Yves right here. Medea Benjamin and Nicholas Davies present an essential service by chronicling some key belligerent actions of the Trump and Biden-Harris administrations and why each are positive to proceed and prolong US war-mongering. Nonetheless, anti-war advocates too typically appear to miss alternatives to construct sturdy alliances with different pure opponents of the military-industrial complicated, comparable to environmentalists and inexperienced vitality advocates and proponents of stronger social security nets. It could be an excessive amount of to ask given the urgency of the genocide in Gaza and the potential the Center East conflicts and the struggle in Ukraine to set off a nuclear trade for peace advocates to up their sport as organizers. However that’s the activity earlier than them if they’re to extend their base of help and skill to mobilize it.
Admittedly, a core downside, because the framing of the article makes clear, is the truth that American democracy just isn’t all that democratic. Witness, as an illustration, the perverse means through which views that rating effectively in polls are demonized as populist and increasingly of our elites demand social media censorship. Former US Ambassador Chas Freeman, in a current interview with Nima of Dialogue Works, factors out that our “democracy” is just like that of the much-pilloried “authoritarian” Iran [starting at 19:30]:
And I believe most likely Iranian voters, who in spite of everything do operate in a guided democracy, it’s a democracy, it’s a guided democracy through which sure positions are dominated out of order for the elections, frankly though that’s open and institutionalized in Iran, it’s not that totally different from different democracies. There are opinions in the US, for instance, nearly all of individuals in the US need an finish to arms gross sales to Israel, don’t need a struggle with Iran, don’t need a wider struggle within the Center East. In all probability a majority now are in opposition to persevering with to help Ukraine within the method now we have. And but our political elite guidelines their views as out of order and proceeds as if they didn’t exist. So one of many phenomea that has emerged which is deeply disturbing in all places is elite opinion ignoring widespread opinion, manipulating it, however not taking it into consideration so there’s a hole between the political institution and the society as an entire, and this calls democracy into disrepute and it threatens it. And that is the case in virtually each democracy that I do know today.
By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies, the authors ofWarfare in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Mindless Battle, revealed by OR Books in November 2022. Medea Benjamin is the cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and the creator of a number of books, together with Inside Iran: The Actual Historical past and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Nicolas J. S. Davies is an impartial journalist, a researcher for CODEPINK and the creator of Blood on Our Fingers: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq
On October twenty fourth, a U.S. presidential candidate instructed an interviewer, “Our day one agenda… additionally contains selecting up the telephone and telling Bibi Netanyahu that the struggle is over, as a result of it’s mainly our proxy struggle. We management the armaments, the funding, the diplomatic cowl, the intelligence, and many others., so we will finish this within the blink of an eye fixed with a single telephone name, which is what Ronald Reagan did when Israel had gone into Lebanon and was massacring hundreds of individuals. So we will try this proper now. That’s day one.”
Tragically, the candidate who stated that was not Donald Trump or Kamala Harris, however Inexperienced Get together candidate Jill Stein. Most People have been persuaded that Stein can’t win the election, and plenty of consider that voting for her in swing states will assist elect Trump by siphoning voters from Harris.
There are various different “third-party” candidates for president, and plenty of of them have good coverage proposals for ending the genocidal U.S.-Israeli bloodbath in Gaza. Because the web site for Claudia de la Cruz, the presidential candidate for the Get together of Socialism and Liberation, explains, “Our tax {dollars} must be used to fulfill individuals’s wants — not pay for the bullets, bombs and missiles used within the bloodbath in Gaza.”
Lots of the rules and coverage proposals of “third-party” and impartial candidates are extra according to the views of most People than these of Harris or Trump. That is hardly shocking given the well known corruption of the U.S. political system. Whereas Trump cynically flip-flops to attraction to either side on many questions, and Harris typically avoids committing to coverage specifics in any respect, particularly relating to international coverage, most People perceive that they’re each extra beholden to the billionaires and company pursuits who fund their campaigns than to the well-being of working People or the way forward for the planet.
Michael Moore has revealed a flier titled “This Is America,” which reveals that enormous majorities of People help “liberal” positions on 18 totally different points, from a ceasefire in Gaza to Medicare For All to getting cash out of politics.
Moore implies that this must be reassuring to Democrats and Harris supporters, and it will be if she was working on these positions. However, for probably the most half, she isn’t. However, many third get together and impartial candidates for president are working on these positions, however the anti-democratic U.S. political system ensures that they will’t win, even when most People agree with them.
Warfare and militarism are probably the most lethal and harmful forces in human society, with actual world, on a regular basis, bodily impacts that kill or maim individuals and destroy their properties, communities and full international locations. So it’s deeply disturbing that the political system in the US has been corrupted into bipartisan subservience to a military-industrial complicated (or MICIMATT, to make use of a up to date time period) that wields exactly the “unwarranted affect” that President Eisenhower warned us in opposition to 64 years in the past, and makes use of its affect to tug us into wars that wreak demise and destruction in nation after nation.
Other than temporary wars to recuperate small neocolonial outposts in Grenada, Panama and Kuwait, all now many many years in the past, the U.S. navy has not received a struggle since 1945. It systematically fails by itself phrases, whereas its nakedly deadly and harmful energy solely fills graveyards and leaves international locations in ruins. Removed from being an efficient automobile to undertaking American energy, unleashing the brutality of the U.S. struggle machine has develop into the quickest, surest approach to additional undermine America’s worldwide standing within the eyes of our neighbors.
After so many wars beneath so many administrations of each events, neither Republicans nor Democrats can declare to be a “lesser evil” on questions of struggle and peace, not to mention a “peace get together.”
