British Soldier Quits Over Abuses of Iraqis by U.S. Soldiers
Monday, March 13, 2006
Sunday, February 26, 2006
Statement - John Amidon, Target of Illegal Spying
It was April 20, 2005. We stood in front of the fountain at the SUNY Albany, Campus Center. As a member of Veterans For Peace, I had been asked to speak about honesty in recruitment, and about discrimination against gay and lesbian Americans by the U.S. military. New York State law prohibits employers from discriminating on the basis of sexual preference- that is, unless the employer is the U.S. military. Approximately 75 students and community members attended this rally, most supporting the exclusion of recruiters from campus if recruiters continued their discrimination. It was a spirited dialogue, with discussion of important id
eas ranging far beyond the stated purpose of this demonstration. The few dissenters were also open to dialogue. The disastrous and illegal war in Iraq, the energy crisis, and the continued erosion of civil liberties were very real concerns to everyone present. Little did we know we were being spied on that day!
Seven months later in December of 2005, NBC News aired a story about groups being spied on by the government. The SUNY Albany event was one the ones that had been watched. Where was the threat to national security? I certainly don't feel like a threat, and I didn't feel threatened by the other people who attended the protest even those who disagreed with me.
When asked how I felt about being spied on, I couldn't help but reflect on the breadth and scope of the U.S. intelligence community: the NSA, the CIA, the FBI, the Pentagon, private contractors, informants, spies, the DEA, AFT, and secret units I have yet to learn about. How, then, did they fail to predict the S
oviet Union's demise, the 1998 Indian nuclear test, or the a!
bsence of Saddam's WMDs? Both al Qaeda's planning of 9/11 and its operatives were missed and the Chinese embassy in Belgrade was bombed in 1999. Currently the Bush administration continues to ignore, discredit or distort what little real intelligence remains. On top of all this, I learn the military is spying on me. How do I feel? Genuinely irritated, but not astonished. Just what the hell is going on here?
Maybe, just maybe if the leaders of the "Free" world stopped spying on Quakers and librarians and Veterans For Peace, they might actually engage in the work we are paying them to do - protect rather than harm and threaten us. When the administration replaces life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness with death, destruction and the pursuit of madness; when the three branches of the Federal government are aligned with the Fourth Estate in coercion and corruption; when the" rule of law" is replaced by" the law of man", I fear we have lost our Republic and have wrought ourselves a dictatorship. How do I feel? I feel angry, depressed and disgusted. I also feel strongly motivated to affirm and protect our inalienable rights and freedoms. I served honorably as a Corporal in the Marines during the Vietnam War from 1965 to 1969. I swore an oath to support the Constitution of the United States. I still intend to honor that oath. I am not intimidated by the government spying on me. I am empowered by it. I am an average guy and I know the fate of our nation now rests in our hands. There is a real urgency now to right the course of this nation and we need everyone to participate in restoring the rule of law to our lives and to our nation. Truly that is how I feel.
eas ranging far beyond the stated purpose of this demonstration. The few dissenters were also open to dialogue. The disastrous and illegal war in Iraq, the energy crisis, and the continued erosion of civil liberties were very real concerns to everyone present. Little did we know we were being spied on that day!
Seven months later in December of 2005, NBC News aired a story about groups being spied on by the government. The SUNY Albany event was one the ones that had been watched. Where was the threat to national security? I certainly don't feel like a threat, and I didn't feel threatened by the other people who attended the protest even those who disagreed with me.
When asked how I felt about being spied on, I couldn't help but reflect on the breadth and scope of the U.S. intelligence community: the NSA, the CIA, the FBI, the Pentagon, private contractors, informants, spies, the DEA, AFT, and secret units I have yet to learn about. How, then, did they fail to predict the S
oviet Union's demise, the 1998 Indian nuclear test, or the a!
bsence of Saddam's WMDs? Both al Qaeda's planning of 9/11 and its operatives were missed and the Chinese embassy in Belgrade was bombed in 1999. Currently the Bush administration continues to ignore, discredit or distort what little real intelligence remains. On top of all this, I learn the military is spying on me. How do I feel? Genuinely irritated, but not astonished. Just what the hell is going on here?
Maybe, just maybe if the leaders of the "Free" world stopped spying on Quakers and librarians and Veterans For Peace, they might actually engage in the work we are paying them to do - protect rather than harm and threaten us. When the administration replaces life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness with death, destruction and the pursuit of madness; when the three branches of the Federal government are aligned with the Fourth Estate in coercion and corruption; when the" rule of law" is replaced by" the law of man", I fear we have lost our Republic and have wrought ourselves a dictatorship. How do I feel? I feel angry, depressed and disgusted. I also feel strongly motivated to affirm and protect our inalienable rights and freedoms. I served honorably as a Corporal in the Marines during the Vietnam War from 1965 to 1969. I swore an oath to support the Constitution of the United States. I still intend to honor that oath. I am not intimidated by the government spying on me. I am empowered by it. I am an average guy and I know the fate of our nation now rests in our hands. There is a real urgency now to right the course of this nation and we need everyone to participate in restoring the rule of law to our lives and to our nation. Truly that is how I feel.
This item is also available on the web at: http://aclu.org/safefree/general/24185res20060217.html
Statement - Debbie Clark, Target of Illegal Spying
I served eight years on active duty in the US Army between 1976 and 1984 - five years in the Military Police and Military Police Investigations and three years as a Special Agent in the US Army Criminal Investigation Command (CID). I was honorably discharged from active duty just prior to the birth of my first child in order to be a full-time mother at home while my then-husband remained in the military. I have been engaged in antiwar activities as a member of Veterans For Peace since before the Iraq war began.
When I first read the news about the Pentagon spying on our antiwar activities two of which were protests that I had pe
rsonally engaged in (one outside of Fort Bragg, NC in March 2005 led by veterans and military families, and the other one near an Army Recruiting Station in Atlanta, GA on Ponce de Leon Avenue), my reaction was basically one of no surprise. I have always pretty much assumed that the government had our activities under surveillance and monitoring to at least some degree or another, but always felt it was important to continue on in our opposition to the war. We have been doing nothing wrong, but rather have been acting as vigilant Americans should act in a time when government officials are suspected of high crimes and treason and misusing our intelligence agencies and military troops for a war of aggression rather than for defense of the nation.
It was interesting to me to see my suspicions of government monitoring of our activities validated and in the news and refreshing to my jaded eyes to see the strong reaction against the Pentagon spying by organizers and activists, bo
th locally and nationwide.
I consider the Pentagon spying on!
our act
ivities to be a massive waste of taxpayer money and intelligence manpower and resources that could be better spent doing something that would be more beneficial to the nation. I can only assume that the agents who have been involved in this are not competent to discern the difference between real terrorists (like the ones that were ignored by the FBI prior to 9/11) and honorable, law-abiding American citizens who are dedicated to the cause of peace and justice.
America as a nation has some shameful things in its history, but there are also many good things about it, not the least of which is that it was founded by rebels like Thomas Jefferson and has a historical record reflecting a significant degree of respect and honor for the principle of free speech and dissent against government. Even in these repressive times with criminals in Washington running the government, it is good to see that there are still people who honor the principle of free speech and dissent against gove
rnment and truly understand the importance of these things in the attempted recovery and maintenance of a free and peaceful nation.
I salute the ACLU and Bob Barr of Georgia for their continued vigilance in this eternal struggle for liberty.
When I first read the news about the Pentagon spying on our antiwar activities two of which were protests that I had pe
rsonally engaged in (one outside of Fort Bragg, NC in March 2005 led by veterans and military families, and the other one near an Army Recruiting Station in Atlanta, GA on Ponce de Leon Avenue), my reaction was basically one of no surprise. I have always pretty much assumed that the government had our activities under surveillance and monitoring to at least some degree or another, but always felt it was important to continue on in our opposition to the war. We have been doing nothing wrong, but rather have been acting as vigilant Americans should act in a time when government officials are suspected of high crimes and treason and misusing our intelligence agencies and military troops for a war of aggression rather than for defense of the nation.
It was interesting to me to see my suspicions of government monitoring of our activities validated and in the news and refreshing to my jaded eyes to see the strong reaction against the Pentagon spying by organizers and activists, bo
th locally and nationwide.
