Showing posts with label war. Show all posts
Showing posts with label war. Show all posts
Saturday, April 17, 2021
Question of the Day -- On "Pro-Life"
Professor Robert Reich asks a terrific question today.
"Wouldn't it be nice if pro-lifers focused on ending gun violence? Or suicide prevention? Or abolishing the death penalty? Or stopping police killings? Or fighting poverty? Or combating the opioid epidemic? Or ending wars?
You know, things that would actually save lives?"
--Robert Reich @RBReich
Saturday, January 11, 2020
So Many Things Too Many Americans Don't Know of Iran, the Middle East and Recent History
I found the following post today on Facebook on the page of author, reporter and former correspondent for NPR until 2014.
As I said, so many things too many of us Americans don't know in our world. I thought this enlightening, if not even important.
Last night, for a few girlfriends, I made baba ghanoush for the first time in a long time. Blistering the eggplants’ skins to black, hulling out the pomegranate seeds, I thought of the first time I was served it -- in a beautiful salon, the snow falling outside, the carpets unfurled and the talk, mesmerizing. I was in North Tehran, at the home of two scholars, Goli and Karim Imami. It was 1995, 16 years after the Iranian revolution, and NPR hadn’t had anyone in the country in years. In the short two weeks I’d have there, I met scores of people -- and even, fell in love with an amazing man over tea and jasmine and jazz.
I would make several more trips to Iran in the 90’s and 2000, one of which, for the Washington Post magazine, would even lead to meeting my husband a few years later. Iran is a spectacularly beautiful country -- you can ski right outside Tehran, or visit the Caspian Sea.
Once, doing a story for Vanity Fair, I got stuck overnight on a train with Faezeh Rafsanjani, the daughter of President Rafsanjani, who was the country’s leader then. We went skiing, too. I made many, many friends -- and my Iranian boyfriend, Ramin, moved with me for a year to Canada, where he became a citizen, (his brothers were already there) before he returned to Tehran and his business. He was a brilliant physicist and poet.
We’ve lost touch, but so many other friends remain -- Mamak, the art collector, scholar and curator, Houman, the graphic artist who had his own marketing and design firm (he’d spend eight years in America before returning to aging parents), Azar Nafisi, the author who emigrated and wrote Reading Lolita in Tehran and I remember, too, all the women who were pushing for change. Maziar Bahari, the documentary filmmaker who was imprisoned in 2009 and lives in London today.
Iran has had internal struggles since the dawn of 20th century, sometimes erecting democratic measures, as in its 1906 constitution (demolished in 1979), and other times, more often, seen those instincts suppressed by monarchies or theocracies -- but it is the Americans overthrew its democratically-elected prime minister Mosaddegh in 1953, in favor of the US-dependent Shah and his brutally repressive regime. The 1979 revolution was wildly popular before it was essentially hijacked by its theocracy, which has enacted its own brutality on the Iranian people, murdering thousands of people. And one way or another, they have held onto power ever since, despite mass demonstrations and international pressure.
But at least Iran, in 2015, under the nuclear agreement JCPOA, signaled it would give diplomacy a try, and abide by the international nuclear agreement that Donald Trump couldn’t wait to tear up, a racist’s rebuke to an African-American president, whose hated legacy he’d do anything to destroy.
Now, the forces of progressivism have been dealt a tremendous blow in the killing of Soleimani.
Even Iranians who would have hated his malicious lethality believe in Iran’s sovereignty-- and there is plenty of hatred within Iran for its own leadership. There were huge demonstrations last fall.
Listening to my former colleague Mary Louise Kelley conduct her excellent interview with Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, I thought back to a time when I’d interviewed him in New York, and how bitter and angry he sounded last night.
As why should he not?
Skills of diplomacy have failed-- and this president has hollowed out intelligence in all the various military sectors, left nearly a score of top defense and intelligence positions vacant, all so that he can act arbitrarily and conduct his whims by tweet.2020 dawns with fear -- the fires in Australia, the gaslighting from the White House and its enablers like Pompeo, the missile strikes raining down in an Iraq caught helplessly in between the US and Iran, and the Iranian people insulted and enraged.
We talked so much, when I was in Iran 20 years ago, about "goftegu," dialogue - could there be a dialogue between Iran and democracies. Two men had founded a magazine by that name. And even though at least them would have to flee, (as did many others; Iran is a bad actor to its own people as well) at least, while Barack Obama was president, we had some dialogue. We had diplomacy. Iranians had sympathy for Americans after 2001.
