After more than six months of trying to see Senator Maria Cantwell to talk to her about the war in Iraq, a group of peace activists from Washington State finally got their chance on Monday, April 10, 2006. There were nine of us: Alice Woldt, Dan Merkel, Yousif Fargo, Bert Saks, Judith Shattuck, Carl Schwartz, Mike Dedrick, Lietta Ruger, David Edelman, and myself, John Repp. The Senator was with her chief of staff, Kurt Beckett and another aide whose name I did not get.
We were able to pull together a delegation after hearing on Friday afternoon that the Senator would see us on the following Monday. We divided the parts of the message we each would present to her, with the last person focusing on our most specific request. "Do you, Senator Cantwell, support John Kerry's latest position on Iraq, calling for the U.S. to set two deadlines and begin pulling forces out by the end of this year, at the latest?" (
http://www.commondreams.org/... )
Kerry's position has some problems. The first deadline is essentially a call for the redeployment of American forces to "garrisoned status" by May 15 if the Iraqis cannot form a unity government. However, our group decided that if we could nudge her to unite with Kerry that would be a step forward. For months and months now, many Iraqis have been calling for the U.S. to stop patrolling in Iraq and return to their bases, set a deadline for withdrawal, and call for an international summit. Kerry's position seems close to that.
Our group's facilitator introduced each of us and explained that we wanted to focus on the war in Iraq and talk about the future, not the past. She thanked the Senator for her courageous work on the environment and immigration. She told the Senator that we definitely do not want another Republican in the Senate from Washington State, but that the Senator has a responsibility to unite the base of the Democratic Party by reclaiming the moral high ground on the issue of the war. She explained the format we wanted, our talking first, followed by give and take and that we assumed the meeting was "for the record". To her credit, Senator Cantwell accepted our format and followed it well.
Then several long-time Democratic activists told the Senator that she could not ignore the war any longer. There were real and "acerbic" conflicts in party in the Seattle area legislative districts because she was not taking a strong position against the war. For example, 2500 party activists were contacted by e-mail and two-thirds of them said they would not vote at all in the General Election or would vote Green if she did not change her position on the war. One third did not know what they would do but were frustrated. We told the Senator very clearly that she needed to address the issue very soon.
A Veterans for Peace activist told her that U.S. options in Iraq are stark: lose the war and lose the army or simply just lose because the "wheels are coming off the Army". They cannot meet commitments for troop strength due to falling enlistments, which even the huge bonuses have not fixed. The Seattle P-I had an article that very day saying West Point graduates are leaving the service as soon as possible in numbers not seen in years.
A Military Families Speak Out (MFSO) activist, who has two family members ready to deploy in Iraq after already having served there, told the Senator she was a "normal" person before the war, but now is forced to be an "advocate" for our soldiers. Our soldiers face retaliation if they speak out so that is why MFSO members advocate for them. Her family members were told they were going to go back to Iraq whether or not they reenlisted, so they reenlisted and now face redeployment. Some of our soldiers have been sent back to Iraq for the fourth time.
An Iraqi-American told the Senator that day-to-day life in Iraq now is "a living hell". When they leave the house in the morning, they never know if they will return. They have 2 or 3 hours of electricity a day and little or no clean water. They want their country and their future back. This will not be possible until the Americans leave. Iraqi family members and friends ask him: "Don't Americans read history books?" They tell him that if we had read history, we would not have invaded Iraq.
Another peace activist told the Senator that he had been to Iraq 9 times since 1996 and had lived in the Middle East in Israel for 5 years. He said there is a huge gap between what Americans believe about Iraq, and both the current "facts on the ground" and the history of the last 15 years. Then he asked the Senator if she had read the article by Sy Hersh in the recent New Yorker. She said that she had not, but had heard a lot about it. He then said he wanted the Senator to say, as publicly as possible, that the U.S. does not have the right to initiate a war with
Iran unless the U.N. is consulted and authorizes it. A war based on any other reason is an illegal war of aggression, what the Nuremberg Charter called the supreme international crime.