I consider the Pentagon spying on!
our act
ivities to be a massive waste of taxpayer money and intelligence manpower and resources that could be better spent doing something that would be more beneficial to the nation. I can only assume that the agents who have been involved in this are not competent to discern the difference between real terrorists (like the ones that were ignored by the FBI prior to 9/11) and honorable, law-abiding American citizens who are dedicated to the cause of peace and justice.
America as a nation has some shameful things in its history, but there are also many good things about it, not the least of which is that it was founded by rebels like Thomas Jefferson and has a historical record reflecting a significant degree of respect and honor for the principle of free speech and dissent against government. Even in these repressive times with criminals in Washington running the government, it is good to see that there are still people who honor the principle of free speech and dissent against gove
rnment and truly understand the importance of these things in the attempted recovery and maintenance of a free and peaceful nation.
I salute the ACLU and Bob Barr of Georgia for their continued vigilance in this eternal struggle for liberty.
This item is also available on the web at:
http://www.aclu.org/safefree/spyfiles/24155res20060215.html
Monday, February 20, 2006
After War Injury, an Iraq Vet Takes on Politics http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/022006C.shtml Tammy Duckworth, Democratic candidate for Congress, cannot escape the catastrophic wounds she suffered as an Army helicopter pilot in Iraq. Her injuries are her signature, her motivator and, she hopes, her ticket into the consciousness of voters in the Illinois 6th District. Duckworth, who considers the Iraq war a mistake, is among about a dozen veterans who served in Iraq or Afghanistan and are running for federal office this year, at last count all but one of them Democrats.
Joe Galloway Military Vehicles, and Lives, Take a Beating in Iraq http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/022006E.shtml Joe Galloway: There are always costs in a war, human costs and hardware costs, and as we draw close to beginning the fourth year of our operations in Iraq, it's time to tally those costs one more time.
The Other Failure in Iraq: the Economy http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/022006H.shtml Eric Le Boucher reminds us that the American "economic reconstruction" of Iraq has left that country economically worse-off than it was before: "The gap between the reconstruction objectives settled upon after Saddam Hussein's overthrow in 2003 and reality only continue to grow."
Marjorie Cohn US Force-Feeding Prisoners in Torture Camp http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/022006J.shtml Last week, the United Nations Human Rights Commission reported that the violent force-feeding of detainees by the US military at its Guantanamo prison camp amounts to torture. More than a third of the prisoners held there have refused food to protest being held incommunicado for years with no hope of release. They have concluded that death could not be worse than the living hell they are enduring.
The Actual Price We've Paid http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/022006N.shtml "To see people die, your friends get hurt over seven months, it can't be explained unless you've been here," Barrient, 21, of Salinas, California, added, speaking in a cold, tiled room filled with bunkbeds as the Muslim call to prayer echoed from mosques down the street. "The actual price we've paid to help this country out - it's unexplainable."
Joe Galloway Military Vehicles, and Lives, Take a Beating in Iraq http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/022006E.shtml Joe Galloway: There are always costs in a war, human costs and hardware costs, and as we draw close to beginning the fourth year of our operations in Iraq, it's time to tally those costs one more time.
The Other Failure in Iraq: the Economy http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/022006H.shtml Eric Le Boucher reminds us that the American "economic reconstruction" of Iraq has left that country economically worse-off than it was before: "The gap between the reconstruction objectives settled upon after Saddam Hussein's overthrow in 2003 and reality only continue to grow."
Marjorie Cohn US Force-Feeding Prisoners in Torture Camp http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/022006J.shtml Last week, the United Nations Human Rights Commission reported that the violent force-feeding of detainees by the US military at its Guantanamo prison camp amounts to torture. More than a third of the prisoners held there have refused food to protest being held incommunicado for years with no hope of release. They have concluded that death could not be worse than the living hell they are enduring.
The Actual Price We've Paid http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/022006N.shtml "To see people die, your friends get hurt over seven months, it can't be explained unless you've been here," Barrient, 21, of Salinas, California, added, speaking in a cold, tiled room filled with bunkbeds as the Muslim call to prayer echoed from mosques down the street. "The actual price we've paid to help this country out - it's unexplainable."
Monday, January 23, 2006
The Forgotten Wounded of Iraq
The Forgotten Wounded of Iraq
By Ron Kovic
Truthdig.com, Wednesday 18 January 2006
Thirty-eight years ago, on Jan. 20, 1968, I was shot and paralyzed from my mid-chest down during my second tour of duty in Vietnam. It is a date that I can never forget, a day that was to change my life forever. Each year as the anniversary of my wounding in the war approached I would become extremely restless, experiencing terrible bouts of insomnia, depression, anxiety attacks and horrifying nightmares. I dreaded that day and what it represented, always fearing that the terrible trauma of my wounding might repeat itself all over again. It was a difficult day for me for decades and it remained that way until the anxieties and nightmares finally began to subside.
By Ron Kovic
Truthdig.com, Wednesday 18 January 2006
|
As I now contemplate another January 20th I cannot help but think of the young men and women who have been wounded in the war in Iraq. They have been coming home now for almost three years, flooding Walter Reed, Bethesda, Brooke Army Medical Center and veterans hospitals all across the country. Paraplegics, amputees, burn victims, the blinded and maimed, shocked and stunned, brain-damaged and psychologically stressed, over 16,000 of them, a whole new generation of severely maimed is returning from Iraq, young men and women who were not even born when I came home wounded to the Bronx veterans hospital in 1968.
I, like most other Americans, have occasionally seen them on TV or at the local veterans hospital, but for the most part they remain hidden, like the flag-draped caskets of our dead, returned to Dover Air Force Base in the darkness of night as this administration continues to pursue a policy of censorship, tightly controlling the images coming out of that war and rarely ever allowing the human cost of its policy to be seen.
Mosul, Fallouja, Basra, Baghdad, a roadside bomb, an RPG, an ambush, the bullets cracking all around them, the reality that they are in a war, that they have suddenly been hit. No more John Wayne-Audie Murphy movie fantasies. No more false bravado, stirring words of patriotism, romantic notions of war or what it might really mean to be in combat, to sacrifice for one's country. All that means nothing now. The reality has struck, the awful, shocking and frightening truth of what it really means to be hit by a bullet, an RPG, an improvised explosive device, shrapnel, a booby trap, friendly fire. They are now in a life-and-death situation and they have suddenly come face to face with the foreign policy of their own nation. The initial shock is wearing off; the painful reality is beginning to sink in, clearly something terrible has happened, something awful and inexplicable.
All the conditioning, all the discipline, shouting, screaming, bullying and threatening verbal abuse of their boot camp drill instructors have now disappeared in this one instant, in this one damaging blow. All they want to do now is stay alive, keep breathing, somehow get out of this place anyway they can. People are dying all around them, someone has been shot and killed right next to them and behind them but all they can really think of at this moment is staying alive.
You don't think of God, or praying, or even your mother or your father. There is no time for that. Your heart is pounding. Blood is seeping out. You will always go back to that day, that moment you got hit, the day you nearly died yet somehow survived. It will be a day you will never forget - when you were trapped in that open area and could not move, when bullets were cracking all around you, when the first Marine tried to save you and was shot dead at your feet and the second, a black Marine - whom you would never see again and who would be killed later that afternoon - would carry you back under heavy fire.
You are now with other wounded all around you heading to a place where there will be help. There are people in pain and great distress, shocked and stunned, frightened beyond anything you can imagine. You are afraid to close your eyes. To close your eyes now means that you may die and never wake up. You toss and turn, your heart pounding, racked with insomnia ... and for many this will go on for months, years after they return home.
They are being put on a helicopter, with the wounded all around them. They try to stay calm. Some are amazed that they are still alive. You just have to keep trying to stay awake, make it to the next stage, keep moving toward the rear, toward another aid station, a corpsman, a doctor a nurse someone who can help you, someone who will operate and keep you alive so you can make it home, home to your backyard and your neighbors and your mother and father. To where it all began, to where it was once peaceful and safe. They just try to keep breathing because they have got to get back.
