Sir! No Sir! Exposing and Debunking Military Lies from Vietnam to Iraq

Where's the Outrage 122 - Our Troops

This article, by Laila Al-Arian, was posted to Democratic Underground.com, February 6, 2009

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How can a war that destroys a peoples’ country, kills over a million, and creates over four million refugees in a country of 30 million be said to be based on a desire to help people? And yet we have the nerve to call *them* terrorists.

U.S. soldiers have long been used by our nation’s leaders and war profiteers as pawns in the service or their plans. Not only are they sent to foreign lands to fight and die, but they are used in numerous public relations stunts. When people criticize a war, especially during the Bush/Cheney administration, our leaders pretend that our criticisms are directed at “the troops” rather than at the leaders who started the war. When Democratic Congresspersons threaten to withhold funds for continuation of the war, they are accused of withholding funds for the protection of “our troops”.
These claims are of course absurd. Criticism of a war is almost always directed at those who create and propagate it – not at those who fight in it. And nothing would protect our troops more than to end the war and send them home. Yet, those who have an interest in the continuation of war never miss an opportunity to slam a war’s opponents as being unpatriotic and against “our troops”.

My perspective on war

When I was very young, like the vast majority of Americans I bought into the idea that it was always a good and patriotic thing to fight in American wars. My liberal parents told me that our country was on the side of virtue and justice in every war it had fought in. Undoubtedly, that’s what they were taught in school – just as I was. But with the onset of the Vietnam War (when I was a teenager) they actually became active in protesting against it.
One thing that makes it difficult to assess justifications for war is that the true motivations are rarely if ever publicly announced, and there are usually multiple true motivations. Different historical accounts provide so many different reasons for wars.
That said, my ideas on valid justifications for war are very similar to the justifications provided by the United Nations. I believe that self-defense and the stopping of genocide (or something similar) are the only two valid justifications for war. As such, the more I read the more I have come to realize that so many of our wars were not justified, contrary to what I had been taught. At this time, our only wars that I believe to have been justified were the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, World War II, and the war to stop the genocide in Kosovo. A very many of them were motivated largely by the worst kinds of motives, including war profiteering, imperialism and racism.
Therefore, I no longer believe in a draft – for my country or any other. I used to believe in it because it made sense to me that if people want the privileges of citizenship they should be required to pay for those privileges in times of great danger to their country. After all, how can a country exist if it doesn’t have the power to defend itself in times of need? But since I realized the extent to which war has been abused by our nation’s leaders through much of our history, I have come to feel differently. If a country can’t persuade its citizens voluntarily to fight for it when necessary, then maybe that country shouldn’t exist.

Our troops

In order for our nation’s war profiteers to be able to use our troops as pawns in their propaganda projects, they have to make them out to be so sacred that the least criticism of them, or even implied criticism, is seen as something akin to treason. Sometimes that is not very hard to do. For Americans who have been brought up to believe that the purpose of every American war is to protect them from a fate worse than death, it is easy to understand the unquestioned reverence they have for our troops. They believe that they are in great danger, and the only thing standing between them and a fate worse than death are our American soldiers.
So, our soldiers can be looked upon as heroes. Or, they can be looked upon as naïve pawns who obediently do what they’re told in the service of those who start wars for their own benefit. Or they can be looked upon as both at the same time. But who are they really?
The truth is that many of them really are heroes – exposing themselves to great risks for what they see as the defense of their country. What percentage of them falls into that category? I wouldn’t even hazard to guess. But undoubtedly, many are heroes and very naïve about what they are being used for at the same time. In my opinion, the most admirable ones are those who, like John Kerry, joined up with the intention of defending their country, but who kept their minds open enough to later turn against a very unjustified war, and who subsequently led anti-war efforts.
And what about the many atrocities that have been committed in so many of our wars, especially in our war against the Philippines, the Vietnam War, and the most recent war and occupation of Iraq? If our soldiers are heroes, then how do you explain all those atrocities? Well, I would say that in most large groups of people there will be a mixture of bad apples and good ones and everything in between. I’m a very non-judgmental person. I don’t judge people by the group they belong to, but as individuals – for the most part. I’m even willing to withhold judgment on individual Republicans until I know something about them individually. And there is a fair share of them in my family.

Variations in U.S. soldiers’ attitudes and behavior over time or other circumstances

Accounts of the behavior of U.S. soldiers during war time have varied greatly. This does not necessarily mean that the differing accounts are unreliable. It is very likely that soldier behavior varies greatly according to their training, leadership and other circumstances, all which vary greatly over time and even within specific time periods.
Retired Brigadier General S.L.A. Marshall wrote in “Men against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command in Future War” that, based on his interviews with soldiers during World War II, only about 15% of them fired their guns at the enemy during combat. His conclusion from his interviews was that it was not fear, but rather humanity, that caused this low firing rate.
Marshall’s conclusions have since become very controversial, as much higher rates of firing were found during the Vietnam War. But even in that war, firing rates were found to be only around 80% – far short of the army ideal of 100%. And Marshall himself found much higher rates during the Vietnam War. So probably the differences were real, reflecting either differences in training or perhaps racial hatred as a factor during the Vietnam War.
Former U.S. Marine Tyler Boudreau, explains in an article in The Progressive, “To Kill or Not to Kill”, how his Marine training was meant to compensate for the U.S. military’s concerns over low firing rates. Referring to the Marshall studies, he says:

You can just imagine the military’s dismay upon getting this news… When I enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1989, drill instructors conveyed the gory destruction of human bodies with genuine zest… To master one’s reluctance to take life, one must stop revering life so much… We trained ourselves with flair to gouge eyeballs from our enemies’ sockets and crush their skulls with the heels of our boots as they lay quivering on the ground. The higher a Marine could swing his leg up into the air and the deeper his heel sunk into the dirt… the more virile he began to feel.

