Militarism: Americans are tiring of The Long War

Even as they enmesh the U.S. in other senseless, costly military adventures in Yemen, Honduras, West Africa, and the Philippines, to name but a few, Obama administration warriors are taking time off this weekend to try to persuade their erstwhile NATO allies that the war in Afghanistan has been worth the effort. "I can't let this be a war without end," the president is alleged to have said, "and I can't lose the whole Democratic Party."

Too late. Not only has the invasion lost support of the whole Democratic Party, but, as Robert Naiman wrote yesterday on his HuffPost blog (On Afghanistan, the Pentagon Has Lost the American People 2012-05-18), "a substantial part of the Republican Party as well; the majority of Republican voters, for example." Luckily for the president, his domestic allies are the GOP leaders, so the AfPak debacle probably won't be much of a factor in the fall election. Still, Obama seems to be anxious to control the narrative in Chicago.

Whatever the outcomes in Chicago this weekend and in Kabul some weekend in the future, the enthusiasm of security staters for the Long War will not diminish, whether Barack Obama continues in office or Mitt Romney becomes commander in chief. With access to oil and other resources the motivation and the failed "War on Drugs" the excuse, and no matter the harm that is being done at home, America's political elite will continue to bog the nation down in unwinnable conflicts big and small.

America's Pacific Century: The future of politics will be decided in Asia, not Afghanistan or Iraq, and the United States will be right at the center of the action by Hillary Clinton (Foreign Policy 2011-10-11)
The National Security State Wins (Again): Why the Real Victor in Campaign 2012 Won’t Be Obama or Romney by William J. Astore (Tom Dispatch 2012-05-15)
Out of Africa: An expat witnesses the end of halcyon days in Mali by Jennifer Swift-Mogan (ForeignPolicy 2012-04-13)
Unmanned and Dangerous: Why NATO's expanding use of drones is a disturbing trend by Louis Arbour (Foreign Policy 2012-05-18)
The Long War: Year Ten  Lost in the Desert with the GPS on the Fritz  by Andrew J. Bacevich (Tom Dispatch 2010-10-01)
Fact Sheet: History of U.S. Military Involvement in Africa  (AfriCom/Congressional Research Service 2008-06-12)
U.S. Africa Command (AfriCom) History, Background and Fact Sheets

Here are some articles analyzing and debunking the "War on Terror," from a reading list on New Democracy:

• The Lockerbie Fraud Again by Dave Stratman
• Did 9/11 justify the war in Afghanistan? by David Ray Griffin
• PTSD, infertility, and other consequences of war by Bob Nichols
• Assassination by Government: An Exchange by Dave Stratman
• Whom Should We Support in Iran? by John Spritzler
• Obama's Afghanistan War: Morally Wrong, or Incompetently Waged?, by John Spritzler
• No War But the Class War
• Unethical Media Coverage of UK Events, by Elias Davidsson
• Concealing the Real Goals of War by John Spritzler
• Bosses and Workers,  a poem by Dennis Serdel
• My Country & The Railroad Tracks: two poems by Dennis Serdel, Vietnam '67-68 purple heart
• Important link:  911 Video, "Loose Change, 2nd edition, recut
• The true significance of Bush's no-warrant domestic eavesdropping by John Spritzler
• The Antiwar Movement Isn’t Where You Think It Is by Dave Stratman
• The London Bombings and the Class War by Dave Stratman
• "What Bush's 'Freedom & Democracy' Means for Iraqi Farmers" by John Spritzler (March 17, 2005)
• "The Witchhunts Continue: Columbia University and the New Anti-Semitism" by M. Junaid Alam
• "Collateral Damage"  a poem by Gary Corseri (February 2005)
• "The Triumph of Liberalism" by Dave Stratman (November 12, 2004)
• "Circles"  and "BREAKING THE LAW TO WIN"  poems by Dennis Serdel (September 28, 2004)
• "This Land Is Our Land" by John Spritzler (August 31, 2004)
• "Talking to the Wrong People: Lessons of the DNC" by Dave Stratman (August 26, 2004)
• Interview of Dave Stratman (focusing on his article Inventing the Enemy) on WING TV (August 18, 2004)
• "Inventing the Enemy" by Dave Stratman (July 26, 2004)
• "The 'Good War' Myth of World War II" by John Spritzler (July 22, 2004)
• "Beware the Liberal War on Terror" by Dave Stratman (July 5, 2004)
• "Abu Ghraib: We Have Met the Enemy and He Is NOT Us" by John Spritzler (June 2, 2004)
• "Abu Ghraib Prison Torture: a Few Bad Apples or Long Standing Policy?" by John Spritzler (May 12, 2004).
• "The Antiwar Movement Is Not Progressive -- And That's A Good Thing"by Dave Stratman. (March 18, 2004).
• "George Bush, The Anti-Family President" by Bill Kauffman. (October 27, 2003).
• "BULLETDUCKERS" -- poetry by Dennis Serdel. (November, 2003).
• Book Review: "The War On Freedom" by John Spritzler (October 5, 2003)
• "Bush and the 'Good War'" by John Spritzler (September 30, 2003)
• "No To Politics, Yes To Mass Refusal" by Dave Stratman. (September 26, 2003).
• "Making Connections: the War, the Budget, and the Crisis in Social Values" -- remarks by David Stratman at the Community Church of Boston (April 6, 2003).
• "Conspiracy Theory" by Floyd Rudmin. (April, 2003).
• "Free Asan Akbar And Put The System On Trial?" by Steve Hesske (April, 2003).
• "Rethinking Anti-War Strategy" by Jim Luken (April, 2003).
• "They Dare Not Speak Its Name" by Steve Hesske (March 25, 2003).
• "The Death March" by Al McKinnis (March, 2003).
• The Call of Workers for Peace  (January, 2003).  Workers for Peace -- Chinese translation. Workers for Peace -- German translation.
• "Stop The Endless War: Boycott The Volunteer Army" by Doug Fuda. (January 23, 2003).
• "Elite Spokesman Alarmed by Magnitude of Opposition to Iraq War" by John Spritzler (January 9, 2003).
• "Palestine & Iraq: Any Signs of Hope? The lessons we have learned" by Henry Lowi (November 10, 2002).
• "What Is War With Iraq Really About?" -- A New Democracy Flyer. (Fall 2002).
• "A War To Make Iraq Democratic?" by John Spritzler. (Oct '02).
• "The U.S. As Fourth Reich" by David Stratman. (September 2, 2002).
• "Useful Enemies" by Dave Stratman. (NDN* Nov. '01-Feb. '02).
• "Is It Really A 'War Against Terrorism?'" (NDN* Nov. '01-Feb. '02).
• "What Else Could He Have Done?" (NDN* Nov. '01-Feb. '02).
• "Why Is The US Bombing Yugoslavia?" by Dave Stratman. (NDN* May-June 1999).
• * "NDN" indicates that the article is from the New Democracy Newsletter.

