Iraq war – Engaging Peace

The spy who tried to stop a war: Katherine Gun’s Courage of Conscience

Posted on April 21, 2021April 22, 2021 by kathiemm

by Stefan Schindler

Katherine Gun was 27 in January 2003, working in England as a translator and intelligence analyst for the British secret service. At that time, the American and British governments were beating the drums for war against Iraq.

Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction, but President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair, echoed and amplified in the British and American mainstream news-media, claimed Iraq did have such weapons. They argued that a preemptive attack on Iraq was therefore justified. Bush and Blair sought United Nations approval for the war, knowing that such approval would give the war a veneer of legitimacy.

Risking prison and the ruination of her life, marriage, and career, Katherine Gun released a classified memo to the press. The memo was from America’s National Security Agency (the NSA). The memo was to GCHQ (Government Communication Headquarters, the British equivalent to the NSA), where Ms.. Gun worked in one of its specialized branches.

The classified memo asked England’s secret service to spy on U.N. Security Council diplomats, and to pass their findings to the National Security Agency. That information could then be used by the Bush Administration to bribe and blackmail targeted U.N. diplomats to vote in favor of the war.

Knowing that she was breaching England’s Official Secrets Act, and thereby committing what the law calls “treason,” Ms. Gun hoped that publication of the secret memo in Britain’s press would force a public reexamination of the war’s legitimacy, and, ideally, prevent the insane loss of life and tragic suffering that war would surely entail.

Ms. Gun was well aware of the Anglo-American push for war against Iraq. It was the major news of the day. However, to Ms. Gun, it didn’t sound right – it didn’t feel right – as Iraq had long been enduring international sanctions and Anglo-American surveillance. The claim that Iraq had WMDs didn’t make sense. To check the validity of her intuition, Ms Gun informed herself further by reading books on Iraq’s recent history and its tensions with the West.

Thus, already suspicious of the Bush-Blair trajectory toward another act of international violence, Ms. Gun viewed the memo as confirming illegal activities in support of an illegal war.

She felt an instantaneous revulsion at the moral hypocrisy of so-called statesmen; she saw the memo’s explosive potential; and she felt an obligation to the British people to show them that they were being lied to and manipulated.

Throughout February, 2003, Gun’s memo did not appear in the press; then, in early March, it did appear, two weeks prior to the American start of the bombing of Iraq which President Bush called “shock and awe.”

Publication of the memo caused an international sensation. GCHQ began an immediate hunt for the whistleblower. Ms. Gun at first denied that she was the leak. The following day, not wanting her colleagues to suffer suspicion and humiliation, she confessed.

Arrested and interrogated, Ms. Gun was asked if she worked for the British government. She said no, governments come and go; she works for the British people; she “does not gather intelligence so the government can lie to the British people.”

Out on bail, it was eight months before Katherine Gun was charged with violating the Official Secrets Act. Her defense team prepared a “defense of necessity” case on her behalf.

“Defense of necessity” means that a person has legitimately violated the law in order to prevent harm or loss of life. (For example, breaking the speed limit in order to get a grievously wounded person to a hospital.)

In preparing a “defense of necessity” case, Gun’s legal team was putting the war itself on trial. The prosecution would be forced to reveal the various Anglo-American “dirty tricks” designed to drum up support for the war.

On the first day of the trial, the prosecution dropped all charges, and Katherine Gun was a free woman.

Release of the memo did not stop the war, but it did cause the U.N. Security Council to deny approval for the war, depriving Bush and Blair of the U.N. blessing they were hoping for.

The Katherine Gun story was barely covered in America’s news media, yet it parallels in highly relevant and fascinating ways Daniel Ellsberg’s release of the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times in early 1971, Ellsberg risking prison to try to halt the ongoing slaughter in America’s Indochina holocaust (euphemistically called The Vietnam War).

To learn more about Katherine Gun’s odyssey, I recommend the 2008 book The Spy Who Tried to Stop a War, by Marcia Mitchell and Thomas Mitchell. I also recommend the film based on that book. Called Official Secrets and released in 2019, the film stars Keira Knightley.

On youtube, I recommend Amy Goodman’s interviews with Gun at “Democracy Now;” also on youtube, the “True Spies” podcast, Episode 14, “The Spy Who Said No.”

Katherine Gun has recently been nominated for The Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Award. In an interview for Vanity Fair (August 30, 2019), she offers this reflection as the fruit of her experience:

“In any walk of life, you can choose to do the right thing. At the end of the day, we are accountable to our conscience. We should think about that and remember that.”

