Reflections as we begin year six


About to head off to yet another antiwar protest on this, the eve of the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War.

Five years after Congress handed President Bush a blank check for war, we've:

- spent 506 BILLION dollars on this war, money not even factored into our normal military budget, borrowed from China or social security or anywhere else Bush could find it

- lost 3900 us soldiers in combat, not to mention 29,000 soldiers wounded, not to mention the tens of thousands more who are psychologically scarred.

- lost somewhere between 85,000 and 100,000 Iraqi lives, created 2 million refugees

- sparked a spinoff war between Turkey and the Iraqi Kurds

- found NO weapons of mass destruction

- found NO pre-existing links to Al Qaeda prior to the invasion, but plenty who have set up shop since

- found our economy headed into a tailspin, inflation on the rise, and fuel and food costs soaring

And what have we gained?

-We kicked one dictator out of power, and let dozens if not hundreds of small terrorist cells set up shop in his place

-We gave Iraqis a pseudo-democracy at the cost of stability, safety and health

-Halliburton and Bechtel stock have soared

-Worldwide anger at America is at a record high

-We feel, not safer from terrorism, but more at risk than ever

State of the antiwar movement

The antiwar movement has had some impressive victories: over the course of those five years, beginning with NO ONE on their side - not either political party, not the media - we organized, formed internet groups like MoveOn.Org and TrueMajority that were wildly successful in turning public opinion around, in doing the nuts-and-bolts work that gave the Democrats a congressional victory in 2006 and have been converting polling places away from electronic ballots across the country. Groups like the ACLU have been challenging Bush's illegal overreaches of power as fast as Congress can rush to legalize them.

But in another way, we're failing miserably: the Democrats, who we are responsible for electing, have turned their backs on us. They have consistently refused to take any real efforts to bring an end to the war, content to propose plans and swallow vetos with no thought of fillibusters or maneuverings. They have ignored their mandate, and they are paying for it - MoveOn has had success in several races getting incumbent, pro-war democrats ousted in the primaries in favor of diehard antiwar candidates.

There is hope. While John McCain is firmly behind 100 more years in Iraq , Obama and Clinton are at least TALKING a good game about ending the war. They are at least presenting, on the surface of things, a real choice for American voters in this regard. They might even accomplish it, but only if we continue to put pressure on them.

The message opposing them has changed from "Saddam is gonna get you" to "support the troops" to "we can't pull out now, there'd be chaos", which is true only in that there'll be chaos WHENEVER we pull out, now or 10 years from now. We got a larger number of troops out of Vietnam in a matter of weeks, and within two decades Vietnam is stable and their economy's looking better than ours.

So I'm out there in the rain today, holding my damn little sign and thinking about what we've accomplished, and how many hours and hours and hours over FIVE YEARS I've spent at marches, doing phone and internet organizing, writing columns (some published in the Globe, Newsweek and USA Today), teaching critical thinking about war to all my students....and thinking about how far we have to go, how much work we have to do.

WHEN this war ends, and it IS a matter of when, some dumb politician - maybe even Clinton or Obama - will get the historical credit. I can live with that. But never forget that we've been the ones, and will continue to be the ones, doing the real work. Here's hoping it doesn't take another five years.

-SW