By Mariam Karouny and Luke Baker
Tue Sep 14, 2004 09:32 AM ET
BAGHDAD (Reuters)
http://www.reuters.com/
newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=6231537&src=eDialog/
GetContent§ion=news
2) US missile attack kills 13 civilians in Iraq
By Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad
Independent Home News
13 September 2004
http://news.independent.co.uk/low_res/story.jsp?story=561021&host=3&dir=75
3) Voices in the Wilderness is following developments
as closely as possible; background information and brief
biographies w/photographs, and other mementos, of these
extraordinary people affiliated with Bridges to Baghdad -
two of whom were dear friends of Kathy Kelly and other
Voices participants; -- also the petition can be found at
Voices website
soon as available.
4) Bush to Shift Iraq Funds to Boost Security
By Adam Entous
Mon Sep 13, 2004 08:44 PM ET
HOLLAND, Mich. (Reuters)
http://www.reuters.com/
newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=6224882&src=eDialog/
GetContent§ion=news
5) Tali Fahima, a Jewish peace activist, was sentenced
today to 4 months of "administrative detention" by an
Israeli court. The "emergency hour" legislation upon
which this detention was carried out dates from the
British mandate period - an excellent example of how
Zionist colonialism is directed not aonly against the
native Arab population but also against those Jews
which dare to oppose the Israeli Apartheid regime. For
more information see:
http://oznik.com/news/040907.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1298770,00.html
What follows is the letter sent to Amnesty
International and other civil rights organizations and
media.
6) Excellent flash presentation that seriously questions what
happened at the Pentagon that fateful day 911
http://pixla.px.cz/pentagon.swf
7) Frances Crowe, 2004: You have a Legal Right to be a
Conscientious Objector
http://www.traprockpeace.org/frances_crowe.html
with description and links to audio of interview
(both mp3 and RealAudio)
8) Why Bush May Well Be The Lesser Evil
Elections, Alliances and Empire
by Gabriel Kolko
CounterPunch - Sept 13, 2004
http://www.counterpunch.org
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
1) Blast in Baghdad Rebel District Kills at Least 47
By Mariam Karouny and Luke Baker
Tue Sep 14, 2004 09:32 AM ET
BAGHDAD (Reuters)
http://www.reuters.com/
newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=6231537&src=eDialog/
GetContent§ion=news
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A huge car bomb blast tore through a
crowded market close to a Baghdad police headquarters building
Tuesday, killing at least 47 people in the deadliest single
attack in the Iraqi capital in six months.
An Internet statement in the name of the Tawhid and Jihad
group led by Jordanian al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi
claimed responsibility for the blast, which it said was carried
out by a suicide attacker. Washington says Zarqawi is its top
enemy in Iraq and has put a $25 million price on his head.
"With the grace of God, a lion from our martyrdom brigades
was successful in striking a center for apostate police
volunteers," said the statement, which could not be verified.
The Health Ministry said 47 people were killed and 114
wounded. The Interior Ministry said at least one car bomb was
used in the attack in Haifa street, a flashpoint area notorious
as a stronghold of criminals and guerrillas.
In a separate incident in the restive town of Baquba,
northeast of Baghdad, gunmen opened fire on a police minibus.
The town's police chief said 12 people were killed. Zarqawi's
group also claimed responsibility for that attack.
Guerrillas also blew up oil pipelines in northern Iraq,
cutting northern oil exports and forcing a nearby power station
to be shut down. The attack meant large areas of Iraq were
without electricity from 3 a.m. onward.
"ALL I SAW WAS BLOOD"
The Baghdad blast caused carnage in the crowded market and
streets near the police headquarters building.
"I was standing there talking to my friend when suddenly
all I saw was blood, and my friend lying dead," said an Iraqi
man who gave his name as Zafer, speaking from his hospital bed
with blood and scratches on his face and bandages on his
stomach.
Hospital workers hosed pools of blood from the floor.
At the blast site, rescuers pulled bodies from mangled
market stalls. The area was littered with shoes, clothes and
body parts, as well as fruit and vegetables from the market.
Bloodstained corpses lay on pavements strewn with chairs,
glass and rubble from blown-out shopfronts. Dazed bystanders
vainly checked bodies for signs of life.
Smoke from blazing vehicles in the middle of the street
billowed into the sky as fire crews tried to douse the flames.
A huge crater was punched into the road. Ambulances with sirens
wailing ferried the dead and wounded to hospital as U.S.
helicopters buzzed overhead.
Sunday, guerrillas mounted multiple car bomb and mortar
attacks in central Baghdad, during a day of violence in which
more than 100 people were killed across the country.
Many of Sunday's casualties were also in Haifa Street,
where U.S. troops have repeatedly clashed with guerrillas.
Following Tuesday's bombing, U.S. troops again moved into
Haifa Street and appeared to be readying for an assault. They
told residents by loudspeaker to leave the area.
Interior Minister Falah al-Naqib visited the site to
condemn the perpetrators.
"They are targeting the Iraqi people and they are trying to
destroy Iraq. These powers won't stop the rebuilding of Iraq,"
he said. "There will be no space for the terrorists and the
enemies of Iraq."
SURGE IN VIOLENCE
Near Mosul, gunmen opened fire on a U.S. patrol Tuesday,
killing one soldier and wounding five, the U.S. military said.
Since the invasion to oust Saddam Hussein last year, at
least 762 U.S. troops have been killed in action. The total
Pentagon death toll, including non-hostile deaths, is 1,013.
Fighting has surged in Iraq over the last few days after
U.S.-led forces launched a drive to pacify areas of the country
under guerrilla control ahead of elections due in January.
The American military has mounted several air strikes on
Falluja, a city controlled by insurgents. It says the attacks
have targeted militants loyal to Zarqawi, who they say are
based in the city.
U.S. forces have also launched an offensive in Tal Afar, a
mainly Turkmen town close to the Syrian border in northern Iraq
which it says has become a haven for foreign fighters.
