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Trying to create a small opening for diplomacy
By mickielynn on 2008-08-05 10:58:51
[caption id="attachment_60" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Waiting for our Thursday Press Conference"]
lw..Waiting for our Thursday Press Conference[/caption]
On Thursday, July 31st and then again on Monday, August 4th a delegation of five women from Women Against War's Iran
project were invited to Representative Mike McNulty's office where we planned to ask that he withdraw his co-sponsorship
for HCR 362 with its dangerous third clause, meant to ban Iran from importing all refined petroleum products (a cruel and
dangerous idea in itself), and using language that could easily cause a blockade of Iran and a travel ban on its diplomats just
at a time when diplomacy was becoming a real possibility.
Since June of 2008 many of his constituents had been emailing Rep. McNulty and calling his Washington, DC office in
response to his co-sponsorship of what we considered a very dangerous piece of legislation, that could easily provide an
excuse for the Bush administration to take our country to war yet again. This same process of contacting sponsors of HCR
362 was taking place in legislative districts all over the country. In response a few legislators had removed their names while
others had agreed to work to amend the bill.
In particular Rep. Robert Wexler [D-FL] wrote an eloquent statement in which he said that he'd work to amend the
resolution in two ways. 1. Remove the language that calls for a naval blockade. 2. Add language that calls for direct
negotiations with Iran. If you want to read more of his statement http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-robert-wexler/iran-
resolution-must-chan_b_111663.html you can look here.
In our Thursday meeting with Representative McNulty's chief of staff, Charlie Diamond, we asked for the following things:
That Mike McNulty promote peace and security through diplomacy and negotiation rather than through the the threat of
force, by either removing his name from HCR 362 or by supporting the upcoming amendments removing the blockade
language and adding a strong call for negotiations. We also asked that he agree to speak out against HCR 362 and vote
against it if it came up for a vote with the blockade provisions still attached.
At the same time another bill that called for multilateral negotiations to bring peace to the Middle East and especially to end
the occupation of Iraq was in committee and awaiting House action. This bill, HCR 321, specifically included Iran as one of
the partners in high level negotiations and held out hope that Iran's important role in the region would be acknowleged and
engaged to bring about postive change. With that in mind we also asked Representative McNulty to sign on to HCR 321 and
to support its progress through the House of Representatives. The last thing that we urged him to do was to support
expanded high level U.S. diplomatic presence in all negotiations with Iran in any future House bills or floor discussions.
After having prepared to meet with Charlie Diamond we found out that Mike McNulty would see us on Monday, the first
day of his return to the Capital District during the legislative recess. What we didn't know was that he also asked Charlie to
fax him all of the materials in the lobbying packet and to summarize the notes of last Thursday's meeting soon after it took
place. Representative McNulty then proceeded to speak with Representative Gary Ackerman who was the author of HCR
362 (and also happened to be a long time friend) and to tell him that he was going to support changes to the bill and would
reserve judgement about whether he could vote for it depending on whether the blockade language was taken out. By the
time we met with him Mike had already signed on to HCR 321and promised to work for its passage.
The success of this lobbying visit was built on three things: A long series of communications and visits that built up a mutual
relationship of respect, careful preparation, research and pre-meeting planning sessions, including careful reading of all the
legislation. You can look up any bill in Congress at http://thomas.loc.gov if you need more information. The most important
thing was the willingness of both Charlie Diamond and Mike McNulty to really listen and respond to our ideas in the
interest of ending the current occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan and avoiding a new war that would claim human lives and
economic resources for no good reason.
One extra and surprising result of our dialogue was Mike McNulty's willingness share his own strong feelings against the
plan to send more troops into Afghanistan. We strongly agreed that the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan required negotiated
political solutions and not military solutions. If you want to read more about our previous actions to prevent a war on Iran
you can visit our website http://www.womenagainstwar.org/
Lobbying is a mysterious process because you never know what other alliances, bargains and negotiations are going on but
it's also a bit like the kind of diplomatic process that could just bring about peace with Iran.
