Stop the War against humanity.
Boycott War Now!

The U.S. war against Iraq has come and gone. What is the point of mounting a boycott of U.S. corporations now?
A boycott of U.S. corporations would in effect target the U.S. working class.
This boycott would have the effect of making the anti-war movement appear anti-American.
The war against Iraq is really about oil.  Why not just boycott U.S. oil companies?  All –U.S. producers” is too nebulous a target.
Practically speaking, how would people implement this? Would it be workable in our daily lives?
What would the potential economic impact of a worldwide boycott of U.S. corporations be?

Issue: The U.S. war against Iraq has come and gone. What is the point of mounting a boycott of U.S. corporations now?

Response: It is true that the attempts to launch an anti-Iraq war boycott of U.S. corporations - and all the other antiwar activities undertaken by people around the world - had little if any affect on the course of events with respect that war. But the boycott action advocated by GBP addresses much more than this single event. It addresses the aftermath of this war. It addresses the underlying drive by the U.S. for economic and political domination of the world, enforced by a massive military power. It addresses all the future military "adventures" and wars of aggression that will inevitably follow these most recent.

A trajectory of domination has been well articulated by the powerful members of the U.S. Bush Administration, and their supporters. We would invite you to visit the web site of Project For The New American Century (PNAC) for a good summary of the U.S. plans for the world. Participating in this group are some of the most influential actors and advisors to the Bush Administration - Dick Cheney (Vice President), Donald Rumsfeld (Sec'y of Defense), Paul Wolfowitz (Ass't Sec'y of Defense), Elliott Abrams (conficted felon, National Security Advisory staff), Dan Quayle (confirmed moron, former Vice President), William Bennett (habitual gambler, conservative Christian moralist, and prominent right-wing ideologue), Jeb Bush (brother to George W., Governor of Florida and major participant in coup d'etat that gave his brother the Presidency).

A review of PNAC's public documents confirms our claim that the war against Iraq is simply one step down a very dangerous and threatening path - one that the U.S. has clearly embarked upon. The U.S. Congress has just recently approved a $US 405,000,000,000 military budget for the next fiscal year. With this, it is obvious that it is not only the close circle of neo-fascists that advise the President, but the broad "bi-partisan concensus" in the U.S. polity that actively (the Republicans) or passively (the "centrist" Democrats) supports the PNAC agenda for the world.

Issue: A boycott of U.S. goods would in effect target the U.S. working class.

Response:  Here are some quick points that can be made at the outset of this discussion:

• Most U.S. jobs are still provided by small business, and we specifically advocate patronage of these kinds of businesses.
  
  
• The build-up to the Iraq war had the observed effect of destabilizing the economy and causing job loss. The policies of the Bush Administration have been devastating to U.S. workers: Compare the Bush record on job creation and retention with that of every U.S. administration since FDR.
  
  
• Conversely, if the U.S. were to reject militarism, it could apply political energy and resources toward not only job creation, but other things that workers need, like health insurance, education for themselves and their children, safe and economical transportation, community amenities like parks, etc.
  
  
• The companies that will benefit most from this war are ones that circulate huge wealth among small numbers of folks (e.g., Halliburton consulting, former stomping grounds of Dick Cheney, which will likely receive billions in contracts to formulate a plan to retool Iraqi oil production for reentry to the world market).
  
  
• People give up products or change brands and companies all the time and are not accused of putting people out of work. 
  
  
• For those people interested in a targeted as opposed to a general boycott: many of the targeted companies contribute to the weakening or collapse of local markets.  This strategy can help to put money into local economies, where it will bring greater yields to workers.
  
  
• Working class and lower-income young people are the ones most likely to serve and to die on behalf of the U.S. in this war.

Some additional points:

A boycott doesnêt affect the working class at all IF it is massively supported, along with all our other anti-war tactics - and the U.S. government is deterred from its projected "unending war".  In any case, it doesn't directly target workers, although layoffs would be a possible response by corporate employers if the boycott were effective and the U.S. government maintained its aggressive posture despite all opposition.  Please remember, as noted above, that we are asking people to do collectively something that any individual would be unimpeachable for doing on his or her own:  Exercising their right to choose the providers of the things they need, and reducing their spending for the things they don't. 

We are all workers, and we share the responsibility, costs and risks of our stand for peace. Weêve tried other tactics, from calling congress to marching in the streets. This is something else we can do, and we need to do all we can to stop this war. This may be a bitter pill for the U.S. peace/anti-war movement (less so for the movement elsewhere), but the alternative À a free hand to those who would make war À is so much worse.

