Beaver County Peace Links

Who Will Speak for Us, the Antiwar Majority, in Congress?

2012-05-21T12:22:00.001-04:00

With Kudos to PDA’s Barbara Lee!

Last week for the first time, the majority of Democrats voted in favor of the Lee Amendment limiting funding for the Afghanistan War to the safe and orderly withdrawal of US troops and security contractors. (101 ayes, 79 Noes).

This represents a sea-change of opinion from the time that Rep. Barbara Lee stood alone among her House colleagues eleven years ago, challenging the wisdom of the war.

It is unfortunately no surprise that this amendment was defeated 113-303. However, in our upcoming work it will be important to emphasize that the President's political base is now in clear opposition to his Afghanistan war policy.

On the 2013 NDAA as a whole (HR 4310) we did better than anticipated with a final vote of 120 Noes and 299 Ayes. Fortunately the majority of Democrats voted against the 2013 NDAA. (104-77). The reasons for Democratic voting on this item are ambiguous because the White House itself was displeased with the final version of the bill and because civil liberties was also an important concern. Yet clearly for many Democrats a major factor was the size of the military budget at a time when domestic programs are under attack.

Going forward, it seems possible that with greater unity we might achieve a better result in the next round of votes. The bill now goes to the Senate, where there will be various efforts to shorten the American stay in Afghanistan and to cut billions from the Pentagon budget.

Our Legislative Working Group will continue to support these initiatives, as well as stronger amendments to end the war in Afghanistan and to garner more NO votes against the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act.

Provided below are links to the Roll-calls on the Lee Amendment and the 2013 NDAA itself. If your member of Congress voted for peace and against the authorization of $242 billion, it might be helpful to send a message of thanks.

Roll Call for 2013 Defense Authorization Act:

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/112-2012/h291

Roll Call for Lee Amendment

http://www.opencongress.org/vote/2012/h/264

Many thanks for everyone who did the Congressional Calls last week. If you obtained any additional information from a Congressional Office, please pass along to rustiandgael@unitedforpeace.org

_______________________________________________
Ufpj-afghanistan mailing list

What Is Obama's Position on Afghanistan? Say It Again?

2012-05-16T12:38:00.001-04:00

‘Winding Down’ the War vs. ‘Losing Afghanistan’

By Tom Hayden
Beaver County Peace Links via HuffPost

May 16, 2012 - As a candidate opposing the Iraq War, Barack Obama improved his hawkish credentials by promising to track down Osama bin Laden, expand drone attacks, and escalate the American troop numbers in Afghanistan. Three years later, bin Laden is dead, the drones inflame Pakistan opinion and complicate a peace settlement, and 33,000 American troops are scheduled to pull out by the end of 2012 with "steady withdrawals" to continue after. Sixty-eight thousand U.S. troops will remain in Afghanistan by this year's end, with the deadline for withdrawing most of them by December 2014.

By the numbers, Afghanistan has already directly cost taxpayers $528.8 billion, and the Obama request for Afghanistan this fiscal year is $107 billion. That does not include the hidden, indirect costs -- accrual such as long-term Social Security, disability, and medical care for veterans, etc. -- partly spurred by an order last year from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal, which will add hundreds of billions, if not trillions to the ultimate financial impact of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The president's internal political calculation in 2008 was that he could never pull out of Afghanistan without killing Al Qaeda's top leadership and building a firewall against a Taliban return to power. While perhaps correct politically, this has led to an Afghan quagmire shaken by severe contradictions.

Hamid Karzai remains an unpopular, unreliable president whose term ends in 2014, the year of the troop withdrawal deadline. He seeks $3.5-6 billion each of the next two years to build up the Afghan armed forces, plus a Western commitment to funding for at least another decade, an impossible expectation.
According to Pentagon evaluations, those troops are unable to function independently, though insurgent infiltrators are skilled at shooting NATO allies. (Twenty percent of NATO fatalities have occurred this year, according to The New York Times).
Foreign aid to Afghanistan equals its entire gross national product and, according to the World Bank, "cannot be sustained."
"Intractable Graft by Elite Afghans" makes reform out of reach.

Earlier this year, the Taliban indicated through intermediaries a willingness to hold dialogue with the West, in Qatar, but demanded the release of several detainees now in Guantanamo, possibly in exchange for an American POW, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. Those discussions are in trouble, partly because of Republican opposition to releasing U.S.-held Taliban combatants. As a result, the Obama administration's hope for progress in negotiations has hit the skids.

Despite these insuperable obstacles, Obama will try mightily at the Chicago NATO summit to indicate that the Afghanistan war is winding down, aware that an implosion is possible as Karzai trembles, millionaire Afghans flee the country, and the Afghan forces flounder. The Republicans will blame Obama for "losing" Afghanistan while trying to avoid any recommendations of their own.

Obama's latest Afghanistan speech indicates where he is headed in a situation clearly out of control:

He has narrowed the mission to an obtainable one, "to make sure that al-Qaeda could never again use this country [Afghanistan] to launch attacks against us."
In Chicago, NATO will announce the "goal" of Afghan forces to be "in the lead for combat" by next year. NATO, however, will fight alongside them when needed."
Current troop reductions will continue on a "firm timeline" and "at a steady pace," with Afghans becoming "fully responsible for the security of their country" by December 2014.
The U.S. will continue to focus on counter-terrorism and training, without building permanent bases or patrolling Afghan cities and mountains. The U.S., however, will use Afghan military "facilities" on a short-term basis.
Obama is offering a "negotiated peace" with the Taliban, as long as they "break with Al Qaeda, renounce violence, and abide by Afghan laws." This is a retreat from the original U.S. demand that the Taliban and other insurgents abide by the Afghan Constitution. This opens the possibilities of a new power-sharing arrangement of some kind.
Obama's offer to Pakistan that they be an "equal partner" in the negotiated outcome suggests that Pakistan's interests and alliances in Afghanistan will be respected, thus ending the rationale for drone strikes over Pakistan.
Obama's statement, "we must give Afghanistan the opportunity to stabilize," can be interpreted as only rhetoric, or a veiled indication that the Afghan elite will have only a "decent interval" before being replaced, the same offer Henry Kissinger proposed for South Vietnam before it collapsed in 1975.
If this seems much too muddled a process, it is because it is being rushed for the Chicago summit and is beyond US control in any event.

But if Obama campaigns on ending the Iraq War and "winding down" Afghanistan, it will only accelerate the march to the exits. No one wants to be the last American soldier to die, or the last Western country to suffer casualties, in an unwinnable, unaffordable war that Americans do not much care about.

Follow Tom Hayden on Twitter: www.twitter.com/TomEHayden

Afghanistan: Our Longest War and Biggest Fantasy

2012-05-09T10:44:00.001-04:00

By Harry Targ
Beaver County Peace Links

On May Day, 2012 President Obama made a secret trip to Afghanistan and spoke to the nation and the troops on the ground about past, present, and future policy. What the speech revealed was a replication of a ten-year fantasy narrative about why we went to war on Afghanistan, what our goals were, and what the future holds in the region for the United States and, most importantly, the Afghan people.

The President announced he was signing an agreement between the two countries which will define “a new kind of relationship” in which Afghans will assume primary responsibility for their security and “we build an equal partnership between two sovereign states.” The future of this relationship will be bright as “the war ends, and a new chapter begins.”

The announcement sounded eerily like the policy of “Vietnamization” which President Nixon put in place in 1969; handing over ground action to the South Vietnamese government while the United States escalated the bombing of targets in North and South Vietnam and invaded neighboring Cambodia. The South Vietnamese government and military were incapable of assuming “primary responsibility” and in the end were overthrown by powerful forces in the countryside.

The President explained that President Bush correctly launched a war on Afghanistan in October, 2001 because the country allowed terrorist leader Osama Bin Laden an al Qaeda “safe-haven” for terrorist planning and attacks, ultimately leading to the tragedy of 9/11. While Bin Laden escaped to Pakistan, the U.S. continued fighting the Taliban who have “waged a brutal insurgency.”

Subsequently, he claimed, using the dehumanized language of violence –prone discourse, the U.S. military has “taken out over 20 of their top leaders” including bin Laden himself. But the war continues. While the United States downsizes its troop commitments policy will include:

a transition of the war to our Afghan military allies. Importantly Obama proclaimed that at the NATO summit this month in Chicago, “our coalition will set a goal for Afghan forces to be in the lead for combat operations across the country next year.” However, “international troops will continue to train, advise and assist Afghans, and fight alongside them when needed.”
training of Afghan Security Forces, leading to an Afghan force of 352,000 troops which NATO will support to create “a strong and sustainable long-term Afghan force.”
increasing US/NATO/Afghan cooperation “including shared commitments to combat terrorism and strengthen democratic institutions.” President Obama declared that these commitments, in the short run involving counter-terrorism and continued training, do not include the building of permanent U.S. bases.
pursuing a negotiated peace with the Taliban if they break with al Qaeda, renounce violence and “abide by Afghan laws.”
working towards stability in South Asia, including partnering with neighboring Pakistan. The President assured viewers that “America has no designs beyond an end to al Qaeda safe-havens, and respect for Afghan sovereignty.” In short, the central goal of United States policy is to destroy al Qaeda, in the short run to stabilize Afghanistan, and “to finish the job we started in Afghanistan…”

The speech reflects the classic pattern of U.S. military globalization coupled with tortured ahistorical fantasy narratives that have characterized policy since the end of World War II.

The President rationalized a ten-year war on a nation in which terrorists resided because Afghan leaders refused to hand over alleged perpetrators without some evidence of the connection between them and 9/11.

Also, the initial narrative, reflected in the President’s speech last week, conflated the al Qaeda terrorists with the so-called Taliban. The Taliban ruled Afghanistan in the 1990s with support from the United States. Some of these Afghan government officials had been recipients of military aid in the 1980s when they fought against the regime in Kabul that was allied with the former Soviet Union.

Neither Bush nor Obama have ever explained to the public who our enemy is. Has al Qaeda been clearly defined? What political, ethnic, and regional constituencies do the Taliban come from? Do we know much about the political forces in Afghanistan the Karzai regime represents?

Is the president correct to suggest that the United States and the Karzai government are winning the hearts and minds of the people outside Kabul, despite consistently negative reports to the contrary in the media?

Along with not being told who the enemy is and why they are the enemy neither Bush nor Obama have described how many of them there are, where they are located, how they are connected in a presumed worldwide network, and most basically how we know that a worldwide network of terrorists really exists. Recently released documents from the bin Laden compound suggest that while he wanted to promote terrorist attacks on the United States there was a communications disconnect between the alleged worldwide terrorist leader and various related organizations around the world.

Mother Jones reported on their website on May 4 devastating statistics concerning the U.S war on Afghanistan since 2001. These included costs for military operations since 2001 of $443.3 billion; the estimated cost per soldier in country in 2011 of $694,000; U.S. soldiers killed in action 1,507 and wounded 15,560. Also U.S military spending has doubled since 2000.And between 2004-2112 there have been 296 drone attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan, 17 percent of those killed were not affiliated with targeted enemies. And civilians killed in Afghanistan between 2006 and 2011 totaled 12,793.

Former Senator J. William Fulbright, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was interviewed in the Vietnam documentary Hearts and Minds, about why he turned against the war in Vietnam in 1965. His friend, President Lyndon Johnson dramatically escalated U.S. military action in Vietnam, with Congressional approval, after the Gulf of Tonkin incident allegedly occurred. Johnson claimed that the North Vietnamese engaged in unprovoked attacks on two U.S. naval vessels in international waters on August 2 and 4, 1964. Johnson used these claims to get Congressional approval of military escalation in Vietnam.

Fulbright said in the documentary that: “We always hesitate in public to use the dirty word lie, but a lie is a lie. It is a misrepresentation of fact. It is supposed to be a criminal act if it’s done under oath. Mr. Johnson didn’t say it under oath. He just said it. We don’t usually have the president under oath.”

The war on Afghanistan since October, 2001 has been a lie and U.S troops, the Afghan people, and all those who could have been served by a more just allocation of our national treasure have been victims of this lie.

There are many reasons to support President Obama’s reelection. However, the peace movement must increase its attack on U.S. policy toward Afghanistan, as it continues to repeat the mistakes of the past.

Where Are We At, Where Are We Headed? A Study Guide…

2012-04-18T13:54:00.001-04:00

NEW MOMENT, NEW MOVEMENT:

Ideas about Antiwar, Antimilitarist Strategies for the Years Ahead

Written by War Times
07 April 2012

As the global and U.S. political landscape shifts, a new round of strategic discussion is taking place in many sectors of the antiwar movement. Below are the key assessment points and questions used by War Times to kick off our collective's effort to (1) take stock of the current volatile moment and (2) look for effective paths forward. The third part of this discussion paper is a short essay on antimilitarist strategies by War Timer Lynn Koh that expresses some of what we felt were the most useful ideas coming out of our deliberations. We are sharing this material in hopes of pushing forward a much-needed dialogue not only among activists who are focused mainly on antiwar and international solidarity efforts, but also with grassroots organizers whose work is mainly in other movements but who see the importance of making opposition to war, empire and militarism an integral part of a revitalized U.S. progressive movement. –Max Elbaum, Francesca Fiorentini, Rebecca Gordon, Hany Khalil and Lynn Koh for War Times

1. Taking stock of the big picture: What can we expect on the war/peace/militarism front in the post-Iraq War, new-U.S.-military-doctrine, continuing-Great-Recession years ahead?

The U.S. is an empire in decline. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars, intended to be the first steps in securing a whole new level of U.S. global hegemony (and right-wing rule at home) instead over-stretched Washington militarily, financially and politically and accelerated the empire's downward trend. In the wake of these wars and the 2008 financial-then-economic crisis, the U.S. elite is adjusting its strategies to maximize U.S. clout in the period ahead.

The elite is united on the maintenance of U.S. military superiority over all rivals (combined) and the willingness to employ force and threats of force as a key part of its global arsenal. But it is badly divided over how adventurous to be in waging war (especially regarding deployment of ground combat troops) and how unilateral to be. The new military doctrine initiated by Obama, which stresses "rebalancing" toward Asia and use of drones and special operations over deployment of ground troops represents the "realist" strategy for the next stage. The Neocon faction, now out of power, wants much more aggressive use of force particularly in the Middle East; and their crusade is bolstered by the fact that a significant swatch of the white population has embraced a racist 'clash of civilizations' zealotry which sees white Christian-Jewish civilization pitted against a whole range of dangerous anti-American, anti-Western Civilization, anti-Israel "others" ranging from Al-Qaeda to Obama.

Under these circumstances, "low level" wars, expansion of military bases and threats against other countries (in Africa and Latin America as well as in the Asia/the Pacific region and the Middle East) will likely be constant features of the decades ahead. And there will be a near-constant danger of larger scale wars pushed by the far right as well. The kind of push is taking place right now with the right's crusade for an attack on Iran.

Simultaneously, the military-industrial complex and the militarist approaches to human relations it advocates will buttress regressive policies and structures on all fronts of social struggle. Military spending and militarist hostility to "enemies" drain resources from social programs; bolster the elite's austerity-for-the-masses program; distort the economy generally; foster racist, anti-immigrant and sexist views and practices; are key excuses to curtail civil liberties, and are a major force in continuing dependence on fossil fuels and threatening environmental disaster. In other words, militarism as both an institutional reality and set of ideas is an obstacle not only to peaceful relations among nations and peoples but to all social progress.

Questions: What do things look like on the war/peace/militarism front over the next 5-10 years? What impact will the 2012 election campaign, and its potential outcomes, have on what lies ahead? Readings:

Bob Wing, The Arab Spring and the Changing Dynamics of Global Struggle

Max Elbaum, Fighting for Peace Against an Empire in Decline

Tom Hayden, End to Long War Doctrine?

2. Antiwar/antimilitarist strategies for the period ahead: What kind of strategies and work priorities will most advance antiwar/anti-militarism goals going forward? Where are existing forces in relation to that kind of work? What is our take on public sentiment?