Boudreau wrote about this in “Packing Inferno: The Unmaking of a Marine”. But then he received an e-mail from a friend and former Marine from an earlier time period (1950s), objecting to what he wrote:

I found this image of a lust to gouge out eyeballs, and to thrust bayonets into real bodies, very off-putting… It sounded un-Marine to me… Though we came out of our training determined to be very good Marines, I don’t think we were ever encouraged to think of ourselves as, or be, bloodthirsty. In my day, we prided ourselves, I thought, on cool professionalism that didn’t depend on hating an enemy.

The former Marine who wrote that e-mail was Daniel Ellsberg, the man who blew the whistle on the Vietnam War with his leak of the Pentagon Papers.

The problems posed in combating guerilla warfare by an occupied and repressed population

Boudreau had a change of heart during his service in the Iraq War:

In 2005, after 12 years of active service in the Marine Corps and with growing reservations about the war, I… resigned my commission. It struck me that, in our headlong pursuit to deliver freedom and democracy and to expel an oppressive regime and combat terrorism, we had inadvertently lost sight of the very people we’d been deployed to help.

Boudreau explains the specific problems that tend to occur during a guerilla war, especially one in which the people of the occupied country respond with hatred and ferocity to what they see as repression and imperialism:

Because the conflict was unconventional, and because our adversaries wore no uniforms and were indistinguishable from the local populace, we began to view all people with suspicion. The distinction between the lives we could revere and those we were compelled to dismiss suddenly became blurred. This was problematic amidst an operation in which gaining popular support, as a method to undermine insurgents, was the paramount task put forth…
As our frustration swelled, our operations shifted conspicuously from humanitarian to a fierce battle of will with the insurgents and, by definition, with the populace in which they concealed themselves. The more casualties we took, the heavier our hand became with the locals…

Speaking out against the Iraq War – “Winter Soldiers”

An article in The Nation, titled “Winter Soldiers Speak”, made this point more forcefully. Written by Laila Al-Arian, the article is taken from the accounts of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) at the March 2008 Winter Soldier summit in Silver Spring, Maryland:

Pfc. Clifton Hicks was given an order. Abu Ghraib had become a "free-fire zone," Hicks was told, and no "friendlies" or civilians remained in the area. "Game on. All weapons free," his captain said. Upon that command, Hicks's unit opened a furious fusillade, firing wildly into cars, at people scurrying for cover, at anything that moved. Sent in to survey the damage, Hicks found the area littered with human and animal corpses, including women and children, but he saw no military gear or weapons of any kind near the bodies. In the aftermath of the massacre, Hicks was told that his unit had killed 700-800 "enemy combatants." But he knew the dead were not terrorists or insurgents; they were innocent Iraqis. "I will agree to swear to that till the day I die," he said. "I didn't see one enemy on that operation."
Soldiers and marines at Winter Soldier described the frustration of routinely raiding the wrong homes and arresting the wrong people… "This is not an isolated incident," the testifiers uttered over and over… insisting that the atrocities they committed or witnessed were common….
While the Winter Soldiers offered a searing critique of the military's treatment of civilians, which they described as alternately inhumane and sadistic, they also empathized with fellow soldiers thrust into a chaotic urban theater where the lines between combatants and civilians are blurred. "It's criminal to put such patriotic Americans...in a situation where their morals are at odds with their survival instincts"…

But as much light as was shone on the situation by US veterans, it only begins to scratch the surface of what Iraqis have to put up with:

The Winter Soldier hearings also featured Iraqi testifiers like Salam Talib… Though Talib said he was encouraged to see so many US veterans describing their experiences in frank terms, the testimonies were not much of a revelation for him. "What the American soldiers are talking about is everyday life for Iraqis. They're not even talking about 10 percent of what's happening there" … "They are simply giving credibility to the stories that have been told over and over from Iraq by journalists, Iraqis and humanitarian organizations…

The stories that Talib refers to are the ones that the U.S. corporate news media refuses to cover. To do so would be embarrassing to our country, and what is worse (since the rest of the world already knows about these things) it would cause the American people to turn against the Iraq occupation even more than they already have.

The inherent contradictions of the Iraq War and occupation

Boudreau sums up his article by noting some of the inherent contradictions facing U.S. troops in Iraq:

Empathy and aggression do not go hand in hand… It is not possible to reduce one’s regard for an enemy’s life without reducing one’s regard for all life. And it is not possible to genuinely strive to help a people, to reach out to them, while simultaneously preparing to kill them. You cannot achieve excellence in both war and humanity at the same time.

As true as Boudreau’s statement is, it does not go to the root of the problem in our occupation of Iraq. He says that “It is not possible to genuinely strive to help a people while simultaneously preparing to kill them”. Well, yeah. But that statement totally ignores the most glaring fact about the Iraq War and occupation (and so many other U.S. wars as well): Its purpose was not genuine and its purpose was NOT to “help a people”. How can a war that destroys a peoples’ country, kills over a million, and creates over four million refugees in a country with a population of between 25 and 30 million be said to be based on a desire to help people? And yet we have the nerve to call them terrorists.
The hypocrisy is mind boggling. The purpose of this war was not to remove a threat to our country, not to fight terrorism and not to bring freedom and democracy to the Iraqi people. The purpose of the war was to enrich the profiteers who advocated it. Given that purpose, it shouldn’t be difficult to understand why our troops were faced with the hatred and ferocious resistance that they encountered.

Where's the Outrage 121 - Why Are We Still at War?

This essay, by Norman Soloman, was published in the Truthout, February 3, 2009

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The United States began its war in Afghanistan 88 months ago. "The war on terror" has no sunset clause. As a perpetual emotion machine, it offers to avenge what can never heal and to fix grief that is irreparable.
For the crimes against humanity committed on September 11, 2001, countless others are to follow, with huge conceits about technological "sophistication" and moral superiority. But if we scrape away the concrete of media truisms, we may reach substrata where some poets have dug.

W.H. Auden: "Those to whom evil is done / Do evil in return."

Stanley Kunitz: "In a murderous time / the heart breaks and breaks / and lives by breaking."