As with so a lot of America’s issues, from the growth of company and oligarchic energy to the generational decline in dwelling requirements, the mixed impression of many years of Democratic and Republican authorities is extra harmful, extra lasting and extra intractable than the insurance policies of any single administration. On no query is that this extra apparent than on questions of struggle and peace.
For many years, there was a small however rising progressive wing within the Democratic Get together that voted in opposition to document navy spending and opposed U.S. wars, occupations and coups. However when Bernie Sanders ran for president and tens of millions of grassroots Democrats rallied round his progressive agenda, the Get together leaders and their company, plutocratic backers fought again extra aggressively to defeat Bernie and the progressives than they ever fought to win elections in opposition to the Republicans, or to oppose the struggle on Iraq or tax cuts for the rich.
This 12 months, flush with blood cash from the Israel foyer, pro-Israel Democrats defeated two of probably the most progressive, public-spirited Democratic members of Congress, Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman.
On the Republican aspect, in response to the U.S. wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, the libertarian Republican member of Congress Ron Paul led a small group of Republicans to affix progressive Democrats in an off-the-cuff bipartisan peace caucus in Congress. In recent times although, the variety of members of both get together keen to take any type of stand for peace has shrunk dramatically. So whereas there are actually over 100 Congressional caucuses, from the Sweet Caucus to the Pickleball Caucus, there may be nonetheless not one for peace.
After the neocons who offered the ideological gas for Bush’s catastrophic wars reconvened round Hillary Clinton in 2016, President Trump tried to “make America’s navy nice once more” by appointing retired generals to his cupboard and characteristically staking out positions everywhere in the map, from a name to kill the households of “terrorists” to a Nationwide Protection Technique naming Russia and China because the “central problem to U.S. prosperity and safety,” to casting himself as a peacemaker by making an attempt to barter a peace treaty with North Korea.
Trump is now working in opposition to Biden’s struggle in Ukraine and making an attempt to have it each methods on Gaza, with timeless help for Israel and a promise to finish the struggle instantly. Some Palestinian-People are supporting Trump for not being the VP for Genocide Joe, simply as different individuals help Harris for not being Trump.
However most People know little about Trump’s precise struggle coverage as president. The distinctive worth of a frontrunner like Trump to the military-industrial complicated is that he attracts consideration to himself and diverts consideration away from U.S. atrocities abroad.
In 2017, Trump’s first 12 months in workplace, he oversaw the climax of Obama’s struggle in opposition to ISIS in Iraq and Syria, which most likely killed as many civilians as Israel has massacred in Gaza. In that 12 months alone, the U.S. and its allies dropped over 60,000 bombs and missiles on Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan,Yemen, Libya, Pakistan and Somalia. That was the heaviest bombing because the first Gulf Warfare in 1991, and double the destruction of the “Shock & Awe” bombing of Iraq in 2003.
Most chillingly, the Iraqi forces who defeated the final remnants of ISIS in Mosul’s Outdated Metropolis had been ordered to kill all of the survivors, fulfilling Trump’s menace to “take out their households.” “We killed all of them,” an Iraqi soldierinstructed Center East Eye. “Daesh, males, ladies and kids. We killed everybody.” If anybody is relying on Trump to save lots of the individuals of Gaza from Netanyahu and Biden’s genocide, that must be a actuality examine.
In different areas, Trump’s back-pedaling on Obama’s diplomatic achievements with Iran and Cuba have led to new crises for each these international locations on the eve of this election. By transferring the US Embassy to Jerusalem, bribing Arab despots with ‘Abraham’ offers, and inspiring Netanyahu’s Larger Israel ambitions, Trump primed the powder-keg for the genocide in Gaza and the brand new disaster within the Center East beneath Biden.
On the opposite aspect, Harris shares duty for genocide, arguably probably the most severe worldwide crime within the ebook. To make issues worse, she has connived in a grotesque scheme to present cowl for the genocide by pretending to be working for a ceasefire that, as Jill Stein and many others have stated, the U.S. might implement “within the blink of an eye fixed, with a single telephone name” if it actually wished to. As for the long run, Harris has solely dedicated to creating the U.S. navy much more “deadly.”
The motion for a Free Palestine and an finish to the genocide in Gaza has did not win the help of the Republican or Democratic presidential campaigns. However this isn’t a failure on the a part of the Palestinian-People now we have listened to and labored with, who’ve engaged in sensible organizing, steadily raised public consciousness and received over extra People to their trigger. They’re main probably the most profitable anti-war organizing marketing campaign in America because the Iraq Warfare.
The refusal of Trump or Harris to take heed to the calls of People whose households are being massacred in Gaza, and now in Lebanon too, is a failure on the a part of the corrupt, anti-democratic political system of which Trump and Harris are figureheads, not a failure of activism or organizing.
Whomever every of us votes for within the presidential election, the marketing campaign to finish the genocide in Gaza will proceed, and we should develop stronger and smarter and extra inclusive till politicians can’t ignore us, irrespective of how a lot cash the Israel foyer and different corrupt pursuits throw at them, or at their political opponents.
Whomever we vote for, the elephant within the room will nonetheless be US militarism and the violence and chaos it inflicts on the world. Whether or not Trump or Harris is president, the outcome shall be extra of the identical, except we do one thing to vary it. As legendary Chinese language thinker Lao Tzu famously stated, “If you don’t change path, you could find yourself the place you might be heading.”
No American must be condemned for voting for a candidate of their alternative, nevertheless efficiently the Democrats and Republicans have marginalized the very idea of multi-party democracy that the U.S. claims to help in different international locations. Whoever wins this election, we should discover a approach to put peace again on this nation’s nationwide agenda, and to make our collective voices heard in methods that can’t be drowned out by oligarchs with large baggage of money.
