peacefile

I haven’t watched this much television since I was in grade school.  I became glued to the DNC coverage this week, both televised and on the net.  Of course, commentary about the proceedings abounded, from convention pundits and participants to bloggers on the scene and those watching from a distance.  I enjoyed the opportunity to hear and read what folks had to say.

The convention was filled with inspiring words and actions (both inside and outside the convention halls), and last night’s event, open to the public and held in the open air on the very anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington, was exceptionally  moving and celebratory.

I appreciated hearing the concrete statements of concern and intent made by both Al Gore and Barack Obama in their cogent presentations.   Here are some reflections:

Last night and throughout the convention, great emphasis was placed on the issue of parenting, particularly on the role of the father in the family.   From Michelle Obama’s early reference to the strength of her own father’s influence on her life, to Barack Obama’s eagerness to be the kind of father that he didn’t have, to Joe Biden’s significant role as single dad to his sons when his wife and daughter were tragically killed … All these seemed to culminate in statements Barack Obama made last night, to great applause, when he stressed that the change Americans want will take more than money; change will require more  responsibility from each of us, especially in the areas of resource conservation and parenting.  “Individual and mutual responsibility,” he said.  “That’s the essence of America’s promise.”

After 8 years of the Bush Administration’s distinct lack of empathy in policy-making, I felt a huge sense of relief hearing a statesman stress that “I am my brother’s keeper; I am my sister’s keeper,” without contradicting the essence of the American ideal of self-determination and personal freedom of choice.  From his vantage point as a father and as a lawmaker and civil rights and women’s rights advocate, Obama repeated that “America’s promise” is the right for all children to become what they want to become, but not as isolated individuals, rather as valued parts of a whole that is interconnected and interdependent.

The bedrock amalgam of freedom and empathy is what underlies Obama’s platform planks –  equal rights to quality education and health care, shared efforts in becoming conservation-minded and energy independent, equal pay for equal work, the rights of workers to organize, and economic policies that support rather than undermine family life.

Precisely because of my agreement with these value-based policies, I disagree with several of Obama’s stated goals regarding national security and foreign relations.  My concerns are these:

·         Obama’s inclination to increase US troop levels in Afghanistan pursues a “more of the same” agenda that hasn’t succeeded in the “war on terror” either there or in Iraq.  Afghanistan is even more difficult in terms of terrain and cultural difference than Iraq, and so far, US military operations in Afghanistan have proven more harmful than helpful to the people there.  Regular reports of civilian casualties from US weapons, a burgeoning opium trade and the growing influence of warlords and religious extremism has occurred under US occupation, and it would seem to repeat the Bush Administration’s stubborn tendency to address a  problem by doing more of what isn’t working.  As an alternative approach, I think answers lie in exactly what Obama prescribes for our own country:  bolstering equal access to education and basic family necessities.  Along the lines of what Greg Mortenson (“Three Cups of Tea”) has been doing with school projects in Afghanistan and Pakistan, assistance in the area of education would do much more than military force  to not only improve living conditions, but to heal relations and remove underlying motives for terrorism. 

·         No mention was made by Barack Obama last night or by any leading party statesperson during the entire convention, as far as I could tell, of the huge problem of the privatization of the US military.  Comprising approximately equal numbers as US military personnel in Iraq, privately contracted mercenary and military support workers have undermined US relations with Iraq, have proven nearly impossible to hold accountable, have been extremely costly and have only provoked, in my opinion, further terrorism.  What does an Obama/Biden administration plan to do about the rise of the outsourced army?

·         Last night, Barack Obama condoned the notion of “taking out” Osama bin Laden.  Assassination is incompatible with US Constitutional and thus international law.  This kind of “tough talk” is exactly the kind of Bush Administration rhetoric that we must move away from, not emulate.  It’s also exactly the kind of rhetoric that has escalated the “war on terror” and has led to the general demonization of whole groups of people – which is completely counter to the direction a new civil rights-minded administration would want to go.  Osama bin Laden can be apprehended – alive – and charged and tried in accordance with international law – something the Bush Administration could have pursued 7 years ago, but chose a path motivated  by opportunism instead.

·         Obama promised to go through the federal budget “line by line” to cut excess spending and free up money to bolster the education and health care insurance plans he supports.  But, the biggest black hole for federal funds has been war spending.  Stop funding war and money will be there for the programs we need.

·         War is not green.  This was a primary message of those who marched and demonstrated outside the convention in Denver (and who plan to do the same in Minnesota this week).  It’s a serious point that is not being made by Al Gore or others in the Obama/Biden campaign.  War and war preparation cause great environmental degradation, both in the US and abroad.  The US military, no matter how much one might support its missions, must be acknowledged as one of the top polluters in the world.  Every decision to use military force rather than diplomacy must take this environmental cost into consideration.

I am enthusiastic about Barack Obama’s general emphasis on reaching out to other government leaders (such as Iran’s) and his tendency to seek dialogue, compromise and common ground.  I’m also buoyed by his insistence on fundamental equality, both as a matter of belief and also as a function of his own background and heritage.  He could bring this same guiding principle of equality to decisions regarding Iraq, Afghanistan, Russia and other potential centers of conflict. 

That is, the principle of equality necessarily extends to all persons, everywhere in the world, not only Americans.  We may have an exceptional form of government, but we do not have an exceptional right to life.  Every human life is of equal value.  Every child in the world deserves the opportunity to live a meaningful life.  This truth, that Obama has expressed so eloquently, must guide US foreign policy as equally as it guides domestic policy.  As Bill Clinton said in his address to the convention, “The power of example is more important than the example of power.” 

I like the example we have seen so far in the ways Barack Obama and Joe Biden have led their own lives as integrated family men and committed public servants.  I wholeheartedly agree with the emphasis on the mix of individual and mutual responsibility that is being discussed in this campaign.  In fact, balancing our lives as individuals and also as members of communities is part of the global human condition.  We can take this opportunity to teach by example in the world, to be willing to admit our mistakes and to learn from our global neighbors whose earth, air, water and sun we share.  Equality is a truth we can choose to live.  Yes, we can.                       

by Susan Van Haitsma (cross-posted at her makingpeace blog at the Austin American-Statesman) 

Today marks the 45th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, one of the greatest events in US history.  The anniversary, remembered mostly for King’s “I Have a Dream” speech delivered to a quarter of a million people gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial, will surely be invoked by Barack Obama at the Democratic National Convention today.

On this day, I like to remember the primary organizer of the historic March on Washington, Bayard Rustin.  Rustin was known for his calm, meticulous, professional handling of the myriad logistics involved in getting people to and from the march in an orderly way via bus, plane, car and train from points far and near.  He also engineered security for the march, including arranging nonviolence training for security personnel, a crucial aspect given the great apprehension among government officials that violence would erupt during the event.  

The march, the largest single-day event of its kind in US history to that date, was a huge success and a major factor toward passage of the Civil Rights Act the following year. 

Bayard Rustin was not only a highly skilled organizer, he was a skilled and experienced nonviolence trainer whose influence in the US civil rights movement at crucial times, such as the early days of the Montgomery Bus Boycott when MLK became involved in the movement, was pivotal.  He also was a gay man who was hounded by the FBI and segregationists like Strom Thurmond, who sought to discredit Rustin in order to thwart the March on Washington. Other organizers of the march, including A. Philip Randolph, stood by Rustin, helping to prevent Thurmond’s attacks from gaining purchase.