And from 1965, when another faraway war got its jolt of righteous escalation from Washington's certainty, Richard Farina wrote: "And death will be our darling and fear will be our name." Then as now came the lessons that taught with unfathomable violence once and for all that unauthorized violence must be crushed by superior violence.
The US war effort in Afghanistan owes itself to the enduring "war on terrorism," chasing a holy grail of victory that can never be.
Early into the second year of the Afghanistan war, in November 2002, a retired US Army general, William Odom, appeared on C-SPAN's "Washington Journal" program and told viewers: "Terrorism is not an enemy. It cannot be defeated. It's a tactic. It's about as sensible to say we declare war on night attacks and expect we're going to win that war. We're not going to win the war on terrorism."
But the "war on terrorism" rubric - increasingly shortened to the even vaguer "war on terror" - kept holding enormous promise for a warfare state of mind. Early on, the writer Joan Didion saw the blotting of the horizon and said so: "We had seen, most importantly, the insistent use of Sept. 11 to justify the reconception of America's correct role in the world as one of initiating and waging virtually perpetual war."
There, in one sentence, an essayist and novelist had captured the essence of a historical moment that vast numbers of journalists had refused to recognize - or, at least, had refused to publicly acknowledge. Didion put to shame the array of self-important and widely lauded journalists at the likes of The New York Times, The Washington Post, PBS and National Public Radio.
The new US "war on terror" was rhetorically bent on dismissing the concept of peacetime as a fatuous mirage.
Now, in early 2009, we're entering what could be called Endless War 2.0, while the new president's escalation of warfare in Afghanistan makes the rounds of the media trade shows, preening the newest applications of technological might and domestic political acquiescence.
And now, although repression of open debate has greatly dissipated since the first months after 9/11, the narrow range of political discourse on Afghanistan is essential to the Obama administration's reported plan to double US troop deployments in that country within a year.
"This war, if it proliferates over the next decade, could prove worse in one respect than any conflict we have yet experienced," Norman Mailer wrote in his book "Why Are We at War?" six years ago. "It is that we will never know just what we are fighting for. It is not enough to say we are against terrorism. Of course we are. In America, who is not? But terrorism compared to more conventional kinds of war is formless, and it is hard to feel righteous when in combat with a void ..."
Anticipating futility and destruction that would be enormous and endless, Mailer told an interviewer in late 2002: "This war is so unbalanced in so many ways, so much power on one side, so much true hatred on the other, so much technology for us, so much potential terrorism on the other, that the damages cannot be estimated. It is bad to enter a war that offers no clear avenue to conclusion.... There will always be someone left to act as a terrorist."
And there will always be plenty of rationales for continuing to send out the patrols and launch the missiles and drop the bombs in Afghanistan, just as there have been in Iraq, just as there were in Vietnam and Laos. Those countries, with very different histories, had the misfortune to share a singular enemy, the most powerful military force on the planet.
It may be profoundly true that we are not red states and blue states, that we are the United States of America - but what that really means is still very much up for grabs. Even the greatest rhetoric is just that. And while the clock ticks, the deployment orders are going through channels.
For anyone who believes that the war in Afghanistan makes sense, I recommend the January 30 discussion on "Bill Moyers Journal" with historian Marilyn Young and former Pentagon official Pierre Sprey. A chilling antidote to illusions that fuel the war can be found in the transcript.
Now, on Capitol Hill and at the White House, convenience masquerades as realism about "the war on terror." Too big to fail. A beast too awesome and immortal not to feed.
And death will be our darling. And fear will be our name.

IVAW News - IVAW Participates in Historic Iraqi Labor Conference

IVAW will be traveling with a U.S. labor delegation to participate in the First International Iraqi Labor Conference in Erbil, Iraq, which takes place from February 27-28. The conference will bring together trade unionists from across Iraq with international allies from labor movements around the world. The objectives of the conference are: (1) to unify the Iraqi labor movement; (2) to increase pressure on the Iraqi government to enact a labor rights law that conforms to all international standards in the International Labor Organization Conventions on the Rights of Workers; (3) to defend Iraqi national resources and public assets against foreign acquisition; and (4) to demand restoration of full sovereignty, which can only be accomplished by ending the occupation and removing all foreign troops and bases.
Since the U.S. occupation began, Iraqi workers have been targeted in an attempt to suppress the population and control Iraq's natural resources. The initial Coalition Provisional Authority upheld Saddam Hussein's law of banning unions; labor leaders have been killed, tortured, and imprisoned; worker's rights have been routinely violated; and union bank accounts have been frozen. In turn, Iraqi labor unions and workers have been among the leading non-sectarian forces defending Iraqi sovereignty and democracy by exercising their collective power through strikes to increase wages, resist privatization of Iraq's oil industry, and stand up to foreign contractors who threaten their livelihoods.
IVAW board member, Aaron Hughes and organizer, TJ Buonomo will represent IVAW as the only non-labor union participants at this historic conference. We have accepted this special invitation as an important opportunity to powerfully demonstrate our solidarity with the Iraqi people's struggle for a truly democratic and sovereign Iraq, free of foreign domination, both military and economic.

Where's the Outrage 117 - Nothing to go back to, no place of their own

This article, by James Warden, was published in Stars and Stripes, January 25, 2009

