Tag: Iraq

Thoughts on protest

Thursday’s Dispatches column will focus on the need for protest against the war in Iraq (The Coalition for Peace Action of Monroe Township was out this weekend and expects to be out there again on Saturday), but I wanted to offer two links worth reading that neatly sum up my thoughts.

The first is an essay/column from Howard Zinn in the current issue of The Progressive that includes these paragraphs:

When a social movement adopts the compromises of legislators, it has forgotten its role, which is to push and challenge the politicians, not to fall in meekly behind them.

We who protest the war are not politicians. We are citizens. Whatever politicians may do, let them first feel the full force of citizens who speak for what is right, not for what is winnable, in a shamefully timorous Congress.

The second is a sometimes overlooked speech given by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 40 years ago this month (I somehow failed to note it on the anniversary three weeks ago). From “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence”:

Meanwhile, we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task while we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment. We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative means of protest possible.

As we counsel young men concerning military service we must clarify for them our nation’s role in Vietnam and challenge them with the alternative of conscientious objection. I am pleased to say that this is the path now being chosen by more than 70 students at my own Alma Mater, Morehouse College, and I recommend it to all who find the American course in Vietnam a dishonorable and unjust one. Moreover, I would encourage all ministers of draft age to give up their ministerial exemptions and seek status as conscientious objectors. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.

As a button that I’ve had since I was probably 20 and that I still wear on occasion says: “Peace — protest and survive.”

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Bush the bubble boy

Dan Froomkin’s White House Watch is the best thing about The Washington Post Web site. Today, writing about what he calls “Bush’s bubble,” he offers this take:

President Bush’s public campaign to push back against Congressional demands for withdrawal from Iraq is becoming highly reminiscent of his failed effort two years ago to win support for a radical overhaul of Social Security.

The meticulously choreographed settings, the carefully controlled audiences, the mind-numbing repetition of hoary talking points (with a particular emphasis on stoking fears) — it’s like deja vu.

And so is the result: A public that is apparently more turned off to Bush’s ideas the more he talks about them.

As it was last time, Bush’s Bubble may be the central problem. Bush seems to think that through sheer force of will — and repetition — he will convince people that his cause is just — in spite of all the evidence to the contrary. And why does he think that? Quite possibly, because virtually everyone he talks to — and virtually everyone he sees — is already in his camp.

The question the White House has to confront is this: Is there another way? What if Bush sought out representative audiences, acknowledged the realities on the ground both in Iraq and at home, engaged his critics and honestly addressed their concerns?

He might or might not be more persuasive. But it would certainly be a good thing for the country.

True. But don’t bet on this happening. The Prez would need to emerge from the bubble first.

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Harry Reid is right

OK. So, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid believes that the war in Iraq cannot be won.

And that’s news?

Most everyone without a political axe to grind has understood this for quite some time. There will be no military solution to this quagmire, only a political one — one likely to happen only after we leave.

And yet the Republicans in Congress (most of them, anyway) insist on offering this kind of nonsense, from U.S. Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) :

“If Harry Reid believes that this war is lost, where is his plan to win this war?”

A plan to win? Nice bit of rhetorical spin here, but the issue has not been about winning or losing for a long time. To keep preaching the “in-it-to-win-it” line does a disservice to the soldiers laboring in this misbegotten conflict, the Iraqis and the rest of us. It is just one more bit of wishful thinking from the bubble brigade, a group of politicians that view everything through a partisan prism that distorts their judgment and causes them to speak in loopy slogans.

It is not about winning. It is about how we can get out quickly without making things worse. We are like gasoline on this fiery conflict and we need to get out.

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The coarsening effect of war

War is an ugly business, coarsens the men who fight and the nation that sends them in to battle.

That is single, most salient thing we need to know, that asking young men to kill, that demonizing the men the are asked to kill — well, this kind of story seems all to inevitable.

The Marine Corps chain of command in Iraq ignored “obvious” signs of “serious misconduct” in the 2005 slayings of two dozen civilians in Haditha, and commanders fostered a climate that devalued the life of innocent Iraqis to the point that their deaths were considered an insignificant part of the war, according to an Army general’s investigation.

Maj. Gen. Eldon A. Bargewell’s 104-page report on Haditha is scathing in its criticism of the Marines’ actions, from the enlisted men who were involved in the shootings on Nov. 19, 2005, to the two-star general who commanded the 2nd Marine Division in Iraq at the time. Bargewell’s previously undisclosed report, obtained by The Washington Post, found that officers may have willfully ignored reports of the civilian deaths to protect themselves and their units from blame. Though Bargewell found no specific coverup, he concluded that there also was no interest at any level in investigating allegations of a massacre.

“All levels of command tended to view civilian casualties, even in significant numbers, as routine and as the natural and intended result of insurgent tactics,” Bargewell wrote. He condemned that approach because it could desensitize Marines to the welfare of noncombatants. “Statements made by the chain of command during interviews for this investigation, taken as a whole, suggest that Iraqi civilian lives are not as important as U.S. lives, their deaths are just the cost of doing business, and that the Marines need to get ‘the job done’ no matter what it takes.”

The story confirms one of the central tenets of Chris Hedges’ book, “War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning,” that war creates its own momentum, its own reasons for being, altering motivation — coarsening us all.

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