The Health Ministry has said at least 60 people were killed
in fighting in Tal Afar over the past week.
(c) Copyright Reuters 2004.
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
2) US missile attack kills 13 civilians in Iraq
By Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad
Independent Home News
13 September 2004
http://news.independent.co.uk/low_res/story.jsp?story=561021&host=3&dir=75
US missile attack kills 13 civilians in Iraq
Andreas Whittam Smith: I know who I won't be voting for at
the general election
"I am a journalist. I'm dying, I'm dying," screamed Mazen
al-Tumeizi, a correspondent for the Arabic television
channel al-Arabiya, after shrapnel from a rocket fired by
an American helicopter interrupted his live broadcast and
slammed into his back.
Twelve others were killed and 61 wounded by rockets from
two US helicopters on Haifa Street in central Baghdad. They
had fired into a crowd milling around a burning Bradley
fighting vehicle that had been hit by a rocket or bomb
hours before.
It comes on one of Iraq's bloodiest days for weeks in which at
least 110 people died in clashes around the country. The Health
Ministry said the worst casualties were in Baghdad and in
Tal Afar near the Syrian border, where 51 people died.
"The helicopter fired on the Bradley to destroy it after it had
been hit earlier and it was on fire," said Major Phil Smith of the
1st Cavalry Division. "It was for the safety of the people around it."
Mr Tumeizi, a Palestinian, was the sixth Arab journalist to be
killed by American troops since Baghdad was captured last year.
The videotape of his last moments shows how Mr Tumeizi was
killed during a live television broadcast, with the Bradley blazing
in the distance and a crowd of young men celebrating its
destruction, but it shows no reason why the helicopters should
open fire.
Many of those hit by the rockets in Haifa Street, in a tough
neighbourhood of tower blocks notorious as a centre of resistance
to the occupation, were on their way to work. "We are just ordinary
workers. We are just trying to live," said Haidar Yahyiah, 23, sobbing
with pain from a broken leg as he lay in bed in nearby Karkh hospital.
He and others described how they had been woken by the sound of
explosions in Haifa Street in the early dawn. They had been sleeping
on the roofs because it is too hot in the Baghdad summer to sleep
inside. They saw a vehicle on fire. But it was several hours later, at
about 8am, that they sallied out.
By then US troops had already removed four lightly wounded soldiers
from the Bradley. Young men and children had swarmed over the
vehicle, cheering triumphantly, waving black flags and setting it ablaze
again. The US military said that a Kiowa, a light reconnaissance and
attack helicopter, fired rockets at the Bradley to destroy weapons and
ammunition on board. But it is evident from the al-Arabiya video that
the rockets landed among people standing or walking far away from
the Bradley.
Hamid Ali Khadum was on his way to work when he was hit. "At first
I thought I had just tripped over dead people but then I realised I was
wounded myself," he said as he lay in Karkh hospital waiting for an
operation on his heavily bandaged left leg. The rest of his body was
peppered with shrapnel. A male nurse standing nearby said: "This
happens not just in Haifa Street but in all Baghdad, and not just in
Baghdad but in all Iraq."
The slaughter in Haifa Street took place only a few hundred yards
from the heavily defended International Zone (what used to be called
the Green Zone) which houses the headquarters of the Iraqi
government and its American ally. It is a measure of the military
failure of the US occupation that it has failed to assume control of
this Sunni Muslim neighbourhood in the heart of the capital.
Early yesterday, insurgents fired more than a dozen rockets and
mortars into the International Zone. The zone contains the US
embassy and Saddam Hussein's Republican Palace.
There was violence elsewhere in Baghdad. Colonel Alaa Bashir, the
police chief of the Yarmouk district in west Baghdad, was killed by a
bomb while on patrol. A suicide bomber blew himself up in a vehicle
packed with explosives at the gates to Abu Ghraib prison _ he was the
only one to die. A US plane attacked a machine-gun team from the
Mehdi Army in their stronghold in Sadr City in east Baghdad.
In Ramadi, a city controlled by insurgents west of Baghdad, 10 people
were killed and 40 wounded in fighting, according to the local hospital.
A US Humvee was also set ablaze, but casualties were unknown.
Also in Middle East
US missile attack kills 13 civilians in Iraq
'Nine killed' as US jets bomb Fallujah
Turkey reacts with fury to massive US assault on northern Iraqi city
US enter Samarrah during new push against insurgents
Despair in Iraq over the forgotten victims of US invasion
(c) 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
3) Voices in the Wilderness is following developments
as closely as possible; background information and brief
biographies w/photographs, and other mementos, of these
extraordinary people affiliated with Bridges to Baghdad -
two of whom were dear friends of Kathy Kelly and other
Voices participants; -- also the petition can be found at
Voices website
soon as available.
Large manifestations have taken place in Iraq (including one of women
and children) and in Italy where vigils as well have been conducted that
may yet continue
(Voices does not make accusations, but in many commentaries, one
reads that no one stands to gain from these people's abduction, other
than the US puppet govt. under former CIA assassin Allawi.)
WRL, WRL West and UPJ both in the bay area and nationally are
connected to the people being held hostage who have been
opposing the occupation, as many of us opposed the sanctions,
Gulf War I, and Saddam Hussein and his U.S. support in its day.
Please, let's all do what we can,
Jim Haber
WRL West, San Francisco
Begin forwarded message:
From: "Hany Khalil"
Date: September 13, 2004 11:16:27 PM PDT
To:
Subject: [UFPJ] Petition for Release of Italian/Iraqi Hostages
Reply-To: hanykhalil@igc.org
Dear UFPJ member group:
The Italian and Iraqi hostages abducted on September 7th have not
yet been released. As you may know, all four worked with Bridges
to Baghdad, an Italian aid group that worked against the sanctions
in the 90s and is a core member of the Occupation Watch Center,
along with United for Peace and Justice and UFPJ member group
Code Pink.
