Category: Antiwar (vintage)

Folks– Marine’s Girl, who has been writing a great blog for the past 5-plus weeks that provides “Insight on being the girl friend of a Marine in Iraq. Opinions of news items of the day, politics, and relationships” is being intimidated into silence.
I’ve only had a link up to her blog for a few days, though I’ve been reading it quite a while longer. She’s taken down most of the content that was previously on the blog. But if the blog is still up on the web at all, you should go read this, and this— as well as anything else you can still find up on her blog.
“First they came for the Jews, and no-one said anything… ” You know how the rest of that goes.
Don’t let them do anything to this plucky, insightful person or her boyfriend! At the very least, send her a message of support.
Update, Monday a.m.: So it seems that MG actually has powerful supporters within the USMC, as well. Check this. I guess it’s not quite all handled yet, but it looks on the way to being so.
Great news, MG! And please, please, get all that content that you’d taken down back up onto your blog a.s.a.p. You and your guy are our Hemingway so far, for this war!

When I say “Thank God for the US military”, don’t get me wrong. My conviction that violence of all kinds is wrong and counter-productive remains firm. Violence begets violence, it’s as simple as that.
On the other hand, at least the people who actually use violence, who are daily exposed to it and are very aware of its costs to all concerned, have a more realistic view of these matters than those who sit in comfortable offices thousands of miles away making life-or-death decisions about military affairs.
So here (while the political echelons of the US leadership were scrambling to find ways both to spin and to escape from the escalating disaster in Iraqi) we have the US’s top military commander in Iraq actually telling it to a bunch of journos like he sees it.
As the NYT’s John F. Burns put it,

Dispensing with euphemisms favored by many Bush administration officials in recent months, General [Ricardo] Sanchez, commander of the 130,000 American troops in Iraq, described what they were facing as a war.

(Get out your flight-suit, George! They might need you to participate for real this time!)
Burns reported (“from a heavily guarded news conference in the Iraqi capital”) that, “On another issue with American political overtones, General Sanchez said interrogations of 20 people suspected of links to Al Qaeda had failed to confirm such links.”
Oh gosh, don’t you just hate it when that happens? There the spinmeisters of K Street were for the past two days, telling us that the 20 people they’d picked up on suspicion of having organized the attack that nearly caught Wolfie’s pants on fire last week were Al-Qaeda operatives– and so, didn’t that just show that Cheney was right with all his repetition of the claims about Saddam-Qaeda links, whatever…
And then the general on the scene goes ahead and tells everyone and her auntie that No, it ain’t so?
But according to Burns, Sanchez had still more to say:

The general described a stark picture of the attacks on American troops, saying they averaged six a day when he took command five months ago, rose to ‘the teens’ 60 days ago, and had increased to 30 to 35 a day in the last 30 days. He predicted that the attacks would increase still further before the intensifying American military campaign began to curb them…

The spinmeisters must be afraid that the military is getting out of control, saying things like that!
Well, from General Sanchez’ point of view, he needs to tell the truth like he sees it, and in a fairly public way. For a number of reasons.
First, he needs to know the truth about the identity of his opponents, so that hopefully (for him) he can devise an appropriate response to their actions.
Second–and don’t underestimate this requirement–he needs to communicate a clear idea of his analysis of the nature of the opponents to all his subordinate commanders in the field and his supporting commanders back home in the Pentagon. Oh sure, the US military doesn’t usually use the NYT as a main means of communication. But with their own communicatons so overwhelmed and possibly unclear, it certainly can’t hurt him to seek also to send a clear message out to them thru the NYT and other major media sources.
Third, he needs to get the viewpoint of the uniformed military leadership on these matters firmly onto the public record before the whole military situation inside Iraq goes firmly down the tubes (which is what he certainly seemed to be presenting as something of a possibility despite his tough, blustery talk about the fact that the eventual US victory “was not in doubt.”)
Indeed, to me, that’s the most interesting thing about Sanchez’ press conference: the clear inference I drew from it that he is preparing a clear CYA defense on behalf of the whole of the uniformed military, in the increasingly likely event of a US debacle in Iraq.
And actually, such a defense is not invalid. The brass as a group certainly tried hard all along to warn the pols that invading and remaking Iraq would not be a cake-walk. Remember Shinseki? And it took Bombs-Away Don a long time to find a compliant general who’d agree to become Chairman of the JCS on his terms…
So thank God for the US military, I say, and especially for this: that at the end of the day, the commanders seem to have resisted the huge pressures to be rolled by the chickenhawks, and to have kept their personal and professional integrity–including their responsibilities to the thousands of men and women under their command who don’t have the luxury of living in the (highly relative) comfort and safety of the “Green Zone” in Baghdad.
And talking of what’s happening out there in the outposts. Here’s a revealing excerpt from a certain interesting blog I’ve been reading recently, which looks as though it must be the transcript of an IM interaction between a person who’s an officer in one of the branches of the US military, writing from somewhere in Iraq, and his life-partner back home:

Officer: Have a good story for you. I walked in a tent today and two guys were tossing darts at a board made from Our Glorious Leader’s picture.
Partner: Oh man, you didn’t bust them for it, did you?
Officer: They saw me and got pale instantly. I think they were seeing their careers flashing before their eyes.
Partner: What did you do?
Officer: I turned and walked out of the tent without saying a word. I stood outside for a few then went back in and no darts or picture was in view. I saw nothing and said nothing to them.

Note the three things that are happening here. The grunts are throwing the darts at OGL’s image. The officer (noncom?) effectively condones that action. And the officer tells his sweetie back home about it–on an open IM link, and knowing full well that she will just love the story…
Oh boy, should Karl Rove be worried.

Go straight to this post on A Marine’s Girl. Don’t pass Go. Don’t even think of collecting $200.
It’s the transcript of an “Instant message” session.
Read down the whole post, carefully.

A fabulous, heart-rending, honest, funny new voice in the blogosphere comes from the new blog by “Marine’s girl”. She’s writing out of someplace in Michigan, I think, and supports her Marine by posting many amazing, strongly antiwar things on her blog.
Last saturday night, she was up till 3:12 a.m., and posted her immediate reaction to the breaking news of the bringing-down of the chopper.
She must have had some terrible hours there, waiting to find out whatever she could about the identity of those killed.
Sunday, her Marine called her. You can read her really intimate account of that call at this post.
You can read a lot of other fine things on her blog, as well. Check it out and say hi to her.

Thanks to all JWN readers who responded to the earlier appeal from Chuck Fager, director of Quaker House in fayetteville, North Carolina, for folks to write to jailed conscientious objector Steven Funk. Funk, a gay man from California, has been sent to the brig at Camp Lejeune in NC, where he knows almost nobody.
Chuck says that Funk has really appreciated all the letters he’s received, and hasn’t been able to reply to all of them. He’s asking folks to keep the letters flowing there for the rest of Funk’s term. For more info, and some advice from Chuck on how your help can be most effective, read on…

Continue reading “Jailed CO Stephen Funk: update”