They are in the intensive-care ward now, the place where they will be operated on, and where in Vietnam a Catholic priest gave me the Last Rites. Someone is putting a mask over their faces just as they put one over mine in Da Nang in 1968. There is the swirl of darkness and soon they awaken to screams all around them. The dead and dying are everywhere. There are things here you can never forget, images and sounds and smells that you will never see on TV or read about in the newspapers. The black pilot dying next to me as the corpsman and nurse tried furiously to save him, pounding on his chest with their fists as they laughed and joked trying to keep from going insane. The Green Beret who died of spinal meningitis, the tiny Vietnamese nun handing out apples and rosary beads to the wounded, the dead being carted in and out like clockwork,19- and 20-year-olds.
There is the long flight home packed with the wounded all around you, every conceivable and horrifying wound you could imagine. Even the unconscious and brain-dead whose minds have been blown apart by bullets and shrapnel make that ride with you, because we are all going home now, back to our country. And this is only the beginning.
The frustrations, anger and rage, insomnia, nightmares, anxiety attacks, terrible restlessness and desperate need to keep moving will come later, but for now we are so thankful to have just made it out of that place, so grateful to be alive even with these grievous wounds.
I cannot help but wonder what it will be like for the young men and women wounded in Iraq. What will their homecoming be like? I feel close to them. Though many years separate us we are brothers and sisters. We have all been to the same place. For us in 1968 it was the Bronx veterans hospital paraplegic ward, overcrowded, understaffed, rats on the ward, a flood of memories and images, I can never forget; urine bags overflowing onto the floor. It seemed more like a slum than a hospital. Paralyzed men lying in their own excrement, pushing call buttons for aides who never came, wondering how our government could spend so much money (billions of dollars) on the most lethal, technologically advanced weaponry to kill and maim human beings but not be able to take care of its own wounded when they came home.
Will it be the same for them? Will they have to return to these same unspeakable conditions? Has any of it changed? I have heard that our government has already attempted to cut back millions in much needed funds for veterans hospitals - and this when thousands of wounded soldiers are returning from Iraq. Will they too be left abandoned and forgotten by a president and administration whose patriotic rhetoric does not match the needs of our wounded troops now returning? Do the American people, the president, the politicians, senators and congressmen who sent us to this war have any idea what it really means to lose an arm or a leg, to be paralyzed, to begin to cope with the psychological wounds of that war? Do they have any concept of the long-term effects of these injuries, how the struggles of the wounded are only now just beginning? How many will die young and never live out their lives because of all the stress and myriad of problems that come with sending young men and women into combat?
It is so difficult at first. You return home and both physically and emotionally don't know how you are going to live with this wound, but you just keep trying, just keep waking up to this frightening reality every morning. “My God, what has happened to me?” But you somehow get up, you somehow go on and find a way to move through each day. Even though it is impossible, you go on. Maybe there will be a day years from now, if you are lucky to live that long, when it will get better and you will not feel so overwhelmed. You must have something to hope for, some way to believe it will not always be this way. This is exactly what many of them are going through right now.
They are alone in their rooms all over this country, right now. Just as I was alone in my room in Massapequa. I know they're there - just as I was. This is the part you never see. The part that is never reported in the news. The part that the president and vice president never mention. This is the agonizing part, the lonely part, when you have to awake to the wound each morning and suddenly realize what you've lost, what is gone forever. They're out there and they have mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, husbands and wives and children. And they're not saying much right now. Just like me they're just trying to get through each day. Trying to be brave and not cry. They still are extremely grateful to be alive, but slowly, agonizingly they are beginning to think about what has really happened to them.
What will it be like for them when one morning they suddenly find themselves naked sitting before that mirror in their room and must come face to face with their injury? I want to reach out to them. I want them to know that I've been there too. I want to just sit with them in their room and tell them that they must not give up. They must try to be patient, try to just get through each day, each morning, each afternoon any way they can. That no matter how impossible and frustrating it may seem, how painful, regardless of the anxiety attacks and nightmares and thoughts of suicide, they must not quit. Somewhere out there there will be a turning point, somewhere through this all they will find a reason to keep on living.
In the months and years that are to follow, others will be less fortunate. Young men and women who survived the battlefield, the intensive-care ward, veterans hospitals and initial homecoming will be unable to make the difficult and often agonizing adjustment.
Is this what is awaiting all of them? Is this the nightmare no one ever told them about, the part no one now wants to talk about or has the time to deal with? The car accidents, and drinking and drug overdoses, the depression, anger and rage, spousal abuse, bedsores and breakdowns, prison, homelessness, sleeping under the piers and bridges. The ones who never leave the hospital, the ones who can't hold a job, can't keep a relationship together, can't love or feel any emotions anymore, the brutal insomnia that leaves you exhausted and practically unable to function, the frightening anxiety attacks that come upon you when you least expect them, and always the dread that each day may be your last.
Marty, Billy, Bobby, Max, Tom, Washington, Pat, Joe? I knew them all. It's a long list. It's amazing that you're still alive when so many others you knew are dead, and at such a young age. Isn't all this dying supposed to happen when you're much older? Not now, not while we're so young. How come the recruiters never mentioned these things? This was never in the slick pamphlets they showed us! This should be a time of innocence, a time of joy and happiness, no cares and youthful dreams - not all these friends dying so young, all this grief and numbness, emptiness and feelings of being so lost.
The physical and psychological battles from the war in Iraq will rage on for decades, deeply impacting the lives of citizens in both our countries.
As this the 38th anniversary of my wounding in Vietnam approaches, in many ways I feel my injury in that war has been a blessing in disguise. I have been given the opportunity to move through that dark night of the soul to a new shore, to gain an understanding, a knowledge, an entirely different vision. I now believe that I have suffered for a reason and in many ways I have found that reason in my commitment to peace and nonviolence. We who have witnessed the obscenity of war and experienced its horror and terrible consequences have an obligation to rise above our pain and suffering and turn the tragedy of our lives into a triumph. I have come to believe that there is nothing in the lives of human beings more terrifying than war and nothing more important than for those of us who have experienced it to share its awful truth.
We must break this cycle of violence and begin to move in a different direction; war is not the answer, violence is not the solution. A more peaceful world is possible.
I am the living death
The memorial day on wheels
I am your yankee doodle dandy
Your John Wayne come home
Your Fourth of July firecracker
Exploding in the grave
Breathe Peace
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
VFP-Southeast Breakfast Meeting Jan 21 8 am
Chapter #100 Alaska
Veterans For Peace:
Our regular monthly breakfast meeting is this coming Saturday, 21 January, 0800 at the Back Room of the Silverbow.
Agenda items include:
SEATIR report, including a draft proposed Juneau School District policy, for VFP's review and approval.
Public action on or around 20 March (Anniversary of U.S. invasion of Iraq).
Chapter help and support of "What I Heard About Iraq".
VFP Convention 2006 planning.
VFP news from around Alaska.*
........... and more ............. (Sorry if I'm forgetting your favorite thing; feel free to Reply-All with additions.)
* Thanks to those members around Alaska who have let me know what's happening in your towns that VFP members are involved with. I'd like to hear from more of you, so I can pass the word.
Wage Peace!
John Dunker
President (outgoing), VFP Chapter #100
P.S.: Our Thursday noon vigils continue, 9th and Glacier Hwy. Thanks to all of you who have helped keep up this constant public reminder of the costs of war.
Veterans For Peace:
Our regular monthly breakfast meeting is this coming Saturday, 21 January, 0800 at the Back Room of the Silverbow.
Agenda items include:
SEATIR report, including a draft proposed Juneau School District policy, for VFP's review and approval.
Public action on or around 20 March (Anniversary of U.S. invasion of Iraq).
Chapter help and support of "What I Heard About Iraq".
VFP Convention 2006 planning.
VFP news from around Alaska.*
........... and more ............. (Sorry if I'm forgetting your favorite thing; feel free to Reply-All with additions.)
* Thanks to those members around Alaska who have let me know what's happening in your towns that VFP members are involved with. I'd like to hear from more of you, so I can pass the word.
Wage Peace!
John Dunker
President (outgoing), VFP Chapter #100
P.S.: Our Thursday noon vigils continue, 9th and Glacier Hwy. Thanks to all of you who have helped keep up this constant public reminder of the costs of war.
