Enough said.
I’ll call ISIS fighters “Daesh” when we can rename US soldiers by their social function: child murderers and cowards.
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Tag Archives: US militarism
‘Patriotic’ pacifists and ‘Peace’crats to hold UFPJ lobbyfest gathering in Chicago
United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) will be holding a gathering in Chicago next week to start their plans for a 2009 Lobbyfest of Barack Obama. They still haven’t figured any of it out and most likely never will. Ostensibly the UFPJ has not decided on doing anything just yet and the gathering is for the group to supposedly decide just what should be done?
That’s all a big joke since the Democratic Party and liberal Christian group controlled leadership of the UFPJ has but just one strategy, and that is to try to make themselves ‘heard’ by the Powers that be (though they refuse to try to mobilize any power of their own). They are like beggars of a sort, who will be pleading with Barack, Hillary, and Gates for some bones of recognition. They promise not to talk too much about imperialism, Afghanistan, Somalia, and anything else of dispute, say like… torture use by the US military, the US threatening Russia with nuclear weapons, Iraq, or US military made pollution… and the list goes on of none issues to these people., or the issues they just plain out want people not to be talking about.
The UFPJ are the ‘patriotic’ Democratic Party liberal middle class voters and churchly pacifists, whose ‘eyes are wide open’ onto the boots of several thousand US soldiers, but not much on the damage these soldiers actually did to other peoples. They voted for ‘change’, but they’re not too pressured about when it comes, where it comes from, or even if it will ever come? A pretty word or two from their Democratic Party gurus will keep most of them totally satisfied for years.
YES, the UFPJ will want to go lobby this new year, and that’s what they will project doing though they will smokescreen it with some sort of ‘national week’ of blah, blah, blah, etc. These are the very same folk that always say that large demonstrations don’t work, so just go out and vote DP. Don’t expect a change of heart from them, or any insight.
How happy they are at the success of that profoundly absurd strategy they must be with the New Administration? The more abjectly they get thrown to the side by Power, the more committed they get to their own masochistic policy of turning out the vote…. to always vote for those who will ignore them, piss on them, and marginalize them as much as they can.
The UFPJ has even been offered a challenge by other antiwar activists to give up their sectarianism and come together with others to help build national and unified demonstrations against the war. That is anathema to the UFPJ leadership though, and we should expect absolutely nothing from them that would help bring that about. They’re sticking with the Democrats come rain or shine, and come the chaos and mayhem the Democratic Party will work alongside their Republican Party cohorts to bring us more of.
The ‘Patriotic’ pacifists and ‘Peace’crats are like small business owners in their outlook, and they have the DP franchise for ownership over the antiwar movement, just as long as the rest of us put up with it and stay demobilized ourselves? That is the big question? Just how long will the real activists in the national antiwar movement keep pumping money and time into this US national coalition, the UFPJ, who are out to simply not do much at all?
Passively accepting such a group of incompetent and chained down to the DP leaders as the UFJP is, is just more of a loser strategy that does nothing to help out a country currently experiencing a collapse of the US economy and the bankruptcy of the corporate class, fallen deathly ill from their own total corruption. The country needs a real antiwar coalition at work for the country, and not just a prayer group of multiple paid office hacks. The longer a real Movement is not actually built, the more damage the Pentagon will actually do to the country and the world, Lockheed and all the other corporate powers behind them feeding from the public trough. The UFJP is not even close to being the leadership for a real Antiwar Movement in this country, and can never be that as it is organized and structured to not be one, but rather to just be a pacifist coalition of a few nice people who pray and vote and not much else.
The UFPJ not only cannot be looked upon to provide leadership for us in the next years of Obama Nation, but will be an active barrier against all that do try to work to build dissent against US militarism. That is sad to say, but efforts to try to change the orientation of this group will be about as futile as trying to pull MoveOn away from their Democratic Party foundation. Better to spend your time, energy, and efforts to build other organizations as alternative to these obstructionists. The UFPJ is simply their church, and not much else.
Colo. Springs celebrates underage vets
COLORADO SPRINGS- The average age of a uniformed participant in this year’s Veteran’s Day Parade was underage! The high school Junior ROTCs, the Young Marines, the Devil Pups, and the scouts, pulled the age downward against the ever diminishing number of retired combat vets. I think the Hussar-clad HS marching bands brought the mean down too.
While officially the youthful paraders were there to cheer the old vets, it’s hard to imagine the cries of “thank you” were not intended for the ears of those in attendance who were still part of the military. Actually a large number of those involved in the Veteran’s Day Parade are active duty, when not on deployment.
Belonging to a pro-militant fan club such as the Colorado Springs Young Marines does not make you a soldier, nor I should hope a soldier-to-be. But their recruits are already veterans of US militarism and the warrior indoctrination process.
The Young Marines are sponsored by the Marine Corps, a rather audacious recruiting beachhead considering Colorado Springs is an Army and Air Force town. Note: the Marines have no JROTC program here, and the fewest nationwide. What does that say about the age they target?
Not to be outdone by the Young Marines, the Colorado Springs Youth Marine Club goes by the name DEVIL PUPS, although it offers its conscripts the chance to “learn code of conduct from Godly Veterans.”
Note the better fitting uniform and helmet, sized for infants. The Devil Pups are affiliated with a Camp Pendleton Devil Pups Inc. Though They claim to be neither a mini-boot-camp, nor a para-military outfit, the Devil Pups require that children “must pass a Physical Fitness Test, cannot be on any type of medication for any reason, [and] cannot have asthma (no exceptions).”
Do you doubt the Boy Scouts are a para-military organization? These scoutmasters don’t. STILL SERVING THROUGH SCOUTING read one banner. Another read RETURNING TO THE VALUES SCOUTING NEVER LEFT. Were those the values of Kit Carson to which you’re alluding?
Here are elementary school students riding on a float sponsored by the Globe Charter School. They hold posters celebrating the four branches of the military, plus the National Guard and the Coast Guard.
Rampart High School’s marching band, the “Rampart Regiment” costumed in deaths-head Hessian uniforms.
Our land-locked state also has a JROTC for students interested in the Navy. Three out of the four Colorado high schools enrolled in the Navy program are in Colorado Springs. They are Mesa Ridge, Wasson and Widefield. Oddly, none of Colorado’s 21 Army JROTC high school programs are in COS. The Air Force has five of seven participating high schools: Harrison, William Mitchell, Air Academy, Falcon and Sand Creek.