If there is any sympathy there today, I can imagine, it is among the kinds of educated people who’ve struggled under this regime, who know too well what it is like to have a malignant actor with autocratic instincts at the helm. We have a man who would destroy culture, something he does not understand, and who celebrates war crimes.
I just hope we can survive long enough to get rid of him.
Until he is gone, the world is so much less safe.
My baba ghanoush was well-received. Restraint, restraint, restraint.
Links:
Monday, November 11, 2019
Happy Veterans Day: Let's Start REALLY Honoring Them
So yes, first thing, absolutely, HAPPY VETERANS DAY. First and foremost.
But then, after that, let's start really, actually honoring them, as a nation.
Let's:
- End the war in Afghanistan. This is our 18th year there. We are gaining nothing. It is our longest war in the history of the nation.
- End perpetual war
- End the empire
- Bring more of our soldiers home from across the globe.
- Let's stop creating new wars to send them off to
The United States still maintains nearly 800 military bases in more than 70 countries and territories abroad—from giant “Little Americas” to small radar facilities. Britain, France and Russia, by contrast, have about 30 foreign bases combined.
It's insane.
Let's bring all we can, home.
Let's bring all we can, home.
Sunday, September 15, 2019
The Singular Most Important Article Any Adult American Could Read Today
There is a fantastic, long, long overdue article in today's Sunday New York Times that says everything I and a lot of us have ever thought about present day America, our defense spending and our insane, inane perpetual, endless war.
The Only Way to End ‘Endless War’
First, America has to give up its pursuit of global dominance
Dr. Stephen Wertheim
As I said, I think all Americans should read it, all of it, absolutely but herewith, I'll post just a few of the most important quotes and clips. I'll begin with a stunner from none other than Republican Party President Donald J "the John" Trump.
“Great nations do not fight endless wars.”
But vowing to end America’s interminable military adventures doesn’t make it so. Four years ago, President Barack Obama denounced “the idea of endless war” even as he announced that ground troops would remain in Afghanistan. In his last year in office, the United States dropped an estimated 26,172 bombs on seven countries.
President Trump, despite criticizing Middle East wars, has intensified existing interventions and threatened to start new ones. He has abetted the Saudi-led war in Yemen, in defiance of Congress. He has put America perpetually on the brink with Iran. And he has lavished billions extra on a Pentagon that already outspends the world’s seven next largest militaries combined.
Dominance, assumed to ensure peace, in fact guarantees war.
In theory, armed supremacy could foster peace. Facing overwhelming force, who would dare to defy American wishes? That was the hope of Pentagon planners in 1992; they reacted to the collapse of America’s Cold War adversary not by pulling back but by pursuing even greater military pre-eminence. But the quarter-century that followed showed the opposite to prevail in practice. Freed from one big enemy, the United States found many smaller enemies: It has launched far more military interventions since the Cold War than during the “twilight struggle” itself. Of all its interventions since 1946, roughly 80 percent have taken place after 1991.
Why have interventions proliferated as challengers have shrunk? The basic cause is America’s infatuation with military force. Its political class imagines that force will advance any aim, limiting debate to what that aim should be. Continued gains by the Taliban, 18 years after the United States initially toppled it, suggest a different principle: The profligate deployment of force creates new and unnecessary objectives more than it realizes existing and worthy ones.
In the Middle East, endless war began when the United States first stationed troops permanently in the region after winning the Persian Gulf war in 1991. A circular logic took hold. The United States created its own dependence on allies that hosted and assisted American forces. It provoked states, terrorists and militias that opposed its presence. Among the results: The United States has bombed Iraq almost every year since 1991 and spent an estimated $6 trillion on post-9/11 wars....
Armed domination has become an end in itself. Which means Americans face a choice: Either they should openly espouse endless war, or they should chart a new course.
...the United States should pursue the safety and welfare of its people while respecting the rights and dignity of all. In the 21st century, finally rid of colonial empires and Cold War antagonism, America has the opportunity to practice responsible statecraft, directed toward the promotion of peace. Responsible statecraft will oppose the war-making of others, but it will make sure, first and foremost, that America is not fueling violence.
