Antiwar News December 5
VFP-111 Coat and Sock Drive
How the US and Israel Quietly Revived Al-Qaeda Allies in Syria’s Idlib Offensive
As Syrian opposition forces, spearheaded by the Al-Qaeda affiliate Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, intensify their offensive to seize more territory after capturing Aleppo, Washington has distanced itself from the attack—a remarkable reversal, considering its longstanding support for weaponizing so-called “moderate rebel” groups based in Idlib.
.Under President Barack Obama, the U.S. government secretly poured billions into a covert operation designed to topple Bashar al-Assad’s government. The CIA’s Timber Sycamore program, one of the agency’s most expensive undertakings, at its peak, funneled $100,000 per Syrian militant trained—many of whom would ultimately fight under the banner of Al-Qaeda-linked factions.
The full extent of Washington’s complicity was laid bare in leaked cables, which revealed a startling admission from Jake Sullivan, then-Deputy Chief of Staff, to Hillary Clinton in 2012: Al-Qaeda “is on our side in Syria.” Brett McGurk, the National Security Council’s coordinator for the Middle East, later labeled Idlib as “the largest Al-Qaeda safe haven since 9/11.”
In a 2020 subcommittee hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Dana Stroul, who would later become the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (DASD) for the Middle East under the Biden administration, argued that “Russia and Iran do not have the resources to stabilize or rebuild Syria.” She pointed out that the Syrian economy, already reeling, was “continuing to spiral downward,” a situation worsened by the economic crisis in Lebanon and the U.S.-led sanctions regime.
Stroul went on to suggest that “here is the opportunity,” advocating for a proactive approach. She proposed the U.S. begin planning how to “leverage the next outbreak of violence to reinvigorate a political process.” Stroul went on to emphasize that this strategy should include U.S. rapprochement with Turkey, along with maintaining a firm stance on political matters, sanctions, and the denial of reconstruction aid.
The objective has been unwavering: to drive Iran out of Syrian territory and compel Damascus to forsake its alliance with Lebanese Hezbollah. This ambition is more than strategy—it is a vision to reshape the region’s balance of power in favor of Israeli and American interests...Continue reading on Scheerpost.
The full extent of Washington’s complicity was laid bare in leaked cables, which revealed a startling admission from Jake Sullivan, then-Deputy Chief of Staff, to Hillary Clinton in 2012: Al-Qaeda “is on our side in Syria.” Brett McGurk, the National Security Council’s coordinator for the Middle East, later labeled Idlib as “the largest Al-Qaeda safe haven since 9/11.”
In a 2020 subcommittee hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Dana Stroul, who would later become the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (DASD) for the Middle East under the Biden administration, argued that “Russia and Iran do not have the resources to stabilize or rebuild Syria.” She pointed out that the Syrian economy, already reeling, was “continuing to spiral downward,” a situation worsened by the economic crisis in Lebanon and the U.S.-led sanctions regime.
Stroul went on to suggest that “here is the opportunity,” advocating for a proactive approach. She proposed the U.S. begin planning how to “leverage the next outbreak of violence to reinvigorate a political process.” Stroul went on to emphasize that this strategy should include U.S. rapprochement with Turkey, along with maintaining a firm stance on political matters, sanctions, and the denial of reconstruction aid.
The objective has been unwavering: to drive Iran out of Syrian territory and compel Damascus to forsake its alliance with Lebanese Hezbollah. This ambition is more than strategy—it is a vision to reshape the region’s balance of power in favor of Israeli and American interests...Continue reading on Scheerpost.
New Russian Missile Delivers Six
Warheads and Three Messages
by Ted Snider
Posted on November 27, 2024
Warheads and Three Messages
by Ted Snider
Posted on November 27, 2024
english.pravda.ru
On November 21, just two days after Ukraine acted for the first time on U.S. permission to fire Western supplied long-range missiles deeper into Russia, Russia launched a missile attack on a military base in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro. The base houses the missile and space company Pivdenmash, which produces missiles, rockets, satellites and engines.
The attack included six cruise missiles and a Kinzhal hypersonic missile. There is nothing new or unusual about hitting that military target or about using those missiles. But there was something very unusual about the 9M729 Oreshnik missile that was also included in the attack.
The Oreshnik is a new intermediate range ballistic missile that has never been seen or used before. Ted Postol, Professor Emeritus of Science, Technology, and National Security Policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, calls it an “absolutely new weapon.” Russian President Vladimir Putin called the Orseshnik “experimental” and said that the strike was a test fire.
Though intermediate range ballistic missiles like Oreshnik are typically designed to carry nuclear warheads, the missile used in this attack did not: it was armed with conventional warheads.
What is remarkable about the demonstration of the Oreshnik is that it flew at around Mach 10 or 11, making it a hypersonic missile. Unlike ordinary ballistic missiles, this one seemed to increase its range by gliding parallel to the earth during part of its flight path instead of maintaining the expected inverted U-shape ballistic trajectory...continue reading.
The attack included six cruise missiles and a Kinzhal hypersonic missile. There is nothing new or unusual about hitting that military target or about using those missiles. But there was something very unusual about the 9M729 Oreshnik missile that was also included in the attack.
The Oreshnik is a new intermediate range ballistic missile that has never been seen or used before. Ted Postol, Professor Emeritus of Science, Technology, and National Security Policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, calls it an “absolutely new weapon.” Russian President Vladimir Putin called the Orseshnik “experimental” and said that the strike was a test fire.
Though intermediate range ballistic missiles like Oreshnik are typically designed to carry nuclear warheads, the missile used in this attack did not: it was armed with conventional warheads.
What is remarkable about the demonstration of the Oreshnik is that it flew at around Mach 10 or 11, making it a hypersonic missile. Unlike ordinary ballistic missiles, this one seemed to increase its range by gliding parallel to the earth during part of its flight path instead of maintaining the expected inverted U-shape ballistic trajectory...continue reading.
Biden Allows Ukraine To Strike Russia With Long-Range US Missiles
Putin has made clear that US-supported long-range strikes in Russia would risk nuclear war
by Dave DeCamp November 17, 2024
The New York Times reported on Sunday that President Biden had authorized Ukraine’s use of long-range US-provided missiles in strikes on Russian territory, an escalation Moscow has made clear risks nuclear war.
US officials told the paper that Ukraine can now use Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS), which have a range of up to 190 miles, to strike Russian territory. The ATACMS are fired by US-made multiple rocket launch systems, including the HIMARS. Ukraine can only fire the HIMARS with coordinates provided by or confirmed by the US and its allies, meaning the US will now directly support strikes deep inside Russia.
The US officials said the ATACMS will likely initially be used to hit Russian troops fighting against Ukrainian forces in Russia’s Kursk Oblast. Ukraine and the US have also said North Korean troops are deployed in Kursk. The US has said the North Korean troops are engaged in combat, but that hasn’t been confirmed by Moscow.
Earlier this year, President Biden gave Ukraine the greenlight to strike Russian border regions with US-provided weapons, including shorter-range rockets fired by the HIMARS. A few months later, Ukraine launched its invasion of Kursk, and Ukrainian officials began pushing hard for the US to support longer-range strikes inside Russia.
In response to those calls and comments from Western officials supporting the idea, Russian President Vladimir Putin said if NATO supported long-range strikes in Russia, it would put the Western military alliance “at war with Russia.”
Putin then ordered changes to Russia’s nuclear doctrine that lowered the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons. Under the new doctrine, an attack on Russia by a non-nuclear armed state that was supported by a nuclear power will be considered a joint attack.
The Kremlin said the changes to the nuclear doctrine were meant as a message to the West. “This is a message that warns these countries of the consequences should they participate in an attack on our country by various means, not necessarily nuclear,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
The US appeared to back down on supporting long-range strikes in Russia, but now the Biden administration is looking to escalate the proxy war as much as possible for its last few months in power. President-elect Donald Trump campaigned on ending the proxy war, and the Biden team and officials in Ukraine fear he will just do that. However, some of Trump’s cabinet picks favor escalation in Ukraine, including his National Security Advisor, Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL).
Read complete article on antiwar.com.
by Dave DeCamp November 17, 2024
The New York Times reported on Sunday that President Biden had authorized Ukraine’s use of long-range US-provided missiles in strikes on Russian territory, an escalation Moscow has made clear risks nuclear war.
US officials told the paper that Ukraine can now use Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS), which have a range of up to 190 miles, to strike Russian territory. The ATACMS are fired by US-made multiple rocket launch systems, including the HIMARS. Ukraine can only fire the HIMARS with coordinates provided by or confirmed by the US and its allies, meaning the US will now directly support strikes deep inside Russia.
The US officials said the ATACMS will likely initially be used to hit Russian troops fighting against Ukrainian forces in Russia’s Kursk Oblast. Ukraine and the US have also said North Korean troops are deployed in Kursk. The US has said the North Korean troops are engaged in combat, but that hasn’t been confirmed by Moscow.
Earlier this year, President Biden gave Ukraine the greenlight to strike Russian border regions with US-provided weapons, including shorter-range rockets fired by the HIMARS. A few months later, Ukraine launched its invasion of Kursk, and Ukrainian officials began pushing hard for the US to support longer-range strikes inside Russia.
In response to those calls and comments from Western officials supporting the idea, Russian President Vladimir Putin said if NATO supported long-range strikes in Russia, it would put the Western military alliance “at war with Russia.”
Putin then ordered changes to Russia’s nuclear doctrine that lowered the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons. Under the new doctrine, an attack on Russia by a non-nuclear armed state that was supported by a nuclear power will be considered a joint attack.
The Kremlin said the changes to the nuclear doctrine were meant as a message to the West. “This is a message that warns these countries of the consequences should they participate in an attack on our country by various means, not necessarily nuclear,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
The US appeared to back down on supporting long-range strikes in Russia, but now the Biden administration is looking to escalate the proxy war as much as possible for its last few months in power. President-elect Donald Trump campaigned on ending the proxy war, and the Biden team and officials in Ukraine fear he will just do that. However, some of Trump’s cabinet picks favor escalation in Ukraine, including his National Security Advisor, Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL).
Read complete article on antiwar.com.
Report Details Israel’s Ethnic Cleansing Campaign in Beit Lahia, Northern Gaza
There is no longer a single house people can live in, and the Israeli military fires artillery rounds to ensure any remaining civilians leave.
Dave DeCamp November 6
Dave DeCamp November 6
A report from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz published on Wednesday detailed the situation in Beit Lahia, a city in northern Gaza near the Israeli border where Israeli forces are implementing an ethnic cleansing campaign.
At the beginning of October, Israel ordered hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living in northern Gaza to head south. Many ignored the order since there was nowhere safe to go, and the Israeli military focused its renewed assault on the north on Beith Lahia and neighboring Beit Hanoun and Jabalia, where it imposed a full siege to starve out civilians.
The Israeli military has said it forcibly expelled 55,000 Palestinians from the Jabalia refugee camp, and it has no intention of allowing them back. According to Haaretz, only a few thousand civilians remain in Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun.
“There is no intention of allowing the residents of the northern Gaza Strip to return to their homes,” IDF spokesman Brig Gen Itzik Cohen told reporters on Tuesday.
Finish article Antiwar.com.
At the beginning of October, Israel ordered hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living in northern Gaza to head south. Many ignored the order since there was nowhere safe to go, and the Israeli military focused its renewed assault on the north on Beith Lahia and neighboring Beit Hanoun and Jabalia, where it imposed a full siege to starve out civilians.
The Israeli military has said it forcibly expelled 55,000 Palestinians from the Jabalia refugee camp, and it has no intention of allowing them back. According to Haaretz, only a few thousand civilians remain in Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun.
“There is no intention of allowing the residents of the northern Gaza Strip to return to their homes,” IDF spokesman Brig Gen Itzik Cohen told reporters on Tuesday.
Finish article Antiwar.com.
In an exclusive new documentary, Max Blumenthal rips the cover off the media deceptions and atrocity hoaxes Israel pushed after October 7 to create political space for its gruesome assault on the Gaza Strip. Blumenthal exposes the US mainstream media's role as a megaphone for the Israeli government, introducing new lies even after their initial ones were debunked.
Atrocity Inc raises serious questions about the official narrative of October 7, while revealing how Israel's army has consciously engaged in the same hideous atrocities which it falsely accused Palestinian militants of committing.
Directed & Edited by Sut Jhally
Written by Max Blumenthal and Sut Jhally
Atrocity Inc raises serious questions about the official narrative of October 7, while revealing how Israel's army has consciously engaged in the same hideous atrocities which it falsely accused Palestinian militants of committing.
Directed & Edited by Sut Jhally
Written by Max Blumenthal and Sut Jhally
WPJC joins Veterans For Peace in Support of Opting Out
U.S. Army soldiers during a firefight with Taliban forces in Barawala Kalay Valley in Kunar province, Afghanistan, March 31, 2011. (U.S. Army, Cameron Boyd, Public domain)
At the end of the last century, hoping to drive the United States from Saudi Arabia, the home of Islam’s holiest sites, al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden sought to draw in the American military. He reportedly wanted to “bring the Americans into a fight on Muslim soil,” provoking savage asymmetric conflicts that would send home a stream of “wooden boxes and coffins” and weaken American resolve. “This is when you will leave,” he predicted.
After the 9/11 attacks, Washington took the bait, launching interventions across the Greater Middle East and Africa. What followed was a slew of sputtering counterterrorism failures and stalemates in places ranging from Niger and Burkina Faso to Somalia and Yemen, a dismal loss, after 20 years, in Afghanistan, and a costly fiasco in Iraq.
And just as bin Laden predicted, those conflicts led to discontent in the United States. Americans finally turned against the war in Afghanistan after 10 years of fighting there, while it took only a little more than a year for the public to conclude that the Iraq war wasn’t worth the cost. Still, those conflicts dragged on. To date, more than 7,000 U.S. troops have died fighting the Taliban, al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, and other militant groups.
As lethal as those Islamist fighters have been, however, another “enemy” has proven far more deadly for American forces: themselves. A recent Pentagon study found suicide to be the leading cause of death among active-duty U.S. Army personnel.
Out of 2,530 soldiers who died between 2014 and 2019 from causes ranging from car crashes to drug overdoses to cancer, 35 percent — 883 troops — took their own lives. Just 96 soldiers died in combat during those same six years.
Those military findings bolster other recent investigations. The journalism nonprofit Voice of San Diego found, for example, that young men in the military are more likely to take their own lives than their civilian peers. The suicide rate for American soldiers has, in fact, risen steadily since the Army began tracking it 20 years ago.
Last year, the medical journal JAMA Neurology reported that the suicide rate among U.S. veterans was 31.7 per 100,000 — 57 percent greater than that of non-veterans. And that followed a 2021 study by Brown University’s Costs of War Project which found that, compared to those who died in combat, at least four times as many active-duty military personnel and post-9/11 war veterans — an estimated 30,177 of them — had killed themselves.
Read complete article on Consortium News.
After the 9/11 attacks, Washington took the bait, launching interventions across the Greater Middle East and Africa. What followed was a slew of sputtering counterterrorism failures and stalemates in places ranging from Niger and Burkina Faso to Somalia and Yemen, a dismal loss, after 20 years, in Afghanistan, and a costly fiasco in Iraq.
And just as bin Laden predicted, those conflicts led to discontent in the United States. Americans finally turned against the war in Afghanistan after 10 years of fighting there, while it took only a little more than a year for the public to conclude that the Iraq war wasn’t worth the cost. Still, those conflicts dragged on. To date, more than 7,000 U.S. troops have died fighting the Taliban, al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, and other militant groups.
As lethal as those Islamist fighters have been, however, another “enemy” has proven far more deadly for American forces: themselves. A recent Pentagon study found suicide to be the leading cause of death among active-duty U.S. Army personnel.
Out of 2,530 soldiers who died between 2014 and 2019 from causes ranging from car crashes to drug overdoses to cancer, 35 percent — 883 troops — took their own lives. Just 96 soldiers died in combat during those same six years.
Those military findings bolster other recent investigations. The journalism nonprofit Voice of San Diego found, for example, that young men in the military are more likely to take their own lives than their civilian peers. The suicide rate for American soldiers has, in fact, risen steadily since the Army began tracking it 20 years ago.
Last year, the medical journal JAMA Neurology reported that the suicide rate among U.S. veterans was 31.7 per 100,000 — 57 percent greater than that of non-veterans. And that followed a 2021 study by Brown University’s Costs of War Project which found that, compared to those who died in combat, at least four times as many active-duty military personnel and post-9/11 war veterans — an estimated 30,177 of them — had killed themselves.