The parade of vintage cars provides a suitable reminder that all modern wars, post WWI, like these models, have been fought over the resource needed to fuel them.
Unafraid to make that point directly, the Military Vehicle Collectors Club solicits donations to KEEP ‘EM ROLLING.
This 40s staff car ferried former Waves who served the Navy in WWII. Resembling what most of us expect from a parade for honored veterans.
Obama not to change a thing
Obama is not going to change a thing and that is not me saying it, but one of Obama’s chief aides, or at least so thinks the Wall Street Journal. OCTOBER 3, 2008 Obama Adviser Doesn’t Expect Defense Cuts
Isn’t that just nice? Here we have all the people screaming before about Bush’s War, and now they are almost all planning to vote for a guy who’s going to keep the War Budget right where it’s at! Why? Well they are Democrats, aren’t they?
This gets even worse when one thinks about what the bloated military budget and the deficit spending keeping it afloat is doing to the American and world economies. Where is Mr. Change here? He is for sinking the US people and the US dollar straight down into the gutter. He is for draining the country of its wealth and putting it into the private hands of a very few. He is for a bloated military. He is for permanent war.
What strikes one about the ruling classes servants, McCain and Obama, is how much alike they really are in their political programs of give away to the super rich. It is no accident that neither had the slightest difference in how they came out to support Bush’s Federal Giveaway program for the looters from the US Treasury. Neither said that they had alternative programs for America that $700,000,000,000 could better be spent upon. Not a whisper of difference between the two. They’re both with the Big Boys.
If you are looking for a move away from US militarism under Obama, then look again. Both the Republicans and Democrats are completely controlled by the military suppliers;companies like Lockheed, Boeing , Northrop, etc. ‘Scrubbing’ them my ass! The only scrubbing that will get done by Obama and his sidekicks will be the American general public and not the military suppliers. I don’t believe he’ll touch them in the least, do you?
US liberal radicals silent about ‘self determination’ now that South Ossetia and Abkhazia want it
One of the most aggravating things about American (and British) liberals has been how they consistently line up with the US government shouting ‘Self-Determination! Self Determination!’ every time the Pentagon uses some small nationality against another government.
When Australia wanted to split East Timor off of Indonesia, this was their shout. When the US and the Western Europeans wanted to carve up Greater Yugoslavia into nation-lets under their control this was their call. We hear their call again against China as the US government wants to use Tibet to propagandize for the Pentagon and against the Chinese. We hear it in Africa as they use the issue of the fighting in Darfur to move against Sudan.
Liberal radicals are always using the issue of ‘self determination’ to support US militarism while pretending to be doing the exact complete opposite. That is why their silence is so deafening now about keeping quiet about ‘self determination’ for Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Apparently the liberal interventionist American Left is only for ‘self determination’ when the Pentagon calls for it? This is a sad illustration about the liberal Left’s own lack of self examination and their pro US nationalism and pro imperialism that hides behind liberal human rights rhetoric. Some even hide behind Marxism to justify what positions for the Pentagon they take!
What about the Ossetians? Once again the Libertarian Right is more honest than the pseudo Marxists and Left liberal ‘Progressive’ community is. They ask the question about the Ossetians when the phonys remain silent. While the pro Democratic Party liberals/radicals are out cheerleading Barack it is antiwar.com that keeps us informed about the dangerous buildup for war involving Russia and the US. And unfortunately, this constant misuse of the issue of ‘self determination’ in support of State Department propaganda is often used by many even to the Left of the Democratic Party, too. Shameful. But now they are all silent when it comes to South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
Carnage across Somalia almost 2 years after US takeover
Somalia is a US occupied territory, not much different than the other US occupied nations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Ethiopian troops do the job for the Pentagon in Somali, whereas Iraq and Afghanistan are occupied much more directly by US troops, so we don’t hear hardly anything about Somalia in ‘the news’ in our Glorious Homeland, the USA.
In its FACTBOX-Somalia, a country torn apart, Reuters does a lot of lying about history. Somalia had begun to establish a stable government, unlike what this report says, but the US-Ethiopian invasion overthrew it in 2006. Now, the fighting continues, and Ethiopia grows weary of its guard duty that they signed up for under US direction. The whole country of Somalia lies in total shambles, and the US will not let go, which would allow the country to try to repair some of the damage done. National liberation fighters, which Reuter labels ‘Islamic Forces’ have just taken over control over the countries 3rd largest city.
Shame on the US for torturing the entire Somalia nation! We can expect the US military to start casually bombing this city that Liberation forces now hold. We can expect yet more carnage, and the whole Somalia occupation remains well off the ‘Peace’ radar of the Christian liberal pacifists that dominate the US’s limp movement against US militarism. I am ashamed to be an American, when that only means being part of a System and Empire that bullies the poorest people in the world everywhere.
The US spreads its aggression from the Balkans to the Caucasus region
Tskhinvali, capital of South Ossetia.
The attack of the Georgian military, allied with the US and NATO, against Russian supported South Ossetia has widened the US military encirclement of Russia to another level and another region. The US Antiwar Movement has slept in the years since the ex-Soviet Union fell from the blows of the Cold War and ignored the continued US belligerence towards a now capitalist Russia.
Much of this ‘Peace’ Movement consists of liberals immersed in a reactionary campaign against China, another nation that the Pentagon and US government are waging a world war against, though the fighting between these 2 countries now is mainly at the level of propaganda wars. In regards to China, the liberal ‘Peacenics’ find themselves allied more with the Pentagon than they do with their beloved abstract ‘nonviolence’ religion. And they definitely are allied with voting for the Democratic Party, a pro-war party of the corporations.
Most of the liberal US and European Left actively supported the US-NATO bombardment of Yugoslavia, so they are even more poorly placed to understand the inter relationship between the previous fighting in the Balkans, and the now hot eruption of war in South Ossetia and Georgia. In short, they are in a total fog of complete ignorance about how the bipartisan US government has promoted policies of aggression towards Russia that has led up to this new fighting.
The liberals that make up the ‘Peace Community’ don’t like to come to grips with the realities of US society at all. They want to think that if they just tinker a little that the whole nation will begin to see how righteous they are. They are on Cloud Nine when it comes to understanding basic US geopolitics around the Globe, and their idea of a ‘Peace’ Rapture is totally void of reality. This is a hard fight and they are only into offering a choreographed film of ‘resistance’, not roughing it out to build an Antiwar Movement any larger than their small liberal church followings.
