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In the Name of Mothers Around the World

May 8, 2009

By Jodie Evans | The Women’s Media Center, May 8, 2009

The author, co-founder of the grass-roots peace and justice movement CODEPINK and board member of the Women’s Media Center, calls on us to honor Mother’s Day as it was originally intended—by the abolitionist, feminist and pacifist Julia Ward Howe.

Women know that war is SO over. We know it in our hearts, in our guts, in our wombs. We know that the madness in Iraq and Afghanistan has to end, that we cannot keep sending our children to kill the children of mothers across the globe. Last month at an appearance in Turkey, President Obama himself said “…sometimes I think that if you just put the mothers in charge for a while, that things would get resolved.”

Mother’s Day pledge by Noo Dal Molin

It is nearly 140 years since Julia Ward Howe wrote her Mother’s Day Proclamation, a pacifist reaction to the carnage of the American Civil War and the Franco–Prussian War. It flowed from her feminist belief that women had a responsibility to shape their societies at the political level.  Every year since CODEPINK began in 2002, we have worked to remind the public and media that Mother’s Day isn’t really about Hallmark and Teleflora, but was a call for women to gather in “the great and general interests of peace.” Howe knew then what we know now.  It will take women’s leadership to undermine what have become the USA’s greatest exports: Violence, Weapons and War.

This year we knew those who could attend our 24-hour weekend vigil outside the White House would be smaller than before, given the fiscal crunch we are all feeling.  We created a project so those who wanted could add to the activities.  In the past we have done an aerial image of thousands of bodies spelling Mother’s Say No To War photographed from the Washington Monument with the White House in the background.  But this year we put out a call for people to knit pink and green squares that we would sew together to read “We will not raise our children to kill another mother’s child” and place across the White House fence. Thousands of pink and green knitted squares have been filling the basement of the CODEPINK house in D.C.  They arrive with stories of how they were knitted with love, passion and conviction, with photos of the joys shared in knitting circles around the world.  The surprise has been that more women than ever want to participate, more women want to join together in community and engage in conversation.

They want answers. What they hear in the media makes no sense.  Why are we leaving more soldiers and private mercenaries in Iraq and not getting out on the date promised?  Why are we moving soldiers to Afghanistan when our military has told us there is no military solution?  How can we end the violence and protect the women? How can we turn our back on the women and children in Gaza?  Why is the military budget larger than under Bush (and that’s not counting another supplemental on Iraq and Afghanistan tacked on)? Why are we spending so much money on destruction, when Obama himself said in his inaugural address, “people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy”?

Women are fired up to gather together and expose the emptiness of the continued push for more weapons and more money for war.

We hope that our gathering on Mother’s Day will plant the seeds of new energy and new coalitions we will need to affect a world drunk on war.  It falls on us to bring peace to the table, to push our way to the table and not let up. Women know that instead of sending our young people overseas as soldiers, we need to send troops of doctors, teachers, business leaders, economists, farmers and peacekeepers who can build the economic structures for security to take root.

During our Mother’s Day weekend in DC, we will celebrate our sisterhood with song and poetry and fun, peace-building children’s activities, but we will also share our pain and grief by hearing the stories of women whose lives have been shattered by war—both women from war zones and mothers of American soldiers. When we bear witness to one another’s stories, we create a deeper, more compassionate foundation from which we can work together for peace.

Even if you can’t join us in D.C., you can send a rose to honor a mother whose life has been profoundly affected by war.  On Mother’s Day we will deliver the roses to the mothers and tie others to the fence outside the White House as a memorial to the dead and a moving call for peace.

However you spend your Mother’s Day, remember those women who have relentlessly stood for our rights in the past and know that we can bring peace. But first we MUST see it as possible and put our hoe in the ground.

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When peace means war

May 8, 2009

Lee Sustar looks at the U.S. war drive taking shape in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Socialist Worker, May 8, 2009

President Barack Obama with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and Afghan President Hamid Karzai (Pete Souza)

President Barack Obama with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and Afghan President Hamid Karzai (Pete Souza)

WHILE BARACK Obama stage-managed a Washington meeting with the presidents of Afghanistan and Pakistan to discuss regional peace, the U.S. was escalating the war in both countries–and civilian deaths and a mass refugee crisis were the result.

As Obama met with Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai May 7, mourners in Afghanistan had barely buried an estimated 120 people killed the day before–the latest in a series of killings by civilians in that country by U.S. and NATO occupation forces.

And by the time Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari arrived in Washington, an estimated 200,000 people had fled the Swat Valley after the U.S. pressured the Pakistani military into breaking a ceasefire with elements of the Taliban. Government officials in Pakistan fear the total number of refugees from Swat could reach 500,000–in addition to an estimated 500,000 Pakistanis who have already fled other war-torn areas near the border with Afghanistan.

The suffering of the Swat refugees is directly due to U.S. policy, which pressured Pakistan to overturn a three-month truce with the Taliban. The government blames the breakdown of the truce on the Taliban for its attempt to seize the town of Buner, but the Pakistani military was already on the offensive (and the U.S. had been carrying out periodic air strikes on Pakistani territory using Predator drones).

Bad as the situation has been, it’s likely to get worse. U.S officials have rebranded the occupation of Afghanistan, which dates from the “war on terror” begun in 2001, as the “Af-Pak” war–a regional campaign to crush the Taliban, whose resistance is an obstacle to U.S. domination.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

OVERSEEING THE policy is special envoy Richard Holbrooke, the egomaniac veteran diplomat who used U.S.- and NATO-backed ethnic cleansing in Bosnia to broker the 1995 Balkans peace deal. He’s out to do the same thing in Afghanistan and Pakistan, pushing a divide-and-conquer strategy that involves trying to buy off “good” Taliban elements, while waging an all-out war to crush the rest.

Holbrooke’s intervention has led directly to heightened conflict on both sides of the border.

In Afghanistan, the U.S. is casting doubts on whether Karzai should run again for president, crippling his already minimal ability to act as a broker among Afghanistan’s warlords. To prop himself up, Karzai chose as his running mate Mohammad Fahim, a warlord notorious for human rights abuses and reputedly a big player in the opium trade. Karzai’s weakness, in turn, has encouraged the Taliban to resist the planned escalation of 25,000 U.S. troops.

In Pakistan, Holbrooke has decided to bypass Zardari, a weak and corrupt politician, by publicly opening a channel of communication with former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who has close connections with Islamist political parties in areas where the Taliban and its allies are strong. Here, too, the aim is to deepen the turmoil in Pakistani politics, where a mass democracy movement recently forced Zardari to reinstate Supreme Court justices ousted by the previous military ruler, Pervez Musharraf.

