NEON GODS

Thanks to all who sacrificed to protect us and others who needed help

Today I would like to honor my dad who was a flight engineer on a B-29 toward the end of WW II.  He was the only son of a mother widowed in her 20s and struggled mightily during the depression to keep the family together and when the war broke out she begged my dad to stay home, keep his job that paid three times the tiny wages she made as a clerk at a local ice company.  She was able to get him deferments for a few years but finally he put his foot down and said he had a bigger duty to his country, and joined the Army. 

He ended up on a B-29 air crew that flew bombing runs over Japan from Guam, Saipan, and Tinian.  He rarely wanted to talk about his service for he knew that the bombs they carried to Japan were killing lots of people down below.  He understood that lots of Americans had also died at the hands of the Japanese, but I could tell he took little pleasure in evening the score.  Was it dangerous, I asked?  He said, "At certain times, Yes.  But worse was the boredom of the long flights there and back."

We are fond of calling my dad's generation "The Greatest Generation" for the way they responded to the Nazi war machine taking over Europe and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.  Americans flooded the recruitment stations, including baseball stars, and those left behind, from the very wealthy to the poor, sacrificed for four years to allow everything to be focused on producing weapons, vehicles, food, and more for our troops fighting overseas.  We're told that will never happen again, that Americans are too lazy and pampered to ever endure those sacrifices again.

That, of course, is bullshit.  My Dad's generation responded as they did because of two things we haven't had since: 1) ruthless enemies who were determined to use extreme force to expand their power, and 2) great leadership. 

Our enemies in the late 30s and early 40s were of a scale we haven't seen since, and Franklin Roosevelt understood the only way we could win was by an all out effort from everyone.  He had to first convince the manufacturing sector to stop making profitable consumer goods and retool quickly to begin making tanks, planes, guns, jeeps, ammo, uniforms, etc.  He got eveyone involved in the war effort by touting victory gardens and war bonds, etc.

We won that war in four short years and I'm convinced it was because of the leadership of one man, Franklin Roosevelt rather than a generation of exceptionally brave Americans.  Given enemies like we had in the 1940s and exceptional leadership, I'm certain that today's generation of Americans would respond just as bravely and sacrifice just as much as my Dad's generation.  Just look at the how our American troops have fought in Iraq and Afghanistan.  No one can fault their bravery or dedication.  What's at fault these days is our leadership.  It's been abysmal.  George Bush took the 9/11 tragedy which united all Americans against the Taliban and used that patriotic fervor to invade Iraq, thus bogging us down into two miserable, unwinnable wars that have dragged on for a decade.  Obama has tried to extricate us but has done it timidly knowing that pulling out our troops quickly would almost certainly be used by his political enemies to paint him as weak on national defence.  We not only have poor leadership these days we also have a ruthless opposition party in the Republicans.

But this does nothing to diminish the courage and sacrifices of our armed forces of all generations in the defence of our country, and today I wish to honor my dad and all the others who have sacrificed for our freedoms over the years.

--Trakker

For Shame!

From today's NY Time's editorial:

Five men who say the Bush administration sent them to other countries to be tortured had a chance to be the first ones to have torture claims heard in court. But because the Obama administration decided to adopt the Bush administration’s claim that hearing the case would divulge state secrets, the men’s lawsuit was tossed out on Wednesday by the full United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The decision diminishes any hope that this odious practice will finally receive the legal label it deserves: a violation of international law.

It ends with:

All too often in the past, the judges pointed out, secrecy privileges have been used to avoid embarrassing the government, not to protect real secrets. In this case, the embarrassment and the shame to America’s reputation are already too well known.

THIS is one of then bigger reasons why the left is pissed off at the Obama adminstration.  I'm proud of the left for making this an issue and threatening to stay away from the voting booth this Novemeber.  Using the states secrets doctrine to avoid embarrassment like this is WRONG and if the Democrats take a big hit this election, all I can say is tough shit.  In my America there are lines that must not be crossed and this is one of them.  Just because the big bad Republicans will use something like this to skewer Obama and the Democrts to win elections is no reason to cave on something this important. For Shame!