The large antiwar movement that surged in 2002-2006, mainly in response to the Iraq War, has ebbed. A significant but not huge number of groups and activists have continued to make antiwar efforts a main (or at least important) aspect of their work. Most have adjusted their approaches given changed conditions: the official end of the Iraq War, and economic issues/social austerity replacing war/peace as the main axis of progressive activism and the main political issue for the population at large. Action campaigns and educational work on specific U.S. wars and war threats (Iran, Afghanistan, etc.) and key solidarity efforts (especially with Palestine) continue. But these are in a new context, where there is special emphasis on figuring out ways to make pro-peace perspectives and actions an integral part of popular movements and coalitions that are driven mainly by economic or other "domestic" issues. "Move the Money" efforts are one important approach folks are utilizing to try to accomplish this. Likewise, there is a new emphasis on peace activists supporting other movements in an ongoing way and, through ties built, over time working with others to embrace issues of war/peace. These practical shifts are paralleled and informed by a perspective that targets not just specific U.S. wars but U.S. militarism more generally.

The current state of public opinion provides a good deal to build on in conducting this kind of work. Substantial majorities have come round to the view that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are/were "not worth the cost in blood and treasure." The leadership of most large liberal-to-progressive organizations (as opposed to the liberal elite) now takes at least a nominal antiwar, cut-the-military-budget position, as does the Progressive Caucus in Congress. Even within the right there is skepticism and division about the Neocon all-war, all-the-time crusade: Ron Paul has won support for his brand of conservative isolationism; and sectors of the right that reject Paul as "soft" on U.S. enemies are dubious about paying for large-scale wars and skeptical about sending large numbers of U.S. troops to fight elsewhere. Of particular immediate importance, public opinion has swung substantially against continuing the war in Afghanistan, where the U.S./NATO position is rapidly unraveling in front of the eyes of the whole world.

Still, these pluses do not yet translate into the clout needed to halt U.S. interventions much less roll back the military industrial complex. Much antiwar sentiment is at this point passive: it does not translate into large-scale activity, either direct action or as key factor in deciding who to vote for or holding elected officials who run on some kind of peace platform accountable to a consistent antiwar stance. Most progressive organizations not focused on war/peace do not prioritize antiwar anti-militarist education or action, and often the leaderships are hesitant or even unwilling to allow this issue to be flagged in the course of their other (urgent) campaigns. And within the constituencies that are against wars with U.S. combat troops and in favor of cutting military spending, there is still a lot of work to do to get large numbers to oppose drone killings and covert actions; and the connections between war-making abroad and a host of injustices and inequities at home are not prominent in the thinking of millions. Meanwhile the right-wing isolationists do almost nothing to oppose U.S. wars and militarism other than campaign for Ron Paul (who will soon throw his weight behind a Republican hawk in the 2012 election).

This landscape implies several important tasks for antiwar anti-militarist activists:

*Work to strengthen commitment, energy, unity and analytic/strategic acuity within the ranks of those who focus on war/peace issues. A core of energetic activists and groups that prioritize antiwar, antimilitarist and international solidarity activism over the long term, and carry the lessons of each "flow" period through times of relative ebb, is a critical element in the U.S. progressive movement's capacity to beat back the war-makers and military-industrial complex.

*Keep war/peace/militarism issues in front of progressive leaders and activists whose focus is on other fronts of struggle, constantly drawing linkages and showing how war and militarism prevents the realization of their goals while supporting other movements' efforts on their own terms.

*Beyond the activist ranks, conduct the kind of education work that expands the numbers who oppose war and militarism and embrace an internationalist vision, especially in the constituencies that are key to building a muscle for peace and justice: communities of color, labor, youth, and women.

*Find "pressure points" where actions can be taken that engage the immediate issues on the war/peace agenda and make a difference in their outcomes. Right now, halting the drive for a war against Iran, and work to end U.S. blank check support for Israel, are key focal points where a lot is at stake and also where catastrophic events can be headed off and gains can be made. Down the road other such focal points might arise: perhaps opposing an AFRICOM-centered military adventure in Africa, mobilizing against a U.S.-backed coup in Latin America, or weighing in to help put nuclear disarmament back at the top of the international agenda, etc.

*Finally, there is the key strategic task of interacting effectively with the motion currently underway toward reconstructing a dynamic and durable multi-issue, multi-sector U.S. progressive movement. Right now we observe a host of different social forces moving (at different paces and with different degrees of commitment and energy) toward constructing the kind of mass-based, durable jobs-justice-environmental protection-peace bloc that could become a serious force in U.S. politics. Activists and groups that focus on ending U.S. wars face the challenges of doing what we can to help such a bloc come into being and working to make sure that demands to end wars and militarism are an integral part of its program, texture and political culture. This key strategic point is elaborated upon in some detail in the essay by Lynn Koh which follows.

Questions: What do we think of the shift from an "antiwar" framework to an "antiwar/anti-militarism" framework to provide guidance to our efforts in the period ahead? What are different groups in the peace movement doing, what work do we think is most promising? (What do we assess are prospects for building a powerful progressive current in U.S. politics that includes an end to wars and shift away from militarism in its core outlook and actions?

Readings:

Clare Bayard, Demilitarization as Rehumanization:

New Priorities Network website

3. PATHS FORWARD FOR ANTIWAR ORGANIZERS: Making Antiwar Politics Integral to a New Progressive Alliance –Lynn Koh, War Times/Tiempo de Guerras

For some time, the antiwar movement has been struggling to find its political bearings, as street demonstrations decrease in size and frequency. Obama's election, the Great Recession, the explosion of the Occupy movement, as well as the noxious Republican primary campaign, have created a markedly different political terrain. This essay is intended as a contribution to the debate over the antiwar movement's strategic direction, and its significance for progressive politics in the U.S.

A look back at the last decade of the antiwar movement[1] helps us understand the challenges and tasks before us. In the long stretch from 2001 to 2008, what now stands out is what all movement activists then took for granted - that we had a central political demand immediately comprehensible to those within our orbit, as well as the general public. We wanted to stop the wars, end the wars, and then end the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. The sides were clearly defined, and we were focused on winning public opinion over to our side.

While antiwar organizing involved diverse constituencies and practices, most antiwar groups converged in efforts to mobilize as many opponents of the wars as possible in street actions and other public demonstrations across the country. The immense protests of 2003 made a deep impression on me; it was the first time I felt part of a group so massive as to constitute - so I thought - an historical subject. After a period of disorientation brought about by Bush's decision to invade in the face of active global opposition, there followed a 500,000 person protest at the 2004 RNC under the banner of 'The world says no to the Bush Agenda', and in 2006 UFPJ worked with Rainbow/Push, NOW, and environmental groups to organize a 200,000+ peace-and-social-justice march in NYC. No other movement was able to put hundreds of thousands of people into the streets during the entire span of the Bush administration, or to draw in mainstream liberal organizations as well as staunchly progressive outfits, and these large demonstrations served as a focal point for the national movement.

In 2005, we experienced a turning point in public opinion and mainstream press coverage of the occupations. When the invasion of Iraq started in 2003, 75% of the public supported it. But after Fallujah, Abu Ghraib, and the intensification of sectarian violence, antiwar sentiment surged. The Bush administration's criminal neglect of the Gulf Coast in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita generated the widespread feeling that desperately needed human resources and finances were funneled into an unnecessary war. The question of war and peace was at the center of the overall progressive political motion, which mainly took the form of an anti-Bush front.

At the same time, the deepening of outrage against the occupations fueled innovative and inspiring community-based organizing linked to the national antiwar movement. Of these, I am most familiar with counter-recruitment efforts, which I covered for War Times when I first joined the collective. In schools across the country, students and veterans, community activists and peace organizers joined to organize military-free zones or to provide an honest description of the military experience. While these efforts in some cases pre-dated the 2001 antiwar-movement, they were undoubtedly buoyed by the increased momentum and consciousness from 2005 on. The 2006 Military Out of Our Schools conference in Berkeley, California was a high-water mark in this sector.

During this upsurge, the antiwar movement achieved significant political results - it was able to raise the question of war funding repeatedly in Congress, undercut the credibility of the Neoconservatives, slowed down recruitment into the military, and drove the national electorate away from the right-wing. The movement's power was supported by a temporary, often fragile alignment of interests between elite Democrats seeking to turn antiwar sentiment into electoral gains; a new crop of Democratic activists seeking the Party's return to progressivism; antiwar organizers, and public opinion. The young Democratic activists would prove crucial in Obama's victory in Iowa and the overall sense that a candidate who pledged to end the Iraq War was viable.

At the same time, the trajectory of large chunks of the mobilized antiwar base into electoral politics presented fresh challenges for the national movement. Undoubtedly, it reflected the belief that the sentiments which drove people into the streets and the anti-Bush front could be turned into a broader progressive political force. But it also drained street protest of an energized (albeit largely white and middle-class) base. In fact, this move into electoral politics began in 2004 with the Kerry campaign, and continued in 2006 through 2008. Other problems emerged: the escalation of the war - dubbed 'the surge' '- coincided with the winding down of sectarian violence, although not due to American military efforts but rather because major areas had effectively been segregated along religious and other lines. This created the impression that the situation was manageable - and thus forgettable - once again.[2] RECALIBRATING FOR A NEW MOMENT

Nonetheless, the crisis of global capitalism and Obama's election have forced the antiwar movement to recalibrate its strategy. Economic inequality and jobs have become the front-and-center issues for the vast majority of the antiwar movement's constituency. Meanwhile, Obama's escalation of the war in Afghanistan (which was no surprise to War Times readers) broke the temporary alignment between the Democratic leadership, Dem activists, and peace forces. It became clear even to those that hoped otherwise that the 'realist' wing of the ruling class, which came around to the view that the Iraq fiasco was a terrible mistake, and which strongly backed Obama, remained committed to U.S. military hegemony pursued through all manner of practices short of massive ground troops: aerial bombardment, drone attacks, the proliferation of bases, assassination, covert ops, and proxy wars.

In short, the antiwar movement now finds itself in a difficult political situation: where war and peace is not the pivotal issue for progressives, where even small victories will be much tougher to obtain, and many of the key issues the movement hopes to raise are not necessarily understandable to the general public.

These challenges suggest that, first, a durable antiwar movement will require a long-term base-building and community organizing approach. One example is what Iraq Veterans Against War has done with its 'Operation Recovery' campaign; another is US Labor Against War's work with the key constituency of labor unions, of which more below. Developing a broader framework around militarism rather than war as it is conventionally understood, and growing an activist core without relying on momentum gained from news headlines, is impossible without ongoing work and political discussions with an active base aimed at achievable, concrete victories. [3]

Furthermore, base-building alone will not suffice, especially when economic issues are first and foremost on the public agenda. In this period, it is even more important to find ways to integrate the politics of war and peace into the broader progressive alliance that is emerging to challenge both the insanity of the right-wing and the most dangerous tendencies of the Democratic leadership. Such an alliance would bring together the key organizations and constituencies with the breadth, power, and activity needed to lead a real struggle within our dysfunctional political system for a program of democratic rights, economic and social justice.

The past few years has seen a number of attempts to build a cohesive alliance among forces to the left of, and with varying degrees of independence from, the Democratic Party leadership: One Nation, Rebuild the Dream, the Wisconsin uprising, and most recently the confluence of forces around Occupy. While it would be fantasy to expect an alliance to materialize out of thin air (or a few meetings) with organizational and political unity, the on-the-ground solidarity, as well as tension, among combative sections of the labor movement, grassroots organizations rooted in communities of color, and civil rights groups which we've seen in those efforts means we are living through a moment of possibility. The rest of this essay will attempt to flesh out how the antiwar movement can relate to these broader political developments.

There is much to build on from the work of antiwar organizers since 2001, but we are a long ways from gaining real traction within an emerging progressive alliance. There are two key developments that are crucial for this to happen. The first is for the antiwar movement to push harder on outreach towards the main sectors within that alliance (a community-peace coalition). The second is for the organizations and constituencies that are providing the main energy and dynamism within the progressive alliance to foreground antiwar and antimilitarist politics. In my view, pursuing both of these lines is necessary for success.

The New Priorities Network, highlighted in War Times, is one example of antiwar organizers developing solid coalitions with community groups and unions; its key work has been in winning passage of local resolutions demanding funding for jobs and social needs by ending occupation and reducing military spending. Its success indicates that the main way the U.S. public will relate to an antimilitarism message is via the military budget.

Antimilitarism also provides a framework for connecting the antiwar movement with other community struggles in new ways. LGBT bullying, police brutality, border drones, and gun violence are all issues where what is at stake is the question of how conflict is resolved and order created -- based on cooperation rather than force. It is up to us to seize the initiative and build the bridges.

Much more difficult will be consistently and explicitly inserting antiwar and antimilitarist politics within the leading sectors of progressive politics. The iconic example of this remains Martin Luther King, Jr.'s 'Beyond Vietnam' speech, which sharply divided his inner circle and allies. Today the challenge is not so much ideological - most individuals that would identify with racial, gender, economic, and social justice would support some kind of antiwar stance - it is rather that 30 years of movement silos and fragmentation of the left has taken its toll.

The work of US Labor Against the War, which moved historic antiwar resolutions in both Change to Win and the AFL-CIO, shows that success is still possible today. In general, however, we must admit that today even leaders within the progressive movement would be hard pressed to explain how war and militarism shape the overall possibilities for U.S. progressive politics; below, I highlight three dynamics I believe are important to consider. Without this understanding, we are left with either an ideological or humanitarian commitment to internationalism, difficult to rely on given the dominance of pragmatism within our movements. 1. The Military Budget and Social Change

So far, the U.S. ruling class has proved incapable or unwilling to address the structural issues that led to the 2008 crash. The result has been probably the weakest economic recovery in recent U.S. history, and continuing devastation of our communities in terms of unemployment, foreclosures, increased poverty, and intensification of racism. Mass resistance is in its first stages, utilizing tactics ranging from building takeovers to ballot initiatives.

I assume that for this audience I do not have to make the case for cutting the military budget in order to fund jobs and social needs; a politics that is serious about addressing the long-term problems of the economy must - at a minimum - demand a dramatic increase in the social wage, including rights to jobs, housing, higher education, health care, and other public goods. Organizers that want to move beyond single-issue demands and build a movement for broader social transformation will, sooner or later, have to tackle head-on the issues of tax policy, skyrocketing health care costs, and the military budget. [4] 2. Militarism as the cornerstone of authoritarianism

As many others have written, the ascendancy of what's widely termed neoliberalism has not meant the retreat of the state from civil society, but rather an expansion of the state's coercive apparatus. However, the world's purest form of bourgeois democracy - who today could deny that the U.S. ruling class serves the interests of the wealthy - persists as what Sheldon Wolin called, in 2003, 'inverted totalitarianism.' By this Wolin meant that while the fascism of Italy or Germany needed "a continuously mobilized society that would not only support the regime without complaint and enthusiastically vote 'yes' at the periodic plebiscites, inverted totalitarianism wants a politically demobilized society that hardly votes at all."[5]

Thus, futility and distraction for the masses - and intensified punitive measures and dehumanization for any that break the mold. Increasingly, these practices are borrowed from the repertoire of techniques used by the U.S. military against so-called foreign threats. Drones now fly over the southern border; Congress legislates indefinite detention of U.S. citizens, the White House prosecutes whistleblowers in record numbers, and the Justice Department defends the assassination of U.S. citizens as consistent with U.S. and international law. The normalization of a 'state of war' mentality is at the center of attempts to narrow the limits of legal, democratic struggle. 3. From Wall Street to the Military Base

Finally, taking on the power of the financial elites and shifting our economy away from neoliberalism will be extraordinarily more difficult without a politics against war and empire. In the 1970s, the U.S. elites settled on a new economic model to resolve the crisis of 'stagflation'. This system depended on breaking working class power to lower wages in the U.S., restructuring the global division of labor to facilitate low-priced commodity imports, and a volatile but dynamic expansion of the powers of the financial sector and 'free market' relations throughout the globe. Key to all this was the ability to draw capital from around the world to the U.S., eventually buttressed by the guarantee of low inflation and long-term stability, in order to finance our deficits and inflate asset bubbles. Why worry about deindustrialization and U.S. workers' mounting debts when you can privatize water in Latin America, grab land in Africa, manipulate currencies, and make money hedging risk for multinational corporations?[6]

This model, now generally termed 'neoliberalism,' coincided with the U.S. elites' development of close military ties with other states that fell within its imperial embrace. In fact, the U.S. imperial project was essentially to foster close linkages with other economies, the better to induce neoliberal restructuring, while resorting to force to deal with recalcitrant or outright hostile states. The Neocons wanted to go further - fuelled by hallucinations that a remade Middle East would guarantee U.S. control of energy supplies, and thus eliminate any potential challenge to U.S. global leadership of the capitalist system. The 'realists' among the U.S. elites, however, remain committed to imperialism lite, namely the use of military hegemony to integrate rising economies into the U.S. orbit (in Southeast Asia, for instance).