It's important that we do what we can to convince their captors that
these people stand against the occupation, not with it, and should
be released. The petition calling for their release has not been
posted at http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/freeourfriends .
You can sign it directly online. We encourage your group to sign it ASAP.
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
4) Bush to Shift Iraq Funds to Boost Security
By Adam Entous
Mon Sep 13, 2004 08:44 PM ET
HOLLAND, Mich. (Reuters)
http://www.reuters.com/
newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=6224882&src=eDialog/
GetContent§ion=news
HOLLAND, Mich. (Reuters) - Faced with mounting violence in Iraq,
the Bush administration plans on Tuesday to propose shifting $3.46
billion from Iraqi water, power and other reconstruction projects to
improve security, boost oil output and prepare for elections scheduled
for January.
Administration and congressional officials briefed on the plan said it
cleared the way for President Bush, who was campaigning in Michigan,
to forgive 95 percent of Iraq's prewar debts to the United States totaling
about $4 billion.
The changes, which will require congressional approval, reflect a
realization within the administration that without better security,
long-term rebuilding is impossible.
Of the more than $18 billion approved for Iraq's reconstruction, only
about $1 billion has been spent so far.
"This is adjusting a plan in response to changing circumstances," said
a U.S. official who asked not to be named. "One of the changing
circumstances is the need to focus more urgently and more quickly
on developing Iraqi security capability. Another is the need to accelerate
employment of Iraqis."
According to a document outlining the plan, a copy of which was seen
by Reuters, the administration would shift $1.804 billion now earmarked
for water, sewage and electricity projects to expand security forces.
This would include adding 45,000 Iraqi police officers and 16,000
officials for border enforcement.
Another $180 million would help plan for elections and strengthen
local governments.
The number of U.S. troops killed since the March 2003 invasion passed
the 1,000 mark last week, while the number of wounded topped 7,000,
and administration officials say the anti-U.S. insurgency may intensify
in the months ahead.
White House national security advisor Condoleezza Rice told CBS's
"Face the Nation" on Sunday that "there will undoubtedly be violence
up until the elections and probably even during the elections."
Secretary of State Colin Powell added, "This insurgency isn't going
to go away."
In addition to the funds to bolster Iraqi security and election planning,
the administration will shift $450 million from refined oil purchases
to expand Iraq's oil capacity.
The document said the funds would be used for "specifically targeted
oil infrastructure projects that will increase Iraqi oil production by
650,000 barrels per day by mid-2005."
The Bush administration wants to expand oil production and exports
at the Kirkuk oil field, including building a new pipeline and improving
facilities at Rumaylah oil field.
A further $380 million would be used to boost economic development.
Some of that money would also be handed out in resettlement aid to
300,000 Kurds. A separate $286 million would help expand job
training programs.
The administration would set aside $360 million to cover the
"budget cost" of forgiving 95 percent of Iraqi debt to the United
States. The figure represents the current estimated amount of the
debt, largely run up during the 1980s.
The administration is required to seek congressional approval for
major changes in Iraq's reconstruction package, but congressional
aides said the White House now wants to ease those restrictions.
One aide complained that the administration was effectively seeking
a "blank check" to spend the money with minimal oversight.
Without authorization from Congress, the administration would only
be able to shift $800 million of the requested funds, the document
said. (Additional reporting by Anna Willard and Arshad Mohammed)
(c) Copyright Reuters 2004.
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
5) Tali Fahima, a Jewish peace activist, was sentenced
today to 4 months of "administrative detention" by an
Israeli court. The "emergency hour" legislation upon
which this detention was carried out dates from the
British mandate period - an excellent example of how
Zionist colonialism is directed not aonly against the
native Arab population but also against those Jews
which dare to oppose the Israeli Apartheid regime. For
more information see:
http://oznik.com/news/040907.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1298770,00.html
What follows is the letter sent to Amnesty
International and other civil rights organizations and
media.
Call for Urgent Action: Tali Fahima under
Administrative Detention
At Sunday, September 5, 2004, Shaul Mofaz, the Israeli
minister of defence, issued an order based on "secret
evidence" to hold Ms. Tali Fahima (an Israeli peace
activist) under administrative detention for four
months. During the 28 days period before this order
was issued Ms. Fahima had been under arrest without
charges, her detention extended according to "secret
inquiry material" that was not shown to the accused or
to her defense lawyers, and was intensively
interrogated by the GSS (Israeli General Security
Service). This was the second detention of Ms. Fahima
this year. On May 24, 2004 she was arrested and held
for 6 days under GSS interrogation. On May 30 she was
released without any charges, and sent to 4 days of
house arrest.
During the 28 days of interrogation Ms. Fahima was
kept in a small cell without windows for 24 hours a
day. She was forced to sleep on a mattress on the
floor, the electricity light always on, and prevented
from receiving any visit by family members, as well as
writing or reading material. She was interrogated for
15 to 18 hours each day, forced to sit in an uneasy
position with her hands cuffed behind her back. Most
of the time the interrogators are lecturing Tali on
politics in order to “re-educate” her, promising to
convert her into “a good Jewish girl” (sic). Physical
abuse is added to the philippics detailing the
interrogators' racist, primitive and reactionary views
on sex and politics.
Some days before her detention, Tali received a phone
call from a GSS agent that was involved in her
previous detention and interrogation. He requested to
meet her, informally, and mentioned that he knows she
has difficulties finding a job. Following the advice
of her lawyers, she refused to meet him. She was then
told that she is going to pay a heavy price.