The Long War: Without lies, could ruling elites justify their wars?

The Real News interviews David Swanson on his new book War Is A Lie, a much-needed counterweight to the mass of disinformation that distorts our understanding of American politics and history. For the United States, war is an economic enterprise, enormously profitable for those engaged in it, crushingly expensive for the rest of us. We didn't listen when Eisenhower warned us about the danger we faced from military-industrial power. It will be interesting to see if, after 40 years of increasing control over American life, corporate power can be arrested now.
.
A coalition of antiwar groups has proposed a major action for April 9, 2011.

The Long War: Rethinking U.S. Strategy in Afghanistan

Nine years in, the American war against Afghanistan is the longest in our history. With the surge, it is costing taxpayers nearly $100 billion per year, a sum roughly seven times larger than Afghanistan’s annual gross national product of $14 billion and well more than, for example, the total annual cost of the new U.S. health insurance program. Thousands of American and allied personnel and countless thousands of Afghanis have been killed or gravely wounded in the conflict.

The centralized government we have attempted to impose on the highly decentralized Afghan polity has failed to take: "President Karzai has had nearly six years to build a legitimate and minimally effective government, and he has manifestly failed to do so," says this report sponsored by the New America Foundation. "His re-election last year was marred by widespread fraud. Karzai has been unable or unwilling to crack down on corruption or rein in the warlords on whom his government still depends."

It's clear that the current occupation is a failure, amounting to not much more than a Kissingerish policy of destroying a society in order to save it. To avoid being thrown out, you might think we should end our involvement preemptively by leaving of our own volition, but that is not something the foreign policy establishment is willing to contemplate, so we have this attempt to come up with an alternative plan:

The way forward: A five point approach

1. Emphasize Power-Sharing and Political Reconciliation
2. Scale Back and Eventually Suspend Combat Operations in the South and Reduce the U.S. Military Footprint
3. Keep the Focus on Al Qaeda and Domestic Security
4. Promote Economic Development
5. Engage Global and Regional Stakeholders.

The authors of the report, holding to conventional faith in western-style economic and security arrangements, believe the United States should not "abandon" Afghanistan even though "U.S. interests at stake in Afghanistan do not warrant this level of sacrifice;" instead they argue it's time to rethink the current strategy. Trying to pacify Afghanistan by force of arms has not and will not work, but even if you accept the premise that America’s vital security interests are engaged there, the costly military campaign is more likely to jeopardize than to protect them. Although the authors continue to find the invasion justified because the attack was initially targeted at al-Qaeda, they admit that "there are only some 400 hard-core al-Qaeda members remaining in the entire Af-Pak theater, most of them hiding in Pakistan's northwest provinces." Since we can't attack Pakistan for various reasons, Afghanistan will have to do, but at least the U.S. should ratchet down its goals to ones that are both more consistent with what the authors define as America’s true interests and that, being more modest, are more likely to succeed.

A New Way Forward | Re-Thinking US Strategy in Afghanistan is a report of the Afghanistan Study Group sponsored by the New America Foundation. Read the report on-line or download it (pdf) to find out what some of the more rational members of the foreign policy establishment are thinking about the war.

The Long War: The "War Is Making You Poor" Act

The Republicans are very good at repackaging horseshit as fertilizer. Want to permit power plants to pollute?: Promote the "Clear Skies Initiative." Want to mow down trees?: Pass "Healthy Forests." Think defunding public education is nifty?: Trot out "No Child Left Behind." Planning on eviscerating the Bill of Rights?: Call it "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism," i.e., the "U.S.A. P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act."

Democrats tend to be more forthcoming, if less imaginative. When they're running things we get bills like the “Restoring American Financial Stability Act” and the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act." However, at least one Democratic Congressman understands that good ideas are made better by proper marketing:

Today, Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) introduced bipartisan legislation called the “War Is Making You Poor Act,” which aims to call attention to a) how much money is being spent to fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and b) how budget gimmicks are used to pay for them. Grayson’s legislation would slash the $159 billion request for supplemental war funding and use that money to deliver a tax break for all Americans. Grayson demands the Pentagon use its currently existing $549 billion defense budget to fight the wars. Speaking on the House floor today, Grayson underscored that the point of his legislation is to highlight the costs of the wars:

GRAYSON: So I believe that the thing we need to do is to take that $159 billion that the President has set aside – we’re not saying he has to stop the war, we’re not giving a cut-off date for the war – we’re simply saying you need to fund that out of the base budget of $549 billion. And we take 90 percent of that and give it back to the American people.

And I think most people would be surprised to learn that that is so much money that we’ve been spending on the war in Afghanistan and the war in Iraq that every single taxpayer in America will be get his first or her first $35,000 of income completely tax free.

Watch it:


Grayson’s bill, which is currently being co-sponsored by Reps. Ron Paul (R-TX), Walter Jones (R-NC), Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), Barbara Lee (D-CA), John Conyers (D-MI) and Lynn Woolsey (D-CA), would also cut the federal deficit by $15.9 billion. “There is no longer any need to go beyond the exorbitant base defense budget,” Grayson said. “It is not necessary. Enough is enough.”

(From Think Progress)

Saturday Catchup 2010-05-08

Perceptions: Let’s start with a game. It's called 'Imagine.' Playing is simple: Take recent happenings in the news, scenes where white people are the main actors and imagine they were black folks or other people of color instead. The object of the game is to predict the public reaction to events or incidents in the news if the persons who are driving the action were of color rather than white. Whoever gains the most insight into the workings of race in America wins. -- Imagine if the Tea Party Was Black by Tim Wise (Ephphatha Poetry 2010-04-22). An effective antidote to the mainstream media's habitual, mindless racism.

Give Arizona back to Mexico: "When conservatives...think of racial profiling, they seem to think of a straw man. The image is something like an evil officer out of the Jim Crow South, full of 'prejudice' (itself a fairly silly and inaccurate way to describe racism), enacting his hatred by stopping black people or Latinos arbitrarily. Although it is arbitrary and unfair in terms of who gets targeted, racial profiling also fits into a set of structures guiding police behavior. If cops want to stop someone, they'll be able to cite some legitimate-sounding suspicion, whether it is actually legitimate or not. Profiling doesn't need to feel like profiling to the police, and they don't need to be secret Klansmen to enforce racial discrimination. It shows up way before you get to that point, among ordinary officers who probably just think they're doing their duty." -- E-mail reveals Arizona law was designed to maximize harassment by Gabriel Winant (Salon 2010-05-03).