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BAGHDAD — Jabar Abu Abdullah once had a good job — guarding a farm in Sab al Bor — and a trailer to live in.
But like many Iraqis, he fled his home four years ago when sectarian fighting broke out. Now, unlike those countrymen who are returning to their old neighborhoods as the violence subsides, Abdullah remains in the Baghdad slum of Chirkuk, operating a closet-sized general store.
“I don’t own anything, so I can’t go back,” he said.
Most reports on Iraqis who fled sectarian fighting have focused on those who want to reclaim their homes. Yet masses of displaced Iraqis have no homes to return to, and no desire to return to the areas where they once lived.
They’ve settled illegally on government land, built homes out of whatever was handy and refuse to move on. While the Iraqi government has had widespread success resettling those with homes, this group of internally displaced people, or IDP, is proving to be an altogether different problem. Baghdad province itself has an estimated 100,000 squatters.
The displaced homeless are among Iraq’s most destitute, although that group also includes some who simply don’t have a deed for homes they bought. Many weren’t even forced out by sectarian fighting. They left impoverished rural areas for Baghdad in the hope of making a better life. Migrants actually started building Chirkuk in 2003, before militias began terrorizing local neighborhoods en masse.
“We’re not even ‘low income.’ We’re ‘below income,’ ” Abdullah said.
Chirkuk is one of 33 so-called “IDP clusters” in Baghdad’s Kadimiyah district, said Lt. Col. Christopher Beckert, deputy commander for the 2nd Heavy Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division. These squatter villages range from a couple of dozen families to 780 families in Chirkuk. The district also has a government-sanctioned IDP camp with services similar to any other neighborhood, including schools.
The camps are blights on the neighborhoods around them. Their concentrated poverty makes them fertile ground for extremist groups who pay the destitute to place roadside bombs or attack coalition forces. Soldiers patrol the area daily to keep tabs on it.
“We know the Americans are here to defend us and fight al-Qaida, but we’re poor people,” Abdullah said. “If they offer money, we’ll do it.”
Residents set up stores in unsanctioned areas that don’t meet local codes and without paying requisite fees. The illegal stores undercut legitimate businesses. The Kadimiyah public works department bulldozed one group of illegal stores after the owners ignored warnings to leave.
But mostly they’re just unsightly. Residents slapped the homes together from cinder blocks, sheet metal, tarps and U.N. food bags. Trash litters the streets. In some districts, raw sewage turns the dirt roads into a fetid morass.|
Kadimiyah residents, justly proud of their rapid return to normalcy, blame the clusters for many of the continuing problems in their communities.
“And they’re right. In many cases, there’s no argument there,” Beckert said.
Yet those displaced people can also be scapegoats for larger problems, he continued. Beckert noted that they wouldn’t be able to place roadside bombs without help from someone living in the community legitimately. They also face significant hurdles their richer counterparts don’t.
In his estimation, property owners make up the largest share of IDPs in his command’s area — about 3,000 people have returned home just in Hurriya, a Kadimiyah neighborhood. But helping those without a home isn’t as easy as helping those who own property in the neighborhoods they fled.
“I think it’s going to take longer to handle fewer people because they’re not the priority right now,” Beckert said. “Their problem is the district councils don’t want them in their neighborhood.”Still, the displaced homeless have received some not-insignificant help. Improved security allowed the U.N. to install water tanks in Chirkuk and distribute humanitarian aid. Altogether, international agencies have provided $1.5 million in relief to Hurriya.
The relief only temporarily alleviates the hardships.
“What is the U.N. going to give you, split peas and rice?” Abdullah asked. “We got all that. We need a different way to help us. Our suffering is property.”
The Iraqi government has directed substantial resources for homeless displaced people. There are migrant return centers that pay returning families 1 million dinars, or about $870, to get back on their feet. It even paid residents of one cluster 3 million dinars to leave so it could turn the land into a parking area for visitors to Kadimiyah’s lucrative shrine. In all, the number of displaced homeless in the district has dropped by half over the past year.
But paying large numbers of people to find a new home can increase costs in Baghdad’s limited rental market, and some of those who were paid to leave probably just moved into other squatter villages. In all likelihood, the half that still remains will be the most difficult to help.
The government could set up more government-sanctioned IDP camps, Beckert said. It could also help them find places to rent or consider low-income housing. But it’s sometimes been slow to help.
“We as Americans want to see these people not living in trash,” Beckert said. “The Iraqi government’s answer is, ‘They shouldn’t be here, but what are we going to do about it?’ They don’t want to be pushed. They want to have an Iraqi solution to it. We may be just a little too impatient.”
Abdullah can complain about many things in Chirkuk, but business isn’t one them. Although he’s not rich by any means, his neighbors ensure that he has enough to provide for his wife and three daughters. The key, he said, is taking care of his customers.
“If you treat them right, you’ll make a good business,” he said.
That’s a lesson Abdullah said he wants the Iraqi government to remember as it figures out what to do with places like Chirkuk.

Searching for two states - Disarray awaits US envoy on first Mideast trip

This article was published by Agence France Presse, January 25, 2009

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JERUSALEM (AFP) – US peace envoy George Mitchell will find a region in disarray when he arrives this week on his first visit to try to cement a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas militants.
The Jewish state is busy with an election campaign and the Palestinians are divided more deeply than ever in the wake of the deadly three-week Gaza war.
Mitchell is due to meet Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas in Ramallah on Wednesday to review "how to relaunch the Israeli-Palestinian peace process," an official said.
But Abbas is a weakened figure whose writ no longer runs in the Gaza Strip where the Islamist Hamas movement retains power, despite the Israeli army assault that left more than 1,300 dead.
Abbas faces a battle with Hamas, which has declared victory in surviving the Israeli offensive, just to control international relief efforts. His calls for a Palestinian unity government have gone unheeded.
And Israel's leading parties are squabbling over who is best placed to work with US President Barack Obama and his "aggressive" push for peace.
Mitchell is to arrive in Israel on Tuesday night and hold talks over the following two days.
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni charged that a government led by election favourite Benjamin Netanyahu could cause a "clash" with the United States.
"Israel and the United States can head toward full cooperation over common goals such as fighting terror, stopping Iran and Hamas and Hezbollah," she said.
"Israel and the United States can also reach a clash. It depends who will be here. If whoever is here stops the peace process and thinks that the world will be with him, will find himself in a head-on collision with the United States in 20 seconds."
Deputy prime minister Haim Ramon added his own warning: "Anyone who today wants to continue the settlements and annexe all the (occupied) territories will bring a major catastrophe on Israel.
"All that will cause a confrontation not just with the United States but the whole world," he said.
Livni leads the ruling centre-right Kadima party for the February 10 ballot which pollsters are predicting will result in a coalition government of Netanyahu's Likud, the far-right Yisrael Beitenu and conservative Jewish religious parties.
A Likud party official scoffed at Livni's comments.
"She is under pressure, because the polls predict that Kadima will lose. Benjamin Netanyahu is the best placed Israeli leader to handle our relations with Washington and defend Israel's interests," he said.
Netanyahu had already tried to cool fears of a drift to the far-right, saying: "If I win the elections, I won't form an extreme right wing government."
To add to the complications, Kadima Prime Minister Ehud Olmert faces corruption charges and is standing down from politics at this election.
But Mitchell, an Arab-American, is no stranger to the challenges of the six-decade Israel-Palestinian conflict.
He led a fact-finding mission into the causes of the 2000 second intifada or Palestinian uprising against occupation. The 2001 Mitchell report called for a halt to all violence and a freeze of Israeli settlements on Arab territory.
Obama appointed the 75-year-old on Thursday and dispatched him to the region to ensure a "durable" and "sustainable" ceasefire in Gaza after Israel's offensive.
Israel and Hamas declared unilateral ceasefires on January 18 and Israel completed its withdrawal from the territory on January 21.
However Israel has warned it will not hesitate to bomb the strip again if arms smuggling resumes and Hamas, which retains the capacity to send rockets to southern Israel, has demanded that the Gaza borders be fully open.
Mitchell arrives while both sides are negotiating in Egypt to try to consolidate the ceasefire.
On the ground in Gaza, residents were still picking through rubble, with major reconstruction efforts blocked because of closed borders.
Israel has kept the crossings shut, saying it will cooperate with rebuilding efforts only if Hamas, which Israel brands a terror outfit, does not control them.
War damage is estimated at 1.9 billion dollars (1.4 billion euros).