Purple Heartbreakers
From the NYTimes Op-Ed
By JAMES WEBB
IT should come as no surprise that an arch-conservative Web site is questioning whether Representative John Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat who has been critical of the war in Iraq, deserved the combat awards he received in Vietnam.
After all, in recent years extremist Republican operatives have inverted a longstanding principle: that our combat veterans be accorded a place of honor in political circles. This trend began with the ugly insinuations leveled at Senator John McCain during the 2000 Republican primaries and continued with the slurs against Senators Max Cleland and John Kerry, and now Mr. Murtha.
Military people past and present have good reason to wonder if the current administration truly values their service beyond its immediate effect on its battlefield of choice. The casting of suspicion and doubt about the actions of veterans who have run against President Bush or opposed his policies has been a constant theme of his career. This pattern of denigrating the service of those with whom they disagree risks cheapening the public's appreciation of what it means to serve, and in the long term may hurt the Republicans themselves.
Not unlike the Clinton "triangulation" strategy, the approach has been to attack an opponent's greatest perceived strength in order to diminish his overall credibility. To no one's surprise, surrogates carry out the attacks, leaving President Bush and other Republican leaders to benefit from the results while publicly distancing themselves from the actual remarks.
During the 2000 primary season, John McCain's life-defining experiences as a prisoner of war in Vietnam were diminished through whispers that he was too scarred by those years to handle the emotional burdens of the presidency. The wide admiration that Senator Max Cleland gained from building a career despite losing three limbs in Vietnam brought on the smug non sequitur from critics that he had been injured in an accident and not by enemy fire. John Kerry's voluntary combat duty was systematically diminished by the well-financed Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in a highly successful effort to insulate a president who avoided having to go to war.
And now comes Jack Murtha. The administration tried a number of times to derail the congressman's criticism of the Iraq war, including a largely ineffective effort to get senior military officials to publicly rebuke him (Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, was the only one to do the administration's bidding there).
Now the Cybercast News Service, a supposedly independent organization with deep ties to the Republican Party, has dusted off the Swift Boat Veterans playbook, questioning whether Mr. Murtha deserved his two Purple Hearts. The article also implied that Mr. Murtha did not deserve the Bronze Star he received, and that the combat-distinguishing "V" on it was questionable. It then called on Mr. Murtha to open up his military records.
Cybercast News Service is run by David Thibault, who formerly worked as the senior producer for "Rising Tide," the televised weekly news magazine produced by the Republican National Committee. One of the authors of the Murtha article was Marc Morano, a long-time writer and producer for Rush Limbaugh.
The accusations against Mr. Murtha were very old news, principally coming from defeated political rivals. Aligned against their charges are an official letter from Marine Corps Headquarters written nearly 40 years ago affirming Mr. Murtha's eligibility for his Purple Hearts - "you are entitled to the Purple Heart and a Gold Star in lieu of a second Purple Heart for wounds received in action" - and the strict tradition of the Marine Corps regarding awards. While in other services lower-level commanders have frequently had authority to issue prestigious awards, in the Marines Mr. Murtha's Vietnam Bronze Star would have required the approval of four different awards boards.
The Bush administration's failure to support those who have served goes beyond the smearing of these political opponents. One of the most regrettable examples comes, oddly enough, from modern-day Vietnam. The government-run War Remnants Museum, a popular tourist site in downtown Ho Chi Minh City, includes an extensive section on "American atrocities." The largest display is devoted to Bob Kerrey, a former United States senator and governor of Nebraska, recipient of the Medal of Honor and member of the 9/11 commission.
In the display, Mr. Kerrey is flatly labeled a war criminal by the Vietnamese government, and the accompanying text gives a thoroughly propagandized version of an incident that resulted in civilian deaths during his time in Vietnam. This display has been up for more than two years. One finds it hard to imagine another example in which a foreign government has been allowed to so characterize the service of a distinguished American with no hint of a diplomatic protest.
The political tactic of playing up the soldiers on the battlefield while tearing down the reputations of veterans who oppose them could eventually cost the Republicans dearly. It may be one reason that a preponderance of the Iraq war veterans who thus far have decided to run for office are doing so as Democrats.
A young American now serving in Iraq might rightly wonder whether his or her service will be deliberately misconstrued 20 years from now, in the next rendition of politically motivated spinmeisters who never had the courage to step forward and put their own lives on the line.
Rudyard Kipling summed up this syndrome quite neatly more than a century ago, writing about the frequent hypocrisy directed at the British soldiers of his day:
An' it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please;
An' Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool - you bet that Tommy sees!
James Webb, a secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration, was a Marine platoon and company commander in Vietnam.
By JAMES WEBB
IT should come as no surprise that an arch-conservative Web site is questioning whether Representative John Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat who has been critical of the war in Iraq, deserved the combat awards he received in Vietnam.
After all, in recent years extremist Republican operatives have inverted a longstanding principle: that our combat veterans be accorded a place of honor in political circles. This trend began with the ugly insinuations leveled at Senator John McCain during the 2000 Republican primaries and continued with the slurs against Senators Max Cleland and John Kerry, and now Mr. Murtha.
Military people past and present have good reason to wonder if the current administration truly values their service beyond its immediate effect on its battlefield of choice. The casting of suspicion and doubt about the actions of veterans who have run against President Bush or opposed his policies has been a constant theme of his career. This pattern of denigrating the service of those with whom they disagree risks cheapening the public's appreciation of what it means to serve, and in the long term may hurt the Republicans themselves.
Not unlike the Clinton "triangulation" strategy, the approach has been to attack an opponent's greatest perceived strength in order to diminish his overall credibility. To no one's surprise, surrogates carry out the attacks, leaving President Bush and other Republican leaders to benefit from the results while publicly distancing themselves from the actual remarks.
During the 2000 primary season, John McCain's life-defining experiences as a prisoner of war in Vietnam were diminished through whispers that he was too scarred by those years to handle the emotional burdens of the presidency. The wide admiration that Senator Max Cleland gained from building a career despite losing three limbs in Vietnam brought on the smug non sequitur from critics that he had been injured in an accident and not by enemy fire. John Kerry's voluntary combat duty was systematically diminished by the well-financed Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in a highly successful effort to insulate a president who avoided having to go to war.
And now comes Jack Murtha. The administration tried a number of times to derail the congressman's criticism of the Iraq war, including a largely ineffective effort to get senior military officials to publicly rebuke him (Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, was the only one to do the administration's bidding there).
Now the Cybercast News Service, a supposedly independent organization with deep ties to the Republican Party, has dusted off the Swift Boat Veterans playbook, questioning whether Mr. Murtha deserved his two Purple Hearts. The article also implied that Mr. Murtha did not deserve the Bronze Star he received, and that the combat-distinguishing "V" on it was questionable. It then called on Mr. Murtha to open up his military records.
Cybercast News Service is run by David Thibault, who formerly worked as the senior producer for "Rising Tide," the televised weekly news magazine produced by the Republican National Committee. One of the authors of the Murtha article was Marc Morano, a long-time writer and producer for Rush Limbaugh.
The accusations against Mr. Murtha were very old news, principally coming from defeated political rivals. Aligned against their charges are an official letter from Marine Corps Headquarters written nearly 40 years ago affirming Mr. Murtha's eligibility for his Purple Hearts - "you are entitled to the Purple Heart and a Gold Star in lieu of a second Purple Heart for wounds received in action" - and the strict tradition of the Marine Corps regarding awards. While in other services lower-level commanders have frequently had authority to issue prestigious awards, in the Marines Mr. Murtha's Vietnam Bronze Star would have required the approval of four different awards boards.
The Bush administration's failure to support those who have served goes beyond the smearing of these political opponents. One of the most regrettable examples comes, oddly enough, from modern-day Vietnam. The government-run War Remnants Museum, a popular tourist site in downtown Ho Chi Minh City, includes an extensive section on "American atrocities." The largest display is devoted to Bob Kerrey, a former United States senator and governor of Nebraska, recipient of the Medal of Honor and member of the 9/11 commission.