For us, the crucial fact is that the imperial aspects of neoliberalism also reflected the deep-seated resentment of U.S. elites toward any solution to the economic crisis that would increase the sense of power of their own working class and exploited communities. In this they followed British and other imperial ruling classes in looking overseas for profit and growth rather than give up class privilege vis-à-vis their own people.

We face a similar situation today, where the cracks in the neoliberal project are more evident than at any other time in the past 30 years. But we must recognize that the capacity of finance capital to shape the global economy in the interests of accumulating greater wealth means that it will be loathe to accept reality, and will continue to believe it can prop up a dysfunctional system through an expanding empire. Dismantling the military hegemony of the U.S. is crucial in undermining the arrogance and power of finance capital and the breaking with neoliberalism. We cannot occupy Wall Street without decolonizing the globe.

[1] I recommend looking at the excellent snapshot of the antiwar movement on fellow War Timer Jan Adams' blog, http://happening-here.blogspot.com/2008/04/stalled-us-peace-movement-antiwar.html

[2] I owe the points made in this paragraph to Bob Wing

[3] See Clare Bayard's article "Demilitarization as Rehumanization" at Left Turn http://www.leftturn.org/demilitarization-rehumanization

[4] Check out "Bombs and Budgets" put out by War Resisters' League and Ya-Ya Network, www.war resisters.org

[5] Inverted Totalitarianism, The Nation, May 19, 2003

[6] See, for a clearer and more in-depth explanation, Panitch, Leo and Gindin, Sam "Global Capitalism and American Empire" in Socialist Register 2004, Dumenil, Gerard and Levy, Dominique "The Economics of U.S. Imperialism," and Harvey, David The New Imperialism. Published in War and Militarism War Times War Times

War Times/Tiempo de Guerras was started to help broaden and deepen the fight against the Bush Administration response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. We believed then - and believe today - that the regime of permanent war begun under Bush cannot and will not prevent terrorist attacks. We believed then - and still believe - that civilians abroad and poor and working people and communities of color in this country would take the most casualties in a so-called "War on Terror."

Organizing Upgrade 2012 / Built by Union Labor

Iran: Who Is Threatening Whom?

2012-04-17T08:08:00.001-04:00

One Graphic, One Thousand Words

Labor Coalition Warns Against War With Iran

2012-04-07T08:45:00.001-04:00

By Roger Bybee
Beaver County Peace Links via In These Times

US Labor Against the War says "it is time to invest at home"

A broad coalition of influential labor organizations and leaders is urging the Obama administration to avoid any steps that would escalate tensions with Iran, which allegedly poses a nuclear threat in the near future. US Labor Against the War—which is independent of U.S. unions but affiliated with scores of unions and labor councils around the country—is alarmed both by the potential for a catastrophic U.S. or Israeli attack on Iran, and the resulting drain on resources needed to rebuild America's economy.

The USLAW statement highlights the human costs of yet another U.S. assault, but also stresses how an attack on Iran would rob U.S. workers of the resources needed to rebuild an economy still wracked by high unemployment and falling wages.

USLAW declared in a statement last month:

“ the AFL-CIO National Executive Council said in its statement on jobs and labor’s agenda on August 3, 2011: "There is no way to fund what we must do as a nation without bringing our troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan. The militarization of our foreign policy has proven to be a costly mistake. It is time to invest at home."

…the budget crises at federal, state and local levels and their devastating consequences for working people make all the more urgent reductions in U.S. military operations and expenditures, and the transfer of those funds to meet pressing domestic needs…

Yet momentum continues to build for an attack on Iran, with Republican presidential candidates taunting the Obama administration as insufficiently tough toward Iran and supposedly hostile to Israel.

“We’re urging the administration to pursue diplomacy and avoid any precipitous steps like those that got us into the wars with Iraq and Afghanistan,” said David Newby, the past president of the Wisconsin AFL-CIO, which is affiliated with USLAW. It "has shown some understanding that a war with Iran would be disastrous, but the rhetoric of [Secretary of State] Hillary Clinton has been disturbing."

Current evidence indicates that Iran does not pose a nuclear threat. As Commondreams.org recently summarized the results of a major investigation,

“The report, citing breaking intelligence from current and former U.S. officials, outlines the less than dramatic realities of Iran's nuclear program, running counter to many U.S. and Israeli claims that Iran has imminent nuclear weapon capabilities. Such had been the desired justification for a joint attack on Iran.

“Yet we’re being told that the threat from Iran is imminent,” Newby said. “It’s so much like the lead-up to the Iraq War,” which was paved with misleading and distorted intelligence reports asserting that Saddam Hussein possessed 'weapons of mass destruction.'

The outcome was a war that destroyed much of Iraqi society, fractured the nation along religious lines, and caused the deaths of 4,486 Americans and "the death of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, including a half-million children," the USLAW said.

Still, even mainstream elite publications like Foreign Affairs publish calls for yet another conflict in the Mideast.

An attack on Iran by the US or Israel would unleash disastrous results across the entire region, said Newby. “The whole region would be in turmoil, with potentially huge risks for Israel.” This is a concern that even the ultra-hawkish Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman has admitted.

USLAW includes several international unions—the Amalgamated Transit Union, Communications Workers of America, United Electrical Radio and Machine Workers—and a variety of state and local AFL-CIO councils and dozens of union locals. Its mission is to be "the organized voice within the labor movement for peace and new priorities."

The organization's Iran statement was sent to Congress and the White House, along with its affiliates, the AFL-CIO and Change to Win.

Note to Obama: We Need a Peace Candidate

2012-04-06T07:25:00.001-04:00

A Protest of NATO From NATO Countries

By Tom Hayden
Beaver County Peace Links via HuffPost

Peace movements in every country are raising their voices against the war in Afghanistan in advance of the May 18-20 NATO summit in Chicago. Some will converge on Chicago, while others will march in NATO capitols. Around two-thirds of the public in NATO countries now opposes the war, and most of their governments are anxious to withdraw if a face-saving path can be found.

The Obama administration and its allies are scrambling to showcase an announcement of progress before the Chicago summit gathering, which thousands of journalists are planning to cover. The administration already has relocated the G-8 summit on the world fiscal crisis, originally planned at the same time, to the secure seclusion of Camp David.

To support a peace petition by citizens of NATO countries, please sign here.

The administration faces a growing reality of quagmire, possibly even deeper chaos, in Afghanistan. Sixty-nine percent of Americans say the U.S. "should not be involved", a jump of 16 percent from last year. The percentages tend to be even higher in NATO countries.

A March 7 New York Times headline, "Intractable Afghan Graft Hampering U.S. Strategy", summarizes the terminal ineptitude of the Karzai regime. According to NATO data, only one of the Afghan army's 158 battalions is able to fight on their own, up from zero last year. (New York Times, March 16, 2012) Meanwhile those same Afghan soldiers and police are "killing their colleagues among the international military force here at an alarming rate", according to another New York Times report. (March 28, 2012) One result of the deepening quagmire has been a collapse of U.S. military morale and discipline, as seen in widely-publicized cases of American soldiers burning Qurans, urinating on dead bodies, and a shooting spree against innocent Afghan villagers. The suicide rate in the American armed forces is at a historic high.

The suspicion is deepening that the war is no longer about benefits for Afghanistan, if it ever was, but about protecting the reputation of NATO. Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote in Foreign Affairs (2010), a division between the U.S. and Europe over Afghanistan "would probably spell the end of the Alliance." Former White House National Security Adviser James Jones said in 2007 that "NATO has bet its future," on sustained combat in Afghanistan. The well-connected Pakistani author Ahmed Rashid has written that, in Afghanistan, NATO "would find meaning for its continued existence." (Rashid, Ahmed. Descent into Chaos, pp. 372-373)

Now that NATO has "proven" itself in Libya, the pressure to justify itself in Afghanistan might lessen. But the arrogance only seems to grow. For example, the NATO secretary-general Anders Fogh Rasmussen, proclaims that there was not a single confirmed civilian casualty in NATO's onslaught against Libya. (New York Times, March 25, 2012), a lie topped only by the CIA's repeated insistence that there have been no civilian casualties from its drone strikes on Pakistan.

Nevertheless, Western proposals being prepared for Chicago continue to assume the supremacy of "NATO's Secrecy Stance" -- the quote is from the New York Times' C.J. Chivers -- during the coming "transition" process through 2014 and beyond. The powers with real interests in stabilizing the region -- Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, China, India and Russia -- are marginalized to secondary roles in NATO's vision of the future.

Ironically, Iran, currently the number-one economic and military target of the West, has historic ties with the Persian-speaking Tajiks and the Shiite Hazara who oppose the Taliban in Afghanistan. Not so long ago, Iran even was envisioned as part of a "contact group" to mediate and resolve the Afghanistan conflict. A top U.S. official in the Bush years noted that "Iran hoped and anticipated that tactical cooperation with the United States would lead to a genuine strategic opening between our two countries." (Council on Foreign Relations) Those days are long gone and, unless there is a "grand bargain" in place of the present brinksmanship, Iran can thwart Washington's hopes for a deal on Afghanistan as the Iranians helped to do over Iraq.

U.S. and NATO policies in the region are, to say the least, "incoherent," in the description of historian Gerald Horne.

During the Chicago summit, Obama is expected to announce a more rapid shift from a combat to an advisory role for U.S. troops, an accelerated withdrawal of more than the 33,000 troops scheduled to depart this year, and a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) containing immunity for any American troops left behind. Karzai so far is demanding that U.S. troops end their night raids and other offensive operations, and face Afghan courts where war crimes are committed. Since there were 2,200 night raids last year, according to NATO's count, curtailing them would threaten the present U.S. strategy. (New York Times, March 23, 2012) On the American side, Obama is facing open opposition by his top general on the battlefield, Marine Gen. John R. Adams ("General Says Afghans Need Big US Force Beyond 2012," New York Times, March 23, 2012). And although growing numbers of Republican voters have given up on "staying the course", Mitt Romney is synchronizing his position to that of the military commanders. The Congress has been dormant, but at least one hundred House votes favoring Barbara Lee's bill cutting funds for any purpose besides redeployment.

There is no light at the end of the Afghan tunnel. A gradual reduction in the U.S.-NATO combat role will not stop the spilling of Afghan blood, will not stem the waste of our tax dollars, will not stabilize Afghanistan, will not end the drone strikes, and will not end the worry of American soldiers that they will be the last to die in a forsaken and forgotten place. Nor will the United States and the West be safer from terrorist attacks on our own soil, as shown once again by the killings in Toulouse this month.

The weight of public opinion in an election year is the critical factor Obama needs to consider, and peace advocates need to amplify. There is no reason to believe that the Afghan war will disappear from the headlines between now and November. In fact, more "isolated" disasters like the shooting of civilians are predictable. That means the United Nations and NATO might have to think the unthinkable and summon the uncommon courage to acknowledge a military quagmire. Expediency may no longer justify a lingering occupation, but instead may mean cutting one's losses and hoping the public will be accepting. If the U.S. does pivot to an exit strategy, unlikely as that seems at the moment, the argument Obama can use is that the hopeless Afghan regime and its hapless army "lost" the war in spite of the ten years of brave successes by the American forces.

The new diplomatic strategy might include a clearer timetable for ending the Western combat role, and for withdrawing all Western troops and foreswearing any desire for permanent military bases. Simultaneously, the West would accelerate efforts at a cease-fire and negotiations for a new power-sharing arrangement instead of propping up a corrupt, unpopular, and unreformable Karzai government in Kabul. The arrangements would include acceptance of a political role for the Taliban and other insurgents in the future of their country. The status quo plan for a 2014 Afghan presidential election would be revised to permit a more inclusive political process. To move forward, the diplomatic process would require cessation of the U.S. drone strikes over Pakistan, perhaps in exchange for a Taliban assurance that it will not allow al Qaeda havens in areas under its control. Figures like Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden will insist on protections for Afghan women, but a current Human Rights Watch report indicts the warlord-dominated regime in Kabul as brutally repressive towards women already. Clinton might succeed in conditioning future aid to maintaining the current rights of Afghan women to education and representation in parliament if she can hold unanimous Afghan support.

To those who worry that withdrawal represents a lack of American resolve, many others will respond that the stubborn refusal to acknowledge a mistake, and the loss of lives in order to save face, reflect a cowardice most Americans will never forget.

Follow Tom Hayden on Twitter: www.twitter.com/TomEHayden

Where Can We Find a Congressman to Speak for the Antiwar Majority?

2012-04-02T10:21:00.001-04:00

CNN Poll: Afghan War Support Hits New Low

Beaver County Peace Links via CNN Political Unit

(CNN, April 2) - Support for the war in Afghanistan has fallen to an all-time low with the majority of Americans saying the U.S. should withdraw all of its troops from Afghanistan before the 2014 deadline set by the Obama administration, according to a new poll.

The CNN/ORC International survey released Friday indicated only 25% of Americans favored the war in the Asian country. A majority of Republicans voiced opposition to it, for the first time since the war began in 2001.

Just 37% of the general public said things are going well for the U.S. in Afghanistan, while only 34% said America is winning the war. The approval likely contributed to the 55% of those surveyed who said the U.S. should remove all of its troops from the country before 2014.

Twenty-two percent expressed support for the 2014 timetable and an additional 22% said the U.S. should keep some troops in Afghanistan beyond 2014.

Leaders at the Pentagon have recently responded to low poll numbers by stressing the importance of fighting the war on the ground.

"We cannot fight wars by polls," Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on Tuesday. "If we do that we're in deep trouble. We have to operate based on what we believe is the best strategy to achieve the mission that we are embarked on. And the mission here is to safeguard our country by ensuring that the Taliban and al Qaeda never again find a safe haven in Afghanistan."

The poll, conducted for CNN by ORC International, surveyed 1,014 American adults by telephone between March 24 and March 25 with a sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

– CNN's Barbara Starr contributed to this report.

Is the Hijab Now a ‘Hoodie’ for Muslim Women?

2012-03-25T09:36:00.001-04:00

Shaima Alawadi Dead: Iraqi Woman Who Was Severely Beaten In California Home Dies

Huffington Post Report

March 24, 2012, EL CAJON, Calif. — A 32-year-old woman from Iraq who was found severely beaten next to a threatening note saying "go back to your country" died on Saturday.

Hanif Mohebi, the director of the San Diego chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said he met with Shaima Alawadi's family members in the morning and was told that she was taken off life support around 3 p.m.

"The family is in shock at the moment. They're still trying to deal with what happened," Mohebi said.

Alawadi, a mother of five, had been hospitalized since her 17-year-old daughter found her unconscious Wednesday in the family's house in El Cajon, police Lt. Steve Shakowski said.

The daughter, Fatima Al Himidi, told KUSI-TV her mother had been beaten on the head repeatedly with a tire iron, and that the note said "go back to your country, you terrorist."

Addressing the camera, the tearful daughter asked: "You took my mother away from me. You took my best friend away from me. Why? Why did you do it?"

Police said the family had found a similar note earlier this month but did not report it to authorities.

Al Himidi told KGTV-TV her mother dismissed the first note, found outside the home, as a child's prank.

A family friend, Sura Alzaidy, told UT San Diego () that the attack apparently occurred after the father took the younger children to school. Alzaidy told the newspaper the family is from Iraq, and that Alawadi is a "respectful modest muhajiba," meaning she wears the traditional hijab, a head scarf. http://bit.ly/GYbfB7

Investigators said they believe the assault is an isolated incident.

"A hate crime is one of the possibilities, and we will be looking at that," Lt. Mark Coit said. "We don't want to focus on only one issue and miss something else."

The family had lived in the house in San Diego County for only a few weeks, after moving from Michigan, Alzaidy said. Alzaidy told the newspaper her father and Alawadi's husband had previously worked together in San Diego as private contractors for the U.S. Army, serving as cultural advisers to train soldiers who were going to be deployed to the Middle East.

Mohebi said the family had been in the United States since the mid-1990s.

He said it was unfortunate that the family didn't report the initial threatening note.

"Our community does face a lot of discriminatory, hate incidents and don't always report them," Mohebi said. "They should take these threats seriously and definitely call local law enforcement."

