TRNN - Mission Accomplished? Iraq Violence Climbs to Highest Level in Years

Interventions That Only a Mugger Could Love

Trey Smith

Libya marks the second anniversary of the death of Muammar Gaddafi with the country on the brink of a new civil war and fighting raging in the eastern city of Benghazi, birthplace of its Arab spring revolution.

Violence between radical militias and regular forces broke out on Friday night and continued yesterday, while the capital Tripoli is braced for fallout from the kidnapping earlier this month of prime minister Ali Zaidan. Federalists in Cyrenaica, home to most of Libya's oil, open their own independent parliament in Benghazi this week, in a step that may herald the breakup of the country.

For months, radical militias and regular forces in Benghazi have fought a tit-for-tat war. Last week two soldiers had their throats slit as they slept in an army base. But Friday's killing of Libya's military police commander, Ahmed al-Barghathi, shot as he left a mosque, has became the trigger for wider violence. Hours after an assassination branded a "heinous act" by US ambassador Deborah Jones, armed units stormed the Benghazi home of a prominent militia commander, Wissam Ben Hamid, with guns and rockets.
~ from Assassination Pushes Libya Toward Civil War Two Years After Gaddafi Death by Chris Stephen ~

Hmm. The US doesn't seem to be building a very good track record when it comes to interventions in predominantly Muslim countries. We attacked Iraq to bring democracy, freedom and peace -- that hasn't turned out so well. Ever since the US intervention, Iraq has been on the precipice of a civil war. According to the above news report, the very same thing is happening in Libya. Owing to this track record, one should anticipate about the same result when we pull out of Afghanistan.

This is not an argument to stay in Afghanistan. Far from it. It is just to point out that when a US Commander-in-Chief -- be it a Republican OR a Democrat -- tells the world that the US must intervene for humanitarian reasons, it is a lie. Is it humanitarian to bat at a hornet's nest, then leave when the hornets come swarming out?

Defenders of these so-called humanitarian interventions will say, It's not our fault. Our aims were pure. You can't blame us if the people we liberate mess up the peace and democracy we so graciously provided them.

Even in that deluded reality, the US still is to blame. It shows that we are very poor teachers who, utilizing the corporate model of education, should be fired because our "students" perform so abysmally.

Bombs: Just What the Doctor Ordered

Trey Smith

In Washington Dulles airport I noticed a large advertisement. I’d seen it before and not paid attention. (No doubt that’s why they saturate public space with the things.) It showed a woman’s face with the words: “A car crash in California almost took her leg. A bomb blast in Iraq helped save it.” It directed one to a website: orthoinfo.org/dominique

I’m against car crashes in California. I’m in favor of saving Dominique’s leg. But at the website what we find is a claim that her leg was saved because her orthopaedic surgeon had experience in Iraq. And I don’t mean in the Iraqi hospitals that existed before we destroyed that country. I mean he had experience in the destruction process.

“Thank you, Dr. Paul Girard. How lucky was I to have an orthopaedic surgeon with wartime experience and special insights on how to treat an injury like mine?” Thus writes Dominique, whose partner James comments on the doctor: “His experience as a wartime orthopaedic surgeon in Iraq gave him a special familiarity with traumatic limb injuries.” How would James know this? Presumably the doctor, whose own comments don’t mention the war, told him. Or someone ghost wrote the website.

The orthoinfo.org website was created by three societies of orthopaedic surgeons that clearly know which side of the mutilated troop their bread is buttered on. (Orthopaedic comes through French from the Greek for boneheaded.)

Surely a few people walk through U.S. airports while simultaneously living in reality, the reality in which the United States destroyed the nation of Iraq, slaughtered 1.4 million people, created 4.5 million refugees, destroyed the health and education and energy infrastructures, created epidemics of disease and birth defects, traumatized millions of children, and left behind a ruined violent anarchic state cursed with deep divisions previously unknown.

Surely some of those reality-based people are aware that a majority of Americans believes the war benefited Iraq, and a plurality believes Iraqis are grateful. To read, on top of that perversity, the claim that a bomb blast in Iraq saved Dominique’s leg is sickening. A doctor saved her leg. He found a silver lining in a genocide. The bomb blasts didn’t fucking save people. The bomb blasts killed people. And very few of the killers or their funders or their voters seem to care.
~ from Wartime U.S. Travelogue by David Swanson ~

Have Americans and members of the world, in general, benefited from innovations developed on the battlefield? An honest answer would be a resounding yes. Lessons learned in war frequently are applied in peacetime.