War Crimes and hard times for those who tell others to kill - Are We Civilized Enough to Hold Our Leaders Accountable for War Crimes? The World Is Watching

This article, by John Dean, was posted to AlterNet, January 24, 2009

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Remarkably, the confirmation of President Obama's Attorney General nominee, Eric Holder, is being held up by Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn, who apparently is unhappy that Holder might actually investigate and prosecute Bush Administration officials who engaged in torture. Aside from this repugnant new Republican embrace of torture (which might be a winning issue for the lunatic fringe of the party and a nice way to further marginalize the GOP), any effort to protect Bush officials from legal responsibility for war crimes, in the long run, will not work.
It is difficult to believe that Eric Holder would agree not to enforce the law, like his recent Republican predecessors. Indeed, if he were to do so, President Obama should withdraw his nomination. But as MSNBC "Countdown" anchor Keith Olbermann stated earlier this week, even if the Obama Administration for whatever reason does not investigate and prosecute these crimes, this still does not mean that the Bush Administration officials who were involved in torture are going to get a pass.
With few exceptions, the discussion about what the Obama Administration will do regarding the torture of detainees during the Bush years has been framed as a domestic matter, and the fate of those involved in torturing has been largely viewed as a question of whether the Department of Justice will take action. In fact, not only is the world watching what the Obama Administration does regarding Bush's torturers, but other countries are very likely to take action if the United States fails to do so.

Bush's Torturers Have Serious Jeopardy

Philippe Sands, a Queen's Counsel at Matrix Chambers and Professor of International law at University College London, has assembled a powerful indictment of the key Bush Administration people involved in torture in his book Torture Team: Rumsfeld's Memo and the Betrayal of American Values. He explains the legal exposure of people like former attorney general Alberto Gonzales, Dick Cheney's counsel and later chief of staff David Addington, former Office of Legal Counsel attorney John Yoo, the former Department of Defense general counsel Jim Haynes, and others for their involvement in the torture of detainees at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and CIA secret prisons.
After reading Sands's book and, more recently, listening to his comments on Terry Gross's NPR show "Fresh Air," on January 7, 2009 I realized how closely the rest of the world is following the actions of these former officials, and was reminded that these actions appear to constitute not merely violations of American law, but also, and very literally, crimes against humanity -- for which the world is ready to hold them responsible.
Here is what Professor Sands told Terry Gross on NPR: "In talking to prosecutors around the world, as I have done, they all recognize the very real political difficulties of taking on someone who has been Vice President of the United States, or President of the United States, or Secretary of Defense of the United States. But those arguments melt away as you go a little down the chain. And I don't think the same arguments would apply in relation to the man, for example, who was Vice President Cheney's general counsel, at the time the decisions were taken, David Addington ... I think he faces a very real risk of, you know, investigation for complicity in an act that amounts to torture ... " Later, referring to "international investigations," he added that Addington (and others) were at "serious risk of being investigated."
These are remarkable statements from a very well-informed man. Because we have a common publisher, I was able to contact him in London, and pose a few questions. I find his book, statements and responses to my questions chilling.

Q & A With Professor Philippe Sands

The following is my email exchange with Professor Sands:

John W. Dean: When talking to Ms. Gross you said you were not calling for such international investigations because we all need more facts. Given the fact that Judge Susan Crawford has now made clear that torture occurred, do you -- and others with your expertise and background -- have sufficient information to call for other countries to take action if the Obama Administration fails to act?
Philippe Sands: Last week's intervention by Susan Crawford, confirming that torture occurred at Guantanamo, is highly significant (as I explain in a piece I wrote with Dahlia Lithwick: "The Turning Point: How the Susan Crawford interview changes everything we know about torture"). The evidence as to torture, with all that implies for domestic and foreign criminal investigation, is compelling. Domestic and foreign investigators already have ample evidence to commence investigation, if so requested or on their own account, even if the whole picture is not yet available. That has implications for the potential exposure of different individuals, depending on the nature and extent of their involvement in acts that have elements of a criminal conspiracy to subvert the law.|
JD: If yes, can you share what you and others might do, and when?
PS: I am in the process of completing the epilogue to my book Torture Team, which will be published in May 2009. That will set out, in detail, what I learned when I made a return visit to the European judge and prosecutor with whom I met in the summer of 2007, as described in the book. Watch this space.
JD: If no, what would it take for those like you to call for all countries with potential jurisdiction to take action?
PS: More than 140 countries may potentially exercise jurisdiction over former members of the Bush Administration for violations of the 1984 Torture Convention and the 1949 Geneva Conventions, including the standards reflected in their Common Article 3. Whether they do so, and how they might do so, turns on a range of factors, including their domestic procedural rules. In the United Kingdom, one criminal investigation is already underway, in relation to the alleged treatment of Binyam Mohammed, a Guantanamo detainee who is a British resident. I doubt it will be the last. That said, having set out the relevant facts in one case [in my book], to the best of my abilities, I feel it will now be for others to take this forward as they consider appropriate.
JD: Also, when talking to Ms. Gross you said that you did not think that David Addington and others involved in torture were likely to be travelling outside the United States. Do you know for a fact that any country might take action? Have you discussed this with any prosecutors who could do so?
PS: This will be addressed in the epilogue to Torture Team.
JD: Do you believe that a failure of the Obama Administration to investigate, and if necessary, prosecute, those involved in torture would make them legally complicit in the torture undertaken by the Bush Administration?
PS: No, although it may give rise to violations by the United States of its obligations under the Torture Convention. In the past few days there have been a series of significant statements: that of Susan Crawford, of former Vice President Cheney's confirming that he approved the use of waterboarding, and by the new Attorney General Eric Holder that he considers waterboarding to be torture. On the basis of these and other statements it is difficult to see how the obligations under Articles 7(1) and (2) of the Torture Convention do not cut in: these require the US to "submit the case to its competent authorities for the purpose of prosecution". What happens thereafter is a matter for the prosecutor, who may decide that, in accordance with applicable standards ("authorities shall take their decision in the same manner as in the case of any ordinary offence of a serious nature under the law of that State") and the facts of the case, including the prospects for a successful prosecution, that proceeding to actual prosecution is not justified.
JD: Finally, you mentioned the case proceeding in the UK regarding possible torture of a British national. Is it possible that even an American ally like Great Britain could seek extradition, and undertake prosecution, of U.S. officials like Addington and Yoo for facilitating the torture of a citizen of Great Britain -- if the U.S. fails to act?
PS: It is possible. The more likely scenario, however, is that which occurred in Senator Pinochet's case: the unwitting traveller sets foot in the wrong country at the wrong time.

What Will The Obama Administration Do?

As all who have followed this issue know, President Obama hedged after he was elected as to what he may or may not do. So too did his Attorney General nominee. After Eric Holder declared waterboarding to be unlawful, no one on the Senate Judiciary Committee truly followed up as to what he was going to do, but it appears they are going to now press him on that point.
My question is how can the Obama Administration not investigate, and, if appropriate, prosecute given the world is watching, because if they do not, other may do so? How could there be "change we can believe in" if the new administration harbors war criminals -- which is the way that Philippe Sands and the rest of the world, familiar with the facts which have surfaced even without an investigation, view those who facilitated or engaged in torture?
One would think that people like Cheney, Rumsfeld, Addington, Gonzales, Yoo, Haynes and others, who claim to have done nothing wrong, would call for investigations to clear themselves if they really believed that to be the case. Only they, however, seem to believe in their innocence -- the entire gutless and cowardly group of them, who have shamed themselves and the nation by committing crimes against humanity in the name of the United States.
We must all hope that the Obama Administration does the right thing, rather than forcing another country to clean up the mess and seek to erase the dangerous precedent these people have created for our country. A first clue may come when Holder resumes testifying.

Surging Out of Iraq, the Obama Administration at War - Logistics of a faster Iraq exit

This article, by Gordon Lubold, was publishedby the Christian Science Monitor, January 26, 2009

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Washington - President Obama's plan to bring American troops home from Iraq is beginning to jell, but whether he keeps his campaign promise to do it in 16 months may depend on logistics, security needs in Afghanistan, and the political dynamic he confronts at the Pentagon.
Ultimately, the decision rests with the new commander in chief, who will either lean on a timeline-oriented departure to meet political goals or a conditions-based plan more pleasing to military commanders that could take two years or more.
Mr. Obama is expected to meet this week with the heads of the four services, including the Army and Marine Corps, who are eager to move beyond Iraq. Obama will weigh their views with those of senior commanders, including Gen. David Petraeus and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, both of whom are inclined to take more than 16 months to withdraw from Iraq.
"We have ... been looking at several options, and obviously 16 months is one of them," Mr. Gates told reporters Thursday.
The rate of departure may be first determined by what the president decides should now be the American security posture in Iraq. Many foreign-policy experts say the US has a strategic interest in leaving a sizable force there for years to come, and some believe that could mean as many as 60,000 troops remain in noncombat-related roles. The Bush administration has signed a "status of forces agreement" that requires most troops to be out of Iraq by 2011.
But other factors are at play. One is logistics: the ability to rapidly remove as many as 143,000 uniformed personnel, some 60,000 aircraft and vehicles, 120,000 trailer-sized containers, and 150,000 private contractors from nearly 50 bases and installations.
The military must decide what equipment stays and what goes. Gifting thousands of used Humvees or old generators to the Iraqis, for example, would cut down on what is shipped home. But it could also lead to more decisions about helping the Iraqis maintain the equipment. And then, who would pay for it?
The military has already been quietly moving materiel out of Iraq over the past 18 to 24 months, says a military official who requested anonymity. He adds, "We think right now we're about the right size we need to be."
The Marines have also been shipping as much as possible out of Iraq in anticipation of redeployment orders, Gen. James Conway, commandant of the Marine Corps, told reporters Friday. General Conway, who wants to send new forces to Afghanistan, has pushed for a reasonable but speedy redeployment. Obama is also looking to send more forces from Iraq to retool the mission in Afghanistan.
After the first Gulf War, an additional 6,000 National Guard and Reservists were sent to Kuwait to help get all the equipment out in about nine months, says Gus Pagonis, a so-called "logistical wizard" who, as a three-star Army general, oversaw the withdrawal from that conflict.
But Mr. Pagonis points out that he had "no terrorist threat and no threat of security." Withdrawal from Iraq, on the other hand, is expected to invite insurgent attacks and may require extra time.
Security will be on Obama's mind as he makes his decision. "The commander in chief cannot be political," says Pagonis. "To the average American, he is making the decision as president, but to the armed forces, he is making the decision as commander in chief."
If Obama slides on his 16-month withdrawal plans, he can use logistical and security concerns for political cover.
"Arguably, Iraqi security forces are improving fast enough that, absent a major disruption to the system, we could try to leave on Obama's 16-month schedule," says Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at Brookings Institution, a think tank in Washington. But Mr. O'Hanlon says it would be a mistake to rush out of Iraq, ignoring the political realities, unresolved issues, and ethnic dissension that still exists there.
"The drawdown pace should be gradual this year and can then accelerate next year," he says.
More streamlined processes mean that Iraq does not have the "iron mountains" of stockpiled equipment that posed enormous logistical challenges in the first Gulf War, say military officials. Still, whatever decision Obama makes will require planners to move figurative mountains to get it done. "It will be tough, but it will not be insurmountable," says the military official.