To justify the increasingly aggressive U.S. intervention in Pakistani politics, the Obama administration raises the specter of a Taliban takeover of the Pakistani state and nuclear-armed jihad. But this is extremely unlikely, given that the Taliban is primarily based among the Pashtun people who live on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

The real difficulty for the U.S. is that the Pakistani state is ambivalent about fighting the Taliban, because of deep connections between Islamist militants and the Pakistani armed forces and security services that date from the 1980s.

Back then, U.S.- and Pakistani-backed Afghani resistance groups, along with money and volunteers like Osama bin Laden, fought a successful war against the former USSR’s occupation that ended in 1989. In a bid to end the turmoil and civil war that followed, Pakistan backed the Taliban’s seizure of power.

In 2001, the U.S. turned the September 11 attacks into an opportunity to seize control of Afghanistan, a strategic crossroads between Central and South Asia and a pressure point for both Russia and China.

Since then, Afghanistan has been dominated by corrupt and brutal warlords, which allowed the once unpopular Taliban to make a military and political comeback. Ironically, the Taliban, which all but eradicated the cultivation of opium poppies in the 1990s, can now tap the opium trade for income. But U.S.-backed warlords are even more involved in the drug trade.

Further complicating matters for the U.S. is the Pakistani military. Assigned by Washington the role of guarantor of stability in Afghanistan, the Pakistani military has been unable or unwilling to deliver. And if Pakistan’s armed forces are reluctant to do Obama’s bidding, it’s not only because of its long-term interests in Afghanistan, but because Pakistan’s generals are wary of the growing economic and military ties between the U.S. and Pakistan’s historic rival, India.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

OBAMA’S SOLUTION to this crisis is the “Afghanistan surge,” a troop buildup modeled on the last phase of George W. Bush’s policy in Iraq, where the Pentagon quieted much of the insurgency by putting it on the U.S. payroll and granting it local political power.

In Iraq, that plan is fraying badly because of the unwillingness of the central government to come to terms with its former enemies. In Afghanistan, such an effort is even more problematic, given the Taliban’s ethnic and social roots. But Washington will pursue this aim anyway, as journalist Pepe Escboar writes:

What matters for the Pentagon is that the minute any sectarian outfit or bandit gang decides to collude with the Pentagon, it’s not “Taliban” anymore; it magically morphs into a “Concerned Local Citizens” outfit. By the same token, any form of resistance to foreign interference or Predator hell from above bombing is inevitably branded “Taliban.”

So far, Afghanistan’s image as the “good” war fought in response to 9/11 has given Obama sufficient political cover for a troop buildup. Obama claims that the escalation is about “making sure that al-Qaeda cannot attack the U.S. homeland, and U.S. interests and our allies” or “project violence against” U.S. citizens.

Obama added more recently: “We want to respect [Pakistan’s] sovereignty, but we also recognize that we have huge strategic interests, huge national security interests in making sure that Pakistan is stable and that you don’t end up having a nuclear-armed militant state.”

But more than a few U.S. foreign policy experts dismiss the notion that today’s weak and scattered al-Qaeda can muster a serious threat against the U.S., and reject the idea that the Taliban has any agenda beyond taking power in its home region. That raises the question of just what the Afghanistan war is really about. John Mueller, a professor at Ohio State University and author of a book critical of what he calls the “terrorism industry,” wrote in the journal Foreign Affairs:

If Obama’s national security justification for his war in Afghanistan comes to seem as spurious as Bush’s national security justification for his war in Iraq, he, like Bush, will increasingly have only the humanitarian argument to fall back on. And that is likely to be a weak reed.

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No to War, No to NATO

April 2, 2009

by Katrina vanden Heuvel | The Nation, March 31, 2009

With President Obama announcing his new strategy for US/NATO escalation in Afghanistan, the April 3-4 NATO Summit in Baden-Baden and Kehl, Germany, and in Strasbourg, France, takes on added urgency — as will the demonstrations by thousands of protestors from over 20 European countries and the US.

Member states will attempt to use the summit as an occasion to celebrate the alliance’s 60th anniversary, France’s return to NATO, and perhaps offer a new “Strategic Concept” as an interventionist force around the world. Activists will articulate an alternative vision focused on securing global peace and confronting domestic challenges at home, including a call for the dissolution of NATO.

Beginning April 1, a diverse coalition of activists will participate in training camps, demonstrations, conferences, workshops, and non-violent blockades. At a moment when international cooperation on economic and human security interests is needed more than ever, the protestors view a US-led, expansionist NATO as destabilizing and dangerous. What was originally designed as a defense alliance against the Warsaw Pact has taken on a very different post-Cold War, global interventionist role.

Activists see a NATO with bases on every continent; a military force that organizers say accounts for more than 75 percent of global military expenditures and drains resources that might otherwise address needs like education, job creation, and poverty; “out of area” operations in Kosovo, Afghanistan, the Mediterranean Sea, and a training mission in Iraq; a destabilizing presence pushing a “missile defense” system, ignoring international law, expanding to Russia’s doorstep, and maintaining a first-strike option — all fueling a renewed arms race. (Recently, popular opposition to the proposed Czech-based radar system for US missile defense was a key factor in bringing down the ruling government there. Peace activist Jan Tamas led a hunger strike that galvanized opposition and he will be speaking at the “counter summit” in Strasbourg.)

Elsa Rassbach, a US citizen and filmmaker who has lived much of the time in Berlin since the mid-1990s, is a member of the International Coordinating Committee that is planning many of the activities of this broad coalition. She said that the need to respond to the occasion of NATO’s 60th anniversary has brought “a lot of different strands” together to collaborate since last June. “For example,” she said, “in the German peace movement — not only the large peace organizations and some Members of the German Parliament, but also smaller groups concerned about military bases used to conduct US/NATO wars, people concerned about atomic weapons…the social movements — the fact that militarization is costing too much. German youth and people concerned with soldier resistance and conscientious objector issues…. We’re bringing disparate movements and organizations together — both large and small — for the NATO action.”

Participants will include national and international groups representing the peace, human rights and anti-globalization movements, as well as students and youth groups. Also represented are trade unions, parliamentary Left and Green parties, and Attac. In all, 600 organizations from 33 countries — including Iraq, Afghanistan, Japan, Georgia, Brazil, Guinea, the Philippines and Turkey — have endorsed the campaign’s “No to War, No to NATO” appeal.

US participants include United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ), Code Pink, American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), Iraq Veterans against the War (IVAW), Peace Action, the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and others.

Perhaps no issue will be more prominent at the Summit and the protests than the War in Afghanistan and Pakistan. EU and NATO troops and resources are key to President Obama’s new plan for escalation, and most Europeans are strongly opposed to the war (though many favor humanitarian aid, reconstruction projects, etc.) In Germany, for example, surveys suggest opposition as high as 70 percent.

