A Candid Open Letter to the Left About Iran and Beyond.

Dear Colleagues and Comrades:

Today the flyers and banners say “STOP THE WAR ON IRAN.” Two weeks ago they said, “STOP THE WAR ON VENEZUELA” or “STOP THE WAR ON CUBA” or “STOP THE WAR ON GAZA.” And of course we easily recall the ones that said “STOP THE WAR ON IRAQ/AFGHANISTAN/YEMEN/SOMALIA/VietnamETC. ETC.”

By Mike Ferner, Navy Corpsman 1969-73 – Veterans For Peace

Personally, when I see those banners parading through my lifetime, I get sick to my stomach.

How many years…decades…and for some of us GENERATIONS will we be OK taking to the streets in righteous anger, maybe get arrested here and there, forming bucket brigades for one fire after another?

With many valiant, dedicated movement colleagues for over 50 years I’ve done all the above.  Most recently, on March 4, a jury refused to convict five of us who blocked our U.S. Senator’s office here in Toledo for over two hours.  But I also firmly believe we have to talk about and act on fire prevention instead of just fire fighting.

There is no question we are experts at fire fighting, at opposing the serial horrors rolled out by the U.S. empire.  For that matter, we are experts at fighting what the highway lobby, the health insurance industry, the toxic waste industry, Big Ag, and the chemical industry throw at us, too.

I’m talking primarily about working for peace, but also including our struggles for universal health care, mass transit, sustainable agriculture, an energy policy based on more than just how quickly we can burn our planet.

So when do we start striking at the root of the problem and not just the branches?  What can we do to prevent the empire’s murder and arson sprees instead of just reacting to them?  How long do we want to walk in circles with the same signs expecting something different to happen?  This is the question that bedevils me – and it is not a rhetorical question.

The U.S. doesn’t cause every evil in the world, just a hugely disproportionate share. We, and so much of the Earth, struggle to survive these crises because, myths aside, we do not govern this country.  Most people reading this would agree we are run by corporate elites with enormous wealth at their disposal, enabling them to do all the aspects of governing.  They buy the politicians, write the legislation, insure it is interpreted for them and their shareholders’ benefit to the exception of all else.  Marine Corps General Smedley Butler’s pamphlet, “War Is A Racket” laid it out clearly almost 100 years ago…and it has only gotten worse.

Our health care policy is written by insurance companies, our foreign policy is written by weapons manufacturing corporations, our transportation policy is written by the Highway Lobby.  Corporations have achieved this privileged status primarily because the Supreme Court has usurped for them all the constitutional protections originally meant only for human beings.  That story has been carefully traced and laid out in brief, plain language.

The way to reverse that history of corrupt usurpation is also laid out in plain language.  Here’s former Transportation Secretary, Pete Buttigieg boiling it down to one minute, 15 seconds.

As he clearly says, it will not be a quick fix.  There aren’t any.  But if we can change the constitution so you can’t drink beer, and then change it back so you can, clearly it’s possibile, as suffragists proved with a persistent campaign to get voting rights for women and the NAACP proved with a decades-long strategy to abolish Jim Crow.

The critical part of ending corporate rule is in our minds.  That’s where the bars of the prison are. When we break out of those prison bars and see ourselves not just as taxpayers or customers or consumers or workers but as “We the People,” from which all authority flows according to the Constitution, then we can accomplish anything.  On the way there, victories like in Minneapolis when people came together to provide for their neighbors, booted out ICE, and even held a general strike, we will see ourselves not just as victims of the system but as people able to democratically run the show for the good of all.

That requires, however, that we learn this history and find ways to articulate it, while we make our demands for peace, health care, clean air, clean water and a sustainable planet.  It’s not hard to do.  Here’s my attempt to include it at a Gaza ceasefire rally in two minutes.