Karen Onder writes in with some early morning love mail:
WAR IS PRO_LIFE YOU FUCKING IDIOTS!!!!!! If it wasn’t for WAR – We wouldn’t be free and have life so shut the hell up. I’m sick of you people. YOU SUCK SHIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You know, when I look at them really closely, each one of those exclamation points looks like a little life-giving cruise missile. And if you don’t agree with me on that point, go exercise your freedom and shut the hell up. Have a nice day.
Blackwater, the American agency of civilian contractors that has been accused of assembling assassination squads, bribing Iraqi officials into compliance, and engaging in massacres of civilians in more than one time and place, has gotten off scot free by writing its own exonerations but also by exploiting legal loopholes that grant Blackwater employees and other contractors immunity from the law. The lack of accountability when American contractors commit crimes overseas makes diplomatic relations difficult and sends the signal to contractors that they can continue to rampage with impunity. Do you need to hear about an American who got hurt by all this in order to care? Fine: when an American contractor for Halliburton was violently raped by Blackwater contractors and the Blackwater rapists hugged tight to their claims of legal immunity, who would respond then?
The sponsors of the Civilian Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act (H.R. 4567 in the House and S. 2979 in the Senate) have responded. If passed, this legislation would bring contractors for companies like Blackwater back under the law.
The following are the House and Senate cosponsors of CEJA:
If you don’t find your Senators or Representative on this list, then find their contact information here and let them know that so long as contractors commit violent acts overseas without heed, you’ll be heeding the action or inaction of Congress.
Last year, Barack Obama pledged to reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the American arsenal. He made great speeches about it. He earned the Nobel Peace Prize.
I am astounded that so many people still need to have that question answered, but if they do need an answer, then those of us who care need to do more than shrug our shoulders and bemoan their ignorance. We need to help provide those answers.
For that reason, I’ll be working over the next few weeks to provide text, links and videos that show the consequences of the use of nuclear weapons. The United States is the only nation to ever use nuclear weapons, and so we Americans have a special duty to remember what has come as the result of our nation’s terrible invention – an invention that Barack Obama wants to make more powerful.
Melissa Block: Was there anything in your experience with the military in Afghanistan and Iraq that made you think that unit cohesion would be a real issue if gays and lesbians who, I think we can acknowledge, are serving in the military now, just not openly, were to be open about their sexual orientation?
Duncan Hunter: Yeah, I think that the majority of people in the military are they’re young kids. They usually have more conservative families, more conservative backgrounds and I think that it would go against their principles and it would frankly make everybody a little bit uneasy to be in these close situations.
Duncan Hunter just called American soldiers young kids who are incapable of serving along side people who offend their sensibilities. He just declared that American soldiers can’t do their jobs if they might upset. He just called American soldiers a bunch of incompetent wimps.
Does that bother you? Don’t complain to me. I didn’t say it. Complain to Duncan Hunter. His Capitol Hill number is 202-225-5672.
Back during the 2008 presidential campaign, John McCain wanted to promote discrimination against lgbt Americans in the military, but to seem fair about it at the same time. So McCain said that, sure, he’d support repealing the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy of kicking people out of the military merely for being openly homosexual – once generals came to him and told him that they thought the policy should be repealed.
Guess what happened today? Generals came to McCain and told him that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is bad for the military. McCain responded by telling the generals that they’re wrong. “At this moment of immense hardship for our armed services, we should not be seeking to overturn the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy,” said McCain.
Let’s remember, John McCain put the military into this period of immense hardship in the first place. He voted to send American soldiers off to hastily-arranged wars without an exit strategy. But now, McCain is saying that while it’s okay to send American soldiers to kill and be killed, it’s just too much to offer those same soldiers protection from discrimination.
Thanks to our reader Tomas for pointing out yet another glaring piece of Obama hypocrisy in this year’s proposed federal budget. In the budget released yesterday, Obama, who last year got a Nobel Peace Prize for work on behalf of peace that he hadn’t actually done yet, has proposed a dramatic increase in spending on our nation’s nuclear weapons program.