Andreas Speck, member of the International Coordination Committee, and also the War Resisters’ International which is participating in non-violent, civil disobedience, said: “This Summit is really important to NATO for taking its next step in becoming a global intervention force — obviously, NATO’s operation in Afghanistan will be an important topic. We want to show that Afghanistan is no better than Iraq — it’s a war that is not justified and we are completely opposed to this military operation.”

Rassbach agreed. “We want Americans to understand that the reason this opposition to NATO is emerging is that NATO — originally supposed to be a defensive alliance — is being converted into a very aggressive force to intervene around the world, and Afghanistan is a prime example,” she said. “Afghanistan is a key test for the ‘out of area’ intervention concept.”

The current schedule calls for: a camp near Strasbourg April 1-5; a conference on NATO and Human Rights on April 1; a hearing on the War in Afghanistan in Karlsruhe, Germany on April 2; a congress/counter summit of leading intellectuals, activists, and representatives of European political parties in Strasbourg on April 3 and April 5; actions in Baden-Baden on April 3 in conjunction with German Chancellor Merkel’s dinner for the heads of state; and also on the morning of April 4 in Strasbourg when a photo-op is scheduled at the pedestrian bridge Passerelle des deux Rives, and the NATO Summit begins in the Palais De La Musique Et Des Congres; the climactic international demonstration in Strasbourg on the afternoon of April 4.

The organizing challenges are enormous.

Just for the civil disobedience coalition — “Block NATO“, which is smaller than the broader coalition — Speck said there will be thousands of people coming in from Germany, France, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, Britain “and a few other countries.”

“It’s a big challenge for us in terms of communication — during the actions, the trainings, and the conference” he said. “Because we will need translation for a lot of these things.”

The coalition has also reached out to the French police to let them know they will be protesting non-violently. They will meet with them on the morning of April 1.

“We fear that the police will not act non-violently against us, so we want them to know that there’s no threat from our side,” Speck said. “The problem is we never know what the police will do and also if they will use agent provocateurs to create the images that they want.”

Perhaps even more pressing is the proposed route for the larger demonstration. The French authorities have relegated it to the outskirts far from the cordoned off Strasbourg city center where the Summit will be held. (The security within the city is extreme and controversial. The French court is currently hearing complaints from residents who are already being asked by police to take down peace flags hanging from their balconies, and who will be forced to wear badges during the summit to move about the city.) Under French law, there are no opportunities to appeal the demonstration route but organizers continue to press their case.

“Nobody’s demanding that we demonstrate very close to the Summit, just something reasonably close,” Speck said. “My fear is that if it’s very far out then people will not accept this…. And maybe that’s what [the authorities] want — a confrontation. Because then you have people upset, trying to make their way to the center of the city, and that will give the police the opportunity to provoke some violent confrontation. I hope that’s not going to happen, we don’t want this to happen.”

(Speck said people in the US can help by writing the French Embassy and speaking out against this infringement on the human right to freedom of expression and assembly.)

Of course, there will be no such negotiations regarding time and place for acts of civil disobedience. “The aim is… to effectively blockade the NATO summit venue basically with our bodies… And to obstruct the functioning of the summit by cutting off the leaders from the infrastructure that they need. There will be no material-blockades or actions which, for example, attack the police.”

Joanne Landy, co-director of the Campaign for Peace and Democracyin the US, said these events and the fervor surrounding them are something the US should be paying attention to. “NATO is very much part and parcel to how the US tries to marshal other countries to do some of the heavy-lifting for an imperial policy,” she said. “This imperial policy is catastrophic for us…. it completely distorts our resources, and it’s just fundamentally the wrong relationship to have with the rest of the world. I would like to have a world in which we could actually be in solidarity with labor movements and women’s movements and so forth. But right now whatever the US does is suspect and for good reason. So you really need a very different foreign policy all together in which the military wouldn’t play the role that it does now, and where the US could really support the needs of ordinary people everywhere.”

“American activists can see this anti-NATO protest as how Europe is protesting the Afghanistan War,” Rassbach said. “But it’s also more than that. It’s against all the military costs and the military bases in Europe and NATO’s nuclear first-strike policy that includes the proposed missile defense shield in Poland and the Czech Republic. The Cold War is over, so why should NATO continue?”

There is another important achievement here that the American peace movement is working towards as well.

“For many people it’s new to work in such a broad coalition,” Speck said. “Sometimes there is quite a bit of tension in the international committee. But on the other hand, everyone wants to work together, with our differences, to counter what NATO is doing, what the EU is doing, and all the militarization that we see going on…. That’s what our work in diverse movements is about, to deal with the differences. We want to create a much more diverse and democratic society so we need to learn to live with these kinds of differences.”

Katrina vanden Heuvel is editor of The Nation.

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An Honorable Exit from Iraq

March 23, 2009

by Poka Laenui | CommonDreams.org, March 20, 2009

CommonDreams.org Editor’s note:  This article was originally published in the Fall 2007 issue of YES! Magazine and re-printed on this site on September 18, 2007.  Despite a new administration in Washington and certain hopeful overtures on US Iraq policy, there is nothing in Poka Laenui’s poignant perspective that doesn’t deserve repeating.  On the Sixth anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, let it serve as a reminder of the crimes of our government’s ongoing policies and how far we still must travel on our path to a sustainable, just, and lasting peace in Iraq and with the Iraqi people.

The United States should not win in its war against Iraq. It should change its strategy to being just.

The United States was wrong to attack Iraq. Possession of weapons of mass destruction is not a justification, moreover Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. Toppling Saddam Hussein is no justification; the imposition by a stronger nation of its political preference for the running of another nation’s government has never been a legitimate basis for attack.

Every justification for the attack by the United States against Iraq leads to the same conclusion: the United States acted as an international delinquent, a violator of Iraqi sovereignty, and an international threat to peace.

So how could one even entertain the notion of winning a war for which there is no justification?

The thinking among the “leadership” of American society in trying to find a victorious exit from Iraq is awry. The United States has been the bad guy all along. It must now exit honorably. The elements of an honorable exit strategy should include the following:

1. Confession. Declare to the Iraqi people and the international community that the United States was wrong in conducting this war.2. Apology. Apologize to the Iraqi people and the international community for its conduct of the war.

3. Reparation. Take responsibility for the repair of the damage caused by the war, and bring the people and the physical condition of Iraq back to the condition they would have been in had the United States not invaded Iraq. Iraqi families who have suffered the loss of lives or injuries should be compensated in amounts established by a neutral commission and fully funded by the United States.

4. Leadership. The United States should leave Iraq immediately and turn over its responsibility for reparation to an international coalition that will direct the rebuilding of Iraq.

5. Relinquish profits. The profits gained by U.S. companies and individuals as a result of the war should be turned over to the reparation effort.