El Cajon, northeast of downtown San Diego, is home to some 40,000 Iraqi immigrants, the second largest such community in the U.S. after Detroit.

Also on HuffPost: 799 406 50 1.7K

End Atrocities by Ending the War

2012-03-15T17:28:00.001-04:00

Terror, Trauma, and the Endless Afghan War

By Amy Goodman
Beaver County Peace Links via Nation of Change

We may never know what drove a U.S. Army staff sergeant to head out into the Afghan night and allegedly murder at least 16 civilians in their homes, among them nine children and three women. The massacre near Belambai, in Kandahar, Afghanistan, has shocked the world and intensified the calls for an end to the longest war in U.S. history. The attack has been called tragic, which it surely is. But when Afghans attack U.S. forces, they are called “terrorists.” That is, perhaps, the inconsistency at the core of U.S. policy, that democracy can be delivered through the barrel of a gun, that terrorism can be fought by terrorizing a nation.

“I did it,” the alleged mass murderer said as he returned to the forward operating base outside Kandahar, that southern city called the “heartland of the Taliban.” He is said to have left the base at 3 a.m. and walked to three nearby homes, methodically killing those inside. One farmer, Abdul Samad, was away at the time. His wife, four sons, and four daughters were killed. Some of the victims had been stabbed, some set on fire. Samad told The New York Times, “Our government told us to come back to the village, and then they let the Americans kill us.”

The massacre follows massive protests against the U.S. military’s burning of copies of the Quran, which followed the video showing U.S. Marines urinating on the corpses of Afghans. Two years earlier, the notorious “kill team” of U.S. soldiers that murdered Afghan civilians for sport, posing for gruesome photos with the corpses and cutting off fingers and other body parts as trophies, also was based near Kandahar.

In response, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta rolled out a string of cliches, reminding us that “war is hell.” Panetta visited Camp Leatherneck in Helmand province, near Kandahar, this week on a previously scheduled trip that coincidentally fell days after the massacre. The 200 Marines invited to hear him speak were forced to leave their weapons outside the tent. NBC News reported that such instructions were “highly unusual,” as Marines are said to always have weapons on hand in a war zone. Earlier, upon his arrival, a stolen truck raced across the landing strip toward his plane, and the driver leapt out of the cab, on fire, in an apparent attack.

The violence doesn’t just happen in the war zone. Back in the U.S., the wounds of war are manifesting in increasingly cruel ways.

The 38-year-old staff sergeant who allegedly committed the massacre was from Joint Base Lewis-McChord (JBLM), a sprawling military facility near Tacoma, Wash., that has been described by Stars and Stripes newspaper as “the most troubled base in the military” and, more recently, as “on the brink.” 2011 marked a record for soldier suicides there. The base also was the home for the “kill team.”

The Seattle Times reported earlier this month that 285 patients at JBLM’s Madigan Army Medical Center had their post-traumatic stress disorder diagnoses inexplicably reversed by a forensic psychiatric screening team. The reversals are now under investigation due to concerns they were partly motivated by a desire to avoid paying those who qualify for medical benefits.

Kevin Baker was also a staff sergeant in the U.S. Army, stationed at Fort Lewis. After two deployments to Iraq, he refused a third after being denied a PTSD diagnosis. He began organizing to bring the troops home. He told me: “If a soldier is wounded on a battlefield in combat, and they’re bleeding to death, and an officer orders that person to not receive medical attention, costing that servicemember their life, that officer would be found guilty of dereliction of duty and possibly murder. But when that happens in the U.S., when that happens for soldiers that are going to seek help, and officers are ordering not a clear diagnosis for PTSD and essentially denying them that metaphoric tourniquet, real psychological help, and the soldier ends up suffering internally to the point of taking their own life or somebody else’s life, then these officers and this military and the Pentagon has to be held responsible for these atrocities.”

While too late to save Abdul Samad’s family, Baker’s group, March Forward!—along with Iraq Veterans Against the War’s “Operation Recovery,” which seeks to ban the deployment of troops already suffering from PTSD—may well help end the disastrous, terrorizing occupation of Afghanistan.

This article was published at NationofChange at: http://www.nationofchange.org/terror-trauma-and-endless-afghan-war-1331826602. All rights are reserved.

Note to Obama: Don’t Go Here

2012-03-14T12:30:00.001-04:00

Circle Of Clowns Playing With Fire:

The GOP's Warmongering on Iran

By Bill Fletcher, Jr
Progressive America Rising via Seattle Medium

March 14, 2012 - It is difficult to watch the spectacle of the Republican primaries and not agree with whoever it was that originated the description of those candidacies as nothing more or less than a ‘circle of clowns.’ At each moment one or the other candidate seems to go deeper into the swamp, whether through denigrating science, attacking women or attempting to ridicule President Obama for supporting college education.

With this evolution of the campaign it feels as if we are going deeper and deeper into a new dark age with mysticism, fear, militarism, racism and misogynism as the defining characteristics.

What never ceases to amaze me is the manner in which these politicians have, with the exception of the right-wing libertarian Ron Paul, jumped up and down on the band-wagon in favor of war with Iran. In concert with an element of the Israeli political establishment and their supporters in the USA, they have been beating the drum for military strikes against Iran as a means of stopping the alleged efforts of Iran to achieve a nuclear weapon.

Never mind that no one has been able to establish that the Iranians are doing anything more than they propose?to develop nuclear power for peaceful purposes?and never mind the fact that Israel possesses nuclear weapons, is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and assisted apartheid South Africa in constructing weapons of mass destruction. Never mind the fact that retired and current US military officials (and actually substantial numbers of Israeli military officials) oppose any discussion of military strikes on Iran, seeing such strikes as nothing short of foolhardy.

The circle of clowns ask us to ignore this and to proceed forward with a disastrous war with Iran. This, all based on the crazy rhetoric of the Iranian regime and the possibility of what they might be able to do.

Think about it this way. Let?s say that you had a neighbor who did not like you. You go and buy a gun because you are a hunter. Your neighbor concludes that you bought the gun to get them, so they come into your house and kill you. Besides you being in a grave, where do you think that this would end? How many courts?unless race were involved?would ever go for an argument that it was fine to attack you because the neighbor thought that you might attack. Yet this is the same logic that the circle of clowns are operating on and this must be repudiated.

While it appears that President Obama is not interested in, at least for now, a war with Iran, he has fallen over himself to demonstrate his loyalty and support to Israel. This is unsettling; US foreign policy should not be based upon supporting Israel on everything that they do. For that reason, if the voices of the people of the USA are not heard loud and clear, the banter from the circle of clowns may prevail and we could be looking at events that will spiral out of control.

Bill Fletcher, Jr. is a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies, immediate past president of TransAfrica Forum, and the co-author of Solidarity Divided.

Warning from a Warmonger on Iran

2012-03-10T08:07:00.001-05:00

Dangerous, Ignorant Warmongers

The drums of war are being banged again by those that cater to the economic wishes of the military/industrial/security complex.

By Leslie H. Gelb
Beaver County Peace Links via The Daily Beast

March 9, 2012 - I'm not supposed to tell you this. I'm violating the code. I'm giving away the deepest, darkest secret of the foreign policy clan: even though we sound like we know everything, we know very little, especially about the intentions of bad guys and the consequences of war.

But since the media keeps treating us like sages and keeps ignoring our horrendous mistakes, we carry on with our game, and do a lot of damage. Let me give you of few of the more recent examples of how ignorant and dangerous we are, and why you should be wary of any flat out “truths” and certainties uttered by my clanspeople.

Take Iran. Those who can't wait to start a war with Iran tell us that Tehran is within three seconds, three months, or a year of developing a nuclear weapon. I promise you they don't know this for anything near a fact. They're trying to push Israel and the United States into a military attack against Iran.

Here's all we do know for sure: Iran is enriching uranium and has the capacity to enrich enough of it to a level of purity sufficient to make nukes - maybe, perhaps, in a year or two or more. Iran may have or may be developing related capacities to place this uranium into explosive form in a bomb or missile warhead. We have suspicions about the latter based on various kinds of imaging and listening intelligence.

Now, are these activities something to worry about? Absolutely! But it is not a basis for going to war now or soon. It is a basis for Americans, Israelis, and others to find out more as quickly as possible through better intelligence and diplomacy. Yes, diplomacy, because we can argue forever about exactly what the Iranians have and intend, but making diplomatic proposals allows us to test our hypotheses. If Tehran rejects reasonable proposals, then there are grounds for raising suspicions and waving the war wand.

By the way, this isn't just my view. It is the consensus position of U.S. intelligence agencies. Equally telling, it is what retired senior Israeli intelligence chiefs and military officers have been shouting from the rooftops publicly, totally contrary to the code of silence on these matters.

Israeli and American hawks are also proclaiming that we need not worry about the consequences of an attack on Iran, that the Iranians could not or would not do anything that should trouble us deeply. Hold on to your wallet here. How do they know if Tehran will strike back at, say, Saudi or Iraqi oil fields and drive oil prices into the stratosphere, or launch terrorist attacks against American, Israelis, and others worldwide? Of course, I don't know either. But these are real risks that we must accept and reckon with before attacking Iran.

Take Syria. The war twins, Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, along with the usual cohort of neoconservatives and humanitarian interventionists, are urging military action. They want airstrikes and arms for the Syrian rebels, no-fly zones, and so forth. They can't stand President Bashar al-Assad killing his people. None of us can. But why are the neocons so riled up about several thousand Syrian deaths, when they are practically mum about the millions killed and being killed in Africa? Why don't they advocate arming the Tibetans? Well, we know why they don't want war with China. For the time being, all they desire is to beef up U.S. military spending and presence in Asia. Then, we'll see.

So, one might suspect that their passion for Washington "to lead" on Syria and get into another war there turns on something other than saving lives. Try Iran. They want to weaken Iran's position in the Arab world, with its great Syrian ally, and with Iranian-backed extremists like Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. It is a noble goal.

But again what of the consequences, or better, the risks? The interventionists, for example, plead to arm Syrian rebels. But who are those rebels exactly? Oh, former Syrian soldiers. Oh, people fighting against Assad's tyranny. That's fine. But who else are they? Are there major al Qaeda elements among them, or other Muslim extremists? Would they be a bigger threat to Israel and to Arab neighbors like Jordan than Assad himself? The warmongers say not to worry, but they don't know the answers to any of these questions. Nor do they have any idea what these "freedom fighters" would do with Assad's chemical weapons. Nor have the interventionists begun to explain how they would conduct air operations over Syria, and what more they'd be prepared to do if those air attacks failed to stop Assad's killings.

There's an even longer list of questions that the war humanitarians should be made to answer before any president lifts his sword. Americans need protection from these snake-oil salesmen, and that protection depends almost entirely on Congress and the media. They have got to be much tougher with the experts, pin them down on what they know and don't know and what facts their views are based on. They've got to demand real answers, and not let the experts escape with slogans like "lead" and "take action," or "that will all work out." But it is the rarest of occasions when legislators or journalists bear down on the experts. If the questioners don't do their job once again, as with Iraq and Afghanistan, then we'll be in wars once again. And once again, we'll be very sorry. But the interventionists won't be. They never are. They'll just want to keep fighting every war forever until we "win."

Afghan Widow: ‘I Just Want You to Leave’

2012-02-29T11:24:00.001-05:00

The Ghost and the Machine

By Kathy Kelly
with research by the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers

Beaver County Peace Links via HuffPost

Feb, 29, 2012 - Fazillah, age 25, lives in Maidan Shar, the central city of Afghanistan's Wardak province. She married about six years ago, and gave birth to a son, Aymal, who just turned five without a father. Fazillah tells her son, Aymal, that his father was killed by an American bomber plane, remote-controlled by computer.

That July, in 2007, Aymal's father was sitting in a garden with four other men. A weaponized drone, what we used to call an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle or UAV, was flying, unseen, overhead, and fired missiles into the garden, killing all five men.

Now Fazillah and Aymal share a small dwelling with the deceased man's mother. According to the tradition, a husband's relatives are responsible to look after a widow with no breadwinner remaining in her immediate family. She and her son have no regular source of bread or income, but Fazillah says that her small family is better off than it might have been: one of the men killed alongside her husband left behind a wife and child but no other living relatives that could provide them with any source of support, at all.

Aymal's grandmother becomes agitated and distraught speaking about her son's death, and that of his four friends. "All of us ask, 'Why?'" she says, raising her voice. "They kill people with computers and they can't tell us why. When we ask why this happened, they say they had doubts, they had suspicions. But they didn't take time to ask 'Who is this person?' or 'Who was that person?' There is no proof, no accountability. Now, there is no reliable person in the home to bring us bread. I am old, and I do not have a peaceful life."

Listening to them, I recall an earlier conversation I had with a Pakistani social worker and with Safdar Dawar, a journalist, both of whom had survived drone attacks in the area of Miran Shah, in Pakistan's Waziristan province. Exasperated at the increasingly common experience which they had survived and which too many others have not, they began firing questions at us.

"Who has given the license to kill and in what court? Who has declared that they can hit anyone they like?"

"How many 'high level targets' could there possibly be?"

"What kind of democracy is America," Safdar asks, "where people do not ask these questions?"

One question Fazillah cannot answer for her son is whether anyone asked the question at all of whether to kill his father.

Forbes Magazine reports that the Air Force has sixty-five to seventy thousand analysts processing drone video surveillance; a Rand review states they actually need half again that number to properly handle the data. Asked to point to the human who actually made the decision to kill her husband, she can only point to another machine.

In June 2010, Philip G. Alston, then the UN's Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, appeared before the UN Human Rights Council and testified that "targeted killings pose a rapidly growing challenge to the international rule of law ... In a situation in which there is no disclosure of who has been killed, for what reason, and whether innocent civilians have died, the legal principle of international accountability is, by definition, comprehensively violated."

Such an expanded and open-ended interpretation of the right to self defense comes close to destroying the prohibition on the use of armed force contained in the United Nations Charter. If invoked by other states in pursuit of those they deemed to be terrorists and to have attacked them, it would cause chaos.

This past week, on February 23, the legal action charity Reprieve spoke up on behalf of more than a dozen Pakistani families who had lost loved ones in drone strikes, and asked the UN Human Rights Council to condemn the attacks as illegal human rights violations.

"In Pakistan, the CIA is creating desolation and calling it peace," said Reprieve's Director Clive Stafford Smith. "The illegal programme of drone strikes has murdered hundreds of civilians in Pakistan. The UN must put a stop to it before any more children are killed. Not only is it causing untold suffering to the people of North West Pakistan -- it is also the most effective recruiting sergeant yet for the very 'militants' the US claims to be targeting."

The lawyer representing the families, Shahzad Akbar of Pakistan's "Foundation for Fundamental Rights," said:

If President Obama really believes the drone strikes have 'pinpoint' accuracy, it has to be asked where the deaths of kids like Maezol Khan's eight-year-old son fit into the CIA's plan. If the US is not prepared to face up to the reality of the suffering the strikes are causing, then the UN must step in. The international community can no longer afford to ignore the human rights catastrophe which is taking place in North West Pakistan in the name of the 'War on Terror.'

Drone warfare, ever more widely used from month to month from the Bush through the Obama administrations, has seen very little meaningful public debate. We don't ask questions -- our minds straying no nearer these battlefields than in the coming decades the bodies of our young people will -- that is, if the chaos our war making engenders doesn't bring the battlefields to us. An expanding network of devastatingly lethal covert actions spreading throughout the developing world passes with minimal concern or comment.

So who does Fazillah blame? Who does one blame when confronted with the actions of a machine?

Our Pakistani friend asks, "What kind of a democracy is America where people do not ask these questions?" Becoming an actual democracy, with an actual choice at election-time between war and peace rather than between political machines vying for the chance to bring us war, seems to many Americans, if some of the less-reported polls are to be believed, a near-unachievable goal. The U.S. has become a process that churns out war -- today Afghanistan and (in any real sense) Iraq; tomorrow Iran and Pakistan, with China securely, however distantly, on the horizon -- and for those of us with any concern for peace, a principled opposition to war ultimately requires a determination to make the U.S. at long last into a democracy, striving as Dr. King enjoined us, in "molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood."

It must begin with compassion -- powerless compassion perhaps, perhaps only the ghost of dissent, but compassion for people like Fazillah and Aymal -- and with deciding to be human, maybe only the ghost of a human, but alive in some way and alive to what our assent, and perhaps especially our silence are accomplishing in the world. Humanity is the first thing to be won back -- and then, if we have the strength, relentlessly defended -- against indifference, complacency, and, above all, inaction. If enough of us refuse to be machines, if enough of us refuse enough, can democracy, and even peace, not be at last achieved? But first comes the refusal.

