The Gutless Pacifist talks about the abuse of iraqi prisoners and asks How high up does it go?
bq. There are many troubling political issues coming out of both the reports of abuse in iraq and earlier reports of abuse at Guantanamo Bay (which are looking increasingly accurate). But what is even more troubling to me is the larger moral issue that each of us who are Americans may be in part responsible for these atrocities. For it is we who have allowed a culture of death and violence to develop.
Meanwhile, a report on the abuses by “Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba”:http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4894033/ is chilling in its detailing of physical and psychologial torture reportedly taking place at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib Prison in Baghdad.
Joshua Micah Marshall’s “Talking Points Memo”:http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_05_02.php#002909 is keeping close tabs on developments and reactions in Washington, including the President’s:
bq. The disasters now facing the country in iraq — some in slow motion, others by quick violence — aren’t just happening on the president’s watch. They are happening in a real sense, really in the deepest sense, because of him — because of his attention to the simulacra of leadership rather than the real thing, which is more difficult and demanding, both personally and morally.
Don’t miss Marshall’s thoughtful comparison of “President Bush to a bad C.E.O.”:http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_05_02.php#002906.
The other essential reading on all this is Seymour Hersh’s “New Yorker article on the torture at Abu Ghraib”:http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/.
Quaker Ranter
A Weekly Newsletter and Blog from Martin Kelley
Tag Archives ⇒ wars and militarism
Conscientious Objection, After You’re In
April 30, 2004
Here’s a website of “Jeremy Hinzman, a U.S. Army soldier who became a a conscientious objector”:http://www.jeremyhinzman.net/faq.html in the course of his service. His applications denied, he moved to Canada and is seeking political asylum there.
I find I can understand the issues all too well. In only a slightly-parallel universe, I’d be in iraq myself instead of publishing Nonviolence.org. My father, a veteran who fought in the South Pacific in World War II, really wanted me to join the U.S. Navy and attend the Naval Academy at Annapolis. For quite some time, I seriously considered it. I am attracted to the idea of service and duty and putting in hard work for something I believe in.
Hinzman’s story is getting a lot of mainstream coverage, I suspect because the “escape to Canada” angle has so many Vietnam-era echoes that resonate with that generation. I wish Hinzman would flesh out his website story though. His Frequently Asked Questions leaves out some important details that could really make the story – why did he join the Army in the first place, what were some of the experiences that led him to rethink his duty, etc. I’d recommend Jeff Paterson’s “Gulf War Refusenik”:http://jeff.paterson.net/ site, which includes lots of stories including his own:
bq. “What am I going to do with my life?” has always been huge question of youth, and today in the wake of the horror and tragedy of New York September 11th this question has increased importance for millions of young people. No one who has seen the images will ever forget… If I hadn’t spent those four years in the Marine Corps, I might be inclined to fall into line now. Most of the time my unit trained to fight a war against peasants who dared to struggle against “American interests” in their homelands-specifically Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala… Faced with this reality, I began the process of becoming un-American-meaning that the interests of the people of the world began to weigh heavier than my self-interest. I realized that the world did not need or want another U.S. troop…
There are bound to be more stories all the time of service-people who find a different reality when they land on foreign shores. How many will rethink their relationship to the U.S. military. How many will follow Paterson’s example of becoming “un-American”?
Mordichai Vanunu about to be released from prison (sort of)
April 20, 2004
From the “Mordechai Vanunu”:/vanunu site:
bq.. “PEACE HERO” MORDECHAI VANUNU, LEAVING PRISON IN HOURS, WILL BE GREETED BY WHITE DOVES, FLOWERS… AND YET MORE PUNISHMENT
In less than twelve hours, Israel’s captive Mordechai Vanunu is to walk out of Shikma Prison, where his home was a cell for the last 18 years. Over 100 international anti-nuclear, peace and human rights activists, and at least as many Israeli supporters of the nuclear whistleblower will assemble outside the prison gate at 8:00 am Wednesday morning
Then the leash stiffens, and the collar tightens. Although his full sentence has been served and all his secrets have been told, Mordechai Vanunu’s next punishment is to shun all contact with foreigners and most modern communications while confined to the city of Jaffa for one year. He is denied his passport and is forbidden to enter embassies or approach borders and airports. He may not talk to Israelis about his work at the nuclear weapons factory in Dimona, nor even recite his published revelations from the pages of the London Sunday Times in October, 1986.
More Terror
March 11, 2004
The big news is more terror, over 190 dead in Spain. Violence is being used to wage politics yet again. As I write, “conflicting reports on the terrorists’ identities”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3501364.stm are still coming through.
