Tweet
[this is a re-post from 9-14-09]
The only war the United States seems to be winning is the one on EMPATHY. Time to reverse that one, and end the two in the Middle East. Obama, eager to win some influence on health care reform with the Republican neocons, has begun to get approval from them for the escalation of the war in Afghanistan and the non-withdrawal withdrawal in Iraq.
How much longer will we allow the continuation of this trauma and destruction to the American citizenry as well as citizens of the Middle East? How many more fresh hells until we earnestly and massively protest? Our government not only sadistically and lawlessly tortured Middle Eastern detainees, it continues to betray and exploit its own patriotic youth, putting them in harm’s way to be traumatized mentally and physically, wounded and/or killed. They are trapped in hell. They are crying out for help or giving up to suicide, addiction, emotional illness.
And we as a country have destroyed the lives literally and figuratively of hundreds of thousands of Middle Eastern citizens in their own homelands.
Time to respond. Time to stop this insanity. Enough. Please consider the following (this list of 20 random statistics and/or assertions was assembled from disclosures of Gareth Porter, Dahr Jamail and Haroon Siddiqui. Links will follow.):
1) The U.S. has four massive military bases in Iraq and an embassy the size of Vatican City. (withdrawal is a myth)
2) Brookings Institute reports that 73% of Iraqis oppose the presence of coalition forces and 63% of U.S. citizens oppose the continuation of the occupation of Iraq. (apparently the will of the majority of citizens in both countries does not matter to their governments)
3) 437 Iraqi were killed in June, the highest death toll in 11 months.
4) The Pentagon announced 131,000 troops will be maintained in Iraq through at least 2010. (withdrawal is a myth)
5) Army Desertion was nearly 4,700 in 2007. (the highest rate in 27 years)
6) The Stop-Loss program (a program used to keep soldiers enlisted beyond the terms of their contracts) has affected over 185,000 soldiers since Sept. 11, 2001.
7) Between 2003 and 2007 there was an 80% increase in overall desertion rates in the army.
8) 19,000 U.S. soldiers have been added to the occupation of Afghanistan.
9) Military contractors are paid 10X more than military personnel. They do not have to abide by UCMJ or International Law.
10) 8,000 soldiers in Iraq have rap sheets. Standards have profoundly dropped. (Skinheads have been recruited. People with serious medical issues.)
11) Alcohol and drug abuse have spiked among the military, along with mental problems. The highest rate of suicide has been reached within the Army since records started being kept 3 decades ago. Suicides are up 31% in the first 6 months of 2009 against that same period in 2008.
12) 38% of all army personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan have served multiple tours of duty.
13) By October 2007, the army reported that approximately 12% of all combat troops in Iraq were coping by using antidepressants and/or sleeping pills (psychotropic drugs).
14) The Rand Corporation released a study in April 2005. Nearly 20% of military service members who have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan, 300,000, report symptoms of PTSD or major depression. Most don’t seek treatment.
15) Sexism is rampant in the military. (claims Jamiel: “If a woman is considering joining the US military today, she basically is guaranteed that she’ll be raped or sexually assaulted.”)
16) For every soldier killed, it is estimated that 8 are wounded. (ratio in Vietnam was one killed to three wounded)
17) The Kabul regime in Afghanistan, propped up by the U.S., has had only one economic success. The restoration of the opium trade. Afghanistan is the world’s leading producer of opium and heroin.
18) The Afghan presidential election had serious irregularities and rather than stabilizing Afghanistan it wounded the credibility of Hamid Karzai.
19) The two wars have cost the U.S. 5,000 American lives and $1 trillion.
20) It is estimated that perhaps 1 million Iraqi civilians have been killed, and 4 million displaced. There are at present no credible estimates of Afghans dead, injured and displaced.
Enough. To borrow from Mr. Jamail’s new book title, we must rally our “WILL TO RESIST!”
http://firedoglake.com/2009/09/12/fdl-book-salon-welcomes-dahr-jamail-the-will-to-resist-soldiers-who-refuse-to-fight-in-iraq-and-afghanistan/
http://dahrjamailiraq.com/iraq-as-actor-and-stakeholder#more-1558
http://dahrjamailiraq.com/afghanistan-war-resister-to-put-the-war-on-trial#more-1550
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23458.htm
56 Comments
I recall this list from last time so I won’t repeat my criticisms…..
All new criticism!!
You are making out the chief perpertrators of war to be the innocent victims of their own actions. You are describing people who take the empire’s shilling to go kill innocent people. In class war terms they are humanities betrayers. They work for the man, murdering and keeping down the rest of us.
Thugs.
Bullies.
Cold blooded killers for Haliburton and Goldman Sachs.
It is inappropriate to express compassion for them here and doing so only helps to boost war further. That is of course precisely why the state propaganda and state media are always so careful to boost these “patriots”, as you accurately call them. Workers for the state, but enemies of humanity.