But that is no excuse for war! Just because a few positives come out of it, this in no way negates or justifies the many negatives. War is an abomination and there is no way to dress it up otherwise.

The questions left unasked in the advertisement that Swanson saw are: How many Iraqis died to save Dominique's leg? How many were maimed and injured? How many lost their homes? How many became refugees? How many were so traumatized that life will never be the same?

Swanson's article offers another example of the insidious nature of American Exceptionalism. It treats the Iraqi people as if THEIR lives don't matter. What is a shattered Iraqi's life compared to the saving of one American leg?

The Faceless Others

Trey Smith

There are more than 30,000 books on the Vietnam War in print. There are volumes on the decision-making of Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, grand biographies of Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh, rafts of memoirs by American soldiers -- some staggeringly well-written, many not -- and plenty of disposable paperbacks about snipers, medics, and field Marines. I can tell you from experience that if you read a few dozen of the best of them, you can get a fairly good idea about what that war was really like. Maybe not perfect knowledge, but a reasonable picture anyway. Or you can read several hundred of the middling-to-poor books and, if you pay special attention to the few real truths buried in all the run-of-the-mill war stories, you’ll still get some feeling for war American-style.

The main problem with most of those books is the complete lack of Vietnamese voices. The Vietnam War killed more than 58,000 Americans. That’s a lot of people and a lot of heartache. It deserves attention. But it killed several million Vietnamese and severely affected -- and I mean severely -- the lives of many millions more. That deserves a whole lot more focus.

From American histories, you would think the primary feature of the Vietnam War was combat. It wasn’t. Suffering was the main characteristic of the war in Southeast Asia. Millions of Vietnamese suffered: injuries and deaths, loss, privation, hunger, dislocation, house burnings, detention, imprisonment, and torture. Some experienced one or another of these every day for years on end.
~ from Who Did You Rape in the War, Daddy? A Question for Veterans that Needs Answering by Nick Turse ~

In reading Turse's article, I thought about the recent 10-year anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq. Just as with Vietnam, almost the entire focus on that "war" is from the US perspective.

The main focus by those to the left of center is that President Bush lied to us. We were deceived and we are not happy about it.

I don't have much sympathy for all the folks out there who claim they were deceived. Why? Because the lies were exposed in real time! Countless individuals and commentators made very strong cases that what Bush and his minions were saying wasn't true and yet the vast majority of our elected leaders PLUS the American public supported the invasion of Iraq. Bomb them back to the stone age was a familiar retort.

Even today people who claim they were deceived still believe that, while the war was prosecuted under false pretenses, one wonderful thing came out of it: We got Saddam. In getting Saddam, we freed the Iraqi people.

What chauvinistic dribble!

While there can be no question that Hussein was a repressive tyrant, the standard of living under his regime was far better than it is today. Back then, Iraq had a functioning electricity grid and working water sanitation facilities. Hospitals were equipped with the latest in technology. Schools operated at near capacity. And most people went about their daily business without fear of being shot, bombed or kidnapped.

Today none of these things is true. In "freeing" the Iraqi people, we decimated their infrastructure. Even worse, the violence didn't magically end when the majority of our troops left. Iraq today is a shell of its former self and a good deal of the population lives in communities that closely resemble ghettos.

Oh, but we don't like to talk about such negatives.

No, if we're going to talk about negatives, then it's about the number of our service men and women who were killed, injured or psychologically crippled. It's not that our people don't deserve compassion and sympathy -- it's more that our numbers pale in comparison to the Iraqi people. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were killed, injured, psychologically devastated and/or displaced from their homes and yet they barely get a mention. It's enough to make an average Iraqi feel as if Americans only see worth in American lives and no one else.

War is hell, but the worst hell occurs where the war is fought. Almost all modern American wars are fought somewhere else. It is because Americans don't experience war in their face that it is easy for us to embrace jingoist and sanitized versions of what actually took place. It is why we listen to American voices and don't even notice that the people who suffered the most are not represented.

