Antiwar leaders stymied, frustrated

There really is nothing new of note here except it just takes on what all of know from a different angle.

A well-known antiwar leader has gone public with the transcript of a private conference call that shows peace activists are exasperated with the Democratic congressional leadership and at a loss for a long-term strategy.

The Aug. 29 call highlights divisions in the Democratic Party that Republicans are gearing up to try to exploit as Congress debates its response to the report on Iraq this week by Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker.

On Monday, the pair begins two days of testimony on Capitol Hill.

Republicans say the call reflects the degree to which war opponents have failed to gain the advantage that many in both parties thought would build over the summer.

Rabbi Michael Lerner, the editor of Tikkun magazine, posted the transcript Friday on the Web site of the Network of Spiritual Progressives, of which he is a co-chair.

The transcript reveals that opponents of the war in Iraq have decided to first try to enlist conservative Democrats, before moving on moderate Republicans. The call shows they are having little success because of fears about the impact on next year’s elections if the party is seen as defeatist.

The call, which Lerner titled “Strategizing with leaders of the Anti-War Movement,” included two sympathetic members of Congress and representatives of groups ranging from Code Pink to the Progressive Democrats of America.

Lerner -- who is based in Berkeley, Calif., and is a leader of what he calls “the religious left” -- told Politico in a phone interview on Sunday that he concluded from the call that the antiwar movement does not have a long-term strategy, even though the war “is going to continue through the end of President Bush’s administration” and perhaps into the term of the next president.

Lerner said he posted the transcript in an effort to persuade war opponents that they need “some fundamentally new thinking.”

“Right now, we could write the story of this Congress as ‘Profiles in Cowardice,’” Lerner said. “There’s a great deal of frustration with the Democrats in the Congress – a sense almost of betrayal. The Democrats don’t have – and even the people in the antiwar movement don’t have – a coherent alternative worldview from which to base a strategy. That’s why they end up debating everything on the same terms that the Republicans do.”

Via Politio.