We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth: We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations -- acting individually or in concert -- will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified. ~ Barack Obama (President of the United States. Peace Prize Acceptance Speech. December 10, 2009)
For years, Americans saw live, and in person, or on television screens, Presidential aspirant Barack Obama. Several mused; the man is calm in a crisis. "No drama Obama" was the phrase most often associated with the candidate. Those closely and personally connected to the potential President corroborated what was for most only an observation. The election did not change Barack Obama. His calm demeanor remained intact. Yet, many perceived a difference, not in his response to a predicament, but in the President's rhetoric. Empathy evolved into escalation. This was perhaps most evident on two occasions, when Mister Obama delivered his Address on the War in Afghanistan, and then again when the Commander-In Chief offered his Remarks in acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize. After these events, the pensive pondered; what was there all along, Cerebral Discord, the Two Faces of Barack Obama.
War Is Not Peace. Nor is there reason to think a warrior can be cleansed of the blood on his hands because he receives the Nobel Peace Prize. Words can work to express justifications, or espouse the possibility that war is just, good, or even necessary. However, when man wields weapons and bodies are intentionally broken there can be no defense. To deliberately take the life of another, or to purposely cause people harm is to wage war. Such transgressions will not produce peace. Nor will aggressive attacks articulate a desire for diplomacy. Democracy will not thrive in a world where all men are not treated as though they are created equal. Only death and destruction will survive if a President who professes a need for bigger and bolder battles is proclaimed to be benevolent or the one who will bequeath global harmony.
One Thousand words or four will not convert combat to calm. Nor will the Nobel Prize change the message of a military Commander-In-Chief. A Head of State who chooses to engage with guns and tanks cannot be the bearer of peace, regardless of the eloquent rationalizations.
Please peruse what some think profound or scan what others trust to be a shallow excuse for the escalation of Armed Forces. . . The words of President Obama as he accepts the Nobel Peace Prize, after he declared the need to send more troops to Afghanistan
It is said, as individuals, we can achieve all we conceive, if only we truly believe. President Barack Obama once knew this. He lived this veracity. Indeed, candidate Obama's audacity and accomplishments gave Americans hope. When Barack Obama reached for the sky he realized what no one thought he could. The electorate was energized. People came to expect the country was in for a change. Now, it seems Mister Obama is bogged down by what Eisenhower understood, concerns of the Military Industrial Complex.
The intricacy of the Armed Forces mission does not confine itself to forceful martial escalation. Nothing escapes the wide reach of combative nation building. Lives are lost. Limbs crushed. With bullets ablaze, brains are battered or blown to smithereens. Hope suffers. Hearts are hurt. The economy is also affected.
From the newsletter of March Forward! We join the military for many different reasons. Some of us want to have access to a college education. Some of us want job training and a steady paycheck. Some of us join to get U.S. citizenship. Some of us need to get out of debt or need to get off a destructive path. Some of us join out of pride, patriotism and a genuine desire to be a part of some greater, collective good. Many of us made the decision early-while still in high school, enticed by recruiters' promises of cash bonuses, adventure and opportunity-while some of us joined after years as a worker, drawn by the military's full health care and housing benefits.
Whatever the reason, we all found ourselves wearing the uniform of the U.S. military. What did we actually join? What is the role of the U.S. military in the world? What does it mean to be a soldier following the dictates of U.S. foreign policy? When we sign ourselves away to the military, what are we being used to do?
In recent years, many of us ended up in Iraq or Afghanistan. We are told that as a soldier in the U.S. military we are defending the interests of the United States. This does have an ounce of truth-but only an ounce. We are defending the interests of a particular class in the United States. It is only a wealthy minority whose interests are being defended in Iraq, Afghanistan and the more than 130 countries where U.S. troops are stationed.
It is difficult, even impossible, to accept President Obama's "New strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan" as described by him in a formal speech on March 27. It fails by imperial and non-imperial standards.
First the imperial: Chalmers Johnson, a former CIA agent, reports in his book Nemesis: "The Carter administration deliberately provoked the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In his 1996 memoir, former CIA Director Robert Gates acknowledges that the American intelligence services began to aid the anti-Soviet mujahideen guerillas not after the Russian invasion but six months before it. President Carter's purpose was to provoke a full-scale Soviet military intervention to tie down the USSR." Will an expanded military effort in Afghanistan tie down the U.S. as it did the USSR?
