No to Rightist Ron Paul, Better Strategies for Ending the War

By STEVEN ARGUE

Claiming that only an alliance with Ron Paul conservatives can end the war, New York City Indymedia volunteers have allowed blatant slander against Liberation News and have censored attempts to respond to those lies. Among the slanders posted were accusations that Liberation News is opposed to Ron Paul because we support Hillary Clinton and her healthcare program. I tried posting the following response, but it was censored on the site:

Ron Paul supporter: “it's pointed out that yes Ron Paul is a racist but Stevies candidate Hillary is even worse.”

Steven Argue: “I don’t support Hillary Clinton. Never have, but you don’t listen. This is pure slander.”

They then repeat their slander that I support Hillary Clinton for her healthcare plan saying, “It's pointed out that Stevie is willing to sacrifice liberty for a bogus health care plan”

Steven Argue: “Hillary Clinton opposes both socialized medicine and single payer healthcare. She supports insurance company healthcare, the kind that is killing untold millions in the United States. This is one of many reasons I oppose her.”

“And no, I don't see Clinton as a first step towards socialized medicine. Her promise to force people to buy insurance has nothing in common with socialized medicine, nor partially socialized medicine (i.e. single payer). I’m clear about this in my article:

The Case for Socialized Medicine in the United States, and the Struggle to Achieve It, By STEVEN ARGUE
www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/01/02/18469739.php

“As for Ron Paul, he wants to privatize everything, including public education, Social Security, and Medicare, eliminate the Voting Rights Act and Roe V Wade in the name of "states rights", signed on to the "Marriage Protection Act", would eliminate every environmental and labor protection, etc. etc. etc. This is a prescription for the slavery of the majority to protect the “liberty” of a tiny handful of capitalists to exploit.

“I oppose both Hillary Clinton and Ron Paul. But I’ve already made that clear as being my position. These accusations are slanderous.”

Ron Paul supporter: “Then Stevie moves the goal posts again. Waaa. He's being censored.”

Steven Argue: “I repeatedly posted a response to the slander that I support Hillary Clinton’s healthcare plan, and the response is censored every time. I have no motive to make that up. I mentioned it because I wanted people to see my response. Frankly, I’m quite surprised it is happening. Let’s see if this one goes up.”

That response, as I feared, was also censored. Revealing the reasons behind the Ron Paul censorship at the site, the Ron Paul backers posted the following:

“Get off your sectarianism.

“What you don’t get is that there are only two ways we're going to end the occupation of Iraq:

“1.) A recession, and a bad one.

“2.) Convincing the vast majority of conservative Americans it's wrong. Ron Paul reaches these people. The guy with the Free Mumia shirt selling the "Socialist Worker" doesn't.

“To get anything done in a democracy you're going to have to work with people you don't agree with and people you might not even like. People in grown up countries do this all the time. They're called "coalitions".

“The Labor Party in Israel, for example, makes alliances with the ultra orthodox. The Liberal Democrats have made common cause with the Tories in the UK. The left made common cause with Vicente Fox to get the PRI out of power in Mexico.

“It's only in the puritan USA where everybody thinks you have to like all your political allies and agree with them on everything.”

Besides the fact that the majority of Americans already oppose the war; and besides the fact that these points show a total lack of understanding of the bourgeois nature of the coalitions in the countries mentioned; and besides showing a total lack of understanding of what it will take to end the war (I discuss this at the end of the article); New York City Indymedia’s lack of confidence in the ability of people to change has caused them to build a coalition with a capitalist politician who is a racist, homophobic, anti-worker, anti-environmental, bible thumping, sexist, anti-labor, anti-poor, free-market privatization fanatic. On top of that, they censor the left in order to achieve that coalition.

While a Ron Paul presidency would likely end the war, at what price would this come?

Ron Paul uses the term liberty a lot, so let’s take a look at what he means by liberty.

The liberty Ron Paul demands is:

The liberty of the capitalists to exploit without labor laws and environmental protections;

The "state’s right” to prevent Blacks from voting without the interference of the Voting Rights Act (voted against its renewal in Congress);

The "states right" to ban abortions without the interference of Roe v Wade;

The freedom of the government to deny same-sex rights (was an original sponsor of the "Marriage Protection Act");

The freedom of children not to attend schools (would abolish public education);

The freedom of the elderly and disabled to starve (would abolish Social Security);

The freedom of the sick to die (would abolish Medicare);

The freedom of the U.S. to destroy the planet without even the most basic limits on carbon emissions (opposes signing on to Kyoto and all other carbon limitations);

This is, in short, the liberty of a wealthy minority to make their money from the exploitation of labor and the environment with zero interference from labor laws, environmental laws, and the IRS. While his program is liberty for a minority of rich white heterosexual males, it is slavery for the majority.

Simply put, Ron Paul’s promises to end the war are not enough when one looks at the fact that he would eliminate two centuries of hard fought social progress in the United States.

Some of the anti-war backers of Ron Paul argue that we don’t have to worry about these things because Ron Paul will never be elected. They think that backing his campaign is a way to win over his supporters. What is clear is that such arguments could only come from people who are utterly lost and rudderless, which leaves unclear the question of what they are winning Ron Paul supporters over to. They are supporting a candidate whose program is George Wallace on crack cocaine! Yet, the ultimate absurdity is the fact that they are backing a candidate whose most reassuring feature is that he won’t get elected! Is this point lost on these people? And is the chance that their support may help him get elected a chance they really want to take? Nobody thought that third party candidate Jesse (the body) Ventura would get elected in Minnesota either, but he was, and as soon as he was elected he discarded his libertarian values on drug legalization and prostitution and instead proceeded to carrying out attacks on labor and carrying out disastrous cuts in education and other social spending.