6. Disengage from Iraqi affairs. The United States should make a legally binding commitment to refrain from any overt or covert attempt to affect the internal affairs of Iraq.

7. Accept accountability. U.S. individuals, including the highest-ranking civilian and military personnel, should be subject to the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court and to domestic courts to answer to war crimes charges. This plan will not be supported by the U.S. public initially, because of its high price. But the plan will stop the cost from escalating further in terms of lives lost and injuries on all sides of the war, and the destruction of property.

The price will only go higher the longer this unjust war continues, and the repayment will eventually be meted out, if not willingly by the United States, then through continued terrorism throughout the lives of our children and their children, ad infinitum.

The continuation of this war will not resolve terrorism. If terrorism is to end, it will only come through a just peace. An end to U.S. government terrorism will decrease other forms of terrorism, and this, along with the elements above, can begin to build a foundation of justice as the basis for long-lasting peace.

Poka Laenui is executive director of Hale Na`au Pono, a Community Mental Health Center in Wai`anae, Hawai`i. He is active in the Hawai`i and international arena as a proponent for indigenous people’s rights and for the decolonization of Hawai`i. www.opihi.com/sovereignty.

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Time to Quit Afghanistan

March 16, 2009

by Eric Margolis | Toronto Sun (Canada), March 15, 2009

It’s taken far too long for Prime Minister Stephen Harper to finally admit the war in Afghanistan cannot be won. Better late than never. Kudos to Harper for facing facts and telling Canadians the truth.

If the war can’t be won, why risk lives of Canadian troops for nothing? Why stay in harm’s way a day longer when the writing is on the wall in Afghanistan? President Barack Obama, who is sending more troops to Afghanistan, ought to be asking himself the same questions.

We must think hard about waging an increasingly bloody war against lightly-armed mountain tribesmen who face the 24/7 lethal fury of the U.S. air force’s heavy bombers, strike aircraft, helicopter and AC-130 Spectre gunships, killer drones and heavy artillery. Do we really want a test of wills against men who have the courage to endure cluster bombs with thousands of sharp fragments, white phosphorus that burns through flesh to the bone, fuel/air explosives that burst the lungs and tear apart bodies? Will Canada’s use of Soviet helicopters and Israeli drones win Afghan hearts and minds?

Our propaganda brands these Pashtun tribesmen as “Taliban terrorists.” They call themselves warriors fighting occupation by the western powers and their local Communist, Tajik and Uzbek allies.

Al-Qaida’s few hundred members long ago vanished.

Fatuous claims we occupy Afghanistan to protect women are belied by the continued plight of Afghan females under western rule. A British report just concluded 100,000 Indian women are burned alive each year for their dowries. Will we now send troops to India?

Only the first step

Admitting the U.S. and NATO cannot bludgeon the Afghan resistance into submission is only the first step. If the war can’t be won, then Canadian soldiers should remain in their bases, stop aggressive patrolling and cease attacks on Taliban supporters and civilians. Other NATO members are doing so.

The next step is to understand that wars are waged for political objectives, not simply to kill your enemies.

The U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan have no coherent political objectives. The U.S.-installed Karzai regime in Kabul has no political legitimacy and commands no respect or loyalty. It is engulfed by corruption and massive drug dealing. The Obama administration is casting about for a new puppet, but so far can’t find one who could do any better than poor Karzai. You can’t make a puppet into a real national leader.

Worse, as Kabul flounders and the Taliban and its allies are on the offensive, events in neighbouring Pakistan are going from awful to calamitous. The West cannot wage war in Afghanistan without the support of Pakistan’s army, air bases, intelligence service and logistical infrastructure. That means keeping a government in power in Islamabad responsive to U.S. demands and that will continue renting its army to Washington.

But Pakistan is in political chaos. After easing former discredited dictator Pervez Musharraf out of power, Washington eased into power Pakistan People’s Party leader, Asif Ali Zardari, widower of Benazir Bhutto. His popularity ratings are rock bottom.

Zardari recently got his stooges on the corrupt Supreme Court to ban Pakistan’s most popular democratic opposition leader, Pakistan Muslim League chief Nawaz Sharif, from running for office. Nawaz’s brother, Shabaz, also was judicially deposed as minister of Punjab, Pakistan’s largest state.

Violent demonstrations against Zardari’s dictatorial ploy are shaking Pakistan. It would be surprising if the unpopular Zardari, who is dogged by grave corruption charges, manages to cling to power. But Nawaz also has plenty of skeletons in his closets. The army — Pakistan’s other government — is watching the nation’s descent into bankruptcy and political chaos with mounting concern.

The military fortunes of the U.S. and NATO in South Asia thus rest on political quicksand in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Plans by the U.S. to arm tribes on Pakistan’s North-West Frontier are sure to bring even more violence and chaos.

NATO, which has no strategic interest in the region, would be wise to get its troops out of this boiling mess.

Copyright © 2009 Toronto Sun

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From Bush to Obama: War is still a racket

March 2, 2009

By Krystalline Kraus | ZNet, March 2, 2009
Source: Rabble

War ain’t cheap. But it’s better for big business the longer it lasts. Defense contractors don’t care about death tolls and MIA lists, only dollars and cents. The colour of blood is green.

First, let’s start with Iraq. A December 2008 Washington Post poll [2] found, “Seventy percent say President-elect Barack Obama should fulfill his campaign promise to withdraw U.S. forces from the country within 16 months.” It now appears Obama will miss fulfilling that timeline by at least three months [3].

Bush’s pre-emptive declaration of victory

But, the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq? How can you end a war that has already ended?

I remember President ‘W’ Bush standing on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003, behind a huge banner that read: ‘Mission Accomplished.’ [4]

And wait, didn’t we – the free world – actually win this war?

The U.S. Commander-in-chief told the nation later that night in May, 2003, that, “Major combat operations in Iraq have ended.” He then congratulated the U.S. military’s effort in Iraq, saying, “Because of you, our nation is more secure. Because of you, the tyrant has fallen, and Iraq is free.”

Of course, Bush also said, “The transition from dictatorship to democracy will take time but it is worth every effort. Our coalition will stay until our work is done.” (Five years after the May 1 declaration and for Bush’s departure, the White House did try and rewrite history by claiming the “Mission Accomplished” banner was meant to refer only to the sailors on that particular ship. No alterations to his speech have been made.)

But we still won, right? Right? We won somewhere back in 2003. All the terrorists are now safely locked away in Gitmo and all the IEDs are out of the ground? The U.S. has cleaned up all the depleted uranium and cluster bombs? So it’s all good, tab settled, check paid? What left over work could there to be done according to the tone of Bush’s speech? He seemed so proud of himself [5].

The economics of death

For a war that’s already ended and when the free world has already won, how come so many are still dying over there if the major combat operations have ended? Why is the supposed aftermath of a war causing more deaths than the war itself? Why does democracy look more like a war zone?