We can expect a surge of international propaganda pushed by the US government and its allies where they promote themselves though the media as being goodhearted and completely disinterested observers of this fighting from afar. Far from that, the US and its allies are flat smack dab in the middle of the responsibility for this Georgian attack on South Ossetia, and Russia is unlikely to back off and allow the US con game much room for maneuver.
Russia tried to warn the US and its allies that making Kosovo an independent country would provoke this sort of new fighting where their country would be directly involved and utterly resistant to being forced to surrender their own national interests before the onslaught of US aggression. But the hawks in the US government, both DP and RP hawks, would have none of it and today we are where we are now with this new war breaking out. The timing of this war’s beginning comes just several months after the US-NATO broke Kosovo off of Yugoslavia, and that is no coincidence.
This is a dangerous game the US ruling corporate class is playing with all our lives. We must build a Movement that will stop them, and that means we must expand the Antiwar Movement from being just a tiny group of religious pacifist fools, like what is currently the case. These are nice enough people alright and they have the best of intentions, it is simply that their theology is not the building block necessary to build a larger response amongst the US population to US militarism in today’s world.
The US military buildup is colossal and it must be braked and dismantled for the world to ever live in any peace.
Unearthing the 70,000 Peruvians killed by the US counterinsurgency
Americans don’t like to look at their bloody history, their bloody leaders, their bloody genocides. In fact, many liberals think it their calling to ask for even more bloody military interventions, all in the name of our supposed national goodness.
Instead of building a real Movement to end US militarism, they tell us the problem is that we merely need to make our interventionism ‘humanitarian’ oriented, as if that would be a solution to the world poverty, misery, and chaos our corporate, government, and military leaders preside over! They forget about places like Peru, Chile, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Vietnam, to name just a few locales that we as a people have helped our elites torture and occupy.
Over at the local idiotic Justice and Peace Commission’s HQ, the paid staff and preacher jefe on top are all busy with building something they call a summer ‘Peace Camp’ for children (Vacation Bible School). There, they plan to preach the mantra they call ‘nonviolence’ to a very select few kids. This is inactivity they substitute for real activism, where they would have to talk to the general public about places like Somalia, Iran, Pakistan, Lebanon, and Haiti. There at ‘Bible School’, the kids will never hear of places like Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Peru, sites of bloody US atrocity and torture. The liberal ‘peace’ salaried workers will help blab on to the kids about turning the other cheek, etc.
Why won’t the Peace and Justice group tell the kids the real story? Why won’t they tell the kids about the unearthing of thousands of graves of other children, all murdered by a US campaign to terrorize an entire country… Peru? What a moral failure these ‘peace’ people are! They not only do not speak truth to power, they do not even speak truth to their own kids!
Yes, the US government-Peruvian government killed tens of thousands in the ’80s. Yes, Kids, your moms and dads paid the taxes for these massacres to happen, and voted for the Democrats and Republicans that authorized it. The blood of these dead kids, just like the dead kids of Gaza, Somalia, Afghanistan, and Iraq are your responsibility, and the responsibility of your sheep-like parents. Are you going to let these atrocities continue without trying to do something to stop them?
Peruvians seek relatives in mass grave Our tax dollars should go to help these people find their relatives killed by the Pentagon. Shame on us as a society for playing dumb all the time.
And shame on the liberal Democratic Party voters for being some of the worst offenders in that regard. You know that your party is a war party alongside the Republicans, yet all the time you mouth to us the necessity of voting for them. Shame on you. Shame on you for demobilizing the protests against The War. These Peruvian graves are your fault, just as much as they are the fault of all those who vote Republcian. Iraq is your fault, the Clinton’s fault, Al Gore’s fault. You have blood on your voting hands.
Thank you Obama’s Reverend Wright
What a fantastic development, to have Barack Obama unmasked still early into the election, bursting the giddy bubble which his fans regard as the change Obama offers from Centrism/Neoliberalism/Neoconartistry. Obama is not only denouncing Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s statements. Obama is now telling Americans over-regulation is a problem, Obama is endorsing charter schools, Obama is conceding that some Republican policies are preferable to those of Democrats…
Can you dispute any of the pronouncements of Obama’s Reverend? Even rephrased by critics, I found these criticisms are unassailable, if uncomfortably spirited. Here they are presented in an accusatory article on Barack Obama: WHAT DID HE KNOW AND WHEN?
Racism is alive and well. Racism is the American way.
Racism is how this country was founded, and how this country is still run.
No black man can ever be President.
No black woman will ever be considered for anything outside of what she can give with her body.
America is still the number one killer in the world.
We are deeply involved in the importing of drugs, the exporting of guns and the training professional killers.
We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority. And believe it more than we believe in God.
We supported Zionism shamelessly while ignoring the Palestinians, and branding anybody who spoke out against it as being anti-Semitic.
We do not care if poor black and brown children cannot read and kill each other senselessly
We started the AIDS virus, and now that it is out of control we still put more money in the military than in medicine. More money in hate than humanitarian concerns.
We are selfish, self-centered ego egotists, who are arrogant and ignorant.
The second to last statement may be extreme, but what’s to argue? Whether CIA labs produced an AIDs virus to arrest the exploding populations of Africa, or whether our exploitive capitalism / polluting industrialism / callous militarism / usurious enslavement systems precipitated the genocide over lands from which the developed nations need resources but not people, are either less murderous?
One could split the same hairs about 9/11. Whether our government colluded with the hijackers to facilitate/exacerbate a false flag attack against the first world, or whether our world trade banking policies finally so enraged its victims to goad their desperate symbolic strike on our WTC, are we any the less responsible?
Reverend Jeremiah Wright is absolutely right about all these points. In the tradition of MLK not by coincidence. Barack Obama is being compelled by the corporate mainstream to distance himself from what the American public knows are truths, and all the better. Those of us who know we need a change can see that Obama isn’t going to be it.
“The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no, God damn America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people. “God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.
“We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye.
We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost.”
Chinese respond in protests against Western government’s anti-Chinese campaign
The beginnings of Chinese protest against the racist campaign against China and the Chinese by Western governments and their corporate press have begun. The Chinese simply don’t want to be subjugated by Europeans and the US ever again. See the BBC report China urges ‘rational’ protests
While these protests are important methods to stopping the racism and imperialism of The Western Powers, it in no way invalidates the need for the Chinese government to respect the rights and cultural autonomy of minorities living within its boundaries. If not, outside powers will certainly seek to use anything they can get their hands on to weaken the Chinese control over their own country.
