Tag Archives ⇒ republican party

Cindy Sheehan “resigns”: It’s up to us now

May 29, 2007
· Martin Kelley

Poor Cindy Shee­han, the famous anti-war mom who camped out­side Bush’s Craw­ford Texas home fol­low­ing the death of her son in Iraq. News comes today that she’s all but “resigned from the protest movement”:http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070529/ap_on_re_us/cindy_sheehan. She post­ed the fol­low­ing “on her Dai­ly Kos blog”:http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/28/12530/1525
bq. The first con­clu­sion is that I was the dar­ling of the so-called left as long as I lim­it­ed my protests to George Bush and the Repub­li­can Par­ty. Of course, I was slan­dered and libeled by the right as a “tool” of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty… How­ev­er, when I start­ed to hold the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty to the same stan­dards that I held the Repub­li­can Par­ty, sup­port for my cause start­ed to erode and the “left” start­ed label­ing me with the same slurs that the right used. I guess no one paid atten­tion to me when I said that the issue of peace and peo­ple dying for no rea­son is not a mat­ter of “right or left”, but “right and wrong.”
The sad truth is that she was used. Much of the pow­er and mon­ey in the anti-war move­ment comes from Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty con­nec­tions. Her trag­ic sto­ry, soc­cer mom looks and artic­u­late ide­al­ism made her a nat­ur­al poster girl for an anti-Bush move­ment that has nev­er real­ly been as anti-war as it’s claimed.
Con­gres­sion­al Democ­rats had all the infor­ma­tion they need­ed in 2002 to expose Pres­i­dent Bush’s out­landish claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruc­tion. But they “autho­rized his war of aggres­sion anyway”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Resolution. More recent­ly, Amer­i­cans gave them a land­slide vote of con­fi­dence in last Novem­ber’s elec­tions but still they step back from insist­ing on an Iraq pull-out. The Non​vi​o​lence​.org archives are full of denun­ci­a­tions of Pres­i­dent Clin­ton’s repeat­ed mis­sile attacks on places like the Sudan and Afghanistan; before rein­vent­ing him­self as a earth-toned eco can­di­date, Al Gore posi­tioned him­self as the pro-war hawk of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Party.
Anti-war activists need to build alliances and real change will need to involve insid­ers of both major Amer­i­can polit­i­cal par­ties. But as long as the move­ment is fueled with polit­i­cal mon­ey it will be behold­en to those inter­ests and will ulti­mate­ly defer to back-room Cap­i­tal Hill deal-making.
I feel for Cindy. She’s been on a pub­lic­i­ty roller coast­er these past few years. I hope she finds the rest she needs to re-ground her­self. Defeat­ing war is the work of a life­time and it’s the work of a move­ment. Shee­han’s wit­ness has touched peo­ple she’ll nev­er meet. It’s made a dif­fer­ence. She’s a woman of remark­able courage who’s point­ing out the pup­pet strings she’s cut­ting as she steps off the stage. Hats off to you Cindy.

Nonviolence.org’s fundrais­ing cam­paign ends in a few hours. In four months we’ve raised $150 which does­n’t even cov­er that peri­od’s serv­er costs. This project cel­e­brates its twelfth year this fall and accu­rate­ly “exposed the weapons of mass destruc­tion hoaxes”:http://www.nonviolence.org/weapons_of_mass_destruction/ in real time as they were being thrust on a gullible Con­gress. Cindy signed off:
bq. Good-bye Amer­i­ca …you are not the coun­try that I love and I final­ly real­ized no mat­ter how much I sac­ri­fice, I can’t make you be that coun­try unless you want it. It’s up to you now.
Some­times I real­ly have to unite with that sentiment.