According to the casualty counter (yes, there is such a thing. It was last updated on February 9, 2009) on www.antiwar.com [6], 4243 American Forces deaths have been recorded since the war began on March 19, 2003, with 4104 of those deaths having occurred after the “Mission” was declared “Accomplished” on May 1, 2003. If the mission was so accomplished, why do two-thirds of Americans polled in the Washington Post article state they did not believe the war in Iraq was worth fighting? Was it ever?

War for profit

If someone is making bullets, then someone is making money. This is true in regards to defense contractors working in the Iraq theatre of conflict, where the U.S. treasury has become a virtual money exchange where you insert money to buy bullets and private security guards instead of school books and expensive patented medicine. Every year millions of tax dollars siphoned from domestic and international aid programs are diverted to feed the war machine.

A 2007 Rolling Stone magazine article, ‘The Great Iraq Swindle [7],’ by Matti Taibbi, outlines how Bush, “allowed an Army of for-profit contractors to invade the U.S. Treasury.”

“What the Bush administration has created in Iraq is a sort of paradise of perverted capitalism … Operation Iraqi Freedom, it turns out, was never a war against Saddam ­Hussein’s Iraq. It was an invasion of the federal budget, and no occupying force in history has ever been this efficient,” Taibbi wrote.

The Internet site, Business Pundit, has a July 22, 2008 list of the twenty-five most vicious war profiteers; including names the public has heard before, like Halliburton and Veritas Capital Fund/DynCorp. You can view the list here [8].

Which brings me to the next point, or man. Sad to say, even with Washington under new management, these companies will still be raking through the bloodshed for gold coins. No one should be blinded by the bright light of Obama’s supposed luminary change until it actually happens. The financial interests that were backing up Bush will be propping up the new administration behind the scenes as well.

To Obama’s credit, he did come forward with a campaign promise to withdraw US Forces from Iraqi soil within sixteen months. Perhaps this will finally end the war that has already ended and the free world has already won?

From Bush to Obama

The ongoing-legacy of the Iraq war is heartbreaking, death statistics spill like oil from the giant hole called victory in Iraq. Along with death statistics from enemy combat, we are faced with the horrific news from the United States Army report released early February, 2009, regarding suicide rates among soldiers [9], reporting an alarming spike in suicides among soldiers in January, 2009.

“In January, we lost more soldiers to suicide than to Al Qaeda,” Paul Rieckhoff, the director of the Iraq and Afghanistan veterans of America [10], stated in a related press release.

In the Army’s annual report, it stated that soldiers were killing themselves at the highest rates on record in 2008. Yearly increases in suicide rates have been reported since 2004.

Turns out, the blood on Bush’s hands is also from his own soldiers, and in the handshake transference of power to Obama, he has inherited these spoils of war.

From Iraq to Afghanistan

Obama, like his predecessor, has pledged to continue the fight against terrorism. Although he has declared his intentions to pull out of Iraq, just like in the game Risk, he is simply sliding his army across the map from Iraq to Afghanistan, America’s forgotten war.

Speaking at the annual Munich Security Conference last week [11] U.S. government envoy, Richard Holbrooke warned that Afghanistan would be, “much tougher than Iraq.” He said the war Obama inherits there is “a situation of very grand rhetoric with inadequate, insufficient resources.” Holbrooke added, “I have never seen anything like the mess we have inherited.”

This is the sendoff 30,000 U.S. troops received as they prepare — over the course of 2009 — to deploy to Afghanistan, ready to join the 32,500 NATO troops already stationed there as of December 1, 2008. An additional 17,000 troops were just announced, with 8,000 Marines going to southern Afghanistan in late spring, another 4,000 soldiers in summer and 5,000 support troops throughout the year.

When Obama visited Ottawa last week he did not ask Canada to deploy any more of its NATO troops to Afghanistan, instead choosing to praise the nation for its involvement. I wonder how soon victory will be declared there, before or after Canada troops are predicted to withdraw in 2011?

Obama’s war

Every president needs a war. Bush Sr. and Jr. both had theirs. For Obama, he was against the war in Iraq before his presidency. While he rarely mentioned Afghanistan on the campaign trail, now as President, he has settled on his choice of enemy.

He has also chosen who will profit from this war. Just as with Bush’s legacy of war profiteering, it seems that the Obama that swore during the campaign he would not invite lobbyists to the White House has appointed former Raytheon (a Canadian missile systems corporation) lobbyist, William Lynn [12], as deputy defense secretary on Wednesday, February 11, 2009.

The total cost for Iraq is predicted at three trillion dollars [13]. How much money private contractors will make off the war, the public will never know. I guess victory ain’t cheap.

Those figures are only in dollars, not drops of blood. How much more does Obama expect his nation to pay? Let alone the rest of the world?

This whole war business just doesn’t add up.


Krystalline Kraus is a Toronto-based writer.

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Afghan-Pakistan War Council

February 24, 2009

by Robert Dreyfuss | The Nation, Feb 23, 2009

Team Obama will be holding a war council of sorts this week, as top Pakistani and Afghan officials come to Washington as part of Obama’s ongoing review of the conflict. Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi and Afghan Foreign Minister Rangeen Dadfar Spanta will meet with, among others, Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates, Richard Holbrooke, and Bruce Riedel, who’s coordinating the administration’s rethink. A whole passel of military officials from the region will be here, too.But what’s troubling so far about the administration’s signals on Afghanistan and Pakistan is that it’s all tilted toward war and “counterinsurgency,” and there’s precious little being said about negotiations, deal-making with the Taliban, and diplomacy.

It’s not only that Obama has ordered the deployment of 17,000 more US troops. The administration is escalating Predator and Reaper air strikes against targets in both countries, and, according to both the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times the air strikes are being quietly supported by Pakistan, even as Pakistan’s top officials criticize them in public. The Times reported that Obama has expanded the air strikes to attacks on the Pakistani Taliban, who are gaining momentum in that country, even as they continue to hit Al Qaeda and Taliban targets inside Pakistan who use the tribal areas there as a base for the Afghan insurgency. An important story in the Journal last week, entitled, “Pakistan Lends Support for U.S. Military Strikes,” said:

“Pakistan’s leaders have publicly denounced U.S. missile strikes as an attack on the country’s sovereignty, but privately Pakistani military and intelligence officers are aiding these attacks and have given significant support to recent U.S. missions, say officials from both countries.”

The cat’s out of the bag as far as US-Pakistani cooperation goes now, with Senator Dianne Feinstein, the chair of the Senate intelligence committee, blurting out at a recent hearing that US air strikes are flown from military bases in Pakistan, not elsewhere. “As I understand it, these are flown out of a Pakistani base,” she said.

