Antiwar leaders stymied, frustrated
Hummm....
By: Mike Allen
Sep 9, 2007 07:12 PM EST
Progressive rabbi calls Democratic congressional leaders “profiles in cowardice,” and calls for a new strategy.
Photo by AP
A well-known antiwar leader has gone public with the transcript of a private conference call that shows peace activists are exasperated with the Democratic congressional leadership and at a loss for a long-term strategy.
The Aug. 29 call highlights divisions in the Democratic Party that Republicans are gearing up to try to exploit as Congress debates its response to the report on Iraq this week by Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker.
On Monday, the pair begins two days of testimony on Capitol Hill.
Republicans say the call reflects the degree to which war opponents have failed to gain the advantage that many in both parties thought would build over the summer.
Rabbi Michael Lerner, the editor of Tikkun magazine, posted the transcript Friday on the Web site of the Network of Spiritual Progressives, of which he is a co-chair.
The transcript reveals that opponents of the war in Iraq have decided to first try to enlist conservative Democrats, before moving on moderate Republicans. The call shows they are having little success because of fears about the impact on next year’s elections if the party is seen as defeatist.
The call, which Lerner titled “Strategizing with leaders of the Anti-War Movement,” included two sympathetic members of Congress and representatives of groups ranging from Code Pink to the Progressive Democrats of America.
Lerner -- who is based in Berkeley, Calif., and is a leader of what he calls “the religious left” -- told Politico in a phone interview on Sunday that he concluded from the call that the antiwar movement does not have a long-term strategy, even though the war “is going to continue through the end of President Bush’s administration” and perhaps into the term of the next president.
Lerner said he posted the transcript in an effort to persuade war opponents that they need “some fundamentally new thinking.”
“Right now, we could write the story of this Congress as ‘Profiles in Cowardice,’” Lerner said. “There’s a great deal of frustration with the Democrats in the Congress – a sense almost of betrayal. The Democrats don’t have – and even the people in the antiwar movement don’t have – a coherent alternative worldview from which to base a strategy. That’s why they end up debating everything on the same terms that the Republicans do.”
Lerner, 64, said he is on the Orthodox side of the Jewish Renewal Movement; he gained a measure of fame early in the Clinton administration when then-First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton quoted his phrase “politics of meaning” in speeches. Lerner said the transcript was prepared by his staff and that he is certain it is accurate.
Republicans are circulating the link to the transcript and think it makes their case that opponents of the war in Iraq are losing ground. “This call shows the tables may have turned,” said one Republican official.
“It shows the tightrope Democrats have to walk with an angry group of liberal organizers who are sensing defeat.”
The transcript quotes Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.), who is co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, as saying: “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 [want to] bring our troops home. They swear they don’t. They swear that they’ll lose their elections if they do the right thing.”
When one peace organizer talks about “peeling away Republican support for the war,” Woolsey interjects: “Maybe you folks should go after the Democrats.”
Chris Shields, Woolsey's press secretary, said in reply: “As a leader of the anti-war movement, the Congresswoman is committed to working with outside groups, her colleagues in the House, and her party's leadership to bring our troops home to their families in a safe and orderly manner."
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