Can you say putz?: "Joe Lieberman's latest exercise in demagoguery -- his plan to strip citizenship rights from Americans allegedly involved in terrorism -- has been quickly and incisively condemned (as "madness" by Andrew Sullivan, among others). But like Arizona's dangerous, unconstitutional immigration law, it seems likely to garner support from a majority or substantial minority of Americans who will assume that they won't be victimized by it -- that it will only target other people, namely presumptively guilty terrorists. In fact, Lieberman's proposal, combined with an obscure network of federal laws enabling the executive branch to designate individuals and groups as terrorists, with no due process, would put millions of innocent Americans at risk of arbitrarily losing their citizenship." -- Joe Lieberman Means You by Wendy Kaminer (The Atlantic 2010-05-05).

Coffee break:

Or go to YouTube.

What, me worry?: "The roots of mass apathy are found in the profound divide between liberals, who are mostly white and well educated, and our disenfranchised working class, whose sons and daughters, because they cannot get decent jobs with benefits, have few options besides the military. Liberals, whose children are more often to be found in elite colleges than the Marine Corps, did not fight the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994 and the dismantling of our manufacturing base. They did nothing when the Democrats gutted welfare two years later and stood by as our banks were turned over to Wall Street speculators. They signed on, by supporting the Clinton and Obama Democrats, for the corporate rape carried out in the name of globalization and endless war, and they ignored the plight of the poor. And for this reason the poor have little interest in the moral protestations of liberals. We have lost all credibility. We are justly hated for our tacit complicity in the corporate assault on workers and their families. Our passivity has resulted, however, in much more than imperial adventurism and a permanent underclass. A slow-motion coup by a corporate state has cemented into place a neofeudalism in which there are only masters and serfs. And the process is one that cannot be reversed through the traditional mechanisms of electoral politics." -- No One Cares by Chris Hedges (truthdig 2010-06-03).

Our fragile polity: The decline in Congressional oversight stems from a complete break from the historical perception within Congress itself that first and foremost it is a separate branch of government. Once upon a time, very powerful Democratic chairmen would have no trouble going after Democratic or Republican administration wrongdoing. And, at least as importantly, they were aggressive at preserving their power in the Congress to access information from the Executive branch. But now they've become so deferential -- both Democrats and Republicans -- to the executive branch, especially when it comes to national security, that it's appalling. The fundamental problem is that Congress doesn't have the same sense of itself that it used to -- certainly not when brash leaders like Lyndon Baines Johnson were in charge. They took their power really seriously and they were not afraid to use it. -- Congressional Oversight Crippled By Institutional Anemia, Reformer Says by Dan Froomkin (Huffington Post 2010-05-05).

What Jed Bartlet would do: How Hollywood Presidents Would Solve America’s Problems by Peter Baker (New York Times 2010-04-30).

"Britain needs change" was the refrain of the hotly contested election in the U.K. this week. But did that mean changing the name of the Isle of Man to "the Isle of Men, Women, Children and Some Animals?" That is just one of the questions posed by the Official Monster Raving Loony Party, a lampoon of the British political scene that has been running for nearly three decades. While the big parties cross swords over deficits and immigration, Loony proposals include knighthood for Ozzy Osbourne, adding the Loch Ness Monster to the endangered-species list and creating a 99-pence coin (to end the nuisance of carrying pennies). -- In the Longest-Running Joke In Politics, Life Imitates Farce -- Britain's Loony Party Feuds Over Bookies And Term Limits; Glue and Chocolate by Paul Sonne and Alistair MacDonald (Wall Street Journal 2010-05-06).

And speaking of jokes, lets hope Paul Campos is right that, if she is nominated to be one of the Supremes, Elena Kagan will be laughed out of town: The Next Harriet Miers? by Paul Campos (DailyBeast 2010-05-01).

Freedom of the press has declined for the eighth year in a row, according to Freedom House’s annual report. And while the media has focused on the lack of media freedoms in such suspect locales as China and Venezuela, they’ve virtually ignored the U.S. position – No. 24 (PDF).

Foxhole humor: Here is a swell video by some U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan doing an affectionate send-up of Lady Gaga:

Or watch it on YouTube.

Time to pack in AfPak: The pilots waging America’s undeclared drone war in Pakistan could be liable to criminal prosecution for “war crimes,” a prominent law professor told a Congressional panel Wednesday. Well, no wonder. The CIA has been allowed to use drones to attack a broader range of targets, according to the L.A.Times. Previously, drones were only able to fire on enemies on an approved list a few dozen times a year, but now they are able to attack several times a week. Danger Room reminds us that once upon a time, the CIA had to know a militant’s name before putting him up for a robotic targeted killing. Now, if the guy acts like a guerrilla, it’s enough to call in a drone strike; it’s another sign of that a once-limited, once-covert program to off senior terrorist leaders has morphed into a full-scale -- if undeclared -- war in Pakistan. And finally, less well known, but perhaps equally dubious, is the State Department’s counter-narcotics air force, staffed by mercenaries.-- Drone Pilots Could Be Tried for ‘War Crimes,’ Law Prof Says by Nathan Hodge (Danger Room 2010-04-28)

At least "Pakistan is not an ungovernable Somalia. The numbers tell the story. At least 55% of Pakistan's 170 million-strong population are Punjabis. There's no evidence they are about to embrace Talibanistan; they are essentially Shi'ites, Sufis or a mix of both. Around 50 million are Sindhis - faithful followers of the late Benazir Bhutto and her husband, now President Asif Ali Zardari's centrist and overwhelmingly secular Pakistan People's Party. Talibanistan fanatics in these two provinces -- amounting to 85% of Pakistan's population, with a heavy concentration of the urban middle class -- are an infinitesimal minority. The Pakistan-based Taliban -- subdivided in roughly three major groups, amounting to less than 10,000 fighters with no air force, no Predator drones, no tanks and no heavily weaponized vehicles -- are concentrated in the Pashtun tribal areas, in some districts of North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), and some very localized, small parts of Punjab." Although, wait until we're done with it. -- The myth of Talibanistan by Pepe Escobar (Asia Times 2010-05-01).

Activism: The New York Times reported on a lesser-known Big Apple tradition –- one that has nothing to do with hot dogs, Broadway or spitting obscenities at strangers. For the last 330 Wednesdays, a group of elderly women (and a couple of elderly men) have met on 5th Avenue to protest the American presence in Iraq and Afghanistan. The demonstrations began Jan. 14, 2004 and are still going strong. -- Badass Anti-War Grannies Still At It, After 330 Straight Weeks by Byard Duncan (AlterNet 2010-05-07).

This has been around a while, but despite the poor quality of the picture it's still fun to watch Marty Robbins' reaction to Merle Haggard's impersonation of him:
Or go to YouTube.

