Peace and Justice Post

Source: Dissident Voice.org

by Glen Ford / June 22nd, 2007

If the Democrats don’t even make an effort to impeach George Bush or Dick Cheney before these criminals’ terms are up, then no president of the United States will ever face punishment for crimes against his own people or humanity at-large. So said David Swanson, of the Internet treasure trove of impeachment information, AfterDowningStreet.org.

Swanson was speaking at a discussion of impeachment at the Take Back America Conference, in Washington, earlier this week. Swanson presented an encyclopaedic list of 12 categories of impeachable crimes committed by the Bush regime – not 12 crimes, but 12 whole categories of crimes, each containing many separate instances and counts of crimes, any one of which is enough to send Bush and Cheney back where they came from before January, 2009. Taken together, the list shows there is no rule of law in the United States – that Bush has effectively destroyed the Constitution as a barrier to executive dictatorship. If laws can be broken at will, there is no law. Congress may as well stop enacting them, and go home, themselves.

That goes for the Congressional Black Caucus as an institution, as well. At least 40 of the 42 Black members of the House of Representatives should be co-sponsors of a measure to impeach Dick Cheney – but only four have signed on. What are they afraid of? Huge majorities of African Americans would have voted to impeach George Bush before he was even sworn in, in January, 2001, for having stolen the 2000 election. He did it again, in 2004, committing myriad crimes in the process. And he was still at it, this year, firing his own Republican U.S. attorneys for not being vigorous enough in systematically suppressing the voting rights of Blacks and Latinos – in preparation for Republican theft of the election in 2008. Yet only four Black congresspersons have signed on for impeachment.

They fear House Speaker Nancy Pelosi more than they respect the will of their own constituents, who would endorse impeachment in an instant. Pelosi says impeachment will remain “off the table” – meaning the rule of law is off the table. Pelosi’s defenders, including Black lawmakers, say there’s not enough time left in Bush’s and Cheney’s terms to bother with impeaching them. That’s a lie that flies in the face of history. Richard Nixon’s impeachment proceedings took only three months, after which he resigned in disgrace. It took only four months for Bill Clinton to go through the entire process, and be acquitted. The Democrats have been in the majority in the House and Senate for five months, and have not raised a finger to defend the rule of law.

Impeachment, like all criminal processes, is designed not just to punish current lawbreakers, but to prevent future criminality. George Bush and his gang have been running a massive criminal enterprise for more than six years, effectively nullifying the Constitution. The Constitution does not automatically come back to life after the two top criminals leave. It must be enforced, or it is just an old, moldy piece of paper. The question is not whether there is time to impeach Bush and Cheney, but whether there is time to rescue the rule of law – domestic and international.

http://www.opednews.comJune 22, 2007 by Dave Lindorff

Bush’s “Coalition of the Willing,” that motley crew of cajoled and pressured mostly minor nations that provided token troops to send to Iraq along with the U.S. juggernaut during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, is looking decidedly smaller today.

Since 2004, 17 countries, which had sent a total of 10,500 troops have pulled out entirely and brought everyone home. These include Italy, which at one point had the fourth-largest contingent of troops in the coalition (3200) and Ukraine, which had 1650 troops in Iraq, and also Iceland, which at one point had sent 2 soldiers, making it the smallest member of the invasion force.

 

Of course, the coalition was always much less than it appeared. Initially, the White House had announced that Costa Rica was a part of the coalition, but it had to drop that claim when Costa Rica pointed out that it has no army.Most of the other countries in a coalition that at one point purportedly numbered 48 actually barred their soldiers from engaging in combat. Poland was the biggest of these, with 2500 troops in Iraq at one point, but with nobody fighting. Indeed, the only countries that actually supplied combat troops to do any fighting alongside U.S. forces were the U.K., which initially sent a force of 45,000, Australia, which sent 2000, and Denmark, which sent 300. Today, at a time that Bush is adding American troops, Britain’s troops in Iraq are down to just 5500, with most slated to be gone by year’s end. Poland’s non-combat contingent is down to 900, Australia has pulled out all but 628, and Denmark has 460.

Gone altogether along with Italy, Ukraine and Iceland are the Netherlands, Spain, Japan, Thailand, Honduras, Dominican Republic, Hungary, Nicaragua, Singapore, Norway, Portugal, New Zealand, Philippines and Tonga.

That is to say, the U.S.-led “coalition,” in addition to the severely attritioned Britain, Australia, Poland and Denmark, is down to just 23 countries. But of these, only two are providing troops in four digits—the U.K. and South Korea, which has 1200. The other 17 members, which include Rumania, Georgia, El Salvador, the Czech Republic, Azerbaijan, Latvia, Mongolia, Albania, Lithuania, Slovenia, Armenia, Boznia-Herzegovena, Estonia, Macedonia, Kazakhstan, Moldova and Bulgaria, are only providing a grand total of 2278 soldiers—none of them in combat roles.

This is quite a grand coalition our president has assembled!

It’s also a coalition that will scatter like chaff in a storm if the Bush administration follows the advice of Vice President Cheney and attacks Iran. At that point it will be the Coalition of One.

It must make the men and women of the U.S. military feel good to have all those allies with them as they drive their bedraggled Humvees through the IED-strewn streets of Iraq.

Especially when they know that most, if not all, of these coalition members only joined because they were threatened with aid cut-offs or bribed with promises of arms supplies and loans.

The problem for the Bush administration is that many of the members of this “Coalition of the Willing” were never really willing. Their governments may have been, but their people were not, and a number of governments—for example those in Italy and Spain—fell in large part because of popular rage over their countries’ involvement in Bush’s Iraq fiasco. Unlike in America, the voting public in these countries was able to force their governments to change course and get out.