UPDATE: This is Andrew Sullivan writing about this decision on his blog.

But Obama's insistence on protecting every Bush era war criminal and every Bush era war crime from any redress or even scrutiny is a sign both of how cold-blooded he can be, but more, I think, of how powerful the security state now is, how it can protect itself, how it exists independently of any real accountability to anyone, how even the metrics of judging it are beyond the citizen's reach or understanding.

I tried valiantly not to believe this of Holder and Obama for months; I tried to see their legitimate concerns about exposing a war machine when it is still at war; I understand the need for some extraordinary renditions; and the necessity for executive power in emergencies to act swiftly, as the Founders intended. Yes war requires some secrecy. But Obama has gone much further than this now. The cloak of secrecy he is invoking is not protecting national security but protecting war crimes. And this is now inescapably his cloak. He is therefore a clear and knowing accessory to war crimes, and should at some point face prosecution as well, if the Geneva Conventions mean anything any more. This won't happen in my lifetime, barring a miracle. Because Obama was a test case. If an outsider like him, if a constitutional scholar like him, at a pivotal moment for accountability like the last two years, cannot hold American torturers to account, there is simply no accountability for American torture. When the CIA actually rehires as a contractor someone who held a power-drill against the skull of a prisoner, you know that change from within this system is impossible. The system is too powerful. It protects itself. It makes a mockery of the rule of law. It doesn't only allow torture; it rewards it.

This is no longer our country. The rule of law means nothing anymore.  We are a country that eagerly jails thousands of powerless young Americans for non-violent crimes, but turn a blind eye to the powerful acting in our name who commit war crimes. WAR CRIMES!

--Trakker

The sinking of a superpower

Conservative Andrew Sullivan:

[Here's another] legacy of the Bush-Cheney years: by both bankrupting the country and grinding the US military into the barren dust of Iraq and Afghanistan, those two fools did more to weaken America internationally than any administration in modern times. So much of power lies in the imagination of others. Before Iraq, the US military had immense soft power. After Iraq, where the whole world saw a military incapable of curtailing an insurgency for four years, morally tainted by torture and abuse of prisoners, and now leaving a fractured, fragile tinder box more friendly to Iran than ever before, the deterrent effect has been lost. After Afghanistan, the world has seen the greatest military all but defeated by a bunch of goons and thugs and corrupt election-stealers. A super-power should guard its reputation carefully. Bush recklessly threw that reputation away.

It would not be the first time the desire to project power revealed its limits. Neoconservatism began with a Project For The Next American century. It's achievement is a new century with a newly empowered Iran, Pakistan (the two Islamist states with WMDs) and China. And still they write and act as if nothing - nothing - in their worldview needs changing.

Andrew has come a long way since the early 2000s.  It's interesting to watch open-minded conservatives begin to say things we liberals were saying years ago.

--Trakker

Bring Back the Draft

Andrew J. Bacevich writes,

Long wars are antithetical to democracy. Protracted conflict introduces toxins that inexorably corrode the values of popular government. [...]

After Vietnam, the United States abandoned its citizen army tradition, oblivious to the consequences. In its place, it opted for what the Founders once called a "standing army" -- a force consisting of long-serving career professionals.

For a time, the creation of this so-called all-volunteer force, only tenuously linked to American society, appeared to be a master stroke. Washington got superbly trained soldiers and Republicans and Democrats took turns putting them to work. The result, once the Cold War ended, was greater willingness to intervene abroad. As Americans followed news reports of U.S. troops going into action everywhere from the Persian Gulf to the Balkans, from the Caribbean to the Horn of Africa, they found little to complain about: The costs appeared negligible. Their role was simply to cheer.

I don't like the "volunteer" army.  Too many of the volunteers are actually kids without jobs or prospects of a job and they join either to get free training or three squares and a paycheck.  I doubt if the army is having much trouble getting volunteers with unemployment - the real numbers - running around 18% or more.  This is just one more responsibility (national defense) that the rich avoid while reaping the benefits of living in America. 