It was good to hear US Rep. John Lewis interviewed last night at the DNC after Barack Obama had been officially nominated.  Lewis was one of the “Big Ten” who spoke along with King on that important day in 1963, and his speech was considered one of the more fiery of the day.  He asked people to “get in and stay in the streets of every city, every village and hamlet of this nation until true freedom comes, until the revolution of 1776 is complete.”

It is not complete, but there are still people working hard - both inside government and outside in the streets - for a nonviolent revolution of values declaring that freedom from injustice also means freedom from war. 

Photo from wikipedia

By Greg Moses

Somewhere down in their guts, and despite the bravado of Barack Obama’s campaign rhetoric, the people who yearn for “change” in America are asking for leadership that will not turn its back on the wisdom of peace makers like Saul Alinsky. But last week’s killings in South Ossetia seemed to grin back at the young movement with the face of Randoph Bourne saying I told you so. “War is the health of the state.”

Out of the recent Caucasian (sic) war, a clear winner rises. Whether you look to Russia, Georgia, Poland, or the USA, the victor stands waving flags. His name is nationalism. And in the face of this victory, what are the chances that the people of the USA will be able to choose internationalism instead?

George Bush betrays USA commitments to internationalism, but he could not act alone. What he goes for is nationalism in alliance. What he calls coalition should be more properly termed cartel, because a coalition is something you put together to fight a cartel, if you want language that respects liberation.

The Georgian (was the pun intended?) assault on South Ossetia was a repudiation of internationalism, and in that sense, it worked perfectly well. Prior to the Georgian glare of rockets, there was an international arrangement in place for the peace of South Ossetia. It was a weak arrangement, as we see. And it was dominated by Russian influence. Nevertheless, the peace of South Ossetia was formally monitored by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). And compared to this week, we can see that it was working in important ways.

The war over South Ossetia makes official what George Bush has been telling us all along. The cold war cannot be over, so long as there is an unstoppable nationalism on the loose. The cleverness of last week’s gun show was how it (once again) transferred the reality of that nationalism over to one side. My god! Look at what the Russians are doing!

What Russia’s doing is criminal. It counts as collective punishment of the Georgian people. But the problem is finding any principle of wrongdoing that George Bush has not already shredded. What Georgia did on Aug. 7 was criminal also, in violation of tautly stretched peace agreements. And when Georgian troops were retrieved from Iraq, who could not be reminded of the criminal-in-chief?

In place of this never-ending spiral of gang violence, there is a real and present yearning for a global neighborhood that thugs don’t shove around. Which brings us back to the roots of Alinsky’s dream and the half-conscious attempt by the Obama movement to globalize it.

As Socrates once said to sweet Phaedrus, before you can persuade a person to do anything good for himself, you have to figure out how to speak to his particular kind of soul. In the language of the political battlefield last week, we learned something we might have thought we could ignore about the soul of America. Something, dare we say it, that Jeremiah Wright was on to.

The textbook answer to the cycle of national belligerence, of course, is to get back in the business of international power and peace. A textbook answer won’t work, you say? In fact, the American voters have for the past several elections desired something other than a Bush-whacking nation. Getting who you vote for is difficult enough these days. But then getting why you voted for them? That’s the ultimate challenge that the movement for “change” faces in the world today.

by Greg Moses

OpEdNews

However we might assess recent anti-war statements by Russian human rights activists, Anna Arutunyan assures us that they are not to be confused with the “real” opposition in Russia. For the more popular alternative party, Arutunyan suggests that we look to the The Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF).

“After all,” writes Arutnyan, “the Communist Party functioned more like an opposition party than the liberals ever did.” Today the CPRF “stands for nationalizing the country’s natural resources, making the country’s stabilization fund available for social betterment, guaranteeing free medicine, housing, and education, and reviving the country’s scientific and industrial standing.”

For Americans who know very well how such an agenda would get you branded and run out of town quick, Arutunyan reminds us that in Russia, “the CPRF’s program is an honest reflection of what independent polls show. According to an ongoing study by the Levada Center, a steady 34-48% of respondents support a Soviet model of government — nearly twice as many as those that support a Western-style democracy.”

Arutunyan points to these features of Russian politics in order to caution Western hardliners against pushing Putin into a corner, because in the larger view he is the leader who continues to prioritize “economic integration” over “democracy” and who therefore is the force most likely to deliver what the West most wants from Russia, all gradeschool language about freedom aside.

Although Peter Charles Choharis can denounce “Kremlin Capitalism” in the August 16 Wall Street Journal, his blue-faced impatience seems not to consider the living alternative within a Russian context. If you don’t like “Kremlin Capitalism,” then join the crowd in Russia. Opt for Communism instead.

Taking a tip from Arutunyan, and getting some help from Google translate, I’ve been reading the freshly updated web pages of the CPRF (kprf.ru). What they demand as a consequence of the Caucasus war is nothing like a return to status quo. Russia has established its power in Georgia, and the CPRF leadership would like to see that power translated into real changes on the ground.

First of all, Communist leadership demands immediate recognition of independence for the breakaway states of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

“After the Georgia regime’s attack on the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali, the world should fully understand why Russia would recognize the independence of Ossetia and Abkhazia and enter into security alliances that would reliably guarantee the security of the long-suffering populations of these republics,” says Communist Party chief G. A. Zyuganov.

“The aggressor should be punished,” says Zyuganov. Yet, “We are encouraged to pretend that nothing happened.”

Yuri A. Kvitsinskim, first deputy chairman of the Committee on International Affairs of the State Duma (KPRF faction) echoes Zyuganov’s denunciation of any return to “status quo.” He says the French President is acting like the Uncle you send over in your behalf, and once he gets the best deal he can, you say, oh but I wanted even more. My Uncle doesn’t speak for me.

“Now everything should be done to break the aggressor, punish the guilty in an act of aggression, war crimes and crimes of genocide, provide effective assistance to victims, begin to rebuild South Ossetia,” says Kvitsinskim. ” We must immediately recognize South Ossetia and Abkhazia and take them under protection.”

As the Communist Party analysts see it, the Georgian incursion was based upon a gamble that the Geogian-led army could close the Roksky tunnel in time to prevent a Russian response.

“Not coincidentally Western media during the first night ‘didn’t notice’ the invasion of Georgian troops in South Ossetia and the UN Security Council refused to consider our appeal regarding aggression, ostensibly because it was too late and members of the Council very much like to sleep,” grumbles Kvitsinskim. “But the Council quickly awakened once Russian tanks went through the tunnel, and our aviation began to strike at Georgian aggressors.”

As for the threatening statements coming from the USA?

“They just need to make noise, otherwise the damage to U.S. prestige will be even more sensitive,” answers Kvitsinskim. “This is only an attempt to ’save face’.”

by Greg Moses

OpEdNews / Red State Rebels / Dissident Voice

First they called on Georgia to stop the military assault on South Ossetia, then they denounced Russian aggression in Georgia. Human rights activists in Russia are speaking up for peace and justice in the Caucasus region.

Writing for the August 11 edition of the Eurasia Daily Monitor, Jonas Bernstein reported that, “Some veteran Russian human rights activists have criticized Russia’s attack on Georgia unequivocally.” Bernstein sourced his report to the Russian news site grani.ru, which may be the most balanced news agency to report on the conflict.