When will they ever learn?

Posted on May 8, 2019May 8, 2019 by kathiemm

by Kathie MM

I cannot even say those words (“When will they ever learn?”) without Pete Seeger’s ballad, “Where have all the flowers gone,” flooding my brain. We had such optimism in the sixties, despite the vile and catastrophic assassinations of JFK , MLK,, and RFK, such hope that people would study war no more. But the current era is more bloodthirsty and terrifying than ever as the government, the people behind the government, the arms industry, the NRA, and other war profiteers promote and benefit from deadly weapons and the sacking of lands far from our shores.

As is typical of bullies, those responsible for sending our young men and women to kill civilians (that’s who almost all the victims are) refuse to take responsibility for their devastating assaults on human beings and environments. If the power brokers learned any lessons from Vietnam, it was how better to cover up dirty deeds and blame their victims for the violence unleashed upon them.

The Sacking of Falujah: A People’s History by Ross Caputi (a frequent guest author on Engaging Peace), Richard Hil, and Donna Mulhearn takes you behind the scenes of a more recent major bloodletting by the U.S. The book is not only engrossing, but dares to speak truth to power, to describe events as experienced at Falujah not only by the three authors but by dozens of Iraqis who suffered from the second invasion of Iraq and its endlessly deadly aftermath.

Reading this book will not only provide you with hitherto unavailable information about the sacking of Falujah by the US and “Coalition Forces” but also about the events that led up to it—events that the US government is not eager to share or take responsibility for—and the role of that sacking and related events in the rise of ISIS. It will get you thinking about sociocide and urbacide, and information wars. It may also motivate you to think more about our government’s current rhetoric concerning “enemies” in other parts of the world and its threats regarding the selected enemies of today’s regime. You know who the current targets are. Can you ask your Congresspeople to resist complicity?

To view a video of my interview with Ross Caputi about The Sacking of Falujah, go to https://youtu.be/H7KatbFAI6U and send us your comments on this and all engaging peace posts.

Stoking Fear: We Must Remember How the Iraq War Was Sold, Part 1

Posted on April 10, 2019April 8, 2019 by kathiemm

by Roy Eidelson

The high-level machinations that produced the Iraq War are far from unique. (Photo: Reuters/Shannon Stapleton)

History shows that fearmongering has long been a standard tactic used to rally public support and acquiescence for military interventions that are both unwarranted and unwise.

“Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”
— Nazi propagandist Hermann Goering

It was 16 years ago, on March 19, 2003, that U.S. forces began a misguided and illegal “shock and awe” military assault on Iraq. The enormous costs of that invasion and subsequent occupation are all too clear today. Thousands of American soldiers and coalition allies were killed and many more suffered horrific, debilitating injuries; among the U.S. casualties, a disproportionate number were underprivileged youth. At the same time, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians died, and millions were driven from their homes. To this toll we can also add the emergence and growth of the monstrous Islamic State (ISIS). And our Iraq War expenditures—past, present, and future—total trillions of dollars, a massive drain on crucial domestic programs for those in need.

Many painful lessons can still be drawn from this devastating war and its ongoing aftermath. Among them, the tragedy represents a distressing case study in the manipulative use of fear—what I call “It’s a Dangerous World” appeals—by disingenuous leaders who insist that disaster awaits if we fail to heed their policy prescriptions. Unfortunately, dire warnings from influential figures can short-circuit our critical thinking and propel us toward action even before we’ve examined the evidence or considered the consequences and alternatives. Psychologically, we’re soft targets for these tactics because, in our desire to avoid being unprepared when danger strikes, we’re often too quick to conjure catastrophe—the worst outcome imaginable—regardless of how unlikely it may be.

These “It’s a Dangerous World” appeals were employed by the George W. Bush White House throughout the Iraq War. They began with repeated claims months before the invasion that Saddam Hussein—the country’s brutal dictator—had weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).

In August 2002, for example, Vice President Dick Cheney told attendees at the national convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Nashville: “There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.”

Two months later, President Bush presented this frightful image to an audience in Cincinnati: “Knowing these realities, America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof—the smoking gun—that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.”

And Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was unequivocal at a December 2002 Department of Defense news briefing: “Any country on the face of the earth with an active intelligence program knows that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction.”

It didn’t matter that these claims were all untrue; they were effective nonetheless. As White House officials had hoped, their warnings and alarmist predictions succeeded in persuading most Americans of two things: Iraq’s dictator had WMDs, and “preventive” military action was therefore necessary. Indeed, Bush knew he already had won over a majority of Americans when he sat before the television cameras in the Oval Office 16 years ago and announced that U.S. forces had invaded Iraq.