Obama's wars: Surging out of Iraq - Gates says Iraq meeting was start of process

This article, by Anne Gearan, was distributed by the Associated Press, January 23, 2009.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama's top military officials said Thursday they will make sure he knows the potential downside of any timetable for pulling U.S. forces out of Iraq, including the 16-month deadline Obama set during his presidential campaign.
"Our obligation is to give the president a range of options and the risks associated with each of those options, and he will make the decision," Defense Secretary Robert Gates said. He said the 16-month option is one of several. He did not provide a range, nor say which option he himself prefers.
Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are both holdovers from the Bush administration and one-time critics of a swift or deadline-driven withdrawal. Speaking publicly for the first time since Obama took office, both men suggested that the 16-month timeline is not as firm as Obama's campaign rhetoric implied.
"We've certainly heard 16 months for a long time," Mullen told reporters. "We've looked at options, looked at that option, and the risks that are associated with that."
When Obama is ready, Mullen said, "I will advise him accordingly, and then he'll make the decision."
Meanwhile, the U.S. diplomat who has seen Iraq transformed from chaos to relative calm over the past two years said that a hasty departure of U.S. troops would carry severe risks. Al-Qaida might be emboldened and Iraq's security and political gains threatened, Ambassador Ryan Crocker said.
Speaking to reporters a day after he and the top U.S. commander in Iraq briefed Obama by video connection, Crocker declined to say what he and Gen. Ray Odierno told the president.
But he noted that the president was committed to a responsible pullout of the more than 140,000-strong U.S. force.
"A precipitous withdrawal runs some very severe risks," Crocker said in Baghdad.
He said that al-Qaida had been "much weakened" due to setbacks on the battlefield and a loss of support within the Sunni Arab community.
"But as long as they can cling to some handhold here, they are going to keep trying to literally fight their way back," Crocker said.
"And perhaps most important it would have a chilling effect on Iraqis," he said of a quick U.S. departure. "I think the spirit of compromise, of accommodation, of focus on institutional development — all of that would run the risk of getting set aside."
Iraqi officials have said they hope the new administration will stick by the generally longer timeline established in the U.S.-Iraq security agreement which went into effect this month. The deal provides for U.S. combat troops to leave the cities by the end of June, with all U.S. troops gone from the country by 2012.
Military officials said there was no decision made at Wednesday's session in the Situation Room. The meeting on Obama's first full day in office was meant to frame his pledge to quickly end a war he has called misguided and wasteful. He has pledged to turn the nation's focus to what he calls a more pressing conflict in Afghanistan.
Gates called the meeting with Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and others just the start of a process to evaluate numerous options for Iraq.
"There was a good give-and-take," Gates said.
"We discussed a deliberate and yet rapid process," Mullen said.
In a statement after the meeting, Obama said he had told the generals and advisers to come up with a plan for a responsible drawdown, but he did not mention the 16-month timeline.
Military commanders say Iraq is much more stable and safe than it was a year ago, and certainly far calmer than in the darkest days of sectarian bloodshed in 2005 and 2006.
American soldiers are still dying in Iraq, but in fewer numbers even as they take greater risks and fewer precautions.

Shutting Down the Machine - Sanctuary Movement Supports Surge In GI Resistance

This article, by Dee Knight, was originally published in Workers World, January 18 2009. The accompanying photograph was published in the September 1969 issue of The Bond.

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Liberated GIs in the Church of the Crossroads, Honolulu

The current surge in GI resistance, as reported in earlier articles in Workers World, has begun to stimulate calls for a sanctuary movement. In such a movement, people massively communicate unconditional support for GIs who refuse to fight in unjust wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Sanctuary cities have been established in Ithaca, N.Y., and Berkeley, Calif.
Such a movement has also been underway in Israel. Dozens of young Israelis have refused to be part of the Israeli occupation force on the West Bank or in Gaza, scene of the latest slaughter of civilians.
Workers World spoke with John Lewis, a national field organizer of the American Servicemen’s Union (ASU) in August 1969, when an earlier sanctuary struggle took place in Honolulu in protest of the war against Vietnam.
The struggle started when Louis “Buffy” Perry entered the Crossroads Church there amid a flurry of publicity on Aug. 6. “I’ve chosen to begin a lifestyle of noncooperation, on any level, with the military establishment,” Perry told reporters. “I urge all my brothers and sisters to do the same.”