Read complete article on Consortium News.
Trinity & The Parts Left Out of Oppenheimer.First atomic test was 79 years ago this morning.
Greg Mitchell
Jul 16, 2024
Greg Mitchell
Jul 16, 2024
While most people trace the dawn of the nuclear era to August 6, 1945, and the dropping of the atomic bomb over the center of Hiroshima, it really began three weeks earlier, in the desert near Alamogordo, New Mexico, with the top-secret Trinity test. Its 79rd anniversary will be marked—or mourned today.
Entire books have been written about the test, so I’ll just touch on one key issue here briefly. It’s related to a hallmark of the age that would follow: a new government obsession with secrecy, which soon spread from the nuclear program to all military and foreign affairs in the cold war era.
In completing their work on building the bomb, Manhattan Project scientists knew it would produce deadly radiation but weren’t sure exactly how much. The military planners were mainly concerned about the bomber pilots catching a dose, but J. Robert Oppenheimer, “The Father of the Bomb,” worried, with good cause (as it turned out) that the radiation could drift a few miles and also fall to earth with the rain.
Indeed, scientists warned of danger to those living downwind from the Trinity site but, in a pattern-setting decision, the military boss, General Leslie Groves, ruled that residents not be evacuated and kept completely in the dark (at least until they spotted a blast brighter than any sun). Nothing was to interfere with the test. When two physicians on Oppenheimer’s staff (though not Oppie himself) proposed an evacuation, Groves replied, “What are you, Hearst propagandists?”
Read complete article on Substack.
Entire books have been written about the test, so I’ll just touch on one key issue here briefly. It’s related to a hallmark of the age that would follow: a new government obsession with secrecy, which soon spread from the nuclear program to all military and foreign affairs in the cold war era.
In completing their work on building the bomb, Manhattan Project scientists knew it would produce deadly radiation but weren’t sure exactly how much. The military planners were mainly concerned about the bomber pilots catching a dose, but J. Robert Oppenheimer, “The Father of the Bomb,” worried, with good cause (as it turned out) that the radiation could drift a few miles and also fall to earth with the rain.
Indeed, scientists warned of danger to those living downwind from the Trinity site but, in a pattern-setting decision, the military boss, General Leslie Groves, ruled that residents not be evacuated and kept completely in the dark (at least until they spotted a blast brighter than any sun). Nothing was to interfere with the test. When two physicians on Oppenheimer’s staff (though not Oppie himself) proposed an evacuation, Groves replied, “What are you, Hearst propagandists?”
Read complete article on Substack.
VFP-111 Announces Conscientious Objector Project
"The best way to engage the interest of community members is to provide an action that they can take. Chapter 111's Conscientious Objection Project does that," says chapter president Aneesa Ahad. "It offers a direct path to fighting militarism through draft resistance and developing awareness of how the military is forced upon students in high school."
ICAN Report:
Surge in 2023 Global Nuclear Weapons Spending
The nine nuclear-armed countries spent more than $10 billion more on their nuclear arsenals last year than the year before, as ICAN shows in “Surge: 2023 Global Nuclear Weapons Spending”. Between them, they pumped $91.4 billion into the nuclear arms race, or $2,898 per second.
The biggest spender, also with the largest one-year increase, was the United States at $51.5 billion - $1,633 per second!, more than all other nuclear-armed countries combined.
Read complete report, with takeaways, here.
Read complete report, with takeaways, here.
Maj. Harrison Mann’s LinkedIn profile picture
US Army Officer Resigns Over ‘Unqualified’ Support for Israeli Slaughter in Gaza
Maj. Harrison Mann was working at the Defense Intelligence Agency
Dave DeCamp May 13, 2024
An Army officer working at the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) has resigned in protest of the US’s “unqualified” support for the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza.
Maj. Harrison Mann posted his resignation letter on LinkedIn and said it was initially distributed within the DIA on April 16. In the letter, he said the DIA does not only “inform policy” but “facilitates, and at times, directly executes policy,” referring to US support for Israel.
“The policy that has never been far from my mind for the past six months is the nearly unqualified support for the government of Israel, which has enabled and empowered the killing and starvation of tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians,” Mann said in the letter. “As we were recently reminded, this unconditional support also encourages reckless escalation that risks wider war.”
He said that his work at the DIA had “unquestionably” contributed to the support for Israel and that the “horrific and heartbreaking” images coming from Gaza caused him great shame. Mann submitted his resignation on November 1, but according to The New York Times, it’s unclear when he will be separated from the Army.
Mann said in the letter that he tried to continue working his job and hoped that at some point the slaughter would come to an end or that President Biden would alter his policy of unconditional support. “However, at some point — whatever the justification — you’re either advancing a policy that enables the mass starvation of children, or you’re not,” he said.
Mann pointed to his Jewish heritage as one of his reasons for resigning and speaking out. “And I want to clarify that as the descendant of European Jews, I was raised in a particularly unforgiving moral environment when it came to the topic of bearing responsibility for ethnic cleansing — my grandfather refused to ever purchase products manufactured in Germany — where the paramount importance of ‘never again’ and the inadequacy of ‘just following orders’ were oft repeated,” he said.
“I am haunted by the knowledge that I have failed those principles. But I also have hope that my grandfather would afford me some grace; that he would still be proud of me for stepping away from this war, however belatedly,” Mann added.
Read complete article on antiwar.com.
Moving Back from the Brink
Pacific Northwest organizers join a global campaign to abolish all nukes and push for a city council resolution to start
Gene Marx
Apr 04, 2024
Pacific Northwest organizers join a global campaign to abolish all nukes and push for a city council resolution to start
Gene Marx
Apr 04, 2024
nuclear sun - kattomic energy
At 5:30 a.m. on July 16, 1945, a flash “brighter than a thousand suns” lit the Alamogordo desert in New Mexico. General Leslie Groves, the overseer of the Manhattan Project estimated the explosive force of Trinity, the first full scale test of the implosion-type atomic fission bomb, “in excess of the equivalent of 15,000 to 20,000 tons of TNT.”
Grove’s report continued to describe “a fireball brighter than several midday suns;” a stratospheric mushroom cloud over 41,000 feet; and an explosive force resulting in a crater 1,200 feet in diameter and shattering windows 125 miles away.
According to War Secretary Henry Stimson, President Truman was giddy, “tremendously pepped up,” confident and invigorated enough to call the annihilation of Hiroshima three weeks later to the sailors on the USS Augusta while returning from Potsdam “the greatest thing in history.”
Today, a mere lifetime and thousands of Trinities later, nine nuclear nations control the futures of billions of global inhabitants. The cataclysmic potential of more than 13,000 nuclear weapons in 2024, each with unimaginable destructive power, are but a single miscalculation, false flag attack or accident away from ravaging the planet.
Grove’s report continued to describe “a fireball brighter than several midday suns;” a stratospheric mushroom cloud over 41,000 feet; and an explosive force resulting in a crater 1,200 feet in diameter and shattering windows 125 miles away.
According to War Secretary Henry Stimson, President Truman was giddy, “tremendously pepped up,” confident and invigorated enough to call the annihilation of Hiroshima three weeks later to the sailors on the USS Augusta while returning from Potsdam “the greatest thing in history.”
Today, a mere lifetime and thousands of Trinities later, nine nuclear nations control the futures of billions of global inhabitants. The cataclysmic potential of more than 13,000 nuclear weapons in 2024, each with unimaginable destructive power, are but a single miscalculation, false flag attack or accident away from ravaging the planet.
Recently, longtime antinuclear activist, Dr. Helen Caldicott described the medical effects of a single 20-megaton bomb dropped on an American city, New York or maybe Boston:
Russian 20-megaton bomb would enter at 20 times the speed of sound exploding with the heat of the sun, digging a hole three-quarters of a mile wide and 88 feet deep, converting all buildings, people and earth shot up into the air as a mushroom cloud. Twenty miles from the epicenter, all humans would be killed or lethally injured, some converted to charcoal statues. Winds of 500 mph turn people into missiles traveling at 100 mph. A massive conflagration would follow covering 300 square miles and the fires would coalesce across the nation.
As cities burn across the world, a massive cloud of toxic black smoke will elevate into the stratosphere blocking out the sun for ten years inducing a short ice age nuclear winter when all humans and most plants and animals will perish.
greg wegwich pinterest.com
Closer to home, the Pacific Northwest is a major nuclear, strategically targeted region in any war, if only to include the 1,300 nuclear warheads at Kitsap Bangor Naval Base and submarine communications base, Naval Radio Station Jim Creek, near Oso, both within 73 and 58 miles, as eagles fly, from Bellingham, both listed as primary U.S. ground zeros for Russia’s crosshairs. Doing the cataclysmic math for a strike on Oso, the City of Subdued Excitement and most of Skagit County would be consumed in less than fifteen minutes in a mega-inferno, and finished off by shockwaves and Carl Sagan’s “witches brew of radioactive particles” raining down as fallout.
Those lucky enough to have survived will realize within minutes they are entirely on their own. No 911. No FEMA. Just struggling to self-survive.
While individual and cultural psychic-numbing provides most of the post-Cold War populace with a much-needed coping mechanism to keep from being overwhelmed. Many of the rest of us remember all too well nuclear annihilation threats from U.S. presidents and Soviet leaders, the inefficacies of civil defense exercises and the Cuban Missile crisis, and most refuse to check out, just yet.
Read complete article on Substack.
Those lucky enough to have survived will realize within minutes they are entirely on their own. No 911. No FEMA. Just struggling to self-survive.
While individual and cultural psychic-numbing provides most of the post-Cold War populace with a much-needed coping mechanism to keep from being overwhelmed. Many of the rest of us remember all too well nuclear annihilation threats from U.S. presidents and Soviet leaders, the inefficacies of civil defense exercises and the Cuban Missile crisis, and most refuse to check out, just yet.
Read complete article on Substack.
Update -
Bellingham City Council
unanimously passes resolution calling
for permanent cease-fire in Gaza
It took nine years and a do-over,
but perseverance and peaceful protest win out
Bellingham City Council
unanimously passes resolution calling
for permanent cease-fire in Gaza
It took nine years and a do-over,
but perseverance and peaceful protest win out
On Monday, Bellingham, Washington’s City Council unanimously passed a resolution supporting an “Immediate Ceasefire in Gaza, Israel and Palestine,” crafted by Whatcom (County) Families for Justice, Whatcom Peace & Justice Center, and Veterans for Peace Chapter 111. Interestingly, Bellingham’s latest successful resolution effort is a do-over from Operation Protective Edge in 2014, when a similar Gaza resolution calling for an end to violence on both sides, failed for the simple lack of a second. The Israeli tactic of “mowing the grass” in the Gaza Strip nine years ago, resulting in more than 2,000 Palestinian deaths, including 500 children, was not enough to move the measure forward. Threats, intimidation and political expediency won out.
But that was then.
Almost a decade later, visibly affected Council Members passed the latest version of the resolution during its preliminary Committee of the Whole discussion. Following measured revisions to the original draft submitted by local activists, an impassioned Council recognized the urgency of the 2023 carnage in Gaza and voted unanimously to support its passage during that evening’s business meeting.
Read complete piece on Substack.
But that was then.
Almost a decade later, visibly affected Council Members passed the latest version of the resolution during its preliminary Committee of the Whole discussion. Following measured revisions to the original draft submitted by local activists, an impassioned Council recognized the urgency of the 2023 carnage in Gaza and voted unanimously to support its passage during that evening’s business meeting.
Read complete piece on Substack.
Beneath the still waters of Puget Sound, submarines loaded with nukes patrol the Kitsap Peninsula and beyond.
Farther east, at Joint Base Lewis-McChord on Interstate 5 near Tacoma, is the only U.S. military unit to call for transportation of nuclear weapons by air.
Even farther east, in Richland, is the Hanford Site, historically the nation's biggest producer of plutonium for nuclear weapons.
Washington state has been home to nuclear weapons-related projects for decades — some well-known, others shrouded in secrecy. These projects have contributed to a robust nuclear presence in the military, a booming nuke industry — and death and injury to hundreds of thousands of people in Washington state and across the Pacific.
Washington “has been at all levels a cornerstone of the U.S. nuclear enterprise,” said Hans Kristensen, director of the Federation of American Scientists’ Nuclear Information Project.
Farther east, at Joint Base Lewis-McChord on Interstate 5 near Tacoma, is the only U.S. military unit to call for transportation of nuclear weapons by air.
Even farther east, in Richland, is the Hanford Site, historically the nation's biggest producer of plutonium for nuclear weapons.
Washington state has been home to nuclear weapons-related projects for decades — some well-known, others shrouded in secrecy. These projects have contributed to a robust nuclear presence in the military, a booming nuke industry — and death and injury to hundreds of thousands of people in Washington state and across the Pacific.
Washington “has been at all levels a cornerstone of the U.S. nuclear enterprise,” said Hans Kristensen, director of the Federation of American Scientists’ Nuclear Information Project.
Puget Sound is home to around one-third of the nation’s active nukes.
Bangor Submarine Base on the Kitsap Peninsula, near Poulsbo, has around 720 nuclear warheads, according to a Federation of American Scientists’ report. These nukes are loaded into Trident missiles, then aboard eight submarines that roam the waters.
Each warhead could destroy a city, kill millions, and jeopardize the environment and future generations through “long-term catastrophic effects,” according to a United Nations web page.
Bangor Submarine Base on the Kitsap Peninsula, near Poulsbo, has around 720 nuclear warheads, according to a Federation of American Scientists’ report. These nukes are loaded into Trident missiles, then aboard eight submarines that roam the waters.
Each warhead could destroy a city, kill millions, and jeopardize the environment and future generations through “long-term catastrophic effects,” according to a United Nations web page.
J. Overton, public affairs officer for Navy Region Northwest, said these submarines provide “constant strategic deterrence.”
Deterrence is the theory that the threat of nuclear weapons prevents violence and war — including nuclear war. The logic: If a nuclear nation attacks another, or its allies, counterattack is certain — so why risk it?
Next door to the Bangor base is a nonprofit that advocates for the abolition of nukes, Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action. Leonard Eiger, a member of the group, said that deterrence theory is a sham, and any use of nukes would likely provoke all-out nuclear war, “causing an unimaginable number of immediate deaths and apocalyptic radioactive fallout.”
“It’s only a question of time before either accidentally or intentionally, the weapons are used,” Eiger said. “What security is there in that?”
J. Overton responded that the Navy takes security around these nukes “very seriously,” but declined to comment on specifics.
Read complete article on kuow.org.
The Era of Nukes and No Diplomacy:
‘Crossing a Rubicon to Armageddon’
by EditorJuly 7, 2023
Professor Jackson Lears warns the Ukraine war has wrought “the ultimate technocratic fantasy: a winnable nuclear war.”
‘Crossing a Rubicon to Armageddon’
by EditorJuly 7, 2023
Professor Jackson Lears warns the Ukraine war has wrought “the ultimate technocratic fantasy: a winnable nuclear war.”
The Doomsday Clock continues to tick toward nuclear war, but at its fastest pace ever. Professor Jackson Lears, a former naval officer serving on a U.S cruiser carrying tactical nuclear weapons, considers the current moment more frightening than at any time during the Cold War. Then, there was intense alarm for the fate of the earth and the survival of the human race. Today, rather than diplomacy or negotiation, talk revolves around new weapons shipments, disappointment in Ukraine’s counteroffensive failures, and even drone strikes in Moscow. But far less attention has been paid to the prospect of nuclear war between Russia and the U.S that threatens to end all life on this planet as we know it. That is the alarm sounded by cultural historian and author Jackson Lears who joins host Robert Scheer to discuss Lears’s essay for Harper’s Magazine, “Behind the Veil of Indifference.”
Lears’s piece warns that despite the public indifference, a “winnable nuclear war” has entered the minds of American strategists and politicians once again, undermining years of work towards nuclear disarmament. Lears tells Scheer that it is similar to the attitudes from the Cold War, yet this time, there is an eerie disinterest from the American side about even talking to someone like Vladimir Putin. “[T]his is, in a sense, a return to the worst kind of confrontations of the early 1960s but there’s a big difference because even Kennedy and even Reagan, cold warriors that they were, were eager to create common ground ultimately between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. And that common ground no longer exists between the U.S. and Russia, and there is no interest in diplomacy at all,” Lears said.