Afternoon Matinee: A People's History, Part 34

Afternoon Matinee: A People's History, Part 33

The Sickness That Is War

Trey Smith

A day after visiting Iraq, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta spoke to reporters in Turkey on Saturday and said this, according to the DoD’s own site:

“There is no question that the United States was divided going into that war,” he said. “But I think the United States is united coming out of that war. We all recognize the tremendous price that has been paid in lives, in blood. And yet I think we also recognize that those lives were not lost in vain. . . .

“As difficult as [the Iraq war] was,” and the cost in both American and Iraqi lives, “I think the price has been worth it, to establish a stable government in a very important region of the world,” he added.

The “price” that Panetta believes is “worth it” includes dead civilians in the hundreds of thousands, countless more maimed, millions of Iraqis internally and externally displaced (a huge number who remain so), tens of thousands of American soldiers killed and/or injured, and at least $1 trillion spent, contributing to “austerity” so severe that Panetta himself has been urging cuts to core social programs.
~ from Panetta: Iraq War Was “Worth It” by Glenn Greenwald ~

We see this play out all the time. It doesn't matter which side won or lost, the spin is still the same. The big wigs -- those who do NOT fight the wars -- almost always think it was "worth it." The war had to be fought for national honor or national interests (always a nebulous term).

The reason WHY war almost always is worthy for the elite is that it brings them two things: wealth and status. They prize these desires above all others -- including all the faceless people who are killed and maimed.

War always makes somebody rich or richer. If wars were bad for the corporate bottom line, they would be few and far between. Diplomacy would spring to the forefront and the titans of industry would apply immense pressure on governments to avoid war at almost any cost.

Too often, unfortunately, diplomacy is bad for business. Killing faceless human beings brings lucrative federal dollars and what wealthy mega corporation doesn't want to pocket public money?

Except for the few who became insanely richer as a result of the war in Iraq, it was an abysmal failure. Not only did it destroy the nation of Iraq, but it is also responsible for the impending destruction of the US.

But hey, that's okay. Why worry about trivial human life when there are trillions of dollars to be made!!!

Hit Me Again and Again

When considering the premise of reparation being paid for the Iraq War it would be natural to assume that the party to whom such payments would be made would be the Iraqi civilian population, the ordinary people who suffered the brunt of the devastation from the fighting.

Fought on the false pretense of capturing Saddam Hussein’s nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, the war resulted in massive indiscriminate suffering for Iraqi civilians which continues to this day. Estimates of the number of dead and wounded range from the hundreds of thousands into the millions, and additional millions of refugees remain been forcibly separated from their homes, livelihoods and families.

Billions of dollars in reparations are indeed being paid for the Iraq War, but not to Iraqis who lost loved ones or property as a result of the conflict, and who, despite their nation’s oil wealth, are still suffering the effects of an utterly destroyed economy. "Reparations payments" are being made by Iraq to Americans and others for the suffering which those parties experienced as a result of the past two decades of conflict with Iraq.
~ from Iraq Foots the Bill for Its Own Destruction by Murtaza Hussain ~

It should go without saying that this whole story highlights a great injustice on the Iraqi people, but, sad to say, it's par for the course. I'm sure, at some point, the Libyan people will find themselves in the same boat.

But we don't have to look at other nations to see this same strategy at play. Here, in our own country, the national economy is built upon the premise of the poor and middle class paying reparations to Corporate America and Wall Street for running it into the ground. By providing the rich with lavish tax cuts, WE put money in THEIR pockets. When our leaders rip to shreds what is left of the social safety net, this again benefits only the smallest sliver of the population.

It is as if we are being forced by our government to be abused and, when we continue to send the same kind of yo-yos to Washington to represent our needs, it's like we're saying, "Hit me again and again."

The chief difference between the American and the Iraqi people is that the latter have no choice. They have no say so in how much they get slapped around.

Okay, Now I've Heard Everything!

This is frick'n unbelievable that it almost leaves me speechless!

A U.S. congressman visiting Baghdad Friday suggested that Iraq pay back the United States for the money it has spent in the eight years since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher spoke during a one-day visit by a group of six U.S. congressman. The California Republican said he raised the suggestion during a meeting with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki that some day when Iraq is a "prosperous" nation it pay back the U.S. for everything that it has done here...

What's next? Will Rohrabacher say rape victims need to repay rapists for any court costs they may encounter?

Sheesh!