Began with a mass protest

The local anti-war movement, known as the Hawai’i Resistance, held an anti-war march and rally of 350 people on Aug. 10 to commemorate Nagasaki Day. GI participants and their civilian supporters demanded “a bill of rights” for military personnel. By the end of that day, six GIs went AWOL and sought sanctuary inside the Church of the Crossroads, joining Perry.
During the next week, Black Marines rebelled at the nearby Kaneohe Marine Corps Air Station and a delegation from the sanctuary church demonstrated support for them. Marines and soldiers from other bases and from the tens of thousands visiting Hawaii on rest and recreation break from Vietnam began to join those in the sanctuary. Some who didn’t join the sanctuary brought food and other material aid
The Hawaii People’s Coalition for Peace and Justice quickly formed to support the soldiers. Two “sanctuaries” for AWOL soldiers were established: the Church of the Crossroads and the First Unitarian Church of Honolulu. During the next four weeks, Honolulu became a hotbed of GI resistance, with over 100,000 military personnel on the island of Oahu at Pearl Harbor, Wickham Air Force Base, Scofield Barracks and Kaneohe Marine Corps Air Station, plus GIs on leave from Vietnam. According to legal records from a case brought three years later, at least 24 soldiers refused to cooperate in a war they didn’t agree with and took refuge in the churches.
“You have to picture the grounds of the Crossroads teeming with people,” said Cindy Lance, who stayed at Crossroads Church during the sanctuary struggle. “In the evening there would be maybe a couple hundred support people bringing food and other supplies or just coming to stay for the evening, singing and talking with the GIs.”
About dawn on Friday, Sept. 12, military police stormed the two churches and seized some 12 AWOL GIs. Others escaped. The Unitarian Church caretaker remembered waking up with an MP’s gun to his head. The raids occurred simultaneously and were over quickly. The soldiers would face court-martial.
“It was a dramatic end to a dramatic demonstration,” Unitarian pastor Gene Bridges said of the raid. He explained that the sanctuary idea derives from medieval Christian practice, when a person fleeing authorities could find safe haven inside a church.

Liberated Barracks

Cindy Lance continued to work with Liberated Barracks, an organization spawned by the sanctuary movement that continued to reach out to GIs after the sanctuary raids. “I think the military simply wanted the sanctuary movement to die,” Lance said. “They probably thought we would be demoralized after the bust and just fade away. On the contrary, we continued to visit the guys in the brigs and attend their trials.”
Many GIs defied the MPs’ efforts to arrest them. The cops only caught John Lewis after a dramatic chase across Honolulu by a convoy of vehicles—documented by a BBC-TV news team in Honolulu to cover the sanctuary movement. Lewis ended up in the Fort Dix stockade in New Jersey.
Other GIs who had participated in the sanctuary decided to leave the country and go to Canada. The life-and-death gravity of the situation changed not only the lives of the GIs, but also the thinking of some anti-war activists. Community members began secretly housing AWOL GIs in their homes.
An earlier sanctuary movement was integral to the anti-slavery abolitionist struggle of the 19th century, known as “the Underground Railroad.” Thousands of runaway slaves found freedom and a new life through the heroic support provided to them by churches and individuals who sheltered and guided them, often at extremely high risk to themselves. This legacy is important to the current struggle. Then, as now, those who provided sanctuary were consciously doing everything they could to win immediate freedom for the victims of a criminal government and its institutions arrayed against them.
Today, it is unknown how many GIs are living a semi-underground AWOL existence, although thousands are AWOL. During the Vietnam War, hundreds of thousands were AWOL, and non-white GIs especially were sheltered by their families and other community members.
Today, to the extent it exists, this embryonic form of sanctuary has been largely clandestine. It may be possible to make it public if it can be made clear to those who remain in hiding that there is widespread public support for them in their communities and in society at large.
Some worry about the difficulty of providing sanctuary. In a 2003 article, Cindy Lance commented: “Wasn’t it difficult for Germans to help Jews escape, or for whites to smuggle slaves to freedom? It’s not a question of degree of difficulty, it’s a question of doing what’s right.”

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The folowing description of the events in Hawai'i, was originally published in the GI Paper The AWOL PRESS, issue no. 9:

Sanctuary
Some two dozen GIs opposed to the Vietnam war have sought sanctuary at the Church of the Crossroads in Honolulu. The action began August 6 at a Hiroshima Day demonstration, when aa member of the air force named Louis Parry announced that "further cooperation with the US military on my part, would be to commit crimes against humanity."
Parry, surrounded by civilian supporters, then took sanctuary in the church.
On August 9th, Parry was joined by five other servicemen. One of them, Marine Pfc. Vincent Ventimiglia, announced that he was a member of military intelligence who had been ordered to bring in the "defectors," but had decided to join them instead. Another of the GIs who took sanctuary that day was on R&R from Vietnam.
Since that time, the number of GIs in the sanctuary has fluctuated around two dozen, about one--third of the Vietnam veterans. Ventimiglia was arrested Aug. 20 when he left the sanctuary to try and meet his parents at a Honolulu hotel. Four of the servicemen have left the sanctuary and surrendered to authorities voluntarily.
The military has so far not made any move to break up the sanctuary and arrest the GIs. The New York Times quoted "officials" to the effect that they would ask local police to arrest the GIs for desertion once they had been AWOL for thirty days.
The custom of sanctuary is not legally recognized today, but has been invoked by several churches as a protest against the war in Vietnam.

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Wiping the Stains off the Wall and Getting out of GITMO - Obama Acts "In the Interest of Justice" To Halt Tribunals

This article, by John Nichols, was published in The Nation, January 21, 2009.

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Apparently Barack Obama took his oath to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States" a tad more seriously than did his predecessor.
Lawyers for the United States government -- the one now led by Obama -- acted even as the inaugural celebrations were going on to halt the Guantánamo Bay military commission trials.
Obama, in one of his first official acts, ordered a suspension of the trials, which had been adjourned in anticipation of the transition of authority from former President George Bush to his successor.
The motion filed by Obama's lawyers called for a 120-day moratorium on legal proceedings so that "the newly inaugurated president and his administration [can] review the military commissions process, generally, and the cases currently pending before military commissions, specifically."
Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a holdover from the Bush administration that initiated the controversial trials, joined in the motion.
The order to halt to the tribunals was issed "in the interests of justice," according to the official request to the military judges.
"The suspension of military commissions so soon after President Obama took office is an indication of the sense of urgency he feels about reversing the destructive course that the previous administration was taking in fighting terrorism," declared Gabor Rona, the international director of Human Rights First.
Obama must, of course, do much more in the interest of justice. "It's a great first step but it is only a first step," notes Rona. "It will permit the newly inaugurated president and his administration to undertake a thorough review of both the pending cases and the military commissions process generally."
But Human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, who has represented Guantánamo suspects told BBC Radio 4: "It's going to take some work but what he [Obama] is looking at I think here is a very clear-cut distinction between this administration and the last."
That would seem to be a fair assessment of the moment, and the beginning of definition of change we can believe in.