Text of Proposed Petition for “A Million Knockers for Peace” Sept. 20 Campaign (received from Code Pink via e-mail) followed by my response

PETITION

Members of the United States Congress:

The five and a half years of war in Iraq has been an exercise of misplaced priorities:
· Draining U.S. taxpayers of at least three trillion dollars which could have gone towards investments that strengthen our economy, such as: health care for our families, ensuring the best education for our children and youth, and addressing the energy crisis.
· Resulting in hundreds of thousands of American and Iraqis dead and wounded.
· And undermining the United States’ standing as a worldwide symbol for democracy and justice.
Because of these reasons, the majority of American and Iraqi people want the United States to begin a withdrawal of American troops from Iraq as soon as possible, with a date certain for completing that process.
Therefore, we, the undersigned, call on [Rep. / Sen. NAME] to immediately support and pass legislation that will set a specific date to bring U.S. troops home from Iraq within a year.

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Dear Code Pink:

I wonder how much say Code Pink had in the text of the petition for Sept. 20? I hope this incoherent and disappointing text was a “lesser evil” compromise and not somebody’s idea of what the anti-war movement really needs to be saying. “An exercise of misplaced priorities”? How about a violation of international law and a crime against humanity? Would you call Stalin’s “liquidation of the kulaks” or the massacre at Wounded Knee “exercises of misplaced priorities?” Should we lament how much it cost U.S. taxpayers to drop the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in lieu of looking squarely at the dreadful implications of ordering and carrying out such an act? Isn’t such phrasing itself an “exercise of [sic–should be “in”] misplaced priorities”?

To the authors of this petition that collapses the woundings and deaths of a tiny percentage of Americans (in the course of an illegal imperial war and occupation) with the almost unimaginable suffering experienced by the entire nation of Iraq; the hundreds of thousands (or maybe millions?) of excess deaths experienced in Iraq over the last 2 decades as a result of U.S. actions; the poisoning of Iraq’s environment with depleted uranium; the internal displacement and external refugee crisis; the detentions and torture; the transformation of Iraq into an internally fragmented puppet of the U.S.–for shame.

Of course I am not saying that U.S. deaths and woundings don’t matter, only that the scale of comparison is an insult to the political intelligence, not to mention the moral sense.

What is wrong with this petition is what is wrong with the Democratic party that it pretends to nudge along the path of slightly greater foreign policy responsibility. This petition says that Americans cannot bear too much reality. It sets the bar awfully low in suggesting that an appeal to self-interest is the only way to get people to do the right thing. The problem is that a huge number of people in this country believe, consciously or unconsciously, that their self-interest is aligned with the maintenance of the American empire. What these people need to hear from the anti-war movement is that empire is wrong, that invading other countries without provocation is just as unacceptable when “we” do it as when Russia does it, and that we owe the Iraqis massive reparations, not the resentful suspicion (which this misconceived petition fuels) that “they” are somehow draining our resources and refusing to take responsibility for their own future.

Sincerely,
Jan Clausen