They are not trapped in hell. They make hell, one bullet at a time.
You want to end war? Then stop treating the war-brigners as if they were heroes or innocent “children”.
Points taken, David.
I see victims on both sides here.
I have been reading a lot lately about the “data mining” now employed to recruit teenagers to sign up along with the slick propaganda to serve one’s country and be a hero. I see the economic incentives for people to enlist. I see a trust in their leadership that they are protecting the population, at least when they enter service. I see them not yet cynical to the corporate agenda the militiary industrial complex is in bed with. I see them trying to please Right wing parents who have brainwsshed them into the “holiness” of sacrifice by killing the enemy.
I see them similar to the Viet Nam Vets who were in a double bind, a mass number of the population lacked empathy for them on their return, with their PTSD and addictions and with some eventual suicides because they had volunteered or been drafted to serve their country.
I see human beings who either become callous to killing the enemy or who will be forever haunted by being the perpetrators of death and destruction to innocnets.
I see human beings who have a loyalty to their brothers and sisters fighting and risking life and death at their sides.
I see human beings who have contracted for a certain period betrayed and made to go back again and even again to face the horror and their own possible and probable death.
I see people who signed up after 9/11, who were proactive and wanted to help our country from such a horrifying ambush in NYC.
I see kids entering boot camp and trained to desensitize and dehumanize an enemy and group think in the darkest side of their supposed “masculinity”
I see kids fighting an enemy they never see, who boobytrap deserted or crowded areas and one fateful footfall means death or amputation and a life as a disabled person, a future ambushed or ended
I see kids who have been abandoned by a complacent citizenry, who have little empathy outside their own little world, and especially with the economy stress, stress brings out narcissism in people, sadly
I see brave men and women saying NO … and deserting, resigning, making huge problems for themselves, even imprisonment and econmic crises, with their stances about the injustice of their situations
I see families who must mourn those that die forever saddened and embittered, I see familes who receive back the survivors rocked and stressed by the wounds, physical and psychological, and the pain and rage of these victims, yes victims, too, unleashed on new victims who are spouses and children and maybe even innocents who die from meltdowns into violence which has begun to happen
Thanks for the exchange.
Well let me be more blunt, if that’s even possible.
All this touchy-feely crap about how the poor wee little lambs that go off to Iraq to butcher people deserve our sympathy is encouraging war, so cut it out. If you want to stop war stop lauding those who create it. Stop excusing them. Stop pretending they are minors when they are adults. Stop putting the blame for their actions on others.
If you think war is immoral then tell the soldiers they are acting immorally. Don’t pussyfoot around and make them feel validated.
You want to feel empathy for killers? Go ahead. But please don’t broadcast it in public and make out that its a good thing. Especially when you refuse to put it in the context of a heavy moral condemnation of what they do. Otherwise you’re simply parroting imperial propaganda.
YOU are the one saying these killers are children that don’t know right from wrong. Well now WHO’S FAULT IS THAT? How will they know it’s wrong to go to war if people like you won’t tell them?
ps.
See you in another six weeks when you re-post :)
David,
For your information I asked Libby to repost this diary because I had missed it before. Most of us here respect the opinions of others; Libby has certainly shown you that courtesy but you respond with personal attacks and sarcasm. You have cheapened yourself and your argument.
You don’t know me at all :)
Oh sigh.
Okay, David. Are you auditioning for poster boy…man for the War on Empathy I often speak of? Forgive the snark but you got your shots in.
Okay, are you proposing there should not be a U.S. army at all? Or a National Guard? Would you encourage everyone to boycott such a vocation? US should go passive globally?
I don’t think exploring motivations with human beings is inappropriately placed compassion. Victims are so often victimizers, sadly.
And I do think slack must be given for children and young adults, especially in a society that is crazymaking, romanticizes sex and violence. Faux-masculinity. And not only the culture, but the xenophobia and racism and misplaced religiosity and cronyism of manipulative authorities like their parents. Peer pressure too among young adults to join up.
And if any of us were in the actual boots on the ground over there, how would we cope? How vulnerable would we be to group think and trauma and rage and demonization at the threat of death or just having seen our buddies die horrifyingly before us.
I find it hard to fathom how you can read the statistics about desertions and suicides and PTSD and drug and alcohol abuse and not have empathy for these human beings. Even with the torture horror, there was a young woman, Allysa Peterson who was exposed to it and asked to participate and in a few days allegedly committed suicide. if one does not play the game, does one get caged and tortured? And the Abu Ghraib guards. Yes, they were responsible. But to have old chickenhawk Rumsfeld accuse rotten apples of going rogue and ducking accountability when the upper echelon had directed that kind of inhumane treatment by the guards. Like during the holocaust when certain Jewish prisoners wielded cruel power over others for their own choice of survival. heavy moral questions, and how many of us know how we would act, what our tipping point would be in such a heart of darkness.