Working backward from the reports at grani.ru, we find an August 7 statement posted at memo.ru, the website for the Memorial International Society founded by Sergei Kovalev. The statement was apparently composed in the first hours of military outbreak, while the Georgian army was advancing northward toward the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali.

The Memorial statement reminded readers that the territory of South Ossetia was officially under the peacekeeping purview of the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe).

“Georgia, as an OSCE member, has an obligation to resolve conflicts with peaceful measures,” said the Memorial statement. “Restoring the territorial integrity of the government cannot be grounds for the dismissal of such responsibilities. War operations in South Ossetia should be rapidly halted. The path of negotiations will be long and difficult, but this is the only way can lasting peace be attained.”

Of course, the statement did not stop the Georgian attack, and Russia soon entered the battlefield of South Ossetia from the north.

As soon as Russia expanded its military operation beyond South Ossetia, Kovalev joined a coalition of human rights activists in Georgia to denounce the aggression in strong terms.

“We call for the immediate stop of aggression against Georgia,” said the statement of August 10, translated into English two days later by theotherrussia.org. “We consider that Russia’s leadership, having set another bloody stain to the country’s reputation, finally made its presence in the Group of Eight unacceptable from a moral point of view.”

On August 11, another statement denouncing Russian military actions came from a Russian opposition party led by Garry Kasparov.

“Today, it is short-sighted to concentrate solely on criticism of [Georgian President] Saakashvili,” said the statement by the United Civil Front (again translated by theotherrussia.org). “To demand an immediate cease-fire and start of talks is correct, but insufficient. If we want to eliminate the risk of repeating similar tragic situations in the future, the Russian authority must bear responsibility for its actions before its citizens.”

Kasparov’s party wants to hold Moscow accountable for longstanding policies that have served to perpetuate a conflict in South Ossetia.

“As a first step,” says the party statement, “the president and prime-minister would do well to explain why the government is issuing tens of thousands of Russian passports in the territory of a neighboring country, with which we maintain normal diplomatic relations? Why are the key posts in the South Ossetian government and security services occupied by career Russian civil servants and military personnel? Why, after an attack on Russian peacekeepers by the superior forces of the opponent in Tskhinvali, did the official establishment stand in a state of stupor for several hours, and didn’t rush to provide military assistance? What does the Kremlin want to achieve by escalating the conflict with Georgia and expanding the theater of military operations?”

These critical words from Russian human rights activists offer a framework for peace activism in the USA. As we read the Russian activists’ recollections of Russian mistakes and crimes, we may find ways to join grievances against the misadventures and illegalities of our own aggressive state.

As the USA prepares to introduce a militarized humanitarian mission into Georgia, the words of Russian dissidents apply: “Historical experience shows that the interference of our country in someone else’s affairs inevitably, and contrary to any claims of ‘assistance,’ leads to innumerable misfortunes.“

Isn’t there an eerie echo for American activists in the following paragraph by Russian human rights activists?

“The incursion into Afghanistan led to many years of unceasing widespread violence and human rights abuses, as well as flare-ups of war again and again. The historical development of Afghanistan turned completely around: from a secular government it turned into a theocratic one. The actions of the Soviet leadership led to a sharp rise in the popularity of Islamic fundamentalism not only in Afghanistan, but in Pakistan and Arab countries as well. (Remember the alliance between the Taliban and Al-Qaeda).”

As our nationalist media on both sides whip up the fighting spirit in terms of either/or, Russia or USA, the level voices of Russian activists remind us: “Politics not based on the principles of international law does not serve the true interests of the Russian people and can in no way work to resolve national-territorial conflicts in this region.”

From a perspective of USA peace activism, can’t we say “ditto” to much of this?

By Greg Moses

OpEdNews / Dissident Voice

On Sunday Michel Chossudovsky reasoned that the US-backed attack on the capital of South Ossetia was designed to produce a humanitarian crisis. On Wednesday, President Bush declared that the US military would spearhead a humanitarian mission to Georgia, which the Russians had better not bother.

Now Chossudovsky is concluding that the South Ossetia operation, by putting Russian troops in check, is one last step in the encirclement of Iran. All pieces are practically in place for a blockade, including plans to use a warship from Brazil. The anti-Iran coalition, which is global and bi-partisan, will be considering the use of pre-emptive nuclear strike.

And because of Iran’s strained relations with the International Atomic Energy Agency, which continues to express worry about Iran’s “transparency and full disclosure,” Iran now finds itself not only encircled but virtually friendless.

Markets, they say, hate uncertainty. Since this is what WWIII looks like, Dow futures this morning were up.

But speaking of “transparency and full disclosure” where is the international agency that will demand an answer to this question: were the civilian populations of South Ossetia and Georgia deliberately sacrificed to achieve these military ends?

By Greg Moses

The USA President makes loud threats about how he’s going to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. Yet last week in Iran’s back yard an American-backed invasion proved that a nuclear arsenal may be the only deterrent to war that the USA President truly respects.

If the people of the USA want a less dangerous world, let them first demand less dangerous leadership. As long as USA propagandists continue to drum up the image of Russia as the lone aggressor, we should not stop demanding that journalists pursue the
question of who stood behind last week’s provocative and bloody military incursion into South Ossetia.

Georgian soldiers returning from that failed invasion of South Ossetia were reportedly quite vocal in disappointment that the USA had not backed them up more forcefully. But why has the USA declined to get more involved?

According to retired Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner, last week’s little war was the closest the world has come lately to nuclear combat.

“Let me just say,” said Col. Gardiner to Amy Goodman, “that if you were to rate how serious the strategic situations have been in the past few years, this would be above Iraq, this would be above Afghanistan, and this would be above Iran.”

On Col. Gardiner’s account, military strategists for the USA would have known that for the past two decades Russia has embraced a published policy that if they were ever directly threatened with an American-style assault of precision weapons, they would have to resort to a tactical nuclear response. Last week, the Georgian invasion of South Ossetia tested that policy up against the Russian border.

Sharing the widespread assumption of retreating Georgian soldiers, Russian strategists last week believed that the USA very likely “was going to intervene,” said Col. Gardiner. “At a news conference on Sunday, the [USA] deputy national security adviser said we have noted that the Russians have introduced two SS-21 medium-range ballistic missile launchers into South Ossetia.” And since those missile launchers could deliver tactical nukes, they became a very likely reason why further USA involvement has been deterred.

In other words, the armored push toward the Russian border was a kind of military dare: show us your nukes, or else! And, if I follow Col. Gardiner’s line of analysis, it was only Russia’s willingness to call that nuclear dare that saved South Ossetia from becoming one more lasting theater of reckless adventure backed by the USA.

True enough, Russia has done more than was necessary to repel the Georgian attack. They pushed back further than they had to. They killed more people than had to be killed for purposes of defending the attacked populations of South Ossetia (a population whose pain does not count for much in Western media reports – we have much preferred to share stories of the Georgians clear and present horror). In the end, however, the Russians have done less than they were dared to, because the military question put to them had virtually demanded a tactical nuclear answer.

Don’t count me opposed to condemning or prosecuting Russia’s military excesses this week; what the Georgians are suffering is wrong. Just make sure that any lineup for suspects of thuggerdom in Georgia begins with the smirking mug of the President of the USA for not discouraging in the strongest possible terms the Georgian military assault on the people of South Ossetia and their local militia.