As Obama is proposing cuts in domestic spending that he says we just can’t afford, he is calling for 7 billion dollars to be spent on making new nuclear weapons. These new nuclear weapons are supposed to be more reliable than the ones we already have. A reliable nuclear weapon is one that’s much more likely to hit its target, vaporizing huge civilian populations in foreign cities.
Last year, Obama said he was going to work to rid the world of nuclear weapons. Now, he’s spending money to build more nukes. The idea, apparently, is that the United States needs to build more nuclear weapons in order to rid the world of nuclear weapons.
The argument is like the claim of an alcoholic that he needs just one more stiff drink so that he can summon the courage to admit himself into an alcohol addiction recovery center. It seems that, upon becoming President, Obama became intoxicated by the aroma of plutonium wafting through the Oval Office.
When George W. Bush was President, we complained when Bush offered, year after year, record-breaking budgets for military spending. Now, for the second year in a row, Barack Obama is doing the same.
Unlike the one-time expenditure of 700 billion dollars in the Troubled Asset Relief Program bailout, the federal government won’t get any of the 708 billion dollars in defense spending this year. It’s gone for good, and we’ll get another bill of the same size, if not bigger, next year, and the year after that.
A significant degree of Barack Obama’s victory over the other top Democratic presidential candidates in 2008 can be attributed to his opposition to the invasion of Iraq back in 2003. Hillary Clinton could have easily topped Obama, if it weren’t for the vigorous opposition to her candidacy from large numbers of anti-war Democrats who never forgave her for voting in favor of the American invasion. Peace activists in 2008 thought they would be getting a President in Obama who would see things at least a little bit more their way.
That’s not what we saw in last year’s military budget, and it’s not what we’re seeing this year either. Last year, Democrats made excuses for Obama. Give him some more time to get settled into the Oval Office, they said, and then we’ll all see some real changes.
What are those Democrats going to say now? Will they acknowledge the failure of Obama to bring change, or will they change their ideology to suit their leader?
When Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina was invited by North Carolina Association of Educators to meet with them back in December of 2009, he turned down the invitation from the organization that represents 65,000 North Carolina teachers. He just didn’t have the time, he said.
If you’ve gone to more than a handful of protest marches in your lifetime, you’ve no doubt heard the same old chants too many times:
Tell me what Democracy looks like! This is what Democracy looks like! Hey hey! Ho ho! ___________ has got to go! What do we want? _____________! When do we want it? Now!
And then there’s the rally where speakers tell everyone who’s at the march why they need to be at the march, and then someone reminds us that the issues surrounding _______ cannot be disentangled from the three other issues she or he wants to bring up, then someone reads a poem or sings a song, then someone exaggerates the size of the crowd, then someone declares that the energy cannot die here today, then someone asks for money, then we all go home.
Protest in America has gotten to be so formulaic that it’s become tiresome and unremarkable — not just to the participants, but to the political targets of protest as well. Unremarkable protest goes unremarked. It’s time for some innovation in activism.
One innovative activist event will be held in the Maine State Capital Hall of Flags next month. The Draw-In on February 18 will feature people creating artworks to answer the question, “What would you spend our tax dollars on rather than war?” After the sketching and painting and sculpting has come to a halt, Mainers will bring the artwork to their state legislators as a conversation-opener about investing in more peaceful priorities.
Because the experience will be unusual, it will be more memorable to legislators. If it is more likely to be remembered, it will be more likely to bring about change.
Of course, that’s the point. The guns carried by American soldiers are not supposed to be used in the name of Christianity against other religions. The U.S. military is not supposed to be a Christian organization.
The presence of the passages from the Christian New Testament renew concerns that many in the military and civilian federal government alike regard the fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq as part of a new Christian crusade against Islam. At the beginning of his “War on Terror”, George W. Bush openly referred to the fighting as a “crusade”, and later was quoted as saying that he believed that the wars were the will of the Christian God. Military leaders such as General William G. Boykin have made public speeches about their belief that Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan are fighting for Christianity to prevail against an Islamic Satan.
The Christian scriptures on American military rifles reinforce the common perception among people in Muslim countries that Americans fight against them because they want to spread Christianity. The printing of these Bible verses on guns certainly does create a new level religious meaning.