Fazillah wants a peaceful life. She doesn't want to see any more people killed, any more ghosts like that of her husband. Any more bodies, burned (as she recalls) so charred that they are almost unrecognizable one from another.

"I don't want this to happen to anyone," says Fazillah. I don't want any children to be left without parents."

And," she adds, "I want the U.S. troops to leave."

Kathy Kelly (Kathy@vcnv.org) co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence (www.vcnv.org) The Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers (www.ourjourneytosmile.com) are based in Kabul.

The Need to Stop a Very Bad Idea

2012-02-28T08:21:00.001-05:00

Iran, Israel and the US: The Slide To War

By Conn Hallinan
Beaver County Peace Links via Dispatches from the Edge

Feb 24, 2012 - Wars are fought because some people decide it is in their interests to fight them. World War I was not started over the Archduke Ferdinand’s assassination, nor was it triggered by the alliance system. An “incident” may set the stage for war, but no one keeps shooting unless they think it’s a good idea. The Great War started because the countries involved decided they would profit by it, delusional as that conclusion was.

It is useful to keep this idea in mind when trying to figure out if there will be a war with Iran. In short, what are the interests of the protagonists, and are they important enough for those nations to take the fateful step into the chaos of battle?

First off, because oil and gas are involved, a war would have global ramifications. Iran supplies [4] China with about 15 percent of its oil, and India with 10 percent. It is a major supplier to Europe, Turkey, Japan and South Korea, and it has the third largest oil reserves and the second largest natural gas reserves in the world. Some 17 million barrels per day pass through the narrow Strait of Hormuz, a significant part of the globe’s energy supply.

In short, the actors in this drama are widespread and their interests as diverse as their nationalities.

According to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu [5], Iran is building nuclear weapons that pose an “existential” threat to Israel. But virtually no one believes this, including the bulk of Tel Aviv’s military and intelligence communities [6]. As former Israeli Chief of Staff Dan Halutz [7] said recently, Iran “is not an existential” threat to Israel. There is no evidence that Iran is building a bomb and all its facilities are currently under a 24-hour United Nations inspection regime.

But Israel does have an interest in keeping the Middle East a fragmented place, riven by sectarian divisions and dominated by authoritarian governments and feudal monarchies. If there is one lesson Israel has learned from its former British overlords, it is “divide and conquer.” Among its closest allies were the former dictatorships in Egypt and Tunisia, and it now finds itself on the same page as the reactionary monarchies of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC): Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, and Oman.

Iran is not a military threat to Israel, but it is a political problem, because Tel Aviv sees Teheran’s fierce nationalism and independence from the U.S. and Europe as a wildcard. Iran is also allied to Israel’s major regional enemy, Syria—with which it is still officially at war— and the Shiite-based Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, and the Shiite-dominated government in Iraq.

In the Netanyahu government’s analysis, beating up on Iran would weaken Israel’s local enemies and at little cost. Tel Aviv’s scenario [8] features a shock and awe attack, followed by a United Nations mandated ceasefire, with a maximum of 500 Israeli casualties. The Iranians have little capacity to strike back, and, if they did attack Israeli civilian centers or tried to close the Hormutz Strait, it would bring in the Americans.

Of course that rose-colored scenario is little more than wishful thinking. Iran is not likely to agree to a ceasefire—it fought for eight long years against Iraq—and war has a habit of derailing the best-laid plans. In real life it will be long and bloody and might well spread to the entire region.

Iran’s leaders use a lot of bombast about punishing Israel if it attacks, but in the short run, there is not a lot they could do, particularly given the red lines [9] Washington has drawn. The Iranian air force is obsolete, and the Israelis have the technology to blank out most of Teheran’s radar and anti-aircraft sites. Iran could do little to stop Tel Aviv’s mixture of air attacks, submarine-fired cruise missiles, and Jericho ballistic missiles.

For all its talk about “everything being on the table.” The Obama administration appears to be trying to avoid a war [10], but with the 2012 elections looming, would Washington remain on the sidelines? On the “yes” side are polls indicating that Americans would not look with favor on a new Middle East war [11]. But on the “no” side are a united front of Republicans, neo-conservatives, and the American Israeli Political Action Committee [12] pressing for a confrontation with Iran.

Israeli sources [13] suggest that Netanyahu may calculate that in the run-up to the 2012 American elections, an Israeli attack might force the Obama Administration to back a war and/or damage Obama’s re-election chances. It is no secret that there is no love lost between the two leaders.

But the U.S. also has a dog in this fight, and one not all that different than Israel’s. American hostility to Iran dates back to Teheran’s seizure of its oil assets from Britain in 1951. The CIA helped overthrow the democratically elected Iranian government in 1953 and install the dictatorial Shah. The U.S. also backed Saddam Hussein’s war on Iran, has had a longstanding antagonistic relationship with Syria, and will not talk with Hezbollah or Hamas. Tel Aviv’s local enemies are Washington’s local enemies.

When the Gulf monarchs formed the GCC in 1981, its primary purpose was to oppose Iranian influence in the Middle East. Using religious division as a wedge, the GCC has encouraged Sunni fundamentalists to fight Shiites in Lebanon, Iraq and Syria, and blocked the spread of the “Arab Spring” to its own turf. When Shiites in Bahrain began protesting over a lack of democracy and low wages, the GCC invaded and crushed the demonstrations. The GCC does not see eye-to-eye with the U.S. and Israel on the Palestinians—although it is careful not to annoy [14] Washington and Tel Aviv—but the GCC is on the same page as both capitals concerning Syria, Lebanon and Iran.

The European Union (EU) has joined the sanctions, although France [15] and Germany [16] have explicitly rejected the use of force. Motivations in the EU range from France’s desire to reclaim its former influence in Lebanon to Europe’s need to keep its finger on the energy jugular vein. In brief, it isn’t all about oil and gas but a whole lot of it is, and, as CounterPunch’s Alexander Cockburn [16]points out, oil companies would like to see production cut and prices rise. A war would accomplish both.

Iran will be the victim here, but there will be some who would take advantage of a war. An attack would unify the country around what is now a rather unpopular government, allow the Revolutionary Guard to crush its opposition, and give cover to the current drive by the Ahmadinejad government to cut subsidies for transportation, housing and food. A war would cement the power of the most reactionary elements [17]of the current regime.

There are other actors in this drama—China, Russia, India, Turkey, and Pakistan for starters, none of whom support a war—but whether they can influence events is an open question. In the end, Israel may just decide that its interests are served by starting a war, and that the U.S. will go along because it is much of the same mind.

Or maybe this is all sound and fury signifying nothing?

The sobering thought is that the three most powerful actors in this drama—Israel, the U.S. and its European allies, and the Gulf Cooperation Council—have many of the same interests, and share the belief that force is an effective way to achieve one’s goals.

On such illusions are tragedies built.

GOP Warmongering on the Rise

2012-02-27T10:39:00.001-05:00

The Gang That Couldn't Bomb Straight

By Robert Scheer
Beaver County Peace Links via Truthdig Op-Ed

Feb. 26, 2012 - Here we go again. With the economy showing faint signs of life and their positions on the social issues alienating most moderates, the leading Republican candidates, with the exception of Ron Paul, have returned to the elixir of warmongering to once again sway the gullible masses.

The race to the bottom has been set by Newt Gingrich, the most desperate of the lot, who on Tuesday charged that "the president wants to unilaterally weaken the United States" because his administration has dared question the wisdom of Israel attacking Iran and proposes a slight reduction in the bloated defense budget.

Let the good times roll, with a beefed-up military budget justified by plans to invade yet another Muslim country. As Paul warned during the South Carolina primary debate as his presidential rivals threatened war with Iran: "I'm afraid what's going on right now is similar to the war propaganda that went on against Iraq." Indeed, the shouting match over which of the other GOP candidates most wants a war with Iran is in sync with the last Republican president's 2003 invasion.

It was an invasion that removed Saddam Hussein, once the U.S. ally in confronting Iran, from power and replaced him with a Shiite leadership long beholden to the ayatollahs of Iran. Of course, as Bush lied, this was not about nation-building aimed at imposing a democracy in our image, but rather, as is the claim now, about preventing radical Muslims from getting their hands on a nuclear weapon. In a "Where's Waldo?" moment, it turned out that the dreaded nukes were not in Iraq, and the leading Republican presidential candidates are convinced that Iran now has such weapons and that they need to be taken out.

Not so, say CIA and Pentagon experts in these matters, who insist that Iran is some distance from developing a nuclear weapon, even if that is its intention. In a CNN interview Sunday, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stated that Iran had not yet decided whether to build a nuclear weapon. He also said the U.S. had told Israel that any Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities would be "destabilizing."

But such facts are not troubling to the GOP contenders, who seem not to have realized that there is one Muslim country already in possession of scores of such weapons. That would be Pakistan, the country Bush didn't invade despite its avid support for the Taliban sponsors of al-Qaida. Instead, after 9/11, Bush dropped the sanctions his predecessor, Bill Clinton, had imposed on Pakistan as punishment for its developing a nuclear arsenal. Nor did Bush and his fellow Republican hawks get overly exercised by the revelation that Pakistan was giving nuclear weapons technology to North Korea, Libya and, yes, Iran. It was also the hiding place for Osama bin Laden when Barack Obama made good on Bush's pledge to run the al-Qaida leader to ground.

If Bush had taken out bin Laden, the Republicans would have by now had W's head chiseled into Mount Rushmore, but since it is Obama's success, they are driven mad by this turn of events. On Tuesday, Gingrich came totally unglued, telling a student audience at Oral Roberts University that defeating Obama is "a duty of national security" because the president "is incapable of defending the United States."

Why? Simple. Obama has accepted the eminently sensible proposal endorsed by the Pentagon brass to trim $32 billion from the $655 billion defense budget in 2013. That small cut from a Cold War-style budget that accounts for 45 percent of world spending on the military despite there being no sophisticated military enemy now in sight for the U.S. was judged by Gingrich to render the president "willfully dishonest."

The idea of Newt Gingrich calling anyone else dishonest is an affront to reason, but, with the exception of Rep. Paul, those vying with the former House speaker for the nomination have been quick to indicate they are in full accord with the accusation. Gingrich's rabid support for the U.S. lining up behind an Israeli attack, even a nuclear one, may be explained by his campaign being kept afloat by a Nevada gambling billionaire who contributed $10 million to a pro-Gingrich super PAC and whose prime cause is the Israeli far-right. Rick Santorum offers biblical bromides for his support of Israeli militarism, and for Mitt Romney, the thirst for war just seems a natural extension of his innate say-anything opportunism. What a disreputable crew.

Valentine's Day in War Zones

2012-02-14T19:35:00.001-05:00

Afghan boys

Cold, Cold Heart

By Kathy Kelly
Beaver County Peace Links via HuffPort

Feb 14, 2012 - It's Valentine's Day, and opening the little cartoon on the Google page brings up a sentimental animation with Tony Bennett singing "why can't I free your doubtful mind and melt your cold, cold heart."

Here in Dubai, where I'm awaiting a visa to visit Afghanistan, the weather is already warm and humid. But my bags are packed with sweaters because Kabul is still reeling from the coldest winter on record. Two weeks ago, eight children under age five froze to death there in one of the sprawling refugee camps inhabited by so many who have fled from the battles in other provinces. Since January 15, at least 23 children under the age of five have frozen to death in the camps.

And just over a week ago, eight young shepherds, all but one of them under the age of 14, lit a fire for warmth on the snowy Afghan mountainside in Kapisa Province where they were helping support their families by grazing sheep. French troops saw the fire, and acted on faulty information, and the boys were all killed in two successive NATO airstrikes. The usual denunciations from local authorities, and Western apologies, followed.

So I'm thinking about warmth, and who we share it with and who we don't.

This is an unexpected trip for me. I had first planned to spend this week at home in Chicago, and then, rather suddenly, agreed to join a group of informal human rights observers traveling to Bahrain for the one year anniversary of their brutally repressed "February 17th Revolution" (please follow events there, and demand that the U.S. cease arming Bahrain's dictatorship, at witnessbahrain.org). Bahraini authorities declined to issue me a visa, and so I asked the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers if I could change my plans and spend the coming week with them.

My friends tell me that the apartment where I'm headed has been without electricity for several days in a row. The pipes have frozen, so there will be no running water. But in spite of the cold, it's an especially good time to visit them because twelve of them will be there, on winter vacation from school, including two 14-year-old boys I couldn't meet during my last visit who spent much of the last year away from the others, back home in Bamiyan province, in their mountain villages, supporting their families.

One father left the family to find work elsewhere and is now living in Iran. My young friend doesn't hear from his father much, but I wonder what he must think as war threatens to move there. The mother launders clothes to help make ends meet, but with one weak arm due to a history of polio, she can't earn enough for the family's food. Her son is an excellent student, but she's had to ask him to give up school and start adult work full-time. Older members of the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers have worked hard finding him odd jobs in various shops, hoping to put off the day when he will have to start full time work as a shepherd.

I've just, by coincidence, read the story of another young man, training for work in the mountains: the article reaches me from friends I have just left in Colorado Springs, and begins: "Pfc. Josh Harris pulled the charging handle of a grenade launcher on Thursday, leaned back and peered through the sights. His orders were clear. "All right," said Spc. Michael Breton, moments earlier. "There is an ice cream truck out there. So shoot it." Pressing down with his thumbs, the MK-19 -- a machine gun equipped with grenades instead of bullets -- launched four training grenades 300 meters down a Fort Carson range." This is last-minute training before shipping out with the Fort's 4th Brigade Combat Team. "By March," the reporter continues, "he'll likely be watching grenades sail into the hillsides of eastern Afghanistan."

Everyone knows that these attacks will kill civilians -- will kill children. If you fire enough bullets where there are children you're going to hit them. A few days back filmmaker John McHugh described his twelve day stint embedded in the U.S.' "Operation Mace" in Afghanistan's Nuristan province to Al Jazeera for a piece called "The Winter War": "Over the course of my stay on Mace, I witnessed the truly awesome firepower that the U.S. military brings to a fight. Between their helicopters and jets they had dropped 19 bombs, fired two Hellfire missiles, 205 rockets, 500 rounds of 20 millimeter, and 210 rounds of 30-millimetre cannon. They also discharged 3,750 rounds of 50 caliber machine gun ammunition. And yet, only once, could they confirm that they had killed a single Taliban fighter." Would a Western media outlet have bothered covering the story?

It's hard to fathom the vast indifference of Western observers to what their militaries are doing in Afghanistan -- to the lives lost, the futures broken, the families and friendships and loves torn apart -- all of which will occur in the next country we collectively agree to demolish, and the next. Our apathy surely makes it easier for military and political elites to wage multiple wars. They count on us to look out at a world that we have been told is barbaric and feral, addled (unlike ours) with terrifying fundamentalism driving them (unlike us) to incessant violence.

We lull ourselves into a comforting delusion that we're waging humanitarian wars, and then wonder why people aren't more grateful. Thinking of ourselves as exceptionally noble, we're lost in denial masked as civilizing virtue as we hum along with Tony Bennett's puzzled lyrics:

"I tried so hard my dear to show that you're my only dream Yet you're afraid each thing I do is just some evil scheme. A memory from your lonesome past keeps us so far apart. Why can't I free your doubtful mind, and melt your cold, cold heart?"

Kathy Kelly (Kathy@vcnv.org) co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence (www.vcnv.org)

The Coming War with Iran

2012-02-09T11:38:00.001-05:00

Iranan missiles for taking out aircraft carriers and other targets

Is GOP Rhetoric Setting the

Stage for an Israeli Attack?

By Tom Hayden
Beaver County Peace Links via TomHayden.com

Feb. 7, 2012 - Israel now estimates that Iran’s nuclear program is nine months away from “being able to withstand an Israeli attack,” which happens to be the same timeline as the U.S. presidential election. Meanwhile, a well-connected U.S. Pentagon adviser believes that Israel might give the White House only an hour or two warning before attacking Iran, “just enough to maintain good relations between the countries but not quite enough to allow Washington to prevent the attack.”

