Howard Zinn on the Left, Congress and the war

Chelsea Neighbors Against the War has reprinted Howard Zinn's latest piece on the Left, Congress and the war in Iraq http://www.chelseaneighborsunited.org/, which will appear in the May, 2007 issue of The Progressive.

At this moment when Congress is debating cutting-off funds for the this immoral and unpopular war, Zinn not only takes issue with the the "Democrats [who] are behaving with their customary timidity, proposing withdrawal, but only after a year, or eighteen months," but also with sectors of the left like "MoveOn, which polled its members on the Democrat proposal, saying that progressives in Congress, 'like many of us, don’t think the bill goes far enough, but see it as the first concrete step to ending the war.'"

So it is clear that Zinn's article is too urgent to wait for the print version of the May issue of The Progressive. I strongly urge you to check it out on the Chelsea Neighbors' website or that of The Progressive.

I think it's particularly important to herald the courage of the Democrats in the House who voted against the war-funding measure out of a commitment to ending the war NOW - Maxine Waters, Lynn Woolsey, Diane Watson and Barbara Lee, all of California, Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, John Lewis of Georgia, Mike McNulty of New York and Mike Michaud of Maine.

The Senate vote on a similar measure should happen any minute. And our posture toward these largely political votes will be very important. As Zinn says:

"When a social movement adopts the compromises of legislators, it has forgotten its role, which is to push and challenge the politicians, not to fall in meekly behind them.

"We who protest the war are not politicians. We are citizens. Whatever politicians may do, let them first feel the full force of citizens who speak for what is right, not for what is winnable, in a shamefully timorous Congress."