Some guns carry the code for the Gospel of John, Chapter 8, Verse 12, which reads, “Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life, and will then go and shoot people with rifles.”
Others feature Corinthians Chapter 6, Verse 4, which states, “For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, and then to send a volley of bullets into the bodies of our enemies.”
Then there’s the gun Bible verse from Matthew Chapter 5 Verse 8: “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God, and then die, die, die!”
It’s a religion of peace, see.
1/19/2010 5:23pm
No Corners Left In Sight
Monday, February 28, 2005
First we were told that America had turned a corner in Iraq with "the end of major combat operations". Then, a couple months later, we were told that the insurgent attacks were a sign of desperation, and that America had turned a corner in Iraq by staying put and showing resolve. Then, months later, Saddam Hussein was captured, and we were told that America had turned a corner in Iraq because surely the insurgency would dissolve without the ultra evil Saddam to inspire it. Six months after that, the Bush Administration told us that America had turned a corner in Iraq because a new puppet government with pseudosovereignty had been created. A month ago, we were told that that America had turned a corner in Iraq because of relatively peaceful elections.
Since that time, rebel attacks have increased, not decreased. American soldiers are still fighting, killing and dying. Big suicide bombings are taking place almost every day. Yesterday, rebels destroyed a major oil pipeline in Iraq. This morning in Iraq, a suicide bomber killed 106 people, mostly members of the Iraqi National Guard, and gravely wounded many more. The death toll is sure to rise sharply throughout the day. The Bush Administration has reacted to the news by saying that it will work to reconfigure the Iraqi National Guard, bone by bone...
Life in Iraq continues to become more dangerous, and more impoverished, the longer the American occupation continues. And now that the elections have failed to produce peace, the Bush Administration doesn't have any more ideas about new corners that America might be able to turn in Iraq to make it all better.
And still, the Republicans say that it was worth all this growing suffering to start the war.
Operation A Rocky Freedom Goes International
Wednesday, February 23, 2005
Today, some British soldiers were convicted of torturing Iraqi prisoners. One of the convicted soldiers is the fellow wearing camouflage in this photograph. In a white prison hall where the floors are designed so that bodily fluids can be easily cleaned up after an "interrogation", does camouflage keep you well hidden from enemy eyes, or does it just give you permission to treat another human being with extreme cruelty?
It's been a remarkable thing, how both American soldiers and British soldiers have been tormenting prisoners in very similar ways, in places as far away from each other as Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan, and Iraq. I suppose that George W. Bush really meant it when he promised to increase his efforts at international cooperation. It's a shame that Bush can't gain international cooperation for uplifting humanity instead of finding new ways to undermine the law and inflict pain.
By the way, if you're looking for the Iraqi freedom that has been provided by Operation Iraqi Freedom, you can see it right in the photograph above. What, you couldn't find it? Oh, the Iraqi Freedom is lying cowering in that net, helpless, waiting to get another beating. A lot of people just can't see how we've turned a corner in Iraq. Do you think the fellow on the floor will turn a corner soon too?
Failing the Duty of National Defense
Tuesday, February 15, 2005
George W. Bush is always saying that his presidency ought to be evaluated according to how well he provides for the national defense. In almost every speech he gives, Bush goes on and on about how the primary duty of the President of the United States is to keep the American people safe.
Of course, Bush is dead wrong when he makes such claims. The Oath of Office that presidents take centers around the promise to defend the Constitution of the United States, not to enact a security state.
But, this morning, I'm feeling a little bit generous. So, for the moment, I'll assume that Bush is right, and that his primary duty as President of the United States is to defend the American people. On that level, how is Bush doing? Lousy.
This morning, we get news about one of George W. Bush's favorite defense projects: Implementing a national missile defense system, which is supposed to protect the United States against nuclear missiles. Ever since the 1980s, the Pentagon has been pushing its scientists to come up with a missile defense system that actually, you know, works. Ever since the 1980s, the Pentagon has failed to come up with any system that comes close to working.