We are all complicit in this travesty of war. Who helps pay for the bullets the troops have? Have you risked with civil disobedience not paying taxes? Do you protest? Work for anti-war candidates? How often do you call the Prez and Congress to protest the Wars? I ask that of myself, too, and the answers make me feel my own responsibility.
I believe in redemption. I believe that denial and shock is a protection for trauma and can be recovered from. What courgage and clout the anti-war vets have. Do you have issues with them?
There was a line in the old All the President’s Men movie about how on the phone George Mitchell tells Carl Bernstein character “to tell Katie Graham she’s gonna get her tit caught in a big wringer.” Very graphic and startling and ugly.
I feel that our military mad machine is the same kind of big wringer. And when caught in that wringer, there is entrapment, psychologically and physically.
We need sane and sober people in our military. And there is that mission creep insanity that gets into the gamesmanship and ego of the big guys. Also, the media sets us up with military pundits who are being fed economically from weapons corporations. And reports on war or doesn’t. The deal now with no photos being permitted. And Sec. Gates going nuts that some poor family had to see a photo of their son dying. He was incensed. Meanwhile, he is so responsible for escalation of wars since Reagan. He was responsible for lying about the threat of Russia and cronied up to the military industrial complex and disinformed to help the Pentagon defense budget.
And as for re-posting, if I thought it would help end these wars which I think, david, we both want, I would re-post every day.
I agree, David, soldiers and volunteers should be challenged as to why they are willing to go kill fellow human beings.
But showing compassion for those who have learned the hard horrifying way the true nature of war, and even to those who stay blind and in denial because they can’t take responsibility or call on their own conscience, is not misplaced.
Empathy. We need empathy in this country. How much do the news shows ever mention the human dimension of war? Newshour gives us some minutes of silence and photos at the end of its show. Have you no feeling watching those photos on the screen?
Thanks for this exchange. i think it is important.
No you still don’t get it. I am saying that what you are doing here is immoral because you are endorsing and boosting war. By boosting the soldiers you are boosting what they do — which is kill people in wars. Now that isn’t exactly a hard concept to understand I hope? But you’ve been brainwashed to be a cheerleader for war all your life so it seems you just cannot stop it.
STOP IT!!
Please quit endorsing and boosting people whose sole job is to start and fight wars of aggression. When you speak well of soldiers, qua soldiers, you boost war itself — the very thing they do by definition.
Now you offer various excuses for your behaviour which are all bullshit, but I’ll credit you with sincerity here and try to answer all of them, though its a long post.
I wonder if you really care so much about empathy or are you just shocked that I attack the “heroes” you have been programed to praise? For example would your empathy equally extend to let’s say the 9-11 hijackers?
At any rate I didn’t say I was against empathy for even the most vile killers (and that is what the US soldiers are of course). What I said was that it was inappropriate to express that sentiment in the context of trying to write a piece against war. It’s inappropriate (this should be obvious) because you contradict yourself. You send at best a very mixed message, at worst you endorse war.
There certainly are times when expressing compassion for US soldiers is appropriate. I have made several points elsewhere about conditions for men inside US prisons. That is where US soldiers should be of course since they are vile killers, but I don’t think it’s right that they should be daily sodomised because that’s cruel and unusual punishment and a human rights violation.
Do you see? Compassion doesn’t mean you pretend that things are not what they are. Compassion doesn’t mean you call soldiers heroes (or “children”) when they’re killers. In fact if you have real compassion and you really think these soldiers just don’t realise killing is wrong (a proposition I reject as idiocy btw) that is all the more reason you need to be calling them out.
Under the present circumstances where we all know that the US armed forces are simply butchers for Haliburton? Yes. Are you NOT saying that? I don’t object to eg. Sweden’s army because Sweden doesn’t go around the world murdering people in the seven digits.
Oh really? You don’t think it depends on the context then? So it would be fine to, for example, start discussing how rapists aren’t really to blame, on a board for recovering rape victims?
How do you think the Iraqi victims would react to your defence of their persecutors? Is it really appropriate to defend them when you’re supposed to be talking about the evils of war? Maybe you could get away with it, if, as I said, you were careful to do so only within a context of expressly saying how evil the soldiers’ actions were. But you never did that! Still haven’t in fact.
It’s as if you were talking about the top 20 things bad about rape and “someone gets raped” was item number 20, with most of the other 19 being sympathy for the rapist. Don’t you think most people would consider your words a little suspect?
Are you willing, even now, to condemn the soldiers?
Various excuses for murder are the offered in the remainder of your comment. They are all bullshit. “I was bored so I killed someone”. “I was only 18 so I didn’t know murder was bad”. “I wanted some cash so I thought, why not go kill people?”
I find it insulting to the victims that you so casually defend this vile behaviour. It’s as if you were talking about an eight year old who shop-lifted a bar of candy in a weak moment. Not professional toughened adults taking money to mercilessly butcher over a million people over the course of many years. You even defended torturers!
