From Danny Schechter, the News Dissector
Now I Know Why MoveOn Has No Use for WMD
It seems that MoveOn which played to anti-war sentiment to build its membership base has now decided to drop the issue on the belief it is not winnable. They cite some vague polls of their members as the reason.
Pragmatism strikes again to rationalize silence.
What’s next? An alliance with the DLC? I guess to win brownie points or access on the Hill and in the inner circule they feel they have to move like Hillary Clinton and the others into a centrist CONsensus. You could see this coming when one time anti-war hero John Kerry felt he had to out-Bush Bush on the war to win. It didn’t work, did it?
Whats especially troubling is that MoveON is dropping the war as an issue after a majority of the people (56% in a December poll) now say they now think Iraq was a bad idea. As anti-war sentiment grows and as the US military loses the initiative, MoveOn is pursuijng its own “ëxit stratgy.”
Anthony Lappe of Guerilla News was recently invited to spend three days at a swanky Maryland resort to “the future of the progressive movement” with an impressive group of lefty movers and shakers.
Mainstream Democrat-friendly ‘movers and shakers.’ Genuine progressives and radicals like ANSWER and NION. I’m guessing, were not invited. God forbid someone might mention the word “imperialism.’ It might offend the tender sensibilities of deep-pockets donors.
Over the course of the conference, the only time I heard the word “Iraq†was when I noted, that in case they hadn’t noticed, we are at war and that maybe we should discuss what we were going to do about it. I was met with blank stares.
Apart from a few recent grassroots efforts, the mainstream left has largely ignored the growing insurgency in Iraq. As GNN contributor Norman Solomon writes, nowhere is the left’s abandonment of the antiwar movement more clear than in MoveOn’s agenda. One MoveOner explained to me that weekend in Maryland, social security is their number one issue for 2005 because “it’s an issue we can win.” Iraq, he explained, “is not a winner”.
None of this should be a surprise. MoveOn is, and always has been, a PAC, a political fund-raising entity for mainstream Democrats. They are not antiwar and they are not progessive. They exist to raise money for corporate Democrats.
But, dear me, I’m so terribly sorry they don’t think Iraq is a “winner”, doubtless those in Baghdad whose homes are being blown up by assault helicopters will understand.