Ms. Tali Fahima is a Jewish peace activist from Kiryat
Gat - a peripheral workers' township some 50 km. south
of Tel Aviv. She was brought up with two sisters by a
single hard-working mother, and worked as a secretary
at an advocate's office. Since the beginning of the
Intifada, she had gradually begun to lose her
confidence in the Israeli media. After intensive study
of the political situation and conversations with
Palestinians, she decided to see the facts with her
own eyes, and visited the Jenin refugee camp - the
well known target of past and present Israeli attacks
and devastation. Her stay in the refugee camp shocked
her. Ever since her visit in the Jenin refugee camp
she became active in support of the refugees. She,
together with a group of her friends, collected
contributions in order to reopen a youth club in the
camp, and kept contact with the camp's activists. Her
humanitarian work with Jenin camp's children - trying
to establish human solidarity between people in the
harshest conditions - was highly praised even by the
judge in the Israeli court that released her on May 30
after her first detention.
Ms. Fahima was never engaged in any kind of violent
activity. She is a peace activist, concentrating
mainly in humanitarian work and public acts. At the
end of 2003 Ms. Fahima declared on the Israeli media
that she is ready to serve as a human shield for Mr.
Zakariya Zbeida, a leading Jenin camp activist that
has already escaped several Israeli assassination
attempts. From that moment she, and her family, became
victims of systematic harassment: She was fired from
her job as a secretary and had great difficulties
finding a job. She had to leave her flat and meanwhile
stayed at the homes of relatives and friends. The
Israeli media published information from "reliable"
(and anonymous) sources which claimed that she is
suspected of conspiracy to carry out a terror attack.
A campaign of demonization is being waged through the
media against Tali by the Israeli security services
and politicians. The voice of the international
community is indispensable in order to protect her
freedom and personal security as well as those of her
family, which is also continuously threatened. The
only "crime" Tali is really guilty of is having broken
the unwritten Apartheid laws of Israel, which forbid
any Jew under the harshest penalties to meet the
victims of Zionism in the refugee camps of the
Occupied Territories and beyond.
Personal information:
Ms. Tali Fahima, Israeli ID no. 038292447, date of
birth: 8.2.1976, female, single, secretary in
advocateÂ’s office hometown: Kiryat Gat town in the
south of Israel.
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
5) RNC Reportbacks
The Ronald Reagan Home for the Criminally Insane
had a great time annoying Republicans and entertaining
New Yorkers and the press during the Republican
National Circus.
We have a bunch of photos and articles posted on our website
that we hope you will enjoy.
www.InsaneReagan.com
www.InsaneReagan.com
We will also be participating in two RNC reportbacks in
San Francisco next weekend.
Friday, September 17th
Dolores Park 8:00- 10:00pm
Indybay and Street Level TV are holding a guerilla film
screening of footage from the RNC shot by Bay Area video
guerillas and live reportbacks from activists.
Sunday, September 19
Cellspace 2050 Bryant St. (between Mariposa+18th)
7:00- 10:00pm
Direct Action to Stop the War (DASW) is throwing a
reportback party that will include video, live music
by David Rovics and Dave Lippman and activist testimonials
on the joys of direct action and tell all tales of what went
on behind the walls of Guantanamo on the Hudson.
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
6) Excellent flash presentation that seriously questions what
happened at the Pentagon that fateful day 911
http://pixla.px.cz/pentagon.swf
Ps, Clark webmaster http://2012AD.com/ http://hempevolution.org/
http://thebikehut.com/ http://viktervz.com/ http://caravida.com/
http://shuttlepro.net/ Remember you're the One!
911 inside job
http://www.wtc7.net - http://www.physics911.org - http://www.911-strike.com
http://www.oilempire.us - http://www.dieoff.org - http://www.peakoil.net
http://bombsinsidewtc.dk - http://www.911review.com
http://911research.wtc7.net/talks/towers/index.html
http://www.globalresearch.ca -http://www.cooperativeresearch.org
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
7) Frances Crowe, 2004: You have a Legal Right to be a
Conscientious Objector
http://www.traprockpeace.org/frances_crowe.html
with description and links to audio of interview
(both mp3 and RealAudio)
Frances Crowe, 2004: You have a Legal Right to be a
Conscientious Objector
Frances Crowe, now 85, is one of the founders of Traprock Peace Center. She
answers questions for young people across the country, when Aaron Ford, a
student at Greenfield Community College and Sunny Miller, Exec. Director of
Traprock, sought out her depth of wisdom for this 2004 interview on
conscientious objection.
With clarity and compassion, Frances lays out the facts, one after another,
informing young men and women today how to establish their human right to
not participate in killing, and their legal right in the United States to
not participate in war. Eighty-three percent of US survey respondents say
they don't want a draft, but last year draft boards were asked to fill
vacancies at the local level. Frances describes immediate steps young
people and supportive friends and family can take. She urges established
conscientious objectors to speak up, bringing news everywhere that:
"Anyone who is conscientiously opposed to participating in any war facing
them, on moral, ethical, philosophical or religious grounds, with the same
degree of intensity as you would hold a religious belief, has a right not to
be drafted."
Frances explains that Dan Seeger helped establish this legal standard by
taking his case all the way to the Supreme Court. Previously, only some with
a religious objection to war were not pressed into military service.
These are the four questions draft boards have traditionally asked. Writing
your answers now helps you to get clear, and talking about your process may
help others clarify their positions.
1. What do you object to about war now? What is the nature of
your belief-- is your objection moral, philosophical, ethical or religous?
2. Where did those beliefs come from? What influenced you?
3. How is that objection showing up in your life?
4. Would you be willing to serve as a military medic? (Many would
not, because the priority of military medicine is not to heal the wounded,
but to get people back to fighting -- and killing -- as quickly as
possible.)
Frances asserts that young people have a duty to get clear about what it is
about war they object to, (war now, not past wars) even as war propaganda is
heavily funded, sweeps to find undocumented workers and threats of
deportation intimidate many into signing up, and promises of money for
college create tremendous pressure to submit to participating. Even though
there is no place provided on draft registration cards, you can write in the
margin, "I am a conscientious objector." Before you mail in your
registration card, make a copy for yourself and date that by sending it to
yourself, signed receipt requested. Leaving it sealed in the envelope helps
create a paper trail of your history as a conscientious objector. Begin now
to build a file where you can add poems, research papers, letters of
recommendation, notes on conversations with family, soldiers, activists and
clergy, or the music, movies, and cultural events that influence you to
object to war. If the draft is instituted, you might have as little as 30
days to prepare to go before your local draft board. Exploring your
conscience now or discussing your process in a group setting can support you
as you develop clarity about your thinking and feeling.