Serpico Redux: Two years ago, a police officer in a Brooklyn precinct became gravely concerned about how the public was being served. To document his concerns, he began carrying around a digital sound recorder, secretly recording his colleagues and superiors. He recorded precinct roll calls; his precinct commander and other supervisors; street encounters; small talk and stationhouse banter; in all, he surreptitiously recorded hundreds of hours of cops talking about their jobs. Made without the knowledge or approval of the NYPD, the tapes provide an unprecedented portrait of what it's like to work as a cop in New York City. They reveal that precinct bosses threaten street cops if they don't make their quotas of arrests and stop-and-frisks, but also tell them not to take certain robbery reports in order to manipulate crime statistics. The tapes also refer to command officers calling crime victims directly to intimidate them about their complaints. -- The NYPD Tapes: Inside Bed-Stuy's 81st Precinct by Graham Rayman (Village Voice 2010-05-04)

It's reassuring that even in the noughts a mainstream band could still upset the fuzz. Rock and roll!:

Or go to YouTube.

The Long War: Educating Congress

A little sad that we need

A Teach In on Capitol Hill: What Congress Must Do to End U.S. Wars and Help Secure a Peaceful Middle East

What: An Educational briefing on the U. S. agenda in the Middle East, its consequences and development of a strategy/plan to withdraw. Emphasis will be on constructive, interactive dialogue among panelists and attendees.

When: Thursday, April 29, 2010, 1:45pm – 4:00pm

Where: Gold Room (2168), Rayburn House Office Building, Independence Ave and C Street SW, Washington, D.C.

Moderator: Representative Dennis J. Kucinich (D - Ohio)

Panel: Chris Hedges, Jeremy Scahill, David Swanson, Ann Wright

Free and open to the public, the media, members and staff of Congress; beverages will be served

Chris Hedges is a senior fellow at The Nation Institute. He spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than 50 countries and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News, and The New York Times, for which he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years. He has taught at Columbia University, New York University, and Princeton University. He left the Times after being issued a formal reprimand for denouncing the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq. He has written nine books, including Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle and War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning.

Jeremy Scahill is the author of the international best-seller Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. He is a frequent contributor to The Nation magazine and a correspondent for the national radio and TV program Democracy Now! He is currently a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute. Scahill has won numerous awards for his reporting, including the prestigious George Polk Award, which he won twice. While a correspondent for Democracy Now!, Scahill reported extensively from Iraq through both the Clinton and Bush administrations. He has appeared on ABC World News, CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, CNN, MSNBC, PBS’s The NewsHour, Bill Moyers Journal and is a frequent guest on other radio and TV programs nationwide.

David Swanson is the author of Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union. He holds a master's degree in philosophy from the University of Virginia. He has worked as a newspaper reporter and as a communications director, with jobs including press secretary for Dennis Kucinich's 2004 presidential campaign, media coordinator for the International Labor Communications Association, and three years as communications coordinator for ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Swanson is Co-Founder of AfterDowningStreet.org, creator of ProsecuteBushCheney.org, and Washington Director of Democrats.com, a board member of Progressive Democrats of America, the Backbone Campaign, Voters for Peace, and the Liberty Tree Foundation for the Democratic Revolution, and chair of the Robert Jackson Steering Committee. AfterDowningStreet was named Most Valuable Progressive by The Nation Magazine in 2005, 2006, and 2007.

Ann Wright spent thirteen years in the U.S. Army and sixteen additional years in the Army Reserves, retiring as a Colonel. In 1987, she joined the Foreign Service and served as U.S. Deputy Ambassador in Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan, and Mongolia. She received the State Department’s Award for Heroism for her actions during the evacuation of 2,500 people from the civil war in Sierra Leone, the largest evacuation since Saigon. She was on the first State Department team to go to Afghanistan and helped reopen the Embassy there in December 2001. On March 19, 2003, the eve of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Wright cabled a letter of resignation to Secretary of State Colin Powell, stating that without the authorization of the UN Security Council, the invasion and occupation of a Muslim, Arab, oil-rich country would be a disaster. She is a member of Veterans for Peace and is the co-author of Dissent: Voices of Conscience.

Sponsors: EndUSWars.org, AfterDowningStreet.org, Code Pink: Women for Peace, Democrats.com, Progressive Democrats of America, The Nation, and Gray Panthers of Metro Washington.

Contact: Herb Hoffman, 207-646-5431 or pala at maine.rr.com

...but we do.

The Long War: A murderous action by U.S. forces -- caught on tape

In the longer piece on Peace Action West that this is cut from, Rebecca Griffin argues that we must face the "truly horrifying" costs of the American military adventure in Afghanistan.

by Rebecca Griffin

The US military admitted earlier this week that US special operations forces killed five innocent civilians in Gardez, including two pregnant women. The two women leave behind sixteen motherless children. While the military has denied any kind of cover-up of the raid, there were signs of evidence tampering at the scene:

And in what would be a scandalous turn to the investigation, The Times of London reported Sunday night that Afghan investigators also determined that American forces not only killed the women but had also “dug bullets out of their victims’ bodies in the bloody aftermath” and then “washed the wounds with alcohol before lying to their superiors about what happened.”

A spokesman for the Afghan Interior Ministry, Zemary Bashary, said that he did not have any information about the Afghan investigation, which he said remained unfinished.

In an interview, a NATO official said the Afghan-led investigation team alerted American and NATO commanders that the inquiry had found signs of evidence tampering. A briefing was given by investigators to General McChrystal and other military officials in late March.

“There was evidence of tampering at the scene, walls being washed, bullets dug out of holes in the wall,” the NATO official said, adding that investigators “couldn’t find bullets from the wounds in the body.”

Civilian casualties have been a continued source of outrage in Afghanistan, and General McChrystal has received praise for his attempts to lower the number of civilian casualties. While the intent is admirable, it is unrealistic in practice. McChrystal recently commented on their inability to decrease the number of shootings of innocent people at military checkpoints with the startling admission that, “We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat.”

Following this tragic story comes the release of a video of US soldiers in a helicopter firing on civilians in Iraq as though they were in a video game. The soldiers killed over a dozen people in the suburb of New Baghdad, including two journalists working for Reuters. (Warning: the video is disturbing and contains some explicit language.)

Wikileaks received the video and supporting documents from military whistleblowers and the Pentagon has confirmed that the video is authentic. It paints a disturbing picture of soldiers shooting into a group of mostly unarmed civilians, and at times laughing about it, with authorization from their superiors. When a van arrives to pick up the wounded and dead, they open fire, wounding two children. One of the pilots can be heard saying, “Well, it’s their fault for bringing their kids into a battle.”

Julian Assange of Wikileaks made an important point about the nature of the video on Democracy Now this morning:

What’s important to remember is that every step that the Apache takes in opening fire is authorized. It does pause before shooting. It explains the situation, sometimes exaggerating a little to its commanders, and gets authorized permission.