Scheer and Lears highlight a critical factor in shaping public perception: the Russiagate controversy and the media’s role in complying with government demands for secrecy, beginning in the late 1970s, while also promoting narratives that fostered consent for war with Russia. Scheer said, “if you even dare suggest there’s some complexity to this issue, or that the other side might have a point of view, or there’s something even worth negotiating about, you’re now considered unpatriotic.” Lears agreed: “We have former directors of the CIA who have perjured themselves before Congress, now posing as professional wise men and professional truth tellers on MSNBC and CNN.”
Wrapping up the discussion, Lears gives an insight into his latest book, Animal Spirits: The American Pursuit of Vitality from Camp Meeting to Wall Street. In it, Lears explores the history behind thinkers in America who honed in on vitalism rather than the restrictive nature of traditional cultures involving religion, science and commercialization.
JFK's Commencement Address at American University, Washington, D.C., June 10, 1963
President John F. Kennedy
June 10, 1963
President Anderson, members of the faculty, board of trustees, distinguished guests, my old colleague, Senator Bob Byrd, who has earned his degree through many years of attending night law school, while I am earning mine in the next 30 minutes, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen:
It is with great pride that I participate in this ceremony of the American University, sponsored by the Methodist Church, founded by Bishop John Fletcher Hurst, and first opened by President Woodrow Wilson in 1914. This is a young and growing university, but it has already fulfilled Bishop Hurst's enlightened hope for the study of history and public affairs in a city devoted to the making of history and the conduct of the public's business. By sponsoring this institution of higher learning for all who wish to learn, whatever their color or their creed, the Methodists of this area and the Nation deserve the Nation's thanks, and I commend all those who are today graduating.
Professor Woodrow Wilson once said that every man sent out from a university should be a man of his nation as well as a man of his time, and I am confident that the men and women who carry the honor of graduating from this institution will continue to give from their lives, from their talents, a high measure of public service and public support.
"There are few earthly things more beautiful than a university," wrote John Masefield in his tribute to English universities--and his words are equally true today. He did not refer to spires and towers, to campus greens and ivied walls. He admired the splendid beauty of the university, he said, because it was "a place where those who hate ignorance may strive to know, where those who perceive truth may strive to make others see."
I have, therefore, chosen this time and this place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth is too rarely perceived--yet it is the most important topic on earth: world peace.
What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children--not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women--not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.
I speak of peace because of the new face of war. Total war makes no sense in an age when great powers can maintain large and relatively invulnerable nuclear forces and refuse to surrender without resort to those forces. It makes no sense in an age when a single nuclear weapon contains almost ten times the explosive force delivered by all the allied air forces in the Second World War. It makes no sense in an age when the deadly poisons produced by a nuclear exchange would be carried by wind and water and soil and seed to the far corners of the globe and to generations yet unborn.
Today the expenditure of billions of dollars every year on weapons acquired for the purpose of making sure we never need to use them is essential to keeping the peace. But surely the acquisition of such idle stockpiles--which can only destroy and never create--is not the only, much less the most efficient, means of assuring peace.
I speak of peace, therefore, as the necessary rational end of rational men. I realize that the pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war--and frequently the words of the pursuer fall on deaf ears. But we have no more urgent task.
Some say that it is useless to speak of world peace or world law or world disarmament--and that it will be useless until the leaders of the Soviet Union adopt a more enlightened attitude. I hope they do. I believe we can help them do it. But I also believe that we must reexamine our own attitude--as individuals and as a Nation--for our attitude is as essential as theirs. And every graduate of this school, every thoughtful citizen who despairs of war and wishes to bring peace, should begin by looking inward--by examining his own attitude toward the possibilities of peace, toward the Soviet Union, toward the course of the cold war and toward freedom and peace here at home.
First: Let us examine our attitude toward peace itself. Too many of us think it is impossible. Too many think it unreal. But that is a dangerous, defeatist belief. It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable--that mankind is doomed--that we are gripped by forces we cannot control.
We need not accept that view. Our problems are manmade--therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. Man's reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable--and we believe they can do it again.
I am not referring to the absolute, infinite concept of peace and good will of which some fantasies and fanatics dream. I do not deny the value of hopes and dreams but we merely invite discouragement and incredulity by making that our only and immediate goal.
Let us focus instead on a more practical, more attainable peace-- based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in human institutions--on a series of concrete actions and effective agreements which are in the interest of all concerned. There is no single, simple key to this peace--no grand or magic formula to be adopted by one or two powers. Genuine peace must be the product of many nations, the sum of many acts. It must be dynamic, not static, changing to meet the challenge of each new generation. For peace is a process--a way of solving problems.
With such a peace, there will still be quarrels and conflicting interests, as there are within families and nations. World peace, like community peace, does not require that each man love his neighbor--it requires only that they live together in mutual tolerance, submitting their disputes to a just and peaceful settlement.
And history teaches us that enmities between nations, as between individuals, do not last forever. However fixed our likes and dislikes may seem, the tide of time and events will often bring surprising changes in the relations between nations and neighbors.
So let us persevere. Peace need not be impracticable, and war need not be inevitable. By defining our goal more clearly, by making it seem more manageable and less remote, we can help all peoples to see it, to draw hope from it, and to move irresistibly toward it.
Second: Let us reexamine our attitude toward the Soviet Union. It is discouraging to think that their leaders may actually believe what their propagandists write. It is discouraging to read a recent authoritative Soviet text on Military Strategy and find, on page after page, wholly baseless and incredible claims--such as the allegation that "American imperialist circles are preparing to unleash different types of wars . . . that there is a very real threat of a preventive war being unleashed by American imperialists against the Soviet Union . . . [and that] the political aims of the American imperialists are to enslave economically and politically the European and other capitalist countries . . . [and] to achieve world domination . . . by means of aggressive wars."
Truly, as it was written long ago: "The wicked flee when no man pursueth." Yet it is sad to read these Soviet statements--to realize the extent of the gulf between us. But it is also a warning--a warning to the American people not to fall into the same trap as the Soviets, not to see only a distorted and desperate view of the other side, not to see conflict as inevitable, accommodation as impossible, and communication as nothing more than an exchange of threats.
No government or social system is so evil that its people must be considered as lacking in virtue. As Americans, we find communism profoundly repugnant as a negation of personal freedom and dignity. But we can still hail the Russian people for their many achievements--in science and space, in economic and industrial growth, in culture and in acts of courage.
Among the many traits the peoples of our two countries have in common, none is stronger than our mutual abhorrence of war. Almost unique among the major world powers, we have never been at war with each other. And no nation in the history of battle ever suffered more than the Soviet Union suffered in the course of the Second World War. At least 20 million lost their lives. Countless millions of homes and farms were burned or sacked. A third of the nation's territory, including nearly two thirds of its industrial base, was turned into a wasteland--a loss equivalent to the devastation of this country east of Chicago.
Today, should total war ever break out again--no matter how--our two countries would become the primary targets. It is an ironic but accurate fact that the two strongest powers are the two in the most danger of devastation. All we have built, all we have worked for, would be destroyed in the first 24 hours. And even in the cold war, which brings burdens and dangers to so many nations, including this Nation's closest allies--our two countries bear the heaviest burdens. For we are both devoting massive sums of money to weapons that could be better devoted to combating ignorance, poverty, and disease. We are both caught up in a vicious and dangerous cycle in which suspicion on one side breeds suspicion on the other, and new weapons beget counterweapons.
In short, both the United States and its allies, and the Soviet Union and its allies, have a mutually deep interest in a just and genuine peace and in halting the arms race. Agreements to this end are in the interests of the Soviet Union as well as ours--and even the most hostile nations can be relied upon to accept and keep those treaty obligations, and only those treaty obligations, which are in their own interest.
So, let us not be blind to our differences--but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.
Third: Let us reexamine our attitude toward the cold war, remembering that we are not engaged in a debate, seeking to pile up debating points. We are not here distributing blame or pointing the finger of judgment. We must deal with the world as it is, and not as it might have been had the history of the last 18 years been different.
We must, therefore, persevere in the search for peace in the hope that constructive changes within the Communist bloc might bring within reach solutions which now seem beyond us. We must conduct our affairs in such a way that it becomes in the Communists' interest to agree on a genuine peace. Above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy--or of a collective death-wish for the world.
To secure these ends, America's weapons are nonprovocative, carefully controlled, designed to deter, and capable of selective use. Our military forces are committed to peace and disciplined in self- restraint. Our diplomats are instructed to avoid unnecessary irritants and purely rhetorical hostility.
For we can seek a relaxation of tension without relaxing our guard. And, for our part, we do not need to use threats to prove that we are resolute. We do not need to jam foreign broadcasts out of fear our faith will be eroded. We are unwilling to impose our system on any unwilling people--but we are willing and able to engage in peaceful competition with any people on earth.
Meanwhile, we seek to strengthen the United Nations, to help solve its financial problems, to make it a more effective instrument for peace, to develop it into a genuine world security system--a system capable of resolving disputes on the basis of law, of insuring the security of the large and the small, and of creating conditions under which arms can finally be abolished.
At the same time we seek to keep peace inside the non-Communist world, where many nations, all of them our friends, are divided over issues which weaken Western unity, which invite Communist intervention or which threaten to erupt into war. Our efforts in West New Guinea, in the Congo, in the Middle East, and in the Indian subcontinent, have been persistent and patient despite criticism from both sides. We have also tried to set an example for others--by seeking to adjust small but significant differences with our own closest neighbors in Mexico and in Canada.
Speaking of other nations, I wish to make one point clear. We are bound to many nations by alliances. Those alliances exist because our concern and theirs substantially overlap. Our commitment to defend Western Europe and West Berlin, for example, stands undiminished because of the identity of our vital interests. The United States will make no deal with the Soviet Union at the expense of other nations and other peoples, not merely because they are our partners, but also because their interests and ours converge.
Our interests converge, however, not only in defending the frontiers of freedom, but in pursuing the paths of peace. It is our hope-- and the purpose of allied policies--to convince the Soviet Union that she, too, should let each nation choose its own future, so long as that choice does not interfere with the choices of others. The Communist drive to impose their political and economic system on others is the primary cause of world tension today. For there can be no doubt that, if all nations could refrain from interfering in the self-determination of others, the peace would be much more assured.
This will require a new effort to achieve world law--a new context for world discussions. It will require increased understanding between the Soviets and ourselves. And increased understanding will require increased contact and communication. One step in this direction is the proposed arrangement for a direct line between Moscow and Washington, to avoid on each side the dangerous delays, misunderstandings, and misreadings of the other's actions which might occur at a time of crisis.
We have also been talking in Geneva about the other first-step measures of arms control designed to limit the intensity of the arms race and to reduce the risks of accidental war. Our primary long range interest in Geneva, however, is general and complete disarmament-- designed to take place by stages, permitting parallel political developments to build the new institutions of peace which would take the place of arms.
The pursuit of disarmament has been an effort of this Government since the 1920's. It has been urgently sought by the past three administrations. And however dim the prospects may be today, we intend to continue this effort--to continue it in order that all countries, including our own, can better grasp what the problems and possibilities of disarmament are.
The one major area of these negotiations where the end is in sight, yet where a fresh start is badly needed, is in a treaty to outlaw nuclear tests. The conclusion of such a treaty, so near and yet so far, would check the spiraling arms race in one of its most dangerous areas. It would place the nuclear powers in a position to deal more effectively with one of the greatest hazards which man faces in 1963, the further spread of nuclear arms. It would increase our security--it would decrease the prospects of war. Surely this goal is sufficiently important to require our steady pursuit, yielding neither to the temptation to give up the whole effort nor the temptation to give up our insistence on vital and responsible safeguards.
I am taking this opportunity, therefore, to announce two important decisions in this regard.
First: Chairman Khrushchev, Prime Minister Macmillan, and I have agreed that high-level discussions will shortly begin in Moscow looking toward early agreement on a comprehensive test ban treaty. Our hopes must be tempered with the caution of history--but with our hopes go the hopes of all mankind.
Second: To make clear our good faith and solemn convictions on the matter, I now declare that the United States does not propose to conduct nuclear tests in the atmosphere so long as other states do not do so. We will not be the first to resume. Such a declaration is no substitute for a formal binding treaty, but I hope it will help us achieve one. Nor would such a treaty be a substitute for disarmament, but I hope it will help us achieve it.
Finally, my fellow Americans, let us examine our attitude toward peace and freedom here at home. The quality and spirit of our own society must justify and support our efforts abroad. We must show it in the dedication of our own lives--as many of you who are graduating today will have a unique opportunity to do, by serving without pay in the Peace Corps abroad or in the proposed National Service Corps here at home.
But wherever we are, we must all, in our daily lives, live up to the age-old faith that peace and freedom walk together. In too many of our cities today, the peace is not secure because the freedom is incomplete.
It is the responsibility of the executive branch at all levels of government--local, State, and National--to provide and protect that freedom for all of our citizens by all means within their authority. It is the responsibility of the legislative branch at all levels, wherever that authority is not now adequate, to make it adequate. And it is the responsibility of all citizens in all sections of this country to respect the rights of all others and to respect the law of the land.
All this is not unrelated to world peace. "When a man's ways please the Lord," the Scriptures tell us, "he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him." And is not peace, in the last analysis, basically a matter of human rights--the right to live out our lives without fear of devastation--the right to breathe air as nature provided it--the right of future generations to a healthy existence?
While we proceed to safeguard our national interests, let us also safeguard human interests. And the elimination of war and arms is clearly in the interest of both. No treaty, however much it may be to the advantage of all, however tightly it may be worded, can provide absolute security against the risks of deception and evasion. But it can--if it is sufficiently effective in its enforcement and if it is sufficiently in the interests of its signers--offer far more security and far fewer risks than an unabated, uncontrolled, unpredictable arms race.
The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war. We do not want a war. We do not now expect a war. This generation of Americans has already had enough--more than enough--of war and hate and oppression. We shall be prepared if others wish it. We shall be alert to try to stop it. But we shall also do our part to build a world of peace where the weak are safe and the strong are just. We are not helpless before that task or hopeless of its success. Confident and unafraid, we labor on--not toward a strategy of annihilation but toward a strategy of peace.
Never Too Late to Shout About It
”In the next war the survivors will envy the dead.” If there was ever a time for antiwar dialogue, engagement, resistance, it’s right now.
Gene Marx
February 10, 2013
”In the next war the survivors will envy the dead.” If there was ever a time for antiwar dialogue, engagement, resistance, it’s right now.
Gene Marx
February 10, 2013
Vue du siège de Gibraltar et explosion des batteries flottantes commons.wikimedia
“All acts of healing and love – and the defiance of war is an affirmation of love – allow us to shout out to the vast powers of the universe that, however broken we are, we are not helpless. However we despair we are not without hope, however weak we may feel, we will always, always, always resist.”
Chris Hedges, War is the Greatest Evil
Chris Hedges, War is the Greatest Evil
Respectfully, I have been all in for hope for as long as I can remember, but never a devotee. During the chaotic 60s of my shamelessly irresponsible youth, hope was an emotional default. Despite the radicalization of my generation, historic levels of civil unrest, and friends ending up as human remains in US issue body bags, hope was just a coping mechanism to counter undercurrents of dread and the white noise of Lyndon Johnson’s falling dominoes. Most of my draft-age fodder peers could never begin to imagine an end to the killing, but Congressional opposition to the genocide in Southeast Asia caught on and LBJ was driven out of office. Democrats and Republicans alike – Pete McCloskey, Mike Mansfield, Charles Mathias and Mike Gravel and others – challenged the pro-war narrative. Eugene McCarthy primaried LBJ. Bobby Kennedy joined the fray. It turned out my hope was more than a thing with feathers.
In sharp contrast to today’s 118th Congress, lawmakers recognized a regrettable debacle when they saw one.
In sharp contrast to today’s 118th Congress, lawmakers recognized a regrettable debacle when they saw one.
Eugene McCarthy
Mike Gravel
Bobby Kennedy
That was a lifetime ago, when wars ended, for everyone but the survivors.
A half century later, after escaping in one piece, from my own war to end all wars, a flailing American empire is now poised on the brink of direct confrontations with the world’s largest nuclear superpowers. As if a viral pandemic and planetary climate collapse weren’t enough, NATO and the US National Security State are trying to kill us all, including the very last man in Ukraine in America’s latest proxy war. And if the new Ukrainian conscription policy - lowering the draft age to 16 –and reports of a 4-hour life expectancy for new untrained troops in the Donbass are true, that poor grunt bastard’s days are numbered.
