Ending the war on terror, and war in general:

1. You have to control the troops to end the war; the troops ARE the war.

2. You can control the troops a few ways but they basically come down to:

-a-Convince the current President to stop the war or be the President yourself and order the war to stop

or

-b-Controlling them in other ways (ideological, for instance) and ordering them to stop fighitng AGAINST the pro-war orders of the President.

3. The first way is easier than the second way. All you have to do to get an anti-war president is get the votes. To get an antiwar movement against a pro-war president, you have to do everything you’d do to get an antiwar president (educate people, etc.) but you’d have to do it to an even greater extent because, if the president is pro-war, that means a lot of americans are pro-war (or at least not anti-war) which means there will be people to suppress any sort of action taken by the military which is against the orders of the president.

4. However, that’s not to say that we should RELY SOLELY on the power of the president. Look at Honduras, Venezuela, Haiti, etc. The rich just kidnap a President if they don’t like his policies. We need to build a movement which is organized and willing enough to fight back against those who would seek to use extra-legal initiatives to thwart the will of the people expressed through their electoral candidates–or to fight their candidates if the candidates don’t deliver. However, getting that Presidency on our side (by convincing him or electing someone new) is crucial because, if we are on the side of the President–even if that president gets kidnapped or something–we are then in a strong position to fight to end the war; even people who don’t care much about the war–but care about democracy and not kidnapping presidents and stuff–will support us.

5. Which brings us to another point: If you can’t convince a pro-war president to be anti-war (and I don’t even set this as my goal because I think (a) it won’t happen and (b) if it can happen, it will only happen through building another party to challenge his support, anyway) how do you get a new president? You cannot do it with an anti-war stance alone. People care about more than one issue. You have to have a broad platform that unites a lot of people behind a single person. (Now, again, I don’t want to unite everyone around a person, I want to unite them around a program; however, the rules are set up now so that we have representatives not direct votes–so we don’t vote on open borders or closed, war or peace, we vote for representatives and then they decide. *Now, we don’t have to play by those rules* However, to change the rules we’ll need so much power to be successful that we’ll have no problem just playing by these rules and them changing the rules through using the existing rules [ammending the Constitution]). So, there you have it, like I said at the start, the world is inter-connected. Just look at the people and how they can get what they want: the people are inter-connected in that they care about a lot of things; and they are also inter-connected in that, to get any of these things done, they have to work with others.

6. And this is why I’ve been thinking about the Green Party a lot. We need a third party. We don’t ONLY need a third electoral party. But we do need it. I don’t know if the Green Party is that party. But it might be. I so wish I could talk to Cynthia Mckinney today; however, part of me thinks I’d be disappointed because, though I love her, I don’t see her as having a completely grass-roots perspective. But I could be wrong.

7. So, that’s looking at one issue and we can already see the need for an expansive program. [And I could go through this strategy stuff and come to the same conclusions with every issue I listed that I want.] But, if you have an expansive program–as opposed to a narrow one–what are the people currently in power going to think? They are going to think (1) they are trying to take away all of our power! and (2) when they were trying to chip away at my power i wasn’t scared because I knew they wouldn’t even get the crumbs they were asking for; but now they will get at least a slice if not the whole loaf! That’s when violence can happen. I don’t know that it will, but I don’t dismiss the possibility–whether it be targeted (kidnapping a president) or general (fascism); though it’s hard to imagine one without the other. So, again, we need more than an electoral party, we need an organization of people ready to take it further. And you certainly can’t get that organization without exposing all these problems–who’s going to fight just for a national health care system? No one. But you can get people to fight for: a national health care system, an end to wars, a better environment, quality food, AND an end to poverty, etc.

First, just some criticisms: I don’t think that race and gender prove to be a useful lens for investigating the imperialist ‘motive’. For sure, racism and sexism contribute to the force behind imperial adventures (and are a result of those same imperial aims), but it is not the primary “force” motivating imperialism itself. That, I believe, can be attributed to the first two items mentioned: the (geo)political and the economic.

We should take care to look at how racism and sexism anticipate and become products of imperialism – but if we are to create a movement that is anti-imperialist, I’m not sure how race and gender can serve as useful frameworks for action. I mean, we didn’t invade Iraq because we’re racist and sexist; we invaded Iraq for very strict geopolitical reasons. Those reasons should be elucidated and utilized to create the backbone for a movement – not peripheral (but still important) explanatory theories, such as race and gender. The goal for a movement should be to target the crux of the problem.

The question becomes, then: what do we do with these tools of analysis? How do we lay the groundwork for a peace movement on their basis? I think there are answers to these questions (I’ve got some tentative ones for which I’ll share at a later time), but I think a good starting place would be building a 21st-century version of J.A. Hobson’s classic work on imperialism. Hobson’s work is outdated, for sure, responding to European colonialism in Africa; but the way he looks at the motivating factors behind the rapaciousness of the ‘strong few’ are both a simple and, to this day, radical lesson for us. Who stands to benefit from unrelenting militarism? Are their interests organized? Can these organized interests exert pressure in the ‘arena of politics’? What is the ‘direct economic outcome’ for these organized interests in particular cases of militarism? Targeting those interests responsible for U.S. militarism would be a good start, I think.

That being said, I do think this post touches upon the crux of the matter for rebuilding a (lasting!) peace movement: do we organize around a single focal point (as, for instance, UFPJ did with Iraq) or do we organize around a value/analysis that is flexible to the whims of D.C. (as a cohesive, intellectually solid, and militant anti-imperialist movement would do)? In short, I think the answer you provided is the right one.

But I do think we have to build that kind of movement conscious of the fact that the ‘building’ becomes a lot more difficult. Take UFPJ (I was on the national staff): it is not anti-imperialist. Lots of folks involved in it are; but not all of them; never enough to get consensus at one of the national conferences. So, for some folks, the decision was whether to build a robust mass-movement opposed to the invasion (and after March 2003, the war in Iraq), even if some of the people were not anti-imperialist but anti-Bush, not opposed to U.S. militarism but opposed to the ‘dumb’ war in Iraq; or whether to create an anti-imperialist outfit with limited numbers at first. The point was that “anti-imperialism” scares a lot of potential allies off (it wasn’t until December 2008 that UFPJ was able to oppose the war in Afghanistan).

We have to be mindful of that fact when building a movement on that basis. Especially in times of urgency, as we faced before the war in Iraq and as face right now with close to 200,000 troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.