These troubling assertions were contained in a recent and authoritative article in The New York Times Magazine about a potential Israel-Iran confrontation. Written by the magazine’s Israeli correspondent Ronen Bergman, who has access to top Israeli leadership, the story reports that Israel believes three key conditions for starting a war may have been met.

First, that Israel can cause serious damage to Iran’s sites and “withstand the inevitable counterattack.” Second, that there is tacit support from the “international community,” particularly the United States, for carrying out an attack. And third, all other possibilities of containing the threat have been exhausted, and it will soon be too late to prevent.

Standing in the way, according to the article, is President Barack Obama, whom the Israelis suspect “has abandoned any aggressive strategy that would ensure the prevention of a nuclear Iran and is merely playing a game of words to appease them.” The same conclusion has been suggested elsewhere.

So the stage is set for nuclear brinksmanship in an American presidential-election year. The role of Republican candidates is to ensure that the second condition is met, that of “tacit support” for an Israeli strike, even if forced by political pressure. The balance of forces is lopsided at present, with most Americans worried about Iran and unprepared to resist a sudden outbreak of war, Congress—dominated by supporters of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee—and the media are not prepared to oppose a strike. A short “successful” war—a highly dubious prospect—would be accepted by American public opinion until serious consequences set in afterward.

Any public expression of protest against this war is far better than silence, of course. But the greatest opportunity for protest may be in the arena of the presidential-election drama now playing out. It is fair and accurate to say both Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich are collaborating, for political reasons, to push Obama into war during the presidential election, with Rick Santorum on the bench if needed.

The New York Times has also now documented, in a front-page story, the millions spent by casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson and his Israeli wife to save Gingrich’s presidential campaign. Adelson was pleased when Gingrich, seemingly out of nowhere, recently condemned the Palestinians as “an invented people.” Adelson owns a newpaper chain in Israel supportive of the Netanyahu government and is a vocal opponent of a negotiated settlement.

No one in the mainstream media so far has written the story of Romney’s past consulting and business partnership with Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu at Boston Consulting Group, but his campaign rhetoric echoes Netanyahu’s position, that Obama can’t be trusted to prevent Iran from getting the bomb. The Romney and Gingrich campaigns create an unrelenting pressure on Obama to support an attack on Iran with little countervailing pressure. But neither the Republicans nor the Israeli hawks are comfortable being charged with using political pressure to start a war.

Santorum, whose Republican ranking is third, is equal to Romney and Gingrich in his hawkish position toward Iran. Santorum has deep support from right-wing Christian groups who believe that war in the Middle East will hasten the Second Coming.

Avoiding war with Iran may be Obama’s best option in policy and politics, if he can navigate the campaign winds. The question is whether any organized force has his back.

The U.S. Should Stay Out of Syria

2012-02-08T20:27:00.001-05:00

By Robert Dreyfuss
Beaver County Peace Links via The Nation

Feb 6, 2012 - A Syrian soldier, who has defected to join the Free Syrian Army, holds up his rifle and waves a Syrian independence flag in the Damascus suburb of Saqba on January 27, 2012. REUTERS/Ahmed Jadallah

Let’s be clear what is and what is not happening in Syria.

Lined up in support of regime change in Damascus are the Middle East’s major Sunni powers, led by Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Also backing regime change, though less publicly, is the international network known as the Muslim Brotherhood, a Sunni powerhouse that is providing much, if not most, of the increasingly militarized Syrian opposition forces, especially in Sunni strongholds such as Homs. And backing the Sunni-led regional forces for regime change is NATO, the United States and its allies, who are outraged, just outraged, that Russia and China would dare to veto a carefully crafted UN Security Council resolution targeting President Bashar al-Assad.

The Syrian opposition, at least in its external form, is murky at best.

As Aisling Byrne wrote recently in the Asia Times:

What we are seeing in Syria is a deliberate and calculated campaign to bring down the Assad government so as to replace it with a regime “more compatible” with US interests in the region.

Various hawks, neoconservatives, think-tank denizens at places like AEI and the Washington Institution for Near East Policy, various pro-Israel right-wingers and most of the Republican candidates for president are demanding stronger action from the Obama administration, and some of them want outright military intervention, arms embargos, direct lethal aid to the insurgents and their paramilitary wing, and other support.

For Saudi Arabia, the Arab states of the Persian Gulf and Turkey, this is about building a Sunni, anti-Shiite coalition against Iran. Iraq, whose Shiite regime is more and more dependent on Iran, is tilting toward Assad, who’s getting strong Iranian support. (Although lately Iran seems to be hedging its bets, talking to the Syrian opposition, in case Assad collapses.) So in its fervor to isolate Iran, the United States is poised at the edge of joining the Syrian civil war. This is not good.

The killings in Syria are ugly, but no doubt wildly exaggerated. Nearly all, repeat all, of the information about the violence in Syria is coming from a handful of exiled Syrian opposition groups backed by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and various Western powers. Did 200 people really die in Homs this past weekend, conveniently just on the eve of the UNSC debate? Who knows? The only source for the fishy information, though ubiquitously quoted in the New York Times, the wire services, the network news and elsewhere, are the suspect Syrian opposition groups, who have axes galore to grind.

As Byrne reports, skeptically:

Of the three main sources for all data on numbers of protesters killed and numbers of people attending demonstrations—the pillars of the narrative—all are part of the “regime change” alliance. The Syrian Observatory of Human Rights, in particular, is reportedly funded through a Dubai-based fund with pooled (and therefore deniable) Western-Gulf money…. What appears to be a nondescript British-based organization, the Observatory has been pivotal in sustaining the narrative of the mass killing of thousands of peaceful protesters using inflated figures, “facts”, and often exaggerated claims of “massacres” and even recently “genocide”.

And Byrne points out that the Syrian opposition is getting strong backing and propaganda support from Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based news network that is an arm of the Qatari royal family.

Let me add that I agree 100 percent with Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister:

There are some in the West who have given evaluations of the vote on Syria in the United Nations Security Council that sound, I would say, indecent and perhaps on the verge of hysterical. Those who get angry are rarely right.

Lavrov, along with Russia’s intelligence chief, is planning to meet with Assad on Tuesday in Damascus to seek a compromise or some sort of deal. Vitaly Churkin, Russia’s ambassador to the UN, said accurately: “The Security Council is not the only diplomatic tool on the planet.”

Both Russia and China vetoed the UN resolution on Syria, triggering huffs and puffs of outrage in the United States.

The Washington Post notes:

Georgy Mirsky, a senior researcher at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations, told the newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta that Russia’s blocking of the U.N. resolution is unlikely to deter Saudi Arabia. “Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey will not be standing aside: they will send military instructors, advisers and arms to Syria without any UN Security Council resolutions,” he was quoted as saying. “The Muslim Brotherhood movement may come to power in Syria instead of Assad.

“All this may result in a bloody massacre of the Alawites and a confrontation between the Sunnis and Shiites in the Middle East,” he said.

All true.

Truth, Lies and Afghanistan

2012-02-07T10:57:00.001-05:00

Taliban fighters

How military leaders have let us down

By LT. COL. DANIEL L. DAVIS
Beaver County Peace Links via Armed Forces Journal

I spent last year in Afghanistan, visiting and talking with U.S. troops and their Afghan partners. My duties with the Army’s Rapid Equipping Force took me into every significant area where our soldiers engage the enemy. Over the course of 12 months, I covered more than 9,000 miles and talked, traveled and patrolled with troops in Kandahar, Kunar, Ghazni, Khost, Paktika, Kunduz, Balkh, Nangarhar and other provinces.

What I saw bore no resemblance to rosy official statements by U.S. military leaders about conditions on the ground.

Entering this deployment, I was sincerely hoping to learn that the claims were true: that conditions in Afghanistan were improving, that the local government and military were progressing toward self-sufficiency. I did not need to witness dramatic improvements to be reassured, but merely hoped to see evidence of positive trends, to see companies or battalions produce even minimal but sustainable progress.

Instead, I witnessed the absence of success on virtually every level.

My arrival in country in late 2010 marked the start of my fourth combat deployment, and my second in Afghanistan. A Regular Army officer in the Armor Branch, I served in Operation Desert Storm, in Afghanistan in 2005-06 and in Iraq in 2008-09. In the middle of my career, I spent eight years in the U.S. Army Reserve and held a number of civilian jobs — among them, legislative correspondent for defense and foreign affairs for Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas.

As a representative for the Rapid Equipping Force, I set out to talk to our troops about their needs and their circumstances. Along the way, I conducted mounted and dismounted combat patrols, spending time with conventional and Special Forces troops. I interviewed or had conversations with more than 250 soldiers in the field, from the lowest-ranking 19-year-old private to division commanders and staff members at every echelon. I spoke at length with Afghan security officials, Afghan civilians and a few village elders.

I saw the incredible difficulties any military force would have to pacify even a single area of any of those provinces; I heard many stories of how insurgents controlled virtually every piece of land beyond eyeshot of a U.S. or International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) base.

I saw little to no evidence the local governments were able to provide for the basic needs of the people. Some of the Afghan civilians I talked with said the people didn’t want to be connected to a predatory or incapable local government.

From time to time, I observed Afghan Security forces collude with the insurgency.

From Bad to Abysmal

Much of what I saw during my deployment, let alone read or wrote in official reports, I can’t talk about; the information remains classified. But I can say that such reports — mine and others’ — serve to illuminate the gulf between conditions on the ground and official statements of progress.

And I can relate a few representative experiences, of the kind that I observed all over the country.

In January 2011, I made my first trip into the mountains of Kunar province near the Pakistan border to visit the troops of 1st Squadron, 32nd Cavalry. On a patrol to the northernmost U.S. position in eastern Afghanistan, we arrived at an Afghan National Police (ANP) station that had reported being attacked by the Taliban 2½ hours earlier.

Through the interpreter, I asked the police captain where the attack had originated, and he pointed to the side of a nearby mountain.

“What are your normal procedures in situations like these?” I asked. “Do you form up a squad and go after them? Do you periodically send out harassing patrols? What do you do?”

As the interpreter conveyed my questions, the captain’s head wheeled around, looking first at the interpreter and turning to me with an incredulous expression. Then he laughed.

“No! We don’t go after them,” he said. “That would be dangerous!”

According to the cavalry troopers, the Afghan policemen rarely leave the cover of the checkpoints. In that part of the province, the Taliban literally run free.

In June, I was in the Zharay district of Kandahar province, returning to a base from a dismounted patrol. Gunshots were audible as the Taliban attacked a U.S. checkpoint about one mile away.

As I entered the unit’s command post, the commander and his staff were watching a live video feed of the battle. Two ANP vehicles were blocking the main road leading to the site of the attack. The fire was coming from behind a haystack. We watched as two Afghan men emerged, mounted a motorcycle and began moving toward the Afghan policemen in their vehicles.

The U.S. commander turned around and told the Afghan radio operator to make sure the policemen halted the men. The radio operator shouted into the radio repeatedly, but got no answer.

On the screen, we watched as the two men slowly motored past the ANP vehicles. The policemen neither got out to stop the two men nor answered the radio — until the motorcycle was out of sight.

To a man, the U.S. officers in that unit told me they had nothing but contempt for the Afghan troops in their area — and that was before the above incident occurred.

In August, I went on a dismounted patrol with troops in the Panjwai district of Kandahar province. Several troops from the unit had recently been killed in action, one of whom was a very popular and experienced soldier. One of the unit’s senior officers rhetorically asked me, “How do I look these men in the eye and ask them to go out day after day on these missions? What’s harder: How do I look [my soldier’s] wife in the eye when I get back and tell her that her husband died for something meaningful? How do I do that?”

One of the senior enlisted leaders added, “Guys are saying, ‘I hope I live so I can at least get home to R&R leave before I get it,’ or ‘I hope I only lose a foot.’ Sometimes they even say which limb it might be: ‘Maybe it’ll only be my left foot.’ They don’t have a lot of confidence that the leadership two levels up really understands what they’re living here, what the situation really is.”

On Sept. 11, the 10th anniversary of the infamous attack on the U.S., I visited another unit in Kunar province, this one near the town of Asmar. I talked with the local official who served as the cultural adviser to the U.S. commander. Here’s how the conversation went:

Davis: “Here you have many units of the Afghan National Security Forces [ANSF]. Will they be able to hold out against the Taliban when U.S. troops leave this area?”

Adviser: “No. They are definitely not capable. Already all across this region [many elements of] the security forces have made deals with the Taliban. [The ANSF] won’t shoot at the Taliban, and the Taliban won’t shoot them.

“Also, when a Taliban member is arrested, he is soon released with no action taken against him. So when the Taliban returns [when the Americans leave after 2014], so too go the jobs, especially for everyone like me who has worked with the coalition.

“Recently, I got a cellphone call from a Talib who had captured a friend of mine. While I could hear, he began to beat him, telling me I’d better quit working for the Americans. I could hear my friend crying out in pain. [The Talib] said the next time they would kidnap my sons and do the same to them. Because of the direct threats, I’ve had to take my children out of school just to keep them safe.

“And last night, right on that mountain there [he pointed to a ridge overlooking the U.S. base, about 700 meters distant], a member of the ANP was murdered. The Taliban came and called him out, kidnapped him in front of his parents, and took him away and murdered him. He was a member of the ANP from another province and had come back to visit his parents. He was only 27 years old. The people are not safe anywhere.”

That murder took place within view of the U.S. base, a post nominally responsible for the security of an area of hundreds of square kilometers. Imagine how insecure the population is beyond visual range. And yet that conversation was representative of what I saw in many regions of Afghanistan.

In all of the places I visited, the tactical situation was bad to abysmal. If the events I have described — and many, many more I could mention — had been in the first year of war, or even the third or fourth, one might be willing to believe that Afghanistan was just a hard fight, and we should stick it out. Yet these incidents all happened in the 10th year of war.

As the numbers depicting casualties and enemy violence indicate the absence of progress, so too did my observations of the tactical situation all over Afghanistan.

Credibility Gap

I’m hardly the only one who has noted the discrepancy between official statements and the truth on the ground.

A January 2011 report by the Afghan NGO Security Office noted that public statements made by U.S. and ISAF leaders at the end of 2010 were “sharply divergent from IMF, [international military forces, NGO-speak for ISAF] ‘strategic communication’ messages suggesting improvements. We encourage [nongovernment organization personnel] to recognize that no matter how authoritative the source of any such claim, messages of the nature are solely intended to influence American and European public opinion ahead of the withdrawal, and are not intended to offer an accurate portrayal of the situation for those who live and work here.”

The following month, Anthony Cordesman, on behalf of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote that ISAF and the U.S. leadership failed to report accurately on the reality of the situation in Afghanistan.

“Since June 2010, the unclassified reporting the U.S. does provide has steadily shrunk in content, effectively ‘spinning’ the road to victory by eliminating content that illustrates the full scale of the challenges ahead,” Cordesman wrote. “They also, however, were driven by political decisions to ignore or understate Taliban and insurgent gains from 2002 to 2009, to ignore the problems caused by weak and corrupt Afghan governance, to understate the risks posed by sanctuaries in Pakistan, and to ‘spin’ the value of tactical ISAF victories while ignoring the steady growth of Taliban influence and control.”

How many more men must die in support of a mission that is not succeeding and behind an array of more than seven years of optimistic statements by U.S. senior leaders in Afghanistan? No one expects our leaders to always have a successful plan. But we do expect — and the men who do the living, fighting and dying deserve — to have our leaders tell us the truth about what’s going on.

I first encountered senior-level equivocation during a 1997 division-level “experiment” that turned out to be far more setpiece than experiment. Over dinner at Fort Hood, Texas, Training and Doctrine Command leaders told me that the Advanced Warfighter Experiment (AWE) had shown that a “digital division” with fewer troops and more gear could be far more effective than current divisions. The next day, our congressional staff delegation observed the demonstration firsthand, and it didn’t take long to realize there was little substance to the claims. Virtually no legitimate experimentation was actually conducted. All parameters were carefully scripted. All events had a preordained sequence and outcome. The AWE was simply an expensive show, couched in the language of scientific experimentation and presented in glowing press releases and public statements, intended to persuade Congress to fund the Army’s preference. Citing the AWE’s “results,” Army leaders proceeded to eliminate one maneuver company per combat battalion. But the loss of fighting systems was never offset by a commensurate rise in killing capability.