Both China and Russia have responded way to cautiously to the menace of US imperialism against them. Both countries’ governments need to mobilize their own citizenry to denounce the US and its allies pogroms in Afghanistan, Somalia, and Iraq. Instead, they have tried to placate the US by remaining silent on the international issues. That is a strategy that weakens their own defense against US militarism attacking them.
Putin, to his credit, does appear to be taking a stronger stance against the encirclement of Russia by US forces. Still, it has been too little to really protect Russian interests. He needs to engage the Chinese government with a plan to have a mutual Defense Plan against the US and its allies. The world is at risk unless we can move from the current unipolar American Empire, to at least some semblance of a return to a bipolar dissemination of world power.
The UN says it may occupy Darfur for 10 years
In talk reminiscent of how the US may militarily occupy Iraq and Afghanistan for decades, the US dominated and controlled UN military is now talking about how it may militarily occupy Darfur for 10 years. ‘Saving Darfur’ is now in march it seems, and it is now obvious just what this actually means. We can see other examples of ‘saved’ places, like Haiti, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, East Timor, Congo, and all don’t look too saved at all, but just occupied by military troops. Darfur mission may last 10 years: UNAMID general
This raises the issues of how a real Antiwar Movement can be organized, with much of the organizations we presently have full of supporters of war controlling leadership positions in these supposedly pro Peace groups? Almost all the ‘leadership’ consists of Democratic Party voters, who vote for candidates that promote US militarism. Further, under the guise of being saintly non-violent types, much of the membership continues to support the idea of their government called on to ‘do things’ with US troops, in places like Afghanistan and Darfur. We have a supposed antiwar movement at present, that wants to dote on ‘the troops’ even.
Yes, the UN says it may occupy Darfur for 10 years. What a disaster! God save Sudan and all of its peoples. And let’s get these thugs in dove’s feathers out of Haiti, too! It’s time to wake up about the UN, if only the pacifist liberals ever will?
Propagandist for Jews only Israel in town ‘for Darfur’ end of month
I just got a notice from a leader and promoter of the local ‘Save Darfur’ crowd, that LA film director Mark Jonathan Harris would be in town the end of March pushing the need to intervene against Sudan and China in Africa. While the multiple civil wars in Sudan have been horribly destructive of human life and I wish for them to end like yesterday, I know where this campaign is getting its biggest push from. It is getting it from the Go-Zionism lobby that operates and flourishes in D.C., Florida, and Hollywood.
This film director, Mark Harris, has been sponsored before via The US Holocaust Museum, which is partially funded with America’s tax monies, though it principally promotes the foreign agenda of Israel. The principal angle the US Holocaust Museum is always working, is that US militarism is absolutely necessary to protect others from genocides, which of course, the US government is never supposedly responsible for. What a dubious supposition, too! But then again, what would one expect would be the main argument of an institution that is partially sponsored by our own government?
Harris is intimately tied to the US Holocaust Museum through one of his previous works (well promoted by ‘the museum’) about Jewish orphans after WW2. One will probably never get to see him doing a work about Palestinian, Afghan, or Iraqi orphans though, even if now he has a film out to supposedly educate the public about the need to ‘Save Darfur’.
Israel is trying so hard to justify their own repression against the Arab population the Jewish state has displaced and continues to displace, that the US Holocaust Museum is investing much of its funds to take public eyes off all the current Jewish and American sponsored slaughter thoughout the world. Through it’s joining and sponsoring the campaign to supposedly ‘Save Darfur’, The US Holocaust Museum hopes to justify the concept of supposedly just and humanitarian interventions coming from The Empire’s military power.
‘Genocide, Genocide, Genocide’ is what they want you to hear for the next 1,000 years, and they want you to hear it in a way that would justify next to anything Jewish Apartheid Israel might do to make itself yet larger in territory stolen away from another group of people. A US grab for Sudanese oil is nothing to them compared to their own desire to help Jewish Israel grab yet more land.
Mark Jonathan Harris and the US Holocaust Museum want to operate like stealth bombers inside the ‘Save Darfur’ push by the Israeli propaganda squad. It is important that the general American public not realize that this is part of a Zionist campaign, so The US Holocaust Museum’s front group is called Genocide Intervention Network instead. It’s a case really, of an institution sponsored by 2 governments (Israel and the US are behind the US Holocaust Museum), posing itself off as an activist coalition.
Actually, the only real thing important to Israel is to try to revitalize the idea that US government ‘humanitarian intervention’ will be needed over and over again. That is their big lie. Without it, Apartheid Jewish Israel would stand alone in the world.
Saving Darfur means less than nothing to Zionists. And neither does saving Sudan. They merely want to save Zionist Jews from world disapproval by distracting attention elsewhere. So far, they have partially succeeded, so beware new wars because of that. And yes, it’s a shame that some proPeace activists have gotten sucked into this Zionist campaign.
Racial separatism can be promoted as a supposedly humanitarian objective, but it really is not. Neither in Sudan, nor Israel/Palestine.
Sudan ultimately just cannot benefit by Europeans and Americans ‘saving it’, and then dividing it up into multiple new ‘countries’. See Iraq and Afghanistan today to get a take on what is meant by stating such. Partition under the direction of The Empire may ultimately be the fate that awaits all 3 of these widely different regions (present day Sudan, Iraq, Afghanistan), unless, of course, we can stop this continual military interventionism by the US.
Torturing the universities, future feminine possibilities for Colorado College
Pity the universities these days. They have become wildlife havens for America’s torturers. Southern Methodist University in Dallas is to house the papers of the head torturer advocate of them all, George W. Bush, in his ‘presidential library’. Stanford gets Donald Rumsfield. And now the University of Florida took it upon itself to take up the media rehabilitation program of Alberto Gonzalez. Whoopee, Students!
Here at home the local rag, The Gazette, today continued in its campaign to pretend that Global Warming is nothing to be concerned about, health care for all is too expensive to be implemented in the US, and YES, that water boarding is ‘uncomfortable, not torture’. So what, since at least local students have the ‘liberal’ Colorado College to find refuge in, right?
No, this local institution has graduated Dick Cheney’s wife and both his daughters, too (Lynn, Elizabeth, and Mary). And the college’s board of directors has Suzanne Woolsey , wife of super neo con advocate of fighting a continual, decades long ‘world war’ against the Muslim World, exCIA Head James Woolsey, sitting in as Vice Chair of the Colorado College Board of Trustees, emphasis on VICE.
