[Baghdad Journal] A Heart-warming Farewell (March 2)

[Wade Hudson]

A Heart-warming Farewell (March 2)

by Wade Hudson

Forty people, mostly old friends and colleagues from various chapters of
my life, gather at the Quaker Meeting House in San Francisco on Sunday,
March 2 to send me off to Iraq. Following introductions, many of which
prove to be touching expressions of affection and respect, Elizabeth
Boardman reports on her recent trip to Iraq with the Iraq Peace Team. Then
I make the following remarks.

“I want to talk about what I’ll be doing and say some things about why I’m
going and make some comments about the politics of the situation and
future options for action. I’ll start with some practical things. I’ll be
leaving San Francisco on March 5 for Chicago, and leaving for Amman on
March 6. We’ll get to Amman on March 7, and hopefully leave the next day
for Baghdad. I’m hoping, when I’m there, to play with children in an
orphanage on a daily basis. That’s one thing that I’m going to look into
to.

And I’ll participate in any IPT demonstrations that are held there. They
have a vigil across the street from the U.N. inspectors’ headquarters.
They had one action that got quite a bit of press at the shelter where 400
people were incinerated during the last war. And they’ve had others at
bridges where they drape banners saying, “Bombing this will be a war
crime.” That got some press coverage.

Then I’ll be observing and learning as much as I can and reporting back by
email and in person when I come back. I may help with the office there and
I’m trying to help them get set up with a consolidated e-list that can
send out IPT dispatches frequently with summaries of what other people are
sending out to their lists or excerpts from those messages. And then I’ll
be doing my own writing. I’ll be taking a laptop, a digital camera, and an
audio recorder.

I have a return ticket from Chicago to San Francisco in six weeks, and an
open return from Amman to Chicago that will enable me to come back to
Chicago at any time if I need to leave for any reason, such as medical
problems. But if there is a war and I get stuck, I could be there for
months. We could be stuck for weeks without being able to send out any
communication.

We’ll be taking our own money and covering own expenses. So we’ll be
independent of the Iraqi government, unlike another group, the Human
Shields. We clearly will not be there in support of Saddam Hussein. The
Iraq Peace Team has made that very clear and has been very critical of
Hussein in their writings and what they’ve circulated.

In terms of why I’m going, I’ve known about the work of the peacemaker
community for some time, primarily through the work of David Hartsough.
Several months ago, when the most recent Palestinian uprising began, I
thought about going to Palestine with the International Solidarity
Movement, but it was not practical at that time. I just think that
building a large peace force that could go into situations to help defuse
and/or mediate or otherwise discourage violence is a great possibility. On
a small scale, in places like villages in Columbia, there have been
successes already. I just want to help build that movement and be an
example. As one of the Berrigan brothers said, “The peace movement will
only achieve success when it shows the same courage for peace as soldiers
do for war.” He overstates the case a bit. I don’t think my situation will
be the same as that of a soldier. I don’t pretend to be showing that kind
of courage. But I still think that’s a point.

Also, I feel outraged at what they are doing with my tax money, so I want
to be there and do as much as I can to help people who suffer because of
my money and my government.

Also, my personal situation is that I’m relatively free of commitments. I
had taken a sabbatical from activism, so I’m not entangled in stuff right
now. I don’t have children and so forth. I’m relatively free. And I have a
job waiting for me when I get back. So if not me, who?

And I want to learn better how to confront my fear of death by facing it.
I think the fear of death is crippling, in general, and reinforces the
lack of confidence that is engendered into us by our competitive culture.
We just feel more anxious and less secure in general. On the mirror in my
bathroom, I have a sign that says, “Recognize reality.” Without death,
there would be no life. It’s a cliché, but I want to face that fear. I
don’t think I will overcome it totally. But I think I can move in that
direction.

I’d also like to talk a little bit about my political analysis of the
situation because I think it influences options for actions. Personally, I
think that the overwhelming reason for this rush to war is domestic
politics. It’s a way to get Republicans elected. It’s a way to boost
Bush’s approval ratings. Remember that it’s now pretty well proved and
acknowledged that the Democrats stayed in Vietnam for years even though
they believed that it was impossible to win because they were afraid of
being called soft on communism in the next election. Elections are every
two years in this country. And these people who get elected to public
office have a lust for power. They want to get re-elected and they want to
get their party re-elected.

A lot of people have talked about these factors. So that’s nothing new.
But what they haven’t talked about is the roots of the Republican
strategy. Some people have talked about how Bush has been motivated by
“ABC” – anything but Clinton. Their policies have been heavily shaped by
wanting to distinguish themselves from Clinton. Well, what was Clinton’s
approach?