It’s one thing to have compassion for the criminal but quite another to make excuses for the crime. You dismiss and diminish the crime in the eyes of your viewers by seeking to characaterise it as if it were some little incident, some youthful indiscretion, some momentary lapse of good judgement under peer pressure.
(1) It’s the worst crime humanity has.
(2) They actively volunteered to do it.
(3) They kept doing it for years
(4) They did it with extreme malice and with full knowledge.
That’s bullshit too. I actually was arguing that in another thread just today, but it was an honest debate. But to actually use that argument as a way to defend war (ie soldiers) is sick. And by that “logic” of “oh everyone’s guilty” you are claiming the Iraqis are guilty of contributing to their own slaughter. Way to go blaming the victim there.
What you’re doing is dismissing and diminishing the vile crime of war by comparing it to middle class guilt/angst about maybe not doing enough. That’s SICK. Do you not see that?
I just don’t get how you live with that view of war. That war is like some tiny blip. Like feeling guilty for not doing some extra little thing like emailing your congressman. I dropped some litter on the highway. I helped murder over a million people. Bot bad things just the same, eh?
Yes I do. Absolutely. They should stay away from peace rallies because they represent war and death. At the very least they should never take their uniforms with them unless its to burn them, and they should never be placed at the front of a march or in any position of prominence. To do otherwise is to endorse war. It says “Look we have some killers with us so their opinion is worth much more than the rest of us.” and it says if they come in uniform, “Look we are proud of out killers and what they represent.”
You don’t believe in redemption by the way. Redemption requires confession and putting away the old things. I believe in redemption. What you appear to believe in is ignoring or winking at evil.
That’s NOT what I said. I said you should CONDEMN them for their EVIL behaviour. Do you have some problem with that? Are you perhaps not sure that helping to kill a million Iraqis is a great crime?
—————————————————————–
Disclaimer: I don’t have any anger towards you or anyone else here. People say it sounds like I do. That’s not the case. I didn’t have any problem with you re-posting the diary. If I didn’t appreciate it I wouldn’t spend all this time responding to it, surely?
David, the suicides, the desertions, the addictions are the psychological price of the denial and the wrong-headed use of our soldiers by the patriarchal war-mongering military and political elite. That is where my rage is directed. At the engineers and “deciders” of these terrible wars, who are in their own web of pressures, the corporate sociopathological matrix exploiting the miliary for profit-making.
Human beings when in a corrupt system become corrupted. Stanley Milgram’s experience with human beings dealing with anonymous authority figures and how they behaved from social intimidation to give electric shocks to fellow human beings out of authoritarian intimidation. Was it 4 out of 10 people were morally mature enough to say no, not sure of that statistic, but when I heard that only 1 out of 4 Americans were against torture of any kind I thought of this statistic, too. So there is a level of moral obtuseness or stunting in the majority of people. Then add the powers of group think and heavy handed authority which can bring about horrifying results. Scott Peck in his awesome book People of the Lie does an exploration of the MyLai massacre that is worth a read in terms of the desensitization of soldiers.
And I see the soldiers coming to terms with the war crimes they have been involved with and the tragic toll on them and their struggles to deal with that. I don’t think it contradicts with my compassion for their victims.
I also feel for those soldiers who were killed during the war crimes. And tragically wounded. And I feel for their victims. I am not crazy or immoral to have compassion for all involved imho.
Yes, maybe I have a blind spot to enable my emotions to go there, whereby significant men in my life have been in the military and my love for them has made me strive to appreciate and understand their experiences with war and the hells they lived through from their side of it. I have also known those who were conscientious objectors and did not go. And I am proud of my own anti-war activities during Viet Nam and now.
And I am old enough and as a female in this society appreciate being on the lower rungs of work and social ladders whereby one is at the mercy of narcissistic superiors where choices and decisions are made that I have had to go along with and felt at the mercy of a top totem that is deaf to empathy at times and had to watch on or participate with frustration.
I think we both made some valid points, but I do not consider my position immoral and I think you are out of line labeling me that. I appreciate your strong emotions about this issue, but my feelings are my feelings and my thinking is my thinking and I stand by it.
I am glad I can find compassion for soldiers and for foreign victims of the US military at the same time. Emotional multi-tasking perhaps, not limited and dangerous, but expansive and inclusive. And a humanist paradigm shift away from either or thinking to a wider scope. I was assuming that those reading my post would have a similar capacity in relating. You may see it as contradictory thinking which is immoral, I see it as emotional maturity in seeing many sides of the tragedy, in human costs.
Your stance certainly has stretched my thinking and provoked all the readers into exploring the focus more deeply which is a good thing. I appreciate that.
I feel like an alien from a foreign planet talking to you. On my planet killing people is wrong and collectively killing a million people is an unimaginably huge crime.
On yours? It’s not a crime at all.