These women folk ‘belonging to’ such noted torturers and torture advocates, Dick Cheney and James Woolsey, make it just right, that Colorado College and its Department of Political Science should house a proposed ‘Library of Women That Love Torturers’. There, we could see the love letters between these prominent ladies and their torturer husbands, dads, and lovers!
It would be a credit for the local military community’s institutions, too! Visit the Air Force Academy, then step over to Colorado College to see the more feminine side of US militarism, and women who love the torturers behind it. Other cities have their water parks, but Colorado Springs could have their waterboarding park!
Maybe our mayor, Lionel Rivera, and the entire city council will get behind this idea? We can only propose… but Colorado College should not let itself fall behind in the academic love affair with noted American torturers! Now can it? Maybe it could open up by next Halloween?
The sick American public on Iraq and Iran
Recent polls show that over 60% of Americans now are opposed to continuing the Iraq War. That’s the good news, but now the bad. Zogby poll Some 52% of Americans support a new war, that being one with Iran.
And now the even sicker news. Some 1/3 of the American public thinks it perfectly OK to use nuclear weapons on Iran, too. This is what the US public has arrived at thinking, after helping kill way over 1,000,000 Iraqis in the last decade and a half. Is this sick or what?
How did American society reach such a level of sick criminality? It shouldn’t be believed that it is fear at all. The stated fear of being under the possible threat from foreign WOMD is sheer excuse for supporting a criminality from one’s own government, similar to how Germans once stated a societal fear of a worldwide Jewish conspiracy. Acting illogical like this is based on a desire to be world thugs, same as it was with Hitler’s ascendancy
Despite the honks of support we get when we do vigils and demonstrations against the Iraq War, we should be cognizant that the American public continues to be overwhelmingly totally supportive of US militarism. They ‘support the troops’. We live in a totally sick national culture of support for cruelty and criminality. We should not forget that for even one second, so what can be done?
The few of us willing to take a public stance of opposing the main stream must be as bold as possible, and continue to show our stance of being against this new war that Hillary Cheney and Dick Clinton are trying to push off on the world. We cannot get sidelined into other issues and activities that seem more comfortable to do. We must be as public as possible about opposing the new set of lies that have been let fly.
No War with Iran! And throw these torturers and assassins that head up our government in jail where they now belong. Supporting their new plans for international terrorism needs to be stopped.
Shame on the majority of our citizens for playing stupid so long. It certainly won’t get you to heaven either here or when you die.
Join up and see the world in a negative way!
Strangely enough, many of us that protest constantly against US militarism often get asked about whether we think it a good idea that somebody or other should join up with the military? Is it a good career move or what? It’s as if these young people have been approached by Satan who offers them a seemingly too good a deal to be believed and they are puzzling over the exact wording of the contract! Go figure?, except they want us to figure some for them! Should Anyone Join the Military? by Laurence M. Vance
Why Green Party is Dead, Dead, Dead
Four years ago, the US socialist Left was awash in hope for finally finding some cheap breakthrough to out flanking the 2 corporate political parties. They had decided that the Green Party was the road to Nirvana for them, and thought that this sad electoral vehicle might somehow be used to disassemble DP-voting liberals away from their cherished fetish, the Democratic Party.
Their hopes were based solely on their own desires, ignoring the reality that Democratic Party based liberalism still maintained complete ideological and organizational control over the Green Party bureaucracy at the top. Ralph Nader tried his best by refusing to go along with gluing the Green Party to merely helping elect another Democratic Party president. The official Green Party candidate, David Cobb, did the opposite, and ran a non-campaign for US president which completely set back the Greens chances of ever making any political impact at all.
This was what the Democratic Party wanted for the Green Party to do. By that time many card carrying liberals now just wanted The Green Party to just go away entirely, and David Cobb was the man to accomplish that. The Green Party under his wing set out like bulldogs to disappear themselves politically.
This time around, there is now no Green Party doing anything. They don’t even have to run the so called ‘safe states’ non-campaign of David Cobb this presidential race. Nobody takes the Green Party seriously anymore, and the repentant DP-voting liberals are safely back to waiting to cast their votes for a Hillary or a John once again. They chant ‘Anybody but a Republican!’ while voting for Democrats that are no different than the Republicans.
As to the socialists? They, too, are totally out of it. The Labor Movement has been split and socialists have largely ignored activating themselves through focusing on antiwar activism instead. There is not a Green Party vehicle to try to magically reach electoral Nirvana with either. Internationally, the socialist Left is in full retreat, too.
The Socialist Left has put itself in the political dead zone along with the Green Party itself. For almost 35 some odd years they have largely absented themselves from focusing on doing work to stop US militarism, and it shows. Why is the Green Party dead, dead, dead right now? For the same reason that the Socialist Left is. Neither has made opposing US militarism its priority political work. Instead, both went chasing political rainbows instead.
A political movement in this country that doesn’t make opposing the constant war making of the bipartisan US corporate government its central activity, just runs out of life. That’s what happened to The Greens. The fact is, that US militarism and how to go about stopping it is the central question of our time.
See Joshua Frank’s, The End of the Green Party? for more commentary about the Green Party’s disappearance act.
Afghanistan, the word the ‘peace’ troops never seem to mention
In Afghanistan, the US is consistently bombing civilian areas with large loss of life, and yet the US Peace Movement hardly seems to take notice. There’s next to no mention of the US Occupation of Afghanistan at all, with one notable exception being antiwar.com, a Libertarian run site. And the main antiwar coalitions call for peace in Iraq, but do not really mention Afghanistan on their web sites, their lit, or their banners. The reason is quite simple.
Many US citizens supposedly wanting an end to the Iraq War in the peace camp actually continue to support their government having invaded and occupied Afghanistan, so the peace movement, both local and national, has tended to say not a word about ending the US war against Afghanistan.
It’s high time to start changing that silence. It is a matter of showing solidarity or not? It is a matter of being seriously opposed to US militarism or not? It is a matter of being decent, or not? Which will American antiwar activists choose? More silence, or beginning to call for an end to this war against a downtrodden people in a downtrodden region of the world?
The ‘Save Darfur Coalition’ propaganda in support of US African military intervention is utterly reactionary
Sunday in Denver one of the many nationwide rallies by the so-called ‘Save Darfur Coalition’ will be held, demanding that Bush, John Negroponte, Condaleeza Rice, and The Pentagon move troops into Sudan supposedly to help stop a civil war in that country.