At last! News that the US intelligence community is going back to re-evaluate the “information” it bought from Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congres in the months and years leading up to the invasion of Iraq.
The initial reports don’t look good for Chalabi. The New York Times is reporting today that, “An internal assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency has concluded that most of the information provided by Iraqi defectors who were made available by the Iraqi National Congress was of little or no value, according to federal officials briefed on the arrangement.”
It’s significant that this piece is reported by Douglas Jehl, the Timesperson put onto the case after numerous questions were asked by the role of fellow Timesperson Judith Miller as a totally uncritical– nay, often overtly laudatory–conduit for much of Chalabi’s most blatant agitprop.
In what may have been designed as an indirect admission of this uncomfortable record, Jehl writes, “The Iraqi National Congress had made some of these defectors available to several news organizations, including The New York Times, which reported their allegations about prisoners and the country’s weapons program.”
Ah well, better late than never– both for the Times and, more importantly, for the DIA, which is the organization responsible for getting accurate defense info to US military commanders all around the world…
More power to the DIA folks’ elbows if they should decide to really go after the snake oil purveyed by Chalabi. But in addition to tracking down his many mis-statements and outright lies, they should also be looking at the broad nexus of people in the administration, so-called “think tanks”, and the US media which between them packaged Chalabi’s snake-oil into a political package that was designed to jerk the US public into supporting the war.
Part of this investigation could focus on the Halliburton alum (and continued beneficiary) Dick Cheney. And another whole part on Bombs-Away Don and some of hawkish advisors in the civilian part of the Pentagon.
By the way, some folks have been talking a bit recently about Under-Secretary of Defense Doug Feith and his relationship with a firm of lawyers/consultants who have been making a big pitch to get into Iraqi consulting “on the ground floor.”
If you go to the website of Feith’s old law firm, “Feith and Zell”, a.k.a. cutely FANDZ, you might think from the home-page that this is one big, well-extended international law firm with practices all around the globe. Click on “Participating attorneys”, however, and you see they have offices only in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. But the new Iraqi Governing Council is saying that for alol they’ll open their economy up to foreigners, still, they won’t be allowing deals with Israeli firms.
So how does Marc Zell hope to get his entree? Makes one wonder… Funny that he’s been starting up a bunch of new projects with Chalabi’s nephew…
More broadly, though, it’s great news that serious people in and around the US political class are starting to ask serious questions about the so-called “reasoning” that jerked the US into this war. The new questioning about the INC’s “intel” is one part of that– though I don’t necessarily expect it to get very far since the DIA report was given the Stephen Cambone, who as far as I know is a pro-war hatchet-person in his own right.
The other good investigation that’s opening up is opf course the one into Novak-gate— the questioning into who it was in the administration who told Novak that Amb. Joseph Wilson’s wife Valery is a CIA agent…
This one may well go pretty far, since the question of “outing” a CIA officer is something that folks on the right wing in this country have to take seriously. Plus Wilson– far from being intimidated or silenced by the threat made to his spouse’s career–seems intent to take this as far as he can. (One assumes, with her support.)
There are of course some superficial similarities with the David Kelly /Andrew Gilligan case in England. In both cases, you have a (probably highly placed) political operative seeking to silence and intimidate a “lower” member of the government bureaucracy by leaking the name of the latter to compliant folks in the media.
But in this case, it certainly doesn’t seem as if either Wilson or his wife seem as though they are going to be so intimidated and humilated that they follow David Kelly’s example and commit suicide. Instead, they are going to (well, he is going to) hang in there and fight this one. Excellent!
There are several reports, of course, that the leaker in chief was Karl Rove. Well, couldn’t happen to nicer guy.

I think the true epiphany came to me a couple years ago when I first visited the Disney-ized (but also “real”) gold mine that is a big attraction in the “Gold Reef City” theme park near Johannesburg.
Before the eager visitors get to “re-create” the thrill of being an actual South African gold-miner by being winched down the very scary mine-shaft, you get to wait in a sort of museum-y place where they have actual artifacts, old photos, diagrams, maps, etc.
One sequence of grainy old photos has a (circa 1985?) caption telling us that these are the “native African boys” (actually, a crowd of very ragged-looking grown men) who were persuaded to work down the mines by the fact that they needed to earn cash to pay poll-taxes that had summarily been slapped on them by the British colonial power that had taken over their land. Otherwise, the caption added someplace, the “boys” would have been very reluctant to go into the bowels of the earth in such a dangerous way to carry out the British mineowners’ desires…
So here it is, Helena’s guide to How to be a Colonialist. (Iraqis, Palestinians, and other peoples of color probably don’t need to take this course.)
1. Have a big army. Take over a country.
2. Pauperize the “native” population as fast as you can by destroying their “native” economy. If necessary impose outrageous taxes.
3. When the locals are truly desperate, offer them terrible sweatshop work at extremely low rates of pay. (But only offer it to a few. Have them compete for the chance to work so then they feel “grateful” if they get it!)
4. Feel good about the fact that you are offering the chance to work to these poor benighted souls who otherwise would be in total destitution.
5. Take your profits home. Enjoy them. Feel good about yourself for bringing “civlization” and “modernization” to those distant natives.
Actually, Riverbend has had a few good posts about how this whole process has been working in today’s Iraq. Like this one, today.
Juan Cole has had some interesting news along the same lines, too. For example, today he reports that yesterday (Sept. 23) the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Program(WFP) issued a joint report that recorded that chronic malnutrition afflicts several million persons in Iraq today, including 100,000 refugees and 200,000 internally displaced persons. “The situation of mothers and children in central and southern Iraq is of particular concern,” the report says.
However, soon after that, he comments:

It is a horrible thing that a potentially rich oil state such as Iraq has been reduced to fourth world conditions by the misrule of the Baath.