Images of Patriotism and the Swift Boat Controversy

August 23, 2004
· Martin Kelley

The U.S. elec­tion cam­paign has many ironies, none per­haps as strange as the fights over the can­di­dates’ war records. The cur­rent Pres­i­dent George W. Bush got out of active duty in Viet­nam by using the influ­ence of his polit­i­cal­ly pow­er­ful fam­i­ly. While sol­diers killed and died on the Mekong Delta, he goofed off on an Alaba­ma air­field. Most of the cen­tral fig­ures of his Admin­is­tra­tion, includ­ing Vice Pres­i­dent Dick Cheney also avoid­ed fight­ing in Vietnam.
Not that I can blame them exact­ly. If you don’t believe in fight­ing, then why not use any influ­ence and loop­hole you can? It’s more coura­geous to stand up pub­licly and stand in sol­i­dar­i­ty with those con­sci­en­tious objec­tors who don’t share your polit­i­cal con­nec­tions. But if you’re both anti­war and a cow­ard, hey, loop­holes are great. Bush was one less Amer­i­can teenag­er shoot­ing up Viet­nam vil­lages and for that we com­mend him.
Ah, but of course George W. Bush does­n’t claim to be either anti­war or a cow­ard. Two and a half decades lat­er, he snook­ered Amer­i­can into a war on false pre­tences. Nowa­days he uses every photo-op he can to look strong and patri­ot­ic. Like most scions of aris­to­crat­ic dynas­ties through­out his­to­ry, he dis­plays the worst kind of poli­cial cow­ardice: he is a leader who believes only in send­ing oth­er peo­ple’s kids to war.
Con­trast this with his Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty rival John Ker­ry. He was also the son of a politically-connected fam­i­ly. He could have pulled some strings and end­ed up in Alaba­ma. But he chose to fight in Viet­nam. He was wound­ed in bat­tle, received met­als and came back a cer­ti­fied war hero. Have fought he saw both the eter­nal hor­rors of war and the par­tic­u­lar hor­rors of the Viet­nam War. It was only after he came back that he used his polit­i­cal con­nec­tions. He used them to punc­ture the myths of the Viet­nam War and in so doing became a promi­nent anti­war activist.
Not that his anti­war activ­i­ties make him a paci­fist, then or now. As Pres­i­dent I’m sure he’d turn to mil­i­tary solu­tions that we here at Non​vi​o​lence​.org would con­demn. But we be assured that when he orders a war, he’d be think­ing of the kids that Amer­i­ca would be send­ing out to die and he’d be think­ing of the for­eign vic­tims whose lives would inevitably be tak­en in conflict.
Despite the stark con­trast of these Pres­i­den­tial biogra­phies, the pecu­liar log­ic of Amer­i­can pol­i­tics is paint­ing the mil­i­tary dodger as a hero and the cer­ti­fied war hero as a cow­ard. The lat­ter cam­paign is being led by a shad­owy group called the Swift Boat Vet­er­ans for Truth. Today’s Guardian has an excel­lent arti­cle on the “Texas Repub­li­cans fund­ing the Swift Boat controversy”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/story/0,13918,1288272,00.html. The New York Times also delves the “out­right fab­ri­ca­tions of the Swift Boat TV ads”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/20/politics/campaign/20swift.html?ex=1094018686&ei=1&en=691b4b0e81b8387f. A lot of Bush’s bud­dies and long-time Repub­li­can Par­ty appa­ratchiks are behind this and its lies are trans­par­ent and easy to uncov­er. It’s a good primer on dirty pol­i­tics 2004 style.
One of the big ques­tions about this elec­tion is whether the Amer­i­can vot­ers will believe more in image or sub­stance. It goes beyond pol­i­tics, real­ly, to cul­ture and to a con­sumerism that promis­es that with the right clothes and affect­ed atti­tude, you can sim­ply buy your­self a new iden­ti­ty. Pres­i­dent Bush put on a flight jack­et and land­ed a jet on an air­craft car­ri­er a mile off the Cal­i­for­nia beach. He was the very pic­ture of a war hero and strong patri­ot. Is a pho­to all it takes anymore?

Religious Peace Left: Puny, Aged & Marginalized?

January 16, 2004
· Martin Kelley

Jour­nal­ist Mark I. Pin­sky talks about the “state of the reli­gious left”:www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/7644649.htm :
bq. Left-wing reli­gious efforts at polit­i­cal mobi­liza­tion — where they exist — seem puny, aged and mar­gin­al­ized. After decades of rid­ing pop­u­lar social move­ments such as civ­il rights, the left splin­tered and now seems unable to regroup. Con­verse­ly, the GOP has co-opted the sup­port of reli­gious vot­ers by focus­ing their atten­tion on cul­tur­al and lifestyle issues — such as gay marriage.
Arti­cle found from a link on “The Right Christians”:http://www.therightchristians.org/ site, which has more com­men­tary on the sub­ject and a pro­pos­al to mim­ic the Dean Cam­paign inter­net orga­niz­ing to rebuild a pro­gres­sive Chris­t­ian left.

Post-Liberals & Post-Evangelicals?

