Bring the War Home broadens scope, delays start

Translation: It will fuck with our summer vacations.

First off, I don't want to sound like I'm raining on your parade, but this is stupid:

>>guerilla outbreaks of street theater and independent direct action to increase the costs to the war machine and war profiteers<<

So, you're going to bring in clowns, jugglers, puppets and that is somehow *direct action* that's going to stop the war?

You're not going to be able to stop anything, let alone a war, until you're able to challenge the system and its ability to maintain control. This means building the foundation of sustained radical organizing and activity. This doesn't seem to be on your agenda. Like most modern things, your approach seems as thought out as an instantly gratifying MTV video. Sure it has visceral appeal, but are revolutions made as the aggregate collection of *actions*? NO, they are not. They begin with a critique of the system and how it hoodwinks us all into thinking that there are no alternatives-----Maggie Thatcher's T.I.N.A. And that critique is based on what activity has historically been a direct threat to the system's ability to oppress and exploit us. It requires a look at what worked and what didn't in the past. It applies this self-critique to what we’ve done and what activity offers the possibility of extending the movement of opposition in a truly radical direction and what has utterly failed. Then adjusting our ideas and applying our critical insights and trying again and again and again.

The closest thing to conscious actions stopping a war occurred at the end of World War I and involved in some instances revolutionary defeatism, where soldiers refused to fight for their nation and attacked their rulers and fraternized with the supposed enemy----another country's working class. That was the beginning of the Russian Revolution and insurrections throughout Germany and other parts of Europe. With the exception of the Russian example, which later faded into just another bourgeois revolution where the Bolsheviks became the new ruling class, they all were brutally crushed.

But nothing short of challenging the systems' control and ability to wage wars that attacks the whole system through an uprising will stop this war in Iraq. Demos, die-ins, puppets, signs, limited direct actions, etc. might affect some people's consciousness, but they won't stop a war, let alone will they stop the cops from arresting us and beating the shit out of us. I personally don't want to see any more fiascoes like the biotech conference where there were more cops than protestors. That's like begging the system to kick your ass.

And groups like *bring the war home* seem to fetishize the limitations that were already reached in the 1960's anti-Vietnam war movement. By 1967 and *stop the draft* week in Oakland it had reached it limits with demands that are much more radical than any street theatre actions that are being called for now. They did hold most of downtown Oakland for one day in a week of actions. They were able to mobilize tens of thousands of young radicals who fought the cops off the streets. But they didn't want to go any further than to *raise the cost of the war* which they were neither able to do nor were they able to stop anything. They didn't go far enough in challenging the whole system that needs wars to survive.

So, *bring the war home* seems to be reinventing a more crooked, weaker and bent wheel than radicals even did in the 60s. That lesson hasn't been learned and you seem to be trying to replay a much more liberal version of it. And ultimately, get lots of folks busted, beat up and demoralized with unneccesary and repeated failures. There are so many lessons that people in this same area have left for us to learn from. Just go the library and check out the books-----or videos/DVDs for that matter----like *Berkeley in the 60s*, *Berkeley at war*, stuff on Kent State and much, much more. I really think those movements did make a difference in putting awareness of Vietnam in most American's living rooms, but I don't think they did anything more than contribute to the pressure that made the war unwageable. Things like mutinies and officer fraggings probably did much, much more to end the Vietnam War. Those things seemed like barely conscious acts of revolutionary defeatism that created a disloyal military----that would rather get stoned or off their leaders than fight the Vietnamese.

Maybe we should be finding out what the level of discontent is with the soldiers in the US military in Iraq and find ways to contribute to their refusal to continue brutalizing the Iraqi people. Maybe we could make the street demos less a matter of middle class liberals having an opportunity to blow off steam and call for peace-----as though 10 years of peace meant any less Iraqi civilians died from American and British bombings. And breakaway marches and black blocs might have seemed a good tactic the first time they caught the cops by surprise, but they don't any more and should be ditched like everything that doesn't work. The cops have actually completely outsmarted those tactics and actually look more like guerillas in their mobility in containing them. Street tactics reached their limits in the 60s too----with tens of thousands more protestors than today and more radical actions, so we should stop masking up with 250 of our friends and figure out how to do radical things that inspire a fighting force worthy of doing battle and ways of organizing that really do threaten not only the war, but the system of capitalism. The IWW used to call for a general strike, and although there isn't nearly any organizing going on today anywhere near that level, maybe we need to start looking at the long term and start connecting with working class people and doing the groundwork that will one day be effective. Because dumbass shit coming out of the protest ghetto isn't doing anything more than making everyone opposed to this war----and capitalism----look dumb, weak and not worth participating with. If we really want to topple this system, let's starting acting----and thinking----like we're serious about it.

Vince

Here are 2 excellent articles about more thinking to go along with action, that also are critical of fetishizing actions without any ideas behind them.

Here's the first, called "Action Will Be Taken":Left Anti-intellectualism and Its Discontents:

http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Action.html

(I think this was on Indybay and sparked lots of debate, but it's germane to this thread about possible future actions)

And this is in response to a debate in Britain, brought here to the US, after the June 18, 1999 *carnival against capital* in London, called "The Necessity and Impossibility of Anti-Activism":

http://www.geocities.com/kk_abacus/ioaa/necessity.html

So please, more thought, self-criticism and theoretical coherence in action. No use looking like crazed chickens with their heads cut off in our political activity.

I'd very much like to see the Bring the War Home group either support their ideology or reply to the criticisms of activism for activism's sake. Only through dialogue and debate can any of us become more effective.

Vince

Vince

if you want a debate, why dont you go to a meeting. if you are dying to see something particular done, why dont you just start doing it yourself.