On its own initiative, the United States can proudly bring home many of its soldiers currently serving in 800 bases ringing the globe, leaving small forces to protect commercial sea lanes. It can reorient its military, prioritizing deterrence and defense over power projection. It can stop the obscenity that America sends more weapons into the world than does any other country. It can reserve armed intervention, and warlike sanctions, for purposes that are essential, legal and rare.
Shrinking the military’s footprint will deprive presidents of the temptation to answer every problem with a violent solution. It will enable genuine engagement in the world, making diplomacy more effective, not less. As the United States stops being a party to every conflict, it can start being a party to resolving conflicts...
Today a world with less American militarism is likely to have less militarism in general.
...there’s a reason no one can connect the dots from unceasing interventions to a system of law and order. After decades of unilateral actions, crowned by the aggressive invasion of Iraq, it is U.S. military power that threatens international law and order. Rules should strengthen through cooperation, not wither through imposition.
In truth, the largest obstacle to ending endless war is self-imposed. Long told that the United States is the world’s “indispensable nation,” the American people have been denied a choice and have almost stopped demanding one. A global superpower — waging endless war — is just “who we are.”
But it is for the people to decide who we are, guided by the best of what we have been. America “goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy,” Secretary of State John Quincy Adams said in 1821. “She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.”
Two centuries later, in the age of Trump, endless war has come home. Cease this folly, and America can begin to take responsibility in the world and reclaim its civic peace.
Benefits to the nation, to us all, if we were to do this?
- First and foremost, it would save our military soldiers' lives..
- As the article points out so clearly, it would reduce war and terror in the world.
- Next, it would cut our spending, our obscene government spending
- We could spend far more wisely on our infratstructure--schools, bridges, roads, HEALTHCARE.
- In short, we could support and invest in our people, in the nation. Imagine better roads, smarter healthcare, better schools, no poverty, fewer, in not zero Americans on the street, impoverished, sick, etc.
- Finally, on this short list, we could also SAVE MONEY.
Any of those, let alone all, are worthy and all are possible, honestly, if we only ended this insanity of perpetual war, the path we're on now.
We have been in Aghanistan EIGHTEEN YEARS. Does anyone really think we've improved things over there? Worse, does anyone think we will (improve things there)?
Finally, here today, for anyone who says we must keep up our "defense spending" because have a "war on terror", I quote the following:
"We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security." --Dwight D. Eisenhower
"The catch-all phrase "the war on terrorism", in all honesty, has no more meaning than if one wants to wage a war against "criminal gangsterism". Terrorism is a tactic. You can't have a war against a tactic. It's deliberately vague and non-definable in order to justify and permit perpetual war anywhere and under any circumstance." --Ron Paul
"Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it." --Douglas MacArthur
"Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich." --Peter Ustinov
And the best, most true quote on the "war on terrorism" nonsense comes, for me, from Gore Vidal:
“You can’t have a war on terrorism because that’s not an actual enemy, it’s an abstract. It’s like having a war on dandruff. That war will be eternal and pointless. It’s idiotic. That’s not a war, it’s a slogan. It’s a lie. It’s advertising, which is the only art form we ever invented in America. And we use it to sell soap, war and presidential candidates in the same fashion.”
Monday, December 3, 2018
Did You Know This About Tear Gas?
Saturday, September 1, 2018
What Most Americans Don't Know About Our National Defense Budget--But Should
There is an excellent, even important article out presently at Alternet I wish all adult, voting-age Americans would read. It is this.
How to Blow $700 Billion and Lose Wars
A Guide to America's Exploding Defense Budget and Military Failure
Step 1: Buy the most expensive weapons in history. Step 2: Don’t use them, since they mostly don’t work
A bit from the article:
This year, President Trump signed the largest defense budget in our history: $700 billion. The budget includes $13.7 billion for 90 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, which according to CNN are “in service and mission capable only 26 percent of the time.” Not a single F-35 jet has yet to see combat duty.
The budget will provide $4.5 billion for the construction of a new Ford class aircraft carrier, $450 million for three Littoral Combat Ships, $4 billion for two new guided missile destroyers, $5.5 billion for two new Virginia Class submarines, and tens of billions more for upgrades and repairs on various aircraft and naval vessels. Two of the guided missile destroyers already in service were involved in deadly collisions with cargo ships in the western Pacific last year. A Navy investigation revealed that for all of the hundreds of billions spent on defense, there was apparently not enough in the budget to provide for adequate training in standing watch and driving Navy combat ships...
He finishes the article perfectly, to me. It's something I've been saying for some time.
