Strategy and tactics key element for mobilizing majority against war

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In the first few weeks of the Gulf war, this country has been rocked by an unprecedented antiwar opposition.

Even at the height of the movement against the Vietnam War, never were two national demonstrations—as large as the Jan. 19 and Jan. 26 marches in San Francisco and Washington, D.C.—organized just one week apart.

Before the shooting war began on Jan. 16, two national coalitions had formed and were calling for national actions with the same demand (Bring the Troops Home Now!") in the same two cities—but on different dates. Many considered this a wasteful division of the antiwar movement.

Then the war started, and with it, the outpouring of spontaneous demonstrations, vigils, rallies, and student walk-outs. The liability of having planned mobilizations on separate dates turned into an enormous asset.

Both coalitions immediately endorsed each other's actions. And the Jan. 19 action was used to help build Jan. 26 into an event nearly double the size of the 19th.

And this is only the beginning. On Feb. 15 and 16, local antiwar actions will take place in cities and towns across the country. This announcement was made by the Campaign for Peace in the Middle East and the Mobilization to Bring the Troops Home Now (the organizations which sponsored the Jan. 26 actions in Washington, D.C., and San Francisco respectively).

In addition, national conferences are scheduled to take place this month by the initiators of both the Jan. 19 and the Jan. 26 actions. What will emerge from these and other conferences will hopefully enable the movement as a whole, in all its diversity, to unite in actions even bigger than Jan. 26.

The activists who participate in these meetings will also benefit from an open discussion of which program and tactics best serve the goal of ending the war.

The central issue is how to end the war. The sure way to end the war immediately is for the U.S. government to pull out by withdrawing all its military forces and material.

This was the only solution for ending the Vietnam War. Despite the calls for negotiations, and negotiations themselves, the war couldn't end until U.S. troops were withdrawn.

For those who question the validity of the demand: Bring the Troops Home Now!, remember that nearly 50 percent of the 58,000 American troops who died in the Vietnam War were killed during the 19681973 Paris Peace talks.

This also holds true for the Korean War, where 50 percent of the 38,000 Americans who died were killed during the 1951-53 Pamunjon Peace talks. So calls for negotiations and a ceasefire are not calls for real and lasting solutions to the war.

The only demand capable of mobilizing the broadest layers of the population and ending the war immediately is: "Bring the Troops Home Now!"

Connections to the soldiers "Bring the Troops Home Now!" is also an idea which establishes an effective link between the antiwar movement, and the Gls and their families. This slogan succinctly makes the statement that the only force working to help the Gis, to keep them out of harm's way, is the antiwar movement, not the government.

The hundreds of homemade signs saying, "Support our troops, bring them home now" carried on the Jan. 19 and 26 demonstrations show the great desire on the part of the protesters to answer the phony slogan the government is propagating of "Support Our Troops"

This understanding exists because the Vietnam antiwar movement struggled for many years to understand the importance of winning over the GIs to the antiwar cause.

Any effort to blunt or weaken the call to bring the troops home now will weaken the movement's ability to present to the American people and the U.S. government the clearest and sharpest demand, as well as the one most capable of mobilizing the great numbers that are necessary to end this war.

Support a "peace conference?"

The movement needs to keep this sharp focus and avoid the adoption of a range of other demands.

One such additional demand that has already been adopted by the National Coalition to Stop U.S. Intervention in the Middle East (sponsor of Jan. 19), and the Campaign for Peace in the Middle East, is for an international peace conference, as called for by the UN, as a means of resolving conflict in the Middle Eastincluding the creation of a Palestinian state.

This proposal actually contradicts the call for U.S. withdrawal from the Middle East. What right does the U.S. government, now engaged in a genocidal war against the people of Iraq, have to take part in negotiations called to set up new states and borders?

Why should the antiwar movement endorse a political stance which assures the continued secure borders of the racist Zionist state of Israel by granting to the oppressed Palestinian masses a small piece of what was once their homeland in exchange?

The fair and just solution for the Palestinian people would be to live in their homeland organized not as a Jewish state but as a democratic and secular country.

Obviously, this is not a point of view with great support in the United States, where there are still great illusions about Israel's pretenses of democracy. But masses of Palestinians support this plan—as opposed to many of the leaders who are now prepared to settle for small Bantustan-type states in the West Bank and Gaza.

The best way to keep the movement growing is to make it appeal to people who demonstration.

Demonstrations must be seen as safe ways for working people to make their views known. Legal, peaceful mobilizations like Jan. 19 and 26 were the best answers to the media's violence-baiting of the movement.

Local media in Los Angeles and the Northwest, for example, went out of their way to report all the "violence" of the spontaneous protests in San Francisco when the war began. The media failed to inform people that these demonstrations involved tens of thousands of participants and were overwhelmingly peaceful. This was done purposely to steer people away from the Jan. 19 and 26 marches and rallies.

Escalate our tactics?

Some forces in the antiwar movement are calling for "escalating the tactics." An editorial in a special tabloid published by the National Coalition to Stop U.S. Intervention in the Middle East says the movement should organize "more militant actions including sit-ins, civil-disobedience actions, etc."

Are these tactics in and of themselves more militant? Is closing down bridges and highways a more militant way to oppose the war than getting permits and organizing well-monitored, peaceful, mass march?

This becomes an important question once we understand the central importance of winning over a majority of the American people to the antiwar position. The choice is between organizing actions that can mobilize hundreds of thousands-even millionsagainst the war, or whether to organize much smaller numbers.

The object is to bring people into motion around actions which will bring others, from all walks of life, into motion.

Never before in U.S. history has there been such a huge opposition to a war at such an early stage. The movement is bound to grow, especially when the numbers of American casualties begin to mount.

Everything the antiwar movement does should be calculated to win over greater and greater numbers, including the soldiers themselves. The lessons of the Vietnam antiwar movement, where this did happen, can help guide our new movement. That movement was successful, and we will be