There’s a lesson there.

Maybe after the Brits and the Ozzies leave Iraq, Americans will see the light and demand that the U.S. leave the coalition too.

Then maybe Iraq can start to recover from its long nightmare.

—————————

abcnews.com

June 21, 2007 12:57 PM

Justin Rood Reports:

Vice President Dick Cheney has asserted his office is not a part of the executive branch of the U.S. government, and therefore not bound by a presidential order governing the protection of classified information by government agencies, according to a new letter from Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., to Cheney.

Bill Leonard, head of the government’s Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO), told Waxman’s staff that Cheney’s office has refused to provide his staff with details regarding classified documents or submit to a routine inspection as required by presidential order, according to Waxman.

In pointed letters released today by Waxman, ISOO’s Leonard twice questioned Cheney’s office on its assertion it was exempt from the rules. He received no reply, but the vice president later tried to get rid of Leonard’s office entirely, according to Waxman.

Leonard did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In a statement e-mailed to the Blotter on ABCNews.com, Cheney spokeswoman Megan McGinn said, “We are confident that we are conducting the office properly under the law.”

As director of the tiny, 25-person Information Security Oversight Office, Leonard is responsible for keeping track of the nation’s secrets and making sure they are properly protected.

For the first two years of the George W. Bush administration, Cheney’s office complied with a presidential order that requires officials to report statistics on the number of documents it classifies and declassifies.

Since 2003, however, Cheney’s office has refused to submit the data to ISOO. And when ISOO inspectors tried in 2004 to schedule a routine inspection of the vice president’s offices, they were rebuffed, Waxman’s letter claims.

Other White House offices, including the National Security Council, did not object to similar inspections, according to Waxman.

“Serious questions can be raised about both the legality and advisability of exempting your office from the rules that apply to all other executive branch officials,” Waxman said in his letter to the vice president, and asked him to explain why he felt the rules didn’t apply to him and his staff and how he was protecting classified information in his office.

Former Cheney aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby was recently convicted on several counts of perjury and obstruction of justice stemming from the leak of the identity of former covert CIA officer Valerie Plame, Waxman noted, and in 2006, former Cheney aide Leandro Aragoncillo pleaded guilty to sharing classified U.S. documents with foreign nationals. Aragoncillo also worked under former Democratic Vice President Al Gore, who complied with ISOO’s requests.

McClatchy.com

By Joseph L. Galloway

Posted on Wed, June 20, 2007

We were reminded again this week that in this administration, no good deed goes unpunished, and that no scandal is so great that it can’t be hidden until it’s forgotten.

The sad spectacle that transpired inside the crumbling walls of Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq came roaring back to life with Seymour Hersh’s on-target article in The New Yorker magazine telling the story of an honest general who investigated and reported on events that shocked the world.

Maj. Gen. Anthony Taguba, U.S. Army retired, was an accidental choice to conduct one of 17 Pentagon investigations of the prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib. He was grabbed because he wore two stars, and they needed someone of that rank to probe a case that involved a one-star general.

The trouble was that Tony Taguba was honest and thorough and reported in detail, early and often, to his superiors on the evidence he was uncovering – film and photos of abuses far worse than those the public saw. There was sexual abuse of female prisoners by their American military guards and forced sex acts between a father and his young son.

He wasn’t authorized to investigate any higher up the chain of command than the hapless Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, and so he didn’t.

But when his report was completed, Taguba had a hard time getting anyone in the Pentagon – where the powers that be were determined to push responsibility down to a staff sergeant and even lower ranking guards – to read it.

Both President George W. Bush and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld went on record declaring that the first they knew of the Abu Ghraib scandal was when they saw the less-offensive photographs in the media.

If you believe that, I’ve got some oceanfront property in Arizona that I’d like to sell you.

Within 48 hours of the photographs first coming to the notice of the high command in Baghdad, the back channel was rippling with e-mails detailing the terrible scandal that had befallen the American military and its civilian bosses.

As the investigations unfolded, it was clear that the primary motivation of most of them was to protect Rumsfeld and the president from any blame or responsibility for what had transpired at Abu Ghraib. Blame, unlike cream, settles as close to the bottom of any bureaucracy as can be arranged.

For his honesty in revealing what he uncovered in Iraq in his report and in testimony before Republican-controlled congressional committees, Tony Taguba found himself sidelined for a decent interval, then forced to retire.

The president and the secretary of defense expressed their shock and surprise that a few rogue reserve military police soldiers – a few “bad apples” – had treated prisoners in their charge so badly.

That when it was obvious that President Bush and his White House counsel Alberto Gonzales had done everything they could to unleash military and CIA interrogators from the constraints of the Geneva Convention and common human decency.

There are those who know that Rumsfeld himself ordered Maj. Gen. Geoff Miller, who ran things at the detention center at Guantanamo, Cuba, to take a “tiger team” of specialists in rough interrogation techniques to Abu Ghraib in the summer of 2003 and share their knowledge.

A dozen people in the chain of command were reprimanded or, in the case of Gen. Karpinski, reduced in rank. Half a dozen enlisted reserve MP’s were court-martialed and given prison sentences for their actions.

The president and his men, and Rumsfeld and his, happily put Abu Ghraib behind them and went merrily along knowing that the network of secret CIA prisons where high-value prisoners were subjected to extreme interrogation techniques was still secret.

The examples made of Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric K. Shinseki and Gen. Taguba weren’t lost on military commanders in the field or at home: If you dare speak truth to power in this administration, your career is toast, and any hopes you have of landing a cushy job in one of the defense industry behemoths are finished.