A Two-Way Street

In May 2007,the military-industrial complex decided to use the Port of Grays Harbor (in my then town of residence, Aberdeen, WA) to ship weapons of mass destruction to US forces in Iraq. Thinking that they could avoid the kind of loud protests they had encountered over the previous months in Tacoma and Olympia, they were rudely surprised to find protesters ready and waiting for them.

I know about this event, not because I read about it in the newspaper or saw a report on TV, but because I was one of the organizers!

As we gathered to march and demonstrate, several cameras were trained on our assemblage of 75 - 100 peaceful citizens. These were not TV cameras. The police were the ones holding the cameras. For the entire 4 days, anytime even a small group of us got anywhere near the Port, the police filmed our every move.

On the day of our big march, we were joined by several members of the Evergreen State College Students for Democratic Society (SDS). Since they had been forewarned of the presence of police cameras, several of them decided to wear bandannas to cover their faces.

This move greatly angered the police. One officer yelled at them, "If you aren't doing anything illegal, then you have no reason to worry about being photographed or filmed."

Sounds like a logical position to take, doesn't it? Yet, as David Sirota reports, the police themselves don't take kindly to citizens photographing them as they do police work!

Police officers, [Jim Pasco] told NPR, “need to move quickly, in split seconds, without giving a lot of thought to what the adverse consequences for them might be.” He added that law enforcement authorities believe that “anything that’s going to have a chilling effect on an officer moving — an apprehension that he’s being videotaped and may be made to look bad — could cost him or some citizen their life.”

Obviously, nobody wants to stop officers from doing their much-needed job (well, nobody other than budget-cutting politicians who are slashing police forces). In fact, organizations such as the NAACP have urged citizens to videotape police precisely to make sure police are doing ALL of their job — including protecting individuals’ civil liberties.

This is not some academic or theoretical concern, and video recording is not a needless exercise in Bill of Rights zealotry. The assault on civil liberties in America is a very real problem and monitoring police is absolutely required in light of recent data.

As USA Today reported under the headline “Police brutality cases on rise since 9/11,” situations “in which police, prison guards and other law enforcement authorities have used excessive force or other tactics to violate victims’ civil rights increased 25 percent” between 2001 and 2007. Last year alone, more than 1,500 officers were involved in excessive-force complaints, according to the National Police Misconduct Statistics and Reporting Project...

So, this is what it comes down to. The police argue that law-abiding citizens should not mind having the state photograph us whenever they feel like it, but we do not have the right to film them. If they aren't infringing on our rights or breaking the law, why should they care if they are caught on film?

It's a two-way street or, at least, it SHOULD be.

Defining Power

Wasn't it not too long ago when liberals and leftist decried the Bush administration for redefining words like torture? Didn't we come unglued with the creation of new terms (misnomers?) like "enemy combatants"? Thank goodness Barack Obama is here to save the day. He would never try to redefine words or would he?

Despite Obama's Vow, Combat Brigades Will Stay in Iraq
by Gareth Porter

Despite President Barack Obama's statement at Camp LeJeune, North Carolina Feb. 27 that he had "chosen a timeline that will remove our combat brigades over the next 18 months," a number of Brigade Combat Teams (BCTs), which have been the basic U.S. Army combat unit in Iraq for six years, will remain in Iraq after that date under a new non-combat label.

A spokesman for Defence Secretary Robert M. Gates, Lt. Col. Patrick S. Ryder, told IPS Tuesday that "several advisory and assistance brigades" would be part of a U.S. command in Iraq that will be "re-designated" as a "transition force headquarters" after August 2010.

But the "advisory and assistance brigades" to remain in Iraq after that date will in fact be the same as BCTs, except for the addition of a few dozen officers who would carry out the advice and assistance missions, according to military officials involved in the planning process.

Gates has hinted that the withdrawal of combat brigades will be accomplished through an administrative sleight of hand rather than by actually withdrawing all the combat brigade teams. Appearing on Meet the Press Mar. 1, Gates said the "transition force" would have "a very different kind of mission", and that the units remaining in Iraq "will be characterised differently."

"They will be called advisory and assistance brigades," said Gates. "They won't be called combat brigades."

Obama's decision to go along with the military proposal for a "transition force" of 35,000 to 50,000 troops thus represents a complete abandonment of his own original policy of combat troop withdrawal and an acceptance of what the military wanted all along - the continued presence of several combat brigades in Iraq well beyond mid-2010...