A few years back, George W. Bush got tired of all the failed tests of missile defense prototypes. So what did he do? He ordered the system to be built now, and for the research to come up with a way to make it work to go on in the meantime.
Think about this for a second - President Bush has been spending billions of taxpayer dollars every year to build a system to defend America against nuclear missiles, in spite of the fact that no such system has yet been invented. President Bush might as well order the federal government to spend billions of dollars to build a time machine, and then ask scientists to invent one while it is being built. Could we throw in a personal teleportation device along with it?
This morning's news is about a new test of a new attempt by the Pentagon to invent some kind of device that might have a chance of stopping an incoming nuclear missile before it destroys an entire American city. In the past, the Pentagon tried super laser ray guns, but that didn't work, so now they're trying to invent super defense missiles that can intercept incoming nuclear missiles and blow them up so that, um, a cloud of radioactive debris can descend upon the American landscape, and... um...
Anyway, this new test was supposed to prove that, 20 years after spending hundreds of billions of dollars to invent it, it is theoretically possible to build a system of interceptor missiles that can meet incoming nuclear missiles in the air and destroy them. Sadly, things didn't go quite as the Pentagon leaders had hopes. You see, they couldn't even get the interceptor missile to leave the ground.
This is the second test of an interceptor missile in which the missile didn't even succeed in lifting off the ground, much less destroying its target. So, what has the reaction of the Bush Administration been to the complete failure of these interceptor missiles been? Why, George W. Bush has bought a whole bunch of the interceptor missiles, and has already installed eight of them in missile silos in secret locations around the country. Showing some fiscal restraint, however, Bush declined to order any intergalactic hyperdrives to go along with the missile defense system.
Eight interceptor missiles that aren't even capable of leaving the ground are President Bush's idea of national defense against the threat of nuclear war involving hundreds, if not thousands, of nuclear missiles from Russia and China. George W. Bush says that we ought to judge him on how well he provides for the defense of the United States. So far, it looks like Mr. Bush has been a pathetic, wasteful failure. The only defense that these Star Wars toys provide is financial cover for the executives of big defense contracting corporations - executives who have given handsomely to George W. Bush's political campaigns.
Bush's brand of defense is the sort of thing that America is better off without. Those hundreds of billions of dollars spent on imaginary machines would have been much better spent on foreign aid, helping to repair America's tarnished reputation in the world.
The sad truth is that the only missile defense that works is for there to be no missiles. If America put half the work into global nuclear disarmarment that we put into programs to manufacture military gizmos that never work, we could soon live in a world where we didn't have to worry about nuclear weapons raining down out of the sky at any moment, with nothing to protect us but a handful of broken model rockets put together by big boys playing in the garage.
Alberto Gonzales: the Republican Dream for America
Wednesday, February 02, 2005
The best way to understand what the agenda of the Republican federal government for the second term of George W. Bush is to pay attention to who the Bush Administration's top supporters praise, and how they do it.
These days, an immense amount of praise is coming from Republicans, both in Congress and in the White House, for Alberto Gonzales, the White House chief counsel and the man that President Bush has picked to become the next Attorney General of the United States. It is the constitutional duty of the United States Senate to review presidential appointments for cabinet-level positions such as Attorney General, and to deny those appointments if the nominees are found to be professionally or ethically wanting. So, while a few senators have been directing their staffs to investigate the career of Alberto Gonzales, the majority of Republican senators seem to have focused their efforts on finding reasons to praise Mr. Gonzales, and defend him from any possible criticism.
As a result of their defensive efforts, senate Republicans seem to have come up with a battery of standard talking points that they are intent upon repeating, over and over, until the public accepts them as irrefutable facts. Republican Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, for example, declared that the achievements of Alberto Gonzales are the "manifestation of the American dream". Then on the same day, several other Republican members of Congress repeated these exact words, each declaring that the work of Alberto Gonzales for President Bush has been the "manifestation of the American dream".