The mail arrived. It was from MoveOn.org. Overwhelmed with work, I thought to delete it. I noticed the surname of the sender was the same as a friend of mine. Only that [cosmic] coincidence led me to open the message and peruse. I read Daniel Mintz's words with interest, for he spoke of what I miss in the news. Mister Mintz did not focus on the folly of a few executives at American International Group, Incorporated (AIG). The representative from MoveOn offered what is more real to me, an average American.
As we've seen with AIG this week, the powerful don't give up their special treatment without a fight. They're spending millions on lobbyists to quietly kill the provisions that would make them help pay for America's priorities. 1 And despite all the posturing in Congress over AIG's bonuses, too many senators are still listening to the banking and insurance lobbyists on the issues that aren't in the headlines.
So we need to speak louder than the lobbyists . . .
Today's Washington Post calls it "a populist budget" 2 because it cuts taxes for most Americans while ending unfair tax advantages for the richest among us. The best part is that it takes all the money we'll save and invests it in critical national priorities that will help build and strengthen the middle class.
Obama's budget gives tax breaks to working families instead of CEOs. And it closes the tax loopholes for special interests that cost us billions, like:
The loophole that lets companies take tax breaks for sending jobs overseas. This will save us more than $200 billion over the next decade. 3
The loophole that lets hedge fund managers pay a 15% tax rate on their income, instead of regular income tax like the rest of us. That will save us more than $20 billion. 4
The loophole for big oil companies that gives them huge tax breaks even when they're posting record profits, saving us more than $30 billion over the next decade. 5
The loophole that gives the richest Americans bigger tax breaks for their deductions. Right now, a teacher who contributes $1,000 to the Red Cross gets a $150 tax break. A Wall Street executive making the same contribution gets a $350 tax break. 6
Quality references were offered for each claim. Research for me is more real than rhetoric. Almost as an automaton might, as I read, I reached for the telephone. I smiled at the thought that I might respond as directed. I called my Senator in Washington, District of Columbia.
March 19, 2009, is a day that lives in infamy. There were others in the past. However, on this date six years ago, the United States launched what has come to be accepted as unwarranted attacks on Iraq. Although, from the first, there were protests even in high places such as the Senate floor, unilaterally, Americans bombed an innocent people. This time, for near two years prior, pretense was presented as truth.
President Obama indicated through his press secretary that his administration would review its policy toward Afghanistan before making a decision about sending additional troops to fight in that country. Richard Holbrooke, his envoy, was in the Afghanistan/Pakistan region talking with leaders about how best to address the military and political situation. Obama also met with advisers at the Pentagon and the State Department.
As recently as February 15, it was reported that Obama "is refusing to be rushed into his first decision to send troops into combat . . . questioning the time table, the mission and even the composition of the new forces." However, Obama changed his mind on February 17, authorizing 17,000 additional soldiers and Marines for Afghanistan in what he described as an urgent bid to stabilize a deteriorating and neglected country, joining the 30,000 U.S. troops already there.
Obama will be sending more troops to Afghanistan before he has begun to fulfill a promised rapid withdrawal of troops from Iraq. His order leaves crucial questions of strategy and tactics in Afghanistan unanswered until the strategy review is completed in April. Antiwar groups criticized Obama's decision. Tom Andrews, director of Win Without War said, "The president is committing these troops before he's determined what the mission is..... We need to avoid the slippery slope of military escalation."
"Now, that doesn't mean that questions of Taiwan, Tibet, human rights, the whole range of challenges that we often engage on with the Chinese, are not part of the agenda. But we pretty much know what they are going to say. We have to continue to press them but our pressing on those issues can't interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis, and the security crises. ~ Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton (February 20, 2009)
The news appeared in cyberspace on Friday, February 20, 2009. As Yogi Berra once elucidated, it was as déjà vu, all over again. International and domestic activists have come to realize, once again, America is a democracy dependent on dollars. Amnesty International advocates shook their heads, wondered, and worried of what might be. Students for a Free Tibet collectively shrugged their shoulders and expressed a shared distress. Citizens at home, in America, barely blinked. An avid Obama supporter, was resigned to realities that, only weeks ago, she might not have thought she would willingly accept. Moneybag democracy lives. Hillary Clinton serves the President, the precedent past, present, and perhaps, future.