A decade later, in the summer of 2007, I was assigned to the Future Combat Systems (FCS) organization at Fort Bliss, Texas. It didn’t take long to discover that the same thing the Army had done with a single division at Fort Hood in 1997 was now being done on a significantly larger scale with FCS. Year after year, the congressionally mandated reports from the Government Accountability Office revealed significant problems and warned that the system was in danger of failing. Each year, the Army’s senior leaders told members of Congress at hearings that GAO didn’t really understand the full picture and that to the contrary, the program was on schedule, on budget, and headed for success. Ultimately, of course, the program was canceled, with little but spinoffs to show for $18 billion spent.

If Americans were able to compare the public statements many of our leaders have made with classified data, this credibility gulf would be immediately observable. Naturally, I am not authorized to divulge classified material to the public. But I am legally able to share it with members of Congress. I have accordingly provided a much fuller accounting in a classified report to several members of Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, senators and House members.

A nonclassified version is available at www.afghanreport.com. [Editor’s note: At press time, Army public affairs had not yet ruled on whether Davis could post this longer version.]

Tell The Truth

When it comes to deciding what matters are worth plunging our nation into war and which are not, our senior leaders owe it to the nation and to the uniformed members to be candid — graphically, if necessary — in telling them what’s at stake and how expensive potential success is likely to be. U.S. citizens and their elected representatives can decide if the risk to blood and treasure is worth it.

Likewise when having to decide whether to continue a war, alter its aims or to close off a campaign that cannot be won at an acceptable price, our senior leaders have an obligation to tell Congress and American people the unvarnished truth and let the people decide what course of action to choose. That is the very essence of civilian control of the military. The American people deserve better than what they’ve gotten from their senior uniformed leaders over the last number of years. Simply telling the truth would be a good start. AFJ

Elect Romney, Get War in Iran?

2012-02-06T10:38:00.001-05:00

‘Regime Change:’ Deja Vu All Over Again

By Max Blumenthal
Alternet.org

Feb. 6, 2012 - Should Mitt Romney make it to the White House, his Middle East policy and plan for Iran may be as hawkish as that of Bush Junior, thanks to Eliot Cohen.

In 2005, a group of graduate students at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced and International Studies (SAIS) participated in the school’s annual diplomatic simulation. The high-pressure scenario required the students to negotiate a resolution to a standoff with a nuclear-armed Republic of Pakistan. Mara Karlin, a student known for her hawkish politics on Israel and the Middle East, played President of the United States.

Though most of the participants were confident they could head off a military conflict with diplomatic measures, Karlin jumped the gun. According to a former SAIS student, not only did Karlin order a nuclear strike on Pakistan, she also took the opportunity to nuke Iran. Her classmates were shocked. It was the first time in 45 years that a simulation concluded with the deployment of a nuclear weapon.

That year, Karlin received a plum job in the Bush administration’s Department of Defense where, according to her bio she was “intimately involved in formulating U.S. policy on Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Israel-Palestinian affairs.” Lebanon was a special area of focus for Karlin. She claims to have helped structure the Lebanese Armed Forces and coordinated relations between the US and Lebanese militaries.

According to the former SAIS student, Karlin was a favorite of Eliot Cohen, an ultra-hawkish professor of strategic studies at SAIS, which is regarded in American foreign policy circles as a training ground for the neoconservative movement. Through Cohen’s connections among the neocons occupying key civilian posts in Bush’s Defense Department, the former student claims Cohen was able to arrange an attractive sinecure for Karlin. Besides Karlin, the ex-SAIS student told me Cohen has promoted the career ambitions of many former pupils, including Kelly Magsamen, who worked under Cohen in the Bush administration and now oversees the Iran portfolio in the Obama administration’s State Department.

Today, Cohen is among Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney’s top campaign advisers. He is the primary author of Romney’s foreign policy white paper, which attacks Obama for “currying favor with [America’s] enemies” and “ostentatiously shunning Jerusalem.”

The paper urges a policy of regime change in Iran including possible coordination with Israel on military strikes to prevent the Iranian regime from developing a nuclear weapon. It is an aggressive Republican election season document presenting a concoction of post-9/11 unilateralism and unvarnished neo-imperialism as the antidote to a sitting president Cohen accused of “unilateral disarmament in the diplomatic and moral sphere.” More importantly, it suggests that a Romney administration’s foreign policy might look remarkably similar to – and perhaps more extreme than – that of the Bush administration.

Stephen Walt, a professor of international affairs at Harvard University’s School of Government who has been on the receiving end of aggressive attacks by Cohen, called Cohen “a classic neoconservative.” Walt said, “He is constantly fretting about alleged U.S. vulnerabilities, consistently supportive of increased defense spending, and generally inclined to favor U.S. intervention in other countries. Second, like virtually all neoconservatives, he is also deeply attached to Israel, as well as to the United States. I do not question his patriotism, but I think he tends to see U.S. and Israeli interests as more-or-less identical and doesn't see a trade-off between support for one and support for the other.”

Cohen rose through the ranks of the Republican foreign policy elite as a protégé of Paul Wolfowitz, the former Assistant Secretary of Defense who is credited with playing a central role in the push for invading Iraq. In 1990, Wolfowitz secured a position for Cohen working beside him on the policy planning staff of the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Three years later, when Wolfowitz was appointed dean of SAIS, he began using his influence to propel Cohen’s career. According to a former State Department official who graduated from SAIS, it was through the beneficence of Wolfowitz that Cohen earned an endowed teaching position at SAIS as the Robert E. Osgood Professor of Strategic Studies.

In 1997, Wolfowitz and Cohen joined forces to form the Project for a New American Century, a neoconservative umbrella group that served as the key non-governmental vehicle for promoting the case for invading Iraq after 9/11. In the immediate wake of al-Qaeda’s attack on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., Cohen took to the media to map out the next phase of a grand global military venture that he coined, “World War IV.”

Describing Iraq as “the big prize,” Cohen urged a unilateral invasion of Iraq that would advance the ambitions of the now-discredited political charlatan Ahmed Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress. Like so many of his neoconservative peers, Cohen claimed Saddam Hussein’s regime maintained “a connection with the 9/11 terrorists.” With the war deteriorating into a chaotic bloodbath and as his own son was called up for duty, Cohen criticized the Bush administration for “happy talk and denials of error.” However, he refused to admit fault for his role in selling Americans on the invasion.

Despite mildly dissenting from the White House line, Cohen continued his ascent, replacing Philip Zelikow as counselor to then-Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice in 2007. According to the former State Department official, Rice had almost no role in Cohen’s appointment. Instead, Cohen was recommended for the position by Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz. Cheney’s daughter headed the Iran Syrian Operations Group, a newly created, neoconservative-inspired initiative burrowed within the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. At the time of Cohen’s appointment, Rice was attempting to open diplomatic lines to Iran, North Korea, and Syria – a move Cohen and the Cheneys fiercely opposed.

A few months after Bush left office, the former State Department official said Cohen and Wolfowitz rewarded their neoconservative fellow traveler Eric Edelman – a former Defense Department official during the later Bush years – with a visiting scholarship at SAIS. In private, Johns Hopkins alumni expressed outrage at the installment of Edelman, a career diplomat with no academic background, accusing the neoconservatives of exploiting SAIS to create a system of political patronage.

Cohen’s extensive web of foreign policy and military connections forms a seamless line to Tel Aviv. There, on the top floor of one of the office buildings known as “HaKirya,” is the office of one of Cohen’s former pupils, Aviv Kochavi. Kochavi is now the director of Israeli military intelligence, making him one of the most quietly influential figures in the country. In 2006, Kochavi, who also holds a philosophy degree, boasted to the Israeli architect and anti-occupation activist Eyal Weizmann about how he and his troops crushed Palestinian resistance cells in Nablus through the use of “inverse geometry” and “micro-tactical actions” inspired by the theories of post-structuralist philosophers like Deleuze and Guattari. On February 2, Kochavi appeared at the annual Herzliya Conference to issue grave warnings about the rapid progress of Iran’s nuclear program, suggesting that sanctions and diplomacy have failed, and that more aggressive action might be required.

Despite Cohen’s deep Israeli ties, he has proven extremely sensitive to critiques of the connection. When Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, the latter a professor of International Relations at the University of Chicago, published their widely debated paper on the Israel lobby in 2006, Cohen authored one of the first attempts to discredit their thesis about a loose coalition of individuals and organizations creating political pressure to move US foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction. In an op-ed in the Washington Post, Cohen accused the authors of “kooky academic work” and “obsessive and irrationally hostile beliefs about Jews.”

“Cohen’s rather hysterical reaction to our work was both typical and easy to explain,” Walt remarked. “Given that he and other neoconservatives had played a key role in convincing George Bush to invade Iraq in 2003, he was understandably upset when we pointed this out and provided extensive documentation of their role in the run-up to this disastrous war. He could not refute our logic or our evidence, however, so he chose to misrepresent our views and smear us falsely as anti-Semites and conspiracy theorists.”

With the last battalions of US troops preparing to redeploy from Iraq to other conflict zones, Cohen is homing in on Iran. In a September 2009 editorial for the Wall Street Journal, he dismissed diplomacy and sanctions as feasible means of curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions. “Pressure, be it gentle or severe, will not erase that nuclear program,” he wrote. “The choices are now what they ever were: an American or an Israeli strike, which would probably cause a substantial war, or living in a world with Iranian nuclear weapons, which may also result in war, perhaps nuclear, over a longer period of time.” While not ruling out the necessity of an American strike on Iranian facilities, Cohen advised that the “US actively seek the overthrow of the Islamic Republic…through every instrument of U.S. power, soft more than hard.”

As tensions between Israel and Iran rise to unprecedented levels, and Israel’s leadership beseeches the US to join a military strike on Iran, Cohen’s visions of regime change seem closer to realization than ever before. For him and the neoconservative policy elite, a Romney victory in November might deliver the next “big prize.”

Max Blumenthal is the author of Republican Gomorrah (Basic/Nation Books, 2009). Twitter at @MaxBlumenthal. © 2012 al-akhbar All rights reserved. View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/154018/

Unjust War Meets ‘Christian Politics’

2012-01-17T12:34:00.001-05:00

Blessed Be the Bellicose? Jesus Would Weep

By Tony Norman
Beaver County Peace Links via Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Jan 17, 2012 - Last week, video footage of four U.S. Marines urinating on the bodies of three dead Taliban fighters went viral. With the exception of a handful of morally dead ideologues on the right, the reaction to the video was one of revulsion at home and fury abroad.

As Americans, we were reminded that just because we choose not to pay attention to the war in Afghanistan, we share moral complicity for wars fought in our name. The callousness of the four Marines wasn't unprecedented. Relative to the toll on civilian lives in three countries because of American drone attacks, public urination on enemy corpses pales in comparison as a war crime.

In a widely read essay in The Washington Post, war correspondent Sebastian Junger astutely pointed out that a "19-year-old Marine has a very hard time reconciling the fact that it's OK to waterboard a live Taliban fighter but not OK to urinate on a dead one."

Mr. Junger and others point out that these young Marines grew up hearing the contentious policy debates about "enhanced interrogation" and the rationalizations for torture laid out by the Bush administration after 9/11. The soldiers Mr. Junger has written about in the theater of war "are very clear about the fact that society trains them to kill, orders them to kill and then balks at anything that suggests they have dehumanized the enemy they have killed."

As much as we refuse to condone what they did, the soldiers have a visceral reaction to our hypocrisy, too. So, where does a nation turn for a sense of moral clarity and enlightenment during these troubled times? Should it be left to journalists like Mr. Junger to tease out the moral implications of wetting down enemy corpses with splashes of uric acid? Where are our religious leaders, trained as many of them are supposed to be, in the subtleties of god-craft and moral reasoning?

Instead of leading a national discussion about how war deadens the spirit along with any capacity for simple, human empathy, 150 conservative "Christian" leaders met in Texas over the weekend to throw their support behind GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum, a man who said he'd launch a pre-emptive war with Iran to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons.

Gary Bauer, the president of American Values, a conservative "Christian" advocacy group, summed up the evangelical cabal's thinking this way: "Our main argument," Mr. Bauer said, "was that Rick [Santorum] has been willing to defend our values in the public arena and in meetings on the Hill for years."

On Monday, Mr. Santorum showed the "Christian" values that characterize his sponsors. "On occasion, scientists working on the nuclear program in Iran turn up dead," Mr. Santorum said, referring to the recent wave of assassinations of Iranian scientists by unknown assailants widely suspected of being Israeli agents. "I think that's a wonderful thing."

It is a sign of how decadent much of American Christianity has become: A candidate who enthusiastically condones assassination is the same man who 150 "Christian" leaders have decided best exemplifies the Christian values they want to see at work in the White House. Where does Jesus Christ fit in this scenario?

Blessed are the peacemakers? No, blessed are those who are willing to strike first and destroy an entire country if necessary because everyone knows Jesus hates 4,000-year-old civilizations almost as much as he hates Muslims.

On its best day, politics is an ungodly business in this country. It is a profession full of liars, thieves and corporate whores. Our politics elevates hypocrisy, rewards ruthlessness and settles for flawed men more skilled at Christian rhetoric than Christian charity.

Men like Mr. Santorum and the 150 religious leaders who back him love to rhapsodize about the unborn and take offense at anyone who questions whether life begins at conception. They also believe that life begins at "incorporation" and that the assumptions of capitalism don't have to be questioned. They're cool with the dominance of corporate speech devoid of any sense of morality. They're even more comfortable with war. "I have not come to bring peace, but a sword," Jesus once said. That's as much of the Gospel as these men care about. Tony Norman: tnorman@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1631. More articles by this author First published on January 17, 2012 at 12:00 am

Honor the Message, Honor the Man

2012-01-16T09:59:00.001-05:00

Occupy: Resurrecting

Rev. King's Final Dream

By Leo Gerard
United Steel Workers

In public squares across the country, Occupy protesters honor Rev. Martin Luther King's memory on this holiday devoted to him. Their tribute is more meaningful and enduring than the granite monument that President Obama dedicated to Rev. King in Washington, D.C. last year.

That's because the Occupiers are pressing for a cause -- economic justice -- that Rev. King had embraced in the months before his assassination in 1968. And they're pursuing it with the technique he advocated - nonviolent protest.

Rev. King's final crusade, his Poor People's Campaign, and the Occupiers' championing the nation's 99 percent are remarkable in their similarities. It's tragic that in the 44 years since Rev. King launched his campaign for an economic Bill of Rights that the nation's poor and middle class have lurched backward instead of forward. It's hopeful, however, that a whole new generation of idealists has taken up the dream of economic justice.

In the year before Rev. King was gunned down, he persuaded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to join him in a movement devoted to securing for all citizens the basic needs that would enable them to pursue the American Dream, to pursue happiness. He believed every able-bodied person should have access to a job with a living wage. And he believed every American should have decent housing and affordable health care. Without economic security, he said, no man is free.

Rev. King's dream has its roots in the progressive movement, containing key elements of Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt's proposed Economic Bill of Rights. Roosevelt, the beloved president who gave the country Social Security, pushed the Economic Bill of Rights in the waning days of the war.

Roosevelt said the original Bill of Rights had made the country great, but its political entitlements had proved inadequate to assure Americans equal opportunity to pursue happiness. The president who had pulled the country out of the Great Depression, the man born to great wealth, warned:

"People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made."

So he advocated a second Bill of Rights "under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all -- regardless of station, race or creed."

Among the rights Roosevelt proposed were a sustaining job, a decent home and adequate medical care.

Just 24 years later, Rev. King took up that cause for all people -- regardless of station, race or creed. He was murdered before completing plans for a march on Washington. But just weeks after his death, his widow and fellow Southern Christian Leadership Conference ministers, including Rev. Jesse Jackson and Rev. Ralph Abernathy, led protesters into the capital city on May 12, 1968.

They went to federal offices seeking anti-poverty legislation. Then they established a shantytown called Resurrection City. Its huts and tents extended the length of the reflecting pool. As many as 1,800 people camped there through virtually continuous rain. The bad weather, the mud, the lingering trauma from Rev. King's assassination and the murder of Robert Kennedy on June 5, 1968, just a few weeks into the encampment, depressed the protesters.

In a recording from those difficult days, Rev. Jackson can be heard attempting to rally the demonstrators with the chant:

"I am. Somebody. I am. God's Child. I may not have a job, but I am somebody."

The crowd repeated Rev. Jackson's words, just like the "human microphone" used by the Occupiers today.