But, in a brutally frank, nightmare scenario, so are ours.
But, in a brutally frank, nightmare scenario, so are ours.
With global alliances for the Ukraine conflict set in stone and diplomatic entreaties more unlikely or unthinkable, the possibility of a massive nuclear exchange becomes more thinkable with each new weapon shipped to Zelenskyy forces by the collective West. Still, 100 US tactical nukes in Europe, intractable war power rhetoric, cornered adversaries with nothing to lose and the unfettered hubris of US foreign policy neocons is a recipe for a maelstrom, but barely gets a mention anywhere, from anyone.
Russia - Total nuclear warheads as of 2022 - 6,257 (Reuters)
An exchange of tactical nuclear devices in Eastern Europe - by accident or design - would result in counterattacks from all sides. We have been warned since Trinity, but while American support for the conflict in Ukraine has flat-lined, the escalation ladder of US and NATO weapons continues to, well, escalate. Still, no one with or without agency is talking or, better yet, shouting about it. For uncensored, unbridled antiwar dialogue, alternative media is our last best hope – there’s that word again – against unrelenting war propaganda.
US - Total nuclear warheads as of 2022 - 5,550 (Reuters)
“This threat is largely ignored by politicians and the mainstream media,” writes nuclear activist Dr. Helen Caldicott, “who continue to practice psychic numbing as we stumble blindly toward our demise.” For many progressives self-censorship became a safe place. Whoever countered the pro-NATO narrative continue to be labeled alarmists or Kremlin agents at the mere mention of a diplomatic off ramp. (Read: Peace).
And JFK’s 1963 warning at American University couldn’t have been more prescient:
And JFK’s 1963 warning at American University couldn’t have been more prescient:
“Above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy--or of a collective death-wish for the world.”
Incredibly, we would joke about nuclear annihilation in 1965, as we sang singer-songwriter Tom Lehrer’s satirical piece “So Long, Mom, I’m off to Drop the Bomb,” a much-needed musical respite from the psychotrauma of the Cuban Missile Crisis. When the laughter died, this rendition of a Cold War musical deflection had a short shelf life.
Dr. Helen Caldicott would later write:
“Knowing man’s propensity to fight, why in God’s name did the U.S. Government and Soviet Union authorize the brilliant scientists and weapons makers to construct thousands of nuclear weapons during and after the Cold War, culminating in more than 70,000 nuclear weapons during the '70s and '80s?"
No one should be breathing any easier today with over 13,000 warheads distributed among the nine nuclear armed states - United States, Russia, United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea. One targeting miscalculation or false flag provocation could result in a global crossette of destruction lasting an hour, give or take, eventually eradicating billions with the survivors envying the dead, as JFK would often quote Nikita Khrushchev.
Read complete article on Geno's Stuff Box.
Dr. Helen Caldicott would later write:
“Knowing man’s propensity to fight, why in God’s name did the U.S. Government and Soviet Union authorize the brilliant scientists and weapons makers to construct thousands of nuclear weapons during and after the Cold War, culminating in more than 70,000 nuclear weapons during the '70s and '80s?"
No one should be breathing any easier today with over 13,000 warheads distributed among the nine nuclear armed states - United States, Russia, United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea. One targeting miscalculation or false flag provocation could result in a global crossette of destruction lasting an hour, give or take, eventually eradicating billions with the survivors envying the dead, as JFK would often quote Nikita Khrushchev.
Read complete article on Geno's Stuff Box.
VFP-111 Co-Sponsors WPJC's Annual
IDP Commemoration
IDP Commemoration
WPJC Honors 20 Years of Peace and Justice
For the 19th year in a row, Whatcom Peace & Justice Center is hosting Bellingham’s International Day of Peace celebration.
International Day of Peace is WPJC's main fundraising and educational event of the year, raising critical funds to support the ever more critical work of the Center in advocating for peace and against wars & militarized systemic violence at home and abroad.
This year features a series of hybrid events including the presentation of our annual Lifetime Peacemaker Award, a new Youth Peacemaker Award, and a historical conversation with Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz honoring 20 years of resistance to endless wars, systemic violence, and the need for an international, intergenerational and intersectional peace movement.
VFP-111 & WPJC Join
Global Day of Action, Sunday, March 6,
No to War in Ukraine
Global Day of Action, Sunday, March 6,
No to War in Ukraine
- This Sunday, March 6th, VFP-111 is co-hosting with the Whatcom Peace & Justice Center and the local peace community a downtown gathering (near Bayou on the Bay) to call for the U.S. to reject war with Russia over Ukraine. We will be standing in solidarity with other local and international peace communities to support the GlobalDay of Action for Peace/Against War in Ukraine. Come join us for a while - from 12 to 1 or as long as you can stay.
- If you can't make the gathering on Sunday, plan to attend the Peace Vigil on Friday, March 4th, from 4 to 5, at Magnolia & Cornwall. No war in Ukraine, No to NATO expansion!
- Also, on Saturday, March 5th there will be an information and sharing circle at the north end of Boulevard Park at 12pm.
Wait a Minute, We Got in This Ukrainian Mess...How?
Feb 6, 2014, Victoria Nuland handing out food to insurgents in Maidan Square who overthrew the government two weeks later. US Ambassador to her left.
By Dianne Foster • Feb 20, 2022
I am writing with urgency to correct the mainstream media’s disinformation about Ukraine and supposed Russian aggression there. I clearly remember taking a group of peace activists including Occupy Bellingham, Veterans for Peace, and Whatcom Peace and Justice, into Representative Rick Larsen’s office after the February 2014 United States-backed coup in Ukraine. We helped overthrow the democratically elected president, Viktor Yanukovich, and installed the neo-Nazi Svoboda and Right Sector parties into power. Yanukovich’s election in 2010 had been validated by the U.N. as fair and square.
The image of then U.S. Secretary of European Affairs Victoria Nuland, a Dick Cheney appointee promoted by Hillary Clinton, standing on the stage in Kiev’s Maiden Square, throwing cookies out to the mobs of neo-Nazi’s and encouraging them to riot, is imprinted in my memory. On the stage behind her stood John McCain and Joe Biden, she had requested Obama send them as “point men” in this putsch. Shots were fired, Yanukovich left in haste for Russia, and millionaire Petro Poroshenko was selected to lead the country. Even Henry Kissinger, the king of “regime change” operations, protested in a Washington Post editorial, that this was over-the-top and Ukraine deserved their own sovereignty. Notably, Nuland’s husband, Robert Kagan, was a leading neocon architect of the Iraq War.
It was no surprise, therefore, that Putin took back the historically Russian seaport of Crimea, the Black Sea gem that was bequeathed to Ukraine, for uncertain reasons, by Ukrainian-born former Premier Nikita Khrushchev in 1954.
Then there’s the history of the Svoboda and Right Sector political parties during WW2 in Ukraine: it is horrific. They were notorious for heinous crimes such as carving up Jewish children. Even today they are carrying out anti-Semitic pogroms, primarily by the Azov Battalion, a neo-Nazi paramilitary group that is now incorporated into the Ukraine National Guard. Although Congressman Ro Khanna attempted to insure that no American aid went to that organization, it has unfortunately been funded in an attempt to oppose Russian interests there.
The neo-Nazi-leaning Ukraine government has been bombing the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine since the 2014 coup, prompting nationalist leaders in Russia to push Putin into some action to take back the entire country, though current CIA Director William Burns does not believe Putin will do it. During April of 2014, we Democrats in the 40th Legislative District passed a resolution condemning this coup, in accordance with the Whatcom Dems platform that states: “Our government should not engage in overt or covert efforts to destabilize other nations’ governments.”
As someone whose father was a POW in Nazi Germany, I have spent much of my academic and personal life researching and opposing fascist movements. Many people forget that it was Russia and the Russian people who suffered the most in World War II, and without Russian leadership we would have lost to Hitler. If they hadn’t won the war in Europe, I wouldn’t be here today.
It should also be noted that when President Mikhail Gorbachev voluntarily ended the Cold War in 1990 by lowering the Berlin Wall, the U.S. promised in return that the West would not bring former Soviet states into NATO, thereby guaranteeing a safety zone around Russia. How would we feel if Russia incorporated Mexico or Canada into their sphere of influence? By 1994, President Clinton reneged on that promise, as one country after another was admitted to NATO, whose purpose at that time was to perpetrate a new Cold War. For a brief period, Clinton proposed a “peace dividend” that would divert money from the military to social needs. It appeared the military-industrial complex was not too happy with that idea. Thus we have had “endless wars” and regime changes; one of the most tragic was in Afghanistan. I am, however, optimistic to see countries like Chile and Honduras reversing the trend and moving away from neoliberal imperial domination.
What is most disturbing about this narrative is that President Biden was there, in Ukraine: he participated in that coup, and is now blaming it on the Russians. We cannot have real diplomacy based on lies. I plan to call the White House and my congressional representatives and encourage them to tell the truth. They are provoking a potential nuclear war that would end history. I have attached the Veterans for Peace resolution that was passed nationally in March of 2014 by that organization; it provides accurate details.
See NWCitizen.com for related links.
Dianne Foster guest wrote this opinion article for NW Citizen about our involvement today with Ukraine. She has a B.A. political science/international relations from the U. of W., and is a former “PCO of the Year” with the Whatcom Democrats.
Is the U.S. Provoking War with Russia?
Margaret Kimberley
January 27, 2022
Margaret Kimberley
January 27, 2022
The corporate media always carry water for the state, and they are never more dangerous than when the nation is on a war footing. Right now the United States government is sending weapons to Ukraine. One wouldn’t know that because of constant references to “lethal aid.” The euphemisms and subterfuge are necessary for a very simple reason. Everyone except the Washington war party knows that provoking war with Russia is extremely dangerous.
Joe Biden is picking up where he left off, as Barack Obama’s Ukraine viceroy. He and his incompetent foreign policy team have spun a tale about a pending Russian attack on Ukraine. In reality, it is the U.S. that is ginning up war by provoking the Ukrainians to start a fight that they can’t win. In 2014 a U.S. backed coup put a far-right clique in power. The people of the Donbass region in the east, largely ethnic Russians, wanted no part of the new anti-Russian government and sought autonomy. The resulting war has killed some 30,000 people.
Now the Biden team who publicly insulted the Chinese government and withdrew from Afghanistan without even being able to secure a major airport, have moved on to opening the proverbial can of whoopass with the world’s other major nuclear power. They are using Ukraine in an ill-advised effort to instigate what could lead to disaster.
The 2014 coup against an elected Ukrainian president took place in part because the Russians underestimated the extent of U.S. and NATO determination. They roused themselves quickly however and Crimeans, who are mostly of Russian origin, voted to rejoin the nation they had been a part of until 1954. The U.S./NATO regime change effort came at a steep price for Ukraine. Thanks to Atlanticist meddling it is now the poorest country in Europe that won’t get the NATO and EU membership it was promised. It remains a pawn between two powerful countries.
The U.S. is pulling all the hybrid warfare schemes out of the tool box. For months they claimed that Russian troops were massed on the border, ready to invade. They have engaged in diplomacy but only to try and get their way. Russia has held firm on a guarantee of no further NATO encroachment and the removal of missiles from their border. The French and Germans are feckless and do what Washington wants. They should be pressuring Ukraine to live up to the Minsk II Agreement which requires talks with the breakaway Donbass region.
None of this information is conveyed to the American people who live in ignorance orchestrated by republicans, democrats, and their friends in corporate media. Republican senators who want to run for president outdo one another with nonsense about stopping the Nord Stream II gas pipeline that Germany, a U.S. ally, asked the Russians to build. Winter is coming, quite literally, and Europe needs Russia’s gas. But unless they stop following Uncle Sam’s bullying they will end up with nothing.
Now Washington is pulling the same ploy they attempted in Ethiopia. They have declared that the Russians are coming and have even announced an evacuation of embassy personnel families from the capital city of Kyiv. Vassal states Australia and the United Kingdom have followed suit, but a European Union official demurred , “We are not going to do the same thing because we don’t know any specific reasons.” The Ukrainian government, a de facto U.S. colony, wasn't happy and called the evacuations “premature.”
If the right hand doesn’t know what the left is doing, then one can only conclude that big lies are being told. The U.S. has been hoisted on its own petard and now has little more than dangerous bluster to get its own allies in line.
Biden himself is a part of this problem of his own making. In a recent press conference he declared that Russia was on the verge of invading but then said a little invasion wouldn’t be so bad after all. It isn’t clear if he was speaking from his usual state of confusion or if he really meant what he said.
The Russians certainly mean what they say. As Secretary of State Antony Blinken rushes from Moscow to Berlin to London to Moscow, seemingly making things up as he goes along, the Russians dig in their heels and make clear that their days of being pushovers are in the past. The most committed puppet states like the U.K. go along with whatever Washington wants. They can be counted on to repeat an unsourced story of a Russian plan to overthrow the Ukrainian government or something else equally nonsensical. The people most likely to use a false flag event to justify going to war, instead claim that the other side will do so. The result is a situation that could go badly over the slightest provocation or even a perceived provocation.
Read complete article on LA Progressive.
Joe Biden is picking up where he left off, as Barack Obama’s Ukraine viceroy. He and his incompetent foreign policy team have spun a tale about a pending Russian attack on Ukraine. In reality, it is the U.S. that is ginning up war by provoking the Ukrainians to start a fight that they can’t win. In 2014 a U.S. backed coup put a far-right clique in power. The people of the Donbass region in the east, largely ethnic Russians, wanted no part of the new anti-Russian government and sought autonomy. The resulting war has killed some 30,000 people.
Now the Biden team who publicly insulted the Chinese government and withdrew from Afghanistan without even being able to secure a major airport, have moved on to opening the proverbial can of whoopass with the world’s other major nuclear power. They are using Ukraine in an ill-advised effort to instigate what could lead to disaster.
The 2014 coup against an elected Ukrainian president took place in part because the Russians underestimated the extent of U.S. and NATO determination. They roused themselves quickly however and Crimeans, who are mostly of Russian origin, voted to rejoin the nation they had been a part of until 1954. The U.S./NATO regime change effort came at a steep price for Ukraine. Thanks to Atlanticist meddling it is now the poorest country in Europe that won’t get the NATO and EU membership it was promised. It remains a pawn between two powerful countries.
The U.S. is pulling all the hybrid warfare schemes out of the tool box. For months they claimed that Russian troops were massed on the border, ready to invade. They have engaged in diplomacy but only to try and get their way. Russia has held firm on a guarantee of no further NATO encroachment and the removal of missiles from their border. The French and Germans are feckless and do what Washington wants. They should be pressuring Ukraine to live up to the Minsk II Agreement which requires talks with the breakaway Donbass region.
None of this information is conveyed to the American people who live in ignorance orchestrated by republicans, democrats, and their friends in corporate media. Republican senators who want to run for president outdo one another with nonsense about stopping the Nord Stream II gas pipeline that Germany, a U.S. ally, asked the Russians to build. Winter is coming, quite literally, and Europe needs Russia’s gas. But unless they stop following Uncle Sam’s bullying they will end up with nothing.
Now Washington is pulling the same ploy they attempted in Ethiopia. They have declared that the Russians are coming and have even announced an evacuation of embassy personnel families from the capital city of Kyiv. Vassal states Australia and the United Kingdom have followed suit, but a European Union official demurred , “We are not going to do the same thing because we don’t know any specific reasons.” The Ukrainian government, a de facto U.S. colony, wasn't happy and called the evacuations “premature.”
If the right hand doesn’t know what the left is doing, then one can only conclude that big lies are being told. The U.S. has been hoisted on its own petard and now has little more than dangerous bluster to get its own allies in line.
Biden himself is a part of this problem of his own making. In a recent press conference he declared that Russia was on the verge of invading but then said a little invasion wouldn’t be so bad after all. It isn’t clear if he was speaking from his usual state of confusion or if he really meant what he said.
The Russians certainly mean what they say. As Secretary of State Antony Blinken rushes from Moscow to Berlin to London to Moscow, seemingly making things up as he goes along, the Russians dig in their heels and make clear that their days of being pushovers are in the past. The most committed puppet states like the U.K. go along with whatever Washington wants. They can be counted on to repeat an unsourced story of a Russian plan to overthrow the Ukrainian government or something else equally nonsensical. The people most likely to use a false flag event to justify going to war, instead claim that the other side will do so. The result is a situation that could go badly over the slightest provocation or even a perceived provocation.