On November 8, 2004, Artist and Political Essayist Andrew Wahl, penned his thoughts on "Might." Then, the current war in Iraq may have been on his mind. Fiscal policies that ruled in favor of the wealthy could have evoked his visual essay. Way back then, religious factions, each of which was ready to deem the others wrong, were engaged in combat. That thought, coupled with the rest, may have brought this toon to be. Today, all these realities remain true.
It was 11:22 Ante Meridian, on January 21, 2009. I did as I rarely do. I stood silently and watched television. As one who listens to what is aired, and does so from another room, this was an unusual occurrence. However, the Cherokee wisdom of wolves, an illustration that represents the internal strife within every human being beckoned me.
Then, at the very same hour on the very next day, again I was compelled to do what is odd for me. I did not say a word as I glared at humanitarian actions took place on the screen. President Barack Obama proclaimed, by Executive Order, the United States would not torture. Nor would we, as a nation, detain presumed "combatants" without a just trial. On each occasion, I was in awe as I gazed upon what I had not imagined would come to pass. Upon reflection, the two events seem to be related.
On this, the anniversary of Martin Luther King Junior's birth, January 15, war is in the wind. In cyberspace communities, and on the streets of Israel, Gaza, Iraq, Afghanistan, even on the supposedly serene avenues in America, people are engaged in brutal battles. Be the clashes verbal or written, the combat is cruel. The punishment is not proportional. This truth is not unusual. Sadly, it is the convention, steeped in tradition. There is abundant conflict in every corner of the globe, contrary to the Civil Rights Leader, and nonviolent activist would want. Certainly, these crusades are not as G-d would grant just.
The command, "an eye for an eye" is used to justify vengeance. Retaliation is said to be the way of the Almighty, Allah, and the son, Jesus. Yet, theologians would admonish such interpretations of sacred text.
History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.
In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. ~ Martin Luther King Junior
Martin Luther King Junior offers his veracity, which may speak to those who have faith in any of the teachings of holy passages. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, are not silent on the subject of peace. Please peruse, ponder, and perhaps, walk in peace . . .
This much is clear: violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation,
and only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul. ~ Robert F. Kennedy
It is the seventh day of the month, a date that now lives in infamy. On this occasion, she passed. She was killed by an attack that was all too sudden. Her physical presence on Earth did not end in the month of December. The year was not 1941. The events at Pearl Harbor did cause my Mom's heart to stop. Indeed, she only ceased to exist in a form that I can see with my eyes or touch with my hand, less than a decade ago. Truly, it feels as if Mommy just took her leave.
In every moment, she is still with me. All these years later, I mourn my loss. Oh, if only I could bring her back. She enters into my dreams almost daily. Since childhood, I knew, if she were gone, I might not be able to go on. Today, on the anniversary of her bodily discorporation, I mourn, as I trust she would, the casualties in Iraq, Afghanistan, Gaza, Israel, and anywhere that war delays, defers, or denies family time, space, and a proper setting in which to grieve.
Just days ago, throughout the globe, people celebrated religious holidays. Peace on Earth and good will to all men was the palpable feeling that filled the air. Everywhere anyone turned expressions of fondness for our fellow beings could be heard. People were filled with glee. Then, suddenly, the sound that is the silent hum of joyous laughter was broken. Everything changed. Yet, indeed nothing did. The cycle of violence that has perpetually existed on this planet began again. The qualified quest for justice was once more the people's agenda. In Israel and Gaza, bombs blasted. Bullets whizzed by the heads of frantic, frightened people who sought shelter from another Mediterranean storm. Some died. Hamas was blamed for the initial attacks, this time. As had occurred on other occasions, Israel, in the name of self-defense, fought back. The roles might have been reversed and have been.