From 2011 to today, 2018, we more than doubled our national defense budget from 354 billion dollars to 700 billion.
We have no new enemies. No new group has attacked us or is attacking. Or is going to.
We are weakening, actually weakening our nation with all this absurd, obscenely expensive and very wasteful spending.
Understand this:
Our defense budget is very huge, very bloated and very wasteful and is actually making the nation weaker. Not stronger.
What are we going to do about this, America?
Links:
Note this next article is from the American Conservative magazine:
Monday, May 28, 2018
Quote of the Day -- On Patriotism
"We Americans claim to be a peace-loving people. We hate bloodshed; we are opposed to violence. Yet we go into spasms of joy over the possibility of projecting dynamite bombs from flying machines upon helpless citizens. We are ready to hang, electrocute, or lynch anyone, who, from economic necessity, will risk his own life in the attempt upon that of some industrial magnate. Yet our hearts swell with pride at the thought that America is becoming the most powerful nation on earth, and that she will eventually plant her iron foot on the necks of all other nations.
Such is the logic of patriotism."
--Emma Goldman, "What is Patriotism?", 1908
Sunday, March 25, 2018
Saturday, September 30, 2017
What Trump’s Bravado and Bluster Gets Us---and the World
Maduro: Venezuela must prepare for war with the United States
They would be the first sent off to war, after all.
Saturday, July 15, 2017
The Most Insightful Writing On This President?
I do believe, personally, that Michael Gerson may well be writing the most lucid, insightful and intelligent, relevant, nearly important pieces about this current President.
It is sometimes argued that the media should spend less time on President Trump’s transgressive tweets in order to devote more attention to real issues such as North Korea. In fact, it is necessary to focus on Trump’s tweets precisely because they shed light on the mind that is doing the deciding on North Korea. It is a distasteful exercise. But we cannot look away. We need to know the state of mind we’re dealing with.
Trump’s tweets reveal a leader who is compulsive, abusive and easily triggered. Trump describes all this as “modern day presidential.”
What we are witnessing is not a new age in presidential communications. It is an ongoing, public breakdown. And the question naturally arises: Is this the result of mental dysfunction?
Most psychiatrists are (understandably) uncomfortable with diagnosis from a distance. And the particular diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder requires significant impairment – which is a hard case to make of a figure at the pinnacle of American politics.
And yet. There are judgments that must be made about the fitness of the leaders. Citizens are under no ethical obligation to be silent when they see serious dysfunction. The challenge here is not merely the trashing of political norms. The main problem is the possibility that America has an unbalanced president during a period of high-stakes global testing. This is not a clinical diagnosis. It is a civic and political judgment, made necessary by the president’s own words and acts. Trump holds a job that requires, above all else, the ability to unite and steady the nation in a time of crisis. There is no reason to believe he can play that role.
Much of the prudence and courage required to confront this problem will need to come from Republicans and conservatives. Where to start? How about refusing to downplay revolting lunacy?
It is not merely an “occasional ad hominem” for a president to employ the tremendous power of his office to target individual American citizens who oppose him. It is an abuse of power.
It is not merely “uncouth” for a president to tolerate, even to hint support for, violence against political opponents (“I’d like to punch him in the face”). It creates an atmosphere of intimidation.
It is not merely “exaggeration” for a president to issue a series of eye-stretching lies, including that his predecessor spied on him and that a popular vote victory was denied to him by widespread electoral fraud. It indicates either a deep cynicism or a tenuous connection to reality.
It is not being “coarse” for a president to engage in consistent misogyny. It is a sign of a disturbing and deep-seated dehumanization of women.
Many conservatives would respond to this critique by saying, “At least he fights!” The question is: For what? Trump evinces no strong or consistent policy views. He fights for himself – for admiration and adulation – which is the only cause his extreme narcissism allows.
Many conservatives would also respond by saying, “At least he does conservative things!” But if health care is any indication, Trump lacks conviction, knowledge and the ability to persuade.
House and Senate Republicans should be prepared to aggressively challenge unbalanced or unhinged presidential language and decisions, rather than trying to dismiss them as simply a “distraction.”
No one really knows how to deal with this situation, which still feels more like an unnerving political novel than our political reality. Trump has led our country into unexplored territory. If this is “modern day presidential,” all progress moves toward the past.
--Michael Gerson served as President George W. Bush’s chief speechwriter from 2001-2006 and is a columnist for the Washington Post
Sunday, April 23, 2017
What We've Come To
Where we are now, thanks to this Presidency.