You see, this is one of the perks of power -- defining words and concepts. When you're in charge, you're the one who gets to make out the agenda, draw up the orders or set the table. President Obama simply is following in the footsteps of every other American president and power broker.

I'm not giving him a pass, though. As much as I was irked with Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton and Bush Jr. for playing these kinds of games, I'm just as mad with the new guy.

Our Bloodstained Legacy

There's another good article posted on Alternet this morning concerning the carnage we've had a large hand in over in Iraq. John Tirman of The Nation takes a look at the really grim statistics. According to current calculations, there have been "about 1 Million Killed, 4.5 Million Displaced, 1-2 Million Widows, 5 Million Orphans".

While I think these estimates certainly are in the ballpark, I'm really growing tired of the alternative press laying the responsibility solely at the feet of the former president. Yes, Dubya got us into the war and, yes, he did it under false pretenses. But we've had a mechanism to stop the war from the get go -- at any point in time, Congress could have cut the purse strings which would have stopped the war dead in its tracks! You simply can't wage war without the necessary military appropriations.

But time and time again Congress -- with Democratic majorities -- continued to approve funding and, in some instances, for even more money than the Bush administration asked for. While the Dems stood at press conferences to provide sound bytes about how they "opposed the war" in Iraq, their actions told a completely different story!!!

It didn't matter how many of us across the country took to the streets in protest over this immoral war. It didn't matter how many phone calls we made, emails we sent or letters to the editor we penned. At the end of the day, Congress members on both sides of the aisle kept funneling more and more of our taxpayer dollars to Iraq to keep the war going.

Therefore, Iraq is not the bloodstained legacy of the Bush administration; it's a horrible legacy for our entire nation. Because almost none of our elected representatives would take a stand to stop the carnage, each and every one of us has the stain of innocent blood on our hands.

Far worse, it's not the kind of stain one can wash off with a little soap and water.

Our Anti-Stimulus Package

While Congress and the media debate President Obama's economic stimulus bill, it's interesting to note that the total amount -- currently tabbed at $850 billion -- is in the ballpark of what this nation has borrowed and/or spent on conducting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Consequently, had we not initiated either of these wars, this money would be available now.

I realize that the above statement is not entirely true. If we hadn't wasted so much money on this two failed military endeavors, we would have spent some of the funds on other things. In addition, a lot of this money are not funds we currently have -- the monies were borrowed. Still, had we not borrowed the money, we wouldn't be so deep in debt and our national economy wouldn't be in such shambles now.

While former [p]Resident George W. Bush bares a lot of the responsibility for our current dilemma, both political parties are equally culpable. Republicans, as well as Democrats, kept passing bills that funneled more and more taxpayer dollars down the holes known as Afghanistan and Iraq! Congress could have easily halted either war by simply cutting the purse strings, but this didn't happen.

The National Priorities Project (NPP) has done a great deal of work on calculating the costs of the Iraq war. As of March, this cost will equal $656.1 billion. Here's a note on their methodology:

The Cost of Iraq War calculator is counting up to $656.1 billion, the amount allocated by Congress through March 2009. When additional fiscal year 2009 war funding is approved, the counter will be updated.

The numbers include military and non-military spending, such as reconstruction. Spending only includes incremental costs, additional funds that are expended due to the war. For example, soldiers' regular pay is not included, but combat pay is included. Potential future costs, such as future medical care for soldiers and veterans wounded in the war, are not included. It is also not clear whether the current funding will cover all military wear and tear. It also does not account for the Iraq War being deficit-financed and that taxpayers will need to make additional interest payments on the national debt due to those deficits.

The media (and others) sometimes cite a figure that is in excess of our estimate. However, the number cited by the media may include not just the Iraq War, but the Afghanistan War and for enhanced security abroad. Our figure is only covering the cost of the Iraq War as it relates to the U.S. federal budget (and does not include costs to others or other countries or any economic impact costs to Americans).

This number is based on an analysis of the legislation in which Congress has allocated money for war so far and research by the Congressional Research Service (latest report) which has access to Department of Defense financial reports...

Five of Ten

So, how ARE things going in Iraq these days? Here's one-half of an article. I hope it spurs you to read the story in its entirety.

