the U.S. occupation.
One hopeful sign that the movement is committed to addressing both hurdles was our decision in St. Louis to join dozens of other countries for the World Day of Mobilization Against War. UFPJ will organize a rally at the United Nations in New York City on Sept. 10, to coincide with a meeting of heads of 191 countries on the United Nation's 60th Anniversary. This anniversary provides an opportunity to engage our communities in support of building global institutions that have the power and moral authority to reject unilateral war and to promote fundamental human rights.
At Riverside Church in 1967, Martin Luther King opened his famous speech that linked poverty, racism and the
Vietnam War with, "I come to this house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice." The ultimate challenge the peace movement faces is to stir that same spirit in the American public on Iraq.
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Amy Quinn is the Peace Movement Links Coordinator for the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C.
She is a founding steering committee member of United for Peace and Justice.
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/what_now_for_the_peace_movement.php
Message from: Howard N. Meyer
Subject: "Give Law a Chance" to assist peace efforts and studies.
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005
Seekers and students of peace and peace history, will read with interest a statement that was prepared for a conference at Ryerson University (Ottawa). [I had been invited to come to discuss the World Court in connection with a conference on "The Evolution of World Order."]
The statement was also distributed at a Peace Studies Conference conducted by a Teacher's College peace education group at the Riverside Church, New York City.
Statement on the Evolution of World Order
GIVE LAW A CHANCE
Some may remember the period of the Vietnam protests, when American activists -- and no doubt their brothers and sisters around the world -- chanted and carried banners saying "GIVE PEACE A CHANCE."
That was, of course, intended to be recalled by the title given to this brief statement. The phrase was not originated by this writer. It was used for the headline on the front page of the New York Times Sunday Book Review for August 25, 1990. The book under review was "On the Law of Nations" written by United States Senator Daniel P. Moynihan as the culminating effort in a mini-crusade he had been conducting in lectures, essays and other publications. That crusade began with the protest he and Senator Barry Goldwater lodged in 1984
asserting that the CIA action in mining the harbors of Nicaragua was illegal, a violation of international law. (The mining attack was part of the ongoing effort of the United States to change the regime of the government of Nicaragua.)
The fate of his effort was summarized by Moynihan in his book:
"In the annals of forgetfulness there is nothing quite to compare with the fading from the American mind of the idea of the law of nations. In the beginning this law was set forth as the foundation of our national existence."
The charge of "illegality" was sustained by the International Court of Justice, informally and usually referred to as the World Court.
The action of my government in "walking out" of the proceedings at the Court after Court rejected (14-1) U S objections to the Court hearing the case filed by Nicaragua (echoing the Moynihan/Goldwater demarche) inspired my taking on the effort of writing the book The World Court in Action.
The characterization of my country's invasion of Iraq as "illegal" by U N Secretary General Kofi Annan may be compared with the charge made by Moynihan and Goldwater twenty years ago. The hostile and/or indifferent response to the current accusation by my fellow-Americans creates a problem of conscience.
Peace activists and advocates and students should have been bringing this home to the nation. Their failure to do so is in large part due to ignorance that vindicates Moynihan's reference to the "annals of forgetfulness."
The Nicaragua case is discussed and explained in my book, THE WORLD COURT IN ACTION. This is not done in isolation but as part of the story of America's key role in creation of the Court and later relations with it.
All this is described in the history and story of the creation of the Court and its functioning, explained for the benefit of lay readers. I think it appropriate to call to the attention of Peace Studies scholars the words of one reviewer of the book who appreciatively noted "The subject of International Law is a missing dimension from peace history, the history of U S foreign relations and international relations generally. The World Court in action...makes a significant attempt to rectify this state of affairs."
For the benefit of a Canadian audience I think it fitting that I should tell of a chapter of U S/Canadian relations of a 160 years ago included in the book:
The case of The Caroline arose from an episode in the Mackenzie/Papineau insurrection, during which upstate New York was used as a base.
The highly relevant and instructive result of that case was a rule of international law agreed upon by Daniel Webster for the United States and the British (pre-dominion) Foreign Office. It was drafted by Webster. It defined when the use of military force in self-defense was legal: Only where the "necessity of that self-defense is instant, overwhelming and leaving no choice of means, and no moment of deliberation is the use of force legitimate." These are words with which peace activists and peace students and peace historians should be familiar.
Howard N Meyer
