Ten years gone

Ten years after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and subsequent launch of the "global war on terror," it's difficult to know what to say or where to begin.

Without rehashing a decade's worth of damning statistics about civilians killed, countries destroyed, societies shredded and multiple generations of people who are either maimed, widowed, childless, disabled, homeless, jobless, divorced, addicted, crippled, blind, suicidal, alcoholic, broken or otherwise disaffected by any one or a combination of our war making, it's hard to sum up all that has been lost and wasted during this ten year period.

As a nation, we've been deceived, divided, distracted and defrauded by our own government under the guise of personal safety and national security. We were told 9/11 came out of the blue because "they hate us for our freedom." We were told they had WMD (just as we do). We were warned of mushroom clouds (like the kind we made). We've heard so many stories about why we invaded Afghanistan and Iraq just as we've heard almost nothing about why we are executing an undeclared, undebated, illegal secretive predator drone war that targets people primarily in Pakistan but also Yemen, Somalia and Libya if not Afghanistan and Iraq as well.

We've been told by our highest elected officials, our chief legal authorities and our own military officers that torture is ok, imprisonment without charge or legal representation is acceptable, illegal kidnapping and rendering to secret 'black sites' in foreign countries is justifiable and spying and surveillance of our own citizens at home and abroad is in our best interest.

We've spent literally trillions of dollars to pursue destruction and death in countries whose citizens didn't threaten us. We've ceaselessly threatened other nations whom we accuse of pursuing weapons similar to the ones we ourselves produce, maintain and have used even as we maintain our own 'right' to use those same WMD against any nation at any time.

We continue to keep more than 700 foreign military bases or facilities in over a hundred countries demanding special 'rights and privileges' such as immunity from local laws and norms although we have not one foreign soldier on our soil nor would we ever accept it.

Despite vowing to remove every single last occupying soldier from Iraq by December 31, 2011, our government is now negotiating to keep 'trainers' in that country past the deadline. We say we are beginning to 'draw down' from Afghanistan even as we send new troops over to that broken country.

Supposedly we are helping rebuild and strengthen Iraq, Afghanistan and now Libya as well, even as our own country is in such a dreadful state that Americans from the far right to the far left are literally up in arms and have taken to demonstrating across the country in the face of police beating, abuse and arrest.

In 2011, with no discussion, debate or even any notice from the public or media, our Congress and president voted to spend $725 Billion on the military for one fiscal year when we can't even keep our schools, libraries and hospitals properly open and operating.

What was once considered an 'outrage' under Bush is now considered the norm under Obama. We're told by some that the country faces 'grave danger from Socialist forces' in the government yet we have politicians in both "parties" who are beholden to only one power: the almighty Corporation which, being 'too big to fail,' must be rescued and revived at any cost, American workers be damned.

And even as we're told that the war(s) are 'winding down' or being brought to a 'responsible conclusion,' they continue to drain our resources, both human and financial, as well as our own national spirit and moral fiber. After Bush, many thought we would 'restore our good reputation' and revive our name amongst other nations of the world. Instead, we've only proven ourselves to be more willing to tolerate state manufactured and exported violence than anyone ever thought possible.

Afghanistan, Iraq, and all the other under-reported military adventures we have been pursuing and continue to pursue do not help us as a people or as a nation. We've been utterly and completed deluded into thinking that war can make things better.

Ten years into this so-called 'global war on terror' or, what others have named simply the 'long war,' the extraordinary misuse and the gross misdirection of natural, financial and human resources, perpetrated jointly by both Democrats and Republicans has been a shameful, pointless orgy of fraud, waste and abuse which has resulted not in making us safer or protecting our freedom, but quite the opposite.

October 6, 2011

United we kill

By Jon Letman 

May 5, 2011 LIHUE -- Since the announcement of Osama bin Laden's death late Sunday night, the country has been swept up in a frenzy of 9/11 flashbacks. Americans have reacted to bin Laden's killing with emotions ranging from shock and relief to satisfaction, skepticism and incredulity, but the most prominently emotion displayed, and the one that has received the most attention, is pure, unabashed joy. 

Not the joy of watching a child take her first step or the joy of creating something new and beautiful, but the dark, blood-stained joy of exacting revenge on a mass murderer. Americans were dealt bruising physical wounds and a deep psychological blow on September 11, 2001 and, for the last decade, have been on a constant drip of reminders of the attacks whose intensity ebbs and flows with time. But the elusiveness of 9/11's supreme perpetrator, has remained like a broken thorn under our skin, palpable but without relief. 