With the influence of Quaker tradition
and feminist thinking, Frances Crowe
began doing group draft counseling in
the basement of her home in
Northampton in groups and circles, in
1967, despite the refusal of a
newspaper to print announcements. With
neighbors she founded the Northampton
Draft Information Center in 1968, which
operated full-time until the draft
ended. Young men, family members,
young women and some active members of the
military attended. In the first year alone,
2000 participated. During four
years of thoughtful group discussions,
no one decided to fake a physical or
mental condition, cut off a finger, or
leave for Canada. All were clear and
empowered by positions and statements
as conscientious objectors, as the
misguided tragedies of the Vietnam war
continued to unfold. Many went on to
fruitful lives in healthcare, teaching or
other public service.
Crowe describes her own progression
from working in a factory during World
War II, to working for peace after the
bombings of civilian populations in
Tokyo, Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Now she works to reduce her reliance
on oil - by car-pooling, riding the bus,
walking to downtown and flying only
in emergencies. Frances Crowe says she
cannot pay for killing and has become
a war tax refuser.
The audio interview lasts 38 minutes, 32 seconds.
It is followed by an Afterword (2 minutes) summarized here:
Aaron: Is there anything I can do right away?
Frances; Yes! Write to your draft board
today. You can hand carry your
letter to the post office, make a copy or
two to keep, and mail one to
yourself, return receipt requested.
At the post office you can get the
address of the selective service board,
because draft registration goes on
at every post office.
This interview and the Afterword are
offered to campus organizers and radio
stations, or for use as a personal gift,
as the fall 2004 school year
begins. Please join us in celebrating
25 years of collaboration in a
Neighbors Network to End War since
Traprock Peace Center's founding in 1979.
We appreciate neighborly wisdom,
initiative and mutual support.
This summary is printed and distributed
by Traprock Peace Center 103a Keets
Road, Deerfield, 01342. Tel: 413 773-7427
For more resources on why you object to
war, see and hear about the
unfolding tragedy of uranium weapons, at
http://www.traprockpeace.org
You can find many links to other groups,
check the calendar, or post your
meetings on conscientious objection on
the calendar.
For other resources on conscientious
objection, see http://www.objector.org
and http://www.nisbco.org
For campus organizing see http://www.campusantiwar.net
Sunny Miller
Traprock Peace Center
103A Keets Road
Deerfield, MA 01342
413-773-7427; Fax 413-773-7507
http://traprockpeace.org
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
8) Why Bush May Well Be The Lesser Evil
Elections, Alliances and Empire
by Gabriel Kolko
CounterPunch - Sept 13, 2004
http://www.counterpunch.org
Alliances have been a major cause of wars throughout modern history,
removing inhibitions that might otherwise have caused Germany, France
and countless nations to reflect much more cautiously before embarking
on death and destruction. The dissolution of all alliances is a crucial
precondition of a world without wars.
The United States' strength, to an important extent, has rested on its
ability to convince other nations that it was to their vital interests
to see America prevail in its global role. With the loss of that ability
there will be a fundamental change in the international system, a change
whose implications and consequences may ultimately be as far-reaching as
the dissolution of the Soviet bloc. The scope of America's world role is
now far more dangerous and ambitious than when Communism existed, but it
was fear of the USSR that alone gave NATO its raison d'etre and provided
Washington with the justification for its global pretensions. Enemies
have disappeared and new ones--many once former allies and congenial
states--have taken their places. The United States, to a degree to which
it is itself uncertain of, needs alliances. But even friendly nations
are less likely than ever to be bound into complaisant "coalitions of
the willing'.
Nothing in President Bush's extraordinarily vague doctrine, promulgated
on September 19, 2002, of fighting "preemptive" wars, unilaterally if
necessary, was a fundamentally new departure. Since the 1890s,
regardless of whether the Republicans or Democrats were in office, the
U.S. has intervened in countless ways--sending in the Marines,
installing and bolstering friendly tyrants--in the western hemisphere to
determine the political destinies of innumerable southern nations. The
Democratic Administration that established the United Nations explicitly
regarded the hemisphere as the U.S. sphere of influence, and at the same
time created the IMF and World Bank to police the world economy.
Indeed, it was the Democratic Party that created most of the pillars of
postwar American foreign policy, from the Truman Doctrine in 1947 and
NATO through the institutionalization of the arms race and the core
illusion that weapons and firepower are a solution to many of the
world's political problems. So the Democrats share, in the name of a
truly "bipartisan" consensus, equal responsibility for both the
character and dilemmas of America's foreign strategy today. President
Jimmy Carter initiated the Afghanistan adventure in July 1979, hoping to
bog down the Soviets there as the Americans had been in Vietnam. And it
was Carter who first encouraged Saddam Hussein to confront Iranian
fundamentalism, a policy President Reagan continued.
In his 2003 book The Roaring Nineties Joseph E. Stiglitz, chairman of
the President's Council of Economic Advisers from 1993 to 1997, argues
that the Clinton Administration intensified the "hegemonic legacy" in
the world economy, and Bush is just following along. The 1990s, Stiglitz
writes, was "A decade of unparalleled American influence over the global
economy" that Democratic financiers and fiscal conservatives in key
posts defined, "in which one economic crisis seemed to follow another."