I certainly don’t hold a candle for the Baath. But I don’t recall reports of such chronic malnutrition in Iraq during their time in power. Terrible atrocites of other descriptions, yes. Thousands of otherwise avoidable infant deaths because of the UN-impsoed sanctions, yes. But widespread and chronic malnutrition? I just don’t recall it.
Plus, honestly, how can you blame the Baath for malnutrition that’s occurring now, nearly six full months after the US “won” the “major combat” phase of the battle–and thereby, under international law as well as simple logic, became completely responsible, as occupying power, for the basic welfare of the country’s population???

This, from former Senator Max Cleland, thanks to Juan Cole:

Welcome to Vietnam, Mr. President. Sorry you didn’t go when you had the chance.

Read Cleland’s whole, excellent op-ed in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, here.

Chuck Fager, the head of Quaker House in Fayetteville NC, has sent a message saying that Marine Corps Conscientious Objector (CO) Stephen Funk needs some cards and letters of support. Funk has just recently been transferred to the brig in Camp Lejeune, NC to serve a 6-month sentence.
This is the same brig where dozens of Marine COs were detained and harassed during the first Persian Gulf War.
As a public conscientious objector to war and an openly gay man, Funk is at particular risk. The more his jailers know that the outside world is watching, the better (we hope) they’ll treat him. (This is called the Amnesty International Theory.) Funk would therefore appreciate letters from supporters at the following address:
Stephen Funk
Building 1041
PSC 20140
Camp Lejeune, NC 28542
More details from his defense committee:

Continue reading “Appeal for a conscientious objector”

Monday night, I was speaking to a fairly large audience at the University of Richmond. About the war. I focused quite a lot on ‘How did the country get into this quagmire in Iraq?’ and presented an answer that focused heavily on the fact that, imho, a small coterie of ideologues based in Don Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney’s offices had in essence “captured” the US nation’s foreign policy and taken or dragged the nation into the war.
Which is all good and true as far as it goes. I was glad, though, that a male student in the audience put up his hand and said he personally had not felt “dragged” or “taken” into the war but that he had supported it, based on the new kind of fear and vulnerability that he had experienced since 9/11.
Soon as he said that, I was glad he had added that important dimension to the picture. Because the fact remains true that a large majority of US citizens did support the decision to go to the war, at the time, even if many of those former supporters are now wondering what the heck it was they got us all into.
We in the antiwar movement need to speak centrally to those erstwhile war supporters.
That was why I was so glad that that student had stuck up his hand and contributed to the discussion. (Plus, imho, it probably takes a degree of guts and self-confidence for a young male to admit in a large public setting that he experiences or has experienced fear.)
I started to try to engage with him. I probably didn’t do the greatest of all possible jobs. I tried to make the point that fear, while quite understandable in the circs, is not of itself a great guide to action: we still need to call on our capacities for logic and reason. (The violence between Israelis and Palestinians comes to mind here.)
I also started to make the point that a situation of sort of near-existential fear is one that most of “the other 96 percent” of the world’s population are already much more familiar with, and have lived with for a while; and that in many cases it has informed the much more war-averse attitudes that you find in places other than the US…
Anyway, thanks again to that questioner for forcing me to start to deal with this issue more seriously. The “small coterie” has certainly been an important part of the story. But we do also need to deal with the huge reserve of popular support for the war that they were able to draw on…
Before the talk, I had a very friendly dinner with a small group of UR faculty and students. Being as how we were in Richmond, former capital of the Confederacy, I felt almost obliged to state at one point that “We Quakers were right about slavery and you will all soon see, I hope, that we are right about violence and war.” Except of course Quakers aren’t supposed to be prideful, so this is not a point that it’s particularly appropriate to word in just that way…