Even more annoying is the large number of young conservatives who constantly advocate war with any nation they don't like, yet never seem committed enough to actually fight those wars.  They would rather stockpile an arsenal of firearms here at home so they can feel manly and patriotic while avoiding any real danger.

This is just one more reason America is in trouble.

(h/t horsec)

--Trakker

If only politicians REALLY cared about those who die in our wars.

Today is a day when we should all take a few moments to remember all the men and women who have died defending our country, or in wars our nation has engaged in.  I may not agree with some of those wars but it doesn't diminish the sacrifices made by those who fought in those wars. 

Maybe someday we will learn that war MUST be the solution of last resort.  It pisses me off to see politicians get all misty-eyed on Memorial Day and the next day vote to continue our wars and even consider bombing Iran or invading Pakistan.

--Trakker

$1 TRILLION spent on wars. How much on job creation?

Rep. Alan Grayson:

On May 30, 2010, at 10:06 a.m, the direct cost of occupying Iraq and Afghanistan will hit $1 trillion. And in a few weeks, the House of Representatives will be asked to vote for $33 billion of additional "emergency" supplemental spending to continue the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. There will be the pretense of debate -- speeches on the floor of both chambers, stern requests for timetables or metrics or benchmarks -- but this war money will get tossed in the wood chipper without difficulty, requested by a president who ran on an anti-war platform. Passing this legislation will mark the breaking of another promise to America, the promise that all war spending would be done through the regular budget process. Not through an off-budget swipe of our Chinese credit card.

The war money could be used for schools, bridges, or paying everyone's mortgage payments for a whole year. It could be used to end federal income taxes on every American's first $35,000 of income, as my bill, the War Is Making You Poor Act, does. It could be used to close the yawning deficit, supply health care to the unemployed, or for any other human and humane purpose.

... Imagine if we had decided after 9/11 to wean ourselves off oil and other carbon-based fuels. We'd be almost ten years into that project by now.

Imagine if George W. Bush had somehow been able to summon the moral strength of Mahatma Gandhi, Helen Keller, or Martin Luther King Jr, and committed the American people to the pursuit of a common goal of a transformed society, a society which meets our own human needs rather than declaring "war" on an emotion, or, as John Quincy Adams put it, going "abroad, in search of monsters to destroy".

Alan Grayson is one of the very few politicians who still give me hope.  He is one of the few politicians I will support with money this fall, but ya' know what?  Didn't Barack Obama say a lot of the same things back when he ran for president in 2008?  Didn't it excite you then?  And how did that work out?

--Trakker

The "Can't Do" Nation?

I don't know about you but this whole BP oil spill disaster is really pissing me off, and the more I think about it and the circumstances that led up to it, the angrier I get.

First we had Cheney letting the oil companies write the energy legislation for the Bush administration.  Then we had the federal government's Minerals Management Service accepting gifts from and partying with (including sex) the very oil companies they were supposed to be overseeing.  In effect, they let the oil companies police themselves. As a federal employee for over 30 years this makes me want to castrate and jail every one of the miscreants for a minimum of 20 years with no parole.  We depended on them to protect us and our earth from these voracious oil companies, and they betrayed our trust.  I have no use for scum like that.

Then there are the frickin' oil companies who lied on their applications, flagged their submersible oil drilling vessels in the Marshall Islands to avoid strict environmental controls, and then made a bad decision based on greed which caused an explosion that killed 11 of their employees blew a hole in the earth that is spewing around 80,000 gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico every freaking hour of every freaking day since April 20.  Oil is gushing out of the ground and into the Gulf even as you read this!  And we don't know how to stop it.

But that shouldn't surprise us because we can't stop anything anymore. Global warming, the wars in Iraq ad Afghanistan, the deficit from rising, unemployment, illegal immigration, drugs, poverty, Guantanamo, outsourcing of our jobs, the deterioration of schools in the inner cities...Nothing.  We have a whole political party whose only goal is to insure nothing good happens while Barack Obama is president, we have a whole sub-population of Americans who fervently believe Ronald Reagan's bromide that government isn't the solution, it is the problem.  They believe that government is evil and liberals are their enemy. 