The U.S. created trade barriers and gave large subsidies to its own
agribusiness but countries in financial straits were advised and often
compelled to cut spending and "adopt policies that were markedly
different from those that we ourselves had adopted." The scale of
domestic and global peculation by the Clinton and Bush administrations
can be debated but they were enormous in both cases. In foreign and
military affairs, both the Clinton and Bush administrations have
suffered from the same procurement fetish, believing that expensive
weapons are superior to realistic political strategies. The same
illusions produced the Vietnam War--and disaster. Elegant strategies
promising technological routes to victory have been with us since the
late 1940s, but they are essentially public relations exercises intended
to encourage more orders for arms manufacturers, justifications for
bigger budgets for the rival military services. During the Clinton years
the Pentagon continued to concoct grandiose strategies, demanding--and
getting--new weapons to implement them. There are many ways to measure
defense expenditures over time but--minor annual fluctuations
notwithstanding--the consensus between the two parties on the Pentagon's
budgets has flourished since 1945. In January 2000 Clinton added $115
billion to the Pentagon's five-year plan, far more than the Republicans
were calling for. When Clinton left office the Pentagon had over a half
trillion dollars in the major weapons procurement pipeline, not counting
the ballistic missile defense systems, a pure boondoggle that cost over
$71 billion by 1999. The dilemma, as both CIA and senior Clinton
officials correctly warned, was that terrorists were more likely to
strike the American homeland than some nation against which the military
could retaliate. This fundamental disparity between hardware and reality
has always existed and September 11, 2001 showed how vulnerable and weak
the U.S. has become, a theme readers can explore in my book, Another
Century of War?
The war in Yugoslavia in the spring of 1999 brought to a head the future
of NATO and the alliance, and especially Washington's deepening anxiety
regarding Germany's possible independent role in Europe. Well before
Bush took office, the Clinton Administration resolved never again to
allow its allies to inhibit or define its strategy. Bush's policies,
notwithstanding the brutal way in which they have been expressed or
implemented, follow directly and logically from this crucial decision.
NATO members' refusal to contribute the soldiers and equipment essential
to end warlordism and allow fair elections to be held in Afghanistan (it
sent five times as many troops to Kosovo in 1999), is the logic of
America's bipartisan disdain for the alliance.
But the world today is increasingly dangerous for the U. S. and
communism's demise has called into fundamental question the core
premises of the post-1945 alliance system. More nations have nuclear
weapons and means of delivering them; destructive small arms are much
more abundant (thanks to swelling American arms exports which grew from
32 percent of the world trade in 1987 to 43 percent in 1997); there are
more local and civil wars than ever, especially in regions like Eastern
Europe which had not experienced any for nearly a half-century; and
there is terrorism--the poor and weak man's ultimate weapon--on a scale
that has never existed. The political, economic, and cultural causes of
instability and conflict are growing, and expensive weapons are
irrelevant--save to the balance sheets of those who make them.
So long as the future is to a large degree--to paraphrase Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld--"unknowable", it is not in the national
interest of America's traditional allies to perpetuate the relationships
created from 1945 to 1990. Through ineptness and a vague ideology of
American power that acknowledges no limits on its global ambitions, the
Bush Administration has lunged into unilateralist initiatives and
adventurism that discount consultations with its friends, much less the
United Nations. The outcome has been serious erosion of the alliance
system upon which U.S. foreign policy from 1947 onwards was based. With
the proliferation of destructive weaponry and growing political
instability, the world is becoming increasingly dangerous--and so is
membership in alliances.
If Bush is reelected then the international order may be very different
in 2008 than it is today, let alone 1999. Regardless of who is the next
president, there is no reason to believe that objective assessments of
the costs and consequences of its actions will significantly alter
America's foreign policy priorities over the next four years. If the
Democrats win they will attempt, in the name of "progressive
internationalism", to reconstruct the alliance system as it existed
before the Yugoslav war of 1999, when the Clinton Administration turned
against the veto powers built into NATO's structure. There is important
bipartisan support for resurrecting the Atlanticism that Bush is in the
process of smashing, and it was best reflected in the Council on Foreign
Relations' banal March 2004 report on the "transatlantic alliance",
which Henry Kissinger helped direct and which both influential
Republicans and Wall Street leaders endorsed. Traditional elites are
desperate to see NATO and the Atlantic system restored to their old
glory. Their vision, premised on the expansionist assumptions that have
guided American foreign policy since 1945, was best articulated the same
month in a book, The Choice: Global Domination or Global Leadership, by
Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was Carter's National Security adviser.
Brzezinski rejects the Bush Administration's counterproductive rhetoric
that so alienates former and potential future allies. But he regards
American power as central to stability in every part of world and his
global vision no less ambitious than the Bush Administration's. He is
for the U.S. maintaining "a comprehensive technological edge over all
potential rivals" and calls for the transformation of "America's
prevailing power into a co-optive hegemony--one in which leadership is
exercised more through shared conviction with enduring allies than by
assertive domination". Precisely because it is much more salable to past
and potential allies, this traditional Democratic vision is far more
dangerous than that of the inept, eccentric melange now guiding American
foreign policy.
But vice-president Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and the
neoconservatives and eclectic hawks in Bush's administration are
oblivious to the consequences of their recommendations or to the way
they shock America's overseas friends. Many of the President's key
advisers possess aggressive, essentially academic geopolitical visions
that assume overwhelming American military and economic power. Eccentric
interpretations of Holy Scripture inspire yet others, including Bush
himself. Most of these crusaders employ an amorphous nationalist AND
MESSIANIC rhetoric that makes it impossible to predict exactly how Bush
will mediate between very diverse, often quirky influences, though thus
far he has favored advocates of wanton use of American military might
throughout the world. No one close to the President acknowledges the
limits of its power--limits that are political and, as Korea and Vietnam
proved, military too.