It’s long past time for Congress to reopen the matter of who’s really responsible for Abu Ghraib and let the chips fall where they may – even if that means they pile up around the retirement home of a former secretary of defense or the gates of the White House itself.

How many more high crimes and misdemeanors will be revealed in the months to come? How long is it going to take to clean, polish and restore the White House and the Pentagon and all the other agencies of our government when this bunch moves out?

Let’s begin right here by serving subpoenas on all the rats that are lining up to skitter down the hawsers of a sinking ship, and getting to the TOP of all the sorry scandals of this administration, one by one.

Consortiumnews.com

June 20, 2007

By Robert Parry

In years to come, historians may look back on U.S. press coverage of George W. Bush’s presidency and wonder why there was not a single front-page story announcing one of the most monumental events of mankind’s modern era – the death of the American Republic and the elimination of the “unalienable rights” pledged to “posterity” by the Founders.

The historians will, of course, find stories about elements of this extraordinary event – Bush’s denial of habeas corpus rights to a fair trial, his secret prisons, his tolerance of torture, his violation of Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches, his “signing statements” overriding laws, the erosion of constitutional checks and balances.

But the historians will scroll through front pages of the New York Times, the Washington Post and every other major newspaper – as well as scan the national network news and the 24-hour cable channels – and find not a single story connecting the dots, explaining the larger picture: the end of a remarkable democratic experiment which started in 1776 and which was phased out sometime in the early 21st century.

How, these historians may ask, did the U.S. press corps miss one of history’s most important developments? Was it a case like the proverbial frog that would have jumped to safety if tossed into boiling water but was slowly cooked to death when the water was brought to a slow boil?

Or was it that journalists and politicians intuitively knew that identifying too clearly what was happening in the United States would have compelled them to action, and that action would have meant losing their jobs and livelihoods? Perhaps, too, they understood that there was little they could do to change the larger reality, so why bother?

As for the broader public, did the fear and anger generated by the 9/11 attacks so overwhelm the judgment of Americans that they didn’t care that President Bush had offered them a deal with the devil, he would promise them a tad more safety in exchange for their liberties?

And what happened to the brave souls who did challenge Bush’s establishment of an authoritarian state? Why, the historians may wonder, did the American people and their representatives not rise up as Bush systematically removed honorable public servants who did their best to uphold the nation’s laws and principles?

One could go down a long list of government officials who were purged or punished for speaking up, the likes of Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, Army Gen. Eric Shinseki, counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson and Deputy Attorney General James Comey.

The Taguba Purge

Yet possibly the most troubling case was revealed in mid-June by The New Yorker’s investigative reporter Seymour M. Hersh, the case of Army Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, who investigated the abuses of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison and issued a tough report that prevented the scandal from being swept entirely under the rug.

Rather than thank Taguba for upholding the honor of the U.S. military, the Bush administration singled out this hard-working, low-key general for ridicule, retribution and forced retirement in early 2007.

In an interview with Hersh, Taguba described a chilling conversation he had with Gen. John Abizaid, head of Central Command, a few weeks after Taguba’s report became public in 2004. Sitting in the back of Abizaid’s Mercedes sedan in Kuwait, Abizaid quietly told Taguba, “You and your report will be investigated.”

“I’d been in the Army 32 years by then,” Taguba told Hersh, “and it was the first time that I thought I was in the Mafia.”

It was also an early indication that Taguba’s military career was nearing its end. In January 2006, Gen. Richard Cody, the Army’s Vice-Chief of Staff, called Taguba and without pleasantries or explanation told Taguba, “I need you to retire by January 2007.”

So, the general who had violated the omerta code of silence was banished from Bush’s Mafia.

Hersh wrote that the sensitivity over Taguba’s report went beyond its graphic account of physical and sexual abuse of Iraqis detained at Abu Ghraib; it also brought unwanted attention to a wider pattern of criminal acts committed with the approval of President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

“The administration feared that the publicity would expose more secret operations and practices,” including a special military task forces or Special Access Programs set up to roam the world and assassinate suspected terrorists, Hersh wrote.

Hersh quoted a recently retired CIA officer as saying the task-force teams “had full authority to whack – to go in and conduct ‘executive action,’” a phrase meaning assassination.

“It was surrealistic what these guys were doing,” the ex-officer told Hersh. “They were running around the world without clearing their operations with the ambassador or the [CIA] chief of station.” [New Yorker, June 25, 2007, edition]

In other words, President Bush not only had arrogated to himself the right to snatch people off the street and lock them up indefinitely without trial but he had dispatched assassins around the world to eliminate alleged “bad guys.”

The bigger picture – the stark and grim image of what had transpired over the past half dozen years in the name of the American people – was that the United States could no longer claim to be a nation of laws and liberties. It had become a country governed by a criminal mob deploying an unsavory collection of capos, consiglieres and hit men.

In this view, George W. Bush was no longer President of a Republic but Godfather of the world’s most intimidating crime syndicate. But that was a reality that the U.S. news media could not afford to acknowledge in real time, though it might become the unavoidable conclusion of future historians.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It’s also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & ‘Project Truth.’

The Independent online

Leonard Doyle reports

Published June 21, 2007

The publication of an anthology of works, composed on paper cups by detainees, provides a harrowing insight into the torments and fading hopes of prisoners.

The words of the celebrated Pakistani poet were scratched on the sides of a Styrofoam cup with a pebble. Then, under the eyes of Guantanamo Bay’s prison guards, they were secretly passed from cell to cell. When the guards discovered what was going on, they smashed the containers and threw them away, fearing that it was a way of passing coded messages.