Read complete article on LA Progressive.
Veterans Release Nuclear Posture Review
The U.S.-based international organization Veterans For Peace has released its own assessment of the current global threat of nuclear war, ahead of the anticipated release of the Biden Administration’s Nuclear Posture Review. The Veterans For Peace Nuclear Posture Review warns that the danger of nuclear war is greater than ever and that nuclear disarmament must be vigorously pursued. Veterans For Peace plans to deliver their Nuclear Posture Review to the President and Vice President, to every member of Congress, and to the Pentagon.
With the first anniversary of the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) on January 22, the Veterans For Peace Nuclear Posture Review calls on the U.S. government to sign the treaty and to work with other nuclear-armed states to eliminate all the world’s nuclear weapons. The TPNW, approved by a vote of 122-1 in the UN General Assembly in July of 2017, reflects the international consensus against the existence of such weapons.
Veterans For Peace Nuclear Posture Review also calls for measures that would reduce the risk of nuclear war, such as implementing policies for No First Use and taking nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert.
As early as this month, President Biden is expected to issue a United States Nuclear Posture Review, prepared by the Department of Defense in a tradition started in 1994 during the Clinton Administration and continued during the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations. Veterans For Peace anticipates that the Biden Administration’s Nuclear Posture Review will continue to reflect the unrealistic goals of full spectrum dominance and justify the continuing expenditure of billions of dollars on nuclear weapons.
“Veterans have learned the hard way to be skeptical of our government’s military adventures, which have led us from one disastrous war to another,” said Ken Mayers, a retired Marine Corps major. “Nuclear weapons are a threat to the very existence of human civilization,” continued Mayers, “so the U.S. nuclear posture is too important to be left to the cold warriors at the Pentagon. Veterans For Peace has developed our own Nuclear Posture Review, one that is consistent with U.S. treaty obligations and reflects the research and work of many arms control experts.”
The 10-page document prepared by Veterans For Peace reviews the nuclear posture of all the nuclear-armed states – the U.S., Russia, the UK, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel. It makes a number of recommendations for how the U.S. could provide leadership to begin a process of worldwide disarmament.
“This is not rocket science,” said Gerry Condon, a Vietnam-era veteran and former president of Veterans For Peace. “The experts make nuclear disarmament seem impossibly difficult. However, there is a growing international consensus against the existence of such weapons. The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was approved overwhelmingly by the UN General Assembly in July 2017 and went into effect on January 22, 2021. It IS possible and necessary to eliminate all nuclear weapons, as 122 nations of the world have agreed.”
LINK to the Veterans For Peace Nuclear Posture Review
With the first anniversary of the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) on January 22, the Veterans For Peace Nuclear Posture Review calls on the U.S. government to sign the treaty and to work with other nuclear-armed states to eliminate all the world’s nuclear weapons. The TPNW, approved by a vote of 122-1 in the UN General Assembly in July of 2017, reflects the international consensus against the existence of such weapons.
Veterans For Peace Nuclear Posture Review also calls for measures that would reduce the risk of nuclear war, such as implementing policies for No First Use and taking nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert.
As early as this month, President Biden is expected to issue a United States Nuclear Posture Review, prepared by the Department of Defense in a tradition started in 1994 during the Clinton Administration and continued during the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations. Veterans For Peace anticipates that the Biden Administration’s Nuclear Posture Review will continue to reflect the unrealistic goals of full spectrum dominance and justify the continuing expenditure of billions of dollars on nuclear weapons.
“Veterans have learned the hard way to be skeptical of our government’s military adventures, which have led us from one disastrous war to another,” said Ken Mayers, a retired Marine Corps major. “Nuclear weapons are a threat to the very existence of human civilization,” continued Mayers, “so the U.S. nuclear posture is too important to be left to the cold warriors at the Pentagon. Veterans For Peace has developed our own Nuclear Posture Review, one that is consistent with U.S. treaty obligations and reflects the research and work of many arms control experts.”
The 10-page document prepared by Veterans For Peace reviews the nuclear posture of all the nuclear-armed states – the U.S., Russia, the UK, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel. It makes a number of recommendations for how the U.S. could provide leadership to begin a process of worldwide disarmament.
“This is not rocket science,” said Gerry Condon, a Vietnam-era veteran and former president of Veterans For Peace. “The experts make nuclear disarmament seem impossibly difficult. However, there is a growing international consensus against the existence of such weapons. The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was approved overwhelmingly by the UN General Assembly in July 2017 and went into effect on January 22, 2021. It IS possible and necessary to eliminate all nuclear weapons, as 122 nations of the world have agreed.”
LINK to the Veterans For Peace Nuclear Posture Review
National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund
On July 19, 2012, one year after the death of Rep. John Lewis, Representative Jim McGovern of Massachusetts became the new sponsor of the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Bill, H.R. 4529. "To affirm the freedom of taxpayers who are conscientiously opposed to participation in war, to provide that the income, estate, or gift tax payments of such taxpayers be used for nonmilitary purposes, to create the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund to receive such payments, to improve revenue collection, and for other purposes."
This bill "directs the Department of Treasury to establish in the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund for the deposit of income, gift and estate taxes paid by or on behalf of taxpayers: (1) who are designated conscientious objectors opposed to participation in war in any form based upon their sincerely held moral, ethical, or religious beliefs or training (within the meaning of the Military Selective Service Act); and (2) who have certified their beliefs in writing."
"Amounts deposited in the Fund shall be allocated annually to any appropriation not for a military purpose. Treasury shall report to the House and Senate Appropriations Committees on the total amount transferred into the Fund during the preceding fiscal year and the purposes for which such amount was allocated. The privacy of the individuals using the Fund shall be protected."
Please sign this petition to move your Congressional representatives to support this bill.
This bill "directs the Department of Treasury to establish in the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund for the deposit of income, gift and estate taxes paid by or on behalf of taxpayers: (1) who are designated conscientious objectors opposed to participation in war in any form based upon their sincerely held moral, ethical, or religious beliefs or training (within the meaning of the Military Selective Service Act); and (2) who have certified their beliefs in writing."
"Amounts deposited in the Fund shall be allocated annually to any appropriation not for a military purpose. Treasury shall report to the House and Senate Appropriations Committees on the total amount transferred into the Fund during the preceding fiscal year and the purposes for which such amount was allocated. The privacy of the individuals using the Fund shall be protected."
Please sign this petition to move your Congressional representatives to support this bill.
April 21, 2021
Support the
Tropes
How media language encourages the left to support wars, coups and intervention
Alan MacLeod
Support the
Tropes
How media language encourages the left to support wars, coups and intervention
Alan MacLeod
In an earlier piece (FAIR.org, 3/3/21), we explored some country case study examples of how the press helps to manufacture consent for regime change and other US actions abroad among left-leaning audiences, a traditionally conflict-skeptical group.
Some level of buy-in, or at least a hesitancy to resist, among the United States’ more left-leaning half is necessary to ensure that US interventions are carried out with a minimum of domestic opposition. To this end, corporate media invoke the language of human rights and humanitarianism to convince those to the left of center to accept, if not support, US actions abroad—a treatment of sorts for the country’s 50-year-long Vietnam syndrome.
What follows are some of the common tropes used by establishment outlets to convince skeptical leftists that this time, things might be different, selling a progressive intervention everyone can get behind.
Think of the women!
The vast majority of the world was against the US attack on Afghanistan that followed the 9/11 attacks in 2001. However, the idea had overwhelming support from the US public, including from Democrats. In fact, when Gallup (Brookings, 1/9/20) asked about the occupation in 2019, there was slightly more support for maintaining troops there among Democrats than Republicans—38% vs. 34%—and slightly less support for withdrawing troops (21% vs. 23%).
Media coverage can partially explain this phenomenon, convincing some and at the least providing cover for those in power. This was not a war of aggression, they insisted. They were not simply there to capture Osama bin Laden (whom the Taliban actually offered to hand over); this was a fight to bring freedom to the oppressed women of the country. As First Lady Laura Bush said: We respect our mothers, our sisters and daughters. "Fighting brutality against women and children is not the expression of a specific culture; it is the acceptance of our common humanity—a commitment shared by people of goodwill on every continent…. The fight against terrorism is also a fight for the rights and dignity of women."
Wars are not fought to liberate women (FAIR.org, 7/26/17), and bombing people is never a feminist activity (FAIR.org, 6/28/20). But the New York Times was among the chief architects in constructing the belief in a phantom feminist war. Within weeks of the invasion (12/2/01), it reported on the “joyful return” of women to college campuses, profiling one student who strode up the steps tentatively at first, her body covered from face to foot by blue cotton. As she neared the door, she flipped the cloth back over her head, revealing round cheeks, dark ringlets of hair and the searching brown eyes of a student.
The over-the-top symbolism was hard to miss: This was a country changed, and all thanks to the invasion.
Time magazine also played heavily on this angle. Six weeks after the invasion (11/26/01), it told readers that “the greatest pageant of mass liberation since the fight for suffrage” was occurring, as “female faces, shy and bright, emerged from the dark cellars,” casting off their veils and symbolically stomping on them. If the implication was not clear enough, it directly told readers “the sight of jubilation was a holiday gift, a reminder of reasons the war was worth fighting beyond those of basic self-defense.”
“How much better will their lives be now?” Time (12/3/01) asked. Not much better, as it turned out.
A few days later, Time‘s cover (12/3/01) featured a portrait of a blonde, light-skinned Afghan woman, with the words, “Lifting the Veil. The shocking story of how the Taliban brutalized the women of Afghanistan. How much better will their lives be now?”
This was representative of a much wider phenomenon. A study by Carol Stabile and Deepa Kumar published in Media, Culture & Society (9/1/05) found that, in 1999, there were 29 US newspaper articles and 37 broadcast TV reports about women’s rights in Afghanistan. Between 2000 and September 11, 2001, those figures were 15 and 33, respectively. However, in the 16 weeks between September 12 and January 1, 2002, Americans were inundated with stories on the subject, with 93 newspaper articles and 628 TV reports on the subject. Once the real objectives of the war were secure, those figures fell off a cliff.
Antiwar messages were largely absent from corporate news coverage. Indeed, as FAIR founder Jeff Cohen noted in his book Cable News Confidential, CNN executives instructed their staff to constantly counter any images of civilian casualties with pro-war messages, even if “it may start sounding rote.” This sort of coverage helped to push 75% of Democratic voters into supporting the ground war.
As reality set in, it became increasingly difficult to pretend women’s rights in Afghanistan were seriously improving. Women still face the same problems as they did before. As a female Afghan member of parliament told Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies (CounterSpin, 2/17/21), women in Afghanistan have three principal enemies:
"One is the Taliban. Two is this group of warlords, disguised as a government, that the US supports. And the third is the US occupation…. If you in the West could get the US occupation out, we’d only have two."
However, Time managed to find a way to tug on the heartstrings of left-leaning audiences to support continued occupation. Featuring a shocking image of an 18-year-old local woman who had her ear and nose cut off, a 2010 cover story (8/9/10) asked readers to wonder “what happens if we leave Afghanistan,” the clear implication being the US must stay to prevent further brutality—despite the fact that the woman’s mutilation occurred after eight years of US occupation (Extra!, 10/10).
Vox (3/4/21) asserted that the US occupation of Afghanistan has meant “better rights for women and children” without offering evidence that that is the case.
The trick is still being used to this day. In March, Vox (3/4/21) credulously reported that Joint Chiefs of Staff chair Gen. Mark Milley made an emotional plea to Biden that he must stay in Afghanistan, otherwise women’s rights “will go back to the Stone Age.” It’s so good to know the upper echelons of the military industrial complex are filled with such passionate feminists.
In reality, nearly 20 years of occupation has only led to a situation where zero percent of Afghans considered themselves to be “thriving” while 85% are “suffering,” according to a Gallup poll. Only one in three girls goes to school, let alone university.
And all of this ignores the fact that the US supported radical Islamist groups and their takeover of the country in the first place, a move that drastically reduced women’s rights. Pre-Taliban, half of university students were women, as were 40% of the country’s doctors, 70% of its teachers and 30% of its civil servants—reflecting the reforms of the Soviet-backed government that the US dedicated massive resources to destroying.
Today, in half of the country’s provinces, fewer than 20% of teachers are female (and in many, fewer than 10% are). Only 37% of adolescent girls can read (compared to 66% of boys). Meanwhile, being a female gynecologist is now considered “one of the most dangerous jobs in the world” (New Statesman, 9/24/14). So much for a new golden age.
The “think of the women” trope is far from unique to Afghanistan. In fact, 19th century British imperial propagandists used the plight of Hindu women in India and Muslim women in Egypt as a pretext to invade and conquer those countries. The tactic’s longevity is perhaps testament to its effectiveness.
Read complete article on FAIR.
Some level of buy-in, or at least a hesitancy to resist, among the United States’ more left-leaning half is necessary to ensure that US interventions are carried out with a minimum of domestic opposition. To this end, corporate media invoke the language of human rights and humanitarianism to convince those to the left of center to accept, if not support, US actions abroad—a treatment of sorts for the country’s 50-year-long Vietnam syndrome.
What follows are some of the common tropes used by establishment outlets to convince skeptical leftists that this time, things might be different, selling a progressive intervention everyone can get behind.
Think of the women!
The vast majority of the world was against the US attack on Afghanistan that followed the 9/11 attacks in 2001. However, the idea had overwhelming support from the US public, including from Democrats. In fact, when Gallup (Brookings, 1/9/20) asked about the occupation in 2019, there was slightly more support for maintaining troops there among Democrats than Republicans—38% vs. 34%—and slightly less support for withdrawing troops (21% vs. 23%).
Media coverage can partially explain this phenomenon, convincing some and at the least providing cover for those in power. This was not a war of aggression, they insisted. They were not simply there to capture Osama bin Laden (whom the Taliban actually offered to hand over); this was a fight to bring freedom to the oppressed women of the country. As First Lady Laura Bush said: We respect our mothers, our sisters and daughters. "Fighting brutality against women and children is not the expression of a specific culture; it is the acceptance of our common humanity—a commitment shared by people of goodwill on every continent…. The fight against terrorism is also a fight for the rights and dignity of women."
Wars are not fought to liberate women (FAIR.org, 7/26/17), and bombing people is never a feminist activity (FAIR.org, 6/28/20). But the New York Times was among the chief architects in constructing the belief in a phantom feminist war. Within weeks of the invasion (12/2/01), it reported on the “joyful return” of women to college campuses, profiling one student who strode up the steps tentatively at first, her body covered from face to foot by blue cotton. As she neared the door, she flipped the cloth back over her head, revealing round cheeks, dark ringlets of hair and the searching brown eyes of a student.
The over-the-top symbolism was hard to miss: This was a country changed, and all thanks to the invasion.
Time magazine also played heavily on this angle. Six weeks after the invasion (11/26/01), it told readers that “the greatest pageant of mass liberation since the fight for suffrage” was occurring, as “female faces, shy and bright, emerged from the dark cellars,” casting off their veils and symbolically stomping on them. If the implication was not clear enough, it directly told readers “the sight of jubilation was a holiday gift, a reminder of reasons the war was worth fighting beyond those of basic self-defense.”
“How much better will their lives be now?” Time (12/3/01) asked. Not much better, as it turned out.
A few days later, Time‘s cover (12/3/01) featured a portrait of a blonde, light-skinned Afghan woman, with the words, “Lifting the Veil. The shocking story of how the Taliban brutalized the women of Afghanistan. How much better will their lives be now?”
This was representative of a much wider phenomenon. A study by Carol Stabile and Deepa Kumar published in Media, Culture & Society (9/1/05) found that, in 1999, there were 29 US newspaper articles and 37 broadcast TV reports about women’s rights in Afghanistan. Between 2000 and September 11, 2001, those figures were 15 and 33, respectively. However, in the 16 weeks between September 12 and January 1, 2002, Americans were inundated with stories on the subject, with 93 newspaper articles and 628 TV reports on the subject. Once the real objectives of the war were secure, those figures fell off a cliff.
Antiwar messages were largely absent from corporate news coverage. Indeed, as FAIR founder Jeff Cohen noted in his book Cable News Confidential, CNN executives instructed their staff to constantly counter any images of civilian casualties with pro-war messages, even if “it may start sounding rote.” This sort of coverage helped to push 75% of Democratic voters into supporting the ground war.