Meanwhile, as the Times reports today, a team of 70 US Special Forces troops and others has been in Pakistan for nearly a year “training Pakistani Army and paramilitary troops [and] providing them with intelligence and advising on combat tactics.” And:

“They make up a secret task force, overseen by the United States Central Command and Special Operations Command. It started last summer, with the support of Pakistan’s government and military, in an effort to root out Qaeda and Taliban operations that threaten American troops in Afghanistan and are increasingly destabilizing Pakistan. It is a much larger and more ambitious effort than either country has acknowledged.”

It’s clear that Obama is intent on a significant escalation of the war in Afghanistan itself along with a much more overt relationship with Pakistan’s armed forces and its intelligence services, including the ISI. It looks as if it’s all aimed at something called “victory,” even though more and more analysts say that victory — whatever that means — isn’t likely and the only real exit strategy is a negotiated deal with the insurgency, in both countries.

It’s troubling, therefore, to read all the criticism of efforts by Pakistan and Afghanistan to offer peace feelers to the other side. Top US officials are critical of Pakistan’s latest attempt at working out a deal with Taliban-related fighters in the Swat Valley, a settled area outside Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas that has largely been overrun by the Taliban. They are also quick to disparage President Hamid Karzai’s repeated feelers to the Taliban in Afghanistan, too. And, while it’s true that Obama’s Afghan-Pakistan review is still underway, the president himself isn’t saying much about involving India, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Russia and China in bolstering both Pakistan’s and Afghanistan’s feeble overtures for a deal.

An intelligent piece today in the Los Angeles Times by Julian Barnes describes the challenges facing Obama in Afghanistan thusly:

“President Obama’s war strategy began to take shape with his announcement last week that 17,000 additional U.S. troops are headed to Afghanistan. But the thorniest problems still await him: persuading militants to lay down their arms, coaxing help from allies and eliminating extremist havens on the Afghan-Pakistan border.”

But America’s allies in NATO aren’t likely to step up support for the war. (Obama will make a pitch to them directly during a high-stakes NATO summit in April.) The real solution lies in getting the vast majority of Afghanistan’s pro-Taliban and Taliban-leaning warlords, tribal chiefs, village leaders, and others, along with a hefty chunk of the Taliban leadership, to make a deal. As I reported in mt Nation feature last December, “Obama’s Afghan Dilemma” , the core of Obama’s strategy is based on the conviction that the Taliban won’t negotiate now because they think they’re winning. So, Obama believes, first the United States has to regain the military advantage and then start talking. My question is: why not test the reverse idea? Why not start talking now, and put an offer on the table of a US withdrawal, and see what happens?

Copyright © 2009 The Nation
Robert Dreyfuss, a Nation contributing editor, is an investigative journalist in Alexandria, Virginia, specializing in politics and national security. He is the author of Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam and is a frequent contributor to Rolling Stone, The American Prospect, and Mother Jones.

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Sri Lanka’s war of terror

February 20, 2009

Nagesh Rao explains the historical background to the Sri Lankan government’s latest war crimes against the Tamil minority.

Socialist Worker, February 18, 2009

A group of made refugees in Sri Lanka's civil warA group of made refugees in Sri Lanka’s civil war

THE SRI LANKAN military is intensifying its war on the country’s Tamil minority–but the international media is focused far more on the violence of the Tamil resistance.

Just as the Israelis did during their most recent invasion of Gaza, Sri Lankan authorities have prevented journalists from entering war zones. Consequently, the media has largely followed official Sri Lankan pronouncements and viewed this decades-old conflict through the relatively new lens of the “war on terror.”

Meanwhile, human rights organizations, various NGOs, and Tamil organizations worldwide have produced evidence of a brutal military campaign by the Sri Lankan state directed against the Tamil population at large.

A January 28 Amnesty International press release about the unfolding humanitarian catastrophe in Sri Lanka stated:

“Recent fighting has placed more than a quarter of a million civilians at great risk. People displaced by the conflict are experiencing acute shortages of humanitarian aid, especially food, shelter and medical care. There has been no food convoy in the area since 16 January,” said Yolanda Foster, Amnesty International’s Sri Lanka researcher.

The Government of Sri Lanka is carrying out military operations in areas with a civilian population. The aerial and artillery bombardment has reportedly led to civilian deaths, injuries, the destruction of property and mass displacement on this island nation off India’s southeastern coast.

Sri Lankan government forces have pushed the Tamil Tigers out of all major urban areas they had held for nearly a decade and into a small pocket of land. More than 300,000 civilians who have fled the oncoming government troops are also trapped in this small area. They have been displaced multiple times and are increasingly vulnerable as fighting moves closer.

Hundreds of people have been killed or injured and such medical care as has been available is threatened due to danger to the few health workers and damage to hospitals.

The government had declared “safe zones” to allow civilians to seek shelter, but information made available to Amnesty International indicates that several civilians in the so-called safe zone have been killed or sustained injuries as a result of artillery bombardment.

A doctor working in a hospital in a “safe zone” says that about 1,000 shells fell around the hospital.

Yet even though Amnesty International demonstrated that the overwhelming responsibility for the violence lay with government authorities, it titled its press release, “Government and Tamil Tigers violating laws of war.” According to Amnesty, “in at least one instance,” the rebel Tamil Tigers blocked the movement of a Red Cross convoy of injured and at-risk people out of the war zone. The statement ends by quoting Yolanda Foster again:

The immediate priority is medical attention for the seriously wounded. The Tamil Tigers must let injured civilians go. Preventing civilians from accessing medical care constitutes a war crime.

The Amnesty International statement thus offers a lengthy list of crimes committed by the Sri Lankan military, only to end by suggesting that the obstacle to meeting the most “immediate priority” is the “war crime” being committed by the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) group. Nowhere in the statement are the words “war crime” associated with the government’s actions, which are instead referred to as “a military campaign.”

In response, many Tamil activists and organizations have urged the international community to recognize the Sri Lankan government’s latest military assault on the Tamils as constituting, at a minimum, “acts of genocide” as defined by the Geneva Convention.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

ON THE streets of the capital Colombo, roving gangs of political thugs have waged a campaign of terror designed to intimidate any and all opposition to the Sri Lankan state. On January 28, human rights lawyer and activist Amitha Ariyaratne received death threats from police officers at a police station just north of Colombo. Three days later, his office was burned down by an unknown arsonist.

This came on the heels of the sensational assassination on January 8 of a leading journalist and critic of the government and editor of the Sunday Leader newspaper. Lasantha Wickramatunga was assassinated by unidentified assailants during his morning commute in rush-hour traffic. His car window was smashed in, and he was shot in the head, the chest and the stomach. He died on the way to the hospital.

