And of course as you can see the radical anti-America left wing and by large foreign interest groups deeply invested in American failure have conference calls with Democrats on how it can be accomplished. The Network of Spiritual Progressives -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Strategizing with Leaders of the Anti-War Movement Posted Friday, September 07 2007 Rabbi Michael Lerner This is a slightly edited version of a phone conference call convened by the NSP with the goal of establishing more contact and cooperation between various segments of the anti-war movement, and encouraging long-term strategic thinking. On the call were Tim Carpenter of Progressive Democrats of America, Medea Benjamin of Code Pink, Rick Ufford chase of the Christian Peace Wtiness for Iraq, Leslie Cagan of UFPJ, Dot Maver of Dept. of Peace, Rabbi Michael Lerner and Nichola Torbett of NSP, Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey of the Progressive Caucus of the House, Congressman Jim Moran, and many other significant national leaders of the efforts to the end the war in Iraq. 8/29/07: Iraq War Strategy Call Present on the call: Mark Johnson, President, Fellowship of Reconciliation Dan Nejfelt, Faith in Public Life Nichola Torbett, Network of Spiritual Progressives Dot Maver, Dept of Peace Medea Benjamin, Code Pink Leslie Cagan, UFPJ Rick Ufford-Chase, Christian Peace Witness for Iraq Michael Lerner, NSP/Tikkun Dave Belden, Tikkun Magazine Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) Congressman Jim Moran (D-VA) Tim Carpenter, Progressive Democrats of America Jean Stokan, Pax Christi ______________________________________________________ Congresswoman Lynne Woolsey: Let’s start with what it’s going to take. It’s going to take some courage to not fund continuing the occupation. But we have to make sure that ending the war is not perceived as abandoning the troops. So what the triad (Congresswomen Woolsey, Waters, and Lee), are proposing ( H.R. 508 by Barbara Lee) is that we only fund a safe and orderly redeployment, including bringing the big equipment out of Iraq. So your role (the NSP and the other organizations represented on this conference call) is to keep on doing what you’re doing. Help people change the conversation from “abandoning the troops” to funding orderly redeployment. I’m telling you, that’s going to take six months to a year. If we don’t get started…and they don’t want it to happen, the Republicans. Then we have Senator John Warner (R-VA) saying, “Start [redeploying the troops] by Christmas.” I think we should build on that, by the way, even though he doesn’t mean it with the same intensity we do. But we have to make it look like this is the beginning of something that could happen so that Democrats could get some courage. Tim Carpenter: We’ve been working hard. UFPJ, PDA, a number of groups have been doing email blasts during the recess and Congressional visits. We’ve generated a little over 9,000 of those emails blasts into the [Speaker’s?] office supporting the Triad’s strategy in the last three weeks. And with the press conference tomorrow, it looks like a number of other organizations will also be sending out the link, as UFPJ and PDA are doing it, as far as getting you the support, just from own Caucus members who haven’t signed off on the letter, to try to get that number up for you in the next week or two. That’s something on the call that we can maybe collectively strategize on, on those specific members, and Bill’s been helping us with that list. Just to move that seventy number up to eighty or eight–five, by the time you get back in early September. Woolsey: Ok, here’s something. I believe that Nancy (Pelosi) is with us, and she’s counting on you guys and Barbara and Maxine and me to push from the Left in the Congress. But the people that need to hear are the moderate Democrats who are holding up the whole thing. They’re the ones who have to know that their people care, that they bring our troops home. They swear they don’t. They swear that they’ll lose their elections if they do the right thing. Woolsey: Well, my question is: How come Walter Jones gets it, and Democrats don’t? What’s missing in this picture? He’s got as difficult of a district as anybody. So, I’m not putting it all on you. I think what you’re doing is magnificent. And you know that MoveOn is tying the war to what these districts aren’t getting in their local budgets. And I think that’s very positive. Cagan: But their strategy through the “Iraq Summer” has really been targeting the Republicans. Their strategy has been to peel away Republican supporters of the president. To be honest, I think a lot of their strategy is geared towards the Presidential elections and the Congressional elections next year. But nevertheless, their focus has been clearly stated: peeling away Republican support for the war. They’re not going after the Democrats. Woolsey: Well, maybe you folks should go after the Democrats. Carpenter: That’s our piece. Lerner: Pelosi could simply not bring up any funding bill for the military. She could not bring it up, and then say: “We’re only going to bring it up if you agree to end the war.” Lerner: Instead of bringing it to the floor where she knows she’ll lose the vote, she’ll refuse to bring it to the floor. Benjamin: Lynn, if there’s no change of heart from the leadership of the Democratic Party now, is the most likely scenario that Bush will get his now 200 Billion dollars for the war with no timeline? Woolsey: Well, it could be, yeah. Benjamin: Is that the most likely scenario now? Woolsey: Well, we had fifty-some members sign a letter saying no more money except to bring the troops home. Carpenter: We’re at 70 now, Lynn. Woolsey: Ok, 70 now, thank you. Benjamin: But if Pelosi doesn’t take that one seriously, things will play out the way it did with the last 95 billion. Woolsey: It could. Of course, that’s my greatest fear. Woolsey: Well you’re absolutely right, and smart security is one of the good answers to that. I’d like us to not divert our energies right now before the supplemental. I think we start talking now, yes, but we should put every ounce of energy you have into this, into Iraq. Don’t go off onto impeachment—stay on Iraq. And then if we can’t change enough minds to have Democrats look like they… Lerner: …have a backbone. Lerner: Let’s go around and talk about other peoples’ strategies. We’re heard about what we need to do for September, but this call is also about laying out peoples’ long-range vision of strategy, given that there’s very little chance we’re going to get out of this war in the next two months. Torbett: Congressman Moran, would you like to say a little bit before we open it up to more discussion? Moran: I’d be happy to. I just returned from Iraq on Monday (Aug.27), and I thought I might describe some of the impressions that I got and what I might expect