Fragments of these “cup poems” survived, however, and are included in an 84-page anthology entitled Poems from Guantanamo: the Detainees Speak, to be published later this year by the University of Iowa Press.

The verses provide a harrowing insight into the torments and fading hopes of the prisoners. Only two Guantanamo inmates have been charged with a crime.

They were brought to light by Marc Falkoff, a US professor of law with a doctorate in American literature. He represents 17 Yemeni inmates and has made 10 visits to Guantanamo. He dedicates the book to “my friends inside the wire”.

In the summer of 2005 Professor Falkoff was sent two poems from his clients. Written in Arabic, they were included in letters they could legally send. Because all communication with the detainees is deemed a potential threat to national security, everything – letters, interview notes, legal documents – must be sealed and sent to a US intelligence facility for review. The two poems were deemed a potential risk and remain classified to this day.

Professor Falkoff contacted other lawyers and discovered that several had received poems from their clients. Other detainees, like the two released Britons, Moazzam Begg and Martin Mubanga, wrote poetry while in prison and brought them with them on their release.

Censorship remains absolute at the camp however. As far as the US military is concerned: “poetry … presents a special risk, and DoD [Department of Defence] standards are not to approve the release of any poetry in its original form or language”. The fear, officers say, is that allegorical imagery in poetry may be used to convey coded messages to militants outside.

That is scoffed at by Professor Falkoff. “These are the same military censors who in 2004 tried to stop me receiving allegations of abusive treatment of my clients who were being subjected to intense heat and cold and forced to remain standing.” He added: “If the inmates were writing words like ‘the Eagle flies at dawn,’ the censors might have a case, but they are not. I fully accept their right to stop any coded messages to militants outside. But what the military fears is not so much the possibility of secret messages being communicated, but the power of words to make people outside realise that these are human beings who have not had their day in court.”

The thoughts of the inmates are considered so potentially dangerous by the US military that they are not even trusted with pen and paper. The only exception is an occasional 10-minute period when they are allowed to write to their families via the International Red Cross. Even then the words they write are heavily censored.

The 380 or so inmates of Guantanamo include some avowed Islamic militants and al-Qa’ida fighters. But the majority are there because they were swept up by the police and intelligence services of other countries working on behalf of the US. In their despair many of these detainees have turned to verse to express their innermost feelings.

Others have attempted or committed suicide. One of the poets is a Bahraini man who has been held in solitary confinement since the end of 2003. He has tried to kill himself 12 times while in the prison. On one occasion, he was found by his lawyer, hanging by his neck and bleeding from a gash to his arm.

There are other tragic tales behind the verses. The “cup poems” of Guantanamo speak of the strange absence of flowers in spring, the bangles worn by young women and handcuffs on the militants.

Fragments survived in the memory of the poet Shaikh Abdurraheem Muslim Dost after his eventual release, but thousands of lines of poetry he wrote in prison have disappeared.

Dost, a respected religious scholar, poet, and journalist – and author of nearly 20 books – until his arrest in 2001, spent nearly three years in Guantanamo with his brother. Sent home two years ago, the brothers were picked up by Pakistani intelligence and they too disappeared. Nothing has been heard of them since.

Aami al Haj, a Sudanese national, was a journalist covering the war in Afghanistan for al-Jazeera television, when, in 2001, he was arrested stripped of his passport and press card and handed over to US forces. He was tortured at both Bagram air base and Kandahar before being transferred to Guantanamo Bay. The US military says he was a financial courier for Chechen rebels and that he assisted al-Qa’ida but has offered no evidence to support the claims.

“When I heard pigeons cooing in the trees, Hot tears covered my face,” he wrote from his prison cell. “They have monuments to liberty And freedom of opinion, which is well and good. But I explained to them, that Architecture is not justice.”

THE POEMS

Humiliated In The Shackles

By Sami al Hajj

When I heard pigeons cooing in the trees,

Hot tears covered my face.

When the lark chirped, my thoughts composed

A message for my son.

Mohammad, I am afflicted.

In my despair, I have no one but Allah for comfort.

The oppressors are playing with me,

As they move freely around the world.

They ask me to spy on my countrymen,

Claiming it would be a good deed.

They offer me money and land,

And freedom to go where I please.

Their temptations seize

My attention like lightning in the sky.

But their gift is an empty snake,

Carrying hypocrisy in its mouth like venom,

They have monuments to liberty

And freedom of opinion, which is well and good.

But I explained to them that

Architecture is not justice.

America, you ride on the backs of orphans,

And terrorize them daily.

Bush, beware.

The world recognizes an arrogant liar.

To Allah I direct my grievance and my tears.

I am homesick and oppressed.

Mohammad, do not forget me.

Support the cause of your father, a God-fearing man.

I was humiliated in the shackles.

How can I now compose verses? How can I now write?

After the shackles and the nights and the suffering and the tears,

How can I write poetry?

My soul is like a roiling sea, stirred by anguish,

Violent with passion.

I am a captive, but the crimes are my captors’.

I am overwhelmed with apprehension.

Lord, unite me with my son Mohammad.

Lord, grant success to the righteous.

An Al-Jazeera cameraman, Sami al Hajj, a Sudanese, was visiting his brother in Damascus after the 11 September attacks when he got a call asking him to go to Pakistan to cover the impending war in Afghanistan. Instead, he ended up in Guantanamo where he claims he has been severely and regularly beaten, scarring his face.

Death Poem

By Jumah al Dossari

Take my blood.

Take my death shroud and

The remnants of my body.

Take photographs of my corpse at the grave, lonely.

Send them to the world,

To the judges and

To the people of conscience,

Send them to the principled men and the fair-minded.