Their incredible demands pushing for yet more US militarism come at the exact same time that the US government has just created close to half a million refugees in Somalia in the short time span of just 6 weeks! The US is the cause of genocides worldwide not the relief of any of them.
One cannot imagine anything more totally reprehensible and retrograde than what these nitwitty do-gooder liberal types are doing now than in currently rallying to justify to the public yet more US global foreign interventionism at this particular moment. It’s like they haven’t an ounce of common sense about them at all? It’s all very sad to see liberal peaceniks actually push for US governmental militarism rather than opposing it as they should be spending their entire energies doing.
Sure, all in the antiwar community want the end of warfare in Sudan as well as throughout Africa to occur. But calling for ‘peace’ to be implemented by the Pentagon meddling is hair brained at best. And asking for the Pentagon to intervene in Darfur is exactly what the ‘Save Darfur Coalition’ is doing despite their stealth tactics in going about it.
Their ‘Call to Action’ is the polar opposite of the mainstream International Peace Movement’s strategy, which is to call for the US to end the Made-by-the-US genocide currently being implemented by the US military against the Iraqi people. It is the job of the Peace community to oppose one’s own government’s imperialism and not to help justify it, as the ‘Save Darfur Coalition’ is currently doing.
With the construction of a US military African command center (AFRICOM) now underway, the ‘Save Darfur Coaliton’ should be opposing this. Instead, they are actually demanding that it be put into service! And once in Darfur, where else in Africa will the call go out to to send in US or US directed troops as directed by AFRICOM? We know already, do we not? AFRICOM is directing the war against the Somali people now and abducting POWs taken there to be taken out and tortured in other countries, same as has been done in Afghanistan and Iraq. The call to ‘Save Darfur’ in actuality is a call to plan out more genocides, rather than to eliminate one of them.
US troops out of Africa, not into the continent! Stop the Pentagon! No more military adventures using supposed humanitarianism as the justification.
PS… here is from the ‘Save Darfur’ blog. The same types that had the US kidnapping and removing President Aristide from Haiti and occupying that country with US directed troops are the same people now running the “Save Darfur Coalition’. This is not a group of humanitarians at all. They are from the US State Department.
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Global Day for Darfur III – A Critical Initiative Now!
Posted on Monday, 04/23/07 – 9:23 am
Cross-posted at Globe for Darfur
Amb. (ret.) Lawrence Rossin, Senior International Coordinator at the Save Darfur Coalition, is responsible for designing and leading implementation of the Coalition’s outreach to foreign governments and non-governmental organizations to advocate on behalf of the people of Darfur. Rossin joined the Coalition after serving as Assistant Secretary General and Principal Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary General for the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti, and as part of the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo. He has also served in a number of diplomatic positions in the U.S. Department of State.
Hillary Clinton makes it all clear
Liberals have doggedly kept themselves under a broad delusion that has neutered their value as being any sort of a real force for ending US militarism. That delusion is that the top Democrats actually oppose being mired in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other countries of the Middle East and elsewhere. In fact, they are in essential agreement with the Republican Administration, that ‘national security interests’ mandate that we keep US troops to occupy foreign countries like Iraq.
The Republicans have held to their lie that the US is in Iraq to help Iraqi, and not themselves and their bloody oil comnpanies. As such, the Republicans argue that US troops must actively engage in combat in order to now keep the peace after having begun the war. Hillary Clinton and top Democrats argue that we need to keep the troops behind fortified walls, and let the Iraqis kill themselves. That way our ‘strategic national interests’ are guarded, and we lose less American casualties. When the sectarian strife we have unleashed eventually comes to a bloody climax and then the Iraqi energy is all gone, then the US can begin to cash in on the oil they came to take out. The Democrats argue, why get US soldiers caught up in the crossfire, when we can just wait it out?
It is clear that top Democrats are not going to support the views of Americans that we are morally wrong in having caused all this bloodshed, and that we would be morally wrong to continue to kill for oil to be stolen by our multi-national oil companies. OIL, oil, oil…. There is hardly a world citizen that hasn’t figured it out by now, that the US, Democrats and Republicans politicians alike are on an Easter egg hunt for oil throughout the world. Our government is using 9/11 and a phoney war aginst the shadows to cover for this vast operation. But the rest of the world is not desensitized by our state propaganda and can easily see this con for what it really is. Our US elites want the world oil supply in their hands.
Yes, Hillary Clinton is making it clear in her campaign for president, that a new Clinton Adminstration would be just like the previous one. Just another face on American imperialism now that the world has gotten utterly sick of the Rumsfields, Rices, Boltons, Dicks, and Bushes. But though Americans may be slow learners, the rest of the world does not lag so far behind. Bush and Cheney let the cat out of the bag and now it will not be so easy to get it back in. This is what the liberal imperialists hate. Cheney and Dubya dug them a hole so very deep, all just drilling for more oil. The sweet personalities of the Democrats are no longer enough to delude the world that human rights has anything to do with US foreign policy. All know that it is about brute force (military power) to be used to steal the world’s natural resources.
How the Democratic Party supporter’s sectarianism holds back building the antiwar movement
John Walsh has just published an outstanding article at Counterpunch about how the sectarianism of the leadership of the national UFPJ (united for Peace & Justice) is holding back the construction of a much larger and more active antiwar movement.
The UFPJ is one of two national antiwar coalitions, and is dominated by Democratic Party supporters that refuse to work with others in a united manner. Control is what this ‘coalition’ is about, and central to that is their desire to use control to help elect Democratic party politicians who often go on to betray the antiwar cause.
As the Democratic Party continues to rot, some liberals just refuse to let go. Their grandparents believed that the DP was the party of change, as did their moms and dads. These liberals just refuse to deal with the basic reality that through the generations, all the ‘change’ the DP has brought has been from a net BAD to a net much WORSE. To these types, this addiction to the Democrats has been much harder to fight than even that of being addicted to food, alcohol, heroin, and tobacco.
Let’s be real. The UFPJ has failed to mobilize the American public into the streets in protest, where asses if they had this war would have already been over. The issue of stopping the US military from rambling along zonkers under the Bush Administration direction should unite us all, Libertarians, liberal Christians, Socialists, Anarchists, and the Democratic Party liberal voters, too. Unfortunately, each group has often acted as if they owned how opposition to Bush should be allowed to unfold. The net effect has been a diminished response to any action from the public at large.