Well, what exactly do we know about the work of Alberto Gonzales in the Bush White House that could make him a manifestation of the American dream? Well, the truth is that as White House counsel to George W. Bush, Alberto Gonzales has earned the nickname "Mr. Torture". You see, it was Alberto Gonzales who wrote a memo advising the President of the United States that treating prisoners humanely according to the Geneva Conventions was a "quaint" and "outdated" idea. It was Alberto Gonzales who advised George W. Bush that he had the power to overrule American laws that make torture and inhumane treatment of prisoners illegal, whenever Mr. Bush made the decision that torture and cruel treatment of prisoners would be in the national interest. It was Alberto Gonzales who signed off on another memo that made up a new, alternative legal definition of torture so narrow that it would purposefully exclude many methods of torture being planned for use in American prisons by George W. Bush.
So, when Republicans like Senator Bill Frist declare that the work of Alberto Gonzales is the "manifestation of the American dream", what they're really saying is that it is the American dream to torture prisoners. The Republicans are saying that it is the American dream to give the President the power to single-handedly override American and international law. The Republicans are saying that it is the American dream to commit war crimes. This version of the American dream that Republican politicians find manifested in the work of Alberto Gonzales is a nightmare.
So, given the Republican praise for Alberto Gonzales, and their determination to push Gonzales into the position of Attorney General of the United States despite the fact that not one Democrat in the Senate Judiciary Committee saw fit to recommend him for the position, what can we expect during the next four years?
It appears that we can expect the Bush Administration to continue to place itself above the law, especially in matters of war. We can expect the Bush Administration to continue to commit war crimes in the name of the American people. We can expect more torture. We can expect more secret wars, unapproved by the U.S. Congress and unreported by the major television networks, who will be unable to get any pretty pictures of explosions from the Pentagon. We can expect the Bush Administration to conduct more illegal imprisonments, outside of the system of civilized law that dates back all the way to the Magna Carta.
We can expect the Bush Administration to drag the United States of America back into the legal abyss of the Dark Ages, when might made right and nobody dared to question the divine authority of kings.
No more Arafat to Blame Anymore
Tuesday, January 18, 2005
For years now, the Bush Administration has blamed the whole mess with Israel and Palestine on one man: Yasser Arafat. Even as violence escalated between Israelis and Palestinians, George W. Bush sat by with his hands neatly folded in his lap, refusing to lift a finger to stop it. His excuse was that as long as Yasser Arafat is around, there is no hope for peace.
Well, now, Yasser Arafat is gone, and his successor has been elected, and guess what's happening? The same damn thing as before. The Israelis refuse to talk to the Palestinians because the new leadership too has been deemed too bad for negotiation. Palestinians are raining gunfire and rockets into Israeli neighborhoods. Israeli tanks are attacking Palestinian neighborhoods. There is no more peace now than there was before.
The stupidly simple analysis of George W. Bush has always been that single evil leaders are responsible for the bad things that happen in the world. Bush seems to believe that once those bad bad people are removed from power, everything will suddenly get all nice again.
In Iraq, and now in Palestine, Bush's childish theory has been soundly disproved.
It is time that American foreign policy in the Middle East be driven by a more grown-up understanding of conflict. When it comes to the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians, the Palestinians and the Israelis both are to blame.
What is most terrifying of all is that Bush seems to accept the same twisted logic that continues to propel the Israeli-Palestinian bloodbath year after year after year: The idea that the only way to get peace is to completely subdue one's opponents through military force. The Israelis and Palestinians both have been propelled forward in a cycle of death and despair by this idea for generations.
The only way that the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is for courageous people on both side to demand that their leaders step back from the fighting. Unfortunately, the continued inaction of the Bush Administration, combined with Bush's encouragement of unrestrained military attacks on the part of the Israelis, makes such principled restraint all the more difficult.
Remember Martin Luther King Jr. - And Read!
Monday, January 17, 2005
In the creation of the Martin Luther King National Holiday, initial direct resistance from Republicans has been transformed into a radical reduction of the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. In the new, politically sanitized version of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s life, we are supposed to believe that he:
1. Was a really good public speaker 2. Wanted black and white people to get along 3. Shouldn't have been shot
Everything else about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s life gets all smudged out in a weekend's repetition of the out of context phrase, "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God almighty, I'm free at last!"