In the end, thanks to our mainstream media, the lesson of South Ossetia remains quite hidden from the people of the USA. If we want a world where nuclear proliferation is less likely, we cannot settle for anything less than an immediate demand for leadership that will advance the world toward peace through peaceful means.

If democracy is as democracy does, then the people of the USA will have to lead their leaders in ways that will be marvelous to see.

Responses to South Ossetia Question Marks

Excellently written, excellently phrased. I enjoyed this immensely. Thank you for writing it.

–Sunnyvale, CA

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Sir, thanks for this commentary today.

As a former US Marine/Vietnam vet, I hope they start a vets against war group and stop any further expletive wars before the expletive politicians can start more wars.

If the US of A sends troops (where will they find them) to this new hell hole, there ought to be an armed revolution right here in America. Regardless of who is the idiot president or “decider” in chief. That means the expletive sell out Obama included there in.

Enough of wars. Tell the expletive Zionists if they bomb Iran, we will bomb them for their war crimes.

Pull out EVERY American military person from every foreign country. The ONLY exception would be the Marine guards at our embassies, as they are there for minimal security and show.

Just the personal opinion of an aged veteran of an earlier imperial war, who woke up today with more than the usual physical pain that I have lived with since 1989.

End ALL wars. NOW.

Thanks for your commentary sir. Thanks also for your time reading my humble (and not so polite) rant of a reply.

–Glenmora, LA

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Nice job of press criticism! Thanks.

–Dallas, TX

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excellent, thank you, my feelings exactly. I wrote to several “reporters/journalists” at nytimes this weekend telling them that they suck and should work for Fox.

Peace

–Montana

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Great piece, but who else, other than me and you, are interested, concerned, and informed? Only if the masses get organized and energized will change be possible.

************

what we can expect is that georgia, the so-called ally of america, will now consider joining russia again, because they were betrayed by nato and the u.s. beautiful foreign policy again by the folks in washington.

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I really wonder what can have been in the Georgian government’s mind. They know better than anyone that the Russian armed forces have all the information collected by their Soviet predecessors - and of course many of them are the same people - who were based in Georgia for decades. They must know every inch of ground, every defensive position, every building. And all the defence plans, too. The only thing the Russians lacked, and could not possibly get without helpful Georgian cooperation, was a provocation. So the Georgians gave them one - and how!

As for expecting US help, what form did they think that might take? Even Dubya would hardly threaten to nuke Moscow over something like this. Georgia, USA - maybe. Georgia, Asia - never. But what else? The US Navy cannot get at Georgia without going through the Black Sea. Ever wondered how one of those big CVNs would react to a nice big missile hit? I bet the Pentagon isn’t keen to find out.

Any long-range missile or bombing activity is ruled out with so many Georgians and Russians mixed up together - and all on Georgian territory now. So that leaves sending in the Army - or maybe the Marines. Excuse me while I roll around laughing helplessly. Those guys are all tied up not winning their wars against two impoverished, ruined Muslim countries with no regular armed forces to speak of. And besides, there is the distinct possibility the Russians would beat them, which again the Pentagon would not like to risk.

I attach a link to today’s cartoon (Aug. 12, 2008: “You and Whose Army?” by Morten Moreland) in The Times of London. Neat, huh? I think it sums things up pretty well.

Best wishes
Basingstoke, England

************

also see comments posted at Dissident Voice

Propaganda the Morning After

By Greg Moses

DissidentVoice / CounterPunch

There are two sides bleeding and too many dead in what is hopefully the aftermath of a weekend war in the Caucasus. And right on cue, the prime opinion space for the American mind is being occupied this Monday morning by a propagandist for perpetual war.

“Will Russia get away with it?” asks the beaming columnist for the New York Times, his smile winking at you as if no way he could be talking up death and disaster.

On one side of the world, writes the propagandist, you have “the United States and its democratic allies.” On the other side, you’ll find “dictatorial and aggressive and fanatical regimes” who “seem happy to work together to weaken the influence of the United States and its democratic allies.”

“The United States, of course, is not without resources and allies to deal with these problems and threats,” hints the propagandist. “But at times we seem oddly timid and uncertain.” Which brings us around to his winking question again: “Will we let Russia get away with it?”

But what if we paraphrase a famous movie hero and remind the propagandist that aggressive is as aggressive does. Then, we may ask, which side of the propagandist’s world last Thursday picked up its guns and blasted a path through the Caucasus mountains to the city of Tskhinvali, killing as many local militia as possible and quite a few others who somehow got in the way?

Was it the enemies of the US and its allies who did this thing? Was it the Russians? Who was it who sent 30,000 refugees fleeing northward for their lives, some of whom stayed North just long enough to catch their breaths before heading South again to fight for their homeland?

Maybe the propagandist means to ask if we will let Russia get away with letting so many refugees flee into its country so quickly? I mean, by comparison, how does that make the US immigration police look in the eyes of the world?

As it turns out, the Russians were not only watching, but waiting, says Michel Chossudovsky of the Centre for Global Research. “The Russian response,” he writes, “was entirely predictable.”

Against the predominantly Georgian military (who were at least accompanied by Israeli advisors, and very likely other nationalities, too, although the New York Times was good enough to minimize embarrassing gossip of American involvement over the weekend) the Russians let go an onslaught of tanks, driving the Georgian coalition backward as quickly as they had arrived.

Does the propagandist mean to ask whether we will let the Russians get away with that tank attack? It’s a curious question, because it seems to accept the premise that “the United States and its democratic allies” should certainly be allowed to get away with marching on Tskhinvali next time, only without anyone else “happy to work together” against it.

The Russians did go farther than just pushing back the Georgian coalition. Their leaders exercised a right to “retaliation” which is a little broader than a right to “protect and defend.” It would be better if we lived in a world where nobody was allowed to “retaliate.” But I live in Texas, and the movement against retaliation isn’t going to start here, so maybe the propagandist thinks it should begin in Georgia? We can see plainly that it won’t begin at the New York Times.

In the end, I wonder if the propagandist has read any Jung lately, because he seems to have a very immature conception of himself, completely unable to recognize that he has become his own shadow: “dictatorial and aggressive and fanatical.” But in this regard he serves his social function perfectly as a perfect reflection of the mind of New York Times readers everywhere.

Well, not to be too harsh, there is some helpful reporting that slips through the teeth at the Times. On Monday morning we can also read how that wearily retreating Georgia coalition was expressing bitter disappointment that more of the US and its allies were not there when, apparently, they had been expected to show up.

After the traumatized soldiers from the Georgia coalition get home and have a little more time to think about what they have lost forever, they may wish to take up the question of the propagandist, who knows? Make it their life’s work, for pay. Or they may do what many young men and women have done among the US and its allies, that is, start a local chapter of veterans against war.

Reuters is reporting that the Russians made two bombing raids directed at airports near Tbilisi, one in the morning and one in the evening. The report is confirmed by a photographer who “saw smoke.” Such targets might be construed as defensive if there are threats of continuing air attacks by Georgia, but one raid reportedly hit near a civilian airport. Georgia claims that it has withdrawn from South Ossetia.

McClatchy reports wider attacks by Russia in areas outside the breakaway states, but they attribute their info to Georgian officials.

Meanwhile, there is a French proposal under development asking parties to return to status quo.

The news out of South Ossetia is grim and grimmer, with pictures of death, and reports of Ossetian refugees fleeing North and Georgian refugees fleeing South. Western media, of course, are focusing on the Georgian casualties.