Triangulation! His advisor, Dick Morris came up with that phrase.
Triangulation consists of staking a position in between traditional
Democratic and Republican positions, to take away Republican advantages.
So Clinton bombed more countries than any President in the history of the
United States. He wanted to take away foreign policy as a Republican issue
with his militaristic foreign policy and declaring that we needed regime
change in Iraq. That policy goes back to the Clinton Administration. So
what happens when the New Democrats do that? The Republicans move farther
to the right to distinguish themselves by being even more militaristic.
And then the triangulating New Democrats have to follow them toward the
right. That’s one reason I was against Clinton’s War Against Yugoslavia. I
thought it was a very bad precedent that would just snowball and it’s
happening. And the Democratic Party leadership presently is silent. If you
haven’t read Robert Byrd’s speech to the Senate, I highly recommend it.
It’s on the Common Dreams website. He’s furious about the silence of the
Democratic Party leadership.

On the Washington Post website, there’s an article about the Democratic
National Committee meeting a week or ten days ago. Normally, that’s a
cattle call, where the candidates for President make their speech and
their supporters applaud and cheer. Gephardt spoke, and there was complete
silence. The second speaker spoke, and there was complete silence. Then
Howard Dean from Vermont spoke and he had a litany of questions. Where is
the Democratic Party when such and such is happening? Where is the
Democratic Party leadership on health care issues and so forth? And then
he said, “I’m here to represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic
Party” and there was a standing ovation. He elicited a tremendous response
and these were the honchos. But still Daschle and Pelosi are silent. Do a
search on Google News for “Pelosi” and “Iraq” and you see nothing. I think
it’s outrageous.

In terms of what can be done from here, I would talk about two different
options. One is within the system and the other is outside the system. In
terms of within the system, I think that we need to take over the
Democratic Party with a Peace and Justice caucus and run candidates in
selected primaries for the House. If you started with 10 people and each
of them recruit 4 people, that’s 40 and you have a total of 50. If those
40 new people recruit 4 each, that’s 160 more, for a total of 210. That
would be a large enough group to adopt a platform for candidates for
Congress. They could submit that platform to people like Nancy Pelosi and
if those candidates didn’t endorse it, the caucus could run someone else.
Then they could proceed to get pledges from people, especially friends and
co-workers, to vote for their candidate in the primary. If the 160 new
recruits got an average of 4 more recruits, you’d end with 850. If the 640
new people recruited 2560 more people, it’s 3,410. And you do it one more
time, and you end up with about 14,000. So after the convention that
adopts the platform, we only need three rounds of recruitment to get
14,000 votes. And I think that those 14,000 votes plus other people that
would vote for your candidate because those 14,000 people were circulating
literature door to door and person to person, I think you’d have 40,000
votes, which is roughly what is needed to elect Democrats in primaries,
and you’d put the fear of God into elected officials who don’t have any
courage. Anyway, that’s one idea I want to throw out before I leave.

The other is in terms of direct action. The group Direct Action to Stop
War, which the Chronicle featured on the front page recently, is planning
a Critical Mass-type bicycle activist disruption of the financial district
the day after the war starts. I suggested to them that they organize an
Auto Brigade of old folks like me who could drive around in cars and run
out of gas and block the streets and do whatever they could to help. Pull
up behind someone on a bicycle and protect them and let them know that
you’re a supporter so that some of the bicyclists could go to another
street and block that street. Just drive very, very slowly. Be creative.
Groups of five could drive in waves across the bridge and circle around
and do it again to block traffic. Transportation is an Achilles Heel of
the economy, just as the House of Representatives is an Achilles Heel of
the political system. It’s a vulnerable point. If you could tie up traffic
long enough, it would contribute to a General Strike, which lots of people
are talking about doing. I’m proud that Direct Action to Stop War added
this proposal for an Auto Brigade to their website.

If the worst-case scenario holds true and Bush pulls the trigger, the
global democracy movement is going to be a hundred times stronger. Like I
said on KPFA earlier today, I think Bush has done more to promote
democracy than anyone in history. It’s just too bad that he doesn’t
recognize democracy when he sees it.

I just hope that we can build on the momentum that is happening with the
global democracy movement and after we stop the war, if it starts,
continue to build on that and be more creative and more positive and take
steps to proactively expand democracy and justice rather than just
reacting to the horrible things that they come up with. Be positive, as my
final word. And try not to get sucked into the vortex of negativism that
the system promotes. I think that it is not accident that the media is so
sensationalistic, because fear weakens people and divides people and makes
people emotional and irrational and they jump down each other’s throats
and unity is more difficult to build.

For every loss there is a gain, and if there is a war, I think we will
gain from it. But I no longer believe that for every gain there is a loss.
We can make positive achievements and will continue to do so. So I hope
that everybody does all that they can to do it.”