These are not bad apples. This is standard practice. You can hear it from the tones of the voices of the pilots that this is in fact another day at the office. These pilots have evidently and gunners have evidently become so corrupted, morally corrupted, by the war that they are looking for excuses to kill. That is why you hear this segment, “Come on, buddy! Just pick up a weapon,” when Saeed, one of the Reuters employees, is crawling on the curb. They don’t want him for intelligence value to understand the situation. The man is clearly of no threat whatsoever. He’s prostate on the ground. Everyone else has been killed. They just want an excuse to kill. And it’s some kind of—appears to me to be some kind of video game mentality where they just want to get a high score, get their kill count up. And later on you’ll hear them proudly proclaiming how they killed twelve to fifteen people.

The Pentagon has stated that an investigation was already held into the incident and no one is being charged with wrongdoing.

There have been a lot of euphemisms and opaque language used in the debate about the merits of the current strategy in Afghanistan. Many proponents of the war build support around benign-sounding efforts like “population-centric counterinsurgency strategy.” They portray this effort as a more friendly form of war, with the vision of the US troops sweeping into Marja, scaring the bad guys out of town, dropping in a new government and bringing peace and stability to the people. These two incidents are surely just two of many in the hellacious reality of war. Michael Cohen at Democracy Arsenal makes an important point about civilian casualties:

Perhaps right on cue there is this horrifying story that not only did US Special Operations forces kill three Afghan women, they covered up the crime – even going to far as to dig bullets out of the bodies of the victims. It is yet another reminder that for all the talk of protecting civilians – and all of General McChrystal’s noble efforts to prevent civilian deaths — they are still happening, and they are still undermining our population centric goals in Afghanistan (again when you put 100,000 US troops, who are trained to kill and protect themselves, in a foreign country none of this should be even slightly surprising).

And as much as I hate to write it, this is likely only going to continue – and we wonder why we can’t convince local Afghans to side with us?

That’s not to even mention the nearly more than 1,000 US and ISAF soldiers who have died. That trend will only continue with the impending increase in troop levels. The first three months of 2010 already saw double the American casualties of the same period in 2009. Thousands of soldiers have been wounded, and their stories are seldom told to the American public.

When we debate this war, let’s be real about what we are debating. Let’s not debate a sanitized version of military efforts in Afghanistan. Those who think that the war in Afghanistan is essential to our security must weigh our gains against the dirty, messy reality of US and Afghan casualties, not an unrealistic vision of soldiers sitting safely in rooms piloting unmanned drones and Afghans embracing the military presence despite the occasional accidental air strike.

"Light 'em all up."

In the years since the "incident," as Reuters has tried to uncover what happened, U.S. military authorities have stonewalled, whitewashing the horrific actions of our gunners as within the rules of engagement. Watch the video: if these fighters are acting within officially sanctioned parameters, then the rules need to be changed. You can't win the hearts and minds of people by murdering them.

In the video, there are two separate attacks on civilians on the ground: at the first, the gunships fire on an unthreatening group whose main offense seems to be that they are men of fighting age; then they unload on a van of people attempting to tend to the wounded and dying from the first attack. The pilots and gunners sound both bloodthirsty and oddly detached, like teenage boys yelling "Kill! Kill! Kill!" in a video arcade.

Although from the air, the helicopter crews couldn't have known that children were in the cab of the Good Samaritans' van -- "Oh yeah, look at that. Right through the windshield! Haha," American reliance on massive preemptive force makes the killing of civilians certain -- premeditated -- and therefore criminal. Firing on a van of medical workers doesn't spawn political martyrs, it makes real ones. If soldiers who commit acts like these are not held accountable, more such tragedies will be impossible to avoid. Of course, if we weren't there at all, such tragedies would be impossible to occur.

The Afghan war itself is counter-productive and stupid as policy and needs to be brought swiftly to a conclusion. In any war, it is a certainty that some innocent people will be harmed. But Obama's expansion of this war -- essentially an intervention in a civil war -- is especially tragic, because the certainty of the outcome -- the withdrawal of U.S.-led forces from the country -- and the willingness of the other side to negotiate create the conditions for a swift settlement.

The Obama administration, which claims to prefer diplomacy to force, could use the threat of immediate withdrawal to make Karzai negotiate a deal with the Taliban (an outcome made all the easier now that the Afghan president has threatened to join the Taliban as his way of punishing the Americans for criticizing his gangsterish regime). The sooner an agreement is reached the more the Taliban will be deterred from expanding its influence beyond its sanctuaries in the south and east, the more U.S. gains in the recent fighting can be consolidated, and the more reduced will be the opportunities for corruption and fraud in the areas controlled from Kabul.

Even assuming that the entry into Afghanistan was unavoidable in the aftermath of 9/11, there is little question that the project has soured and cannot be won militarily. Comparisons to the Vietnam war are inexact, but there is one eerie echo from that conflict: we appear to be destroying Afghanistan in the effort to save it. Dialogue and serious compromise are far more likely to produce a peaceful and prosperous Afghanistan than blasting villagers from helicopters and pilotless drones.

Obama will not be able to go into the next presidential campaign without progress toward peace in the region, which means that there will be a sit-down with the Taliban sooner or later. Sooner is infinitely preferable. If the corrupt, inept Karzai is an obstruction to peace, he can easily be bargained away as part of the final deal (someone should slip Karzai a copy of the biography of Vietnam's President Diem -- it's possible he takes American rhetoric seriously; it's probably better for all concerned if he finds out now with whom he's in bed).

A negotiated settlement soon would not only save American and Afghan lives, but would avoid a precipitate withdrawal just before 2012 that would embarrass the American president and leave Afghanistan in ruins. Surely we'd rather spend our billions rebuilding the country than destroying it. Better to negotiate a compromise that takes into account the aspirations of both sides in the conflict (by which I mean Kabul and the Taliban) for the future of the country than to continue a policy that is to the advantage of no one. One thing all sides can probably agree on: Afghanistan's future must not, will not, can not include occupation by American troops.

The rest of the story: Debate war as it is, not as you want it to be by Rebecca Griffin (Peace Action West Groundswell Blog 2010-04-06)

Transcript of the audio from the WikiLeaks video

Like Abu Graib, defenders of American militarism will claim the actions on this video are aberrant. But graphic combat porn is pretty easy to find:
Special Forces Firefight with Insurgents in Iraq (night time); Night Attack on Al Qaeda; Mosul Firefight as music video; Iraq - AH-64 Apache; Asaeb Ahul Haqq RPG attack; etc. ad infinitum.