Most would say the spontaneous eruption of jubilation and glowing satisfaction, like the feeling of finally scratching a deep, nagging itch after enduring the pain for so long is only natural. But the celebratory flash mobs of fist-pumping youth draped in red, white and blue as they chanted "U-S-A! U-S-A!" and wild orgy of hyper-Americanness claimed to be patriotism rubbed more than a few Americans the wrong way. A Reuters photographer who was at the White House when Obama made the announcement described the scene outside later as deafening "like a sports stadium...like a carnival."
 
Two days after bin Laden's death a Reuters video story titled "Bin Laden death boost for Obama" showed the president remain stony-faced and somber even as members of Congress rose to their feet and burst into applause when the president made a reference to bin Laden's killing. 

Clearly the president is not one of the "America - Fuck Yeah!" flag-wavers. This week he announced that the White House will not be releasing pictures of the dead al Qaeda leader because, as he put it, "we don't need to spike the football." Yet at the same time he has used bin Laden's killing to suggest this is a moment of "national unity" around which all Americans can and should rally together. 

"There is a pride in what this nation stands for and what we can achieve that runs far deeper than party, far deeper than politics," the president told members of Congress. 

But the suggestion that bin Laden's killing should be a sources of national unity is a cynical, cheap exploitation of American's weakness for displays of brute force, violence, killing, and militarism, presumably in order to gain some political capital at a time when Mr. Obama's presidency has been mired in the ugly stuff of reality: stubbornly high unemployment, rising gasoline prices, an economy that is wobbly at best and attacks from both the political right ("Where were you really born, Mr. Socialist?") and the left ("This isn't the change I was hoping for"). 

It is a sad reflection on both the state of the nation and the moral elasticity of the president that what Obama calls "national unity," if something we can all feel good about together is, in fact, a covert military incursion conducted behind the backs of a supposed ally (Pakistan) as a commando-style night raid and revenge killing -- a targeted assassination. Is this what draws Americans together: a blood-stained bedroom floor, the burnt wreckage of a helicopter littering bin Laden's walled courtyard, freshly killed men growing stiff in pools of blood, impounded orphans, a widow and a villain shot in the face and hastily dumped in the sea? 

If this is the true north to which the needle of our moral compass points, then we may as well throw away our compass -- we are clearly lost. It is unimaginably bleak commentary on our nation when, after more than a decade of increasing nastiness, divisive politics and a fraying social fabric, that in the year 2011, Americans seem to be most united only after a killing spree in Tuscon underscores our own tolerance for self-inflicted domestic gun violence or our president announces, albeit with more maturity than the last one, but all the same callous confidence in ourselves to mete out our own cowboy version of justice, united we stand. 

Ironically, only 48 hours before Obama announced the death of bin Laden, the people of Great Britain had found cause for unity in celebration of life in the marriage of a young prince and his bride. Cutting across Britain's highly stratified class system, people in the UK looked, for at least a day anyway, supremely united. Two days later, under the banner of revenge killing, Americans are told to unite. 

Along with this call for "national unity" in the long shadow of bin Laden's corpse, there is a clamor to somehow saddle at least a full decade's of war making, invasions, occupations, drone attacks, secret imprisonment, extraordinary rendition, torture, domestic and international surveillance, draconian and ineffective "security" measures, economically and socially harmful budget cuts and an unchallenged and ever-expanding misuse of Executive Powers to broaden existing wars while embarking on new ones, all to this vague thing we are told is all about "national security," "freedom," and "the defense of Democracy." 

It's as though the killing of bin Laden is supposed to be the Lucky Triple Seven jackpot that makes us all jump and hoot for joy after more than a decade of playing a losing game. 

Unfortunately, the machines are rigged and the house always wins. Bin Laden's death, no matter how happy or how ambivalent you may feel about it, is not the end of the game. Instead of being told that this is an event around which we should all "unite," the President should be reminding us this is no game at all -- it's about war and death and about acknowledging our own role in perpetuating the cycle of violence.

Bin Laden executed a number of unimaginably wicked schemes which resulted in the cold-blooded murder of thousands of innocent people. He is not someone that merits defending or grief, but he is also not alone in employing wicked tactics to strike out as his enemy, innocents be damned, as he used any weapon at his disposal to inflict death and suffering. Hijacked airplanes, suicide belts, and roadside IEDs (improvised explosive devices) produce the same results as Tomahawk missiles, white phosphorous incendiary weapons and predator drones: dead people. 