After six weeks, 1,000 park police surrounded Resurrection City, routed the remaining protesters with tear gas and razed the structures. This is prescient of the fate of too many Occupy encampments, from the original in New York's Zuccotti Park to its twin across the country in Oakland's Frank Ogawa Plaza.

After destruction of the shantytown in 1968, Rev. Jackson said:

"Resurrection City cannot be seen as a mud hole in Washington, but it is rather an idea unleashed in history. The idea has taken root and is growing across the country."

After the Occupy Wall Street evictions, protesters said the same:

"You can't evict an idea whose time has come."

Still, the Resurrection City protesters didn't get what they came for. They had sought major legislation to give opportunity to America's poor. At that time, 13 percent of the nation's population -- 25 million people -- lived in poverty.

Today, it's worse; nearly twice as many Americans -- 46.2 million -- live in poverty. The rate is worse as well -- 15.1 percent.

In addition, in the past decade the gap between rich and poor widened. In the past five years since the great recession began, banks evicted record numbers of families from their homes. And Republicans are threatening to repeal health care reform, the one achievement bringing the nation closer to an economic Bill of Rights.

No wonder protesters resurrected Resurrection City.

What Rev. King preached and what many Occupiers seem to believe is that paramount in a republic is job creation, not wealth creation. The duty of government is not to ensure that the rich get richer but to establish equal opportunity for individuals to achieve freedom, independence and happiness.

Without a job -- without adequate income -- freedom, independence and happiness are impossible.

"This is America's opportunity to help bridge the gulf between the haves and the have-nots. The question is whether America will do it. There is nothing new about poverty. What is new is that we now have the techniques and the resources to get rid of poverty. The real question is whether we have the will."

Those are Rev. King's words. The Occupiers have shown they have the will to achieve his dream.

Madness and Disaster: No War with Iran!

2012-01-15T13:15:00.001-05:00

What are We to Make of The USA,

Israeli, Iranian Dance Of Death?

By Bill Fletcher
Progressive America Rising via BlackCommentator.com

Jan 15, 2012 - In watching the USA/Israeli vs. Iranian tensions play out, I found myself thinking about the similarities with the British/Argentine war in the early 1980s over the Falkland/Malvinas Islands. Talk about a useless, purposeless war. Except for one thing. The ruling elites of both countries needed it.

In the early 1980s the Argentine military government was in trouble and they knew it. Their regime was unraveling and they desperately needed a means to hold things together. Presto!! They began a pseudo-nationalist campaign to regain control over the desolate Falkland/Malvinas Islands that were occupied by Britain (since 1833). Hoping to distract the Argentine population from the economic crisis that combined with the savagery of the military dictatorship, the junta carried out a military operation that under other circumstances would have been the basis of a comedy. Unfortunately the loss of life that accompanied this war was nothing to laugh at.

Britain, under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, needed its own distractions. The Falklands/Malvinas Islands did not possess any strategic importance to Britain but a nice little war did hold importance. A quick, dirty, little war could, and did, distract the British population from its own political and economic difficulties. It also represented an opportunity for the citizens of a dying empire to reassert themselves, much in the way that a bully picks on a weak neighbor in order to reinforce their own feelings of superiority.

There were no good-guys in that war. It was a war that should never have happened.

In today's situation the USA, Israel and Iran all need distractions. All three countries have been in the midst of severe economic crises. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis have protested economic conditions in an unprecedented display of antipathy toward the Israeli political establishment. Iran has been unsettled ever since the emergence of the massive opposition "Green Movement," that followed the questionable elections of 2009. The political challenges faced by the Iranian theocracy accompany growing economic challenges which preceded Western-imposed sanctions (though have been accelerated by those sanctions). And, of course, we in the USA are in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

The USA cannot really afford a war with Iran (though this will not necessarily stop the US from initiating one), a point demonstrated just this past week with Obama's announced cuts to the Pentagon, the clear result of the impact of the aggressive US wars against Afghanistan and Iraq. Israel, which claims an existential threat from Iran, knows full well that such a threat does not exist. The only nuclear power in the Middle East is Israel, and any threat to Israel from Iran would be met by a terrible response from both Israel and the USA. But carrying out an attack or encouraging the USA to carry out an attack on Iran would both distract the Israeli population from domestic concerns as well as provide a cover for Israeli military operations closer to home, such as against Hezbollah in Lebanon or against Hamas in the Gaza.

A war with Iran would be a disaster for everyone. For the Iranians, war would be used, much as with the Argentine junta thirty years ago, to clamp down on dissent and wrap everyone in the flag of nationalism. It would be a chance to breathe more life into what appears to be a dying, reactionary theocratic regime that has carried out brutal repression for years, all the while claiming to be an anti-imperialist force.

A war would create greater instability in the Middle East and more than likely encourage some countries that currently do not possess nuclear weapons to seek them in a hurry!

Such a war could very likely lead to an even deeper global economic crisis if the Straits of Hormuz are blocked by the Iranians, thereby cutting off about 20% of the world's oil. It would also be a war that the West cannot, literally, afford to conduct.

There are many reasons to believe that a war will not happen precisely due to the potential catastrophe. That said, there are elements in all three countries that wish to militarily settle accounts with someone on the other side and/or find an opportunity to use "patriotism" - the last refuge of scoundrels, according to 18thcentury British author Samuel Johnson - as a means of suppressing domestic conflicts, particularly the growing demands for political and economic justice.

Let's not get hood-winked.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member, Bill Fletcher, Jr., is a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies, the immediate past president of TransAfricaForum and co-author of Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path toward Social Justice (University of California Press), which examines the crisis of organized labor in the USA.

Madness in High Places: End It Now!

2012-01-13T13:20:00.001-05:00

Preventing the Coming War with Iran

By Tom Hayden
TomHayden.com

During the past decade, this writer has remained skeptical about prospects of a US-supported war against Iran. The potential costs outweighed the benefits. Now, as the 2012 election year unfolds, I am not certain. The political and geo-political dynamics underscore the growing threat of war.

It’s not that Barack Obama wants an airstrike against Iran, whether by the Israelis, the Americans, or the Israelis with covert US support. My respected friends Juan Cole and Mark Weisbrot are not so sure. They think Obama is laying the groundwork, and may be right. Obama hardly needs another war with unknown costs and consequences. But presidents are not all-powerful, and Obama can be forced to acquiesce unless there is a sharp increase in serious public opposition. As Trita Parsi, director of the National Iranian American Council, told DemocracyNow on January 12:

“We may very well end up in a situation in which, rather than the governments controlling the dynamic, the dynamics will control the government...this could escalate into a full-scale war.”

Here’s the dynamic at work:

First, the Israeli government and the powerful Israeli lobby, in evaluating the Arab revolutions in Egypt and beyond, are extremely concerned that time is against them. They perceive the diplomatic efforts of the Palestinians to secure United Nations recognition as a mortal peril, and went to great extremes to pressure Obama to threaten a veto of the Palestinian bid. This was an overreaction inimical to US interests, leaving the Obama administration extremely isolated from the rest of the world on these issues. Employing a US veto threat played into the hands of all those in the Palestinian and Islamic worlds who believe that armed struggle is the only path open to them.

Second, the Israeli Lobby, or AIPAC, already has learned that Obama is isolated at home, or at least from Congress, on these questions. Obama was forced under pressure to back down on his demand for an end to settlements. His more progressive appointees, whether Chas Freeman or George Mitchell, were forced from their positions or resigned in frustration.

Third, the Iranians have been far from helpful, if they ever intended to be. They reinforce the depiction of themselves as irrational, unstable, fundamentalist, theocratic extremists. Any ideas that they are rational actors in an ongoing crisis -- which began with the US overthrow of their democratically-elected government in 1954; which continues to threaten regime change on a daily basis; in which the Israelis have scores of nuclear weapons available for use -- are dismissed as fuzzy foolishness.

Fourth, and most important at the moment, the Israeli Lobby is using the Republican Party as a Trojan Horse. Mitt Romney is a former business partner of Benjamin Netanyahu (see the excellent screed at Daily Kos). And if the Romney-Netanyahu alliance doesn’t work out, there’s always Newt Gingrich to call the Palestinians an “invented people”, the better to collect millions from his chief financier Sheldon Adelson, a Las Vegas casino developer, and close ally of Netanyahu. Adelson, who says the Palestinians have no historical claims to statehood, just saved Gingrich with a $5 million bailout for the South Carolina primary, on top of millions more, including $7 million to Gingrich committees in 2006 alone. Adelson not only saved Gingrich this month, but his free newspapers in Israel are credited with having saved Netanyahu, too. (New York Times, January 10, 2012)

Fifth, the latest rationale is “Time To Strike Iran” in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, by Matthew Kroenig, who until July was Obama’s special adviser on Iran at the Pentagon. Koenig asserts that the US, not Israel, should attack Iran as the least-bad option. Koenig claims the goal should not be regime change, merely the careful destruction of Iran’s nuclear sites. He assures us that an attack on Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility with a 30,000 pound bunker-busting bomb can be so carefully done that Teheran will not react by closing of the Straits of Hormuz or launch missile assaults on European cities. The US should assure Iran that we have no interest in overthrowing their government, only in destroying their nuclear facilities. Sounds neat, and perhaps Kroenig should not be dismissed as a Dr. Strangelove. But if the US considers Iran’s leadership irrational now, why would Teheran become more reasonable after being attacked at Natanz, Isfahan, Arak, and centrifuge-manufacturing sites near Teheran itself? (The target list is Kroenig’s)

As the presidential campaign proceeds, Obama will be hammered by either/or Romney and Gingrich, backed by the neo-cons and Israeli hawks, who will be legitimized by mainstream media commentary about Iran’s alleged menacing intentions. In the deep background there are concerns about oil supplies in the Straits of Hormuz. There may be an October Surprise.

Who will back Obama against these pressures, especially if they seem to threaten his re-election? At this point, there is no serious organized opposition, although public opinion is on his side.

There may be 200 House members against Iraq and Afghanistan, but few if any against striking Iraq. The media prefers sanctions and diplomatic pressure but will not draw a red line against military intervention. The humanitarian hawks want regime change. Russia, China and the UN General Assembly count for little in American presidential elections. That leaves Ron Paul and a small unfunded anti-war chorus of protesters.

The national security and diplomatic implications may be too great to permit a US-Israeli intervention. But rational self-interest is not always enough to prevent what Barbara Tuchman has called “the march to folly”. Only a serious campaign to protect Obama from repeating the same concessions to neo-con pressure that led to Iraq and Afghanistan might have a chance in 2012.

Perhaps the clergy should lead, the intellectual experts should engage and, at the grass-roots level, the peace movements in both Israel and America will expand a serious dialogue in the Jewish communities – and all communities - where reason might prevail against extremism.

Otherwise, the barking you will hear all this year is from the dogs of war. Article originally appeared on tomhayden.com (http://tomhayden.com/). See website for complete article licensing information.

Defense Cuts: Not What We Meant

2012-01-09T14:29:00.001-05:00

Obama's Pentagon Strategy:

A Leaner, More Efficient Empire

By Charles Davis and Medea Benjamin
Beaver County Peace Links via Alternet

Jan 9, 2012 - In an age when U.S. power can be projected through private mercenary armies and unmanned Predator drones, the U.S. military need no longer rely on massive, conventional ground forces to pursue its imperial agenda, a fact President Barack Obama is now acknowledging. But make no mistake: while the tactics may be changing, the U.S. taxpayer – and poor foreigners abroad – will still be saddled with overblown military budgets and militaristic policies.

Speaking January 5 alongside his Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, the president announced a shift in strategy for the American military, one that emphasizes aerial campaigns and proxy wars as opposed to “long-term nation-building with large military footprints.” This, to some pundits and politicians, is considered a tectonic shift.

Indeed, the way some on the left tell it, the strategy marks a radical departure from the imperial status quo. “Obama just repudiated the past decade of forever war policy,” gushed Rolling Stone reporter Michael Hastings, calling the new strategy a “[s]lap in the face to the generals.”

Conservative hawks, meanwhile, predictably declared that the sky is falling. “This is a lead from behind strategy for a left-behind America,” cried hyperventilating California Republican Buck McKeon, chairman the House Armed Services Committee. “This strategy ensures American decline in exchange for more failed domestic programs.” In McKeon’s world, feeding the war machine is preferable to feeding poor people.

Unfortunately, though, rather than renouncing empire and endless war, Obama’s stated strategy for the military going forward just reaffirms the U.S. commitment to both. Rather than renouncing the last decade of war, it states that the bloody and disastrous occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan – gently termed “extended operations” – were pursued “to bring stability to those countries.”

And Leon Panetta assured the American public that even with the changes, the U.S. would still be able to fight two major wars at the same time—and win. And Obama assured America’s military contractors and coffin makers that their lifeline – U.S. taxpayers’ money – would still be funneled their way in obscene bucket loads.

“Over the next 10 years, the growth in the defense budget will slow,” the president told reporters, “but the fact of the matter is this: It will still grow.” In fact, he added with a touch of pride, it “will still be larger than it was toward the end of the Bush administration,” totaling more than $700 billion a year and accounting for about half of the average American’s income tax. So much for the Pentagon’s budget being slashed – like we were promised – the way lawmakers are trying to cut those “failed domestic programs.”

The U.S. could cut its military spending in half tomorrow and still spend more than three times as much as its next nearest rival, China. That’s because China, instead of waging wars of choice around the world, prefers projecting its might by investing in its own country. On the other hand, the U.S. under the leadership of Obama is beefing up its military presence in China’s backyard, more interested in projecting its dwindling power than rebuilding its economy.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower once noted that every dollar going to the military is a dollar that can’t be used to provide food and shelter for those in need. Today’s obscene amount of military spending isn’t necessary if the administration wished to pursue the quaint goal of simply defending the country from invasion. Maintaining “the best-trained, best-equipped military in history,” as Obama says is his goal? That’s a different story – for a different purpose. Indeed, as Madeline Albright observed, possessing that kind of military might is no fun if you don’t get to use it, as Obama has with gusto in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya and Uganda.

The truth is that the Obama administration’s “new” strategy is more of the same—a reaffirmation of the U.S. government’s commitment to militarism for the all the usual reasons: to promote American hegemony and, by extension, the interests of politically connected capital. And U.S. officials aren’t shy about that.

Indeed, throughout the strategy document the ostensible purpose for having a military — to provide national security — repeatedly takes a backseat to promoting the economic interests of the U.S. elite that profits from empire. Repositioning U.S. forces “toward the Asia-Pacific region,” for instance – including the stationing of American soldiers in that hotbed of violent extremism, Australia – is cast not just as a means of ensuring peace and stability, but guaranteeing “the free flow of commerce.” Maintaining a global empire of bases from Europe to Okinawa isn’t necessary for self-defense, but according to Obama, ensuring – with guns – “the prosperity that flows from an open and free international economic system.”

Of course, that economic considerations shape U.S. foreign policy is nothing new. More than 25 years ago, President Jimmy Carter – that Jimmy Carter – declared in a State of the Union address that U.S. military force would be employed in the Persian Gulf, not for the cause of peace, freedom and apple pie, but to ensure “the free movement of Middle East oil.” And so it goes.

Far from affecting change, Obama is ensuring continuity. “U.S. policy will emphasize Gulf security,” states his new military strategy, in order to “prevent Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon capability and counter its destabilizing policies” — as if it’s Iran that has been destabilizing the region. And as Obama publicly proclaims his support for “political and economic reform” in the Middle East, just like every other U.S. president he not-so-privately backs their oppressors from Bahrain to Yemen and signs off on the biggest weapons deal in history to that bastion of democracy, Saudi Arabia.

Obama can talk all he wants about turning the page on a decade of war and occupation, but so long as he continues to fight wars and military occupy countries on the other side of the globe, talk is all it is. The facts, sadly, are this: since taking office Obama doubled the number of troops in Afghanistan; he fought to extend the U.S. occupation in Iraq– and partially succeeded; he dramatically expanded the use of killer drones from Pakistan to Somalia; and he requested military budgets that would make George W. Bush blush. If you want to see what his military strategy really is, forget what’s said at press conferences and in turgidly written Pentagon press releases. Just look at the record.

Charles Davis is an independent journalist based in Nicaragua. His reporting and commentary on everything from the war on drugs to Western foreign policy toward the developing world has been published by outlets including Inter Press Service, AlterNet and Common Dreams, and has aired on public radio stations from New York City to San Diego. To see more of his work, visit his website.