I'm one of those mythical MoveOn 'members.' Meaning, I signed up in 2004 to vote in some poll they had and, even though I've never given them any money and don't ever bother to use their action alerts and have had nothing to do with them since 2004, they continue to e-mail me and they continue to count me as a member.
When I was vaguely interested in MoveOn, it was when they at least pretended to care about the Iraq War. Six years later and they don't even bother. They e-mailed twice last week. Once to tell me "How To Steal An Election." I didn't open that one because I figured they were just bragging about how they helped Barack steal the 2008 Democratic Party primary election. The other was entitled "Sign this pledge" which I only opened because I thought it said, "Sing this pledge" and was interested in what song they wanted sung. It advised me that I needed to sign a petition ("Fight Washington Corruption") because they didn't have enough signatures in my House members' district. 'My' House member's district. That's from my grandmother's home. I was raised by my grandparents (great people, I owe them big). I have lived at C.I.'s since 2006 and I now vote out here. Anyway, the e-mail was signed by "Ilyse, Amy, Lenore, Milan, and the rest of the team." You know things are bad when you don't even recognize the 'faces' of a group.
And you know things are bad when reports about Jawad Bolani (Interior Minister of Iraq) going around Nouri al-Maliki (sitting prime minister) to meet up with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard fly but, somehow, we don't see any reporting on that from any outlets.
One of the most depressing things in my inbox may be "Seeds of Peace." Excuse me, "Highlights: Seeds of Peace." And why is that depressing? Because it comes not from an anti-war or peace organization but from the US State Department.
In fact, the only one e-mailing last week about Iraq was Debra Sweet of World Can't Wait and I'll include all of the links from her e-mail:
It's so strange for someone like me who grew up with the Iraq War taking place and remembers when the Iraq War actually meant something and the left was actually opposed to it and chanted slogans about "Bring the troops home now!" and wanted the wars ended not a year from now or two years from now but right away.
Of course, most of them never meant it. They just wanted to get Bush out of office and they saw the illegal war as an easy thing to rally around. Those are the ones who voted in another War Party candidate but work really hard to pretend that guy with the light tan isn't a War Hawk.
I work these days, no longer in college, so I'm not on campus and I don't go on the road with Ava, C.I., Kat and Wally. But I do ask the four of them for details and I do check with Dona (who schedules them). I hear about how college students are interested in Iraq and, from Dona, that the demand's actually higher now for them to speak than at any time in the last four years. I asked Kat about it this morning and she said she felt like a lot of the Democrats who used to come were no longer there. Not all, but a lot. In their place, you had Greens, Republicans and people who would have been Democrats or just left the Democratic Party over the War Hawk Barack.
Kat asked me what I'd talk about if I was on the road with them?
It's a good question and my answer was I'd talk about after the illegal war. Not because I think the Iraq War has ended or is about to but because I think we need to be talking about how we make right the damage the US has done? I believe we do that financially.
I do not believe we do that by keeping bases in the country or soldiers on the ground there.
But I am starting to realize that there will be no reparations made to Iraq. Not under a Republican, not under a Democrat. Because it's one War Party and they wanted this war and they continued it. Most of all, these people, these apathetic people who walked away from the war? They appear to think it's over. And yet they've done nothing to call for reparations for Iraq or to insist that we offer financial aid or any other humanitarian thing.
But that's the way it goes when you reduce a war to a campaign promise -- you sort of expect it to be broken and forgotten.