In the end, Russia has made its point. The Georgian offensive has been turned back. Voices of peace should call for a ceasefire and international attention to humanitarian needs.

The Los Angeles Times runs the following paragraph:

Bush was careful to urge both sides to stand down. But his remarks clearly placed the onus for the escalating violence on the Kremlin, saying that bombings in Georgia were occurring “far from the zone of conflict in South Ossetia” and calling on Russia to cease such attacks.

The quotation marks indicate a dangerously ambiguous phrase, because if the Russian military actions go beyond the breakaway territory, it would have to be taken very seriously. But the quotation marks could also mean that within South Ossetia, the Russian incursions go beyond the boundaries of the ethnic Ossetians into areas where ethnic Georgians live. However, if this is the actual meaning, then it begs the question of what the Russians might be shooting at. Bush could be describing what we already know — that the Russians are targeting the Georgian military, who are seeking to enter the zone of conflict. The reporting should therefore specify where “far” is. But I don’t see that the story provides this crucial detail. And because the story does not specify a targeted area outside South Ossetia, which would be crucial news, I think the story is just “reporting” what’s said. In which case — as expected — the propaganda team is recovering.

By Greg Moses

OpEdNews

The UK Sunday Times reports that the Russian Federation’s incursion into the Georgia state of South Ossetia has been matched by a similar operation in Abkhazia, another Georgian state. In this second operation, reports are more clear that Russia is acting in concert with the breakaway leaders.

In the case of South Ossetia there is reason to believe that the majority of people are more sympathetic to the Russian forces than to the Georgian forces that provoked Russia, but if there have also been coordinated military operations, I have not seen them so clearly reported. In both cases, therefore, it appears that Russia has struck in places where it enjoys popular favor, or at least local judgment that Russia is the lesser evil.

While these moves are no doubt embarrassing to the American-trained and equipped Georgian Army, a more ominous geopolitical concern will likely point in the direction of the Ceyhan-Tblisi-Baku (BTC) pipeline which crosses Georgia to the south of the breakaway states. Once again, we could be presented with an oil war.

A survey of cable news and financial networks on Friday indicated that the American propaganda network was caught flatfooted by the Russian actions. But we should probably anticipate a speedy recovery. Who knows what the official line will be next week, but very likely it will converge on language posted at the State Department web site: “The United States supports the territorial integrity of Georgia,” meaning that the breakaway states will be considered outlaws of a kind.

So long as Russian incursions remain confined to the breakaway states of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, voices of peace might consider replying to the official line by pointing out that the peoples of both breakaway states have already established “de facto” autonomy. Fighting Russia in these cases would mean fighting also against the preferences — perhaps they are grudging preferences — of the people in the area.

In the case of Abkhazia, ethnic cleansing of Georgians has apparently already taken place. But in the case of South Ossetia, there are living risks that Georgians in some villages may be endangered by ethnic cleansing. For this reason, voices of peace may consider supporting Georgian military defenses in those areas.

These are comments based on quick studies of internet materials, designed more to focus discussion than to present an expert conclusion. Nevertheless, they don’t fall very far from what historian Mark Almond argued in a CounterPunch article when he asked: “If westerners readily conceded non-Russian republics’ right to secede from the USSR in 1991, what is the logic of insisting that non-Georgians must remain inside a microempire which happens to be pro-western?”

By Greg Moses

DissidentVoice

Considering the grave implications of the battle that has broken out over South Ossetia, it was puzzling to see the sparse coverage on Friday’s cable news and financial networks. On the other hand, maybe this is good news. The imperial position has not been prepped. Before waiting on next week’s lineup of Pentagon consultants dragged back from vacation, we the people have maybe 24 hours to make up our own minds.

My contribution toward a people-centered solution: concede independence to the breakaway republic of Tskhinval. Here’s why.

According to background materials available on the internet, some of which have already been broadcast as news, it appears that South Ossetia has long enjoyed a relatively autonomous position, even under Soviet rule. North Ossetia is part of the Russian Federation, so South Ossetians are kin to Russians. Reports claim that most South Ossetians hold citizenship in the Russian Federation, and that 99 percent of South Ossetians favored independence from Georgia in a 2006 referendum.

On Nov. 12, 2006, South Ossetians aligned with the breakaway republic of Tskhinval, re-elected their independent president, Eduard Kokoity. But this is only half the story.

As Irina Kelekhsayeva reports for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR), on the same day that Kokoity was re-elected in Tskhinval, there was a parallel election among a cluster of ethnic Georgian villages in the region, resulting in the confirmation of Dmitry Sanakoyev as the “alternative president” of an “alternative administrative unit” created by Georgia’s central government. South Ossetia has two Presidents, but Kokoity usually gets called the “de facto” one (CRS No. 392 17-May-07).

Although Russia had agreed to withdraw its military bases from Georgia, reports continued to hint that weapons from Russia were continuing to flow into Tskhinval. Meanwhile, from the other side, Georgia got lots of help from the USA and achieved the highest growth rate of military spending in the world. Says the 2008 yearbook from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI): “Georgia in particular had a very high level of military spending in comparison to the size of its economy.”

On both sides, the arms built up and up. On the ground, people of the region did their best to live under the tensions of dual Russian-Georgian peacekeeping forces, who periodically blocked and unblocked travel along key roads. Last week, in an effort to unfreeze the frozen conflict, the Georgian Army rolled into the region from the South. The Russian Federation countered with a swift and surprising attack from the North.

Already, voices in the USA, echoing the policy posted at the State Department web site, talk about a need to maintain the “integrity” of the border that keeps South Ossetia clearly within the domain of Georgia. This is the position to rethink.

Most ominous for peace lovers is the presence of the Caspian pipeline that runs near the Georgia capital of Tbilisi, just south of South Ossetia. This is the same pipeline that is now in flames in Turkey from a reported attack by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), another “separatist” group that analysts will no doubt consider when evaluating any concession to the South Ossetia “separatists.”

On the Russian side, there are similar considerations of geopolitical posturing. Some analysts say an objective of the Russian incursion this week will be to strengthen the Russian influence over terms of conflict resolution. The Russian gambit may also work to keep Georgia out of NATO forever.

Which brings me to the tentative, people-centered solution: In consideration of the longstanding “de facto” independence of Tskhinvali, the boundary of Georgia’s “integrity” should be rethought to exclude that portion of South Ossetia known as the breakaway republic. The “Georgian villages”, on the other hand, should be allowed to reunite.

No doubt, a certain kind of geopolitical logic will not shirk the prospect of drawing Russia into a protracted war with Georgia. As the Georgian arms buildup comes from USA aid and manufacturers, geopolitical ambitions will still be whetted by profit. But if we think about geopolitical peace that respects traditions of autonomy and self-definition, then the people of South Ossetia deserve a defensive retreat of the Georgian Army to concede the independence of the breakaway republic of Tskhinvali.

Peace for South Ossetia means relinquishing hardline claims that it falls within the “sovereign” borders of Georgia. If Georgia concedes quickly, then world opinion can next focus on the immediate withdrawal of Russian troops, whose stated purpose for invading Tskhinvali will have vanished.

In the above, tentative suggestion, I have tried to apply a people-centered, rather than a bloc- or state-centered strategy of peace. This is a deliberate attempt to think outside of the Cold War box. In the event that people of the world are prepared to think and act with independence, we may find something in our future besides World War III.