As reality set in, it became increasingly difficult to pretend women’s rights in Afghanistan were seriously improving. Women still face the same problems as they did before. As a female Afghan member of parliament told Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies (CounterSpin, 2/17/21), women in Afghanistan have three principal enemies:
"One is the Taliban. Two is this group of warlords, disguised as a government, that the US supports. And the third is the US occupation…. If you in the West could get the US occupation out, we’d only have two."
However, Time managed to find a way to tug on the heartstrings of left-leaning audiences to support continued occupation. Featuring a shocking image of an 18-year-old local woman who had her ear and nose cut off, a 2010 cover story (8/9/10) asked readers to wonder “what happens if we leave Afghanistan,” the clear implication being the US must stay to prevent further brutality—despite the fact that the woman’s mutilation occurred after eight years of US occupation (Extra!, 10/10).
Vox (3/4/21) asserted that the US occupation of Afghanistan has meant “better rights for women and children” without offering evidence that that is the case.
The trick is still being used to this day. In March, Vox (3/4/21) credulously reported that Joint Chiefs of Staff chair Gen. Mark Milley made an emotional plea to Biden that he must stay in Afghanistan, otherwise women’s rights “will go back to the Stone Age.” It’s so good to know the upper echelons of the military industrial complex are filled with such passionate feminists.
In reality, nearly 20 years of occupation has only led to a situation where zero percent of Afghans considered themselves to be “thriving” while 85% are “suffering,” according to a Gallup poll. Only one in three girls goes to school, let alone university.
And all of this ignores the fact that the US supported radical Islamist groups and their takeover of the country in the first place, a move that drastically reduced women’s rights. Pre-Taliban, half of university students were women, as were 40% of the country’s doctors, 70% of its teachers and 30% of its civil servants—reflecting the reforms of the Soviet-backed government that the US dedicated massive resources to destroying.
Today, in half of the country’s provinces, fewer than 20% of teachers are female (and in many, fewer than 10% are). Only 37% of adolescent girls can read (compared to 66% of boys). Meanwhile, being a female gynecologist is now considered “one of the most dangerous jobs in the world” (New Statesman, 9/24/14). So much for a new golden age.
The “think of the women” trope is far from unique to Afghanistan. In fact, 19th century British imperial propagandists used the plight of Hindu women in India and Muslim women in Egypt as a pretext to invade and conquer those countries. The tactic’s longevity is perhaps testament to its effectiveness.
Read complete article on FAIR.
Armistice Day Cringe
November 11, 2020
By Gene Marx
November 11, 2020
By Gene Marx
washingtonpost.com
If you - like me - spent your prime of life in the ranks of some branch of the military and people know it, there is absolutely no escaping the cringe-worthy platitude “Thank you for your service.” I usually go out of my way to avoid any exchange at all, but if unavoidable, my usual reply is “Thanks, but I didn’t serve, I was used.”
Look, I am a Vietnam veteran, OK. And long before I completed nearly 100 combat missions, I realized that I was not one of the good guys. I was an unwitting interventionist with Navy Wings of Gold, flying cover for an invasion force. I should have known better from the start but, like my father before me, I “served,” like a mindless tool.
Forbes Magazine would have its social media readership come to more marketable concepts of 21st century military service. In short, a Veterans Day article by Diana Rau broad brushed generations of US service members. Rau meant well but her piece read like a USAA commercial. The title alone, What I Really Mean When I Say Thank You for Your Service, was enough to turn my laptop into a COVID self-isolation projectile because I knew what was coming.
“Dear Veteran, we celebrate you…thank you for creating the space for me, and so many others, to dream fearlessly.”
Let’s hope yours come without night sweats or heart-pounding triggers.
“What I mean is because of your actions and service, I don’t worry about roadside bombs enroute to meetings or the safety of my family and friends while I’m at work.”
That, Diana, is because bombs are meant for Muslim villages in the Middle East or Asia.
“My ability to experience joy and wonder are because you protected and created the space for me to appreciate life's beauty without fear.”
Believe me, “life’s beauty”, yours or anyone else’s, never entered our collective minds.
Surprisingly, the piece neglected to include, but implied nonetheless “Thank you for our freedom.”
Breaking news! There is not a single veteran, from Okinawa to Kandahar, who served and or fought for anyone’s freedom. Go ahead, ask one.
Sadly, most veterans today owe their military career “opportunities” to an economic draft resulting from the lip service and empty promises of unbloodied Congressional war hawks. A full-time job program, medical and educational benefits, steady salaries, all for targeting supposed insurgents or reasonable facsimiles in countries that many could not spell or find on a map before, or even after, signing up. I was there, one of them, in 1972 in Southeast Asia, but an unraveling empire in the age of endless war and COVID will be an equal employment opportunity on steroids, until the next Resistance takes notice of the true costs of war.
Veterans Day, formerly Armistice Day in the US, often takes me back to a ceremony in 2003 held in honor of a local soldier killed on the last day of WWI. His granddaughter asked me to accompany her son to his gravesite at Arlington, his headstone was corrected with the proper date and the correct spelling of his name. In a remote, lonely corner of Arlington it was just the two of us. A few words, a couple of salutes, two coins left in remembrance and we were done. I'm guessing that was more ceremony than the young Texas private received in 1918.
And neither of us thanked him for his service. We knew better.
Look, I am a Vietnam veteran, OK. And long before I completed nearly 100 combat missions, I realized that I was not one of the good guys. I was an unwitting interventionist with Navy Wings of Gold, flying cover for an invasion force. I should have known better from the start but, like my father before me, I “served,” like a mindless tool.
Forbes Magazine would have its social media readership come to more marketable concepts of 21st century military service. In short, a Veterans Day article by Diana Rau broad brushed generations of US service members. Rau meant well but her piece read like a USAA commercial. The title alone, What I Really Mean When I Say Thank You for Your Service, was enough to turn my laptop into a COVID self-isolation projectile because I knew what was coming.
“Dear Veteran, we celebrate you…thank you for creating the space for me, and so many others, to dream fearlessly.”
Let’s hope yours come without night sweats or heart-pounding triggers.
“What I mean is because of your actions and service, I don’t worry about roadside bombs enroute to meetings or the safety of my family and friends while I’m at work.”
That, Diana, is because bombs are meant for Muslim villages in the Middle East or Asia.
“My ability to experience joy and wonder are because you protected and created the space for me to appreciate life's beauty without fear.”
Believe me, “life’s beauty”, yours or anyone else’s, never entered our collective minds.
Surprisingly, the piece neglected to include, but implied nonetheless “Thank you for our freedom.”
Breaking news! There is not a single veteran, from Okinawa to Kandahar, who served and or fought for anyone’s freedom. Go ahead, ask one.
Sadly, most veterans today owe their military career “opportunities” to an economic draft resulting from the lip service and empty promises of unbloodied Congressional war hawks. A full-time job program, medical and educational benefits, steady salaries, all for targeting supposed insurgents or reasonable facsimiles in countries that many could not spell or find on a map before, or even after, signing up. I was there, one of them, in 1972 in Southeast Asia, but an unraveling empire in the age of endless war and COVID will be an equal employment opportunity on steroids, until the next Resistance takes notice of the true costs of war.
Veterans Day, formerly Armistice Day in the US, often takes me back to a ceremony in 2003 held in honor of a local soldier killed on the last day of WWI. His granddaughter asked me to accompany her son to his gravesite at Arlington, his headstone was corrected with the proper date and the correct spelling of his name. In a remote, lonely corner of Arlington it was just the two of us. A few words, a couple of salutes, two coins left in remembrance and we were done. I'm guessing that was more ceremony than the young Texas private received in 1918.
And neither of us thanked him for his service. We knew better.
Ron Baker commons.wikimedia.org
John Prine’s lyrical one-liners could take your breath away
Steve Kolowich
April 8, 2020 at 7:26 a.m. PDT
John Prine once had a job dusting pews and shoveling snow at an Episcopal church. Walking to work early one Sunday to clear the steps after a snowfall, he heard sirens near the train tracks. An altar boy, heading to serve Mass at a different church, had been lost in a reverie and was struck from behind by a slow-moving commuter train.
Anxious confusion colored the scene. “There was a bunch of mothers that didn’t know where their kids were, and they didn’t know — they hadn’t identified the kid yet,” Prine recalled a few years ago. “And that’s stuck in my mind.”
He eventually wrote that memory into a song called “Bruised Orange (Chain of Sorrow).” It’s about maintaining your center of gravity while moving through a world that bombards you with senseless tragedies: “You can gaze out the window, get mad and get madder, throw your hands in the air and say what does it matter, but it don’t do no good to get angry — so help me, I know.”
Those words stick in our minds today as we gaze out at the wreckage of the coronavirus pandemic: thousands dead, thousands more hospitalized. An economy in the icehouse. Millions huddled in debt and in doubt. The train crept up while we were in a daydream, and now a new victim has been identified: John Prine died on Tuesday of complications from covid-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus. He was 73.
Before he was an American songwriting legend, Prine was a mailman with a hobby. He gigged around Chicago and one night, at a saloon in Old Town, he managed to impress Kris Kristofferson. Later, when Prine was in New York, Kristofferson invited him to play to a star-making crowd at a Greenwich Village club. Prine sang three songs, including “Sam Stone,” a song about a heroin-addicted Vietnam War veteran that has maybe the most brutal couplet in the American songbook: “There’s a hole in daddy’s arm where all the money goes; Jesus Christ died for nothin’, I suppose.”
Prine mastered the art of shrinking tragedy and comedy down to where he could balance both on his tongue at the same time. His most iconic songs were bar-napkin sketches of uncanny depth, featuring at least one casually brilliant phrase that would jump out at you from the blind corner of a rhyme.
“Father, forgive us for what we must do; you forgive us, we’ll forgive you.”
“My head shouted down to my heart, ‘You’d better look out below!’ ”
“Ain’t it funny how an old broken bottle looks just like a diamond ring.”
Ain’t it funny. It’s less a question than a riddle that runs down the spine of human experience, and through Prine’s body of work. He wrote silly lines into sad songs and vice versa. “The airlines lost the elephant’s trunk,” he laments on “Sabu Visits the Twin Cities Alone,” a bleak and bizarre song about the child actor from “The Elephant Boy” being sent on a publicity tour to the Midwest in winter. Does Prine take the opportunity to rhyme “child actor” with “wind chill factor”? You bet. But the smirk in his voice is imperceptible.
He didn’t shrink from darkness but seemed at home in the light. “Life, to me, in general, is humorous,” he told Peter Cooper in a 2014 interview at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. “The world is humorous.”
Death, too — the idea of it, anyway. On “Please Don’t Bury Me,” Prine imagines arriving in heaven unexpectedly. A receiving party (angels, presumably) informs him of what happened: He slipped on the kitchen floor and hit his head. Just like that. The rest of the song is an ode to organ donation via wordplay: He bequeaths his knees to the needy, his feet to the footloose, his ears to the deaf — that is, “if they don’t mind the size.”
All the funnier: a death wish. On “That’s the Way the World Goes ’Round,” the radiator fails while Prine is having a bath; freezing and in despair, he hopes for death to deliver him from the tub where he sits, “naked as the eyes of a clown.” Just as suddenly, sunlight breaks through the window and corrects the temperature — oops, cancel that death! And cue the chorus: “That’s the way that the world goes ’round: you’re up one day, the next you’re down, it’s a half an inch of water and you think you’re gonna drown.”
And now? The coronavirus has collapsed the distance between panic and actual danger: Covid-19 might amount to a half an inch of water for some, but if it’s in your lungs then you might really drown. The world has stopped on its axis, and we’re left to gaze out the window and wonder how Prine would have spun it.
Maybe he would be drawn to the light, if only for balance. “If I can make myself laugh about something that I should be crying about, that’s pretty good,” Prine told NPR two years ago. The hospitals are overflowing with stories as maddening as the altar boy’s train-track trauma, as numbing Sam Stone’s lonely overdose. Elsewhere, the social distancing protocols — God bless their lifesaving, curve-flattening effects — have produced a positively absurd state of affairs. We’re dodging each other like lepers on a sunny spring day, prospecting for toilet paper in the grocery aisles, washing our hands until they become wounds unto themselves. We’re tormented by facial itches we dare not scratch, driven insane by constant proximity to the loved ones we fear to lose. Ain’t it funny.
Felled by the bat flu, that’s rich. Prine had beaten cancer twice. Once in the late ’90s, although it cost him a chunk of his neck and some nerves in his tongue; then again nearly two decades later when it showed up in a lung. His enunciations lost some detail and his vision of the afterlife gained some. On “When I Get to Heaven,” from his 2018 album, “The Tree of Forgiveness,” he laid out a whole plan: He’d wear out God with gratitude, pour a vodka and ginger ale, smoke a gigantic cigarette, kiss a girl on a carnival ride, start a band, spend time with family. Funny, the afterlife seemed to resemble the one he’d enjoyed here on Earth. Maybe that’s the idea.
He departed a world that, like Prine with his cigs, has temporarily given up certain pleasures for health reasons. The clubs are quiet. The pews are gathering dust. We wait for the morning when we can rise with our shovels and start digging out. For now, we cultivate our memories.
Here’s one: In 2017, Prine played DAR Constitution Hall, in Washington, and it was hard not to wonder about how much life he had left. Though a warm presence onstage, he appeared to have become his own statue — body calcified by age, voice creaky, chin drooping to his chest. Then, as the band was jamming on its last song before the encore, the old man slipped off his guitar, placed it on the stage and started to dance. He was light on his feet, wiggling his hips and flirtatiously circling his instrument. Caught by surprise, the audience whooped and cheered him on. Prine sashayed out of view. The joke was on us.
Steve Kolowich
April 8, 2020 at 7:26 a.m. PDT
John Prine once had a job dusting pews and shoveling snow at an Episcopal church. Walking to work early one Sunday to clear the steps after a snowfall, he heard sirens near the train tracks. An altar boy, heading to serve Mass at a different church, had been lost in a reverie and was struck from behind by a slow-moving commuter train.
Anxious confusion colored the scene. “There was a bunch of mothers that didn’t know where their kids were, and they didn’t know — they hadn’t identified the kid yet,” Prine recalled a few years ago. “And that’s stuck in my mind.”
He eventually wrote that memory into a song called “Bruised Orange (Chain of Sorrow).” It’s about maintaining your center of gravity while moving through a world that bombards you with senseless tragedies: “You can gaze out the window, get mad and get madder, throw your hands in the air and say what does it matter, but it don’t do no good to get angry — so help me, I know.”
Those words stick in our minds today as we gaze out at the wreckage of the coronavirus pandemic: thousands dead, thousands more hospitalized. An economy in the icehouse. Millions huddled in debt and in doubt. The train crept up while we were in a daydream, and now a new victim has been identified: John Prine died on Tuesday of complications from covid-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus. He was 73.
Before he was an American songwriting legend, Prine was a mailman with a hobby. He gigged around Chicago and one night, at a saloon in Old Town, he managed to impress Kris Kristofferson. Later, when Prine was in New York, Kristofferson invited him to play to a star-making crowd at a Greenwich Village club. Prine sang three songs, including “Sam Stone,” a song about a heroin-addicted Vietnam War veteran that has maybe the most brutal couplet in the American songbook: “There’s a hole in daddy’s arm where all the money goes; Jesus Christ died for nothin’, I suppose.”
Prine mastered the art of shrinking tragedy and comedy down to where he could balance both on his tongue at the same time. His most iconic songs were bar-napkin sketches of uncanny depth, featuring at least one casually brilliant phrase that would jump out at you from the blind corner of a rhyme.
“Father, forgive us for what we must do; you forgive us, we’ll forgive you.”
“My head shouted down to my heart, ‘You’d better look out below!’ ”
“Ain’t it funny how an old broken bottle looks just like a diamond ring.”
Ain’t it funny. It’s less a question than a riddle that runs down the spine of human experience, and through Prine’s body of work. He wrote silly lines into sad songs and vice versa. “The airlines lost the elephant’s trunk,” he laments on “Sabu Visits the Twin Cities Alone,” a bleak and bizarre song about the child actor from “The Elephant Boy” being sent on a publicity tour to the Midwest in winter. Does Prine take the opportunity to rhyme “child actor” with “wind chill factor”? You bet. But the smirk in his voice is imperceptible.
