I've recently been in this nation's Capitol, and gotten a chance to see where a lot of the big 'peace groups,' if you will, are at with this whole thing, and the kinds of problems they're running into with organizing for big actions.

Now, the first major obstacle I've noticed is, of course, funding. In the 21st century, it appears that the common citizenry has largely been alienated from the vast wealth of the American economy that many politicians have claimed is, in fact, booming, and expanding, despite economist reports to the contrary (for more on the state of our economy, Google "Economy In Crisis").

Secondly, I have noted a lack of fluid communication. It would seem to me that, in this day and age where people can yap at other people across the world with the use of a tiny chunk of electronic wonder at any given moment, this would hardly be a problem. Yet it appears that different elements of many peace organizations are having a tough time with coordinating key events that allow for a generous press opportunity or a good outreach to active-duty military.

Finally, I have noticed a lack of agenda focus. I understand that this is a difficult one for all organizations, including ours, because it is apparent that there are scores and scores of agendas within the 'peace movement' as a whole, and, oftentimes, these tend to overlap to certain degrees, and everybody is trying to get that precious limelight that the mainstream media is being very careful to sanitize of the key voices that I believe will make a huge difference in the efforts of the 'peace movement.'

Now, I reckon that these three problems (and there may very well be more, but I'm generalizing for simplicity) are all related. What I mean by that is that they are merely symptoms of a larger problem. And I believe that problem is that many organizations, including this one, are lacking the key element of any democratic initiative: a strong, social core.

A movement can only be truly successful in bringing about lasting change if it is a movement of the very society that it rises up from. Right now, the movement is very heavily politicized. What that means is that we're only really focusing on soundbites, and getting those juicy press bits, and conducting actions that we hope will get people to notice.

These efforts have not been -entirely- in vain, but I ask you to look to the 'average' citizenry, or even the 'average' member of a given peace organization. Despite the fact that the polls show that over 70% of Americans are opposed to this war, we have yet to see a true mobilization against it. We have our symbolic rallies, we have our Congressional 'visits,' which tend to be just the same people going over to the offices, getting arrested after being recognized from the last visit, fined, released, and going back to 'visit' again, and we have our street theater and similar actions.

Overall, however, I feel that these are, at best, producing slight effects, with regards to the war in Iraq. The Republicrats are, for the most part, saying they oppose the war, but, for the most part, are still voting for it, and offering the American people the same tired excuses for their failure over and over again. Now, I don't know about you folks, but I know I must have annoyed my mother when I did the same kind of thing as a small child.

What I am proposing is that we need to really build this movement as a real citizen movement, one that has our country united on a personal level, with individual people really feeling for one another. I look at the cultures of other countries, especially Iraq, and I notice that, if something goes down in the neighborhood, the whole neighborhood is outraged and doing something about it, personally!

I feel that we can start within ourselves, the Iraq Veterans Against the War, by reaffirming our personal connections with one another, and remembering that we are a group of individual human beings that have served in America's military, and are committed to bringing our brothers and sisters home, giving reps to the Iraqi people for the damage that we caused in their sovereign land, and making sure that all of our brothers and sisters, not only from this war, but from all actions of the American military, receive the honor and care they were promised as Servicemembers, past and present.

I believe that by reaching out to one another and truly uniting in this movement, we will achieve a sense of the camaraderie that many of us felt within our units, the camaraderie that produces groups of men and women who know and acknowledge the strengths and weaknesses of each individual, who know what the group is capable of, and who can efficiently work together to achieve a collective goal.

I have seen the awesome solidarity for the struggles of Adam Kokesh, Liam Madden, and Cloy Richards, and I believe that by continuing to strengthen our bonds with one another, we can create a strong national network that can coordinate resources, communicate effectively, and unite and achieve the three goals of Iraq Veterans Against the War.

This model can also serve to inspire other peace organizations to collectively build a strong social movement in this country that will bring about an end to this war, and truly make America the country that I believe it was meant to be; the country that those long-dead patriots of the late 1700's fought and died for.

And the more groups that adopt this model, the more that the American people realize that we are all on the same sinking ship, the better able we will be to coordinate between groups and achieve our collective goal of putting an end to this Global War on Terrorism farce that has gone on far too long, and is no longer (never was, man!) a laughing matter.