The terror attacks executed by Osama bin Laden and subsequent ongoing wars which have ostensibly killed and maimed far more than bin Laden could have ever hoped for have created a self-perpetuating culture of death and killing. Bin Laden may have been America's "Enemy #1" and our highest profile target, but his death will not mark the end of any of the wars we have chosen to pursue in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and beyond. Killing one man, no matter how evil he may have been, is hardly reason for celebration and should not be the foundation on which we, as Americans, stand united. 

If anything, the news of the death of Osama bin Laden should give us pause to reflect, seriously and soberly about the misery we ourselves have caused, and continue to cause, not only to people in other nations, but to our own fellow citizens right here at home.

School's out forever: Underfunding Education as the wars drag on

Imagine you're sixteen-years-old, or maybe ten, or just six. You've got your whole life in front of you, right? With hard work, support and love from your family and community, and a good education, you're sure to be off on the right track, right?

Maybe. Or, if you are a young person in Detroit, maybe not.

The state of Michigan has announced it has approved a plan that will shutter half of all public schools in Detroit, 70 in all, by 2014. This would be in addition to 59 schools the troubled district closed in 2010.

Among other things, this means public school student's in America's eleventh largest city are going to have a lot more classmates -- around 60 students per class. You can imagine what this is going to do for quality of education in a city already wracked by problems and more problems.

All this to offset the school system's $327 million budget deficit.

A spokesman for Detroit Public Schools' Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb says there is "an absolute requirement to get to zero in a prescribed period of time," and so Detroit is taking this drastic measure, "educational quality" and "viability for parents" be damned.

Now consider this: as America approaches what will be its ninth year occupying Iraq (remember that place?) with around 47,000 U.S. troops still on the ground (and possibly three times that many "private contractors" supporting the military), the war in Iraq is not over and Sec. Defense Robert Gates has recently suggested the U.S. would be willing to stay longer if asked by the Iraqi government.

Meanwhile, the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan, America's longest war, now slogging toward its eleventh year, shows no end in sight. This week's latest news is of a NATO attack in eastern Afghanistan that is reported to have killed between 50 and 60 or more civilians and the shock expressed by President Karzai aides at Gen. David Petraeus' alleged suggestion that Afghans burned their own children in an attempt to make NATO forces look bad.

Add to this, the recent reports that the U.S. currently spends around $300 million dollars per day just in Afghanistan.

Now stop for a minute and re-read that number. Three-hundred million dollars every day (or $208,333 per minute) to fight a war in Afghanistan that our government tells us is making us safer.

According to the National Priorities Project (which President Obama himself cited during his presidential campaign) That's over $380 billion for war spending Afghanistan alone.

This brings us back to the kids in Detroit whose schools are about to close because of a $327 million deficit. Any one of those kids proficient in even basic calculator math could tell you that what the U.S. government spends on war in Afghanistan in 26 hours would wipe out their school district's budget deficit just like that. 

Twenty-six hours of war versus the closure of 70 schools and the impact that will have on 87,000 students, their families, their community, their state and this country... you tell me, is it worth it?

What kind of "security" are we gaining as a nation as we continue to fight wars we can't afford, on people we shouldn't be killing in nations we shouldn't be occupying as our own country literally goes down the toilet.

We've had bailouts for Wall Street, bailouts for big insurance and bailouts for big industry (even in the Motor City), yet our government, which claims to be acting in our best interest, leaves the young, the old, the sick, the vulnerable, the workers, the middle class and even its soldiers fighting its wars to languish as every imaginable program and basic civil institution is slashed, neglected or just plain tossed out the window.

It isn't just shocking. It isn't just maddening. It is really a moral crime committed against us as a nation and the people around the world against whom we are waging wars, both declared and undeclared.

What's even more sad is that most Americans seem not to notice, not to care, or are unable or unwilling to do anything about it. 

And so to hell with education and the school children in Detroit, Atlanta, Seattle, Honolulu or anywhere else in America.

"Fuck schools and fuck the future", the message seems to be. As a nation we are broke and that's just the way it is.  

You want an education kiddies? Muddle your way from K through 12 any way you can and when you get out, come see your local recruiting officer. I'm sure he has a program that will suit you just fine with good pay, money for college, career training, lifelong benefits and the chance to travel and see the world.

Hell, you'll even get your very own holiday.