In the display, Mr. Kerrey is flatly labeled a war criminal by the Vietnamese government, and the accompanying text gives a thoroughly propagandized version of an incident that resulted in civilian deaths during his time in Vietnam. This display has been up for more than two years. One finds it hard to imagine another example in which a foreign government has been allowed to so characterize the service of a distinguished American with no hint of a diplomatic protest.
The political tactic of playing up the soldiers on the battlefield while tearing down the reputations of veterans who oppose them could eventually cost the Republicans dearly. It may be one reason that a preponderance of the Iraq war veterans who thus far have decided to run for office are doing so as Democrats.
A young American now serving in Iraq might rightly wonder whether his or her service will be deliberately misconstrued 20 years from now, in the next rendition of politically motivated spinmeisters who never had the courage to step forward and put their own lives on the line.
Rudyard Kipling summed up this syndrome quite neatly more than a century ago, writing about the frequent hypocrisy directed at the British soldiers of his day:
An' it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please;
An' Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool - you bet that Tommy sees!
James Webb, a secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration, was a Marine platoon and company commander in Vietnam.
Monday, December 12, 2005
VFP Chapter #100 Saturday breakfast meeting
Chapter #100 - Alaska
Veterans For Peace & friends:
Please set aside a couple of hours of your Saturday morning to attend to chapter business and enjoy the fellowship at our breakfast meeting, 17 December, 0800, at the Back Room of the Silverbow, 2nd Street between Main and Seward. Here's a partial agenda:
Please take special note of the bylaw amendment proposal (2nd item above); this constitutes the notice that is required in the Chapter bylaws. If you can't attend the meeting, members may submit a vote on this matter by email, to me or to Sec'y-Treas. Don Birdseye, not later than Friday night 16 Dec.
Let's Wage Peace over bagels and coffee!
John Dunker
President, VFP Chapter #100
Veterans For Peace & friends:
Please set aside a couple of hours of your Saturday morning to attend to chapter business and enjoy the fellowship at our breakfast meeting, 17 December, 0800, at the Back Room of the Silverbow, 2nd Street between Main and Seward. Here's a partial agenda:
- Chapter officers' election status report.
- Proposed amendment of bylaws to split the position of Secretary-Treasurer into two separate positions.
- The Chapter's "What I Heard About Iraq" dramatic production project - progress report and discussion.
- VFP Convention 2006 (Seattle) planning and chapter participation.
- SEATIR (SouthEast Alaska Truth In Recruiting) Chapter project - progress report and discussion.
- Report on the 7 December Veterans' Forum in Anchorage.
- Chapter website development report.
- News from VFP around Alaska - membership, new chapter development, actions. *
Please take special note of the bylaw amendment proposal (2nd item above); this constitutes the notice that is required in the Chapter bylaws. If you can't attend the meeting, members may submit a vote on this matter by email, to me or to Sec'y-Treas. Don Birdseye, not later than Friday night 16 Dec.
Let's Wage Peace over bagels and coffee!
John Dunker
President, VFP Chapter #100
Wednesday, November 23, 2005
A Soldier's Perspective on the Debate
Check out this article from TruthOut.ORG.
Get Some
By William Rivers Pitt, t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Wednesday 23 November 2005
Friday, November 11, 2005
Veterans Day -- Nov. 11
Support Our Troops
We see them every day on the back windows of SUVs, on the fuel doors of sedans--stickers and magnets that say "Support Our Troops." Sometimes they sport yellow ribbons; sometimes American flags. Often they are weathered, peeling off the metal or glass. We see them so often it's easy to tune them out. Like the inoffensive "Have a nice day," the slogan is a pleasant sentiment that skims across our consciousness and disappears into the air.
On Veteran's Day, when we honor all of those who have served our country through the military, it's helpful to take a closer look at these three words that have become so familiar: What does it mean to truly support our troops?
Often, when people ask us to support our troops, they are asking us to support the Bush Administration's decisions in Iraq. But is the Administration supporting our troops by sending them into a war based on lies? By sending them into one battle after another with inadequate body armor, inadequately armored vehicles? By bringing home the wounded in the dead of night so we can pretend they don't exist? By cutting veteran's benefits upon their return, so they have to struggle to pay for their housing, their groceries, their medical care? By making young men and women fight an unwinnable war, a war that no longer has the backing of the American people?
Since March, peace groups including CodePink and Veterans for Peace have been staging a weekly candlelight vigil in front of Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, DC, to highlight the needs of injured soldiers. Lately, the vigils have been met by aggressive counterdemonstrators, who line up on the opposite side of the street with signs denouncing the vigil. These people support the war in Iraq and argue that demonstrations are demoralizing to the recovering soldiers. But how demoralizing must it be for soldiers coming home to discover that in state after state, Veterans Administration hospitals are being shut down? How demoralizing must it be for injured soldiers to have to fight for disability benefits, to be faced with increased co-payments, to be told that their post-traumatic stress disorder is not war-related?
What is the impact on soldiers still in Iraq to learn that the Bush Administration manipulated the intelligence about weapons of mass destruction in order to justify an invasion? How must they feel when they learn that Iraqis don't want us there or understand that their acts of bravery are not making their families safer at home? How demoralizing must it be to see their buddies die in a war that increasing numbers of soldiers don't even believe in?
More than 2,000 of our troops have been killed, and more than 15,000 injured. These numbers are important to remember, but it is also important to remember that our troops are not numbers, not statistics. They are human beings, and there are actions we can take to support them that are much more meaningful than blindly supporting our President or slapping a magnet on the back of our gas-guzzling car.
Send care packages to Iraq: books and snacks and toiletries to mitigate some of the harshness of the desert war zone. Donate to organizations, like the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, that provide help for returning soldiers struggling to put their lives together after war. Stand on street corners with candles and signs that spotlight the injustices our troops face. Support groups like Iraq Veterans Against the War, made up of courageous soldiers speaking out against the war. Urge elected officials to end this misbegotten military adventure. Support clean, green energy programs and lifestyles that move us off our dependence on other countries' oil.
As we honor the sacrifice and courage of our veterans, let us recognize that the best way to support our troops is to call for their swift exit from Iraq, to guarantee them the care they deserve when they return, and to make policy changes that will stop us from ever again rushing into a reckless war.
From the Nation
Support Our Troops
We see them every day on the back windows of SUVs, on the fuel doors of sedans--stickers and magnets that say "Support Our Troops." Sometimes they sport yellow ribbons; sometimes American flags. Often they are weathered, peeling off the metal or glass. We see them so often it's easy to tune them out. Like the inoffensive "Have a nice day," the slogan is a pleasant sentiment that skims across our consciousness and disappears into the air.
On Veteran's Day, when we honor all of those who have served our country through the military, it's helpful to take a closer look at these three words that have become so familiar: What does it mean to truly support our troops?
Often, when people ask us to support our troops, they are asking us to support the Bush Administration's decisions in Iraq. But is the Administration supporting our troops by sending them into a war based on lies? By sending them into one battle after another with inadequate body armor, inadequately armored vehicles? By bringing home the wounded in the dead of night so we can pretend they don't exist? By cutting veteran's benefits upon their return, so they have to struggle to pay for their housing, their groceries, their medical care? By making young men and women fight an unwinnable war, a war that no longer has the backing of the American people?
Since March, peace groups including CodePink and Veterans for Peace have been staging a weekly candlelight vigil in front of Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, DC, to highlight the needs of injured soldiers. Lately, the vigils have been met by aggressive counterdemonstrators, who line up on the opposite side of the street with signs denouncing the vigil. These people support the war in Iraq and argue that demonstrations are demoralizing to the recovering soldiers. But how demoralizing must it be for soldiers coming home to discover that in state after state, Veterans Administration hospitals are being shut down? How demoralizing must it be for injured soldiers to have to fight for disability benefits, to be faced with increased co-payments, to be told that their post-traumatic stress disorder is not war-related?
What is the impact on soldiers still in Iraq to learn that the Bush Administration manipulated the intelligence about weapons of mass destruction in order to justify an invasion? How must they feel when they learn that Iraqis don't want us there or understand that their acts of bravery are not making their families safer at home? How demoralizing must it be to see their buddies die in a war that increasing numbers of soldiers don't even believe in?