Further Reading:

Thanks for seeing that there is something else to write about regarding Chicago than Obama and the Reverend Wright.

I seem to be reading a lot about women in the early twentieth century this week, just by chance. First, Ida Tarbell in a new book on her muckracking classic about Standard Oil, then Jeanette Rankin in a book called “Human Smoke” by Nicholson Baker, and now Jane Addams in your piece. And they did all this without a whole lot of power (in western civ terms, naturally). And we can’t seem to get anywhere near their principles and successes a century later.

Also can’t believe it’s been 40 years since we lost Dr. King.

Best to you.

Catherine Podojil
Cleveland Heights, Ohio

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You should get this piece into every newspaper in the UK (including the tabloid) and the right wing press in France , the disregard for the need of children there is so extreme that it is frightening. I grew up with freedom and spaces to play with my friends and I can easily understand that children without space for play just become crazy ! Putting them in jail as a result is just adding insult to injury but nobody seems to care, they are more concerned about getting their kids in the right schools so they will be able to get the best of life!

Best regards,
A Reader from Finland

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Yeah. Sad to say how true your comments. But this seems to be part of a larger effort - conspiratorial or not - to break down the common connections between people and the idea of a common good. Now, everything is privatized and segregated. Where once kids played in open fields and unclaimed land, now ever atom seemed owned by somebody and play areas are deliniated by entrance fees, security guards and fences.

The line between tyranny and revolution is a fine one. You want people working so hard they don’t have time to think and, in case they do, they are given circuses to distract them, ideas are dumbed down, words go missing. But if too many people are hungry and not working, that’s the tinderbox. The time when TV loses its matrix magic. The economic horizon seems to indicate the possibility of that state of affairs is coming. But then again, maybe not. Maybe this is just a new, slumming dark age, what the ancient Indian scriptures, the Vedas, call Kali Yuga, the age of darkness, confusion and declining spirituality.

What we don’t understand is that on the 7th day, God didn’t just rest, He played.

(Well, God plays all the time but it made a good line, don’t you think?)

Regards,

A Reader from Toronto Canada

Recalling Jane Addams’ lost classic, The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets

By Greg Moses

CounterPunch

Chicago is bleeding, and the Mayor has called the citizens to action: “I don’t want people to wait for Mayor Daley to call a meeting. I want you to call a meeting in your home with your children and loved ones. I want you to go next door and talk to those children next door. I want the parents of the block to say ‘This block will be free of violence.’ Suddenly, all voices converge upon the insight that if nobody else actually provides time or space for youthful thrills, the gun industry will.

Ninety nine years ago Jane Addams wrote about “the stupid experiment” of American life that she saw all around her in Chicago. The adult world had thrown together a city based on round-the-clock work. Impressive piles of cash were daily stacked and sorted. In the hustle-built streets meanwhile stood all the children dropped and stranded by a colossal shift of economic priorities. Stranded youth were symptom to a deeper cause, argued Addams. In modern life the whole spirit of youth has been exiled and detained.

“This stupid experiment of organizing work and failing to organize play has, of course, brought about a fine revenge,” wrote Addams in 1909, pre-dating by a full decade the better known thesis of Freud’s Civilization and its Discontents. Adults were damming up their own “sweet fountains” of pleasure, “but almost worse than the restrictive measures is our apparent belief that the city has no obligation in the matter, an assumption upon which the modern city turns over to commercialism practically all the provisions for public recreation.”

Public recreation? “Only in the modern city have men concluded that it is no longer necessary for the municipality to provide for the insatiable desire for play.” SWAT teams and jobs programs are what headlines call for today; more “restrictive measures” and “organizing work.” According to the Addams formula, these can only add up to another “fine revenge.”

Cromwell’s Puritan dictatorship stripped communal life of adornment and joy, recalls Addams. Then the liquor stores stepped in. As a result, people in the modern Anglo city work to make money, then spend their money buying liquor.

Young women in this new economy could be turned into one of two things: working hands by day or working bodies by night. Bitches or hos. Missing everywhere now was joy. And the young men under this new regime? Well, there was one sanctioned public endeavor that would guarantee them some hope of adventure. Didn’t Addams virtually predict a century of war?

As the pleasure intensity of adult play grew, so did the distance between adult society and children. Is the Playboy mansion the kind of place one brings actual boys? Communal festivals used to be different, argues Addams, where adults and children could dance together. If children obviously get lost in this new industrialized strandedness, adults also fail to find refreshment from an authentic “spirit of youth.”

Everyone fails to listen to the one voice capable of instructing Socrates. It was Diotima, recalls Addams, who said that love is an attempt to give birth to beauty. There is an essential lesson here for any republic that wants to be something besides ugly. When we have come to a crisis where men chase killer kids with SWAT teams and jobs, it may be time to follow the example of Socrates. There is a woman here talking about city-centered love and joy. Shut up and learn.

SubPriming the Pump

by Greg Moses

CounterPunch

Now that bankers of the world have been knocked sideways by American workers in pain – a phenomenon that goes by the name of the “subprime lending crisis” — will the bankers try to fix living conditions for people who make up the subprime base of the global economy? The answer of course is fat chance.

Having once again subprimed the pump of the global economy upon the backs of the most marginalized classes, the banker-driven conversation these days would have us forget the people whose feet are sliding and focus instead on questions of monetary policy. This is globalization as ideology, a mind-framing game that squeezes all it can from flesh and blood workers while denying their basic human value.

Asia Times economist Chan Akya, for example, admits that globalization has allowed bankers from Beijing, Geneva, and Los Angeles to simultaneously milk the labor of Mexican migrant workers in the USA. And he concurs with global consensus that hard times among subprime workers in the USA is the effective trigger for global market tremors. But with a cynical conclusion, he isolates the real pain of “subprime” humanity as a costly political problem to be laid at the feet of the USA administration, and encourages Asian-sphere financiers to turn their investments inward.

Akya’s conclusion is cynical because what remains untouched is the presumption that globalization should continue with top-down arrogance. He gives us no reason to believe, for example, that the increased bargaining power of newly withdrawn Asian financiers will be put to work on anyone’s behalf but bankers who are now able to throw pretty lights upon Tiananmen Square.

And Akya fails to make plain how much Asian bankers owe to American subprime workers who this past decade have been trading with China on a daily basis at Wal-Mart. In sum, Akya’s economics is seedling to the next world war, which is what happens when financiers draw lines between each other on a map.

A lot can be learned about the “subprime” crisis by browsing the abstracts of the Fannie Mae Foundation’s Housing Policy Debates (HPD). There we learn that subprime lending is shorthand for new racism in banking. Instead of “redlining” neighborhoods filled with struggling workers of color, bankers have for the past decade “subprimed” them — giving credit to these working poor at predatory rates (cf: Wyly HPD 15.3).

At the turn of the century, 16.8 percent of households in the USA lived in “housing induced poverty” – the kind of poverty that can be caused by predatory mortgage rates (Kutty HPD 16.1). At any point in time, social investment into these households could have slightly relieved the pain of inequality through housing-allowance entitlements, job improvements, or human rights (cf: Priemus HPD 16.3,4).

In fact, affordable housing helps to grow healthier children (Newman HPD 16.2), which is another way of saying that today’s predatory lending is already replicating tomorrow’s fukked-over class. Is it any wonder therefore that subprime borrowers tend to be disenchanted with the home-owning experience?