The UFPJ has been about the worst of the sectarian offenders due to the obvious fact, that the Democratic Party leadership itself is not really antiwar, but just mildly anti-Republican instead. The UFPJ leadership is made up of liberal democratic Party voters who hope only to lobby to put the DP into offices, and not oppose very much the Democrats politicians already there. Letter writing, lobbying, and prayer are the type of strategies they most often want to engage in. That, and action that gets people arrested, such as sitting down in the middle of the street, or crossing onto military property or into recruitment offices. Working with non liberal Democrats to enlarge public protest rallies and marches is not anywhere much on their radar.
Unity, not sectarianism. And unity not just to elect Democratic party politicians, but unity to stop US militarism in its place and then to roll it back and out of American life altogether.
US sinking into Somalia once again?
Incredible as it may seem, the US appears to be moving back into destabilizing the Horn of Africa once again. It’s like there are not enough problems in the Congo, Sudan/ Chad, Rwanda/ Burundi regions of conflict already for Bush, so the US must provoke reopening conflict in the Horn of Africa/ Somalia zone, too! See AFP article- Eritrea accuses US of masking invasion of Somalia with peacekeeping plan
The last 2 US administrations have absolutely destroyed the credibility of the UN as being a body that functions independently of the Pentagon. Most of the world does not see either NATO or the ‘UN peacekeepers’ as anything other than pure extensions of US militarism, and for good reason, too. UN cooperation with the US bombing and dismemberment of Yugosalvia, UN cooperation in the US destruction of the countries of Iraq and Afghanistan, UN cooperation in accepting Israeli Apartheid and its terrorism of the Occupied Territories as norm, UN carrying out the continuation of the US invasion of Haiti, and UN acceptance and complicity of the US-Israeli destruction of Lebanon all have led to nobody still believing that this is a neutral world association anymore. Not that it ever seemed to be that so much, to the majority of the world outside Europe and the Anglophile countries.
It’s time to dump the UN and reestablish a new world body of nations totally outside the control of the US government. The current United Nations is a totally spent organization politically. Not even moving its adminstrative offices out of New York City could ever reestablish any of its credibility at this point. A better name for the UN in its current state would be the United Imperialist Nations (UIN). Except that even the word ‘united’ no longer can be considered to apply, as the imperialist countries continue to develop fissures in the post WW2 alliance amongst themselves.
As to the US via the UN in Somalia? What a disaster this appears to be in the making.
Is Iraq in ‘Civil War’?
Our national debates often enter into surreal territories, and I got to say that I find the liberal sites to be almost as bad as the conservative ones when it comes to their examination of US militarism. Today finds the liberal sites, like Alternet and CommonDreams celebrating what a supposed advance forward it is that NBC started calling the situation in Iraq a civil war. The White House duly responded with, “Is not! Is not!”. So there, we now have lined up the two sides of the usual American idiocy, The Democrats versus the Republicans. Yawn…. But is the Iraq conflict in reality a ‘civil war’ like the liberals are now declaring it to be? I think not.
See, the liberal Democratic Party types don’t dare call the Iraq conflict what it really is, which is an imperialist war and colonial occupation Made in America. So they do the next best thing they can come up with, and that is to say that the US has troops centered in a country with a ‘civil war’ flaring up. Oh my! Despite ‘our’ good intentions, we’re in danger! Let’s cut and run!
This way of stupidly arguing this issue of war and peace with the Right, allows pro-warmongers to say, Look, the Iraqis need us to keep themselves from killing each other. Oh how humane we shall always be!
Liberals, this is no civil war at all. Can you imagine in our real American Civil War, would we have ever called it a Civil War if all the American cities, both South and North, had been occupied by a bunch of murderous imperial troops, from say Mongolia or Japan? And that these troops were causing the chaos between different sections of our own country’s population? See the simple difference between a real civil war, and an imperialist war? Apparently, the liberals have big trouble on that! Our American Civil War was a civil war, whereas the Iraqi chaos is not.
If one remembers this, the Vietnam War was once described by the American press as a civil war, too. The supposed good guys in South Vietnam were our friends, and the bad guys there were the commies. It was taught that South Vietnam was in a civil war where another country would not leave the South Vietnamese alone to solve their internal difficuties. That bad country was called North Vietnam. Just like then, the argument went that we had to occupy the country, simply because without us, the ‘civil war’ there would go much for the worse. Plus, another country, Iran… uh I mean North Vietnam, was wrongly entering into another country’s civil strife. and trying to turn it into a ‘civil war’! We had to save the South Vietnamese from foreign intervention into their civil war! Oh such tortured logic the warmongers must use.
Liberals refuse to tell the truth to people, back then and right now. They don’t go out and say that we have torn apart another society because we are an imperialist country that invaded and occupied their land. God forbid it if the liberals , who are such great flag waving patriots, would ever speak bad of the troops! Instead, the liberals have a tendency to revert to just moaning and groaning about, Why be over there in such a bad neighborhood? Look, there’s a civil war going on. Gotta go now! We’re getting hurt. Today, some liberal nuns were actually here in Colorado delivering food to our US soldiers! Poor soldier boys and girls. Get them out of harm’s way. They’re innocently in the midst of a ‘civil war’, and need some canned goods delivered to them! They’re starving! Bring them home and feed them better. Such nonsense makes me want to cry, but that’s what the liberal nuns were pushing today in Colorado.
What to say when the US spent all that time previous to the invasion, arming and training Kurds in the North of Iraq? When they take orders from DC, Iraqi Kurds are not fighting a ‘civil war’ then? But if they free lance like the Shia and the Sunni are currently doing, well that’s ‘civil war’? No? That’s nonsense. Iraq is still a conflict where ethnic tensions are being provoked by foreign powers. There is a simple name for doing that, too. It is called IMPERIALISM, not ‘civil war. The US is an imperialist country as is Britain. Imperialism often times picking on weaker countries, not countries that can better fight back. So the first cousin of American imperialism is COLONIALISM. Iraq is in the center of a colonial war, not civil war, Olbermann. I center on this liberal, because he is the point man of the Democrats within the media at this time. It is he that is pushing this use of ‘civil war’ to describe the battlefield that his government has made in the Middle East. LOL. Well he would say, at least, that Bush is not ‘his’ government. But then again, both Iraqi Shia and Sunni agree on one thing. This is not a ‘civil war’, but a warfare forced on them by colonial occupiers. My Fellow Americans, this is an imperialist war and a colonial war. It’s kind of shameful for us continually putting the guilt on the Iraqis on this matter.