Our next speaker told the Senator about the high hopes engendered by her victory of 6 years ago. "She will change things" was the perception. He said that usually no one person can change the "power dynamics", but that we see an opening right now on the issue of the war in Iraq. This Administration is always "testing"' us and we need to move now, "in a major way" not just incrementally. So many people are frustrated and apathetic. The Senate Delegation from Washington can lead the way to a major transition.
Finally, it was my turn. I told the Senator about the INOC withdrawal strategy
http://www.scn.org/... , specifically the first point asking the U.S. to renounce interest in controlling the Iraqi economy and government and to renounce plans for permanent military bases in Iraq. Could she agree publicly to these principles? Would she put a statement to that effect on her website and put it in letters to constituents. I said I thought the sticking point to a political settlement in Iraq is the Bush Administration's unwillingness to honor those principles. I told her she did not have "to honor the tradition of a bipartisan foreign policy when the President lies to the Congress to justify starting a war in part for domestic political advantage." I also told her about how the labor movement is against the war and sees the connection between attacks on the unions here and the attacks on the unions in Iraq. I told the Senator about the night in the Labor Temple when I heard an Iraqi union brother telling local activists how "the U.S. Occupation Authority continued to enforce a 1987 law decreed by Sadaam Hussein prohibiting unions and collective bargaining." She was surprised to hear that.
Then, the Senator was asked directly, "Do you support the Kerry position?" She said "I support many of his points." She said she supports his second deadline, which in Kerry's statement reads: setting "a schedule for withdrawing American combat forces by year's end". She said she voted for that in the Warner Amendment to bill S. 1042 on November 2005. Her chief of staff gave us all a copy after the meeting. It calls for 2006 to be "a period of significant transition to full Iraqi sovereignty" but is not as clear about a deadline to begin withdrawing troops no matter what happens. It makes the training of enough Iraqi security forces the condition for "phased redeployment". The Warner Amendment and the Senator did talk about getting international support and "support in the neighborhood" as part of a solution and even admitted, in a side comment, that the Bush Administration stops the U.N. from playing a positive role in this regard. She said it truly is an embarrassment that there is less gasoline and electricity in Iraq now that before the war.
When the Senator talked several times about "training more Iraqi security forces" as part of the solution, several from our delegation reminded her of two facts. 1) It takes at most 3 months to train American high school graduates to be "combat ready" and we have been in Iraq 3 years. 2) Some of the "Iraqi security forces" shoot at American forces and many Iraqis consider them "gangs" who may come in the night and drag people out of their homes and execute them.
There were times when I thought I heard the Senator say things that indicated she gets it, she's with us. Then we would say to her, make this more public. "Can we help you magnify your message." But then there were times when I thought, no, she doesn't get it, no, she basically supports the Administration. For example, and I know this is "from the past", but when Bert said, that the United States, by invading Iraq without the U.N Security Council approval, had broken international law, and that Kofi Annan had said as much, the Senator made a truly disappointing statement. She said the first Gulf War had ended in a cease-fire. "We were at a cease-fire agreement" she said. Was she implying that the invasion was in effect a continuation of the first war and because of something she thought Sadaam did, we had the right to break the ceasefire and invade? That was an idea the Bush Administration floated before the war to justify their idea that they did not really need either Congressional approval or U.N. Security Council approval to invade. Even they dropped that one and went to Congress and the U.N.
The last thing I remember the Senator saying was "we need to energy independence", which indicates to me that she knows what this war is about. We can agree with her there, on both counts.
There was a whole lot more said during our hour and a half with the Senator. It would take hours to write up the whole thing. The point of difference I think remains: set a schedule for withdrawal or withdrawal when there is "security". We do not think we moved her to our position but we hope what we said may later bear some fruit. We plan to continue to communicate with her.