“This Is How These Soldiers Were Trained to Act”–Veteran of Military Unit Involved in 2007 Baghdad Helicopter Shooting Says Incident Is Part of Much Larger Problem (Democracy Now 2010-04-12).
Veterans of Wikileaks video write "Letter of Reconciliation" to Iraqis Injured in Attack (Civilian-Soldier Alliance): Josh Stieber and Ethan McCord, members of Bravo Company 2-16, are making a stand against the war and are rallying supporters. Go to LetterToIraq.com to read the letter they are sending to the Iraqis who survived the Apache attack
.
Actions: Donate to Peace Action West. Help provide information and support to those in the military on ways of standing up for their beliefs through work being done with the GI Rights Hotline. If you are a veteran or service-member, see Iraq Veterans Against the War or Courage to Resist's websites to get involved in anti-war work. Support and spread the word about the Civilian-Soldier Alliance, embracing those within the military or veteran communities who want to talk about their experiences and work towards other options. Question the training that our government and our tax money puts our impressionable young people through: if we object to this video, we need to look at what training led to it. Check out books like On Killing and pressure political and military leaders to reconsider the psychological methods that teach soldiers to dehumanize. Look at what we teach our children, work towards starting peace studies programs in your schools. Question where our tax money is really going and why so much is spent on warfare. Inform yourself on the deeper priorities of our society by watching for example, The Story of Stuff and ask yourself if your lifestyle is contributing to those mistaken priorities.

Saturday Catchup: Must-reads (and sees) from the recent past

Is America ‘Yearning for Fascism’? by Chris Hedges (TruthDig 2010-03-29). "The Democrats and their liberal apologists are so oblivious to the profound personal and economic despair sweeping through this country that they think offering unemployed people the right to keep their unemployed children on their nonexistent health care policies is a step forward. They think that passing a jobs bill that will give tax credits to corporations is a rational response to an unemployment rate that is, in real terms, close to 20 percent. They think that making ordinary Americans, one in eight of whom depends on food stamps to eat, fork over trillions in taxpayer dollars to pay for the crimes of Wall Street and war is acceptable. They think that the refusal to save the estimated 2.4 million people who will be forced out of their homes by foreclosure this year is justified by the bloodless language of fiscal austerity. The message is clear. Laws do not apply to the power elite. Our government does not work. And the longer we stand by and do nothing, the longer we refuse to embrace and recognize the legitimate rage of the working class, the faster we will see our anemic democracy die."

On this week's 42nd anniversary of Martin Luther King's assassination, two talented lawyers who've dedicated their careers to fighting inequality join Bill Moyers to examine justice and injustice in America after 42 years of struggle. Watch Bill Moyers interview with Bryan Stevenson and Michelle Alexander. A transcript of the interview. Bill Moyers essay on economic justice (Bill Moyers Journal 2010-04-02). Also: Martin Luther King Jr.'s Economic Dream Still Unfulfilled, 42 Years Later by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship (Salon 2010-04-02)and We Still Don’t Hear Him by Bob Herbert (New York Times 2010-04-02).

The Inhumanity of War by Doug Bandow, Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute (Huntington Post 2010-04-03). Constant warfare is good for America and boon to the world. Not.

Nearly six months ago, in a must-read piece in The New Yorker, Jane Mayer pondered the risks of the C.I.A.’s covert drone program (The Predator War 2009-10-26), Obama's ramping up of the terror bombing in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The situation has only become more dire in the months since; as with the torture of prisoners, the debate over the indiscriminately murderous drones has devolved into an argument over how far we can go without committing acts that are actually indictable: see, Drone Attacks Are Legit Self-Defense, Says State Dept. Lawyer by Nathan Hodge (Danger Room 2010-03-26) and The Legal And Moral Issues Of Drone Use (NPR 2010-03-30) with Peter Bergen, Amitai Etzioni and Philip Alston.

Will the Pentagon send surveillance drones and other military support to the Somali government for its offensive against al-Qaida-linked insurgents, as the Associated Press reports? Perhaps you should ask your members of Congress.

Newsweek calls Afghanistan’s police force a ”$6 billion fiasco” that could cost us the war. Nation building is a risky business; no wonder presidential candidates promise not to do it.

"A federal judge ruled Wednesday that the National Security Agency’s program of surveillance without warrants was illegal, rejecting the Obama administration’s effort to keep shrouded in secrecy one of the most disputed counterterrorism policies of former President George W. Bush." By Charlie Savage and James Risen (New York Times 2010-03-31).

The event itself was insignificant, of course, especially by comparison to, say, decades of priestly diddling of deaf children, but the media coverage was characteristically abysmal:

But then, as so often before, Jon Stewart put it all in perspective for you:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
2 Girls 1 GOP
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Reform

And speaking of the important role of late night comedians in our national dialog,  David Letterman's interview of Tea Party member Pam Stout on the Late Show was a "quietly remarkable piece of television," according to Entertainment Weekly's tv critic Ken Tucker.

Catch Henry Farrell and Daniel Drezner's Fun for the Whole Family episode on BloggingHeads -- will health care reform give Obama a foreign policy boost?; Obama and Netanyahu, less than the best of pals; The Frumble in the Jungle; can conservative intellectuals ride the Tea Party tiger?; the Catholic Church’s systemic failure; is the Greek financial crisis just the tip of the iceberg?:


Speaking of the Frumble in the Jungle, Carl Bloice takes on The Myth of the Sensible Center (Black Commentator 2010-04-01). Left, Right and Center become meaningless anyway when the central ideologies controlling our politics, corporatism and militarism, are forbidden subjects.

The Fed in Hot Water by Robert Reich (TalkingPointsMemo 2010-0402). Tim Geithner made secret, unregulated, probably illegal payouts of Bear Stearns and AIG worth tens of billions in public dollars months before Congress authorized taxpayer bailout of the financial community. Also, watch Robert Reich on ABC's This Week: The Obama Administration's Approach To Financial Reform Will Do 'Nothing' To Change Wall Street (Huntington Post 010-04-04).

To battle Wall Street, Obama should channel Teddy Roosevelt by Simon Johnson and James Kwak (The Washington Post 2010-04-04). Like that's going to happen.

And Tepid Reforms Demand that Progressives Mobilize by Katrina vanden Heuvel (Washington Post 2010-03-30).

US GAO releases 2010 Assessments of Selected Weapons Programs (2010-03-30), one- or two-page assessments of 70 weapon programs, most found wanting against "best practices" criteria.

Music video of the week is from a tribute to Skip Spence's legendary Oar (full disclosure: I wrote the liner notes for the second Moby Grape album), with a wild guitar solo by Wilco's Nels Cline:


Women in Their 90'S Who Make A Difference Today by Joan Wile (AfterDowningStreet 2010-04-03). My 94-year-old mother, having lent a hand in the battle to permit wind farms in New England, now wants take on the war in Afghanistan. "I think you should leave the world a little better than you found it," she says.

It took a while for the corporations to lay their cold dead hands fully on the the switches of mass media access after the terrifying (to them) social, intellectual and artistic cacophony of the 60s. Throughout the 70s and 80s, though, brief flashes of anarchy and creativity could still sneak past the cultural police lines, as in this energetic Black Leather Monster by punk rockers Wendy O. Williams and The Plasmatics on “Solid Gold,“ the pop hits countdown that usually featured lipsyncing bubblegum bands and eroto-aerobic dance routines.


