FROM DARKNESS AT NOON TO THE GLOW OF HOPE, Part 1

  • A Female demonstrator offers a flower to military police on guard at the Pentagon during an anti-Vietnam demonstration. Arlington, Virginia, USA. Oct 21, 1967. In the public domain. Author: S.Sgt. Albert R. Simpson.

The Tragic Triumph of the Reagan Counter-Revolution

Against The Spirit of the Sixties, Now Counterbalanced by

the Rekindling of Candles in the Wind

by Stefan Schindler

The 1960s were a time of hope in America and the world. A time of questioning and protest. A renaissance of The Renaissance. The blossoming of a counter-culture committed to peace, freedom, and creative expression.

The Spirit of The Sixties carried over into the 1970s. America and the world saw the continuation and growth of the civil rights movement, the anti-war movement, the anti-nuclear movement, the environmental movement; and, of course, the feminist protest against sexism, perhaps best captured in the bumper sticker: “Women who seek to be equal to men lack ambition.”

Alas, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King were assassinated, as were the leaders of the Black Panthers and the American Indian Movement.

Richard Nixon was elected president twice; then Gerald Ford pardoned him for crimes against humanity.

Jimmy Carter was convinced by his national security adviser to start a covert war against the newly elected social democratic government of Afghanistan, which led to a Russian counter-intervention, which led to America’s creating, funding, and arming of Al Qaeda.

The liberal wing of the Democratic Party saw citizen activism as a “crisis of democracy.” Ronald Reagan applauded American-financed terrorists as “freedom fighters,” and launched the Bush-whacking of FDR’s socialist inspired “New Deal” for the American people.

Bush The First continued Reagan’s attack on America’s middle class and poor, as well as continuing Reagan’s wars abroad, saying, after America shot down an Iranian passenger jet, killing 290 civilians, including 66 children: “I will never apologize for America, I don’t care what the facts are.”

Newt Gingrich, in one of history’s greatest ironies, was elected Speaker of the House, successfully championing lies, insults, and divisive sophistry as the road to power during the failed presidency of Bill Clinton, whose Secretary of State, Madeline Albright, said that half a million dead Iraqi children from American bombings and sanctions was “a small price to pay” for freedom, although Iraq was in fact no threat to America’s national security, and Saddam Hussein had long been Ronald Reagan’s favorite dictator.

The Cheney-Bush administration lie-launched America’s Second Vietnam War, this time in the Middle East, convincing Congress to pass the least patriotic legislation in American history, called “The USA Patriot Acts.”

Obama wasted eight years compromising, betraying his base, and succumbing to a cowardice of conscience that made possible the tragic triumph of a new Trumpeting of racism, sexism, militarism, economic apartheid, and fanatical pseudo-patriotism.

Recalling Jeremiah’s warning that “Ye shall reap the whirlwind,” I’m reminded of another bumper sticker: “God is coming; and, boy, is She mad.”

 

Afghanistan: A Veteran’s Perspective

 

E Battery Royal Horse Artillery escaping from the overwhelming Afghan attack at the Battle of Maiwand, from “Maiwand: Saving the Guns” by Richard Caton Woodville. In the public domain.

by Michael J. Corgan

I don’t consider myself a pacifist. I believe there will always be those who choose to resort to war for little or no good reason and others of us must deal with them. However, sometimes we ourselves are the ones who resort to war for little or no good reason.

Those of us who were in the military as a profession have a particular moral responsibility to speak out.

Like my longtime colleague Andy Bacevich, I am a service academy graduate. I served several tours in wars whose justification was uncertain at best. Like him I am concerned about our propensity to get into wars with no justification: Mexico in 1846, Spain in 1898, Woodrow Wilson’s 20th century Latin American invasions, Granada and Panama in 1982, Iraq in 2003, and others.

At the Naval War College in the late 1970s we began  studying Thucydides and Clausewitz to try to determine why we, a supposed 1st-rate military power, lost to North Vietnam, a supposed 4th-rate military power.

From Thucydides one learns how easily the arrogance of power leads to foolish and disastrous military adventures, in which many are killed for no worthy aim.

From Clausewitz a more important lesson, know when to quit–when you’re not going to ‘win’ and all you’re doing is killing people, however worthy the original reason.

What prompts my concern now is our war in Afghanistan, the longest war in our history. According to New York Times interviews with commanders there,  we are farther from ‘winning’ than ever.

According to international law, we probably had justification for going to war after the Al Qaeda attacks of 9/11 – that group operated with either the acquiescence of the Taliban or the inability of Taliban to prevent using their country as the operations base. But after 14 years, what is our justification for continuing this war that kills civilians without end?

Five hundred years ago, the Mongols couldn’t control the land; 200 years ago the British began their futile attempt to control it; in the last century the Russians also failed.  Now, in our arrogance we think we can create a stable country- though we come as foreigners, don’t speak any of the languages, and are infidels.