Published on Friday, December 26, 2008 by Informed Comment
Top Ten Myths about Iraq, 2008
by Juan Cole

1. Iraqis are safer because of Bush's War. In fact, conditions of insecurity have helped created both an internal and external refugee problem:

'"At least 4.2 million Iraqis were displaced. These included 2.2 million who were displaced within Iraq and some 2 million refugees, mostly in Syria (around 1.4 million) and Jordan (around half a million). In the last months of the year both these neighbouring states, struggling to meet the health, education and other needs of the Iraqi refugees already present, introduced visa requirements that impeded the entry of Iraqis seeking refuge. Within Iraq, most governorates barred entry to Iraqis fleeing sectarian violence elsewhere."

2. Large numbers of Iraqis in exile abroad have returned. In fact, no great number have returned, and more Iraqis may still be leaving to Syria than returning.

3. Iraqis are materially better off because of Bush's war. In fact, A million Iraqis are "food insecure" and another 6 million need UN food rations to survive. Oxfam estimated in summer, 2007, that 28% of Iraqi children are malnourished.

4. The Bush administration scored a major victory with its Status of Forces Agreement. In fact, The Iraqis forced on Bush an agreement that the US would withdraw combat troops from Iraqi cities by July, 2009,and would completely withdraw from the Country by the end of 2011. The Bush administration had wanted 58 long-term bases, and the authority to arrest Iraqis at will and to launch military operations unilaterally.

5. Minorities in Iraq are safer since Bush's invasion. In fact, there have in 2008 been significant attacks on and displacement of Iraqi Christians from Mosul. In early January of 2008, guerrillas bombed churches in Mosul, wounding a number of persons. More recently, some 13,000 Christians have had to flee Mosul because of violence.

Terrorism -- In the Eye of the Beholder

Pick up a newspaper in the United States and it's very obvious who the "terrorists" are. It's those radical Islamic zealots!

Pick up a newspaper in the Arab world and it's very obvious who the "terrorists" are. It's those soldiers, predominantly from the United States!

That's one of the key problems with the word, terrorist. It's always aimed at the folks on the other side of the equation. No nation looks at the terror they may be responsible for; it's always the "other guy" who gets slapped with that highly emotive label. Heck, the folks on your side are freedom fighters!

We're all so used to hearing or reading the word "terrorist" that we often forget that it's not a word that was used much before the latter half of the twentieth century. It's certainly NOT the kind of word you see used in terms of the American Revolution.

If it had been used during that time, our founding fathers are the ones it would have been used in reference to.

The British occupying forces had superior firepower and numbers in comparison with General Washington and his rag-tag army. The English had professional soldiers who had honed their teeth on wars in the European theater.

Faced with these kinds of obstacles, the new Americans knew they couldn't follow the standard military protocol of the day by lining up face-to-face with their adversaries. Too many battles like this would mean the end of the American dream of independence.

So, what did they do? They employed a new military strategy -- guerilla warfare. They'd take a few potshots from the woods, picking off a few of his majesties finest, and then disappear back from whence they came.

From what I've read, after awhile, this tactic terrorized the British army. They never knew when or where the next shot would come from. Consequently, if the word "terrorist was used back then, I'm sure the English press would slapped this label on the American Minutemen.

Another group who most assuredly would have called the Americans terrorists is the various native people who resided on the their/our lovely territory. There are numerous examples of the US Cavalry swooping into an Indian settlement and shooting anything that moved (e.g., Custer's slaughter of unarmed Indians on the Washita River).

Not only did the soldiers gun down woman and children, but they burned villages to the ground, slaughtered thousands of bison and destroyed crops. Like the current Islamic zealots, religion -- this time Christianity, not Islam -- was one of the driving forces behind this wanton desire to exterminate "infidels".

So, just remember, who the terrorists are is in the eye of the beholder.

We Need a "Special" Military Draft

Regardless of the type of group one might speak of, the best group leaders are those who lead by example, not word. It's far easier and more effective to convince the gaggle to accept all forms of hardship and sacrifice, IF the leader is "in the trenches" with the rest of the team.

In regards to the war in Iraq, our elected national representatives in Washington, DC are leading by word, NOT example. While both the Bush administration and the US Congress continue to execute the war on Iraq, few, if any of them, have members of the own family in harm's way.

To remedy this deplorable circumstance, I have a proposal for a very "special" military draft. (This draft would also be advantageous for our troop numbers as recruitment has been way down as of late.)

