Anti-war group on march with old-school tactics, online savvy

Every morning, in a downtown office tower dubbed “the other K Street” by its liberal tenants, the activists who steer Americans Against Escalation in Iraq sit down for a strategy call — and then postpone the strategizing.

The anti-escalation group will spend an estimated $12 million to bird-dog, rally, protest and otherwise cajole GOP centrists into backing a deadline to leave Iraq. But before mapping out their next town meeting, the group’s diverse staffers recount the day’s headlines from Iraq, mourning casualties and marking successes there.

{mosads}The gesture may be unexpected coming from a group known on Capitol Hill as politically savvy and highly partisan. But for deputy campaign manager Tara McGuinness and fellow activists at AAEI, as the group is known, success in Washington is driven by events in Baghdad.

“Even when we have our best moments, we’re still in a sh—-y war and a hard fight for defining what’s good about our foreign policy,” McGuinness said in a recent interview from her small office, one wall of which contains a portrait gallery of
vulnerable Republicans and the dates their pro-war stances cracked.

AAEI leaders liken their well-oiled nationwide effort to a presidential campaign; the August recess will be their pre-Election Day swing. The month-long push they call “Iraq Summer” aims to replace repeated House and Senate floor votes on Iraq with a public drumbeat that AAEI believes will turn more Republicans against President Bush’s war policy.

Depending on the senator or House member, AAEI is planning demonstrations at local airports or district offices to un-welcome lawmakers home.

“AAEI will make a splash in the media showing that members of Congress who continue to support endless war are being greeted by angry constituents all across the country,” according to a planning document the group has crafted.

The first week is only the beginning of the stress planned for the Republicans targeted by AAEI. In the group’s crosshairs are Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.); Sens. Norm Coleman (Minn.), Susan Collins (Maine), John Sununu (N.H.), Chuck Grassley (Iowa) and Pete Domenici (N.M.); Reps. Heather Wilson (N.M.), Mark Kirk (Ill.), Thelma Drake (Va.), Vernon Ehlers (Mich.), Phil English (Pa.) and Jon Porter (Nev.); and others.

The Washington director of MoveOn.org, Tom Matzzie, who is on loan to lead AAEI, estimated the group’s total strength at 130 staffers, of whom 90 are in the field in 15 states. Matzzie described the ultimate goal as political rather than legislative, with each new vote on Iraq breeding more discontent among voters and in turn putting more pressure on the Bush administration to change course.

“It’s not the brilliance of [Democrats’] legislative creativity” driving the campaign, Matzzie said, “which is hard for some lawmakers to understand.”

In fact, Matzzie described AAEI as already having made compromises to support certain Democratic-backed measures that would hasten troop redeployment. Perhaps the biggest compromise came in May, when the new majority agreed to supplemental funding for the war without conditions and AAEI, along with liberal bloggers, did not hide its outrage.

“We moved into opposition to the Democratic leadership at that point,” Matzzie said, calling the post-veto supplemental the group’s biggest setback thus far. “We told them, ‘We’re not going to go off the cliff with you.’”

But AAEI is back in Democrats’ corner this summer, funded by founders that include left-leaning heavyweights MoveOn, the
Service Employees International Union, Americans United for Change, the Campaign for America’s Future and USAction.
Matzzie said the Open Society Institute, created by frequent conservative foe George Soros, was also involved in the group’s creation.

At times the group resembles a template for the future of the Democratic Party, as 20-something organizers in jeans and flip-flops partner with older activists who marched against Vietnam. McGuinness, who has set up elections in Nepal and keeps a copy of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War on her desk, described the AAEI dynamic as “old-school organizing tactics meet America’s best Web designers.”

“The goal is ending the war, but also creating this new, progressive America,” AAEI field director Kate Snyder said. “We don’t want them to drop out [after the Iraq campaign ends].”

Wiley Pearson, also a deputy campaign manager at the group, spent 22 years in the Marines before entering politics. He offered a simple message for Republicans who tar AAEI and Democrats as not supporting U.S. troops.

“The way you support the troops isn’t just with money, but to give them a cause and justify it” while providing necessary body armor and equipment that has at times been unavailable in Iraq, Pearson said.

Pearson later countered another political charge that has stuck to AAEI: “This is not an anti-war group. … I don’t think war solves things, but you’ve got to be prepared to wage it.”

MoveOn’s role in AAEI has become fodder for Republicans, who accused Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) of handing the congressional agenda to pressure groups during last month’s all-night session in the upper chamber. Those arguments hardly fazed Matzzie.

“We’re not that widely known,” he said. “We’re not Coca-Cola.”

AAEI is indeed prominent in its target districts and in local media, however. The group uses clever tactics to grab attention, from sending teachers to lawmakers’ offices with “Iraq Report Cards” to e-mails bombarding schedulers’ BlackBerrys asking for meetings on the war.

A recently launched “Iraq Summer” YouTube channel is chock-full of homemade videos shot by activists and film students.
Coleman, who cannot walk down his street in St. Paul without encountering Iraq lawn signs given to his neighbors by the group, considers AAEI an example of democracy at work.

“People can express their opinions. It’s the beauty of our system,” Coleman said, noting that veterans’ groups in the state have thanked him for remaining opposed to withdrawal. “I’m going to do what I think is right, not because I’m pressured by this group or that.”