More than 2,000 of our troops have been killed, and more than 15,000 injured. These numbers are important to remember, but it is also important to remember that our troops are not numbers, not statistics. They are human beings, and there are actions we can take to support them that are much more meaningful than blindly supporting our President or slapping a magnet on the back of our gas-guzzling car.
Send care packages to Iraq: books and snacks and toiletries to mitigate some of the harshness of the desert war zone. Donate to organizations, like the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, that provide help for returning soldiers struggling to put their lives together after war. Stand on street corners with candles and signs that spotlight the injustices our troops face. Support groups like Iraq Veterans Against the War, made up of courageous soldiers speaking out against the war. Urge elected officials to end this misbegotten military adventure. Support clean, green energy programs and lifestyles that move us off our dependence on other countries' oil.
As we honor the sacrifice and courage of our veterans, let us recognize that the best way to support our troops is to call for their swift exit from Iraq, to guarantee them the care they deserve when they return, and to make policy changes that will stop us from ever again rushing into a reckless war.
From the Nation
Support Our Troops
Wednesday, November 02, 2005
Staying the Course?
Vet's
Here is a powerful arguement for not "staying the course." Everything that opponents of a pullout say would happen if the U.S. left Iraq is happening already, says retired Gen. William E. Odom, the head of the National Security Agency during the Reagan administration. So why stay?
Even some of the establishment is coming around to seeing the tragedy and folly of this war.
Remember the Faith Community Planning Meeting on Peace next Tuesday, 11/8 at 7 pm in Waldron Hall at St. Mary's Episcopal Church (Lake Otis & Tudor)
What’s wrong with cutting and running?
FROM: Nieman Watchdog ASK THIS August 03, 2005
http://www.niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=ask_this.view&askthisid=129
(Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University)What’s wrong with cutting and running?
By William E. Odom diane@hudson.org
If I were a journalist, I would list all the arguments that you hear against pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq, the horrible things that people say would happen, and then ask: Aren’t they happening already? Would a pullout really make things worse? Maybe it would make things better.
Here are some of the arguments against pulling out:
1) We would leave behind a civil war.
2) We would lose credibility on the world stage.
3) It would embolden the insurgency and cripple the move toward democracy.
4) Iraq would become a haven for terrorists.
5) Iranian influence in Iraq would increase.
6) Unrest might spread in the region and/or draw in Iraq's neighbors.
7) Shiite-Sunni clashes would worsen.
8) We haven’t fully trained the Iraqi military and police forces yet.
9) Talk of deadlines would undercut the morale of our troops.
But consider this:
1) On civil war. Iraqis are already fighting Iraqis. Insurgents have killed far more Iraqis than Americans. That’s civil war. We created the civil war when we invaded; we can’t prevent a civil war by staying.
For those who really worry about destabilizing the region, the sensible policy is not to stay the course in Iraq. It is rapid withdrawal, re-establishing strong relations with our allies in Europe, showing confidence in the UN Security Council, and trying to knit together a large coalition including the major states of Europe, Japan, South Korea, China, and India to back a strategy for stabilizing the area from the eastern Mediterranean to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Until the United States withdraws from Iraq and admits its strategic error, no such coalition can be formed.
Thus those who fear leaving a mess are actually helping make things worse while preventing a new strategic approach with some promise of success.
2) On credibility. If we were Russia or some other insecure nation, we might have to worry about credibility. A hyperpower need not worry about credibility. That’s one of the great advantages of being a hyperpower: When we have made a big strategic mistake, we can reverse it. And it may even enhance our credibility. Staying there damages our credibility more than leaving.
Ask the president if he really worries about US credibility. Or, what will happen to our credibility if the course he is pursuing proves to be a major strategic disaster? Would it not be better for our long-term credibility to withdraw earlier than later in this event?
3) On the insurgency and democracy. There is no question the insurgents and other anti-American parties will take over the government once we leave. But that will happen no matter how long we stay. Any government capable of holding power in Iraq will be anti-American, because the Iraqi people are increasingly becoming anti-American.
Also, the U.S. will not leave behind a liberal, constitutional democracy in Iraq no matter how long it stays. Holding elections is easy. It is impossible to make it a constitutional democracy in a hurry.
President Bush’s statements about progress in Iraq are increasingly resembling LBJ's statements during the Vietnam War. For instance, Johnson’s comments about the 1968 election are very similar to what Bush said in February 2005 after the election of a provisional parliament.
Ask the president: Why should we expect a different outcome in Iraq than in Vietnam?
Ask the president if he intends to leave a pro-American liberal regime in place. Because that’s just impossible. Postwar Germany and Japan are not models for Iraq. Each had mature (at least a full generation old) constitutional orders by the end of the 19th century. They both endured as constitutional orders until the 1930s. Thus General Clay and General MacArthur were merely reversing a decade and a half totalitarianism -- returning to nearly a century of liberal political change in Japan and a much longer period in Germany.
Imposing a liberal constitutional order in Iraq would be to accomplish something that has never been done before. Of all the world's political cultures, an Arab-Muslim one may be the most resistant to such a change of any in the world. Even the Muslim society in Turkey (an anti-Arab society) stands out for being the only example of a constitutional order in an Islamic society, and even it backslides occasionally.
4) On terrorists. Iraq is already a training ground for terrorists. In fact, the CIA has pointed out to the administration and congress that Iraq is spawning so many terrorists that they are returning home to many other countries to further practice their skills there. The quicker a new dictator wins the political power in Iraq and imposes order, the sooner the country will stop producing well-experienced terrorists.
Why not ask: "Mr. President, since you and the vice president insisted that Saddam's Iraq supported al Qaeda -- which we now know it did not -- isn't your policy in Iraq today strengthening al Qaeda's position in that country?"
5) On Iranian influence. Iranian leaders see US policy in Iraq as being so much in Teheran's interests that they have been advising Iraqi Shiite leaders to do exactly what the Americans ask them to do. Elections will allow the Shiites to take power legally. Once in charge, they can settle scores with the Baathists and Sunnis. If US policy in Iraq begins to undercut Iran's interests, then Teheran can use its growing influence among Iraqi Shiites to stir up trouble, possibly committing Shiite militias to an insurgency against US forces there. The US invasion has vastly increased Iran's influence in Iraq, not sealed it out.
Questions for the administration: "Why do the Iranians support our presence in Iraq today? Why do they tell the Shiite leaders to avoid a sectarian clash between Sunnis and Shiites? Given all the money and weapons they provide Shiite groups, why are they not stirring up more trouble for the US? Will Iranian policy change once a Shiite majority has the reins of government? Would it not be better to pull out now rather than to continue our present course of weakening the Sunnis and Baathists, opening the way for a Shiite dictatorship?"
6) On Iraq’s neighbors. The civil war we leave behind may well draw in Syria, Turkey and Iran. But already today each of those states is deeply involved in support for or opposition to factions in the ongoing Iraqi civil war. The very act of invading Iraq almost insured that violence would involve the larger region. And so it has and will continue, with, or without, US forces in Iraq.
7) On Shiite-Sunni conflict. The US presence is not preventing Shiite-Sunni conflict; it merely delays it. Iran is preventing it today, and it will probably encourage it once the Shiites dominate the new government, an outcome US policy virtually ensures.
8) On training the Iraq military and police. The insurgents are fighting very effectively without US or European military advisors to train them. Why don't the soldiers and police in the present Iraqi regime's service do their duty as well? Because they are uncertain about committing their lives to this regime. They are being asked to take a political stand, just as the insurgents are. Political consolidation, not military-technical consolidation, is the issue.
The issue is not military training; it is institutional loyalty. We trained the Vietnamese military effectively. Its generals took power and proved to be lousy politicians and poor fighters in the final showdown. In many battles over a decade or more, South Vietnamese military units fought very well, defeating VC and NVA units. But South Vietnam's political leaders lost the war.
Even if we were able to successfully train an Iraqi military and police force, the likely result, after all that, would be another military dictatorship. Experience around the world teaches us that military dictatorships arise when the military’s institutional modernization gets ahead of political consolidation.