I saw the following on the Daily Dish and it struck a nerve.  It was written by an anonymous reader of Andrew's blog so I can't give proper credit.  Please note the last paragraph:

[Andrew] wrote, “If we cannot stop this [massive oil spill], what else can we not stop?” Exactly my own response these last few days. Honestly, I have not reacted to anything with this much impotent despair since 9/11. Not even Abu Ghraib and our collective, in effect, non-reaction to it made me feel more negative about the likely course of our society in the remaining decades of my lifetime.

I don’t participate in the apotheosis some baby boomers indulge of the so-called Greatest Generation. But the thought keeps coming to mind that if today’s American society were faced with situations as complex and terrible as the first half of the 20th century, we’d probably be living with a Nazi Europe and the aftermath of having preemptively nuked the Soviet Union.

Collectively we have lost any ability to make a hard decision, to accept that every action has consequences (as does every refused call to action) and to actually sacrifice, individually and collectively, to keep a terrible situation from becoming more terrible. If we can’t drill anywhere on the planet in pursuit of unlimited oil without destroying entire regional ecologies…well, then hey I guess we’re just screwed. If we can’t just invade the next country on our shit list and stop global Islamic terrorism…well then WTF are we supposed to do? If it turns out that the “wealth” we thought our households possessed was just a temporary accounting fiction…well that doesn’t mean we should have to quit spending money like it’s 2004.

The coup de grace for me personally? That would have to be this. If Barack Obama can not directly and cleanly end torture and rendition and the indefinite detention of the thousands of randomly rounded up non-terrorist, non-combatants abused by the administration he was elected to replace…then there is truly nothing to be done about anything. [emphasis mine]

But, you know what? No one in a position to actually do something about this really gives much of a damn.  Our politicians in Washington are living well, good salaries, nice perks, their families are all covered by great health care programs.  The CEOs are also doing well. Their children are going to the best schools and are not in any danger of being sent to the Middle East to fight our wars.  Our sports figures are also enjoying the good life, unlike the players during WWII and Korea.  Yup, life is still very good for the Americans who count.  No need to rush around in a panic...

--Trakker

Domestic gun owner attacks Pentagon

Just like 9/11, a gun owner attacked the Pentagon today.  He reached in his pocket and came out shooting. Fortunately none of the guards or passerby were serious injured.  The gunman, of course was seriously wounded, something I'm sure he knew would happen.

It will be interesting to see how Fox News and the MSM react to an American gun owner attacking the Pentagon.  Like I've written time and again, American gun owners kill far more innocent Americans than terrorists do.  I know I am much likelier to get killed by a domestic gun owner than attacked by a terrorist.

--Trakker

More about the United States Institute of Peace

I had a nice chat with a representative of the U.S. Institute of Peace yesterday.  As you may recall, I happened upon the new USIP headquarters building under construction on a walk by the Lincoln Memorial last fall.

I was more than a little surprised to find that the United States government had gone and created an institute devoted to peace behind my back 25 years ago, and this was the first that I knew of it.

There's a reason for this.  According to David Smith, the representative I talked to, the Institute is probably better known in the countries where they work than in the U.S.  Their mandate is to concentrate on international affairs, and while they conduct training sessions in this country that are attended by U.S. military and State Department personnel, their main focus is working with people in other countries, encouraging the development of conflict resolution and peacebuilding skills that can be used in problem solving.

I have been studying the USIP website lately and was surprised to find that they facilitated the Congressionally-mandated Iraq Study Group, co-chaired by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Congressman Lee Hamilton.  The ISG's full report (pdf) can be downloaded from USIP's website.

