[PEN-L:6183] House Rejection of NATO's War Shows Power of Opposition

[Robert Naiman <naimanr@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Sunday Journal, Washington DC
May 2, 1999
Robert Naiman
"On the Left"

House Rejection of NATO's War Shows Power of Opposition

The oft-repeated claim that structures of injustice are
invincible is one of the Big Lies. It appears in such forms
as: "you can't beat City Hall" or "you can't change human
nature." It's as untrue as it is pervasive -- people do
beat City Hall, abolish slavery, overthrow Apartheid, end
Jim Crow, stop wars. Effective movements for social change
are as much a part of human history as war, violence, and
oppression.

It's in the interest of power to downplay the fact that
ordinary people can and do change the world, and instead
promote the false view that things are as they have always
been and always will be. The corporate-owned mass media
reflect this view that profound social change can't happen,
or only happens in some other country or time or due to
some Great Leader.

The Washington Post is a good example of a newspaper that
always downplays the opposition. On foreign policy, the
Post is virtually an arm of the State Department. It's a
"legitimate target" for protest by opponents of  the war by
NATO's logic that Serbian TV was a legitimate target for
NATO bombing. On April 28, the U.S. House of
Representatives voted to reject the NATO airwar on
Yugoslavia. Such repudiation of a U.S. war by the House so
early in the conflict is unprecedented since the beginning
of the Cold War. During the Vietnam War it took years
before Congressional opposition reached anything
approaching this level. But you might have missed it in the
next day's Post, buried at the bottom of page A27 without
any sense of its significance. Indeed, it's followed by a
quote from an Administration official saying the vote
didn't mean anything.

In contrast, The New York Times, generally supportive of
the Administration but not nearly so slavishly as the Post,
gave the news a front-page headline above the fold:
"Deadlocked House Denies Support for Air Campaign: Also
Wants Last Say on Troops on Ground." The Washington Times
also gave the news the front-page banner headline it
deserved: "HOUSE REFUSES TO BACK AIR WAR ON SERBS: SEPARATE
VOTE DENIES FUNDS FOR DEPLOYING GROUND FORCES."

The House vote was as close as could be. The resolution
supporting the bombing failed 213-213. Twenty-six Democrats
voted against the Administration and against the bombing.
This group included some of the most progressive Members of
the House, like Dennis Kucinich, Cynthia McKinney, Barbara
Lee, Jesse Jackson Jr., and Pete Stark. It also included
Members who are less likely to challenge the
Administration; these Members voted their districts, which
have been pounding their offices with anti-war sentiment.
Thus, a handful of activists have succeeded in dealing a
significant defeat to U.S. foreign policy. To paraphrase
Margaret Mead, never doubt that a handful of committed
individuals can damage the Empire.

Comparing Democrats who voted against the bombing to the
Democrats that opposed the Administration's request last
year for $18 billion in funding to the International
Monetary Fund, there is, not surprisingly, a lot of
overlap. The IMF and NATO have a lot in common. Both serve
as a multilateral facade for policies determined in
Washington. Both exist to undermine the national
sovereignty of small countries, one economically, the other
militarily. Both are supported by a lot of "well-
intentioned liberals," who prefer rhetoric to reality and
harbor deep illusions about the nature of the Empire. These
"liberals" like the idea of intervening to prevent ethnic
cleansing, so they support NATO, which has massively
facilitated ethnic cleansing, while our missiles kill
Serbian and Albanian civilians. These "liberals" want to
help people in other countries, so they support the IMF,
the World Bank, and U.S. foreign aid, which destroy the
economies of other countries. Meanwhile the costs of Empire
are "coming home to roost." The NAFTA-IMF-WTO trade deficit
destroys U.S. manufacturing, while war veteran Timothy
McVeigh and wannabe soldier Eric Harris demonstrate lessons
learned from the U.S. military. Some liberals refuse to
understand that the best way to help people in other
countries, and working people in the U.S., is to reduce,
not increase, the power of the Empire.

Republicans have broken the "rule" that "politics stops at
the water's edge," a legacy of the Cold War. Good riddance.
The willingness of Republicans to vote against the Empire
has created an opening that hasn't existed in 50 years. If
German Greens follow the House's example, it could stop the
war.

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Robert Naiman <naimanr@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Preamble Center
1737 21st NW
Washington, DC 20009
phone: 202-265-3263
fax:   202-265-3647
http://www.preamble.org/
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