He didn’t shrink from darkness but seemed at home in the light. “Life, to me, in general, is humorous,” he told Peter Cooper in a 2014 interview at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. “The world is humorous.”
Death, too — the idea of it, anyway. On “Please Don’t Bury Me,” Prine imagines arriving in heaven unexpectedly. A receiving party (angels, presumably) informs him of what happened: He slipped on the kitchen floor and hit his head. Just like that. The rest of the song is an ode to organ donation via wordplay: He bequeaths his knees to the needy, his feet to the footloose, his ears to the deaf — that is, “if they don’t mind the size.”
All the funnier: a death wish. On “That’s the Way the World Goes ’Round,” the radiator fails while Prine is having a bath; freezing and in despair, he hopes for death to deliver him from the tub where he sits, “naked as the eyes of a clown.” Just as suddenly, sunlight breaks through the window and corrects the temperature — oops, cancel that death! And cue the chorus: “That’s the way that the world goes ’round: you’re up one day, the next you’re down, it’s a half an inch of water and you think you’re gonna drown.”
And now? The coronavirus has collapsed the distance between panic and actual danger: Covid-19 might amount to a half an inch of water for some, but if it’s in your lungs then you might really drown. The world has stopped on its axis, and we’re left to gaze out the window and wonder how Prine would have spun it.
Maybe he would be drawn to the light, if only for balance. “If I can make myself laugh about something that I should be crying about, that’s pretty good,” Prine told NPR two years ago. The hospitals are overflowing with stories as maddening as the altar boy’s train-track trauma, as numbing Sam Stone’s lonely overdose. Elsewhere, the social distancing protocols — God bless their lifesaving, curve-flattening effects — have produced a positively absurd state of affairs. We’re dodging each other like lepers on a sunny spring day, prospecting for toilet paper in the grocery aisles, washing our hands until they become wounds unto themselves. We’re tormented by facial itches we dare not scratch, driven insane by constant proximity to the loved ones we fear to lose. Ain’t it funny.
Felled by the bat flu, that’s rich. Prine had beaten cancer twice. Once in the late ’90s, although it cost him a chunk of his neck and some nerves in his tongue; then again nearly two decades later when it showed up in a lung. His enunciations lost some detail and his vision of the afterlife gained some. On “When I Get to Heaven,” from his 2018 album, “The Tree of Forgiveness,” he laid out a whole plan: He’d wear out God with gratitude, pour a vodka and ginger ale, smoke a gigantic cigarette, kiss a girl on a carnival ride, start a band, spend time with family. Funny, the afterlife seemed to resemble the one he’d enjoyed here on Earth. Maybe that’s the idea.
He departed a world that, like Prine with his cigs, has temporarily given up certain pleasures for health reasons. The clubs are quiet. The pews are gathering dust. We wait for the morning when we can rise with our shovels and start digging out. For now, we cultivate our memories.
Here’s one: In 2017, Prine played DAR Constitution Hall, in Washington, and it was hard not to wonder about how much life he had left. Though a warm presence onstage, he appeared to have become his own statue — body calcified by age, voice creaky, chin drooping to his chest. Then, as the band was jamming on its last song before the encore, the old man slipped off his guitar, placed it on the stage and started to dance. He was light on his feet, wiggling his hips and flirtatiously circling his instrument. Caught by surprise, the audience whooped and cheered him on. Prine sashayed out of view. The joke was on us.
A Time to Break Silence, also referred as the Riverside Church speech, is an anti–Vietnam War and pro–social justice speech delivered by Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1967, exactly one year before he was assassinated. The major speech at Riverside Church in New York City, followed several interviews and several other public speeches in which King came out against the Vietnam War and the policies that created it. Some, like civil rights leader Ralph Bunche, the NAACP, and the editorial page writers of The Washington Post and The New York Times called the Riverside Church speech a mistake on King's part. The New York Times editorial suggested that conflating the civil rights movement with the anti-war movement was an oversimplification that did justice to neither, stating that "linking these hard, complex problems will lead not to solutions but to deeper confusion." Others, including James Bevel, King's partner and strategist in the Civil Rights Movement, called it King's most important speech. It was written by activist and historian Vincent Harding.
Vietnam v. Afghanistan - Reflections on Matched Mayhem and Ceaseless War
By Gene Marx
November 15, 2019
By Gene Marx
November 15, 2019
globalvillagespace.com
Between the fading bugles of Veterans Day weekend and the crass rants of Black Friday, my day-long musings invariably return to Vietnam, but this year there was a new wrinkle to my abstractions. You see, my granddaughter, Kaya, turns 14 next week and she has never lived in a time when her country wasn’t waging an unrelenting interventionist war somewhere. Not for one single moment, and I couldn’t let it go.
So, what does that have to do with Vietnam? Well, as I grew up and unavoidably served in combat, I never thought “my war” was ever going to end. Never. It was always the mainspring of my very existence, and that of my contemporaries. It was also a monster with an insatiable appetite that devoured friends, relationships, plans and dreams, and no one could – or would – kill it, not a diplomat, not an elected Congress or President, no one.
Today we know our bloody intervention in Indochina was also very much like its evil twin, the disastrous war in Afghanistan - an illegal occupation to prop up a corrupt government, fueled on hubris, with no discernible end state. Still, US forces avoided calling the war in Vietnam unwinnable 50 years ago, just as Pentagon talking points mandate for its ongoing Afghanistan mess. Such military myopia is incessant, but when I first set foot in Da Nang in 1971, it was clear to me the best and the brightest had failed. The American military by any standards had lost in ignominy, thousands of US lives before I had even arrived, with still no end in sight.
Moreover, as historian and retired Army colonel Andrew Bacevich emphasized in a recent op-ed, “With the sole exception of Vietnam, the ongoing Afghanistan war represents the greatest failure in U.S. military history. Today, all but a few diehards understand that Vietnam was a debacle of epic proportions. With Afghanistan, it’s different: In both political and military circles, the urge to dodge the truth remains strong.”
Not surprisingly, dodging the truth is still paramount for the perpetrators. Selling even a hopelessly failed Afghan war continues to fuel exponentially the war machine’s bottom line, House and Senate campaign coffers and burgeoning defense budgets. Yet, after eighteen years, untold casualties, and $1 trillion in the short term – another trillion over the next 40 years for post 9/11 veterans’ care - it would seem the “master” planners and unbloodied patriots on Capitol Hill owe the rest of us a long-overdue explanation, if not an apology. But don't hold your breath. Neither outreach is expected, while the repercussions of unrestrained hegemony continue to plunder future generations.
Just recently, as if a reverberation from my Vietnam reveries, social justice and environmental activist Jean-Louis Bourgeois noted, “For Americans to withdraw from Afghanistan is not a reason for shame. This is not about America; in fact, this is where American exceptionalism gets us into trouble. The shame is to deny the reality of the situation.”
Someday, when the existential consequences of perpetual war are well beyond catastrophic, culpable elders will be tasked with explaining to my granddaughter Kaya and her contemporaries why once again, a half century after Vietnam, those that could – elected Chief Executives, Congress and all the Presidents’ men and women, as well as a shamelessly complicit corporate media - did nothing to kill their monster.
So, what does that have to do with Vietnam? Well, as I grew up and unavoidably served in combat, I never thought “my war” was ever going to end. Never. It was always the mainspring of my very existence, and that of my contemporaries. It was also a monster with an insatiable appetite that devoured friends, relationships, plans and dreams, and no one could – or would – kill it, not a diplomat, not an elected Congress or President, no one.
Today we know our bloody intervention in Indochina was also very much like its evil twin, the disastrous war in Afghanistan - an illegal occupation to prop up a corrupt government, fueled on hubris, with no discernible end state. Still, US forces avoided calling the war in Vietnam unwinnable 50 years ago, just as Pentagon talking points mandate for its ongoing Afghanistan mess. Such military myopia is incessant, but when I first set foot in Da Nang in 1971, it was clear to me the best and the brightest had failed. The American military by any standards had lost in ignominy, thousands of US lives before I had even arrived, with still no end in sight.
Moreover, as historian and retired Army colonel Andrew Bacevich emphasized in a recent op-ed, “With the sole exception of Vietnam, the ongoing Afghanistan war represents the greatest failure in U.S. military history. Today, all but a few diehards understand that Vietnam was a debacle of epic proportions. With Afghanistan, it’s different: In both political and military circles, the urge to dodge the truth remains strong.”
Not surprisingly, dodging the truth is still paramount for the perpetrators. Selling even a hopelessly failed Afghan war continues to fuel exponentially the war machine’s bottom line, House and Senate campaign coffers and burgeoning defense budgets. Yet, after eighteen years, untold casualties, and $1 trillion in the short term – another trillion over the next 40 years for post 9/11 veterans’ care - it would seem the “master” planners and unbloodied patriots on Capitol Hill owe the rest of us a long-overdue explanation, if not an apology. But don't hold your breath. Neither outreach is expected, while the repercussions of unrestrained hegemony continue to plunder future generations.
Just recently, as if a reverberation from my Vietnam reveries, social justice and environmental activist Jean-Louis Bourgeois noted, “For Americans to withdraw from Afghanistan is not a reason for shame. This is not about America; in fact, this is where American exceptionalism gets us into trouble. The shame is to deny the reality of the situation.”
Someday, when the existential consequences of perpetual war are well beyond catastrophic, culpable elders will be tasked with explaining to my granddaughter Kaya and her contemporaries why once again, a half century after Vietnam, those that could – elected Chief Executives, Congress and all the Presidents’ men and women, as well as a shamelessly complicit corporate media - did nothing to kill their monster.
Listen with VFP-111 as Assumption Church bells ring to celebrate end of World War I and Reclaim Armistice Day
Bellingham’s Veterans For Peace Celebrate Armistice Day 2019
Monday, November 11, 10:30 AM
at the Church of the Assumption, 2116 Cornwall
Of the war that, in retrospect, ended peace, Winston Churchill said, “Both sides, victors and vanquished, were ruined.”
On Monday, November 11 at 10:30 AM Bellingham's Veterans For Peace and supporters of peace will be gathering in tribute to commemorate the anniversary of the end of the First World War, across the street from the Church of the Assumption, 2116 Cornwall Ave.
Over one hundred years ago this month the world celebrated peace as a universal principle. All the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War went silent during the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of that eleventh month. Nations mourning their dead collectively called for an end to the butchery of all wars. Armistice Day was born and designated as “a day to be dedicated to the cause of world peace and to be thereafter celebrated." On June 28, 1919 Germany and the Allied powers signed the Treaty of Versailles, declaring an end to “the war to end all wars.”
After World War II, the U.S. Congress decided to rename and designate November 11 as a national holiday, Veterans Day. Sadly, commemorating a forever end to hostilities eventually morphed into glorifying military service and justifying the next war. Armistice Day was flipped from a day for peace into a day for displays of militarism.
Next Sunday thousands of churches at home and abroad, including Bellingham’s Church of the Assumption, will ring their bells 11 times slowly in solemn remembrance at 11 in the morning to mark the end of the war that, in retrospect, ended peace. With the US now waging seemingly endless war, it’s time now, more than ever, for Americans to reclaim Armistice Day.
Join us once more in silent commemoration, with worldwide millions.
VFP-111 and Whatcom Peace & Justice Center to Co-Host Documentary
An Endless War? Getting OUT Of Afghanistan
“For Americans to withdraw from Afghanistan is not a reason for shame. This is not about America, in fact this is where American exceptionalism gets us into trouble. The shame is to deny the reality of the situation.”
VFP Chapter 111 and Whatcom Peace & Justice Center are co-hosting award-winning filmmaker Bob Coen’s latest release An Endless War? Getting OUT of Afghanistan in Bellingham Food Co-Op Community Connections Classroom 103, on Friday, November 15 at 6:00 PM.
The 1 hour-long documentary deconstructs the reasons why the Afghanistan conflict was doomed to fail from its start more than 18 years ago and why it has dragged on for so long. The film features interviews with former commanding officers of the US military, combat veterans, political analysts and American and Afghan peace activists – including FCNL’s Shukria Dellawar, Congressman Walter Jones and IPC Fellow Matthew Hoh. Director Coen and executive producer Jean-Louis Bourgeois also offer solutions on how the United States can exit Afghanistan and not make this an endless war.
The screening will be followed by a discussion with the filmmaker and experts featured in the documentary.
Parking is available behind the Community Connections Building.
Susan Schnall Has Been Resisting War Since Dropping Antiwar Leaflets From A Plane
By Courage to Resist
August 25, 2019
By Courage to Resist
August 25, 2019
While on active duty, Lt. Susan Schnall dropped antiwar leaflets over five military installations and an aircraft carrier from a small plane, held a press conference, and lead a mass peace march while in uniform. She’s been resisting war ever since.
“It became more and more obvious to me as I took care of these guys and physically got them better that I couldn’t heal them psychologically, and I certainly couldn’t heal their souls. And I thought, “I’ve become a part of the military. I need to do something about this, and we need to end this war.”
“It became more and more obvious to me as I took care of these guys and physically got them better that I couldn’t heal them psychologically, and I certainly couldn’t heal their souls. And I thought, “I’ve become a part of the military. I need to do something about this, and we need to end this war.”
TRANSCRIPT
Susan Schnall: It became more and more obvious to me as I took care of these guys and physically got them better that I couldn’t heal them psychologically, and I certainly couldn’t heal their souls. And I thought, “I’ve become a part of the military. I need to do something about this, and we need to end this war.”
Matthew Breems: This is the Courage To Resist Podcast. My name is Matthew Breems. This Courage to Resist Podcast is produced in collaboration with the Vietnam Full Disclosure Effort of Veterans For Peace. Susan Schnall is the guest today. Susan served in the Navy as a nurse throughout the Vietnam conflict. As she cared for GIs returning from Vietnam, she quickly became an antiwar activist. Susan began coordinating peace rallies and volunteering at GI coffeehouses. Her activism continues today through her involvement with Veterans for Peace and working towards legislation for individuals exposed to Agent Orange.
Susan, I’m excited to be talking with you this evening and to hear your story and your involvement in the antiwar movement. Why don’t you take us back? How did you come to a place where resisting the war, specifically the Vietnam War, became such a life obsession for you?
Susan Schnall: Let me start by talking about war, because it is an entity that I’ve lived with my whole life. My dad was in the Marine Corps in the Second World War and was killed on the island of Guam, 1944. I went into the Navy as a nurse and felt that I would be taking care of those who were harmed and hurt in a war in Southeast Asia. I was never someone who was for the war, because I went into nursing to heal and to take care of those who were injured.
I joined in 1965 when I was going to Stanford Nursing School. I graduated in 1967 and went to, I guess it was Officers’ Indoctrination School. They had us nurses, and they wanted to teach us how to be members of the military. Then I was sent to Oak Knoll Naval Hospital in Oakland, California, where I took care of the guys who were coming back from Vietnam, from Southeast Asia. And I heard their stories, their pain. I heard their stories of how they viewed the Vietnamese and heard how they were trained to be killers and trained to hate people who looked different from the way that they did.
I don’t know why I was so naïve, but I didn’t quite expect that, and I was very much a peace activist before I went into the Navy. I had taken part in antiwar demonstrations. But it seems that that was not important to the Navy, and they heard about my history and still sent me on to Oak Knoll Naval Hospital. It was startling to me, and it was an education to me to hear stories first hand from men who had been to war. They were young; they were 18, 20, 21 years old. They told me their stories, that they had participated in war, how some of them had learned to hate “the enemy.”
And there were other stories I heard from young guys who were in the Navy, who worked with the civilian population, who didn’t have that fear and hatred. But I also heard very much their physical and psychological pain. We had one unit that was called the Amputee Unit, and I will never forget it. It was an open ward that had about 30, 35 young men on it. They all had amputations, whether upper extremity or legs, and what was left, their stumps were hanging by butcher-like contraptions that held their limbs aloft. They were in pain, they were terribly infected, and I would hear their cries from one end of the unit to the next, when they would cry out for pain medication.
Read complete interview and listen to podcast on Vietnam Full Disclosure.
Susan Schnall: It became more and more obvious to me as I took care of these guys and physically got them better that I couldn’t heal them psychologically, and I certainly couldn’t heal their souls. And I thought, “I’ve become a part of the military. I need to do something about this, and we need to end this war.”