And let them bear the guilty burden, before the world,

Of this innocent soul.

Let them bear the burden, before their children and before history,

Of this wasted, sinless soul,

Of this soul which has suffered at the hands of the “protectors of peace”.

Arrested in Pakistan and held in solitary confinement since 2003, Jumah al Dossari’s mental wellbeing is worrying his lawyers. The 33-year old Bahraini national has tried to kill himself 12 times since his incarceration in Guantanamo. On one visit, his lawyer found him hanging in a bedsheet noose, with a deep gash in one wrist. In a letter Mr Dossari wrote in 2005, he said: “The purpose of Guantanamo is to destroy people and I have been destroyed.”

Is It True?

By Osama Abu Kadir

Is it true that the grass grows again after rain?

Is it true that the flowers will rise up again in the Spring?

Is it true that birds will migrate home again?

Is it true that the salmon swim back up their streams?

It is true. This is true. These are all miracles.

But is it true that one day we’ll leave Guantanamo Bay?

Is it true that one day we’ll go back to our homes?

I sail in my dreams. I am dreaming of home.

To be with my children, each one part of me;

To be with my wife and the ones that I love;

To be with my parents, my world’s tenderest hearts.

I dream to be home, to be free from this cage.

But do you hear me, oh Judge, do you hear me at all?

We are innocent, here, we’ve committed no crime.

Set me free, set us free, if anywhere still

Justice and compassion remain in this world!

Shortly after 11 September, Osama Abu Kadir travelled to Pakistan to perform charity work in Afghanistan with the Islamic missionary group Tablighi Jamat. The US claims Tablighi was providing fighters for jihad in Afghanistan and arrested Mr Kadir near Jalalabad in November 2001. In his native Jordan, he was known as a dedicated family man who worked as a truck driver. In Guantanamo, he is known as prisoner number 651.

CounterBias.com

May 29 2007

by Michael Boldin

10. The U.S. military has absolutely no right, whether legal or moral, to be killing people who live in Iraq. It has no right to even be in Iraq. Why is this? Because neither the Iraqi government nor the Iraqi people ever attacked the United States. This fact makes the war in Iraq an optional one, not a necessary one.

To reiterate what should be obvious, the fact that the U.S. was attacked in 2001 does not give this country the right to attack and kill people who had nothing to do with those crimes. It is morally acceptable to go after criminals, but it is a crime to kill their families, their friends, their neighbors, or anyone else not criminally complicit.

9. Both political parties have pursued a foreign policy of aggression for decades, and where has that gotten us?

Our military is based in over 120 countries around the world. The U.S. government has spent billions and billions of dollars of our tax money to prop up dictators and despotic regimes. It has armed people such as Osama bin Laden and the “freedom fighters” in Afghanistan, Saddam Hussein, and Manuel Noriega, only to use military force to oust them later on. This type of foreign policy has driven people all over the world to hate us. Don’t we have enough enemies yet? Isn’t it time to say enough is enough?

8. Since this war began back in 1991, millions of people have been driven from their homes, injured, or killed. Considering this fact, I cannot be convinced that the Iraqi people are better off in any way.

7. In a free country, aggressive war should never be used as a tool of foreign policy. Using force to impose what American politicians consider to be a proper government for Iraq violates every principle of freedom which this country is supposed to stand for. This is not freedom for Iraqis

6. No one can convince me that kindness and charity are the primary motives in a war where hundreds of billions of dollars are forcibly redistributed from American citizens to the military-industrial complex; especially the weapons-manufacturers. Maybe something else motivates the war-makers. Could it be greed?

5. Like virtually every war, this war is being funded through the coercive method of taxation. The wealth of the American people is being forcibly transferred to the government and their corporate partners; the merchants of death. Just considering this one point, the war in Iraq is just as immoral and illegal as stealing from one person to give to another.

On top of this, taxation, deficit-spending, and the printing of money gives the government an almost unlimited source of funding. Thus, there is no incentive for the government to spend the money wisely, because it can always get more – from us. Conversely, the access to such vast wealth is actually an incentive to continue the war perpetually. The ability to grow in wealth and power is something that not many politicians have had the strength to resist throughout history. American politicians are no different.

4. The Iraq War is the polar opposite of any proper concept of self-defense. The United States is the aggressor and Iraq is the defender; plain and simple. This fact brings up some very difficult moral and legal issues for everyone involved. Thomas Paine may have summed it up best:

“Not all the treasures of the world, so far as I believe, could have induced me to support an offensive war, for I think it murder.”

3. We fought in Vietnam to stop the “domino effect” of communism, but when the communists took over, the world didn’t come to an end. We “saved” Kuwait from an evil dictator, but it’s still run by a family dynasty that has no interest in liberty for the people. We waged war on Afghanistan to capture Osama bin Laden. Oddly, rights violations are still rampant and Afghani opium production has soared since the invasion. And then, of course, we have all the “good” done in Iraq.

This foreign policy of aggression and intervention, which we have seen grow in preeminence over the last century, just doesn’t work. The politicians promise us peace; they promise us security; they promise us anything to get us to go along with their policies, but what happens? In virtually every situation, the intervention totally fails, or the “enemy” is replaced by another despotic regime. The U.S. government has caused chaos in Iraq, and the time for that to come to an end is now.

2. You don’t bring freedom to people by waging war on their cities and towns, and you don’t protect innocent people by killing innocent people. It is a crime to aggressively take the life of another person. There is no murder of innocent people that can be justified by claiming that it was necessary for the “greater good.”

If you consider that to be the right way of handling the problems in Iraq, you more closely resemble Joseph Stalin’s way of thinking than that of liberty-lovers like Patrick Henry and Thomas Paine.