Others argue that if Ron Paul is elected, he will easily be able to pull the troops out of Iraq, but congress will block him on the other issues. There is no doubt that they would block parts of Ron Paul’s program in order to prevent the social unrest such measures would cause, but with the ruling class’s desire to step up the exploitation of labor and the environment through eliminating regulation and through privatization, there can be little doubt that if he is able to maintain his presidency without being shot, aspects of Ron Paul’s domestic program would be implemented.

Today, in the United States we have two rightwing capitalist parties that rule. The activists who run New York Indymedia are floating around utterly lost and rudderless. On the one hand, their anarchist philosophy prohibits them from putting forward their own leadership or supporting socialist candidates; and on the other hand, they are stuck in the “real politic” of supporting “lesser evil” capitalist politicians. It is these characteristics that made them susceptible to being swept up on the Ron Paul band wagon. Despite their “libertarian” values of “freedom”, they have now taken this to the point where they are even willing to censor critics of Ron Paul on their website.

While Ron Paul, the only Republican candidate opposed to the war, is not worth supporting, the front running Democrats are also very bad. Clinton, Obama, and Edwards, are all pro-war. Both Edwards and Clinton voted for the war. Obama supporters claim that Obama never supported the war. While Obama was not yet in the Senate at the time of the Iraq war vote, Obama, Edwards, and Clinton have all voted for war appropriations. This puts them all in the position of having supported the war. Over a million Iraqis are dead due to the U.S. invasion and occupation, and billions of dollars have been squandered. Obama, by helping pay for the war, has his hands in this mass murder just as Clinton and Edwards do.

Obama’s Iraq War De-escalation Act of 2007 supposedly would have begun troop withdrawal in May 2007. Yet, it didn't call for full nor immediate withdrawal. In addition, under the bill, the withdrawal could be halted if the Iraqi government met a number of criteria laid out by the Bush administration. These included a broad number of things such as changes in the use of oil revenue, government reforms, an end to sectarian violence, and other economic and reconstruction criteria. In Obama’s bill we have a crystal ball into the future. The excuses laid out in the bill will be heard once again as Obama, Clinton, or Edwards explain why they are keeping the troops in Iraq for their entire presidency; that is unless other actions are taken by the people to stop the war.

This brings us to the fundamental question of how to stop the war. If we are to listen to the Ron Paul censors / supporters at NYC Indymedia the only thing we can do to stop the war is support Ron Paul or hope for (pray for?) economic collapse. Yet, this ignores other less damaging possibilities. These include the troops refusing to fight, a general strike, strikes against the movement of war materials, or socialist revolution.

1. The troops refusing to fight. This worked in the struggle to end the U.S. aggression against Vietnam. It was the socialist movement who were the primary organizers of the anti-Vietnam War movement. That movement, immediately after the government’s murders at Kent State in May 1970 had 8 million students out on strike, and some Universities, such a Berkley, were taken over by students and faculty as anti-war universities. After May 1970, the majority of those drafted were already opposed to the war before they got to Vietnam. Refusal to fight was widespread, and the fragging of pro-war officers was common. Nixon could not continue to wage a war with soldiers who refused to fight. This, along with the heroic resistance of the Vietnamese, brought an end to the war in Vietnam.

Troops refusing to fight also helped bring an end to Russian involvement in the First World War, and helped bring down two pro-war governments in 1917.

2. A general strike or strikes against the movement of war materials. Strikes with such political demands have a long history of success. France has many good social programs because the workers there were willing to shut down their country to achieve them; and they are still willing to do the same to protect those hard fought gains.

3. Socialist revolution. The October Russian Revolution achieved an end to Russian involvement in the First World War. This was a good thing, despite the undemocratic nature of the revolution. Learning from those lessons, Liberation News opposes the dictatorial system of one party rule and raises the banner of revolutionary democratic socialism, while at the same time learning from many of the revolutionary strategies of Lenin and Trotsky.

Protests, pickets, information distribution, building a socialist movement, and answering pro-Ron Paul and pro-Obama-Clinton-Edwards propaganda all help towards building the momentum needed in achieving the kinds of actions that can end the war. Putting support behind Ron Paul only helps an extreme rightwing movement achieve the mantel of leadership for an anti-war sentiment that already represents majority public opinion. In addition, backing a guy like Ron Paul who just crossed a picket line to appear on Jay Lenno’s “Tonight Show” destroys the anti-war strategy of reaching out to the working class, as does backing a racist candidate like Ron Paul hurt the ability to reach out to the multi-racial working class.

No to the Democrats and Republicans!

U.S. Out of Iraq Now!

No to Insurance Company Healthcare, For Socialized Medicine!

Save the Planet, Curb Carbon Emissions Now!

Vote Socialist, Build the Labor Movement, Build the Anti-War Movement, Build the Socialist Movement.

[Note, small changes were made to the response that was censored at NYC Indymedia to make it more readable within the format of this article. Those wishing to see the original version will be given it upon request. Likewise, anyone wishing further sources will be provided them upon request]

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