The life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was too complex to be reduced to such little clips, and I won't pretend to do justice to him here in one small article. However, I will mention three things that are commonly cleaned away from his life:
1. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a strong opponent of war 2. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood up for the principle of freedom and dignity of all people, not just the residents of some "homeland" 3. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. worked to make the government accountable to all the people
On all three counts, we have great cause in 2005 to regard the Martin Luther King National Holiday as a wake up call to the American people. The narrowly-won second presidency of George W. Bush is showing strong signs of continuing the anti-peace, anti-freedom, and anti-accountability agenda that marked the first four years.
A good way to celebrate this holiday, and a good way to spark a movement of nonviolent, principled resistance of the sort that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would have admired, is to read a shocking article that was published this very morning.
The article is by Seymour Hersch, the journalist who exposed the torture taking place in the Abu Ghraib prison. Now, Seymour Hersch has discovered what appears to be a plot within the Bush Administration to circumvent the power of Congress and begin a new military campaign against Iran and other nations in secret from the American people.
We'll discuss the implications of this article in greater depth in the days to come. For now, remember the broader character of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and read.
Freedom Isn't Free, but what's the price?
Sunday, December 05, 2004
Since the War on Terror began, we have been besieged with the pro-war slogan: Freedom isn't free!
Well, okay. Freedom is not free. Isn't it funny, though, that the Freedom Isn't Free Crowd never bothers to mention the price that they're asking us to pay?
The pro-war crowd wants us to believe that the inevitable price we all must pay for freedom is war. Well, bull.
No, freedom is not free, but you can't buy it with buckets of blood. Bomb all you want, and it won't make you any more free than if no bombs were dropped. Bullets don't buy freedom, and neither do bayonets.
Freedom is bought with the hard work of peaceful people who struggle to establish a society that values liberty and fairness. For Americans, freedom is established by the U.S. Constitution, not on the battlefield. The Revolution came and went, and yet the Bill of Rights was not yet created. It took the peaceful political process of a new Constitutional Congress to bring true freedom to the former colonies.
Throughout history, war has threatened freedom as much as it has protected it. We will not retain our freedom if we keep on falling back to a default assumption that every war is fought in the defense of freedom.
Buyer beware. Freedom is already ours, if we will protect it from the corrupt politicians who seek to remove it from our society in the cause of fear. No, freedom is not free, but we do not have to pay the price that the pro-war zealots insist upon.
For me, the message is this: Iraq is a mess, and will now be a terrible mess no matter what we do. We need to think ahead now, and institute safeguards that will ...
A Congressional study released just a few days ago reveals that the American share in global arms sales increased last year. In 2004, the United States was, as usual, the biggest source of weapons sold worldwide.
As a singer/songwriter who tossed in protest songs against the GOP and GW at every opportunity I ponder - where are the voices? Back during the Vietnam war the voices raised on high to bring the war to an end - Phil Ochs, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and...
This morning, I was disturbed to find yet another effort by Republicans to lower expectations for Iraq. This one comes from David Brooks, a Republican who writes editorials for the New York Times. Brooks quotes former ambassador to Croatia Peter Galb...
It could be interpreted as a sign that Iraqi leaders are preparing for civil war. Moktada al-Sadr appears to have abandoned peaceful politics and is fighting again. Al-Sadr's followers fought fellow Shiites in Najaf and in Basra, storm...
Military medical examiner Lt. Col. Elizabeth Rouse has found, in two separate instances, that people detained in American prisons in Afghanistan were beaten so badly by their American captors that their muscles were "falling apart" by the tim...
Duncan Hunter: Yeah, I think that the majority of people in the military are they’re young kids. They usually have more conservative families, more conservative backgrounds and I think that it would go against their principles and it would frankly make everybody a little bit uneasy to be in these close situations.
When 
Today, some British soldiers were convicted of torturing Iraqi prisoners. One of the convicted soldiers is the fellow wearing camouflage in this photograph. In a white prison hall where the floors are designed so that bodily fluids can be easily cleaned up after an "interrogation", does camouflage keep you well hidden from enemy eyes, or does it just give you permission to treat another human being with extreme cruelty?