Wickramatunga’s last article, “And then they came for me,” was a moving and passionate letter to his readers predicting his own death at the hands of his government. Not surprisingly, Reporters Without Borders ranks Sri Lanka 165th (out of 173 countries) in its index of press freedom around the world.

The Sri Lankan government has turned a deaf ear to international human rights organizations and Tamil NGOs who have complained about innumerable human rights violations and the ongoing humanitarian disaster in the northeast. Using “war on terror” rhetoric, Sri Lankan state propaganda has instead deflected international media attention towards war crimes allegedly committed by the LTTE.

However, the Sri Lankan government has absolved itself of its own obligation to respect human rights. In 2006 the Supreme Court declared that “[T]he Human Rights Committee at Geneva…is not reposed with judicial power under our constitution,” (see the text of the ruling here) providing a legal fig-leaf for the government’s draconian crackdown on the Tamils. The Asian Human Rights Commission has declared, “The Supreme Court of Sri Lanka is a part of the human rights violation mechanism.”

About 74 percent of the Sri Lankan population consists of Sinhala-speaking Buddhists, while the rest are Tamil-speaking Hindus and Muslims. Since the 1980s, a brutal civil war between the government forces and the Tamil Tigers has claimed over 70,000 lives, with hundreds of thousands more injured and displaced, the majority of them Tamils.

Most media reports date the origins of the conflict between the Tamils and the Sinhalese to the founding of the LTTE in the 1980s, but the Tamils have faced discrimination and repression at the hands of Colombo’s Sinhala-dominated government ever since Sri Lanka achieved its independence from Britain in 1948.

One of the first acts of the newly independent state in 1949 was to disenfranchise, at the stroke of a pen, some 1 million Tamils who had arrived in Sri Lanka in the twentieth century. They were declared non-citizens and told to return to India. Many of these “Indian Tamils” had been brought in by the British from India to not only labor in the tea plantations but to serve in the colonial administrative bureaucracy. British divide-and-rule policies resulted in special privileges for middle-class Tamils who had been educated in English in India. This bred resentment among sections of the Sinhala majority, and right-wing Sinhalese chauvinism began to gain ground during the waning years of British rule.

By disenfranchising the “Indian Tamils,” the newly-independent Sri Lankan state had resorted to a despicably ethnic-chauvinist policy, and encouraged the growth of the far right. In 1956, the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) rode this wave of Sinhalese-Buddhist chauvinism to come to power and unleashed the first anti-Tamil pogrom, leaving some 100 Tamils dead and thousands displaced from their homes. The pogroms were led, and egged on, by militant and fascistic Buddhist monks.

Another wave of anti-Tamil hysteria in the 1960s resulted in the declaration of Sinhala as the only official language of the state. More pogroms followed in the early 1970s, with the monks and their allies periodically terrorizing and intimidating the Tamil population, while their political patrons reaped the rewards of a ready-made majority at the polls. In 1981, in an act that often referred to as “cultural genocide,” rioting policemen burned down the Jaffna Library, which housed much of the cultural memory of the Tamil population.

Continued >>

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Israel Killed Everything but the Will to Resist

January 26, 2009

By Stephen Lendman

Global Research, January 25, 2009

” ‘Freedom or death’, is the popular Palestinian mantra,” wrote Palestine Chronicle Editor-in-Chief Ramzy Baroud in his January 22 article titled “Breaking Gaza’s Will: Israel’s Enduring Fantasy.”

Three weeks of Israeli terror caused about 1400 deaths, over 5500 injured (many seriously), vast destruction and  throughout Gaza, and Physicians for Human Rights warning that large numbers of wounded may die because hospitals are overloaded and lack basic supplies. Yet Palestinians endure. Their spirit is unbowed and unbroken. Hamas is more popular than ever, and world outrage sustains them.

Middle East analyst Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies believes Israel blundered badly. On January 9, he asked:

“The War in Gaza – Tactical Gains, Strategic Defeat?” In spite of all the IDF’s might “The fact remains that the growing human tragedy in Gaza is steadily raising more serious questions as to whether the kind of tactical gains that Israel now reports are worth the suffering involved.”

Cordesman reviewed the death, injury and destruction toll after 14 days of fighting, then added: “These direct costs are only part of the story.” He cited the siege’s crippling economic and humanitarian effects and wrote: “The current war has consequences more far-reaching than casualties. It involves a legacy of greatly increased suffering for the 1.5 million people who will survive this current conflict.”

“It is also far from clear that the tactical gains are worth the political and strategic cost to Israel. At least to date, (the war) increased popular support for Hamas and anger against Israel in Gaza. The same is true in the West Bank and the Islamic world….The US is seen as having done virtually nothing….and the President elect is getting as much blame as” George Bush.

He quotes former Saudi ambassador to Washington and London, Prince Turki al-Faisal saying: “The Bush administration has left you (with) a disgusting legacy and a reckless position towards the massacres and bloodshed of innocents in Gaza. Enough is enough, today we are all Palestinians….”

According to Cordesman, Israel appears to be repeating “the same massive failures” as in the 2006 Lebanon war. “Has Israel somehow blundered into a steadily escalating war without a clear strategic goal or at least one it can credibly achieve? Will Israel end in empowering (Hamas) in political terms….? Will Israel’s actions seriously damage the US position in the region, any hope for peace, as well as moderate Arab regimes and voices in the process? To be blunt, the answer (appears) to be yes….If this is all that Olmert, Livni, and Barak have (to show for their efforts) then they have disgraced themselves and damaged their country and their friends.”

Three Weeks of Israeli Terror Took Its Toll

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights compiles it daily and presents it in weekly reports. Its latest January 15 – 22 one includes whole families killed. More than 43% of deaths and injuries were women and children. The vast majority of casualties were civilians. “Entire features of many areas have disappeared, and civilian infrastructure services have completely collapsed.” Other destruction included:

— hospitals, ambulances, civil defense and private vehicles, and relief services damaged or destroyed;

— thousands of homes and whole neighborhoods damaged or destroyed as well as –

— roads, bridges, power installations, sewage facilities, water wells, and other infrastructure;

— 28 public civilian facilities;

— ministry, municipality and other government buildings; the parliament building;

— UN sanctuaries;

— commercial buildings;

— 121 industrial and commercial workshops destroyed; at least 200 others damaged;

— fishing boats and harbors;

— 21 private projects, including cafeterias, wedding halls, tourist resorts and hotels;

— 30 mosques completely destroyed; 15 others damaged;

— five concrete factories;

— 60 police stations;

— five media buildings and two health ones completely destroyed;

— 29 educational institutions completely or partly destroyed; and

— thousands of dunams of agricultural land razed.

After Israel declared a January 17 “ceasefire,” homes were bulldozed, agricultural land razed, civilians attacked and killed, homes invaded and searched, and arrests made. The war cost the al-Sammouni clan 36 of its men, women and children.