A Critic's Place, Thumb and All is a thoughtful meditation on the future of arts criticism by Times film critic A.O.Scott (New York Times 2010-03-30).

Finally, a song much abused by karaoke singers is given its most disturbing reading ever:

Saturday Catchup: Must reads (and sees) from the past week

Taxing Cannabis: This Time, Pot Really Might Become Legal by Kevin Drum (Mother Jones 2010-03-26) -- The only thing that can stop legalization in California is massive spending by the prison guards union.

War Crimes: State Department Declares Illegal Drone Attacks to Be Legal as Part of Eternal Global War by David Swanson (AfterDowningStreet 2010-03-26) -- Because they say so, that's why.

Change Watch: The horrible prospect of Supreme Court Justice Cass Sunstein by Glenn Greenwald (Salon 2010-03-26) -- or Elena Kagan, for that matter. Will Obama move SCOTUS to the right?'

The influence of the Israel Lobby on America's Iran policy (Obama continues Bush's Iran policy 3) by Daan de Wit, translated by Ben Kearney (Deep Journal 2010-03-23) -- Why Washington lives in fear the lobby's long reach. Also, see Obama continues Bush's Iran policy 1 and 2.

Jon Stewart does (in) Glenn Beck:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Conservative Libertarian
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Reform

Is this the Birth of a Nation? by Melissa Harris-Lacewell (The Nation 2010-03-22) -- The return of Jim Crow.

Health Reform Bill Summary: The Top 18 Immediate Effects by Jeremy Binckes and Nick Wing (Huntington Post 2010-03-23) | It's not affordable or universal, but it's a damn sight better than what was there before.

The real hero of health care reform: Nancy Pelosi by Mark Greenbaum (Christian Science Monitor 2010-03-22) -- Whatever you think of the outcome, leadership came from the House not the White House.

If you want to see why Carly Fiorina will never be US Senator you have only to watch this wacko ad for Carly Fiorina:

Secrets of the Tea Party: The troubling history of Tea Party leader Dick Armey by Beau Hodai (In These Times 2010-03-21)

Two Right-Wing Billionaire Brothers Are Remaking America for Their Own Benefit by Jim Hightower (AlterNet 2010-03-19) -- The Moneybags behind the corporate coup d'état.

Press Release O' the Day: ACLU Seeks Information On Predator Drone Program

Group Files Lawsuit For Data On Targeted Killings Of Suspected Terrorists And Civilian Casualties

NEW YORK - The American Civil Liberties Union filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit today demanding that the government disclose the legal basis for its use of unmanned drones to conduct targeted killings overseas. In particular, the lawsuit asks for information on when, where and against whom drone strikes can be authorized, the number and rate of civilian casualties and other basic information essential for assessing the wisdom and legality of using armed drones to conduct targeted killings.

"The public has a right to know whether the targeted killings being carried out in its name are consistent with international law and with the country's interests and values," said Jonathan Manes, a legal fellow with the ACLU National Security Project. "The Obama administration should disclose basic information about the program, including its legal basis and limits, and the civilian casualty toll thus far."

The CIA and the military have used unmanned drones to target and kill individuals not only in Afghanistan and Iraq but also in Pakistan and, in at least one case in 2002, Yemen. The technology allows U.S. personnel to observe targeted individuals in real time and launch missiles intended to kill them from control centers located thousands of miles away. Recent reports, including public statements from the director of national intelligence, indicate that U.S. citizens have been placed on the list of targets who can be hunted and killed with drones.

The ACLU made an initial FOIA request for information on the drone program in January. Today's lawsuit against the Defense Department, the State Department and the Justice Department seeks to enforce that request. None of the three agencies have provided any documents in response to the request, nor have they given any reason for withholding documents. The CIA answered the ACLU's request by refusing to confirm or deny the existence of any relevant documents. The CIA is not a defendant in today's lawsuit because the ACLU will first appeal the CIA's non-response to the Agency Release Panel.

"The government's use of drones to conduct targeted killings raises complicated questions – not only legal questions, but policy and moral questions as well," said Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU National Security Project. "These kinds of questions ought to be discussed and debated publicly, not resolved secretly behind closed doors. While the Obama administration may legitimately withhold intelligence information as well as sensitive information about military strategy, it should disclose basic information about the scope of the drone program, the legal basis for the program and the civilian casualties that have resulted from the program."

The ACLU's lawsuit seeks, in addition to information about the legal basis for the drone program, information about how the program is overseen and data regarding the number of civilians and non-civilians killed in the strikes. Estimates of civilian casualties provided by anonymous government officials quoted in the press and by various non-governmental analysts differ dramatically, from the dozens to the hundreds, giving an incomplete and inconsistent picture of the human cost of the program.

Are there legal, ethical or policy justifications for a program that by all outward appearances violates common sense, common decency, and the rules of civilized behavior?

Link to the ACLU's complaint
Link to the ACLU's FOIA request

The Long War: Why Hayden's Wrong, Why Pelosi's Lying

[I was about to post about Tom Hayden's odd, defeatist piece in The Nation seeming to hold antiwar members of Congress responsible for prolonging the war by challenging it -- "The war now has greater legitimacy" -- but David Swanson said it better than I could]

by David Swanson (AfterDowningStreet.org 2010-02-12)

Tom Hayden wants peace, but he's sincerely mistaken about how to get it. He claims that Wednesday's unsuccessful vote to end the war in Afghanistan makes ending the war less likely, and that the way to end the war is to pass a bill that would then have to pass the Senate and the President, a bill requiring an exit strategy, any exit strategy -- it could be "redeployment" to Iran in 2038 or anything else.

I'm not against moving bills forward, even meaningless bills if they send a helpful message. I'm not against ending the war in a way that leaves the president in charge of Congress, if that proves the fastest way to end the war -- even though it leaves us in a state in which more wars are inevitable. I don't think we're especially likely to force the House to cut off the funding next month.

But forcing a debate on the war, and forcing congress members to put their names down on one side or the other, does not make those members more likely to stick with those positions. It makes them more likely to oppose the wars. Why? Because it raises public awareness and public pressure. Those who voted to end the war are now being thanked and rewarded and pressured to vote no on funding what they just claimed to want to end. Those who voted to keep the war in Afghanistan going are now being pressured to change that position in a way that they were not when all was silent. Hayden, of all people, is leaving the public out of his calculations.

If we are handed an opportunity to -- at least temporarily -- block the funding, because all the Republicans vote No for some unrelated reason, we will need to seize that opportunity. It will increase the same dynamic of public involvement. It will advance a strategy that is one of the most likely to eventually end the wars. And it will advance an understanding of power dynamics in Washington that will discourage wars by shifting war powers back away from presidents, something that will also be needed in the coming months if we are to end the war in Iraq that too many people naively believe we've already ended.