Each and every member of the Bush Cabinet (and their subordinates) plus each member of Congress would have one age-appropriate member of their immediate family drafted to serve in Iraq or Afghanistan. If no individual in the immediate family meets the specification, then the pool would be widened to nephews/nieces, uncles/aunts, cousins and on down the line.

Because of his devout support of the "War on Terror", George W. Bush's would send both of his twin daughters.

At this juncture, I could fathom several war hawks saying, "Sure, we'll go along with this plan." (wink, wink) "No problem!" Of course, these wily folks would be thinking that they'd get their family members assigned stateside or in a cushy position inside the protected "Green Zone".

But my proposal takes these high jinks into consideration. Each "recruit" from the special draft would start out at the bottom rank. They would each be assigned to platoons that conduct daily excursions into Sadir City, Fallujah, Basra or the hundreds of other cities and towns in Iraq or Afghanistan.

They would have no special standing. They would be outfitted like other foot soldier. They would sleep in the same tents, eat the same food, run on the same schedules and drive the same vehicles.

If this proposal were adopted, then I think a great many more Americans would stand solidly behind the war. They would understand that our elected leaders weren't asking average citizens to sacrifice something they would never dream of sacrificing.

Our leaders would be leading by example and we would gladly follow them to hell and back.

The Unwinnable Solution

If you've read anything on this blog, my columns on Grays Harbor Online or my quotes in The Daily World, it should be quite evident that I believe this bloody war in Iraq is immoral and ethical. However, for this brief moment, let's set my personal sentiments aside.

Let's say we accept the notion that this war is neither immoral nor unethical. Heck, let's even say that the best way to achieve "victory" is to send enough soldiers to get our troop numbers up to 250,000 and we arm them with as much munitions and supplies as they could ever desire, including nuclear weapons!

Will all this guarantee a resounding US victory bathed in the flag, mom and apple pie?
In a word, no. We will still lose.

The only surefire way to root out a faceless enemy is to shoot everything and everyone in sight. You never know when that one innocent face in the crowd might later turn out to be the next suicide bomber. So, we would need to lay waste to the entirety of Iraq and, while we're at it, we might as well decimate Iran, Syria, Afghanistan and Palestine too.

The chief problem with this kind of strategy is that, no matter how many people you kill, more enemies will keep cropping up. So, you'll have to kill them too, only to find there are now more and more of them.

You see, whenever a nation or people start indiscriminately slaughtering both the guilty and the innocent, it causes others to react with revulsion. The allies of the group being slaughtered both will seek revenge AND, since they may well figure they're next in line, they'll take the offensive.

In time though, the problem will hit much closer to home -- it won't be the allies of the vanquished that we'll be most worried about, it will be our OWN allies. They will begin to worry that we are becoming too powerful and ruthless. They will worry that we are getting too big for our britches and may well become a threat to their economic survival.

You see, this is the chief problem with war. It begets itself over and over again. Today's victory leads to tomorrow's defeat and, sooner or later, ALL empires fall under their own blood lust and weight.

So, from a rational standpoint, this drive by some to utterly defeat Iraq and/or global terrorism is really the first step in annihilating America. Yes, we might claim victory now, but down the road we will receive our comeuppance for it.

Don't take my word for it. Grab any world history book and read it for yourself.

Me & My "Shadows"

We seem to live in a world in which almost everybody wants to be famous. That's about the only explanation that makes any sense out of the recent spate of so-called "reality" shows, talent contests and Jerry Springer-like clones. People from all walks of life want their moment "in the sun" and they'll try to finagle a way to get their cute little mug on camera by any means possible, be it for something positive OR negative.

I've never desired to be famous. I actually enjoy being just another anonymous face in the crowd. I can putter about my business in my own time on my own terms.

Over the past few days, however, I've seemed to have developed a following -- literally. It seems like every time I go anywhere in my truck, I soon find a member of the Aberdeen police department on my tail. They follow me for several blocks and, on several occasions, almost all the way home.

If I drive to the port, they follow me all over the place. If I'm just moseying around town -- like to the gas station or the store -- I have almost always had an "escort" for some of the time. Today, when I stopped at the bank, I came out to find one of my favorite unmarked cars waiting in the parking lot.

Maybe I'm just paranoid, but it does seem like everywhere I go these past few days, there they are.

