Is Total Silence on Iraq War and Terrorism
A Smart Labor Strategy for 2006 Election?

Leaders of the AFL-CIO and the Change to Win coalition have to concede that the American people, including their own members, are deeply concerned about what is happening in Afghanistan and Iraq and the confusing reports on the war on terrorism. These are issues that will certainly be on the minds of voters as they cast their ballots in the 2006 midterm elections.

So why are our leaders so doggedly determined to ignore these life-and-death issues and restrict labor's election campaign solely to domestic issues?

Without any mandate to do so, leaders of both labor federations have instituted a total blackout of news and information about the Iraq war, as though it is of no interest to America's working families.

The war in Iraq does not exist on any of the official labor web sites. There is no mention of the growing terrorist threat or the weaknesses of Homeland Security or the spying on U.S. citizens by the Bush administration. Not a statement about the rising toll of killed and wounded American soldiers or any comment in the current public debate about the fate of our 140,000 troops in Iraq.

Why has not AFL-CIO President Sweeney or SEIU President Andy Stern spoken up? If organized labor is bent on winning back the House and Senate, what better issues than the Bush administration's failures in Iraq and the war on terror?

Yet, the 48 members of the AFL-CIO Executive Council remain tight-lipped, in lock-step obedience to some unwritten command to say nothing about issues that have been agitating the public ever since we invaded and occupied Iraq more than years ago. Will any of them have the courage, if that's what it takes, to justify their behavior?

Even more disheartening is how the official labor press has fallen in line to blot out even a mention of what's happening in Iraq. What is the rationale for their silence? Can any editor explain who issued the blackout on Iraq and why union publications followed it so slavishly?

The Iraq War's Impact on Labor's Domestic Agenda

The Bush administration has been spending hundreds of billions of dollars in Iraq in a futile effort to turn it into a democracy. Since neither Bush nor the Democrats have an exit plan for American troops that is regarded as practical, the prospect is that we'll be occupying the country for the foreseeable future, with the continuing drain of countless billions that we and generations after us will have to pay for.

Thus, if we persist in giving Bush a blank check that tolerates all of his costly and self-defeating actions in Iraq, where will there be money for creating good jobs, providing a health-care plan that covers everyone; improving our pension system; making tuition loans more available; building more schools and day-care facilities; offering cheaper medicines for the sick and elderly, and doing other worthy things on labor's agenda?

Our unions should not shirk their responsibility to the 140,000 soldiers in Iraq (thousands of them are union members), who are courting danger every day, most of whom no longer understand why they're still there. We can't leave it to Bush and the war hawks in his administration to decide the fate of our soldiers. Since they cannot speak for themselves, we must speak for them.

That's why in the 2006 election, in addition to launching a full-scale attack on the anti-worker, anti-union policies of President Bush and the Republican controlled Congress, we must speak out to highlight how his policies in Iraq are hurting the American people.

Our two weekly columns (LaborTalk and The World of Labor) can be seen and downloaded at our Web site: www.laboreducator.org.

Harry Kelber's e-mail address is: hkelber@igc.org.