Those who think that opposing wars should involve, you know, opposing wars, should build on the recent debate and vote, by joining in upcoming actions including:

Brown Bag Vigils, and Peace of the Action.

Pelosi does not sincerely want anything substantive and tends to lie whenever her lips move. And here's what she says about war and impeachment:

Pelosi: The issue that … bothers me the most is the issue of the Iraq War. There's so much evidence that there was no reason for us to go into that war at that time or to go into it period. But to think that thousands of lives have been lost, lives affected to the tune of hundreds of thousands, the cost in terms of our military readiness it has not made our military stronger, in terms of dollars to the treasury, but again most of all loss of lives our precious treasure on this war and there was really no price to pay for it so . . .
Maddow: Do you regret having taken impeachment off the table?
Pelosi: No, no, I believe that the if there was evidence, if we could have the evidence to impeach the president then that could come forward. Just because I say it's off doesn't mean if the evidence is there that something wouldn't go forward. It's not a question of not knowing where the culpability is, it's what you can demonstrate and what you can prove. But I do think that those who had a hand in perpetrating not just going to war but misrepresentations to the American people - . Every piece of evidence that we have points to the fact that there was no reason in terms of weapons of mass destruction to go into Iraq…. It's one of the great tragedies.

So it is. And truly tragic as well is the brazenness of it. Pelosi's poodle, John Conyers, who backed off impeachment at her command, offered a wide and varying and self-contradictory list of excuses why, but never present among those excuses was any claim of lacking evidence. Conyers' committee staff spent most of the relevant years publishing books documenting the evidence. His excuses were about electoral campaigns and the corporate media and the likelihood of winning conviction in the Senate.

The level of mendacity in Pelosi's remarks above, her dedication to obeying the president (articulated just prior to what I've quoted), and her allegiance to the war machine: this is what we are up against. We will not defeat it without a massive public movement. We will not generate a massive public movement if we are afraid of raising the issue, pressing our demands forward, naming names, and rewarding and punishing elected officials as merited.

This is a life and death struggle, brothers and sisters, and it's not going to be won through fear, stealth, or timidity.

Challenging the security state is not going to be easy, but militarism can only be stopped by being confronted directly. Hayden's muddled incrementalism strikes me as of a piece with the magical thinking that caused him to urge Barack Obama's election even in the face of clear evidence throughout the 2008 campaign that the candidate would be just the sort of chief executive he has turned out to be. The vote in the House is a small step in a long road to peace.

Ending 'The Long War': Vigils Against War Funding Spread Across the Nation

Brownbaggers Not Teabaggers

On January 20th, Progressive Democrats of America organized "brownbag" lunch vigils against war funding at noon at the district offices of 22 members of the U.S. House of Representatives.

On February 17th -- next Wednesday -- Progressive Democrats will be joined by CODEPINK, Democrats.com, AfterDowningStreet, the California Nurses Assn/National Nurses United, and United for Peace and Justice in holding brown bag lunch vigils outside (or, better yet, inside) at least 36 congressmembers' offices.

What Needs To Be Done:
Brownbaggers are asking members of the House to publicly commit to voting No on any bills that fund wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan or Yemen, and to publicly urge their colleagues and the House leadership to make the same commitment. As lesser steps in the same direction, representatives are being asked to cosponsor HR 2454, calling for an exit strategy from Afghanistan, and HR 3699, prohibiting any increase in the number of U.S. Armed Forces in Afghanistan. Congressmembers' commitments are tracked at DefundWar.org.

"We have to choose between jobs and wars," said Tim Carpenter, national director of Progressive Democrats. "The American people are on one side, but our so-called representatives in Congress are on the other. The Supreme Court is busy increasing corporate control of our elected officials. We need to be busy enforcing the people's control before it is too late."

"Without wasteful war and military spending," said deputy director Laura Bonham, "we could have healthcare, jobs, housing, education, retirement security, environmental sustainability, diplomacy and foreign aid. No longer will we take seriously anyone's claim to support these things while voting to fund more war."

Learn more about brown bag lunch vigils.

Brownbaggers are demanding commitments to vote against more money for war. Slogans on their posters include: "Healthcare not Warfare," "Corporations out of Politics," "Bailout Main Street not Wall Street" and "Brownbaggers not Teabaggers."

Vigils have been planned in the following districts: AZ-5, CA-6, CA-9, CA-10, CA-18, CA-22, CA-23, CA-40, CA-42, CA-45, CA-46, CA-48, CA-50, CA-53, FL-9, FL-10, FL-17, ID-01, IN-9, MA-1, MA-2, MA-3, MA-10, MI-9, NY-18, NY-28, OH-13, OH-17, PA-02, PA-7, PA-15, WA-2, WA-3, WA-6, WI-3, WI-7. These are almost all at noon on Wednesday the 17th, but a few are at odd times, so check the brown bag lunch vigils schedule for details.

Here's how to get involved:

1. Find a brown bag lunch vigil near you. If you don't see a vigil near you, look below to see how to create one.
2. Download the Healthcare NOT Warfare flyer and the Why do we need brown bag lunch vigils? flyer. Customize the BBLV flyer for your group, and make copies of both flyers. Grab your promotional Healthcare NOT Warfare materials.
3.Go to the National Priorities Project to find data on the actual cost of the wars and on the social programs your community could have funded with those tax dollars. Use these figures to make signs for your vigils.
4. Spread the word! Write about your brown bag lunch vigil on your blog, Facebook, and Twitter.
5.Don't forget your brown bag lunch and Healthcare NOT Warfare stickers. Take your lunch in PDA's Healthcare NOT Warfare canvas tote!

To create a BBLV event:

1. Schedule your brown bag lunch vigil here. Your vigil will be promoted to our calendar so others can find you. For more information, contact the team at bbv@pdamerica.org.
2. Send a personalized copy of this letter on defunding our wars to your representative and this letter on war defunding to your senators. Find your representative and senators here. Or schedule an in-person meeting with your member of Congress or the legislative aide on miltary issues to determine your representative's or senator's support.
3. Report on activities and developments pertaining to your lobbying effort using the brown bag lunch vigil Google document. Check coalition partner AfterDowningStreet.org's DefundWar.org to see how your legislators have voted on war funding.
4. Submit articles for publication on the Progressive Democrats website detailing your experiences to Laura@pdamerica.org. It is especially important to share what works and what doesn't with other activists.

Print useful anti war information from DefundWar.org.
Print these posters:
Brownbaggers Poster 9
Brownbaggers Poster 10
Brownbaggers Poster 11

Thanks to AfterDowningStreet and Progressive Democrats of America for their leadership.