I asked if you would condemn the soldiers. You have refused. From what I can see you actually defend these killers. This is no doubt part of your brainwashed pro-war upbringing, but that’s no excuse. Your position is immoral and your advocacy of it is immoral. You encourage war and cause (proportionate to your station) harm. You claim to have compassion for the (real) victims too. I can see little sign of it. You’re like that expression “collateral damage”. You regret their deaths but, whaddya gonna do? What soldiers do is no crime. No foul. It’s as if you see war and a million deaths as some sort of cosmic accident. Nobody to blame! Ooopsies!
You pretend to blame the bosses but your logic establishes their innocence as well as the soldiers’. It’s just human nature you say. That’s what people do. It’s psychology. Well don’t the bosses have psychologies too? Should we not have empathy with them too? Are they not also part of the system? Do they not also have pressures upon them? Should we not walk a mile in their shoes too?
You mention the gender angle.
I find it ironic and notable that feminists constantly charcaterise men as violent thugs in every aspect of their life except the one place where its actually true — military service to empire. But then that is your own violent (by proxy) service to empire is it not? Encouraging the men folk to go out and kill. Men would not do these things if you women did not love them for it. In the US something like 1 in 3 men has been to war. And then feminists blame men for violent attitudes. But never for fighting in a war itself of course.
War will stop when you are brave enough to say it is wrong.
I repeat my challenge: will you condemn the soldiers for what they do?
masculine/patriarchal paradigm is power and control/competition. You are trying to WIN this discussion, David. feminine/humanist paradigm shift would be to cooperation and partnership … exploration. Don’t kill me as messenger. Don’t label compassion as denial and war-mongering. If I am an enemy to your cause, so be it. You have made your declarations.
You have thrown enough wet blankets on this diary that is anti-war. To force words into my mouth is insulting and controlling.
I reject your sexist attempt to characterise the masculine (and me) as negative.
I am not forcing words into your mouth.
In my view you come from a perspective that says killing people is basically not too bad. That is how you dismiss the crimes of the soldiers. I am trying to explain my own perspective to you. I understand that you think you don’t support war. I am trying to explain to you how you are.
Have you understood anything I’ve said?
If you want to continue I suggest you try to read back to me your understand of what my view is, just as I have done for you (which you just called “putting words in my mouth”).
Our main difference is that you don’t want to face up to the criminality of soldiers acts. I guess you’d defend them with the Nuremberg defence, “just following orders”. The reality is that Obama never shot anyone. He just opened his mouth and words came out. Others made the decision to carry out the killings. If Obama was in a lunatic asylum would people still obey him? Each person is responsible for their own actions, not the actions of others. Each person is responsible for their own actions — they cannot blame others.
Why do propagandists for war ALWAYS boost the image of “our troops”? Because they know that painting soldiers as good and heroic always means supporting the war itself. Though you don’t call them heroes, you still deny their crimes.
In closing: I don’t think badly of you. I think well of you.
Libby,
I don’t know who you are, male or female, young or old. I like your posts.
I don’t need 20 reasons.
War is evil.
The U.S. is an evil country.
Female, middle aged, thanks, Art!!!
Your comments are always compelling and succinct! :)
Wow, you are great.
@5 — thanks ART! I meant to add, I love your gift in writing haiku. looking forward to reading more.
An attempt must be made to stop AIPAC’s latest maneuver. Time and time again AIPAC says ‘take action’ and every time they do, your senators get on their knees. I don’t want to send people to the AIPAC site, so I’ll give another site for the explanation of what they are doing. This is what AIPAC says:
********
“Reject the Goldstone Report
The Goldstone report minimized Hamas rocket attacks.
Senior House leaders have introduced a resolution calling on the president and the secretary of state to oppose unequivocally any endorsement or further consideration by the United Nations or other international fora of the Goldstone report on the Gaza war. The resolution (H. Res. 867), sponsored by House Foreign Affairs Committee Ranking Member Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) and Chairman Howard Berman (D-CA), calls the report “irredeemably biased” and notes that it “is being exploited by Israel’s enemies to excuse the actions of violent militant groups and their state sponsors.” The resolution also reaffirms U.S. support “for Israel’s right to defend its citizens from violent militant groups and their state sponsors.” Please urge your House member to cosponsor this resolution. “
BB, thanks for he heads’ up on this. This is so disturbing. Our incredible codpendency with Israel, we are like a colony of theirs, and also I wonder if our political elite is neverous for their own criminality in terms of wars. I see you have more links below. Will explore.
That’s a given. I’d imagine they are petrified. Israel used American planes, bombs, white phosphorous, etc. An examination of Israel’s war crimes is an examination of the US’s complicity in genocide.
From the alternate universe in which apparently Jim Jones is living.
********
“In regards to the Goldstone Report, Jones said that the US unequivocally rejects it. He said that the US expressed their clear opinion on the issue and that Israel is an active democracy with the necessary institutions to take care of any issue.”
http://www.almanar.com.lb/NewsSite/NewsDetails.aspx?id=108918&language=en
“The United Nations has approved a draft resolution proposed by the Islamic Republic of Iran on destruction of nuclear weapons under international supervision.