I am uncertain when it began. Nonetheless, I know that for me, the ache I feel has been with me for what feels as an eternity. I could tell you the twinge was first experienced a moment ago, as I listened to another of President Elect Obama's press conferences. Indeed, a wave of woe that passed through me as I heard the newly selected Commander-In-Chief announce his appointment for Secretary of Veterans Affairs, General Eric Shinseki. The soon-to-be inaugurated Chief Executive stated, "He [Shinseki] has agreed that he is willing to be part of this administration because both he and I share a reverence for those who serve." A mutual admiration, while wondrous, as stated seems incomplete, and perhaps omits the American construct, "all men are created equal."
As I let the words of our next Administrator wash over me, I thought of those who do not wear a uniform; the individuals and families who endure more war than a military man or woman might. Thoughts of innocents who cannot take leave, that is unless corporeally they pass, advance my sorrow. I feel for all veterans. My concern encompasses the affairs of every being embroiled in war. I wish to venerate those who enter the fray willingly, and those who fight, only to sustain their own life.
Today, just as every Saturday, at a local intersection, I stood vigil for war veterans, civilians and soldiers. As I held a sign which reads "Love. Not War. Love," I contemplated the combat overseas, the recent tragedy in Mumbai, India, the protracted wars in Iraq, Afghanistan. The situations in Israel and Iran, were not far from my consciousness. Threats and acts of terrorism, nations in turmoil; thoughts of a desired global tranquility filled my mind. I imagined, as I do daily, a transition, and a hopeful worldwide transformation towards peace.
As I pondered the profound, a man in a very large Sports Utility Vehicle stopped near me. He rolled down his car window. The gent was perhaps in his forties, well-groomed, and thankfully polite. Calmly, concerned, and a bit critical of what he seemed to think my naivety. this anonymous chap announced, "What would you do if they came on to our shores and attacked us."
Without a thought I said, "Violence begets violence." He repeated his query and expanded the thought. "Would you not fight back?" I reflected on what I observe to be true. People kill other people in the name of peace. Christians, Muslims, Jews proclaim a love of the Lord and all mankind, except when they define another as the enemy. I stated, "I would wonder of their reasons. Might they believe we had done them harm." Agitated, the stranger shrieked, "Do you mean to say that we, Americans are to blame?" Without hesitation I responded, "No." I than shared, "I believe as my grandfather taught me, 'Two wrongs do not make a right.'" Seemingly in a huff, the man quickly sped away.
As an afterthought, I realized I might have asked as Andrew Wahl had more than two years ago; "Does It Matter?" (Archive No. 0626a) Does it matter who assaulted whom first or last. For me, it does not. Jew, Muslim, Christian, no matter the race or creed; a life is a life.
I thank you Andrew for the illustration that speaks more than a thousand words might.
Conservatives clamored; if Americans elected Barack Obama as President, unthinkable change would transform the planet as we know it. Republicans warned, there would be war in the streets throughout the land, people would respond violently. An international incident would certainly occur. World leaders would test the "inexperienced" Commander. Certainly, the Illinois Senator would be stunned, awash in angst. If Obama were in the Oval Office, it would become more obvious. He was not prepared to command a country as great as the United States of America. The people, from every nation would take advantage of the inexperienced leader.
For the past several years I have been a member of the local peace group, Pacem in Terris. One outgrowth of membership and action with the group was my recent political campaign. The driving force for political action was then and remains today my staunch opposition to the ongoing occupation of Iraq. Our nation has many issues to be resolved today. We will not be able to address many of those issues so long as we continue to borrow and spend $10 billion a month in Iraq.
On the eve of September 11, I was haunted by the heartache I have felt for seven very long years. On the night, before the anniversary of the horrendous attacks, I was reminded of the people gone and not forgotten. I also thought of those who survived. Time has not healed the wound inflicted on that infamous day, now commonly called 9/11. Indeed, with each passing minute and hour the hurt I feel intensifies.
MoveOn.org presents this production with a desire to seek donations. This self-proclaimed "Progressive" organization hopes to advance the Democratic candidate, and look for dollars to do so. In essence, MoveOn would wish the public to think that if we advocate for Barack Obama then the Party platform will be fulfilled. As one who does not necessarily see these two entities as equivalent, I offer this audio-visual presentation more as a tool to inform than a request for a contribution.
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