Kerry voted for many of Bush's key foreign and domestic measures and he
is, at best, an indifferent candidate. His statements and interviews
over the past months dealing with foreign affairs have mostly been both
vague and incoherent, though he is explicitly and ardently pro-Israel
and explicitly for regime-change in Venezuela. His policies on the
Middle East are identical to Bush's and this alone will prevent the
alliance with Europe from being reconstructed. On Iraq, even as violence
there escalated and Kerry finally had a crucial issue with which to win
the election, his position has been indistinguishable from the
President's. "Until" an Iraqi armed force can replace it, Kerry wrote in
the April 13 Washington Post, the American military has to stay in
Iraq--"preferably helped by NATO." "No matter who is elected president
in November, we will perservere in that mission" to build a stable,
pluralistic Iraq--which, I must add, has never existed and is unlikely
to emerge in the foreseeable future. "It is a matter of national honor
and trust." He has promised to leave American troops in Iraq for his
entire first term if necessary, but he is vague about their subsequent
departure. Not even the scandal over the treatment of Iraqi prisoners
evoked Kerry's criticism despite the fact it has profoundly alienated a
politically decisive segment of the American public.
His statements on domestic policy in favor of fiscal restraint and lower
deficits, much less tax breaks for large corporations, are utterly
lacking in voter appeal. Kerry is packaging himself as an economic
conservative who is also strong on defense spending--a Clinton
clone--because that is precisely how he feels. His advisers are the same
investment bankers who helped Clinton get the nomination in 1992 and
then raised the funds to help him get elected and then defined his
economic policy. The most important of them is Robert Rubin, who became
Treasury secretary, and he and his cronies are running the Kerry
campaign and will also dictate his economic agenda should he win. These
are the same men whom Stiglitz attacks as advocates of the rich and
powerful.
Kerry is, to his core, an ambitious patrician educated in elite schools
and anything but a populist. He is neither articulate nor impressive as
a candidate or as someone who is able to formulate an alternative to
Bush's foreign and defense policies which themselves still have far more
in common with Clinton's than they have differences. To be critical of
Bush is scarcely justification for wishful thinking about Kerry,
although every presidential election produces such illusions. Although
the foreign and military policy goals of the Democrats and Republicans
since 1947 have been essentially consensual, both in terms of objectives
and the varied means--from covert to overt warfare--of attaining them,
there have been significant differences in the way they were expressed.
This was far less the case with Republican presidents and presidential
candidates for most of the twentieth century, and men like Taft, Hoover,
Eisenhower, or Nixon were very sedate by comparison to Reagan or the
present rulers in Washington. But style can be important and
inadvertently, the Bush administration's falsehoods, rudeness, and
preemptory demands have begun to destroy an alliance system that for the
world's peace should have been abolished long ago. In this context, it
is far more likely that the nations allied with the U. S. in the past
will be compelled to stress their own interests and go their own ways.
The Democrats are far less likely to continue that exceedingly desirable
process, a process ultimately much more condusive to peace in the world.
They will perpetuate the same adventurism and opportunism that began
generations ago and that Bush has merely built upon, the same dependence
on military means to solve political crises, the same interference with
every corner of the globe as if America has a divinely ordained mission
to muck around with all the world's problems. The Democrats' greater
finesse in justifying these policies is therefore more dangerous because
they will be made to seem more credible and keep alive alliances that
only reinforce the U.S.' refusal to acknowledge the limits of its power.
In the longer run, Kerry's pursuit of these aggressive goals will lead
eventually to a renewal of the dissolution of alliances, but in the
short-run he will attempt to rebuild them and European leaders will find
it considerably more difficult to refuse his demands than if Bush stays
in power--and that is to be deplored.
The Stakes For The World
Critics of American foreign policy will not rule Washington after this
election regardless of who wins. As dangerous as he is, Bush's
reelection is much more likely to produce the continued destruction of
the alliance system that is so crucial to American power in the long
run. Facts in no way imply moral judgments if we merely identify them.
One does not have to believe that "worse is better" but we have to
consider candidly the foreign policy consequences of a renewal of Bush's
mandate, not the least because it is likely.
Bush's policies have managed to alienate innumerable nations. Even
America's firmest allies--such as Britain, Australia, and Canada--are
compelled to ask themselves if issuance of blank checks to Washington is
in their national interest or if it undermines the tenure of parties in
power. Foreign affairs, as the terrorism in Madrid dramatically showed
in March, are too explosively volatile to permit uncritical endorsement
of American policies and parties in power can pay dearly, as in Spain,
where the people were always overwhelmingly opposed to entering the war
and the ruling party snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. More
important, in terms of cost and price, are the innumerable victims among
the people. The nations that have supported the Iraq war
enthusiastically, particularly Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, and
Australia, have made their populations especially vulnerable to
terrorism. They now have the expensive responsibility of trying to
protect them.
The Washington-based Pew Research Center report on public opinion
released on March 16, 2004 showed that a large and rapidly increasing
majority of the French, Germans, and even British want an independent
European foreign policy, reaching 75 percent in France in March 2004
compared to 60 percent two years earlier. The U.S. "favorability rating"
plunged to 38 percent in France and Germany. But even in Britain it fell
from 75 to 58 percent and the proportion of Britain's population who
supported the decision to go to war in Iraq dropped from 61 percent in
May 2003 to 43 percent in March 2004. Blair's domestic credibility,
after the Labour Party placed third in the June 10 local and European
elections, is at its nadir. Right after the political debacle in Spain
the president of Poland, where a growing majority of the people has
always been opposed to sending troops to Iraq or keeping them there,
complained that Washington "misled" him on Iraq's weapons of mass
destruction and hinted that Poland might withdraw its 2,400 troops from
Iraq earlier than previously scheduled. In Italy, by last May 71 percent
of the people favored withdrawing the 2,700 Italian troops in Iraq no
later than June 30, and leaders of the main opposition have already
declared they will withdraw them if they win the spring 2006
elections--a promise they and other antiwar parties in Britain and Spain
used in the mid-June European Parliament elections to increase
significantly their power. The issue now is whether nations like Poland,
Italy, or The Netherlands can afford to isolate themselves from the
major European powers and their own public opinion to remain a part of
the increasingly quixotic and unilateralist American-led "coalition of
the willing". The political liabilities of remaining staying close to
Washington are obvious, the advantages non-existent.
