Peace Out
With Obama in office, liberals learn to love war
by
Justin Raimondo
by Justin Raimondo
 The
antiwar rally at the University of Iowa was sparsely attended. The
below-30-degree weather might have had something to do with it,
but Paul Street, a local writer and one of the speakers, had another
theory, as the Daily Iowan reported:
Before the
crowd of fewer than 20, Street questioned why the ‘left’
locals and university officials aren’t doing more to help
in the protests against the war. ‘The big truth right now,
whether this town’s missing-in-action progressives get it
or not, is that we need to fight the rich, not their wars,’
he said, citing big corporations for wasting their technology
and funding on war.
The big truth
is that the antiwar movement has largely collapsed in the face of
Barack Obama’s victory: the massive antiwar marches that were
a feature of the Bush years are a thing of the past. Those ostensibly
antiwar organizations that did so much to agitate against the Iraq
War have now fallen into line behind their commander in chief and
are simply awaiting orders.
Take, for example,
Moveon.org, the online activist group that ran antiwar ads during
the election – but only against Republicans – in coalition
with a group of labor unions and Americans Against Escalation in
Iraq. Behind AAEI stood three of Obama’s top political operatives,
Steve Hildebrand, Paul Tewes, and Brad Woodhouse. Woodhouse is now
the Democratic National Committee’s director of communications
and research. He controls the massive e-mail list culled by the
Obama campaign during the primaries and subsequently, as well as
a list of all those who gave money to the presumed peace candidate.
These donors are no doubt wondering what Obama is doing escalating
the war in Afghanistan and venturing into Pakistan.
 As
Greg Sargent noted over at WhoRunsGov.com,
a Washington Post-sponsored site, “Don’t look now,
but President Obama’s announcement today of an escalation in
the American presence in Afghanistan is being met with mostly silence
– and even some support – from the most influential liberal
groups who opposed the Iraq War.”
In response
to inquiries, Moveon.org refused to make any public statement about
Obama’s rollout of the Af-Pak escalation, although someone
described as “an official close to the group” is cited
by WhoRunsGov as confirming that “MoveOn wouldn’t be saying
anything in the near term.” A vague promise to poll their members
was mentioned – “though it’s unclear when.”
Don’t hold your breath.
Another Democratic
Party front masquerading as a peace group, Americans United for
Change, declined to comment on the war plans of the new administration.
This astroturf organization ran $600,000 worth of television ads
in the summer of 2007, focusing like a laser on congressional districts
with Republican incumbents. Change? Not so fast.
Read
the rest of the article
April
17, 2009
Justin
Raimondo [send him mail]
is editorial director of Antiwar.com
and is the author of An
Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard and Reclaiming
the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement.
Copyright
© 2009 The American Conservative
Justin
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