*The Onion got America's problem of twisted priorities spot on with this short video, brilliant in its depiction of the nearly real world.

Beyond Vietnam: an excerpt

Below is in an excerpt from a speech made by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. exactly one day to the year before he was killed.

Martin Luther King, Jr.'s speech "Beyond Vietnam" was delivered exactly one year to the day before he was gunned down.

"A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth with righteous indignation. It will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

A true revolution of values will lay a hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. 

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war."

Listen to the whole speech here.

H.R. 6523 -- the Greatest Little Defense Authorization Act you never heard of

Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was right, "numbers almost are distracting."

Perhaps that's why the few press reports that bothered to cover the passage of H.R.6523 Ike Skelton National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2011 largely omitted just how much this bill is for -- $725 Billion. This is reported to be the largest single request for military funds ever, and yet the overwhelming majority of American tax payers not only do not know about this, they aren't asking and, perhaps, they don't care.

We've become so conditioned to hearing references to such unfathomably large sums of money for war spending that most of us hardly pay any attention. Five hundred billion, a trillion, five trillion -- what does it matter? Even the miserly sum of one million dollars sounds like peanuts. Today, "a million" is the new "thousand" it seems, and when it is reported that it costs one million dollars per soldier per year in our ongoing war in Afghanistan, nobody seems to bat an eye.

So is it blatant omission that reporting by CNN, the New York Times, McClatchy and others, like the White House website itself, don't even mention the amount of money Congress and Obama have committed for war spending in FY2011? (At least NPR alludes to the sum total in the second paragraph of their short blog entry).

In this instance it appears that "don't ask, don't tell" is alive and well. Americans are not asking and the government and press aren't telling. 

But if you can pry yourself away from the sensational coverage of the gun tragedy in Arizona, you might find that a quick look at the actual text of H.R. 6523 sheds some light on a much more horrific spectacle of American violence and how it is being funded:

-- $37.1 million for 71 units of family housing at Guantanamo Bay ("kids, guess what-- we're moving!")

-- $101.5 million for military construction at Bagram, Afghanistan

-- $277. 4 million for military construction at five military bases in Germany

-- $20 million (and change) for military construction in Honduras

-- $19.5 million for military construction at Camp Walker in South Korea

 -- $45 million for Air Force construction in Bahrain

-- $50.3 million for Air Force construction in Guam

-- $29.2 million for Air Force construction in Italy

-- $62.3 million for Air Force construction in Qatar

-- $15 million for Air Force construction in the United Kingdom

-- $99.1 million for military construction in Brussels, Belgium

-- $213.1 million for Naval facility construction in Bahrain

-- $11.1 million for Naval facility construction in Djibouti

-- $6.9 million for Naval facility construction in Japan

-- $23.1 million for Naval facility construction in Spain

-- $66.7 million for Naval facility construction in Guam (including some rather unpopular coral reef dredging to make way for a couple of large aircraft carriers -- sorry plankton!!)

...And so on and so forth. I didn't even mention the military building projects in the fifty states, but there are plenty.

Then there is my favorite (page 313) simply labeled "Worldwide Unspecified Range Facility" which requests $68.5 million. When trying to maintain a global military empire, it is always a good idea to set aside an extra $68 million or so for those unforeseen moments when you need to do a little unexpected construction somewhere around the world (good foresight Pentagon!!).

The text of H.R. 6523 goes on for 383 pages. It's hard to imagine when members of Congress or a busy fellow like President Obama had time to read, digest and analyze all of this. They probably get up really early and do it over donuts and coffee.

There are plenty of other requests for things like maintaining airborne signals for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities, lightweight body armor solutions, imaging satellite capacities, aircraft, missiles, combat vehicles, ammunition, torpedoes and plenty of "other procurements." The list is very long and very exhaustive, but you get the point: 

"numbers almost are distracting."

The message to the public, I suppose, is "just don't ask. We have everything under control so just fork over the $725 Billion and let us take care of it."

Now, if you don't mind, get back to your under-heated, under-maintained, unpaid for homes, go back to your low-paying jobs, send your children off to their under-funded schools (if there are teachers available today) and keep yourselves busy thinking about Liberty, Democracy and all the good things we are bringing to the world and, by extension, ourselves.

Don't worry about the economy (we're pulling out of it), don't worry about the gun violence (that's just part of living in the Freest Nation on Earth) and for heaven's sake, do not worry about that corporate myth climate change-- if the earth is really heating up, why are we having such intense blizzards all around the world?