The sheer nature of imperialism, is that the imperial power always uses one sector of the colony against another. It only gets called civil war, when the imperial country doesn’t klike the way things are spinning out of its control. Then they can withdraw, and say, “Oh those primitive people. They hate each other. They are always in a civil war”. I’m waiting for the day when NBC and Olbermann start calling the Middle East wars of the US for what they are. What they really are. That’s right. I’m waiting to hear the righteous Olbermann to start calling the foreign policy of the US, IMPERIALISM. But Democratic Party motivated liberals and their liberalism can’t be depended on too much.
Democratic Party- Can you hear me now?
If you put your ear to the wind, you hear only silence. Sure, it is only 4 days post election and today was Veterans Day, but the media has been talking about how there was some sort of revolution that occurred last Tuesday. So why so silent? Where is the voice of this revolution’s leaders, or are these merely rebels without a cause? Their leaders’ silence is deafening. Murtha, Dean, Pelosi, Clark, Obama, Slick’s slick wife? Does anybody hear anything? These are the supposed antiwar rabble-rousers, or so has been announced to us by the image churning US media, at one time or another. Can you hear their outrage and anger now, reaching a crescendo of fury post glorious victory? Pretty sad, isn’t it. Only the coyotes and the wind.
But really? Has any DP voting liberal really asked themselves, is this a party truly against the war and US militarism, or one that is for it every much as the Republicans are? That silence….? There is possibly some explanation that the addicted DP liberal might give. Something like this.
“Our leaders are silent this week, better to organize their resistance ahead. It’s coming.”
Yeah right. Their silence is coming, IS, and WAS. They will continue their silence when a Bush directed Israel, in the days ahead, launches the bombing campaign on Syria, Iran, and Lebanon, too, once again. The sale to the American people for war will come from yet another angle. And yet, it is the same old angle repackaged, is it not? The argument will be, that ‘we’ have to help save the ‘Jewish democracy’ from future nuclear attack by the surrounding savages. And the Democratic Party leadership will remain silent, yet regain its voice at both one and the same time. That voice, then rising up, will be the voice of them supporting the Bush Adminstration’s use of Israel as US assault platoon.
Everbody hear the silence of the Democratic Party leadership now? They are silent because they do not oppose this war.
Jay Fawcett, Moderate Republican at best
It is really sad to see the local liberals buying into the campaign of Jay Fawcett. Granted that his opponent Doug Lamborn is about as repulsive as you can get, but that’s still little excuse to go out and vote for Fawcett. The most notable aspect of his campaign has been how he has tied himself into alliance with the national campaign for president of Wesley Clark, Clinton’s man for invading Yugoslavia.
How is supporting Fawcett and Clark pushing for peace and less military? Both were quiet for those 8 long years, as Clinton and Gore waged war on Iraq through bombings and economic sanctions that led to hundreds of thousands of deaths of innocent civilians. Which also led to the beginning of the ethnic dividing up of Iraq that is destroying the country at present. Clinton’s military people pushed into Kurdish Iraq to arm and use them against the Sunni Bathists of Hussein. Now Iraq has an ethnic civil war running hot that is destroying the country.
Fact is, both Fawcett and Clark have straddled the line between the Democrats and the Republicans. Today, Fawcett published a big propaganda piece trawling for Republican votes titled ‘Why Local Republicans Don’t Support Doug Lamborn for Congress’. The real question is why are liberals so desperate that they would vote for Jay Fawcett, moderate Republican? Have they not gone to his website? Do they not know what he actually is? How is a vote for this militarist jerk ‘taking back the Democratic Party’? If he had already been elected to Congress, he would have certainly voted alongside of Democrat Salazar in supporting the Bush Adminsitration’s use of torture on POW’s taken in the fighting. In no way is Fawcett a break from supporting US militarism. He endorses it. He is part of it. Not an obstacle to Bush at all. Why would any liberal want another Democratic Party enabler of Bush’s program in Congress? Fawcett supports a continual US military agression against the rest of the world as Bush and Cheney do. He just thinks that Bush is botching the operation.
Eyes Wide Open Minus 279
Why don’t we reflect on the 279 US soldiers who lost their lives in Afghanistan, too? I think it simply because the AFSC/ Quakers almost universally vote Democratic Party. They don’t want the public to ‘reflect on the true costs of the Afghan war’ while most liberal Democratic Party voters continue to support such. And because of that, the Eyes Wide Open has its eyes sewed wide shut regarding Afghanistan. The AFSC, it seems, will have us only reflect on US troops who died in Iraq.
I have not been much of a backer of this top down AFSC bringing of Eyes Wide Open to Denver and Colorado Springs anyway. How top down? I would say that the main impetus for bringing this exibition to Colorado came from outside the state, and not from within. Discussion was very limited and completely shut off once the honchos had their thing going.
PLUS,this fetishist AFSC focus on the boots of US GIs is a reflection of the constant US nationalist fetishism that focuses on ‘supporting our troops’. They are not OUR troops and we should not be just focusing on the dead GIs’ boots and tags while relegating to the minimalist side the consideration of the deaths of the victims of these US troops. These troops were paid for by our taxes stolen and misused by the government, but they are not my troops. Nor yours, for that matter. So why do we memorialize them as if they were something so very much more special than their victims? Why, AFSC?
And this controlling top down organizing by the Quakers has me peeved. Who do they think they are to try to limit other points of view other than their own pacifist ones at these Fall antiwar events? If the Afghans and Iraqis try to kick the US out of their countries using armed force, then so be it. One gets a little tired of the constant US pacifist Christian messaging, pontificating to other people to non-violently resist their own US government’s violence. These sanctimonious people would have had the Jews of the Warsaw ghetto turning the other cheek to the Nazis even! Defintiely, nobody should feel obligated to not bring their own materials and posters to Eyes Wide Open just because the AFSC tells them not to. They have some damn nerve trying to censor off views other than those parallel with their own. Yes they do.
As an atheist, I will help set up this nominally antiwar exhibit. At least, it will be seen by the press as such. But we sure need a more secular antiwar movement in the future, with the ability to reach out to more than just the liberal church goers. The thing about liberal Christian pacifists, is that they demand that others not just reject the US warmaking but that they do it only for the same reasons that liberal pacifists do. They keep the antiwar movement small, by excluding the majority of people that actually might want to oppose US militarism for reasons other than religiosity.
Anyway, I remember the 279 US troops who have lost their lives in Afghanista. And what’s more, I remember the country of Afghanistan we have torn to shreds. Reflect on that, AFSC.