9) On not supporting our troops by debating an early pullout. Many US officers in Iraq, especially at company and field grade levels, know that while they are winning every tactical battle, they are losing strategically. And according to the New York Times last week, they are beginning to voice complaints about Americans at home bearing none of the pains of the war. One can only guess about the enlisted ranks, but those on a second tour – probably the majority today – are probably anxious for an early pullout. It is also noteworthy that US generals in Iraq are not bubbling over with optimistic reports they way they were during the first few years of the war in Vietnam. Their careful statements and caution probably reflect serious doubts that they do not, and should not, express publicly. The more important question is whether or not the repressive and vindictive behavior by the secretary of defense and his deputy against the senior military -- especially the Army leadership, which is the critical component in the war -- has made it impossible for field commanders to make the political leaders see the facts.
Most surprising to me is that no American political leader today has tried to unmask the absurdity of the administration's case that to question the strategic wisdom of the war is unpatriotic and a failure to support our troops. Most officers and probably most troops don't see it that way. They are angry at the deficiencies in materiel support they get from the Department of Defense, and especially about the irresponsibly long deployments they must now endure because Mr. Rumsfeld and his staff have refused to enlarge the ground forces to provide shorter tours. In the meantime, they know that the defense budget shovels money out the door to maritime forces, SDI, etc., while refusing to increase dramatically the size of the Army.
As I wrote several years ago, "the Pentagon's post-Cold War force structure is so maritime heavy and land force weak that it is firmly in charge of the porpoises and whales while leaving the land to tyrants." The Army, some of the Air Force, the National Guard, and the reserves are now the victims of this gross mismatch between military missions and force structure. Neither the Bush nor the Clinton administration has properly "supported the troops." The media could ask the president why he fails to support our troops by not firing his secretary of defense.
■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■
So why is almost nobody advocating a pullout? I can only speculate. We face a strange situation today where few if any voices among Democrats in Congress will mention early withdrawal from Iraq, and even the one or two who do will not make a comprehensive case for withdrawal now.Why are the Democrats failing the public on this issue today? The biggest reason is because they weren’t willing to raise that issue during the campaign. Howard Dean alone took a clear and consistent stand on Iraq, and the rest of the Democratic party trashed him for it. Most of those in Congress voted for the war and let that vote shackle them later on. Now they are scared to death that the White House will smear them with lack of patriotism if they suggest pulling out.
Journalists can ask all the questions they like but none will prompt a more serious debate as long as no political leaders create the context and force the issues into the open.
I don't believe anyone will be able to sustain a strong case in the short run without going back to the fundamental misjudgment of invading Iraq in the first place. Once the enormity of that error is grasped, the case for pulling out becomes easy to see.
Look at John Kerry's utterly absurd position during the presidential campaign. He said “It’s the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time," but then went on to explain how he expected to win it anyway. Even the voter with no interest in foreign affairs was able to recognize it as an absurdity. If it was the wrong war at the wrong place and time, then it was never in our interest to fight. If that is true, what has changed to make it in our interest? Nothing, absolutely nothing.
The US invasion of Iraq only serves the interest of:
1) Osama bin Laden (it made Iraq safe for al Qaeda, positioned US military personnel in places where al Qaeda operatives can kill them occasionally, helps radicalize youth throughout the Arab and Muslim world, alienates America's most important and strongest allies – the Europeans – and squanders US military resources that otherwise might be finishing off al Qaeda in Pakistan.);
2) The Iranians (who were invaded by Saddam and who suffered massive casualties in an eight year war with Iraq.);
3) And the extremists in both Palestinian and Israeli political circles (who don't really want a peace settlement without the utter destruction of the other side, and probably believe that bogging the United States down in a war in Iraq that will surely become a war between the United States and most of the rest of Arab world gives them the time and cover to wipe out the other side.)
The wisest course for journalists might be to begin sustained investigations of why leading Democrats have failed so miserably to challenge the US occupation of Iraq. The first step, of course, is to establish as conventional wisdom the fact that the war was never in the US interest and has not become so. It is such an obvious case to make that I find it difficult to believe many pundits and political leaders have not already made it repeatedly.
Lieutenant General William E. Odom, U.S. Army (Ret.), is a Senior Fellow with Hudson Institute and a professor at Yale University. He was Director of the National Security Agency from 1985 to 1988. From 1981 to 1985, he served as Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, the Army's senior intelligence officer. From 1977 to 1981, he was Military Assistant to the President's Assistant for National Security Affairs, Zbigniew Brzezinski.
E-mail: diane@hudson.org
Here is a powerful arguement for not "staying the course." Everything that opponents of a pullout say would happen if the U.S. left Iraq is happening already, says retired Gen. William E. Odom, the head of the National Security Agency during the Reagan administration. So why stay?
Even some of the establishment is coming around to seeing the tragedy and folly of this war.
Remember the Faith Community Planning Meeting on Peace next Tuesday, 11/8 at 7 pm in Waldron Hall at St. Mary's Episcopal Church (Lake Otis & Tudor)
What’s wrong with cutting and running?
FROM: Nieman Watchdog ASK THIS August 03, 2005
http://www.niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=ask_this.view&askthisid=129
(Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University)What’s wrong with cutting and running?
By William E. Odom diane@hudson.org
If I were a journalist, I would list all the arguments that you hear against pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq, the horrible things that people say would happen, and then ask: Aren’t they happening already? Would a pullout really make things worse? Maybe it would make things better.
Here are some of the arguments against pulling out:
1) We would leave behind a civil war.
2) We would lose credibility on the world stage.
3) It would embolden the insurgency and cripple the move toward democracy.
4) Iraq would become a haven for terrorists.
5) Iranian influence in Iraq would increase.
6) Unrest might spread in the region and/or draw in Iraq's neighbors.
7) Shiite-Sunni clashes would worsen.
8) We haven’t fully trained the Iraqi military and police forces yet.
9) Talk of deadlines would undercut the morale of our troops.
But consider this:
1) On civil war. Iraqis are already fighting Iraqis. Insurgents have killed far more Iraqis than Americans. That’s civil war. We created the civil war when we invaded; we can’t prevent a civil war by staying.
For those who really worry about destabilizing the region, the sensible policy is not to stay the course in Iraq. It is rapid withdrawal, re-establishing strong relations with our allies in Europe, showing confidence in the UN Security Council, and trying to knit together a large coalition including the major states of Europe, Japan, South Korea, China, and India to back a strategy for stabilizing the area from the eastern Mediterranean to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Until the United States withdraws from Iraq and admits its strategic error, no such coalition can be formed.
Thus those who fear leaving a mess are actually helping make things worse while preventing a new strategic approach with some promise of success.
2) On credibility. If we were Russia or some other insecure nation, we might have to worry about credibility. A hyperpower need not worry about credibility. That’s one of the great advantages of being a hyperpower: When we have made a big strategic mistake, we can reverse it. And it may even enhance our credibility. Staying there damages our credibility more than leaving.
Ask the president if he really worries about US credibility. Or, what will happen to our credibility if the course he is pursuing proves to be a major strategic disaster? Would it not be better for our long-term credibility to withdraw earlier than later in this event?
3) On the insurgency and democracy. There is no question the insurgents and other anti-American parties will take over the government once we leave. But that will happen no matter how long we stay. Any government capable of holding power in Iraq will be anti-American, because the Iraqi people are increasingly becoming anti-American.
Also, the U.S. will not leave behind a liberal, constitutional democracy in Iraq no matter how long it stays. Holding elections is easy. It is impossible to make it a constitutional democracy in a hurry.
President Bush’s statements about progress in Iraq are increasingly resembling LBJ's statements during the Vietnam War. For instance, Johnson’s comments about the 1968 election are very similar to what Bush said in February 2005 after the election of a provisional parliament.
Ask the president: Why should we expect a different outcome in Iraq than in Vietnam?
Ask the president if he intends to leave a pro-American liberal regime in place. Because that’s just impossible. Postwar Germany and Japan are not models for Iraq. Each had mature (at least a full generation old) constitutional orders by the end of the 19th century. They both endured as constitutional orders until the 1930s. Thus General Clay and General MacArthur were merely reversing a decade and a half totalitarianism -- returning to nearly a century of liberal political change in Japan and a much longer period in Germany.