TO ENGAGE OR NOT TO ENGAGE – THAT IS THE QUESTION

Posted on January 7, 2019March 9, 2021 by kathiemm

by Stefan Schindler

Part One: YESTERDAY’S STORM AND TOMORROW’S RAINBOW

There is nothing stable in the world; uproar’s your only music. – John Keats

Fifty years after President Eisenhower launched a multi-trillion dollar arms race with the Soviet Union, the Cheney-Bush Administration (in a version of “the boy who cried wolf”) saw fit to shout the greatest and most dangerous lie in American history, claiming that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and repeating – day after day, week after week, in the post-9/11 rush to vengeance and preemptive war – “Mushroom cloud! Mushroom cloud! Mushroom cloud!”

Thus did Cheney-Bush – and their cabal of Gingrichian sycophants, aided by a cheering mainstream news media – bring to fruition the nightmare envisioned in Bob Dylan’s 1963 tour de force, “Masters of War.” Dylan sings, and the lyrics still resonate:

You’ve thrown the worst fear / that can ever be hurled:

fear to bring children / into the world.

In the dawning of the year 2019, it remains to be seen whether President Donald Trump will also escape punishment for his narcissistic and multitudinous lies, for his continuation of American militaristic violence, and for his Reagan-Cheney-Bush-like crimes – economic and ecological – against the American people and the planet.

In what Gore Vidal called “The United States of Amnesia,” the Orwellian ignoration of the citizen population continues unabated. For example:

I go to the store and buy some stamps. The clerk hands me a packet. Each stamp has an American flag on it. In the lower left hand corner of each stamp is written “USA Forever” – a truly insidious slogan. Nothing lasts forever. Not a season; not a life; not an empire. George Carlin said: “That’s why they call it the American dream. You have to be asleep to believe it.”

In 1821, John Quincy Adams warned that America should not go abroad “in search of monsters to destroy,” for in doing so, “she might become the dictatress of the world, [but] she would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.”

In the late 1890s, Mark Twain witnessed America’s imperial acquisition of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines in the Spanish-American war. Twain responded with an observation not taught in school: “America’s flag should be a skull-and-crossbones.” Then he added: “America cannot have an empire abroad and a Republic at home.” Adams and Twain understood that empire and democracy are mutually exclusive.

Lyndon Johnson said in 1964 that he did not want “a wider war” in Vietnam, even as he was lying about events in the Gulf of Tonkin and planning the invasion that President Kennedy refused to launch. Richard Nixon said he would bring The Vietnam War to an early end with “peace and honor,” yet disgraced himself with a heartless disregard for peace and an utter lack of honor, becoming the first American president to resign from office.

Due to the lies and depredations of Johnson and Nixon, the American people grew increasingly suspicious of their political leaders. That distrust deepened into cynicism when President George W. Bush’s claim – that Iraq had “weapons of mass destruction,” which he then used as a pretext for war – proved to be an outrageous lie. And now, alas, Donald Trump inhabits the White House, proving once again that a Nixonian neurotic and Bush-whacking ideologue can become the most powerful and most dangerous man in the world.

Yet all is not lost, not hopeless, not without redemptive possibilities. Despite the forces of obstruction, the American landscape is filled with a multitude of brave, inquisitive, vocal, active, dedicated justice-seekers and peacemakers. They recognize that they are not alone, that solidarity is our only hope, and that their collective voice indicates something like A Renaissance of The Renaissance. They – We! – know who Tom Paine was, and why he wrote “Common Sense” and “The Rights of Man.”

We know that John and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King were killed for their courage of conscience; and because we refuse to let their lives and deaths be in vain, we carry the torch they lit for a sane and better world. We dare, with John Lennon, to Imagine. We know that there are millions around the world who feel the same, and who are also doing their part to bequeath to a new generation the world of peace and beauty they deserve. Accordingly, we shall not despair; we shall not relinquish hope; and we shall indeed do whatever is necessary to restore America’s tarnished ideals to their once and future glory, for the sake of all humanity, and for Mother Earth and all her blessings.

Stefan Schindler

…………………….

Stefan Schindler is the co-founder of The National Registry for Conscientious Objection; a Board Member of The Life Experience School and Peace Abbey; and author of America’s Indochina Holocaust: The History and Global Matrix of The Vietnam War. His forthcoming book is entitled Buddha’s Political Philosophy.