And the No. 1 reason to get the U.S. out of Iraq…

1. The warfare state is, hands down, the greatest threat to liberty. In war, the government always claims the need for massive power, and it uses war as an excuse to expand its control over our lives in every way possible.

War, the politicians claim, “changes everything.” They tap our phones, read our emails, monitor our bank accounts, and give us “free speech zones.” They consider torture acceptable and imprison people indefinitely. They take our property, waste our resources, and threaten to spend our economy into oblivion.

Throughout history, even kings and queens have often failed to survive such disastrous governance.

And, just in case that’s not enough, here’s one more “bonus” reason to get out Iraq now:

The Constitution does not give the president the power to wage war without first getting a declaration of war from Congress. Although some try to claim that the 2002 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) fulfilled this requirement, it did not. All it did was transfer a Constitutional power – the power to declare war – from congress to the president. This transfer of power is a violation of the Constitution in and of itself.

Thus, the president violated the Constitution by waging war on Iraq without a declaration of war from congress. And, possibly even more important, everyone in congress who voted for the AUMF in 2002 violated the Constitution as well by illegally transferring their power to declare war to the president.

This is how the U.S. government has handled every war since World War II. By allowing the government to wage undeclared wars, politicians from both political parties have violated their Constitutional oaths repeatedly.

Whether you like it or not, the Constitution is not just a set of loose guidelines, it’s the law. Now is the time to demand that our representatives in government abide by the law. We must stop allowing Presidents to drag us into wars, which they later claim we have to continue for years and years until the “job is done.”

National Defense, Not Offense

If government should be playing any role at all in foreign affairs, it should be only to keep us out of wars. Their sole job is to ensure that this country will not be attacked so you and your family can live in peace.

I’d actually like to see some national defense for once in this country; all we have now is a national offense. Such things as staging coups, backing dictators with billions in foreign aid, basing our military in over 120 nations, and attacking other countries does nothing to keep this country safe. In fact, it does just the opposite, and almost guarantees more war in the future.

To make this country safer, we don’t need to increase the power of the politicians, and we definitely don’t need more national offense. We don’t need more weapons, a larger military, or wars in more countries.

We need the exact opposite of this. We need to focus on defending the country rather than aggressing against the rest of the world.

The only reason to have a military force at all is to deter and discourage potential invaders; it’s not to be used as a pre-emptive strike force. If the attackers come anyway, it’s the military’s job to repel them at our borders. Nothing more, nothing less. If they’re unable to do that job, maybe we should consider something different.

What Now?

The path this country is on right now, the path of empire and militarism, will only guarantee us more violence, death, and loss of liberty.

This state of affairs is intolerable.

The right plan, in the short term, is the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Iraq. Now. Not when the violence “subsides.” Not when Iraq has a stable government. Not when more Iraqi forces are trained. Not when the Democrats tell us the war is over, not when the Republicans tell us the war is over, and not when we have a new president.

The time to leave Iraq is now. Not in the fall. Not next year. Not next month or next week. Today, not tomorrow – right now.

Could the entire U.S. Military machine and its associated contractors leave Iraq this very moment? Obviously not. But, we could easily announce an immediate cessation of aggressive hostilities, and start mobilizing all of our resources to transport the troops out right away. It didn’t take all that long to march into Iraq, and it won’t take that long to march right on out.

For The Future

A long-term solution requires a return to our nation’s founding principles of individual liberty. This is quite contrary to America’s current policies of militarism, endless foreign aid, massive standing armies, assassinations, coups, deadly sanctions, and wars.

As a nation, we cannot solve all the problems of the world. We cannot bring peace to the world. And, as the historical record shows, we cannot trust our politicians to do so either. Such has been the arrogance of many of the most murderous tyrants in world history, and such has been the path to their destruction.

We may not be able to stop war and bloodshed in places like Darfur, and we may not be able to bring liberty to places like North Korea. But, by standing up for what we believe in, our voices can make a real difference in what our own government is allowed to do.

When a government that rules in our name engages in torture, killing, and war, the number one question that will be asked of us someday is this: did you rise in opposition to it? Did you speak out against it? Or, did you approve of it by remaining silent?

I, for one, rise in opposition, and will continue to speak out.

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Michael Boldin is a gun-toting, thirty-something technology-inclined city-dweller, who is an avid hiker of the San Gabriel Mountains. Raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin by a politically active family, he developed a distaste for big government early on. Michael welcomes feedback at mboldin@populistamerica.com.

ZNet

June 20, 2007

By Adel Safty

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Israel has been in conflict with the Palestinians and the Arabs since its establishment in 1948. Conflict was inherent in the Zionist project of conquest and colonization of Palestine. Indeed conflict was recognized by Zionist leaders as necessary for the implementation of the Zionist project, for nobody expected the Palestinians to peacefully acquiesce in the loss of their country.

Almost sixty years after the launch of Jewish offensive operations designed to take over all of Palestine, and forty years after the occupation of the rest of Palestine in 1967, and in the face of Israeli intransigence that is dividing the Palestinians and deterring peace, it is imperative to ask: What does Israel want?

Traditional interpretations of the Zionist doctrine suggest that the conquest and colonization of land for the purpose of establishing a Jewish state was the urgent priority of the founding fathers of political Zionism. The rational given by Jewish nationalists was that anti-Semitism was ineradicable, and conflict with the gentile world permanent, and therefore only a Jewish state could offer protection for the world’s Jews.

