Aside from those two pts, Mrs Lincoln…

I’m glad that you have a perspective for growth during the election year, to try to make the war a central issue and hold the candidates accountable (as opposed to some segments of the movement who seek to limit and atomize protest so as not to “embarrass” the Dems, a strategy that didn’t work for UFPJ in 2004 and isn’t working for them in 2008). I also agree with the need to put pressure on whoever is elected. I don’t think it matters so much who is in office, but whether or not the anti-war movement (along with the resistance in Iraq and the GI resistance) can force a situation where the US ruling class perceives the cost of remaining in Iraq as greater than that of withdrawing. Even Bush would end the war in that situation, as even Nixon’s (another “madman”) policy around Vietnam was seriously influenced by the pressure placed on him.

That said, I disagree that the root cause of US imperialism is a mindset. Rather, the mindset that leads to ongoing war stems from the control of the US government by a class of people who have real material interests in US hegemony in the Middle East, a goal that they see as achievable through a combination of diplomacy and war. And war can increase bargaining power in diplomatic negotiations. For example, the US ruling class realized that the Vietnam war was not winnable after Tet, but they continued the slaughter for several years. The message: if you resist the goals of US imperialism, your people will suffer unfathomable miseries. Similarly, the Japanese were willing to surrender WWII (although not unconditionally…they wanted protection for the Emperor) before the US dropped two atomic bombs on major population centers, killing hundreds of thousands and causing birth defects and cancer for generations, but the Truman jumped at the (rare) chance to show what a nuclear weapon can do to a city full of people, and to show they can do it more than once. The message: don’t mess with us or we will slaughter your civilians…we don’t care, we’re crazy and will do anything to get what we want.

The US ruling class needs to go to war to achieve its goal of domination of the Middle East, and with it control of the world’s largest supply of energy resources (vital leverage for US capital against emerging competition like China) because it cannot control every country in the ME through diplomacy, and because diplomacy is not as effective without “all options” being on the table. It’s like the bully who generally gets what they want by threatening violence: if they don’t beat someone up every now and then, kids stop taking them seriously and stop giving them their lunch money. And then there is the danger of another bully (China, Russia, etc.) coming along and taking the lunch money the first bully used to take.

To change the mindset that leads to war, we need to change the material conditions that encourage that mindset, that create a situation where a brutal war that is against the interests of the vast majority of Iraqis and Americans is in the interests of a small elite with control of the most powerfully destructive military in the history of the world.

Does that mean that Obama doesn’t agree with say grass-roots organizing? Of course not. He started there. And I do give him a point for voicing the importance of bottom up. It’s the biggest hang up we have in this authoritarian driven country (vote for so and so and he’ll “protect us” from the “bad guys” or leadership will guide us out of this darkness).

Kucinich was the Democratic candidate who wanted to dismantle the corporate military industrial complex and all of its raison d’être(NFAFA, WTO, World Bank). Nader and McKinney offer a real alternative for enduring peace, not Obama. We are once again left with a lesser deal. Obama’s play is to keep the peace movement at bay (and off-balance), not to embrace it.

Nevertheless, it has been my contention that a practical conclusion to this election is to end up with a President who does as little harm as possible and allows that grass-roots (and even promotes it) to happen. I think a guy like Dodd could have achieved that, but Hillary won’t and Obama is what is left.

I want to see a longer term vital alternative. A coalition of progressive, independents and yes, there are some very progressive green-libertarians join forces and begin to make fundamental change. That will take more than one election and it will be bottom-up, and mostly local and congressional. Growing the voice and the power. It aint going to happen from the top. Kucinich, with all his right-on ideas could not have made this happen - and in some ways might have created the detrimental “backlash” that does in every critical effort (look we’re just starting to regain our footing on the environment after 35 years of dormancy - we’re returning to where we left off because of the “backlash” factor).