The West Bank wasn’t spared. The pattern repeats weekly, but from January 15 – 22 alone:

— Hebron and Beit ‘Awa village (southwest of the city) homes were raided and searched; four civilians were arrested;

— Jenin town and refugee camp homes were invaded, searched, and one civilian arrested;

— Bourqin village homes, west of Jenin, were raided, searched, and one civilian arrested;

— Qabtatya village homes, southwest of Jenin, were invaded and searched; no arrests were reported;

— Roujib village homes, east of Nablus, were raided, searched, and one arrest made;

— Dura village, southwest of Hebron, homes were invaded, searched, and four arrests made;

— Beit Sahour homes were raided and searched; one resident was arrested earlier;

— al-Lubban village, near Nablus, homes were invaded, searched, and three arrests made, including a child;

— at a January 16 Beit Ummar village, north of Hebron, anti-war demonstration, the IDF fired live rounds at civilians wounding at least three;

— at another January 16 southern Hebron demonstration, the IDF shot and killed one man and wounded four others, including a child;

— at a same day East Jerusalem demonstration, the IDF fired sound bombs, tear gas, and violently beat protesters; journalists were also attacked and forced to leave;

— at another demonstration near the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, the IDF attacked and violently beat at least 10 women;

— at an al-‘Eissawiya village, east of Jerusalem, demonstration, the IDF fired on and wounded four children, and arrested two others;

— homes were also raided and searched in Beita village, south of Nablus; Zabbouba village, west of Jenin; ‘Anza village, southeast of Jenin; Hawara village, south of Nablus; Taqqou’ village, southeast of Bethlehem; Bani Na’im, east of Hebron; ‘Arraba village, southwest of Jenin; Fahma village, southeast of Jenin; Sa’ir village, northeast of Hebron; Western Toura village, southwest of Jenin; ‘Assira village, north of Nablus; Beit Emrin village, northwest of Nablus; al-Zahiriya village, south of Hebron; Ya’bad village, southwest of Jenin; Bethlehem city; al-Duhaisha refugee camp, southwest of Bethlehem; ‘Aaida refugee camp, north of Bethlehem; and Qaryout village, southeast of Nablus — homes in all areas were raided and searched; numerous arrests were made;

— at a Beit Ummar village, north of Hebron, demonstration, the IDF fired live rounds on protesters wounding at least one child and arresting another;

— two undercover IDF operations made arrests in Qabatya village, southeast of Jenin, and Qiffin village, north of Tulkarm.

PCHR reports that the Gaza siege continues. Border crossings remain closed. Collective punishment is enforced. Basic food, medicine and other essentials are unavailable or in scarce supply to the great majority of Gazans. Impoverishment now exceeds 80%. Mass human suffering affects everyone. The world community is complicit by its silence.

Continued >>

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Israeli Voices for Peace

January 8, 2009

Amy Goodman | Truthdig – Reports, January 6, 2008

Israel’s assault on Gaza, by air, sea and now land, has killed (at the time of this writing) more than 600 Palestinians, with more than 2,700 injured. Ten Israelis have been killed, three of them Israeli soldiers killed by friendly fire. Beyond the deaths and injuries, the people of Gaza are suffering a dire humanitarian crisis that is dismissed by the Israeli government. There is, however, Israeli opposition to the military assault.

Israeli professor Neve Gordon is chair of the department of politics and government at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in southern Israel, the region most impacted by the Hamas rockets.

Speaking over the phone from Beersheba, Gordon said: “We just had a rocket about an hour ago not far from our house. My two children have been sleeping in a bomb shelter for the past week. And yet, I think what Israel is doing is outrageous. … The problem is that most Israelis say Israel left the Gaza Strip three years ago and Hamas is still shooting rockets at us. They forget the details. The detail is that Israel maintains sovereignty. The detail is that the Palestinians live in a cage. The detail is that they don’t get basic foodstuff, that they don’t get electricity, that they don’t get water. And when you forget those kinds of details, all you say is, ‘Why are they still shooting at us?’ That’s what the media here has been pumping them with, then you think this war is rational. If you look at what’s been going on in the Gaza Strip in the past three years and you see what Israel has been doing to the Palestinians, you would think that the Palestinian resistance is rational. And that’s what’s missing in the mainstream media here.”

Gordon attended a large peace march last weekend in Tel Aviv with more than 10,000 other Israelis. Longtime Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery was there. He called the invasion “a criminal war, because, on top of everything else it is openly and shamelessly part of Ehud Barak’s and Tzipi Livni’s election campaign. I accuse Ehud Barak of exploiting the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] soldiers in order to get more Knesset seats. I accuse Tzipi Livni of advocating mutual slaughter in order to become prime minister.” Israel’s elections will be in February.

The assault strengthens right-wing Likud Party leader and former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a foremost hawk and leading candidate for prime minister. While Netanyahu fully supports the attack on Gaza, his nephew, Jonathan Ben-Artzi, is an Israeli conscientious objector who was court-martialed and imprisoned for a year and a half. He spoke to me from Providence, R.I., where he is a student at Brown University.

“I’m speaking … not as anyone’s nephew but … as an Israeli, trying to speak out to Americans to tell them you don’t have to support Israel blindly. Not everything that Israel does is holy … sometimes you have to speak firmly to Israel and tell us, tell our government, stop doing this.”

Gideon Levy is a Jewish journalist with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. He told me: “I think that Israel had this legitimacy to protect its citizens in the southern part of Israel … but this doing something does not mean this brutal and violent operation. … I believe we could have got to a new truce without this bloodshed. Immediately to send dozens of jets to bomb a total helpless civilian society with hundreds of bombs—just today, they were burying five sisters. I mean, this is unheard of. This cannot go on like this.”

But it is. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency, UNRWA, in Gaza opened up schools to provide shelter, since Gazans, trapped in this narrow strip of land, have no place to flee. Christopher Gunness of UNRWA told me that the agency provided the coordinates of the schools to the Israeli military. Nevertheless, at least two schools have been hit by Israeli strikes in the past 24 hours. Three people were killed at the Asma elementary school. More than 30 are reported dead and more than 55 injured at the al-Fakhura school in the Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza.

While Israeli planes drop pamphlets urging Palestinians to leave, the 1.5 million residents of the Gaza Strip, perhaps the most densely populated place on Earth, have no place to run, no place to hide. Calls for an immediate cease-fire are ignored by Israel and blocked by the U.S. government. It is not clear what the Obama administration will do—but the people of Gaza can’t wait until the inauguration. There must be a cease-fire now. And that’s just the beginning.

Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.

Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 700 stations in North America. She was awarded the 2008 Right Livelihood Award, dubbed the “Alternative Nobel” prize, and received the award in the Swedish Parliament in December.

© 2009 Amy Goodman

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