The U.S. administrationês policies, unchallenged, hurt the U.S. working class. Forty-one million U.S. citizens À families of workers and the unemployed - are without health insurance, while the government wastes $400 billion per year on the military. Their policies, of war, globalization and economic domination backed by military might, hurt working people elsewhere around the world so much more.  If the issue is solidarity with workers, then that solidarity requires the most vigorous opposition possible to the looming "unending war" against the innocent people of the world.

Every strike, boycott, or slowdown that workers have undertaken, for the purpose of securing their rights as workers, has hurt workers.  These days, it is probable that more strikes fail than succeed because of the power and sophistication of the owners, and because of the owners' ability to play one group of workers against another.  The companies first claim, when a strike is mentioned, is "this will hurt you more than it will hurt us".  This bad logic is properly rejected by workers.  We are hearing exactly the same thing now, from those companies that are targeted by the ongoing Middle Eastern boycott of U.S. and Israeli goods, i.e., that Arab franchise holders and workers, not the parent companies such as McDonald's and Coca Cola, will be harmed.  And yet, the Arab people support these boycotts, because the harm done to Arabs by the Israeli occupation vastly outweighs that which may be done by the boycott.

Likewise, in choosing a boycott tactic, we have to weigh the potential for economic harm to workers against the unspeakable degree of harm to innocent Iraqis that the war caused.  The Bush administration planned, told the world about it, and bombed Iraq with the destructive equivalent of Hiroshima - via non-nuclear weapons -the notorious "Shock and Awe".  They said, there will be no safe place in Baghdad, and there wasn't: Tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis were killed, maimed, widowed, orphaned; thousands more are dying silently from poor sanitation, bad water, disease, lack of medicine and basic health care, starvation.   A boycott is a bitter pill.  But the "unending war" advocates in the U.S. government have made it abundantly clear that they doesn't care about the opinions of people in the streets.  We knew they didn't when we launched a boycott campaign months ago.  Their responses since Feb. 15 certainly confirm this.  But they care about what their corporate elite supporters think, and it is to this political reality that the boycott strategy is addressed.

One might consider how the Iraqis and other threatened peoples feel about a boycott of U.S. corporations to stop the war.  We have asked, and have registered no complaints from them.  Their opinions on the subject ought to count for something, since Iraqi workers and their families will be the victims, rather than the manufacturers of the bombs.

U.S. Jobs Gained (Lost), By Presidential Term Since 1945

Issue: This Boycott would have the effect of making the anti-war movement appear anti-American.

Response:  GBP rejects the charge that a boycott of U.S. corporations is anti-American. The boycott is anti-war, which is simply not the same thing 

The U.S. administration is pursuing this war –to protect U.S. security interests”.  But this canard has nothing to do with the well-being of the American people. When asked on Meet The Press (10/7/92) what those interests were, Richard Perle, the well known right-wing –expert” and hawk, now with the American Enterprise Institute, would not and could not say openly, so he indeed ducked the question, and his evasiveness of course went unchallenged.  But we know that –U.S. security interests” are actually the economic interests of U.S. corporations À interests that have everything to do with corporate profits and control of other peoplesê economic lives, and nothing to do with the safety of U.S. citizens.

The war does not help ordinary people in the U.S. - it hurts them.  Soldiers, mostly young people from the working-class, will be killed, injured, sickened.  The U.S. economy, already bad, is getting worse because of the anticipation of war.  Huge amounts of the nations wealth is misspent on the military while human needs - for health care and other human services, education, mass transit, etc. are being neglected.

War no longer stimulates the economy like it did in the WW-II, Korean War, and Vietnam War years, because business and money-making are so vastly different today.  According to NPR, in the past, war was seen to provide a boost to the US economy in the area of 40%.  Now it's only a meager 4%!  So American's shouldn't be fooled into thinking the U.S. economy will benefit from this.

Issue:  The war against Iraq is really about oil.  Why not just boycott U.S. oil companies?  All –U.S.  producers” is too nebulous a target

Note: This response, drafted by a 'general' boycott advocate, is borrowed from the IDEA boycott web site. You may have other thoughts on the question, which we invite you to share.

Response: This is a somewhat frustrating issue for us.  Boycotting oil - only - always comes up in our discussions about this much broader conception of a boycott.  People say, "The war is about oil.  What could be more logical and effective than to direct our actions against the oil companies that support, and stand to profit greatly from the war?"  We are against connecting this more broadly conceived boycott to one targeting only oil. 

Our reasons are:  First, it is not only the oil companies who support and stand to profit from this war.  A very broad and complex nexus of corporate interests provide the political and economic basis for these Mid-East regional wars.  All the suppliers of goods to the military, food, shoes, uniforms, vehicles, computers and software, ships and more - all of the things the civilian sector also uses - are sold in huge quantities to the military, for huge profits .  All these companies back the war making.  Perhaps more importantly, these companies all profit from the worldwide inequitable economic relations that the war-making enforces.  Thomas Friedman, the notorious editorialist for the New York Times has said,

"For globalisation to work, America canêt be afraid to act like the almighty superpower that it is. The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonaldês cannot flourish without McDonnell-Douglas, the designer of the F-15, and the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps."