October 15, 2003
· Martin Kelley

Obser­va­tions on the first Philadel­phia Indie Allies Meet­up. “Just about each of us at the table were com­ing from dif­fer­ent the­o­log­i­cal start­ing points, but it’s safe to say we are all ‘post’ some­thing or oth­er. There was a shared sense that the stock answers our church­es have been pro­vid­ing aren’t work­ing for us. We are all try­ing to find new ways to relate to our faith, to Christ and to one anoth­er in our church communities.”

The infor­mal net­work of younger Evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians cen­tered around web­sites like theooze​.com and Jor​dan​Coop​er​.sk​.ca has start­ed spon­sor­ing a month­ly Indie Allies Meet­up of “Inde­pen­dent Chris­t­ian Thinkers.” Unlike pre­vi­ous months, there were enough peo­ple signed up for the Octo­ber meet­ing in the Philadel­phia area to hold a “meet­up,” so two days ago Julie & I found our­selves in a Cen­ter City piz­za shop with five oth­er “Indie Allies.”

Accord­ing to Robert E. Web­ber’s The Younger Evan­gel­i­cals, I fall pret­ty square­ly into the “Post Lib­er­al” cat­e­go­ry, a la Stan­ley Hauer­was. While it’s always dan­ger­ous label­ing oth­ers, I think at least some of the oth­er par­tic­i­pants would be com­fort­able enough with the “Post Evan­gel­i­cal” label (the one pas­tor among us said that if I read Web­ber’s book I’d know where he’s com­ing from). One par­tic­i­pant was from the Cir­cle church Julie & I attend­ed last First Day.

Just about each of us at the table were com­ing from dif­fer­ent the­o­log­i­cal start­ing points, but it’s safe to say we are all “post” some­thing or oth­er. There was a shared sense that the stock answers our church­es have been pro­vid­ing aren’t work­ing for us. We are all try­ing to find new ways to relate to our faith, to Christ and to one anoth­er in our church com­mu­ni­ties. There’s some­thing about build­ing rela­tion­ships that are deep­er, more down-to-earth and real. Per­haps it’s find­ing a way to be less dog­mat­ic at the same time that we’re more dis­ci­plined. For Friends, that means ques­tion­ing the con­tem­po­rary cul­tur­al ortho­doxy of liberal-think (get­ting beyond the cliched catch phras­es bor­rowed from lib­er­al Protes­tantism and sixties-style activism) while being less afraid of being pec­u­lar­i­ly Quaker.

The con­ver­sa­tion was real­ly inter­est­ing. After all my Quak­er work, it’s always amaz­ing to find oth­er peo­ple my age who actu­al­ly think hard about faith and who are will­ing to build their life around it. There were times where I think we need­ed to trans­late our­selves and times where we tried to map out shared con­nec­tions (i.e., Richard Fos­ter was the known famous Quak­er, I should read him if only to be able to dis­cuss his rela­tion­ship to Con­ser­v­a­tive and Lib­er­al Friends).

It was real­ly good to get out­side of Quak­erism and to hear the lan­guage and issues of oth­ers. One impor­tant les­son is that some of the strong opin­ions I’ve devel­oped in response to Quak­er cul­ture need to be unlearned. The best exam­ple was social action. As I’ve writ­ten before on the web­site, I think the Friends peace tes­ti­mo­ny has become large­ly sec­u­lar­ized and that social action has become a sub­sti­tute for expressed and lived com­mu­nal faith. Yet my Meet­up cohorts were excit­ed to become involved in social action. Their Evan­gel­i­cal back­ground had dis­missed good works as unnec­es­sary – faith being the be-all – and now they want­ed to get involved in the world. But I very much sus­pect that their good works would be root­ed in faith to a degree that a lot of con­tem­po­rary Quak­er activist projects aren’t. I need to remind myself that social wit­ness (even my own) can be fine if tru­ly spirit-led.

Com­mit­ted reli­gious peo­ple switch­ing church­es often bring with them the bag­gage of their frus­tra­tions with the first church and this unre­solved anger often gets in the way of keep­ing true to God’s call. Even though I’m not leav­ing Quak­erism I have to iden­ti­fy and name my own frus­tra­tions so that they don’t get in the way. Hang­ing out with oth­er “Inde­pen­dent Chris­t­ian Thinkers” is a way of keep­ing some per­spec­tive, of remem­ber­ing that Post-Liberal is not exact­ly anti-Liberal.

Rec­om­mend­ed I check out: N.T. Wright, at allelon​.net. I just saw him ref­er­enced as a per­son­al friend of some of the Repub­li­can par­ty lead­er­ship in Con­gress, so this should be interesting.