In the end, it doesn't make that much difference. I'm not up to anything secretive. I'm not traveling to clandestine meetings. I'm just doing what I usually do each day with my little tag alongs tagging along behind.

So guys, if you want to keep playing this weird game, go ahead. After awhile, I think you're going to become very bored because I'm not headed any place special. I'm just making my rounds.

Books & Their Covers

Amongst the legions of peace activists who participated in yesterday's march, there were around 6 or 7 young people who wore bandannas over their faces and some even worse sunglasses. The police kept a very close eye on this group. Why? Solely because of the way they dressed.

When I was young, my parents taught me a maxim that I'm certain most every other parent teaches their children as well -- You shouldn't judge a book by its cover. In other words, you shouldn't allow superficial observations to color your ultimate judgment of a person or situation. Yet this is precisely what the police were/are doing.

Not jumping to quick conclusions seems to be a hard task for all of us. We take a quick glance at a particular circumstance and immediately formulate an opinion. There's nothing wrong with this UNLESS we allow our partial formulation to solidify into a hardcore final analysis. By doing this, we often cast aside pertinent information and further observation that might very well change our overall attitude about our snap judgment.

I've met many, many people who I initially disliked. The first time I encountered one of my best friends from Salem, he was berating a candidate that I served as campaign manager for. He ranted, raved and fumed about what he thought was wrong with the focus of the campaign message.

If I had allowed my knee jerk reaction to govern my final view of this man, I never would have gotten to know him. I never would have discovered his wry sense of humor, his devotion to his wife and children, his commitment to education (he's a history prof at Willamette University) or his dedication to public service. In essence, someone who has turned out to be one of my dearest friends would have remained a stranger to me!

As our march and rally wound down yesterday, I went up to thank each of these youth for their participation. With bandannas removed, I saw youthful faces not unlike countless other faces in the crowd. These young people were no more a threat to "public order" than any other attendee there.

Still, I will admit to the world that there was a time not so long ago when I made the same mistake as the police. Maybe it's a generational thing. As an organizer with Oregon PeaceWorks, I worked with a lot of the so-called street youth in Salem.

I was initially put off by all these young people with weirdly colored hair, dog collars around their necks, ball bearings stapled in their tongues and piercings and body jewelry adorning almost every inch of their bodies. Fortunately, I was able to cast off my "older guy" prejudices and work with these kids on a daily basis. In time, I realized how silly my snap judgments were. Their piercings were nothing more revolutionary than the long hair of my youth.

In this same vein, bandannas covering one's face both is a social and political statement. No more, no less. It certainly doesn't mean that such individuals are prone to violence anymore than anyone else is.

I'm glad these young people came to help us in this protest and I will welcome them with open arms at any future such event. I also hope that local law enforcement personnel will try to remember the lesson they too learned so many years ago as children -- Don't judge a book by its cover.

Thoughts On Why

Throughout the past few days, the one question many people have asked me is why? Why are you people protesting? What is it you hope to accomplish? Do you genuinely think that a few people with signs marching down our streets will cause the armed forces to quit shipping supplies to Iraq?

We protest simply because it's the right thing to do. If you believe that some action or activity is immoral and/or unethical, you have a responsibility to speak up. The oft repeated phrase is true -- Your silence will not protect you!

Protesting takes on even more importance if you are a person who believes in the worth and value of nonviolence. As a pacifist, I would not countenance storming the port and blocking the shipment with the point of a gun. It would wholly negate our mantra of nonviolent action. We would soon become the very thing we so adamantly oppose.

The act of protest most likely will not halt this specific shipment, but it still serves a most important purpose. As more and more people see their friends and neighbors in the streets, it may well motivate them to get off their butts to join us. At some point, with so many people protesting, it will become politically untenable to continue to support the continuation of this infernal war.

In the end, however, I bet my reason for protesting may be a lot different than many of my fellow comrades. I believe that a person should stand up for what they believe in REGARDLESS of whether or not they believe their actions will have much of a public impact.

In other words, even if I KNEW that these protests wouldn't change a damn thing -- now or in the future -- I'd still be out there. I'm not one of these people who believes that one should only fight potential winning battles; often times the losing battles are just as important.

If you know in your heart that something is wrong and yet you sit by saying nothing, you end up bankrupting your own soul. I firmly believe in the sentiment expressed during much of the civil rights movement of the 60s: If you're don't try to be part of the solution, then you indeed become part of the problem.