Upon the completion of their new headquarters in early 2011, USIP will almost certainly gain prominence mostly because of it's location: just north of the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, but also because of the new Public Education Center that will be the centerpiece of the new building.  USIP hopes that many who visit the attractions on the west end of the Mall (Lincoln Memorial, Vietnam War Memorial, Korean War Memorial among others) will also visit the Public Education Center Global Peacebuilding Center where they will gain an understanding of international conflicts and learn about nonviolent approaches used to resolve them.

One of the questions I asked David was about the large contribution that large defense contractor Lockheed Martin had given USIP, and what Lockheed might expect to get in return.  I knew this was an unfair question to ask David - after all he was talking to me as a representative of USIP. I was just curious how he would handle it (I often found myself in a similar position when I worked for the government).  David did assure me that Lockheed Martin's gift was for the new building and that all of USIP's operating funds come directly from the federal government.  If I wanted to know why Lockheed Martin contributed money to the building and what they expected to get in return, I would have to ask them.

I should mention that I strongly oppose government/private sector partnerships of any kind.  I hate to see any corporate name on a government facility.  The government is supposed to be by and for the PEOPLE.  If the people can't or won't fully fund something, it obviously isn't important enough to them.  When a government facility or agency accepts money from a corporation they a) become identified with that corporation for good or bad (imagine partnering with Enron a decade ago or Blackwater today), and b) that corporation "owns" a part of that agency regardless of what anyone says.

In the case of Lockheed Martin and the USIP, I suspect Lockheed Martin is hoping to soften its image as a company profiting from war by becoming a prominent contributor to the U.S. Institute of Peace.  I may be more cynical than most, but that partnership reduces my confidence in the effectiveness of USIP.

That being said, I am impressed with the mission and accomplishments of USIP.  I'm glad there is an institute devoted to finding non-violent solutions to conflicts and sharing that knowledge with the world.  Just yesterday I saw it written that it has been decades since the world has been as peaceful as it is today (especially Africa).  Maybe the non-violent approach to conflict resolution is actually catching on.

Take a look at USIP's website, check out their different centers and projects and I think you will be pleased to know that some of our tax dollars are being used to help resolve conflicts peacefully (now if we can only get the right and the left to begin working together).

I hope to attend some of USIP's public events in the future (in fact one is scheduled for tomorrow, "Haiti: Six Weeks Later")

Peace.

--Trakker

...my life was forever changed.

In 2007, I was an Army lieutenant leading a group on a house-clearing mission in Baquba, Iraq, when I called in an artillery strike on a house. The strike destroyed the house and killed everyone inside. I thought we had struck enemy fighters, but I was wrong. A father, mother and their children had been huddled inside.

The feelings of disbelief that initially filled me quickly transformed into feelings of rage and self-loathing. The following weeks, months and years would prove that my life was forever changed.

So writes Army Captain Shannon Meehan in the NYTimes.  While the tough-talking chickenhawks like Dick Cheney get to send our troops into battle, they never have to fire a shot or call in an airstrike.  They never get pinned down with lead flying by their head and sweat soaking their uniform as they contemplate the future - if they have one.

I believe the civil War bothered Abraham Lincoln deeply, the deaths it caused, the pain experienced by the families of the dead and missing, the wounds that would disable soldiers for the rest of their life.  All that was etched in his face.  I have never gotten the feeling the Cheney, Bush, or the other neo-cons who were so giddy at going to war ever worried much about the pain and suffering of the troops they sent into Iraq, or the innocent Iraqis who perished at the hands of our military.  I hope I'm wrong.  I hope they are human like Capt. Meehan.  I hope they wake up some nights in a sweat wondering if invading Iraq was the right decision or not.

It sickens me to hear so many on the right braying loudly to bomb Iran, or Yemen, or any other country that that doesn't kowtow to us.  How do you get people to understand the cost of war?  The cost in innocent lives lost?  The cost of the future sanity of our soldiers who do the killing?  The cost to care for the badly injured often for the rest of their painful, shattered lives?  The huge cost in dollars, dollars that could otherwise be spent providing Pell Grants for college students, or spent spurring new industry or small businesses, or even returned to the people as tax cuts?

War is not the answer, it should always be a desperate act of last resort.

--Trakker