The resolution was ratified at the First Committee of the UN General Assembly despite the opposition of the United States and its allies.
The United State, France, United Kingdom and Israel voted against the resolution. ”
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=109824§ionid=351020104
blue, adding this to what Col. Wilkerson says in Part 3 about what his foreign friends are telling him; it looks like the shape of things to come. Those smart peoples of ancient times can see farther than the end of their noses: “Iran’s got the oil; Israel ain’t got any; America is bankrupt and can’t produce goods any more – we better stick with Iran.” Leaves US, UK, FR and Israel hanging out there alone if it comes to ‘the scramble’.
the koolaid is so thick on this in the political elite. so much manipulation going on and dangerous unquestioning codependency with Israel. there is so little backlash on this among the citizenry it is stunning and sobering, bb.
International cronyism vs. morality
I wonder how Tony Blair is feeling these days? If this inquiry is done properly, he could find himself eventually charged with war crimes. Information about Bush’s and Blair’s conspiring together to attack Iraq is going to come out in public.
*********
“Ministers, civil servants and senior military figures will be expected to give evidence to the Iraq war inquiry in public, its chairman has said.
His remarks came as the inquiry said it would hold its first public hearings next month in London, although details of witnesses have yet to be released. ”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/8331034.stm
blue, this led to a thought that maybe there should be an investigation into the plans to attack Afghanistan which were already on the table in the summer before 9/11. Planned to attack in the fall, probably October before the snows. Military were already in place. I think the Brit forces were in place, too. How was that sold to NATO? 9/11 sure came in handy, didn’t it.
“The entire bill is here below, for your education and amazement.
111TH CONGRESS
1ST SESSION H. RES. 867
Calling on the President and the Secretary of State to oppose unequivocally
any endorsement or further consideration of the ‘‘Report of the United
Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict’’ in multilateral
fora.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
OCTOBER 23, 2009
Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN (for herself, Mr. BERMAN, Mr. BURTON of Indiana, and
Mr. ACKERMAN) submitted the following resolution; which was referred
to the Committee on Foreign Affairs
RESOLUTION
Calling on the President and the Secretary of State to oppose
unequivocally any endorsement or further consideration
of the ‘‘Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission
on the Gaza Conflict’’ in multilateral fora. ”
http://gazaviews.blogspot.com/2009/10/yet-another-outrageous-congressional.html
There is an e-mail/printed letter form to oppose H. Res 867.
*********
“The Resolution considers the Report –and its findings- “to be irredeemably biased and unworthy of further consideration or legitimacy.” At the moment, the resolution has been co-sponsored by four members of Congress, and has been referred to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.
The Report is the conclusion of a three-month investigation of Israeli war crimes committed against Palestinians in Gaza. It was undertaken by the UN Fact Finding Mission, headed by Justice Richard Goldstone. The Mission called for “the prosecution of persons responsible for serious violations of international humanitarian law [which] would contribute to ending such violations, to the protection of civilians and to the restoration of peace.”
With your quick action, we can encourage opposition for H. RES. 867, and urge accountability for war crimes committed in Gaza. Let’s act NOW! ”
http://capwiz.com/adc/issues/alert/?alertid=14248521&queueid=capwiz:queue_id
thanks, BB. Will access. This is such a scarey MORAL blind spot on the part of the vast, vast majority of our political elite, especially Obama.
If that is your criteria for evil, then all countries are evil. The main difference between America and other countries is simply power.
There were scifi stories in the sixties that related to the sacrifice of our children as a necessity for stability in the zeitgeist or something. The calculation in one of them related to how sorrowful parents regretted the need to send their son off to be summarily sunk at sea. He said, okay, then, I just won’t go. And they paused, demurred, then tried to convince him it was truly necessary in the grand scheme of matters.
I tweak citizens sometimes by telling them the Civil War was a great waste of life which only retained our gangrenous appendage down south. Like the parents in the story, nobody wants to show up at Vicksburg, but everybody thinks somebody else should. Always the ones who insist on the validity of someone else dying for their cause would be much more thoughtful were they in the line of fire.
Hemingway wrote of those psychotic colonels during the great retreat as possessed of that wonderful detachment of those who deal in death and suffer none of its consequences.
Well done, Libby. I’m for you.
amen.
thanks libby!