And thanks fo the Republicans and those who voted for and supported this candidate.
This petulant, unthinking, irrational, emotional, greedy dolt of a man-child.
Links:
Republicans, The Next Four Years Are All On You
Wednesday, January 4, 2017
America: The World's Warmonger
Proof positive. This, from the New York Times yesterday.
U.S. Sold $40 Billion in Weapons
in 2015, Topping Global Market
Tuesday, December 20, 2016
Okay, Republicans and Trump Supporters, The Next Four Years Are All On You
Sure, Mr. Trump is already taking us down his deep, dark "rabbit hole" and we'll all suffer but his actions? The blame for what he does and says and tweets and all the ramifications? Even the ones from the election to today, while he was only president-elect, everything from November 8 to today and for as long as he is president, it's all on you. We have you and your vote and your actions to blame.
The economy? On you.
The nation's international standings?
You.
Any debt or debts he accrues?
Wars?
All.
On you.
And believe me, if he should do anything right and/or well and good, sure, you absolutely get any credit there.
Should that occur.
Same for Mike Pence, as Vice President or, God also forbid, President.
You get all the blame. It's all on you, to repeat.
You wanted this. You voted for it. You supported him and all he represented then and represents since.
Yes, he's all our President, the nation's President but not because we voted for him, not because a majority of us voted for him. You did this.
So buck up and suck it up, kids, because Mr. Trump has already shown us all, since that fateful November election day last year that this is going to be a bumpy, bumpy, unpredictable ride.
It's just on your hands.
Saturday, November 12, 2016
Friday, November 11, 2016
Veterans Day
The 1918 truce that halted fighting in World War I went into effect at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. Today, that is commemorated in the U.S. as Veterans Day.
Let's REALLY honor Veterans.
Demand an end to perpetual war.
Thursday, October 27, 2016
Quote of the Day -- On the US Out of the Middle East
From this article in POLITICO
Why the Arabs don't want us in Syria
"Let’s face it; what we call the “war on terror” is really just another oil war.
We’ve squandered $6 trillion on three wars abroad and on constructing a national security warfare state at home since oilman Dick Cheney declared the “Long War” in 2001. The only winners have been the military contractors and oil companies that have pocketed historic profits, the intelligence agencies that have grown exponentially in power and influence to the detriment of our freedoms and the jihadists who invariably used our interventions as their most effective recruiting tool. We have compromised our values, butchered our own youth, killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people, subverted our idealism and squandered our national treasures in fruitless and costly adventures abroad. In the process, we have helped our worst enemies and turned America, once the world’s beacon of freedom, into a national security surveillance state and an international moral pariah.
America’s founding fathers warned Americans against standing armies, foreign entanglements and, in John Quincy Adams’ words, “going abroad in search of monsters to destroy.” Those wise men understood that imperialism abroad is incompatible with democracy and civil rights at home. The Atlantic Charter echoed their seminal American ideal that each nation should have the right to self-determination. Over the past seven decades, the Dulles brothers, the Cheney gang, the neocons and their ilk have hijacked that fundamental principle of American idealism and deployed our military and intelligence apparatus to serve the mercantile interests of large corporations and particularly, the petroleum companies and military contractors that have literally made a killing from these conflicts.
It’s time for Americans to turn America away from this new imperialism and back to the path of idealism and democracy. We should let the Arabs govern Arabia and turn our energies to the great endeavor of nation building at home. We need to begin this process, not by invading Syria, but by ending the ruinous addiction to oil that has warped U.S. foreign policy for half a century."
~ Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Friday, October 7, 2016
Congratulations, America, On Your Very Dubious 15 Year Anniversary
Today is the 15th anniversary of the U.S-led invasion of Afghanistan.
Think about that.
15 years of sending mostly young American soldiers---men and women--to a foreign country to fight and die--for....?
How is this not like the Vietnam War? How is this not a "quagmire"?
Hoist By Their Own Words
Leslie H. Gelb says the U.S. military has lost its way in Afghanistan.Sunday, August 21, 2016
Thursday, July 14, 2016
On Dubya' and Obama
Bill Maher, with no expletives, on Former President George W. Bush compared to President Barack Obama. Republican war hawk vs. Democratic negotiator.
It's difficult to believe we have to talk them out of these things and people.
Tuesday, May 31, 2016
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