What has happened in Spain is a harbinger of the future, further
isolating the American government in its adventures. Four more nations
of the 30-some members of the "coalition of the willing" have already
withdrawn their troops, and the Ukraine--with its 1,600 soldiers--will
soon follow suit. The Bush Administration sought to unite nations behind
the Iraq War with a gargantuan lie--that Hussein had "weapons of mass
destruction" --and failed spectacularly. Meanwhile, terrorism is more
robust than ever and its arguments have far more credibility in the
Muslim world. The Iraq War energized Al Qaeda and has tied down America,
dividing its alliances as never before. Conflict in Iraq may escalate,
as it has since March, creating a protracted armed conflict with Shiites
and Sunnis that could last many months, even years. Will the nations
that have sent troops there keep them there indefinitely, as Washington
is increasingly likely to ask them to do? Can the political leaders
afford concession to insatiable American demands?
Elsewhere, Washington opposes the major European nations on Iran, in
part because the neoconservatives and realists within its own ranks are
deeply divided, and the same is true of its relations with Japan, South
Korea, and China on how to deal with North Korea. America's effort to
assert its moral and ideological superiority, crucial elements in its
postwar hegemony, is failing--badly.
America's justification for its attack on Iraq compelled France and
Germany to become far more independent on foreign policy, far earlier,
than they had intended or were prepared to do. In a way that was
inconceivable two years ago NATO's future role is now being questioned.
Europe's future defense arrangements are today an open question but
there will be some sort of European military force independent of NATO
and American control. Germany and France strongly oppose the Bush
doctrine of preemption. Tony Blair, however much he intends to continue
acting as a proxy for the U.S. on military questions, must return
Britain to the European project, and his willingness since late 2003 to
emphasize his nation's role in Europe reflects political necessities. To
do otherwise is to alienate his increasingly powerful neighbors and risk
losing elections.
Even more dangerous, the Bush Administration has managed to turn what
was in the mid-1990s a blossoming cordial friendship with the former
Soviet Union into an increasingly tense relationship. Despite a 1997
non-binding American pledge not to station substantial numbers of combat
troops in the territories of new members, NATO last March incorporated
seven East European nations and is now on Russia's very borders and
Washington is in the process of establishing an undetermined but
significant number of bases in the Caucasus and Central Asia. Russia has
stated repeatedly that U.S. encirclement requires that it remain a
military superpower and modernize its delivery systems so that it will
be more than a match for the increasingly expensive and ambitious
missile defense system and space weapons the Pentagon is now building.
It has 5,286 nuclear warheads and 2,922 intercontinental missiles to
deliver them. We now see a dangerous and costly renewal of the arms race.
Because it regards America's ambitions in the former Soviet bloc as
provocation, Russia threatened in February of this year to pull out of
the crucial Conventional Forces in Europe treaty, which has yet to come
into force. "I would like to remind the representatives of [NATO]",
Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov told a security conference in Munich last
February, "that with its expansion they are beginning to operate in the
zone of vitally important interests of our country." By dint of its
increasingly unilateral rampages, without U.N. authority, where Russia's
veto power on the Security Council is, in Ivanov's wistful words-- one
of the "major factors for ensuring global stability", the U.S. has made
international relations "very dangerous." (See Wade Boese, "Russia, NATO
at Loggerheads Over Military Bases," Arms Control Today, March 2004; Los
Angeles Times, March 26, 2004. ) The question Washington's allies will
ask themselves is whether their traditional alliances have far more
risks than benefits--and if they are now necessary.
In the case of China, Bush's key advisers publicly assigned the highest
priority to confronting its burgeoning military and geopolitical power
the moment they came to office. But China's military budget is growing
rapidly--12 per cent this coming year--and the European Union wants to
lift its 15-year old arms embargo and get a share of the enticingly
large market. The Bush Administration, of course, is strongly resisting
any relaxation of the export ban. Establishing bases on China's western
borders is the logic of its ambitions.
By installing bases in small or weak Eastern European and Central Asian
nations the United States is not so much engaged in "power projection"
against an amorphously defined terrorism as again confronting Russia and
China in an open-ended context. Such confrontations may have profoundly
serious and protracted consequences neither America's allies nor its own
people have any inclination to support. Even some Pentagon analysts (see
for example, Dr. Stephen J. Blank's "Toward a New U.S. Strategy in
Asia," U.S. Army Strategic Studies Institute, February 24, 2004) have
warned against this strategy because any American attempt to save failed
states in the Caucasus or Central Asia, implicit in its new obligations,
will risk exhausting what are ultimately its finite military resources.
The political crisis now wracking Uzbekistan makes this fear very real.
There is no way to predict what emergencies will arise or what these
commitments entail, either for the U. S. or its allies, not the least
because--as Iraq proved last year and Vietnam long before it--America's
intelligence on the capabilities and intentions of possible enemies
against which it blares its readiness to "preempt" is so utterly faulty.
Without accurate information a state can believe and do anything, and
this is the predicament the Bush Administration's allies are in. It is
simply not to their national interest, much less to the political
interests of those now in power or the security of their people, to
pursue foreign policies based on a blind, uncritical acceptance of
fictions or flamboyant adventurism premised on false premises and
information. Such acceptance is far too open-ended, both in terms of
potential time and in the political costs involved. If Bush is
reelected, America's allies and friends will have to confront such stark
choices, a process that will redefine and probably shatter existing
alliances. Many nations, including the larger, powerful ones, will
embark on independent, realistic foreign policies, and the dramatic
events in Spain have reinforced this likelihood.
But the United States will be more prudent, and the world will be far
safer, only if it is constrained by a lack of allies and isolated. And
that is happening.
No comments:
Post a Comment