Bombs can’t bring liberation

THANK YOU for republishing Jeremy Scahill's "The not-so-antiwar Democrats," a vital analysis of the June 16 passage of the $106 billion war funding supplemental for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Scahill rightly calls out the shameful hypocrisy of Democrats who, to win the votes of the antiwar majority, claimed to be antiwar when their votes didn't matter, but voted for empire when they could have had some impact. And he exposes Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi's bullying of their antiwar colleagues and double-speak regarding the release of photographic evidence of torture under Bush II.

His article is an indispensable tool for antiwar activists.

Democrats in Congress and the White House weren't the only ones who showed themselves, when the cards are down, to side with the occupiers against the people of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Also exposed were various groups on the left with ties to the Democratic Party--those who "acted as if empire began," and I would add ended, "with George W. Bush," as Anthony Arnove put it in a recent interview with SocialistWorker.org.

In a June 22 article, "MoveOn Resumes Antiwar Stance" in the Nation, Tom Hayden points out that "antiwar sentiment at the grassroots is smothered by the unwillingness of several organizations to openly oppose the war escalation," calling out MoveOn, True Majority, and others for their silence on the supplemental war funding.

Although Hayden points out that MoveOn has resumed its "antiwar stance" by calling for a timetable of withdrawal from Afghanistan, a visit to MoveOn's Web site on June 26--a group that gained millions of supporters because of its opposition to the Iraq War during the Bush years (and turned that support into millions of dollars in contributions to Democrats' campaigns)--yields no mention on the main page of the word "Afghanistan" and only one reference (in a tiny font near the bottom) to ending the war in Iraq.

IN HIS famous speech declaring his opposition to the war in Vietnam, Martin Luther King, Jr. said "there comes a time when silence is betrayal." By refusing to stand against the supplemental war funding bill, MoveOn, True Majority and others have betrayed not only the people of Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, but also their own supporters who want the U.S. out of the Middle East and Central Asia.

The Feminist Majority, a major feminist non-profit, even went so far as to support the war funding supplemental bill because it included an amendment, later dropped, for aid for women in Afghanistan.

The Feminist Majority is right to be outraged by the horrible atrocities, such as rape and the throwing of acid in the faces of school girls, being committed against Afghan women.

However, their press releases distort reality by largely leaving the U.S. and NATO off the hook for supporting warlords whose policies towards women are just as deplorable as the Taliban, not to mention the inherent difficulties involved in "liberating" the Afghan women who are among the hundreds of civilians killed in U.S. airstrikes in the past few months, and those who will be killed by bombs purchased with the newly-approved funding.

The occupation of Afghanistan has always been about U.S. control of Central Asian energy resources. Women's liberation from the Taliban, a justification for the war in Afghanistan held up by anti-abortion/anti-woman crusader George W. Bush, was simply an excuse that deserves to be given as much weight as the claim, coming from a man who took office in 2000 in a stolen election, to seek to spread "democracy" in Iraq.

Furthermore, the U.S., a country with a $10 billion pornography industry and access to abortion in fewer than 15 percent of its counties is in no position to lead others on the path to women's liberation.

Shazia (an alias), a member of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), who struggles for women's rights from her home in Kabul, had this to say to Green Left Weekly:

Those organizations and people who are antiwar, that support the democratic groups, they must support...democratic groups and organizations like RAWA because they will be the future of Afghanistan and they will bring change for the Afghan people.

[Antiwar] demonstrations and such gatherings will have a big impact on the situation in Afghanistan...We think the first step is that [foreign troops] should leave Afghanistan because we do not need war.

They should leave Afghanistan because we have three enemies now, not only two or one.

We, ourselves will bring peace and security for our people because no other country can grant us...peace, democracy and security.

Florence Reece's song "Which Side Are You On?," written in the 1930s in the midst of class struggle in "Bloody" Harlan County, Kentucky, comes to mind:

They say in Harlan County
There are no neutrals there.
You'll either be a union man
Or a thug for J. H. Blair.
Which side are you on?

We must answer RAWA's call by rebuilding the antiwar movement. This will be impossible unless we have a clear and principled answer to Florence Reece's question.

We must never compromise: Not another nickel, not another dime--no more money for the U.S. and NATO's crimes!
Gary Lapon, Northampton, Mass.