Joshua Lawrence Breslin comment:
Several months ago Peter Paul Markin, my old merry prankster pal from the 1960s who has been through many a political struggle with me, compared notes about the condition of the struggle against Barack Obama’s Afghan War policy and the “beneath the radar” opposition to that policy. This past weekend (October 7-8-9, 2012) we attended a couple of events in Boston that have only reconfirmed the initial appraisal (see repost below).
The first event was the now monotonously familiar 11th annual anti-war commemoration of the start of the war in Afghanistan. The most noteworthy aspect of that event was that, with the demise of the Occupy movement that energized the larger crowds seen last year, we are back to the hard core political activists. (Unfortunately hubris, and about ten other factor contributed t to that result but I would only add here it did not have to play out that way).
Second was our participation in the Honk! Parade that ran from Somerville to Cambridge, two liberal-oriented cities just outside of Boston. For those not familiar with a Honk! Parade (as I was not before this year) this is an event where every known band, faux band, pick- up band, finger clapper or stick beater around puts on some kind of costume (the more outlandish the better) and makes music for the people along the route. Great color, great costumes, great fun, dare I say it, great people’s fun in the older medieval sense. I will give Peter Paul the last word though, since he marched with the Veterans for Peace contingent. The same great respect for VFPs as vets was exhibited (as elsewhere, see below) but also the response to the slogans of no more war, no more war especially as Iran looms on the horizon. The people are weary, very war-weary. Let’s stop the madness.
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Repost from the American Left History blog, June 2012:
Recently my old back in the 1960s days friend, Peter Paul Markin, himself a war veteran, were comparing notes about the virtual “under the radar” place that American imperial war policies (there is no other name for it with over 1000 bases in the world and over 700 billion plus dollars eaten up by the war budget each year) has taken in this year’s presidential campaign. And, additionally, the almost total lack of organized public outcry about those policies, most notably the lingering death sore of Afghanistan. That despite the fact that some far-sighted, hell, even some jaded bourgeois commentators have placed the odds of civil war in that benighted country (I will not even dignify such a war lord and mercenaries run place as a state) after the alleged American troop draw down scheduled now for 2014 at two to one in favor of civil war. Even by the American government’s own self-serving estimates the forecast is almost as grim.
I ask; what gives? Where are the mass rallies against the beast? The reason for Peter Paul and me comparing notes on this subject was simple enough. Between the two of us we have attended over the past several months in various capacities a whole series of parades and marches only one of which I will mention more on later that was specifically a peace parade. I will describe our purpose in using those settings as a way to bring the anti-war message home below. However right now I can state that we have come to agree, without a doubt, there is a vast war-weariness that if not organized in a public way runs pretty deep just under the surface among the plebeian masses of this country.
For those who do not know, Peter Paul, over the past decade going back before the beginning of the Iraq War in 2003 has attempted to move might and main along with his fellow Veterans For Peace (VFP)to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and lately to urge no war with Iran) to no avail. I, although not a veteran, have attempted in various journalistic endeavors and on the streets to make those same basic points to no avail as well. Those “no avails” though have never stopped us from continuing to push the rock up the mountain when the cause is righteous. And the struggle against these particular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is righteous and has brought us closer together of late. That has not always been the case, as Peter Paul tends to take a harder anti-capitalist look at the wars as systematic of the need to bring down the whole damn American house of cards and I more from a more anti-imperialist perspective of just trying to hold the American military monster in check.
We united on one idea earlier this year and that was the need to continue to get the anti-war message out to the general public. By any means necessary. That is where the parades idea came in play, although we claim no originally for the idea, none at all. The parades notion actually kind of hit us in the face as a way to bring any kind of peace message to the folks whom we do not normally run into in our rarified big city radical circles. Of course the original focus started out last year in 2011 with Peter Paul’s chapter of Veterans for Peace in Boston, the aptly named Smedley Butler Brigade (“war is a racket”), attempts to march in the “official” South Boston Allied War Council’s Saint Patrick’s Day Parade. Without going into all the particulars of the denial of permission for VFP to march (involving reams of material from a 1995 U.S. Supreme Court decision permitting such exclusions for “private” parades) that organization was shut out of the official parade. Needless to say these resourceful vets (mainly long-in-the-tooth Vietnam era vets who cut their teeth on such symbolic actions) just created their own peace parade to follow the official parade to let those who came to South Boston know there was another voice to be heard from on the questions of war and peace.
That parade in 2011 is where a first tentative recognition of war-weariness came in. Now for those not familiar with South Boston (“Southie”) this is, or was, according to Peter Paul, the last bastion of Irish-centered working class pro-war (or at least don’t question war policy) sentiment left in the world ( a little hyperbole from him, but I am used to it). His family roots stem from that community and I will defer to his analysis (although I would argue that my own hometown, Olde Saco up in Maine filled with grateful immigrant French-Canadians and old time Down East Yankees, would give his Irish a run for his money on unquestioning patriotic sentiment). Expecting the worst all were surprised by the positive reception in Southie. This spring when we marched (yes, I marched with Peter Paul and his VFP brethren like in olden VVAW times) the response by those same plebeian masses was even more cordial to say the least.
Not in the “down with the war, slay the dragon, down with the war budget, take care of things at home” sense that we have “preached” to high heaven about in this space, and others but in the tap of the fingers to the head salute, the ubiquitous throwing up of peace signs, the response when we called for troops out, and enough is enough, as we passed by. Salutes of the VFP flag by hoary old war veterans decked out in their military attire just put icing on the cake.
And that is how the Breslin-Markin antiwar “spring offensive” (with, ah, a little help from VFP and others obviously) took off. A Dorchester Day Parade just south of Southie in one of the more ethnically diverse Irish/Vietnamese/Latino/ Brazilian you name it neighborhoods of Boston (although neighborhoods like Southie that have provided more than their fair share of troops to America’s imperial adventures) produced an even more cordial response. Here some even took up our chants from the sidewalks, shook hands, and offered vocal support as we passed by. Ditto at several Memorial Day services in the area where there was much gnashing of teeth by those who have lost loved ones in the last decade’s wars (and over the post-service stresses that are only now coming to light in huge streams). More recently parades in affluence Rockport and working- class Portsmouth, New Hampshire have only confirmed the cordiality, openness to anti-war messages, and the war weariness. That last one, Portsmouth, by the way, held in a town that depends (read: would not survive) substantially for its local economy on naval appropriations for the huge shipyard there.
So the disconnect between American governmental war policy and the genuine war-weariness of the masses is real enough. But real enough as well, despite the openly expressed sentiments, is any sense of one being able to do anything about it other than patiently waiting for withdrawal due dates. And that is where my simple suggestion comes in. I, as well as other honest and knowledgeable anti-warriors, have recognized that we did not have any serious effect on Bush-Obama war doctrine in Iraq and have had precious little thus far in Afghanistan.
There is one place, and one thing that we can do to turn that around right now. Call on President Obama, who has the built-in executive constitutional power to do so, to pardon Private Bradley Manning now being held in pre-trail detention in Fort Leavenworth Kansas pending charges that could amount to a life sentence for the young soldier. For the forgetful Private Manning allegedly passed sensitive information about U.S. atrocities against civilians and other cover-ups in Iraq and Afghanistan to Wikileaks who then passed it on to a candid world. Thus Private Manning is the “poster person” for opposition to all that has failed, all that is wrong, all that was (and is )atrocious, and all that was (and is) criminal in Bush-Obama war policy. So raise the cry with us-Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops From Afghanistan! President Obama Pardon Private Manning!