The Jewish state was forcibly established, and in the process inflicted gross injustice on the Palestinians and came into violent conflict with its neighbors. The Jews of the world did not come to live in Israel, and the question became: Should Israel continue to favor conquest and occupation for the unrealistic project of gathering the Jews of the world in greater Israel, or should it live in peace with its neighbors and allow the Palestinians it victimized to rebuild their shattered society on the remaining 22% of Palestine(Gaza and the West Bank)?

Israeli writer Gideon Levi indirectly answered this question with an article in April in the Israeli paper Haaretz entitled: Israel Does Not Want Peace.

Levy concluded that Israel did not want peace because Israeli leaders rejected the Arab League peace offer made in 2002 and again renewed by Arab leaders meeting in Saudi Arabia earlier this year. The Arab peace offer is based on the international consensus for a solution to the conflict, embodied in the 1967 UN Security Council Resolution 242 formula of land for peace and on a just resolution of the Palestinian refugee problem.

Israeli leaders showed no interest in the offer and Israeli Prime Minister Olmert categorically rejected the prospect of the return to Israel of even one Palestinian refugee.

Levy wrote that this was ‘the moment of truth’. He believes that the dismissal of the Arab League peace offer may have been the breakdown point, and “leaves no room for doubt that the tired refrain that “Israel supports peace” has been left shattered.”

Levy is right in concluding that Israel does not want peace. But he is wrong in thinking that this is a recent phenomenon Notwithstanding propaganda in Israel and in the West, Israeli leaders, with the possible exception of Moshe Sharrett, have not shown any serious interest in peace with the Arabs, while in fact Arab leaders have realistically demonstrated readiness to resolve the conflict peacefully.

This has now been extensively documented by the new Israeli historians. Israeli historian Avi Shlaim reported in his book “The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World” that Israeli archives showed that the claim that Israel had always wanted peace but there was nobody to talk to was groundless. “The Arabs have repeatedly outstretched a hand to peace,” he told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, “and Israel has always rejected it. Each time with a different excuse.” (August 13, 2005)

Shlaim found that Syrian leader Hosni Zam wanted a peace agreement with Israel. King Farouk of Egypt was ready to make peace with Israel. King Abdullah of Jordan also wanted an agreement. Israel turned them all down. Even Nasser, portrayed by Israeli and Western propaganda as war-bent, wrote a personal letter to then-prime minister Sharett, and sent emissaries. These included Abdel Rahman Sadek, the Egyptian press officer in Paris, who, in 1955, conveyed to the Israelis Nasser’s interest in reducing tension and lifting trade restrictions. Israeli leaders showed no interest.

This made sense from the point of view of Zionist leaders. As long as the Zionist project of conquest and colonization of Palestine was incomplete, and as long as Zionist ideology could be imposed by force, there was no reason to abandon the Zionist project for the sake of making peace with the Arabs.

Besides, Zionist leaders rationalized their rejection of peace offers by arguing that their forcible conquest and colonization of Palestine have alienated the Arabs so much that no Arab leader would really want to make peace with them.

In 1956 Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion told Nahum Goldman, President of the World Zionist Organization who was urging him to negotiate a peaceful settlement with the Arabs:

“I don’t understand your optimism. Why should the Arabs make peace? If I were an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural. We have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to me, but what does it matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, it is true, but two thousand years ago, and what is it to them? There have been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, and Auschwitz but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country.”

Conflict has therefore always been necessary, first to carry out by force the project of conquest and transformation of Palestine into a Jewish state and second, to justify Israeli rejections of peace offers that threatened to bring the Zionists project to a premature end. Short of completely displacing the rival claimants to the land-which was tried and failed in 1948- Israel cannot live in permanent conflict.

Prof. Adel Safty is author of From Camp David to the Gulf, Montreal, New York.

June 20, 2007
Op-Ed Contributory

AHMED YOUSEF

From Gaza City

THE events in Gaza over the last few days have been described in the West as a coup. In essence, they have been the opposite. Eighteen months ago, our Hamas Party won the Palestinian parliamentary elections and entered office under Prime Minister Ismail Haniya but never received the handover of real
power from Fatah, the losing party. The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, has now tried to replace the winning Hamas government with one of his own, returning Fatah to power while many of our elected members of Parliament languish in Israeli jails. That is the real coup.

From the day Hamas won the general elections in 2006 it offered Fatah the chance of joining forces and forming a unity government. It tried to engage the international community to explain its platform for peace. It has consistently offered a 10-year cease-fire with the Israelis to try to create an atmosphere of calm in which we resolve our differences. Hamas even adhered to a unilateral cease-fire for 18 months in an effort to normalize the situation on the ground. None of these points appear to have been recognized in the press coverage of the last few days.

Nor has it been evident to many people in the West that the civil unrest in Gaza and the West Bank has been precipitated by the American and Israeli policy of arming elements of the Fatah opposition who want to attack Hamas and force us from office. For 18 months we have tried to find ways to coexist with Fatah, entering into a unity government, even conceding key positions in the cabinet to their and international demands, negotiating up
until the last moment to try to provide security for all of our people on the streets of Gaza.

Sadly, it became apparent that not all officials from Fatah were negotiating in good faith. There were attempts on Mr. Haniya’s life last week, and eventually we were forced into trying to take control of a very dangerous situation in order to provide political stability and establish law and order.

The streets of Gaza are now calm for the first time in a very long time. We have begun disarming some of the drug dealers and the armed gangs and we hope to restore a sense of security and safety to the citizens of Gaza. We want to get children back to school, get basic services functioning again, and provide long-term economic gains for our people.

