It's About Power

a speech by Doug Fuda
(November 11,2006)

Well, there's good news and bad news in the latest election results. The good news is that the American voters have rejected the Iraq war in the only way possible – by voting decisively against the ruling party. The bad news is that the Democrats have done nothing to deserve their victory – they have supported the war and the violence every step of the way and never lifted a finger to impede the neocon agenda. And in all likelihood the war and occupation will continue, maybe with some new window dressing or change in tactics, but the core policy of intervention and domination will be unchanged.

There is a vast gulf  between ordinary folks and the professional politicians and militarists and war apologists in the media. The architects of the war – the American War Party, led by Bush and the neocons and including virtually all the leaders of both major parties, view the war from the point of view of power politics and public relations and a "might makes right mentality." But the American people have an evaluation of war that is based more on common sense and morality.

Common sense as in maybe the type of governments they have in Iraq or Lebanon or Syria is none of our business. Morality as in maybe it’s wrong for our so-called leaders to send the US Army half way around the world to attack and invade and destroy a defenseless nation that has never attacked us and then claim they are acting to defend America.

Somehow we have to translate this underlying common decency and antiwar sentiment of the people into something concrete and effective that can reverse the disastrous course we are on.

We in Antiwar League don’t pretend to have all the answers but we do have some fundamental beliefs that are worth your consideration:

First, we cannot focus only on the Iraq war but rather we must challenge the whole “war on terror” system. Iraq is only part of the overall war on terror, which is designed to put us on a permanent war footing, a war that will last for generations. It would be a great tragedy indeed if withdrawal from Iraq only presents the War Party with an opportunity to get involved in new, more dangerous wars, perhaps against Iran or Syria.

Secondly, perhaps the single most important lesson we must draw from the Iraq catastrophe is about power -- cold, naked power. We can’t  hope to prevent future Iraqs by a transfer of power to different individuals or a different political party. In fact it is the highly centralized warmaking power of the federal government that is itself the greatest threat to peace. We must not seek to hand that power to a John Kerry or a Hilary Clinton or even a Ralph Nader or Cindy Sheehan. We must dismantle that power. No one should have that kind of power, because, as they say, “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Assuming that our goal is to shut down the war on terror and dismantle and decentralize the federal power, in other words, to cut the bastards down to size, I would go one step further.

We can not rely on the politicians to do what has to be done.  We have to do it ourselves if we want to save America.  And we don't have to go to Washington DC to fight the war machine. The War Party's control is absolute in D.C., bolstered by a cheerleading media, byzantine secrecy, and massive quantities of military/industrial complex dollars.

But we don't have to try to change federal policy directly; rather we must actively refuse to cooperate with it at the level where we can fight effectively -- the local and state level. I call this the Antiwar Home Field Advantage.

Here are some examples of things to do:

1. Actively obstruct the military recruitment of our kids. Parents, teachers and students should demand of local school officials and city government that they defy the federal "No Child Left Behind Law" and expel the recruiters from our schools even if they threaten us with a cutoff of federal funds. We must not "sell" our children to the Masters of War for federal blood money. Tell them to shove it.

2. Indict Bush and/or his accomplices. Let's go to local and state courts and law enforcement officials and demand that they investigate the possibility of a conspiracy by federal officials to start a war of aggression. They have seized control of the Massachusetts National Guard in order to commit mass murder. Let's bring the Guard home now, prevent further deployment and indict the perpetrators. Rumsfeld is now a private citizen. Let's start with him if we can't get at Bush right away.

3. Refuse cooperation with the totalitarian Homeland Security project. "Department of Homeland Security!" The name itself is anti-American, Nazi-type language. We don't talk that way in Roslindale. These homeland security fanatics are creating institutions and technologies and whole industries that will alter our lives and our culture in unimaginable ways for decades to come. They are infiltrating our local police and fire departments with huge influxes of federal dollars for Homeland Security, in effect gaining control over these local institutions.  One simple example: the MBTA police are now going to conduct random searches of our bags and take away our pocket knives and nail files and arrest us if we refuse. That's not gonna stop terrorists. It's just to make us afraid and more obedient to Big Brother. Let's put a stop to it.

4. We need to investigate 9/11 -- We will never know the full truth about the attacks if we rely on the federal government to investigate itself. First they failed to protect us in spite of their mega-billion dollar national security state, then they failed to conduct a serious investigation of that failure, instead plunging us into the endless war on terror which threatens to become a WW III. Everyone knows they are covering something up. How long are we going to put up with this?

Here's a proposal: two of the planes seized in the attacks originated at Logan Airport in Boston. We should demand that the governor of Massachusetts appoint a new independent panel with full investigative powers to get at the truth of what really happened.

These are just some examples of  projects of resistance and refusal that are possible when we begin to advocate a localist strategy to challenge federal power. Similar efforts may already be underway in many places but we need to duplicate these efforts in thousands of communities. We should declare that we have a home field advantage against the War Party and that we intend to use it to peacefully but decisively dismantle the war machine. So that Iraq will end but more importantly so that it will never happen again.

Thank you.

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Doug Fuda is a member of Antiwar League. This speech was delivered on Veterans Day at the Antiwar League rally in Roslindale, MA, where Doug has lived for many years. It is partially based on an article Doug wrote last April:

"Local vs. Federal -- the Antiwar Home Field Advantage"

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Read other speeches from the rally.