@6 — Clovis, love your sensibility as always and points. I thought of two literary pieces as I read. Fahrenheit 451, as Bradbury brilliantly shows the emotional and rational arc of realization on the part of Sontag, that he is perpetrating evil. Also, the brilliant War Prayer by Mark Twain. When a messenger interrupts a church service in which jingoism and xenophobia prevails. I get enraged when I hear the neocons posture for caring so much for our dying troops and that is why we owe it to them to send more young and not always young troops to die. And when it bottomline is a corporate agenda, to die for oil. Blood for oil. If it were reversed, how would we feel if we had violent occupiers in this country raining bombs down on us, sent from one guy with a joy stick thousands of miles away following orders to take out our area as a strategic target, whereby some brass gamesman had decided that the collateral damage of civliians is worth it and the rage of the victims and radicalization of the civilians to join the resistance is not a consideration. Stupidity and callousness.
hey selise, always cherish your support! :)
I apply Occam’s razor whenever possible. I have the base elements covered about Iraq with (1) a dimwit cowboy who is convinced he can be Superman by vanquishing Lex Luther in Bagdhad and all without leaving the ranch, and (2) the Likud Lobby, or AIPAC and associates, including the justifiable disdained Lieberman, are always pushing the foreign policy of a foreign nation to the detriment of our own. Remember when folks in the fifties were prosecuted for doing that?
I see oil as placing in this race for causes.
Hey Lib. We shouldn’t need twenty reasons, one should be enough. That the American people are tired, of all of this
They aren’t though. A poll came out today that showed 57% of the people supported sending more troops to Afghanistan.
This is a sample of why we keep having all the problems we do, is that the people generally support all the bad things.
Just like they will tell You they like their Congress person or Senator. They will in one breath say Congress is no good, but I like MY GUY.
Well guess what. All of them are someones guy, so that’s why it’s such a mess.
All the problems this Country has from the wars to the economy is the fault of our Congress. Today tucked in the bill President Obama signed was the funding for Afghanistan. It cut Miltary spending on some things, but added the funding for the war.
To fix this Country yes Congress needs all of them replaced, but that would be easier than changing the people who support all of it,”THE VOTERS.”
I saw a clip on MSNBC today where Chuck Todd was interviewed. He gave those statistics on that poll taken by NBC/WSJ. My first thought was: “Is this a cooked poll? Propaganda?”. Did anyone here participate in that poll? I didn’t see any such poll online; course, could have just missed it.
That bill funding Afghan war also authorized bribe money to buy off Taliban fighters, like we did the Sunnis in Iraq. [In the Col Wilkerson clip at my diary now listed he states that the money presses are now printing not C-notes but $1000.00 bills. Saves paper and ink and bulk I guess - or maybe a $1000 bill is now worth about $100.]
iremember, I appreciate what you keep emphasizing, believe me, and thanks. We all have to keep hearing it. if we are not part of the solution, we are part of the problem. And I think .. I can’t recall if it was Chris Hedges or Hayes … wrote about the combo bill of Afghan funding with Hate Crimes. His title: War IS a Hate Crime!
Sometimes It’s like talking to a wall. People seem to want to complain, but aren’t willing to hear what’s wrong let alone do anything about it.
agree, iremember! :)
Sigh…I hate it when statistics are reasons. Thanks for this, libby. A good reminder and worthy repost.
Thanks, Jason. It is a pretty random and electic, and since mid-Sept. now sadly outdated list, the statistics have of course increased. And now Pakistan has its own growing statistics. I have been meaning to expand on those original notes. focus on the horror of trauma, maybe. So many fresh hells, eh?
Thank you for resposting, Libby. When we read reports on this or that single aspect of the wars we think only of that; when so many destructive aspects are listed in one report it helps to see the mountainous horror up close and criminal.
I read yesterday that of Iraq’s 28 million people there are 4.5 million orphans. Some of those are in prisons and a small percentage are in care facilities. Most are just living like animals. (I did not take good notes on that.) I’d say those who live to adulthood are prime candidates to become future terrorists.
acquarious, thanks for your encouragement to re=post. I think it is timely, considering Obama is pondering his decision. Though I think he will increase the troop levels, maybe not to what MacChrystal wants as is his MO it seems. Give a little something to keep people’s hopes going as he sells out on the Right side. Lucy time once again. I also think Obama astutely sees Petraeus as possible presidential contender down the pike. And he may be trying to out-Petraeus Petraeus. Hubris is deadly for all.
It feels like the US has gone beyond a tipping point, the normalization of “genocide”. And many still wonder, “Why do they hate us.” Now in Afghanistan we are about to try the helping the civilians approach. WTF? And what were we doing over 7 years before then? This is a new strategy and not the MO for us as a country within another country?????
When I read that the women in Afghanistan want us out, when we score lower than the Taliban in terms of toxicity even to the women, who is running things over there, and what have they been doing? With the money and the personnel.
And even the contractors are raping their own women staffers with impunity from US laws. What as Rachel Maddow asks kind of surreal ethical freakshow of a universe are we living in?
Thanks for reposting this, Libby. I missed it the first time.
