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Most of the text is from David Swanson, including the speculation on
Pakistan/Saudi Arabia. Since they're both leading US clients, there
may be something to it, depending on what deal the Obama
administration has made with the Pakistani military ("there's no
honor among thieves..."). But as Bahrain shows, SA may be more
useful to the US in killing locals that the divided Pakistani
rulers.<br>
<br>
Tim has voted wrong (I think) on a number of things recently - I try
to write him each week, after the N-G publishes the summary of
Congressional votes - but he's one of the handful of representatives
who consistently vote against war in the Mideast. He voted for war
in Afghanistan and Iraq (probably euchred on the latter by Bush
administration, from conversations with him) and has for a while
said he was wrong to do so. (The principal point re Tim below is the
encouragement that <i>"Your protest makes a difference"</i> -
certainly not obvious, and maybe not true.) <br>
<br>
While Congressional Democrats maintain the support for Obama's
aggressive policy in AfPak, opposition is appearing among
Republicans and teapartiers (where the Ron Paul movement has been
the most consistent anti-war voice). Bob Naiman has been crying up
the presidential candidacy of the Republican former governor of NM,
Gary Johnson, "on a platform that calls for withdrawals from
Afghanistan and Iraq" (perhaps an optimistic reading) and even Haley
Barbour, a political scavenger willing to eat almost anything, was
sniffing the withdrawal air, before decide in to crawl back into his
hole. <br>
<br>
Even some Democrats, wearing their Good Cop hats, say that the
killing of OBL should hasten withdrawal from AfPak - nicely using a
crime (extra-judicial execution) to trump a lie (we're in AfPak
"because of 9/11," to "stop terrorism").<br>
<br>
The Democrats are probably lying again in any case, a la mode - see
Alex Cockburn's "Volcano of Lies"
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn05062011.html"><http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn05062011.html></a>, a
harrowing account of Obama's scant respect for the truth, to say
nothing of justice. --CGE<br>
<br>
<br>
On 5/8/11 2:33 PM, Morton K. Brussel wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid:25CA5EF5-FF0F-4ED8-BB1A-9AD243FA12DB@illinois.edu"
type="cite">I only would say that the phrase—
<div><i>Pakistan is now on call should Saudi Arabia need any
troops to kill its own people, the United States having heeded
bin Laden's demand and pulled its troops out to deploy them
elsewhere in the region…</i></div>
<div><i><br>
</i>
<div><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style:
normal;">—puzzled me. It may puzzle others as well. </span></i></div>
<div><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style:
normal;"><br>
</span></i></div>
<div><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style:
normal;">Otherwise a useful forceful statement, even if
too enthusiastic, in my view, to Tim Johnson. </span></i></div>
<div><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style:
normal;"><br>
</span></i></div>
<div><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style:
normal;">--mkb</span></i></div>
<div><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style:
normal;"><br>
</span></i></div>
<div>
<div>
<div>On May 7, 2011, at 12:39 AM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:</div>
<br class="Apple-interchange-newline">
<blockquote type="cite">
<div bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000"> [Text below /
formatted copy attached / comments welcome. --CGE]<br>
<br>
<br>
<b>The Anti-War Anti-Racism Effort of Champaign-Urbana<br>
~ A.W.A.R.E. ~<br>
is a group of local citizens who for almost ten years
have been demanding that<br>
the US government cease its Long War for oil against
the people of the Mideast.<br>
<br>
<br>
About 10 years ago a bunch of psychotic killers
crashed planes into buildings.</b> A tall skinny guy
who took credit said he was protesting the presence of
US troops in Saudi Arabia, US support for Israel's war
on Palestinians, and the sanctions that were causing
starvation in Iraq. That wasn't going to hold up in a
court of law as a justification for mass-murder. But the
U.S. government had already, before 9-11, turned down
offers from the Taliban to put Osama bin Laden on trial
in a third country, and it turned those offers down
again.<br>
<b><br>
Instead, the US president said he had no interest in
bin Laden,</b> but proceeded to encourage Americans to
be afraid of their own shadows. He used that fear to
help launch a war without end. We've now had
nine-and-a-half years of pointless horrific murderous
war in Afghanistan and eight years of the same in Iraq,
plus a drone war in Pakistan, a new war in Libya, and
smaller wars and special military operations in dozens
of other countries.<br>
<b><br>
We watched people in the Mideast on television dancing
in the streets</b> and celebrating the crimes of 9-11
and we thought how evil and barbaric they must be.
Knowing nothing about the decades our government had
spent exploiting and occupying their countries, toppling
their democratic leaders, and kicking in their doors, we
assumed that these subhuman monsters were celebrating
the killing of Americans because they just happened to
dislike us or because their religion told them to.<br>
<b><br>
Of course, we used to have lynch mobs in this country.</b>
Ask the freedom riders who left for the Deep South 50
years ago this month. But we had outgrown that. We were
not driven by blind vengeance. We were civilized. The
reason we locked up far more people in prison than any
other country and killed some of them was a purely
rational calculation dealing with prevention,
deterrence, and restitution. We weren't monsters. We
didn't torture or cut people's heads off.<br>
<b><br>
But those beasts whom we started locking up in
Guantanamo, they were a different story.</b> They
clearly could not be reasoned with. They had to be tied
up like animals just to control them. Our government
wouldn't do that to people if it didn't have to, so
clearly it had to. To think otherwise would be
inappropriate, disloyal, disobedient. It was best to
think what we were told to think, and if most of those
people in Guantanamo turned out to be innocent, well at
least they weren't real people like us.<br>
<b><br>
And so we gave up 800 years of civil rights.</b> We
tore up the Magna Carta. Because people should have the
right to a trial only when the government doesn't tell
us they are guilty. We gave up our opposition to
torture. We abandoned our trepidation regarding
aggressive wars. We sat silent as President Obama
declared his right to assassinate Americans and threw a
whistleblower, naked, into a 6' x 12' cell in Virginia.