Imposing a liberal constitutional order in Iraq would be to accomplish something that has never been done before. Of all the world's political cultures, an Arab-Muslim one may be the most resistant to such a change of any in the world. Even the Muslim society in Turkey (an anti-Arab society) stands out for being the only example of a constitutional order in an Islamic society, and even it backslides occasionally.
4) On terrorists. Iraq is already a training ground for terrorists. In fact, the CIA has pointed out to the administration and congress that Iraq is spawning so many terrorists that they are returning home to many other countries to further practice their skills there. The quicker a new dictator wins the political power in Iraq and imposes order, the sooner the country will stop producing well-experienced terrorists.
Why not ask: "Mr. President, since you and the vice president insisted that Saddam's Iraq supported al Qaeda -- which we now know it did not -- isn't your policy in Iraq today strengthening al Qaeda's position in that country?"
5) On Iranian influence. Iranian leaders see US policy in Iraq as being so much in Teheran's interests that they have been advising Iraqi Shiite leaders to do exactly what the Americans ask them to do. Elections will allow the Shiites to take power legally. Once in charge, they can settle scores with the Baathists and Sunnis. If US policy in Iraq begins to undercut Iran's interests, then Teheran can use its growing influence among Iraqi Shiites to stir up trouble, possibly committing Shiite militias to an insurgency against US forces there. The US invasion has vastly increased Iran's influence in Iraq, not sealed it out.
Questions for the administration: "Why do the Iranians support our presence in Iraq today? Why do they tell the Shiite leaders to avoid a sectarian clash between Sunnis and Shiites? Given all the money and weapons they provide Shiite groups, why are they not stirring up more trouble for the US? Will Iranian policy change once a Shiite majority has the reins of government? Would it not be better to pull out now rather than to continue our present course of weakening the Sunnis and Baathists, opening the way for a Shiite dictatorship?"
6) On Iraq’s neighbors. The civil war we leave behind may well draw in Syria, Turkey and Iran. But already today each of those states is deeply involved in support for or opposition to factions in the ongoing Iraqi civil war. The very act of invading Iraq almost insured that violence would involve the larger region. And so it has and will continue, with, or without, US forces in Iraq.
7) On Shiite-Sunni conflict. The US presence is not preventing Shiite-Sunni conflict; it merely delays it. Iran is preventing it today, and it will probably encourage it once the Shiites dominate the new government, an outcome US policy virtually ensures.
8) On training the Iraq military and police. The insurgents are fighting very effectively without US or European military advisors to train them. Why don't the soldiers and police in the present Iraqi regime's service do their duty as well? Because they are uncertain about committing their lives to this regime. They are being asked to take a political stand, just as the insurgents are. Political consolidation, not military-technical consolidation, is the issue.
The issue is not military training; it is institutional loyalty. We trained the Vietnamese military effectively. Its generals took power and proved to be lousy politicians and poor fighters in the final showdown. In many battles over a decade or more, South Vietnamese military units fought very well, defeating VC and NVA units. But South Vietnam's political leaders lost the war.
Even if we were able to successfully train an Iraqi military and police force, the likely result, after all that, would be another military dictatorship. Experience around the world teaches us that military dictatorships arise when the military’s institutional modernization gets ahead of political consolidation.
9) On not supporting our troops by debating an early pullout. Many US officers in Iraq, especially at company and field grade levels, know that while they are winning every tactical battle, they are losing strategically. And according to the New York Times last week, they are beginning to voice complaints about Americans at home bearing none of the pains of the war. One can only guess about the enlisted ranks, but those on a second tour – probably the majority today – are probably anxious for an early pullout. It is also noteworthy that US generals in Iraq are not bubbling over with optimistic reports they way they were during the first few years of the war in Vietnam. Their careful statements and caution probably reflect serious doubts that they do not, and should not, express publicly. The more important question is whether or not the repressive and vindictive behavior by the secretary of defense and his deputy against the senior military -- especially the Army leadership, which is the critical component in the war -- has made it impossible for field commanders to make the political leaders see the facts.
Most surprising to me is that no American political leader today has tried to unmask the absurdity of the administration's case that to question the strategic wisdom of the war is unpatriotic and a failure to support our troops. Most officers and probably most troops don't see it that way. They are angry at the deficiencies in materiel support they get from the Department of Defense, and especially about the irresponsibly long deployments they must now endure because Mr. Rumsfeld and his staff have refused to enlarge the ground forces to provide shorter tours. In the meantime, they know that the defense budget shovels money out the door to maritime forces, SDI, etc., while refusing to increase dramatically the size of the Army.
As I wrote several years ago, "the Pentagon's post-Cold War force structure is so maritime heavy and land force weak that it is firmly in charge of the porpoises and whales while leaving the land to tyrants." The Army, some of the Air Force, the National Guard, and the reserves are now the victims of this gross mismatch between military missions and force structure. Neither the Bush nor the Clinton administration has properly "supported the troops." The media could ask the president why he fails to support our troops by not firing his secretary of defense.
■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■
So why is almost nobody advocating a pullout? I can only speculate. We face a strange situation today where few if any voices among Democrats in Congress will mention early withdrawal from Iraq, and even the one or two who do will not make a comprehensive case for withdrawal now.Why are the Democrats failing the public on this issue today? The biggest reason is because they weren’t willing to raise that issue during the campaign. Howard Dean alone took a clear and consistent stand on Iraq, and the rest of the Democratic party trashed him for it. Most of those in Congress voted for the war and let that vote shackle them later on. Now they are scared to death that the White House will smear them with lack of patriotism if they suggest pulling out.
Journalists can ask all the questions they like but none will prompt a more serious debate as long as no political leaders create the context and force the issues into the open.
I don't believe anyone will be able to sustain a strong case in the short run without going back to the fundamental misjudgment of invading Iraq in the first place. Once the enormity of that error is grasped, the case for pulling out becomes easy to see.
Look at John Kerry's utterly absurd position during the presidential campaign. He said “It’s the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time," but then went on to explain how he expected to win it anyway. Even the voter with no interest in foreign affairs was able to recognize it as an absurdity. If it was the wrong war at the wrong place and time, then it was never in our interest to fight. If that is true, what has changed to make it in our interest? Nothing, absolutely nothing.
The US invasion of Iraq only serves the interest of:
1) Osama bin Laden (it made Iraq safe for al Qaeda, positioned US military personnel in places where al Qaeda operatives can kill them occasionally, helps radicalize youth throughout the Arab and Muslim world, alienates America's most important and strongest allies – the Europeans – and squanders US military resources that otherwise might be finishing off al Qaeda in Pakistan.);
2) The Iranians (who were invaded by Saddam and who suffered massive casualties in an eight year war with Iraq.);
3) And the extremists in both Palestinian and Israeli political circles (who don't really want a peace settlement without the utter destruction of the other side, and probably believe that bogging the United States down in a war in Iraq that will surely become a war between the United States and most of the rest of Arab world gives them the time and cover to wipe out the other side.)
The wisest course for journalists might be to begin sustained investigations of why leading Democrats have failed so miserably to challenge the US occupation of Iraq. The first step, of course, is to establish as conventional wisdom the fact that the war was never in the US interest and has not become so. It is such an obvious case to make that I find it difficult to believe many pundits and political leaders have not already made it repeatedly.
Lieutenant General William E. Odom, U.S. Army (Ret.), is a Senior Fellow with Hudson Institute and a professor at Yale University. He was Director of the National Security Agency from 1985 to 1988. From 1981 to 1985, he served as Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, the Army's senior intelligence officer. From 1977 to 1981, he was Military Assistant to the President's Assistant for National Security Affairs, Zbigniew Brzezinski.
E-mail: diane@hudson.org
Thursday, October 27, 2005
Welecome Peace Vets
I would like to have us use this blog to keep in touch with each other and to let each other know about what is going on with the Peace Movement in Southcentral Alaska. Let me know what you think.
I can put a link on the home page of the website for Alaskans for Peace & Justice to this blog to get it wider visibility.
Jon Lockert, 250-4986
I can put a link on the home page of the website for Alaskans for Peace & Justice to this blog to get it wider visibility.
Jon Lockert, 250-4986
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