From what I’ve seen on other threads, DB has only one tone. I think you could just ignore him. Why give him something else to push back against?
recommended
Karen, thanks for the support, my friend. Test to the resilient part of me as giddy-uppity woman, I guess. :)
David and Libby are both right and both wrong. David is right that even progressives join in the soldier worship that allows young men and women to feel they are doing a great service to their country and the world by killing other people, and Libby is right that we should have empathy for young people whose heads are turned by overwhelming propaganda and learn the hard way that “glory” is just a word. Both have a place in the discourse. I’m not surprised that some want one side silenced though: militarism is so deeply woven into American culture that challenging it is a bold act of dissent, and Firedoglake is not keen on dissent.
well, they gave the appearance of being keen on dissent when the Democrats were out of power.
But as the recent Netroots Nation poll showed clearly, opposition to the hideous, immoral, stupid wars fell by the wayside once their imperial faction was manning the controls in DC.
Libby posts of the real, human priorities.
The lack of action as Obama embraces and escalates Bush/Cheney reveals the (D) captured Netroots narrow, petty, partisan priorities.
Thanks, sporks. That surely wss my intention.
And my heart goes out to the efforts of Cindy Sheehan and those daily anti-war activits, for in the afterglow of the Obama victory the anti-war momentum was broken, and come to find out despite his not honoring the mandates of the citixenry to bring the wars to an end, he is escalating and people are giving him slack while the military machine churns on creating more death and destruction and destabilizing more and more the Middle East.
There is also a distinction to be made between boorish behavior and dissent. I appreciate dissent.
Well put, DrZ.
Thaks for the re-post lib. It is a great diary. Thanks also to everyone who provided the discussion. Some of the points of conflict were sharp, but there are really serious issues. For myself, I don’t think we should be either in Iraq or Afghanistan. We never should have been in iraq for reasons we all know very well. As for Afghanistan, i think we accomplished our original purpose when we overturned the Taliban who had given hospitality to al qaeda, and did much to disrupt al qaeda’s operations. At that point we should have pulled our troops home, and we still should.
thanks for the repeat did not see it the first time.
Sickening. And the war criminals who lied our nation into these quagmires walk the streets…
Obama
Holder
Leahy
Whitehouse….”no one is above the law”
We want to believe but sure does not look like the evidence supports these claims
The Republicans need more lies under oath about blowjobs to get their justice juices going. Well Acorn seems to be their next target. Blowjobs and poor people that is what they get off on investigating. Pathetic
How sad the authoritarian following who buy the amoral Repubs spin.
Thanks, Leen.
I cannot find it, so perhaps someone here can point it out. There was a This American Life episode on NPR about long-distance Pentagon spotters who had such conundrums as the following: What is the limit in collateral damage of a target? These guys sounded very rational, my son told me, and their job was to determine how many civilian deaths were acceptable in order to take out a high-ranking al Qaida commander.
These are questions handled in every war, possibly, but this program suggested it is becoming codified.
Clovis, appreciate the sensibility. I remember, too, reading about the ratio of collateral damage that was formulaic.
Though in terms of Afghanistan kills on average overall, I think the ratio has been in the duration 700 civilians to one US soldier death.
But what you are referring to I will look for it. It is one of those horrifying statistics worth jotting down to process and share, though the horror seems to be getting normalized and desensitized or ignored with the US population, its majority! The rules of engagement that are amoral rules.
God, I’ve never read as much Boomer candyassing on both sides as I’ve read here. Time for me to lay some reality on all of you.
For the past 9 years, the Boomer elites have sent our young to the Middle East. Most of these yobs are the same chickenhawks that did not serve themselves. If they did, they’d understand war. And what they’d be subjecting their children to.
Telling a bunch of kids in their teens to 20s to ‘resist!’ after they’ve been thru basic is a lost cause. Didn’t work for you dumb hippies then and won’t work now.
I don’t care what some chickhawk yob who went to Canada says, those kids deserve our support. LibbyLiberal, while I don’t agree with everything he says is dead on. We have a bunch of kids over there now in their late 20s or early 30s who have known nothing but war. To them, that’s ‘normal’.
What you Boomers have done thru Bush & BlackBush *cough* Obama is reprehensible. You’ve basically maimed *your children*. Kids who should be back here jump starting the economy, instead replaced by ‘guest workers’ from the 3rd world, like those grifters from India.
Instead you wage generational cleansing on your own children and hire slaves to take up their slack in a desperate bid to ‘fire the economy’:
http://mindtaker.blogspot.com/2009/10/boomers-ongoing-war-on-their-own-young.html
And to DavidByron: You live in a fantasy world. Change does not come from the bottom, change originates at the top. And if you’re not shaming Obama, Pelosi and your fellow chickenhawk flower children into ending this war, then you’re just supporting the war by your inaction and all this blathering. It’s because of yobs like you that Bush & Co continue to broker policy to that horse-trading ‘just a guy’ who is our president.
What we SHOULD DO is let Afghanistan implode. We should let China annex India. And we never should have gone into Iraq when they were doing such a good job of crippling each other.
What none of you understand is that the world is collectively getting OLDER. We live in the framework of your tired old impractical ideas. You made the hell. And kids in their 20s just barely getting a presence of mind are waking up to this fact.