We asked Congress to obey the president and the media to
cheer for our team. And we watched lots of movies.<br>
<b><br>
And in movies and on TV shows, torture works.</b>
Completely unlike reality, the torture victim always
tells the truth in movies. And killing people works
great too. It doesn't disturb the killer at all or have
any nasty side effects. People backing the same cause as
the victim never appear as the credits are rolling.
Happily-ever-after is what comes from killing people.
The best thing for us to do, unless we're busy shopping,
is to cheer and scream like deranged maniacs whose team
just won the Big Game.<br>
<b><br>
So, after 10 years of shredding the rule of law,</b>
hiring mercenary armies, invading helpless unarmed
countries, causing the deaths of over a million people,
and learning to love torture, all of this warfare did
absolutely nothing to locate Osama bin Laden - who was
hiding near the capital of a country to which we'd given
billions of dollars and helped to build illegal nuclear
bombs. We fought a war in Iraq on the pretense that Iraq
was giving bin Laden nuclear weapons, while bin Laden
was hiding out in a nuclear nation, almost certainly
with the knowledge of that nation's military. Pakistan
is now on call should Saudi Arabia need any troops to
kill its own people, the United States having heeded bin
Laden's demand and pulled its troops out to deploy them
elsewhere in the region -- a region in which our
government supports and arms dictators until they are
nonviolently overthrown or, as in Libya, a rebel force
led by a CIA stooge can be backed instead. Only massive
ignorance can continue to ask "Why do they hate us?"<b><br>
<br>
And so, after nearly a decade, our government bothered
to look for bin Laden,</b> found him, and murdered
him. But what choice did they have? A truly fair trial
would always involve the risk of acquittal. A semi-fair
trial would have risked bringing up undesirable topics,
such as the US failure to prevent 9-11, our decades-long
support for bin Laden, bin Laden's evasion of the US in
2001 and ever since, bin Laden's reasons for 9-11, and
the question of precedent. If we gave bin Laden a
semi-fair trial, how would we explain denying one to so
many other people? And a truly unfair military trial
would have made the United States look even worse. A
member of the CIA said this week that killing him was
"cleaner."<br>
<b><br>
We don't try people as we tried the Nazis.</b> We
don't lock people up and torture them ... as much as we
did. We kill them. It's cleaner. And then we dance in
the streets cheering for the killing. But killing Saddam
Hussein didn't bring peace. Killing Muammar Gadaffi will
not bring peace any more than killing his children and
grandchildren has. Killing Osama bin Laden will bring no
peace and is no justice. Nonviolently overthrowing the
governments of Tunisia and Egypt and Yemen points us in
a better direction, if we can break through our
government's propaganda.<br>
<b><br>
In 1969, less than ten years after the US government
launched a war against South Vietnam,</b> about 70% of
the public had come to regard the war as "fundamentally
wrong and immoral," not "a mistake." The Obama
administration is working desperately to keep Americans
from reaching that conclusion today, but it's not
working. Two-thirds of the US population now thinks the
US war in Afghanistan "is not worth fighting."<br>
<b><br>
If you object to the Obama administration's conducting
an unjustified war in the Middle East</b> - and
misrepresenting the reason for it - while doing nothing
about the economy except aiding the rich, tell your
representatives in Congress. Congressman Tim Johnson,
and Senators Dick Durbin and Mark Kirk, can be reached
through the Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121. <i>Your
protest makes a difference: local congressman Tim
Johnson, who voted for the invasions of Afghanistan
and Pakistan, decided that he was wrong to do so and
refuses to vote for any more money for war in the
Middle East. He has kept his promise, while our
senators continue to vote for war. Now Rep. Johnson
has joined other members of the House to initiate
legislation calling for an end to the Libyan
intervention unless Congress approves it. You can call
him and thank him for his stance against the war at
217-403-4690. <br>
</i><b><br>
AWARE, the Anti-War Anti-Racism Effort of
Champaign-Urbana,</b> meets every Sunday at 5pm in the
McKinley Foundation, 5th and Daniel Streets in
Champaign, near the UIUC campus. We discuss the war and
what can be done against it. Visitors are welcome - and
see our Facebook page. We also present AWARE on the Air
each Tuesday 10-11pm on Urbana Public Television,
channel 6. Each week we bring you comments by members
and friends of AWARE about the war and the opposition to
it, locally and nationally, by Americans who oppose our
government's betrayal of our democratic principles.<b>
###</b><br>
<i><br>
(Prepared by C. G. Estabrook, from a text by David
Swanson, 6 May 2011) </i><br>
</div>
<span><flyer201105.doc></span>_______________________________________________<br>
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