Our stated aim when we won the election was to effect reform, end corruption and bring economic prosperity to our people. Our sole focus is Palestinian rights and good governance. We now hope to create a climate of peace and tranquillity within our community that will pave the way for an end to internal strife and bring about the release of the British journalist Alan Johnston, whose kidnapping in March by non-Hamas members is a stain on the reputation of the Palestinian people.

We reject attempts to divide Palestine into two parts and to pass Hamas off as an extreme and dangerous force. We continue to believe that there is still a chance to establish a long-term truce. But this will not happen unless the international community fully engages with Hamas.

Any further attempts to marginalize us, starve our people into submission or attack us militarily will prove that the United States and Israeli governments are not genuinely interested in seeing an end to the violence. Dispassionate observers over the next few weeks will be able to make up their own minds as to each side’s true intentions.

Ahmed Yousef is the political adviser to Ismail Haniya, who became the Palestinian prime minister last year.

The Toronto Star

June 17, 2007

Developing a strategy to withdraw troops is the only real aid Bush can give Iraq, ex-Soviet leader says

By Mikhail Gorbachev

Clashes between U.S. troops and insurgents throughout Iraq, political manoeuvring in the United States over its presence there and the repercussions of that presence around the world leave no doubt that the Bush administration’s hopes for a turnaround have been frustrated.

The recent American troop “surge” has only increased the grim statistics of military casualties, civilian deaths and overall devastation. The U.S Congress reluctantly approved funding for the continued troop presence without requiring a date for withdrawal. But despite claims of victory, media reports suggest that the Bush team understands its current Iraq policies have run their course.

The administration is reportedly considering a 50 per cent reduction of troops in Iraq next year, as well as changing their mandate from combat missions to support and training. There’s renewed interest in the recommendations of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group, brushed aside only a few months ago. The administration has begun consulting Iraq’s neighbours, Iran and Syria.

So even those who like to persist in their mistakes and illusions are being forced to rethink or, at least repackage, their policies. But is this a real change for the better? Is there a light at the end of the tunnel?

No.

The key to understanding the situation – as it appears today and as it appeared one, two or three years ago, indeed as it appeared from Day One of the invasion – is simple. Iraq is occupied by U.S. forces.

That fact hasn’t been changed by Iraq’s creation of a parliament, the election of a new government or the establishment of relative quiet in some parts of the country. Millions of Iraqis perceive the occupation as a national humiliation. That fuels sectarian conflicts, civil strife and continuing instability.

President Bush blames the terrorists (who, incidentally, had no foothold in Iraq before the invasion) and urges Iraq’s neighbours and the international community to co-operate in stabilizing the country. In fact, most of the United States’ international partners – not only members of the so-called “coalition of the willing,” but also those who condemned the invasion – are ready to co-operate.

A conference recently held in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, agreed to write off $30 billion of Iraqi debt. This decision was supported by China, Saudi Arabia, Spain and a number of other countries. Russia agreed to forgive much of Iraq’s debt even earlier. There is therefore no reason to accuse members of the world community of failing to understand the importance of a stable Iraq.

The Bush administration, however, seems to be using this apparently constructive attitude for self-serving ends. While asking its partners to help Iraq, it refuses to do the one thing that would really aid that country: develop a strategy for withdrawal.

Americans will put increasing pressure on the administration to do exactly that. Keeping a certain number of U.S. troops in Iraq for a reasonable period would be acceptable to most Iraqis, as well as to the international community. But only if it’s recognized that the occupation has ended. Such recognition can be achieved only if normalization of Iraq becomes a true international initiative, with the United States ceasing to only hand off certain aspects when it is in its own self-interest.

U.S. withdrawal from Iraq is inevitable. But is it not better to withdraw when the major players inside and outside of Iraq agree on key issues?

Those don’t merely include how to withdraw without too much pain, but also how to move toward national reconciliation and how to ensure peace and security in the region.

At first, to secure order it could conceivably be necessary to replace U.S. troops with soldiers from other countries whose presence would not be resented by most Iraqis. Any such troops would have to be approved by the UN Security Council. The international community’s help might also be needed to advance the political process in Iraq, which is currently stalled to the point of creating a real risk of the country breaking up. No one should fear internationalizing the Iraqi problem; in the end, it would benefit all parties.

In 1985, it took a change of leadership in the Soviet Union to recognize the mistake of entangling the USSR in the Afghan conflict. That new Soviet leadership – with me as its president – set the goal of withdrawing from Afghanistan while urging other countries to help in securing peace and stability.

Regrettably, the U.S. government chose to forget its own assurances, as it had on other occasions. Instead of co-operating with all responsible Afghan forces, including President Mohammad Najibullah, the United States favoured the proxies of certain elements in Pakistan.

We had warned our American partners about the long-term dangers of playing this game, but they seemed unaware of those consequences. Finally, when Russia backed out of Afghan affairs, the road to extremism was left wide open. The “blowback” from those fateful decisions came on a September morning in 2001, in New York and in Washington.

Some would object that historical analogies, whether with Vietnam or Afghanistan, only go so far. It is true that every conflict has some unique features. But many of their lessons are the same.

Think long and hard before trying to solve any problem militarily. Talk of all other peaceful means as exhausted is often baseless: An alternative is always available. If, however, a great power makes the mistake of entangling itself in an armed conflict, it shouldn’t make things worse by arrogantly refusing to heed warnings of dire consequences.

Finally, and most importantly, it should be understood from the start that ultimately there must be a political solution to these conflicts. Seek it honestly, thinking not just of your own self-interest, and look years, not just months, ahead.

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Mikhail Gorbachev served as the leader of the former Soviet Union from 1985 until its collapse in 1991. Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990, he is currently president of the International Foundation for Socio-Economic and Political Studies (The Gorbachev Foundation).