The global lesson to be drawn from the subprime crisis is that bankers should be made to take interest in human development, not simply be allowed to extract interest from it, as they build their houses of cards. Or to put it another way, in a globalized world, banking policy is public policy. And public policy has no business taking lessons from predatory economic theories.

Bank bailouts, says Akya, can only damage the image of government. But bank bailouts in the form of mortgage vouchers given to “subprime” working peoples would surely bring us one step closer to globalization with a human heart.

Issuing housing allowances as entitlements has been tried in the Netherlands, and apparently it works well there (Priemus HPD 16.3,4). People who are secure in their housing are people who can afford to dream of better days to come, and such hope does good things for workers, their children, and — do we have to say it? — their employers, too.

Whether you belong to a Party that calls itself Republican, Democrat, or Communist, you could find some way to honestly repay subprime workers for carrying your whole world on their backs these past few years.

By Buddy Spell

En un lugar de la Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme, no ha mucho tiempo que vivía un hidalgo de los de lanza en astillero, adarga antigua, rocín flaco y galgo corredor.*

And there you go…. Yet another action full of hope and anticipation ending in status quo unresolved expectations of meaningful returns. It happened. It was important for the moment. It was quickly forgotten and even more quickly dismissed. File it away in the “ ‘A’ for effort drawer”.

All that’s left now is to finish unpacking those last few supplemental and always unnecessary travel items, to haul the suitcases back to the attic, and to look forward to yet another year of war and the further destruction of America’s soul. The therapeutic effect of hellraising has always, for me, had a short shelf life.

I went to DC last week on an invitation to act as legal counsel to a group encamped on the National Mall seeking to protest the continued funding of the national nightmare which has become of America’s patently false minded invasion of Iraq four years ago.

I went to DC last week armed with the Constitution and a resolve to do whatever I could to protect our right to petition the government with grievances. I went to DC last week with hope that, finally, the planets were properly aligned and that substantial impact could be achieved by well meaning citizens calling attention to the insanity intrinsic to the road now traveled.

I observed and attended to the predictable results of peaceful civil disobedience. I spent many hours getting Americans out of jail for the crime of speaking truth to power. I marched on the Pentagon with thousands of others who share my sense of urgency and impatience. I came home and nothing had changed.

I was cursed and spat upon by so-called “patriots” who would dissolve democracy in favor of corporate monarchy as I exercised those very rights the republic’s founding fathers described as “God given”. I watched a Navy veteran cuffed and led away by armed government agents from Senate offices for expressing his own true love of country and personal courage. I saw privilege override patriotism. And I noticed that nobody noticed.

When elections are rigged and dissent is suppressed, the options of a people wishing to be better than their government become limited and restricted. All power is finite. It’s that whole action and reaction thing. It can’t go on indefinitely.

I return from Washington less hopeful than ever. And yet, for now, I intend to tilt at windmills because the options otherwise afforded remain unacceptable.

The power elite will either hear the people or fail to do so at their own peril. I hope for all of us that our voices will soon be heard.

See you on the fifth anniversary…..

*In a village in La Mancha (whose name I do not care to recall) there lived, not very long ago, one of those gentlemen who keep a lance in the lance-rack, an ancient shield, a skinny old horse, and a fast greyhound.

****

Buddy Spell is a Louisiana attorney known to practice law in Texas bar ditches.

By Susan Van Haitsma

CounterPunch / CommonDreams

My favorite photograph of Mark Wilkerson shows him smiling, looking relaxed. He is standing in a grove of trees whose trunks radiate outward from his image as though they are drawing life from him. One side of his face glows with reflected sunshine. He wears a black “Iraq Veterans Against the War” T-shirt with a small star over his heart.

I first met Mark on the grounds of the Texas Capitol during a peace demonstration on Gandhi’s birthday, October 2, 2004. Mark was stationed at Ft. Hood, and he and his wife had driven down to attend their first anti-war demonstration in Austin. I didn’t know then the extent of Mark’s experience in Iraq, but he looked stressed, his eyes circled with dark shadows. He exuded nervous energy.

He looked at the materials on our Nonmilitary Options for Youth table and described how he had been recruited through the JROTC program in high school with assurances that he would receive training to become a peacekeeper. At the demonstration, Mark met local members of Veterans for Peace, who understood more profoundly than I the internal and external battles he was facing.

Mark had served one tour of duty in Iraq, during which he had begun to question both the morality and the practicality of the invasion and occupation. Assigned to the military police, he participated in house raids and arrests of Iraqi citizens. He witnessed the effects of the occupation on Iraqi civilians and the change in attitude toward US soldiers. He began suffering serious post-traumatic stress and underwent a crisis of conscience about his participation in the army.

He filed for a discharge as a conscientious objector in March 2004. When his claim was denied 8 months later, he appealed the decision, but soon learned that his unit was about to be deployed to Iraq for a second tour. Stuck between honoring his conscience and obeying orders to deploy, he went AWOL in January 2005.

Mark was AWOL for about 18 months. During that time, he said the nightmares didn’t stop. He also felt at sea, as though he could not move forward with his life. He worked long hours, trying to save for a future that might include prison. Just before he turned himself in at Ft. Hood in August 2006, he held a press conference at Camp Casey in Crawford, TX.

Flanked by other GI resisters and supportive members of Military Families Speak Out and Gold Star Families for Peace, Mark confidently and eloquently expressed his reasons for having left the military and his reasons for returning to the base to accept the consequences.

When I saw Mark Wilkerson last on February 22, 2007, he was embracing his family shortly before being handcuffed and walked to a van outside the Major General Lawrence H. Williams Judicial Center at Fort Hood, Texas following his sentencing by a military judge to seven months of confinement, demotion in rank and a bad conduct discharge for desertion and missing movement.

During the court-martial proceedings, several family members and officers in Mark’s chain of command were called as character witnesses. Mark’s wife described how, several months into his tour, his letters began to include doubts about his mission. During his first 2-week leave, she saw that Mark had changed. He was restless, bothered and “set off by little things. There was an edge to him that hadn’t been there before.” When he returned to Iraq, Mark felt increasing hopelessness about his mission, yet he performed his duties admirably, as his commanding officers testified.

After his tour, Mark had emotional battles, nightmares, and one night, a breakdown. “My body and my mind had never felt that way before,” he said. He explained that when he was home, family and friends “were treating me like some sort of hero,” but he felt nothing like a hero inside. He hesitated to ask for help in the military “because an unsaid rule is that we’re not supposed to rock the boat.” Even after he filed his conscientious objector claim, he was advised to refrain from seeking PTSD counseling while the case was pending.

In Mark’s court-martial, the fact that his conscientious objector claim had been denied prior to a looming second deployment could not be used as a defense to the charges of desertion and missing movement to which he pleaded guilty. However, it is important to note that the conscientious objector approval process in the military is considered by many to be a broken system.

By law, the military must allow soldiers to apply for discharge as conscientious objectors when they have experienced, after enlisting, a “crystallization” of their moral, ethical or religious beliefs about participating in war. However, J.E. McNeil, director of the Center on Conscience & War, says that, according to military figures, only about 50 percent of CO claims are being approved, and anecdotal evidence suggests the percentage may be even lower.

“They throw as many roadblocks in your way as they possibly can,” she says. “The process takes incredibly long, and it really doesn’t have to. They don’t really follow their own regulations. They treat it as an annoyance.”