Matthew Breems: This is the Courage To Resist Podcast. My name is Matthew Breems. This Courage to Resist Podcast is produced in collaboration with the Vietnam Full Disclosure Effort of Veterans For Peace. Susan Schnall is the guest today. Susan served in the Navy as a nurse throughout the Vietnam conflict. As she cared for GIs returning from Vietnam, she quickly became an antiwar activist. Susan began coordinating peace rallies and volunteering at GI coffeehouses. Her activism continues today through her involvement with Veterans for Peace and working towards legislation for individuals exposed to Agent Orange.
Susan, I’m excited to be talking with you this evening and to hear your story and your involvement in the antiwar movement. Why don’t you take us back? How did you come to a place where resisting the war, specifically the Vietnam War, became such a life obsession for you?
Susan Schnall: Let me start by talking about war, because it is an entity that I’ve lived with my whole life. My dad was in the Marine Corps in the Second World War and was killed on the island of Guam, 1944. I went into the Navy as a nurse and felt that I would be taking care of those who were harmed and hurt in a war in Southeast Asia. I was never someone who was for the war, because I went into nursing to heal and to take care of those who were injured.
I joined in 1965 when I was going to Stanford Nursing School. I graduated in 1967 and went to, I guess it was Officers’ Indoctrination School. They had us nurses, and they wanted to teach us how to be members of the military. Then I was sent to Oak Knoll Naval Hospital in Oakland, California, where I took care of the guys who were coming back from Vietnam, from Southeast Asia. And I heard their stories, their pain. I heard their stories of how they viewed the Vietnamese and heard how they were trained to be killers and trained to hate people who looked different from the way that they did.
I don’t know why I was so naïve, but I didn’t quite expect that, and I was very much a peace activist before I went into the Navy. I had taken part in antiwar demonstrations. But it seems that that was not important to the Navy, and they heard about my history and still sent me on to Oak Knoll Naval Hospital. It was startling to me, and it was an education to me to hear stories first hand from men who had been to war. They were young; they were 18, 20, 21 years old. They told me their stories, that they had participated in war, how some of them had learned to hate “the enemy.”
And there were other stories I heard from young guys who were in the Navy, who worked with the civilian population, who didn’t have that fear and hatred. But I also heard very much their physical and psychological pain. We had one unit that was called the Amputee Unit, and I will never forget it. It was an open ward that had about 30, 35 young men on it. They all had amputations, whether upper extremity or legs, and what was left, their stumps were hanging by butcher-like contraptions that held their limbs aloft. They were in pain, they were terribly infected, and I would hear their cries from one end of the unit to the next, when they would cry out for pain medication.
Read complete interview and listen to podcast on Vietnam Full Disclosure.
Letter to the Editor of the Irish Examiner:
Shannon Airport is a 'de facto US military base'
Shannon Airport is a 'de facto US military base'
Sir,
Since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, and Afghanistan before that, transport aircraft, chartered by the US military, have shuttled almost 3 million troops through Shannon Airport. My youngest son and his gun truck company made the stopover trips to the carnage twice, in 2003 and 2004; even disembarking for the terminal lounge in full battle dress while their aircraft was being refueled. There was never an attempt by the soldiers to hide this unwitting disregard for Irish neutrality. To my son’s knowledge there was never a search of the planes and his troops were armed to the teeth, in violation of not only the Irish constitution but also the Hague Convention.
Last St. Patrick’s Day two US veterans, longtime anti-war activists and Veterans For Peace members Ken Mayers and Tarak Kauff, attempted to expose this clear breach of international law at Shannon by unfurling a large banner on the apron that read Respect Irish Neutrality, U.S. War Machine Out of Shannon Airport! As one would expect, my peace-vet friends were abruptly apprehended by airport security and Gardaí, and long story short, their passports were confiscated and they are still in Ireland awaiting trial. More than four months now, one excruciating delay after another with no end in sight. It’s as if the US Justice Department’s treatment of dissidents might be rubbing off on the Irish courts. My great-great-grandfather Mícheál Smyth of County Mayo has got to be freaking out.
Your readership deserves far more coverage of this international law violation than it has received thus far. Polls continue to show that nearly six out of every ten Irish citizens oppose the U.S. military co-opting Shannon Airport, “a de facto American military base,” in Dublin TD Clare Daly’s words. The Irish government however seems content to allow this occupation of County Clare to continue, with not only Irish neutrality at stake but Ireland’s rich heritage of resisting imperialism the obvious collateral damage.
It is far past time to end this thing. Please support the VFP veterans’ bail to include a promise to return. Rest assured they’ll be back. There is nothing they would like more now than a trial.
Gene Marx
Past National Board of Directors Secretary, Veterans For Peace
Bellingham, Washington
America
Since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, and Afghanistan before that, transport aircraft, chartered by the US military, have shuttled almost 3 million troops through Shannon Airport. My youngest son and his gun truck company made the stopover trips to the carnage twice, in 2003 and 2004; even disembarking for the terminal lounge in full battle dress while their aircraft was being refueled. There was never an attempt by the soldiers to hide this unwitting disregard for Irish neutrality. To my son’s knowledge there was never a search of the planes and his troops were armed to the teeth, in violation of not only the Irish constitution but also the Hague Convention.
Last St. Patrick’s Day two US veterans, longtime anti-war activists and Veterans For Peace members Ken Mayers and Tarak Kauff, attempted to expose this clear breach of international law at Shannon by unfurling a large banner on the apron that read Respect Irish Neutrality, U.S. War Machine Out of Shannon Airport! As one would expect, my peace-vet friends were abruptly apprehended by airport security and Gardaí, and long story short, their passports were confiscated and they are still in Ireland awaiting trial. More than four months now, one excruciating delay after another with no end in sight. It’s as if the US Justice Department’s treatment of dissidents might be rubbing off on the Irish courts. My great-great-grandfather Mícheál Smyth of County Mayo has got to be freaking out.
Your readership deserves far more coverage of this international law violation than it has received thus far. Polls continue to show that nearly six out of every ten Irish citizens oppose the U.S. military co-opting Shannon Airport, “a de facto American military base,” in Dublin TD Clare Daly’s words. The Irish government however seems content to allow this occupation of County Clare to continue, with not only Irish neutrality at stake but Ireland’s rich heritage of resisting imperialism the obvious collateral damage.
It is far past time to end this thing. Please support the VFP veterans’ bail to include a promise to return. Rest assured they’ll be back. There is nothing they would like more now than a trial.
Gene Marx
Past National Board of Directors Secretary, Veterans For Peace
Bellingham, Washington
America
Maj. Danny Sjursen
May 21, 2019
This piece originally appeared on anti-war.com.
What if they called a war and no one came? Well, now’s the time folks. The apparent march to war with Iran represents a pivotal moment in the historical arc – the rise and fall – of our republic come empire. This potential war is so unnecessary, so irrational, that it borders on the absurd. Still, since the U.S. now fields a professional, volunteer military, few citizens have “skin in the game.” As such, they could hardly care less.
Unlike in past wars – think Vietnam – there is no longer a built in, established antiwar movement. This is unfortunate, and, dangerous for a democracy. See the US Government operates with near impunity in foreign affairs, waging global war without the consent of the people and, essentially, uninterested in what the people have to say at all. It should not be thus in a healthy republic. People should not fear their government; governments should fear their people.
So let me propose something seemingly ludicrous. It’s this: since Americans only trust the military among various branches of government, and since that military is both over adulated and ultimately responsible for waging these insane wars, it is within the military that active dissent must begin. That’s right, to stop the war America needs clean cut, seemingly conservative, all-American soldiers and officers to start refusing to fight. The people will back them; trust me. These guys are heroes after all, right? I mean few will pay attention to some aging hippie protester – even if he or she is correct – but even Republicans might tune in to hear what a combat vet has to say.
Remember, we soldiers take an oath not to a particular president or a certain government but to the Constitution. And that constitution has been violated time and again for some 75 years as US presidents play emperor and wage unilateral wars without the required, and clearly stipulated, consent of Congress, I.e. the people’s representatives. Thus, one could argue – and I’m doing just that – that a massive military “sit-down-strike” of sorts would be both legal and moral.
Sure, it’s a long shot. But there is historical precedence for dissent within the US military. It is an unknown but vibrant history worthy of a brief recounting. Back in the mid-19th century, many US Army officers were so appalled by the futility and brutality of the three American attempts to subjugate the Seminole tribe in Florida that a staggering portion of the young subalterns simply resigned.
There was also dissent in the ranks during the Mexican-American War of conquest. Though they did their duty, many officers were appalled by the blatant aggression of their country. A young lieutenant – and future general / president – named US Grant stated that he knew “the struggle with my conscience during the Mexican War. I have never altogether forgiven myself for going into that. I had very strong opinions on the subject. I do not think there was ever a more wicked war than that waged by the United States on Mexico. I thought so at the time, when I was a youngster, only I had not moral courage enough to resign.” It’s unlikely that very many Americans even know that prominent statesmen, too, have often been against wars.
Read complete opinion piece on Truthout.
May 21, 2019
This piece originally appeared on anti-war.com.
What if they called a war and no one came? Well, now’s the time folks. The apparent march to war with Iran represents a pivotal moment in the historical arc – the rise and fall – of our republic come empire. This potential war is so unnecessary, so irrational, that it borders on the absurd. Still, since the U.S. now fields a professional, volunteer military, few citizens have “skin in the game.” As such, they could hardly care less.
Unlike in past wars – think Vietnam – there is no longer a built in, established antiwar movement. This is unfortunate, and, dangerous for a democracy. See the US Government operates with near impunity in foreign affairs, waging global war without the consent of the people and, essentially, uninterested in what the people have to say at all. It should not be thus in a healthy republic. People should not fear their government; governments should fear their people.
So let me propose something seemingly ludicrous. It’s this: since Americans only trust the military among various branches of government, and since that military is both over adulated and ultimately responsible for waging these insane wars, it is within the military that active dissent must begin. That’s right, to stop the war America needs clean cut, seemingly conservative, all-American soldiers and officers to start refusing to fight. The people will back them; trust me. These guys are heroes after all, right? I mean few will pay attention to some aging hippie protester – even if he or she is correct – but even Republicans might tune in to hear what a combat vet has to say.
Remember, we soldiers take an oath not to a particular president or a certain government but to the Constitution. And that constitution has been violated time and again for some 75 years as US presidents play emperor and wage unilateral wars without the required, and clearly stipulated, consent of Congress, I.e. the people’s representatives. Thus, one could argue – and I’m doing just that – that a massive military “sit-down-strike” of sorts would be both legal and moral.
Sure, it’s a long shot. But there is historical precedence for dissent within the US military. It is an unknown but vibrant history worthy of a brief recounting. Back in the mid-19th century, many US Army officers were so appalled by the futility and brutality of the three American attempts to subjugate the Seminole tribe in Florida that a staggering portion of the young subalterns simply resigned.
There was also dissent in the ranks during the Mexican-American War of conquest. Though they did their duty, many officers were appalled by the blatant aggression of their country. A young lieutenant – and future general / president – named US Grant stated that he knew “the struggle with my conscience during the Mexican War. I have never altogether forgiven myself for going into that. I had very strong opinions on the subject. I do not think there was ever a more wicked war than that waged by the United States on Mexico. I thought so at the time, when I was a youngster, only I had not moral courage enough to resign.” It’s unlikely that very many Americans even know that prominent statesmen, too, have often been against wars.
Read complete opinion piece on Truthout.
Community Celebrates 100th Armistice Day
Veterans for Peace and allies stand across from the Church of Assumption in silence
By Alexia Suarez
November 14, 2018
Veterans for Peace and allies stand across from the Church of Assumption in silence
By Alexia Suarez
November 14, 2018
Photo by Alexia Suarez
The bells at the Church of Assumption in downtown Bellingham rang 11 times at 11 a.m. on Sunday, November 11. Their slow, rhythmic beats commemorated the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day. Local activist organization Veterans for Peace and Armistice Day supporters stood in silence across the street, flags for peace waving in the crisp autumn air.
The first Armistice Day at the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of November 1918 signaled the halt of World War I and the start of a new era of peace, said Stan Parker, Army veteran and a member of the Veterans for Peace Board of Directors.
The Bellingham celebration was organized by the Veterans for Peace Chapter 111. Among them was Gene Marx, a Vietnam Navy veteran and Veterans for Peace local communication coordinator.
“I’d like people to realize Armistice Day’s original intent was to venerate peace; this was supposedly the war to end all wars,” Marx said. “And as it turns out, it was the war that ended all peace.”
Parker said he came to the rally in remembrance of those who lost their lives in war and also those affected by war. His call-to-action: war is not the answer to the problems of the world.
“There was a time in the world’s history when we really believed we could have world peace, where war was not the answer, and world peace was possible,” Parker said.
Today, Armistice Day is celebrated in countries across the world. Across the Canadian border on Sunday, crowds of citizens wore red poppy pins as they gathered. The flower is a symbol of remembrance of the emotional and physical expenses of war. The United States made the decision to replace Armistice Day with Veterans Day in 1968, even moving the holiday to a Monday to encourage commerce, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Lisa Distler, whose late husband, Bill Distler, was a Vietnam veteran and a founding member of Veterans for Peace, said the message of Armistice Day is one simply of peace; to put one’s arms down and come to an agreement that we as humans shouldn’t kill one another to solve our issues. She believes the newer U.S.-coined holiday has lost that message.
She said Veterans Day glorifies the act of going to war which is counterproductive to having a more inclusive and peaceful world, or recognizing the trauma that violence can inflict.
Daniel Kirkpatrick describes himself as a lifelong pacifist who comes from a long line of pacifists. His father was a conscious objector to World War II – his brother, an objector to the Vietnam War.
“We need a shift in a big way, we need a huge shift in our patterns of funding and supporting militarism and we need to shift towards a peace orientation that will bring prosperity to people across the world,” Kirkpatrick said.
The community remains optimistic.
“Until we get to the point where we want to have peace and our congressional representatives worry more about having peace, more than they’re concerned with their profits, then we will have an end to the fighting,” Marx said. “I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t believe peace couldn’t be attainable.”
Veterans for Peace meets on the third Friday of each month at the Community Connections building, part of the Community Food Co-op downtown. More information can be found on their website, www.vfpbellingham.org.
The first Armistice Day at the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of November 1918 signaled the halt of World War I and the start of a new era of peace, said Stan Parker, Army veteran and a member of the Veterans for Peace Board of Directors.
The Bellingham celebration was organized by the Veterans for Peace Chapter 111. Among them was Gene Marx, a Vietnam Navy veteran and Veterans for Peace local communication coordinator.
“I’d like people to realize Armistice Day’s original intent was to venerate peace; this was supposedly the war to end all wars,” Marx said. “And as it turns out, it was the war that ended all peace.”
Parker said he came to the rally in remembrance of those who lost their lives in war and also those affected by war. His call-to-action: war is not the answer to the problems of the world.
“There was a time in the world’s history when we really believed we could have world peace, where war was not the answer, and world peace was possible,” Parker said.
Today, Armistice Day is celebrated in countries across the world. Across the Canadian border on Sunday, crowds of citizens wore red poppy pins as they gathered. The flower is a symbol of remembrance of the emotional and physical expenses of war. The United States made the decision to replace Armistice Day with Veterans Day in 1968, even moving the holiday to a Monday to encourage commerce, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Lisa Distler, whose late husband, Bill Distler, was a Vietnam veteran and a founding member of Veterans for Peace, said the message of Armistice Day is one simply of peace; to put one’s arms down and come to an agreement that we as humans shouldn’t kill one another to solve our issues. She believes the newer U.S.-coined holiday has lost that message.
She said Veterans Day glorifies the act of going to war which is counterproductive to having a more inclusive and peaceful world, or recognizing the trauma that violence can inflict.
Daniel Kirkpatrick describes himself as a lifelong pacifist who comes from a long line of pacifists. His father was a conscious objector to World War II – his brother, an objector to the Vietnam War.
“We need a shift in a big way, we need a huge shift in our patterns of funding and supporting militarism and we need to shift towards a peace orientation that will bring prosperity to people across the world,” Kirkpatrick said.
The community remains optimistic.
“Until we get to the point where we want to have peace and our congressional representatives worry more about having peace, more than they’re concerned with their profits, then we will have an end to the fighting,” Marx said. “I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t believe peace couldn’t be attainable.”
Veterans for Peace meets on the third Friday of each month at the Community Connections building, part of the Community Food Co-op downtown. More information can be found on their website, www.vfpbellingham.org.
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