{Chris Driscoll/The American Chronicle, 2/12/2008)

As a life-long activist in the labor, peace and social-justice movements, I´ve watched with amazement, wonder, and exhilaration as the American people gave us the most surprising primary races in decades; and that was just the first month! We have eight months to go and undoubtedly many surprises yet to come. The race among major party candidates has provided more highs and lows than a calliope on rocket fuel. However, we´ve already entered a new phase of the election cycle: the Republicans are putting aside their differences in order to unify around a strongly pro-war position. The Democrats have coalesced on a neck-and-neck race between two "triangulating" Iraq war funders whose differences are more about race, gender and style than substance. And the progressive left has, as usual, fallen into lockstep behind one or another corporate-owned Democrat like some enabling abused spouse. Honest progressives will admit that neither Sen. Hillary Clinton nor Sen. Barack Obama offer us—at this point—a seriously better chance of ending the war on Iraq and turning out attention—and tax dollars—toward desperate domestic needs than Sen. John McCain does.

Sen. Obama on his official campaign website says he will "immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. He will remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months." The last I heard, removing "combat brigades" could leave as many as 80,000 American troops in Iraq, not to mention the thousands of American mercenaries from companies like CACI, Titan and Blackwater, and a flood of American commercial vultures who have been just as destructive to that war-torn country as the troops and mercenaries have been. Sen. Clinton´s deceitful plan to continue the war and keep U.S. forces in Iraq in perpetuity is not any better than Obama´s. Neither Sens. Clinton nor Obama have agreed even to pledge to get the U.S. military out of Iraq by the end of their first term in 2013! And history is brutally clear on one important point: while Democrats in the last century have often promised to studiously avoid war while campaigning for president, they have never followed through once in office. President Lyndon B. Johnson, for a typical example, campaigned by casting Barry Goldwater as the guy who would turn Vietnam into an all-out war zone, but it was Johnson himself who did that as president. And this "talk peace, wage war" strategy goes way back with the Democratic presidential candidates: Woodrow Wilson in his 1916 campaign for re-election stumped on the slogans, "he kept us out of war," and "peace with honor." Yet by April 1917, the United States had entered the war that even Wilson himself later admitted was a fight between international commercial interests over who was to control lucrative international markets. Are the Democratic Party leaders of today any different; any better; any more courageous and committed to creating a world without war, even if corporate profits suffer as a result? Most Americans know at some gut level that for Democratic Party politicians commercial concerns always trump moral concerns or the concerns of the hard-working people. We´ve seen it far too often to deny it, even when we wish it were not so. Both Sens. Clinton and Obama are following a campaign model in regard to the War on Iraq that is most reminiscent of President Richard M. Nixon when in his 1968 campaign he promised to get us out of the Vietnam War in 6 months. That was even quicker than Sen. Obama´s 18 month promise. But after Nixon was elected, there were "complications," just as we can expect there will be "complications" for Sens. Clinton or Obama. When you know in advance that these "complications" will develop unless we are successful at building a powerful and large enough anti-war juggernaut, you can understand why some prefer the brutal honesty of a Sen. John McCain, who is at least truthful about his intentions.

From the perspective of the labor, peace and social justice movements, we are now left with little-to-no maneuvering room within the Democratic Party, the party progressive movements traditionally have looked to since the 1930s for allies and alliances. With the withdrawal of Dennis Kucinich, Bill Richardson and John Edwards, there is little chance that the pro-people, anti-war position will have any leverage at the Democratic Party nominating convention, not inside the convention hall in any case. The demonstrations outside the hall will probably remind us of the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago.

Corporate America has already won the election. With Sens. Clinton, Obama and McCain, their interests are hedged three ways while the rest of us lose on all counts. The presidential campaign will be at the center of the public discourse from now till November 4. We are left with only one reasonable alternative if we hope to force our issues into this year´s national public debate: support the independent peace and justice candidate with the biggest megaphone, Ralph Nader!

http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/...