will happen in the Congress in September. I’m a member of the Defense Appropriations Committee, and it was in that capacity that we talked with General Petraeus, Odeirno, and the rest of them, as well as senior Iraqi leaders. We have weaponized that entire country. There are more jersey barriers than blades of grass, and more weapons than there are people. The military is performing well, and that’s what Petraeus is going to say. The result of the military success is going to be wholly inconsistent with our values, and certainly unworthy of the sacrifice of our military families. You could have the greatest car ever manufactured and drive it at the right speed, but if you don’t have the right map, you’re never going to get to your destination, and that’s the situation we have with the military. I personally think we put too much money into the military, but any way you put it, the end result is going to be Shiite theocracy that is suppressive of woman’s rights, human rights, and is closely aligned with Iran, with the most conservative elements of the Iranian government. Moran: The Speaker doesn’t have the votes. If you see what has happened in the Democratic Caucus, I don’t think you’d be quite as critical of the Speaker. She really is trying. She doesn’t have the votes; she doesn’t even have the complete support of some of the leadership. Lerner: House Majority Leader Hoyer is against her, right? Moran: Well, I don’t want to name names, but…There are members who have somewhat other agendas. Principle one is, of course, to maintain a Democratic majority in the House. We cobbled together a majority by winning in a lot of seats that tend to be conservative: in the South, in the rural Midwest, and so on. These members are very much afraid that if they get to far out front, they’re going to lose their seat, and they’re be advised to not take risks so we can sustain this majority. But I also know that some people in the leadership and a couple caucuses who don’t want that to happen, who feel that it’s going to set us back. They think the way that the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) thinks. Have you read any of Al From’s articles or listened to his speeches? That’s what he’s saying. That we’ve got to be the party of more military aggressiveness and so on, we’re too weak on security, etc., etc. I don’t want to put words in his mouth. There is a DLC element in the Democratic Caucus, and it’s enough people that it can kill legislation. Nancy can’t let anything get to the floor that is defeated. If this was to get to the floor and we didn’t have the votes, it’d be an enormous setback. Lerner: Why did she enable the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance act (FISA)? Moran: She was led to believe, as was all of the leadership, that the White House thought there was going to be a terrorist attack in August. They were trying to set us up, so we would leave the country allegedly vulnerable, not passing any FISA legislations. The Senate passed it and then went home, and if we didn’t pass what the Senate did, there would be no bill, and there would be this gap in the ability for the National Security Agency to wiretap. I thought the whole thing was phony; I voted against it, a lot of us did. We had a very vigorous Democratic Caucus [debate] but again, the prevailing view among the leadership and the same people who are reluctant to end this war was that for the sake of the Democratic Party and the long-term ability to retain a majority, we’ve got to pass the Senate version. I thought it was a mistake, I said it was a mistake, and the majority of Democrats voted against it, and Nancy voted against it. Lerner: But she enabled it. Benjamin: She’s the enabler, Jim. We see through that. She allows 200 Billion dollars to go through for war with no timeline for it; she’s going to lose the progressive part of this country. Moran: I know that, but in all fairness, until we get a Democratic president, until we get a president who is committed to ending the war… Cagan: …That may be a long time before we get that. Carpenter: We’d have to be on the phone for a lot longer for that discussion. Moran: That’s for sure. But the President gets to veto anything that gets to his desk. It’s inconceivable that we could override such a veto. The reality is that this war is going to continue as long as the person in the White House wants it to continue. And that’s what happened with Johnson, and Nixon, and throughout history. We’re going to have a national referendum, and it’s going to be in 2008. We’ve got to elect somebody who’s absolutely committed to end this war, and honestly, that’s the only way we are going to achieve that objective. Carpenter: When we did have a meeting with Pelosi last summer when the May vote was coming up, and she calculated when MoveOn came to her with the plan, and at that we within the movement were pushing very hard, as you know, to allow the Lee amendment to come to the floor to at least get the vote. As you know, Barbara took it all the way to the Rules Committee, where Congressman McGovern [tried, attempted, in a way?]. The piece that Pelosi does understand, and the frustration what I want to remind her is that we’re winning by losing. Going up and having the vote with McGovern when we had 171 and we didn’t win, and you know how hard it took us to get to that vote. She made a calculated decision, as did MoveOn, to go in May. It was more of a setback now that we look at it. She is winning, and I’d like to leave you with this thought if you’re able to talk to her: If we’re able to get from 171 to 182 or to 200 or 204, and yet if we ultimately lose the numerical fight on that specific vote, she needs to understand that we need to frame that we’ve moving everyday, and that is a victory. Losing that principled vote you gain more in the long run. In the short term I know she needs to watch her back with the leadership in the cloak room and so forth. She has trouble understanding this, and I hope this is the point you and your colleagues can make: We are winning, if we get the vote as you heard from Lynn and Barbara and Maxine. McGovern’s going to come back through as a result of the 171 vote. She has to make a calculated decision. If she’s going to come to the progressive members this time and ask you to be there, it seems to me the progressives need to be united in August before we get through to September, to make it clear that without that vote on the Lee Amendment, either as a stand-alone or as part of the supplemental and authorization, that the progressives simply can’t move. She’s got to go back to the Blue Dogs and not come back to the progressives to capitulate and not look to Raúl Grijalva at the last minute, who was clearly with us all the way until three minutes before the vote, when he was asked to move. Everybody: Thank you Congressman. Moran: Thank you. Goodbye.