To single out the oil companies misses this point, and exonerates all these other corporate sectors.  The Gulf War and the war against Afghanistan were waged as much by the U.S. corporate media as by the U.S. military.  Their job is to manufacture consent for the wars, and they do it very faithfully and effectively.   The media, with the assistance of the military, undertook the wars against Iraq and Afghanistan for one very good reason - because war was what their U.S. business sponsors wanted.

Second, if most U.S. corporate products (with appropriate exceptions) are to be boycotted to the extent that people are able to, then the oil companies will automatically be included in this effort.  People will participate at various levels.  Some, within their comfort zone; others well  past this level.  Some people may be able to reduce their consumption of petroleum products, and as part of our broader boycott, they certainly should.  Others will not be able to - perhaps because they don't own a car, perhaps because they have to drive as much as they do because they have no transportation options other than their car.  Those who can't do much to reduce use of petroleum products can still participate in this broader boycott effectively.  An oil-only boycott squeezes these people out.  The advantageous position, and the profits of the oil companies (and of the auto and other auto-related companies also) are literally designed and build into the U.S. landscape, in the form of urban sprawl, massive and extremely costly freeways, no room for bicycles, an abandoned railroad network, etc.  These companies understand that these factors force people to patronize oil and autos whether they like it or not.

Third, the U.S. oil companies have used up most of the U.S. oil reserves, so they need other peoples' oil to survive.  Iraq has a huge amount of oil, just waiting to be pumped by whoever controls the country.  The oil companies stand to gain much more through war than they would ever lose through even the most effective boycott.

Finally, the "oil only" approach is often offered as an answer to the charge that a general boycott of U.S. corporations is too large and too nebulous a target - that it would be too difficult for Americans in particular to do.  We reject this logic.  As stated above, an "oil only" approach makes boycotting more, not less difficult for people who have no alternative to their cars.  Further, it is neither possible nor necessary for each boycott participant to avoid all U.S. products.  Rather, we say most or much of what people need can be obtained from non-U.S.  sources, but there will inevitably be things you will have to buy from U.S. corporate producers.  This is not a problem.  Even if you have to buy something from GE, remember that the goal here is not to achieve purity in the –sourcing” of our daily needs.  The goal is to generate significant economic pain for the corporations.  For consumers, even the general boycott is not an –all or nothing” proposition.  If you need something not easily available from an alternate source, take care of your needs.  Above all, use common sense.  Make the easy choices first - oil may or may not be one of these.  As people gain experience with identifying alternative sources, the general boycott will become easier and more natural, and the need for an allegedly  simpler alternative strategy such as "oil only" will fade away.

Issue:  Practically speaking, how would people implement this?  Would it be workable in our daily lives?

Response: For Europeans, Japanese, etc. implementation would seem to be straightforward.  Donêt buy things that are identifiable as U.S. products.  Donêt buy things that arenêt identifiable as to source.

For people in the U.S., itês more complicated of course.  But make the easy choices first.  Whether you favor a general or a targeted boycott of U.S. corporations, GBP advocates that you patronize U.S. small businesses, "Mom & Pop" businesses, family farms, and especially cooperatives.

Following are some examples of alternative sources we can suggest, but an extensive list of alternatives doesnêt exist. A project of GBP is to produce such a list - perhaps an online facility where people can quickly look up recommended sources for commonly purchased goods and services.

Autos:  Re-arrange your life so you wonêt need to buy a new car.  Ride a bike.  Walk.   Organize a car pool or a co-op taxi service.  Buy a used car.  Buy a Japanese or European car, and make sure itês been built there, not here. 

Food:  Buy from a food co-op, buy imported items when appropriate and reasonable, join a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) network, buy from family farms, grow your own.

Clothing:  We have many options.  Buy from the thrift store.  Buy Fair Trade clothing.  The workers in the anti-war movement can help identify and publicize other foreign-made clothing that is non-U.S., and non-sweat shop produced.

Shelter:  Buy an existing home.  Rent.  Help organize a residential construction/remodeling co-op and build your own.

Issue:  What would the potential economic impact of a worldwide boycott of U.S. corporations be?

Response:  As a percentage of U.S. GDP, exports are about 10%, and imports are about 13%.  Consumer spending accounts for about 60% of the U.S. economy.  Perception and fear account for much of what has been happening in the U.S. economy lately, and we think the boycott may be effective in those terms, in addition to impacting corporate revenues and the very important component, market share.