[Mb-civic] Open letter from Tom Hayden to Howard Dean

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0429-23.htm

For those who believe that America needs to change course, Tom 
Hayden's open letter to Howard Dean appealing to him not to take the 
antiwar majority of the Democratic Party for granted is an eloquent and 
important document. Read it, share it. - Katrina vanden Heuvel

    April 26, 2005

    Dear Chairman Dean,

    Thank you kindly for your call and your expressed willingness to 
discuss the Democratic Party's position on the Iraq War. There is 
growing frustration at the grass roots towards the party leadership's 
silent collaboration with the Bush Administration's policies. Personally, 
I cannot remember a time in thirty years when I have been more 
despairing over the party's moral default. Let me take this opportunity 
to explain.

    The party's alliance with the progressive left, so carefully repaired 
after the catastrophic split of 2000, is again beginning to unravel over 
Iraq. Thousands of anti-war activists and millions of antiwar voters 
gave their time, their loyalty and their dollars to the 2004 presidential 
campaign despite profound misgivings about our candidate's position 
on the Iraq War. Of the millions spent by "527" committees on voter 
awareness, none was spent on criticizing the Bush policies in Iraq.

    The Democratic candidate, and other party leaders, even endorsed 
the US invasion of Falluja, giving President Bush a green-light to 
destroy that city with immunity from domestic criticism. As a result, a 
majority of Falluja's residents were displaced violently, guaranteeing a 
Sunni abstention from the subsequent Iraqi elections.

    Then in January, a brave minority of Democrats, led by Senator Ted 
Kennedy and Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey, advocated a timetable 
for withdrawal. Their concerns were quickly deflated by the party 
leadership.

    Next came the Iraqi elections, in which a majority of Iraqis supported 
a platform calling for a timetable for US withdrawal. ("US Intelligence 
Says Iraqis Will Press for Withdrawal." New York Times, Jan. 18, 
2005) A January 2005 poll showed that 82 percent of Sunnis and 69 
percent of Shiites favored a "near-term US withdrawal" (New York 
Times, Feb. 21, 2005. The Democrats failed to capitalize on this peace 
sentiment, as if it were a threat rather than an opportunity.

    Three weeks ago, tens of thousands of Shiites demonstrated in 
Baghdad calling again for US withdrawal, chanting "No America, No 
Saddam." (New York Times, April 10, 2005) The Democrats ignored 
this massive nonviolent protest.

    There is evidence that the Bush Administration, along with its clients 
in Baghdad, is ignoring or suppressing forces within the Iraqi coalition 
calling for peace talks with the resistance. The Democrats are silent 
towards this meddling.

    On April 12, Donald Rumsfeld declared "we don't really have an exit 
strategy. We have a victory strategy." (New York Times, April 13, 
2005). There was no Democratic response.

    The new Iraqi regime, lacking any inclusion of Sunnis or critics of 
our occupation, is being pressured to invite the US troops to stay. The 
new government has been floundering for three months, hopelessly 
unable to provide security or services to the Iraqi people. Its security 
forces are under constant siege by the resistance. The Democrats do 
nothing.

    A unanimous Senate, including all Democrats, supports another 
$80-plus billion for this interminable conflict. This is a retreat even from 
the 2004 presidential campaign when candidate John Kerry at least 
voted against the supplemental funding to attract Democratic voters.

    The Democratic Party's present collaboration with the Bush Iraq 
policies is not only immoral but threatens to tear apart the alliance built 
with antiwar Democrats, Greens, and independents in 2004. The vast 
majority of these voters returned to the Democratic Party after their 
disastrous decision to vote for Ralph Nader four years before. But the 
Democrats' pro-war policies threaten to deeply splinter the party once 
again.

    We all supported and celebrated your election as Party chairman, 
hoping that winds of change would blow away what former president 
Bill Clinton once called "brain-dead thinking."

    But it seems to me that your recent comments about Iraq require 
further reflection and reconsideration if we are to keep the loyalty of 
progressives and promote a meaningful alternative that resonates with 
mainstream American voters.

    Let me tell you where I stand personally. I do not believe the Iraq 
War is worth another drop of blood, another dollar of taxpayer subsidy, 
another stain on our honor. Our occupation is the chief cause of the 
nationalist resistance in that country. We should end the war and 
foreign economic occupation. Period.

    To those Democrats in search of a muscular, manly foreign policy, 
let me say that real men (and real patriots) do not sacrifice young lives 
for their own mistakes, throw good money after bad, or protect the 
political reputations of high officials at the expense of their nation's 
moral reputation.

