Bove, whilst being able and an activist of the global justice movement, is somewhat of an unreliable maverick. represents an alternative to neo-liberalism has been severely dented by refusing to state clearly that she would refuse to participate in a SP government and by CP councillors participating in coalition administrations of local towns which are carrying through neo-liberal policies.
Bove, who has yet to get the 500 sponsorships necessary by March 19, supports a programme against neo-liberalism and has stated on some occasions that it is impossible to consider a governmental or parliamentary agreement with the Socialist Party.
Although campaigner against globalisation and in defence of the environment, he has not had the same profile that Besancenot has amongst youth and the union movement.
There also Arlette Laguiller of Lutte Ouvriere, who has been standing for the last 30 years. She has got a Loyal electorate of at least 2%, and has got the nominations required to be on the ballot. However, Lutte Ouvriere has been totally absent from the debates on the left and is quietly ploughing its own field.
Besancenot, the candidate of the LCR, has already got over 400 nominations and has been touring the country where workers have been fighting back such as Quebecor in Lille and Nestle in Quimperle. Local meetings have also been impressive in size, such as the one at the end of January in Gerardemer, a town of 10,000 in Alsace, where over 450 came to hear Besancenot even though it was snowing and the temperature was minus 5.
With the drift towards neoliberalism of the Socialist Party, dragging in its wake the Communist Party, there is a crying need for a unitary candidate to unite the French left. A "crying need", however, does not resolve the practical problem as to who that candidate should or could be.
This is the problem that has divided the LCR for months. Buffet is politically unacceptable given that she would participate in an SP government given half a chance and Bove, whilst being able and an activist of the global justice movement, is somewhat of an unreliable maverick.
Besancenot, the candidate of the LCR, is on the other hand the best candidate on offer both in terms of his politics and his popular appeal, though he would never be accepted as such by the other organisations.
In the current situation, the best way to strengthen the resistance to neo-liberalism is to see the biggest possible vote for Besancenot.
David Finkel Some hundreds of thousands marched against the Iraq war on January 27 in Washington,
called by the major antiwar
coalition United for Peace and Justice. UFPJ is calling for follow-up local demonstrations over the March 17 weekend, while a smaller coalition is calling for another march in Washington that day.
Dianne Feeley, a participant in the Labor Against War contingent on the 27th, notes: "One of the things that impressed me about the labor contingent was that it seemed pretty multiracial - Latino, African-American and white, although few Asian Americans -and multi-generational.
"I was particularly impressed with the SEIU (service employees union) youth of color. Union contingents I noticed were steelworkers, public employees, communications workers and teachers."
Another significant factor Feeley observed: "1 got a pretty good look at the vets/military families contingent, which seemed quite massive."
This points toward a reality that increasingly concerns American elites as George W. Bush ploughs ahead with his idiotic troop "surge" into Baghdad: besides the fact that nobody believes this move will work, it may bring closer the dreaded meltdown of the U.S. military reserves and National Guard units that bear the brunt of repeated and extended deployments.
The crisis in a nutshell: The U.S. population has turned massively against the war. Much of the political establishment, including Republicans outside the BushCheney bunker, recognise that it's a failure. 1s Military strategists not on the regime's payroll know that the troop "surge" cannot stabilize Iraq, but will create (to borrow Donald Rumsfeld's obscene phrase) a "target-rich environment" for resistance fighters and jihadists.
And there is increasing worry, openly voiced in the mainstream press, that an isolated Bush regime may opt for a final "Hail Mary pass" in the form of a military strike at Iran.
Why, then, does the money. keep flowing to fund an unpopular war in which there is nothing left to win, and possibly the whole Middle East to lose, by continuing it? Several factors have to be considered here.
First, there's the massive institutional power of the U.S. presidency, which in this administration has taken the shape of an imperial-messianic presidency, combined with the political cowardice of a Congress even with its new Democratic majority.
Fearful above all of the "stab in the back" and "unpatriotic" labels, the Democratic leadership gives free rein to anti-Bush rhetoric to blow off steam, but will not allow a serious fight over defunding Bush's escalation of the war -at least, not until and unless there's a clear ruling class consensus that this ruinous administration needs to be crippled.
Second, there's the lobby of the war profiteers, the militaryindustrial complex and the faction of neoconservative ideologues who still think that the full application of U.S. (and Israeli) firepower can overwhelm regional
SET 1199 Healthcard adversaries, particularly Iran.
But third - and underlying the sound and fury of empty sense-of-the-Congress nonbinding resolutions - there's the fact that U.S. imperialism, and its major political factions from hard right to liberal all desire ultimately to confront and decisively defeat Iran, to complete the crushing of Why, then, money keep flowing to unpopular Palestine, to isolate and replace the Syrian regime and any other real or potential alternative to American power.
(In the strategic long run, the threat of an alliance between an independent Iran and a rising Chinese power is a true imperial nightmare.).
Within the political establishment, the Bush regime is increasingly despised for its incompetence in imperial management - especially in entering a major war without a domestic political consensus, then in making a blundering fiasco of the occupation, and now in threatening war with Iran at the worst time and with no shred of confidence from the public.
In short, Iran may be the "right war but started by the wrong president at the wrong time in the wrong way.
That kind of "opposition" may play some role in holding back the most lunatic game plans of a desperate Bush administration today, but it's a bad sign for what may lie in store when this most ruinous of modern presidencies hands over in 2009 to a Hilary Clinton, Barack Obama, John McCain or whomever.
It's why the antiwar movement needs an independent, and above all clear and uncompromising, stand to "Bring the Troops Home Now!"
That must mean ALL the troops, and HOME - not from Iraq to Kuwait or Afghanistan or the Persian Gulf. The warmakers will stand down only when the American people and the military resisters stand up. David Finkel is an editor of AGAINST THE CURRENT, published by the U.S. socialist group Solidarity. A collection of recent articles on the spreading Middle East crisis is on the renovated website www.solidarityus.org.