It isn’t working. and meanwhile people who want no part of either side are dying. There needs to be a solution to problems in that unhappy land but we and our war aren’t providing it even with all our incredible precision weapons and dropping of the largest conventional bomb ever.

The only right thing to do is to extract ourselves and admit the final answer, if there is one, will be attained by those who live there. The moral imperative is that we must go home.

 

Unjustifiable wars and moral imperatives: Another veteran speaks out

Ross Caputi in Iraq.

by Michael J. Corgan

I am writing in response to the recent post on anti-war veteran activist, Ross Caputi.  I don’t consider myself a pacifist since I believe there will always be those who choose to resort to war for little or no good reason and others of us must deal with them.

However, sometimes we  ourselves are the ones who resort to war for little or no good reason; those of us who were in the military as a profession have a particular moral responsibility to speak out.

Like my longtime colleague Andy Bacevich, I am a service academy graduate and served several tours in wars whose justification was uncertain at best. Like him, I am most concerned about our propensity to get into wars for which there was no justification: Mexico in 1846, Spain in 1898,  Woodrow Wilson’s  Latin American invasions, Granada and Panama in 1982, Iraq in 2003, to name just the clearest cases.

At the Naval War College in the late 1970s we began the study of Thucydides and Clausewitz to try to determine why we, a supposed 1st-rate military power lost  to North Vietnam, a supposed 4th-rate military power.

From Thucydides one learns how easily the arrogance of power leads to foolish and disastrous military adventures in which many are killed for no worthy aim. From Clausewitz a more important lesson: know when to quit when you are not going to ‘win.’

What prompts my concern now is our war in Afghanistan, the longest war in our history.  According to New York Times interviews with commanders there,  we are farther from ‘winning’ than ever.

According to international law, we probably had justification for going to war after the Al Qaeda attacks of 9/11; that group operated with either the acquiescence of the Taliban or the inability of the Taliban to prevent  use of their country as an operations base for the attackers. However, after 14 years, what is our justification for continuing a war that kills civilians and is no closer to being concluded than it ever was?

Five hundred years ago,  Mongols couldn’t control the land. Two hundred years ago,  the British began their futile attempt to control it. Then, in the last century, the Russians also failed. All that resulted was a lot of people dead.

Now, in our arrogance, we think we can create a stable country. How can we be effective nation builders when we are foreigners, don’t speak any of the languages, and are infidels. It  isn’t working. Meanwhile people who want no part of either side are dying. There needs to be a solution to problems in that unhappy land but we and our war aren’t providing it even with all our incredible precision weapons and dropping of the largest conventional bomb ever.

The only right thing to do is to extract ourselves and admit the final answer, if there is one, will be attained by those who live there. The moral imperative is that we must go home.

Michael J, Corgan is Associate Professor of Political Science at Boston University.

Fallujah: Death and destruction again, Part 3

By guest contributor Ian Hansen

Anwar al-Awlaki
Imam Anwar al-Awlaki. Photo by Muhammead ud-Deen, from Wikimedia Commons. Used under CC Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license.

For those of us who are not financially invested in the expansion of war and the national security state, Fallujah’s siege by Al Qaeda does at least offer us a teaching moment.

The U.S. government, which says it is opposed to terrorism, is both manifesting terrorism in its policies and creating reactive terrorism among the people we pretend to be concerned with saving and protecting.

Reactive terrorism–often from groups with horrific oppression-supporting ideologies that are eerily reminiscent of the predominant militarism and dominionism in our own culture–allows our government to justify an even more extended campaign of terrorism that is both lucrative and sociopathically gratifying for a powerful subset of our ruling elite.

As we reflect on the fall of Fallujah to our enemies-like-us, we should reflect also on the violence-advocating and influential cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. Awlaki was once widely known as a “moderate,” even Bush-supporting, Muslim U.S. citizen, and his turn to an ideology of violent hatred was also a product of U.S. ham-handedness and indiscriminate brutality in the name of fighting terrorism.

In assassinating the person al-Awlaki turned into, and doing so without charge or transparent evidence of his involvement in any crime (other than hateful and irresponsible free speech and friendly associations with Al Qaeda propagandists and other figures), the U.S. has set ominous legal precedents that cannot now be easily undone.

With his assassination, that of U.S. citizen Samir Khan, as well as of Awlaki’s clearly noncombatant and unaffiliated 16 year old son, the U.S. has symbolically tainted its War on Terror with the blood of Absalom.

When we fight wars, we believe are fighting against some Other, but there is no Other.  All acts of violence are ultimately carried out against oneself, because the chain is unbroken.

And since our government will not cry tears of remorse, we must be the ones to weep, “O my son Absalom–my son, my son Absalom…O Absalom, my son, my son!”

Ian Hansen, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Behavioral Sciences at York College, City University of New York. His research focuses in part on how witness for human rights and peace can transcend explicit political ideology. He is also on the Steering Committee for Psychologists for Social Responsibility.