The mass internet-based liberal organization MoveOn.org— which opposed the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq– is not calling for withdrawal of US forces.
This sign of political maturity has drawn the ire of antiwar writer Norman Solomon.
MoveOn.org executive director Eli Pariser told Solomon that there was no consensus among members on withdrawal from Iraq. Perhaps more than a handful of those members have come to understand the potential calamity of a precipitate withdrawal. But Solomon says the group should be backing a damn-the-consequences, get-out-of-Iraq-now resolution in Congress (Introduced before the January 30 election, the resolution nevertheless proclaims the election a failure.)
Solomon writes:
MoveOn.org pioneered the use of email and web technologies as creative tools to further its political agenda. Now that the MoveOn agenda on the Iraq war has tumbled into the shallow depths of the Potomac, some similar online activism will be needed if MoveOn’s dive is going to be merely temporary…
Friends don’t let friends drive drunk, and peace advocates do a lot more than shrug when a previously great antiwar organization starts to get lost.
Solomon points to a new group called Progressive Democrats of America, which, he reports, is picking up the antiwar banner that MoveOn.org dropped. I consider myself a progressive Democrat, but one who still doesn’t grasp how leaving Iraqis to the mercy of a fascist “resistance” is in any sense progressive.