Everything will be just fine. God bless the troops, God bless H.R. 6523, and most of all, God Bless the American people...  We couldn't do it with out you!

Filling in the blank

Back in the final days of December while you were busy scrambling to buy presents for everyone on your list and trying to figure out how you were going to pay for it all, Congress was busy too.

On December 15^th H.R. 6523 Ike Skelton National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2011 was introduced to the House of Representatives. This legislation, reported to be the largest single military spending bill ever, commits $725 billion for war spending this year alone.

The bill includes $158.7 billion (declared) for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as up to $75 million for training and equipping counter-terrorism forces in Yemen, $205 million for Israel’s “Iron Dome” defense system and $11.6 billion and $1.5 billion for security force development in Afghanistan and Iraq respectively.

The bill also ensures that, despite Obama’s earlier pledge, Guantanamo Bay will not be closed any time soon.

After agonizing over this legislation for all of two days, the House overwhelmingly passed the bill (see vote roll call here) 341 to 48 with 44 Congressmen and women not casting a vote.

Then, two days before Christmas Eve, the Senate passed the bill unanimously, sending this massive war spending legislation on to the desk of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Barack Obama for his signature (pending at the time of this writing).

So as Americans were busy spending money they didn’t have on useless toys they didn’t need, Congress was doing the same. This all took place during the media orgy of faux tolerance when suddenly gay men and women were told that they could now openly serve in the military without fear of being threatened or ridiculed (until at least January 2, 2011).

"During these final days of 2010, Americans didn't ask and Congress didn't tell."

Ditto for the media. Little attention was paid to the rubber stamping of this remarkable amount of money with media outlets (like this FOX News report) emphasizing the restrictions the bill places on closing GITMO, choosing to add a reference to “nearly $160 billion for wars” in the third paragraph, with the overall $725 billion mentioned only in the eighth paragraph down.

There was however some serious discussion of this in RT News, a global multi-lingual Russia-based news outlet,  here and here, but how many Americans caught that?

When I discovered that my supposedly “far left Democrat” Congresswoman Rep. Mazie Hirono (HI- Dist. 1) voted in favor of this bill, I came to fully realize that, as it has been stated before, the left wing and right wing of our government, a perennial hawk, beat in unison, assuring an uninterrupted flight towards permanent militarism at the expense of its own citizens. I searched her website for some indication or explanation that Rep. Hirono had voted for this bill for some good reason, but I could find no reference to the bill whatsoever, not even under “recent votes.”

Then yesterday I came home and found a nice tri-color three-fold mailer from Rep. Hirono in my post box. In it, she writes about “working with you” (me??), traveling the District, creating a clean energy economy, creating education opportunities, getting Hawaii back to work and supporting “sustainable island-grown and Hawaii-made products.” Yet something —  something rather important — was missing.

You guessed it! Mazie Hirono’s lovely flier, so full of good news about “preparing our children to qualify and compete for the jobs of the future” (as a guard outside Kabul’s yet-to-be-built Camp Forever) and “creating (camouflage?) green jobs,” lacks any reference to war, military or defense spending.

What the brochure does have is lots of pictures of Mazie wearing hard hats and leis, small business owners and high school students smiling and being “sustainable,” but no absolutely zero mention of GITMO, Yemen anti-terror funding, Israeli air defense, or the hundreds of billions of dollars she voted in favor of spending on wars and militarism.

Gee, how curious…

Perhaps she was busy. Perhaps her PR people managed to squeeze “Education,” “Energy,” “Agriculture,” “Infrastructure,” and “Environment” onto the mailer, but when it came to long, space-eating words like “WAR,” they simply ran out of room.

But I’ve found that with just a few minor adjustments, the same flier can be modified to include this important topic without disturbing the flow or aesthetic charm of Mazie Hirono’s mail-out piece.

In fact, I’ve found that it can be done in a way that leaves a nice open space where she can outline and explain just what H.R. 6523 Ike Skelton National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2011 is.

I’m guessing that a lot of Hawaii voters have never heard of this bill or how she and her colleagues voted and how that money, which might otherwise have been spent here at home, will instead be used.

Here, I have provided a space for the good Congresswoman to fill in the blank.

This reproduction of Rep. Hirono's recent mailer includes popular priorities like "education, energy, agriculture, infrastructure and environment, yet it neglects to mention the $725 Billion military authorization bill she recently voted in favor of.