This is from a post today at the DailyKOS, encapsulating the very real scenario that the left is really not the sole preserve of antiwar ideology, and indeed that a strong site of dissent is in fact on the right. I've always felt that the left right paradigmn was a very artificial reification, and now it seems that it is busting apart altogether. I've noticed this in Canada, too, with rightist pro-Harperites criticizing the (obstensibly) left Liberal party for being pro-torture and increased militarization, although from a perusal of Libblogs during the Gaza fiasco I would argue that there are a number of anti-agressionistas still closeted in the Liberal party, whereas I don't necessarily get that sense in Harper's cabinet- well maybe with some people, but I'm too smart to name names.

So what is to be done when the Democrats and the Republicans present a united pro war front, and seek to marginalize those of us who continue to point out the insanity of America's ongoing wars and the war crimes being committed in the process? As right wing opposition gradually grows stronger as more and more right wingers take on the anti war position as a way to criticize Obama and the Democrats, will the marginalized left wing anti war forces stand by and let the movement be redefined as a conservative opposition movement in the vein of conservative opposition to FDR's bringing the US into the Second World War? Or can an apolitical ant war movement transcend the fairly arbitrary American political dualism (for the life of me I can't tell the centrists apart - though the bomb throwers on both sides do come off different even if they both throw their bombs in the service of the same regime and the bombs seem to always land on brown people in the Third World who happen to be sitting on some natural resources).

The same dynamic, incidentally, is in play also in the domestic counterpart to America’s militarism abroad, the internal police state. There are those on both the left and the right who stand against the increasingly militarized police forces, in their zero tolerance rampage, packing our prisons with millions of our countrymen. Those on the right oppose it because they think it’s the prelude to a coming totalitarian regime, and those on the left oppose it because of civil rights considerations and the obvious racism and classism of the police state. Those on the left think the right wing opponents are paranoid militia wackos, and those on the right think the left wing opponents are bleeding hearts or reverse racists or some such thing. As a result, both sides of the opposition remain marginalized, as the center continues to expand the police forces, pass more draconian sentencing laws, and build more prisons.

I know that for the people here, the political divisions are very significant, and an alliance with libertarian forces is out of the question, in contradiction to Barack Obama’s own favored approach of seeking out such areas of agreement in order to come together as a nation. Bipartisanship is acceptable on war funding bills, but not on war opposition, it appears. But at what point do our duty to humanity and the absolute moral imperative to oppose butchers as they systematically cleave their way across the globe transcend American domestic politics and link all of the people opposed to war together, regardless of their other political positions? Is the construct of the American two party system so strong as to override such moral concerns? Are the psychological barriers created within us by systematic indoctrination dividing the people into warring camps too great to overcome, even while the actual disagreements between the camps largely come down to symbolic issues and 93-1 votes to expand the wars? Because if they are, the anti war movement in American will remain impotent and marginal, as the militarists intend it to be, and the world will continue to tremble under the boot of the American "liberators."