Unlike the case of First Lt. Ehren Watada, the illegality of the Iraq war was not used as a point of defense in Mark’s court-martial. However, at one point, the military judge asked if there wasn’t an inconsistency inherent in Mark’s guilty plea. Was his intent to “shirk a duty,” or to resist an unjust war? If he was saying he was wrong to desert, was he also saying he was wrong to act on his conscience? Both defense and prosecuting attorneys stated that they saw no inconsistency, and the judge laid aside the concern.

The brief interchange touched on what may be the crux of the dilemma faced by soldiers in all wars. What is a soldier’s duty? The prosecuting attorneys in Mark’s case stressed that he “shirked his important service” when he was “absent by design.” He was told that he “abandoned the Army family that would embrace him.” Soldiers commonly say that when they are on the battlefield, they are not fighting to protect liberty or democracy; they are fighting for the soldiers on their right and left. If they are compelled by conscience to embrace a larger human family that extends to their adversary, it’s no wonder that their expanded sense of duty presents a problem for the military and themselves.

One of the prosecuting attorneys distinguished between being a good soldier and a good public citizen. “This dichotomy must be maintained,” he said.

But, human beings simply cannot divide themselves into two separate beings with two separate moral codes and two separate sets of behaviors. Attempts to do so are injurious, and soldiers who suffer from PTSD know this.

Part of Mark Wilkerson’s defense centered on his achievements in high school as a teenager with a keen interest in peacemaking. Following a serious family violence crisis when he was 12 years old that was described in detail during his court-martial, Mark adopted a strong leadership role in his family, his school and community. He used the tragedy to become more determined to prevent violence. He wanted above all to help people, to be a healer and a reconciler.

Mark wanted to help his country, but his country betrayed him. His country capitalized on his honorable intentions, gave him false promises, fed him misinformation, used him to carry out inhumane missions, caused him psychological injury and then punished him by making him an object lesson for his fellow GI’s.

In fact, Mark is an example of the best kind, for all of us. In the same courtroom where soldiers were sentenced for harming Abu Ghraib prisoners, Mark was sentenced for refusing to harm. In his final testimony, Mark’s plainspoken optimism rose above the contradictions of his surroundings.

“I’m ready to live the life I know I can live,” he said. “I still want to help people, to be useful. I always lived by a certain moral code. I know whatever I do, I’ll do it well. I look forward to being able to do it.”

Mark Wilkerson’s blog is www.markwilkerson.wordpress.com. Susan Van Haitsma is active with Nonmilitary Options for Youth in Austin, Texas and can be reached at jeffjweb@sbcglobal.net

By Susan Van Haitsma

DissidentVoice / CommonDreams

The young woman and I talked into the night as we headed south on a Greyhound bus. Each minute of conversation carried us physically farther from but perhaps emotionally closer to the enlisted man she had married just three days prior. The wedding she had arranged and paid for in their home town had to be canceled because his leave was revoked at the last minute, so she had traveled across the country for a visit with him that included a quick civil ceremony at the courthouse nearest his base.

She described in almost comical terms their attempt at a honeymoon, braving subzero temperatures with bodies unused to a northern climate, with his close-shaven head and light sailor hat and her thin jeans, to walk downtown to see the sights. When she couldn’t feel her legs anymore, she told him, “Baby, I’m sure this is a nice place. Send me some pictures. But, for now, get me out of here!”

She said that they ate at the McDonald’s on base, “where their logo has a little anchor hanging on it – it’s kind of cute.” She didn’t expect the food prices to be so high there, nor had she or her husband counted on other expenses of military life when they had decided jointly on his enlistment several months ago. This hadn’t been her first trip to see him, and she hoped that she could go again by train in the coming weeks, bringing along her two children. But, she wondered if she could afford the travel, or even the purchase of winter clothing for her children. There were also the added costs of keeping up two households, as she put it – “his and ours.”

She said that they had decided he should enlist in order to help support their family, but now she realized that the support they really needed was his presence at home.

Although I was a stranger, my seat-mate expressed her concerns with a frankness that had not yet been altered by the ‘culture of silence’ that often engulfs military family members. With surprise rather than self-pity, she noted the ways her husband had already changed since basic training.

She described his new obsession with order, his habit of lining up his shoes and even his toothbrush and toothpaste in precise, parallel fashion. She said that he suggested she do the same. He was more acutely aware of the time, of the number of minutes necessary to accomplish daily tasks. He walked in front of her instead of by her side. In his sleep, he called out as though he was responding to orders. She explained that he used to show his affection for her liberally in public and private ways, but now he was aloof, turning away from her in bed even during their honeymoon weekend.

Another unexpected consequence of being a military spouse was the paper work she had been required to sign in the case of her husband’s death. She described feeling physically sick as she and her husband listened to an official explain the necessary procedures: the personal effects that would be sent to her, the body, the funeral. Because he was in the Navy rather than the Army, she hadn’t foreseen such a discussion taking place in the first hours of their marriage. The death talk compounded her worry because he told her rumors had been circulating that his unit might soon be shipped to the Middle East.

I asked my seat-mate what reasons, beyond the financial security they had hoped for but that so far had proven illusory, had guided their decision about her husband’s enlistment. She said that he “had a problem with authority” and had been fired from a series of jobs, so he felt that the military would help him achieve the discipline he needed.

I confided to my seat-mate that the “I need more discipline” motivation is one of the most perplexing reasons for enlistment that I hear, and I hear it frequently. Self-discipline and coercion are opposites. But, I didn’t really need to explain that paradox to my seatmate, who already had described how the brand of discipline her husband was learning was leading to family separation rather than the family protection they were promised.

My heart aches when I think of the significant challenges this young couple faces, but I also am heartened by the fact that they are asking questions and discussing the discrepancies between what they know and what they are told. My valentine to them reads, “Question authority always.”

That jealous lover, Uncle Sam, pointed his long finger and shot an arrow into the joined hearts of this couple and said, “I want you to be mine.” But, they had pledged their hearts to one another, not to him.

By Greg Moses

Failure is an f-word obscenity that we need to stop using when it comes to the USA-led invasion and occupation of Iraq. How can something be a failure when it has no purpose to begin with? In fact, the Iraq war is endless, because it seeks a purpose still.

Incredible is the claim that the USA made some “mistake” about “weapons of mass destruction.” That so-called purpose for going to war was a deliberate lie, cooked up and spoon fed from the kitchens of Washington, DC.

Astonishing is the claim that the USA sought to restore sovereignty to the Iraqi people, because immediately upon arrival the USA-led administration not only toppled a dictator, but also abolished the rights of the Iraqi people to sovereign ownership of their land.

Atrocious is the justification that connects the invasion of Iraq to a war on terrorism, because this is only a way of admitting that the war on terrorism is a race war.

So if not for self defense or Iraqi sovereignty, what is the purpose of the war? To re-make the Middle East? This seems to be the most honest answer to date. But if this is the purpose that the USA occupation is trying to win, then how dare we speak about victory or defeat, success or failure? How dare we?

Morally, one cannot pose the problem of “remaking the Middle East” and then ask if the USA is “winning” such a thing through war.

If the so-called purpose of the occupation is to remake a region, then the question is, who are the war criminals responsible for launching this occupation and how do we bring them to justice?

At some deep level, where language is too conflicted to say, the American people have come to understand the wrong we’re doing in Iraq, and no f-words will help us figure things out.

Wrong is not an f-word. A wrong war cannot be made right by winning.