Spain Struggles to Absorb Worst Terrorist Attack in Its History
bq. In the worst terrorist attack in Spanish history, at least 10 bombs exploded during rush hour today in three commuter train stations here. The Interior Ministry said 190 people were killed and more than 1,200 wounded.
War Resisters League’s Military Spending “Pie Chart”
February 16, 2004
The War Resisters League has issued its famous “Pie Chart” flyer showing “Where Your Income Tax Money Really Goes”:http://warresisters.org/piechart.htm. An annual tradition, this flyer breaks down U.S. government spending.
This year 49% of income-tax generated federal spending is going to the military. That’s $536 billion for current military spending, $349 billion to pay for past military spending and a projected $50 billion that the President will ask Congress for after the elections.
There’s just so much wrong with this amount of miliary spending. This is money that could be going into job creation, into supporting affordable health care for Americans, into giving our kids better education. The strongest defense a country could ever have is investing in its people, but that’s impossible if we’re spending half of our taxes on bombs. And having all these bombs around makes us itchy to use them and gives us the ability to fight wars largely by ourselves.
The WRL flyer always goes beyond mere number crunching, however, to show some of the human impact of this inbalanced spending. This time we have listings of “lives lost in Afghanistan & iraq,” lives lost due to poor health standards around the world, the lost freedom of prisoners being held by the U.S. against the Geneva Accords, and the friends “lost and found” by the U.S.‘s unilateralist war.
The empty promise of supporting the troops
November 14, 2003
More on the “myth that is ‘Private Jessica’ ”:www.guardian.co.uk/iraq/Story/0,2763,1081207,00.html, a media creation born of propaganda and racism. I feel sad for the real Jessica Lynch caught up in all this. elsewhere Paul Krugman point out how the Bush Administration isn’t “supporting the troops”:http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/11/opinion/11KRUG.html, “But I also suspect that a government of, by and for the economic elite is having trouble overcoming its basic lack of empathy with the working-class men and women who make up our armed forces.”
U.S. throwing out Al Qaeda trial
September 26, 2003
Updating a story we brought you back in July , the U.S. Justice Department wants to drop the charges against the only person charged in an American court over the September 11 attacks two years ago. The Justice Department doesn’t want to allow Zacarias Moussaoui or his defense team to interview other suspected terrorists.
What does Moussaoui know? What do his potential defense witnesses know? And why doesn’t U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft want these people to speak in an open trial? Moussaoui has admitted being a member of Al Qaeda but any information he or his witnesses know is at least two years old. Why is a trial so worrisome that the U.S. would throw away a trial over it?
Pacifism and the Congo Dilemma
August 25, 2003
From the War Resisters League’s Judith Mahoney Pasternak, “an honest look at the challenge pacifism faces in places like the Congo”:www.warresisters.org/nva0703‑1.htm:
bq. There are those who challenge the pacifist position with such questions as, “A man with a gun is aiming it at your mother. You have a gun in your hand. What nonviolent action do you take?” Our usual answer is, “I’m a pacifist. I don’t have a gun in my hand. Next question.” But at least once in every generation — more frequently, alas, in these violence-ridden years — the challenge is a harder one to shrug off with a flip answer.
The answer of course is to stop wars before they start, by stopping the arms trade, the dictatorships, and the crushing economic reforms demanded by Western banks _before_ these forces all combine and erupt into war. Pasternak outlines four parts to a blueprint that could end much of the violence in the Congo.
I’ve always been impressed that the folks at War Resisters are willing to talk about the limits of nonviolence (see David McReynolds seven-part “Philosophy of Nonviolence”:www.nonviolence.org/issues/philosophy-nonviolence.php). While war is never the only option (and arguably never the best one), it’s much more effective to stop wars ten years before the bullets start flying. In each of the wars the U.S. has fought recently, we can see past U.S. policies setting up the conflict ten, twenty and thirty years ago.
The largest peace marches in the world can rarely prevent a war once the troops ships have set sail. If U.S. policy and aid hadn’t supported the “wrong” side in Iraq and Afghanistan twenty years ago, I don’t think we would have fought these current wars. Pacifists and their kin need to start asking the tough questions about the current repressive regimes the U.S. is supporting – places like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan – and we need to demand that building democracy is our country’s number one goal in the Iraq and Afghanistan occupations (yes, prioritize it _over_ security, so that we “don’t replace Saddam Hussein with equally repressive thugs”:www.nonviolence.org/articles/000130.php.