    At the same time, I understand that there are limitations on what a 
divided political party can propose, and that there are internal 
pressures from hawkish Democratic interest groups. I am not 
suggesting that the Democratic Party has to support language favoring 
"out now" or "isolation." What I am arguing is that the Democratic Party 
must end its silent consent to the Bush Administration's Iraq War 
policies and stand for a negotiated end to the occupation and our 
military presence. The Party should seize on Secretary Rumsfeld's 
recent comments to argue that the Republicans have never had an 
"exit strategy" because they have always wanted a permanent military 
outpost in the Middle East, whatever the cost.

    The Bush Administration deliberately conceals the numbers of 
American dead in the Iraq War. Rather than the 1,500 publicly 
acknowledged, the real number is closer to 2,000 when private 
contractors are counted.

    The Iraq War costs one billion dollars in taxpayer funds every week. 
In "red" states like Missouri, the taxpayer subsidy for the Iraq War 
could support nearly 200,000 four-year university scholarships.

    Military morale is declining swiftly. Prevented by antiwar opinion 
from re-instituting the military draft, the Bush Administration is forced 
to intensify the pressures on our existing forces. Already forty percent 
of those troops are drawn from the National Guard or reservists. 
Recruitment has fallen below its quotas, and 37 military recruiters are 
among the 6,000 soldiers who are AWOL.

    President Bush's "coalition of the willing" is steadily weakening, 
down from 34 countries to approximately twenty. Our international 
reputation has become that of a torturer, a bully.

    The anti-war movement must lead and hopefully, the Democratic 
Party will follow. But there is much the Democratic Party can do:

        First, stop marginalizing those Democrats who are calling for 
immediate withdrawal or a one-year timetable. Encourage pubic 
hearings in Congressional districts on the ongoing costs of war and 
occupation, with comparisons to alternative spending priorities for the 
one billion dollars per week.

        Second, call for peace talks between Iraqi political parties and the 
Iraqi resistance. Hold hearings demand to know why the Bush 
Administration is trying to squash any such Iraqi peace initiatives. 
(Bush Administration officials are hoping the new Iraqi government will 
"settle for a schedule based on the military situation, not the calendar." 
New York Times, Jan. 19, 2005).

        Third, as an incentive to those Iraqi peace initiatives, the US 
needs to offer to end the occupation and withdraw our troops by a 
near-term date. The Bush policy, supported by the Democrats, is to 
train and arm Iraqis to fight Iraqis--a civil war with fewer American 
casualties.

        Fourth, to further promote peace initiatives, the US needs to 
specify that a multi-billion dollar peace dividend will be earmarked for 
Iraqi-led reconstruction, not for the Halliburtons and Bechtels, without 
discrimination as to Iraqi political allegiances.

        Fifth, Democrats could unite behind Senator Rockefellers's 
persistent calls for public hearings on responsibility for the torture 
scandals. If Republicans refuse to permit such hearings, Democrats 
should hold them independently. "No taxes for torture" is a demand 
most Democrats should be able to support. The Democratic Senate 
unity against the Bolton appointment is a bright but isolated example of 
how public hearings can keep media and public attention focused on 
the fabricated reasons for going to war.

    Instead of such initiatives, the national Democratic Party is either 
committed to the Iraq War, or to avoiding blame for losing the Iraq 
War, at the expense of the social programs for which it historically 
stands. The Democrats' stance on the war cannot be separated from 
the Democrats' stance on health care, social security, inner city 
investment, and education, all programs gradually being defunded by a 
war which costs $100 billion yearly, billed to future generations.

    This is a familiar pattern for those of us who suffered through the 
Vietnam War. Today it is conventional wisdom among Washington 
insiders, including even the liberal media, that the Democratic Party 
must distance itself from its antiwar past, and must embrace a position 
of military toughness.

    The truth is quite the opposite. What the Democratic Party should 
distance itself from is its immoral and self-destructive pro-war positions 
in the 1960s which led to unprecedented polarization, the collapse of 
funds for the War on Poverty, a schism in the presidential primaries, 
and the destruction of the Lyndon Johnson presidency. Thirty years 
after our forced withdrawal from Vietnam, the US government has 
stable diplomatic and commercial relations with its former Communist 
enemy. The same future is possible in Iraq.

    I appeal to you, Mr. Chairman, not to take the anti-war majority of 
this Party for granted. May I suggest that you initiate a serious 
reappraisal of how the Democratic Party has become trapped in the 
illusions which you yourself questioned so cogently when you ran for 
president. I believe that an immediate commencement of dialogue is 
necessary to fix the credibility gap in the Party's position on the Iraq 
War. Surely if the war was a mistake based on a fabrication, there is a 
better approach than simply becoming accessories to the perpetrators 
of the deceit. And surely there is a greater role for Party leadership 
than permanently squandering the immense good will, grass roots 
funding, and new volunteer energy that was generated by your 
visionary campaign.

    Tom Hayden

© 2005 The Nation

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