Markin Comment:
Let me put the question posed by the title of this entry in context. In early 2006, during the height of the furor over the Cheney/ Bush Administration’s handling of the Iraq War, the circle of anti-war militants that I work with proposed a strategic plan aimed at creating support groups, the soldiers and sailors solidarity committees mentioned in the headline, for the growing discontent inside the military. Politically it was seen by us as a shortcut way to do effective anti-war work in the absence of any real movement by the organized labor to take actions to put a end to the war, and also as a way to galvanize support from those who were repelled by the flagging mainstream anti-war movement that seemed to be bogged down with a strategy of ever more mass demonstrations and with greedy eyes on the then up-coming 2006 mid-term Congressional elections.
There has always been a distinction made in the revolutionary movement, and if it has not made then it should be, and in any case I will make it here, between the tasks that small ad hoc militant leftist groups can propose and carry out in their work and those of a mass labor party or organization. Thus, today, for instance, communists and other radicals are for the most part about the business of carrying out propaganda to small groups of interested militants in order to create a cadre ready to carry out the tasks necessary when our time comes. In 2006 our circle went beyond that. We carried out the propaganda for soldiers and sailors solidarity committees in the local and regional anti-war milieus but we also saw something of a unique opportunity to link up the civilian antiwar movement with what appeared to us to be some serious discontent in the military, and we agitated around the committee slogan.
What we saw was, as with a the general population, a war-weariness on the part of a significant section of the soldiery, a questioning of the mission in the wake of the very serious pre-2007 troop ‘surge’ in the internal situation in Iraq, a disquiet about the mounting personal hardships, especially by those National Guard units that were being held over, and a physical weariness caused by repeated deployments. The tinder was there, if only for a short time. Moreover, the point that pushed us forward was contact with elements in the military that were looking for civilian support. Thus, for most of 2006 we not only carried out propaganda for soldiers and sailors solidarity committees but we actively agitated and built them. Furthermore, our agitation included encouraging larger groups to form committees, and to make contact with military personal in their area and, most importantly, in Iraq. Thus within the limits of our resources and the time frame we were working in we carried out what overall was an exemplary anti-war campaign.
As I have tried to telegraph above this ability to agitate effectively only lasted until the Bush troop surge of 2007. Our anti-war military work, strangely enough, was one of the casualties of that surge. Our contacts dried up, other things got resolved inside the military and that opening closed down. Although we did low level work around the issue the agitational campaign ended and the slogan of the soldiers and sailors committees went back to its original use as a propaganda tool. I wrote a blog entry in this space about that shift from agitation to propaganda, and timeliness in revolutionary politics in general. (Sell linked article above.)
All this background, hopefully, will help explain not only the title of this entry but why recently my circle has again started to put the question of organizing soldiers and sailors solidarity committees on the front burner for propaganda purposes. This is no mere abstract question. One of the younger, and newer, members of the circle questioned why we were reviving the slogan. Good question. We project that this Afghan war, and its future escalations, will be a big and permanent albatross around the neck of Barack Obama during the life of his presidency, especially on his left from the people that we want to talk to today. However that situation does not appear as such today, although there are certainly murmurs of somewhat inarticulate discontent. Moreover, there is nothing, at least nothing that we can grab a hold onto, happening with the soldiers and sailors (they sailors, in any case, will play a diminished role in land-locked Afghanistan) on duty now. So why the emergence of the slogan again, even if only for propaganda purposes. Well, that goes to one of the lessons that we learned from the 2006 experience.
I have recently, and have on many earlier occasions in this space, noted both my own background in anti-war military work and that such work is hard, tough work. One of the biggest initial hurdles to making those first contacts AND winning the trust of the soldiery. Our circle has come to a consensus, and rightly so I think, that we were actually too late in starting our work, that mid-2005 would have placed us in better position to make a bigger splash. So while this slogan in a propaganda point today, we are making it today to get those connections going. For others, to whom this entry is really directed, start thinking along those lines. Not one penny, not one person for Obama’s wars! For soldiers and sailors anti-war solidarity committees! Immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all U.S./Allied troops and mercenaries from Iraq and Afghanistan!
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