<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=windows-1252"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;">Some cold comfort in Herb Stein's Law: “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.”<div><br></div><div><br><div><div>On Aug 15, 2014, at 8:56 AM, ewjohnson via Peace-discuss <<a href="mailto:peace-discuss@lists.chambana.net">peace-discuss@lists.chambana.net</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div>
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As long as Hillary Clnton and Barack Obama are running around live
and loose,<br>
there is no such thing as Justice in the USA, <br>
there is only the mockery of Justice,<br>
and no one should be punished for any crime, <br>
small or great, as long as Obama is allowed to <br>
openly flaunt the law, <br>
spit on the constitution, and<br>
attempt to ride over every fundamental principle <br>
of determining + and -.<br>
<br>
Actually I don't know real outcome yet, as none of us do...<br>
<br>
yet it has been observed...<br>
<br>
<blockquote><i>Though the mills of God grind slowly;</i><br>
<i>Yet they grind exceeding small;</i><br>
<i>Though with patience he stands waiting,</i><br>
<i>With exactness grinds he all.</i><br>
</blockquote>
<i><br>
</i>Or as another fellow Cicero might have put it in longer but
straighter words---<br>
<br>
<blockquote>"Look here, <br>
ya ignorant son-of- a-lab-rat.<br>
They aint No One gonna get away with this fo-ever.<br>
Quo usque tandem abutere yer dyin' podium, <br>
They ain't no more fuckin' tandem for you or nostra. <br>
Our patience is completely down to Zero-minus.<br>
<br>
Time, <br>
and WE za people<br>
is gonna abutere on yo ass but good.<br>
Ni zenme Capisce, <br>
"kemo-sabe"?"<br>
<br>
</blockquote>
An other outcome is the he takes the whole ship down with 'im.<br>
<i><br>
</i>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 08/15/2014 08:10 PM, David Johnson
via Peace-discuss wrote:<br>
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<blockquote cite="mid:53EDF8A0.7050205@comcast.net" type="cite">
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<h1>Top 9 Reasons To Stop Bombing Iraq</h1>
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<div class="cat-date-line"><span class="cat-date-line2"><a moz-do-not-send="true" href="http://www.popularresistance.org/category/educate/" title="View all posts in Educate!" rel="category tag">Educate!</a></span>
<span class="cat-date-line3"> <a moz-do-not-send="true" href="http://www.popularresistance.org/tag/foreign-policy/" rel="tag">Foreign Policy</a>, <a moz-do-not-send="true" href="http://www.popularresistance.org/tag/iraq/" rel="tag">Iraq</a>, <a moz-do-not-send="true" href="http://www.popularresistance.org/tag/wars-and-militarism/" rel="tag">Wars and Militarism</a> </span> <br>
<span class="cat-date-line4">By David Swanson, <a moz-do-not-send="true" href="http://warisacrime.org/content/top-9-reasons-stop-bombing-iraq" target="_blank">www.warisacrime.org</a><br>
August 14th, 2014</span><br>
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<div class="printfriendly pf-alignright"><a moz-do-not-send="true" href="http://www.printfriendly.com/print?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.popularresistance.org%2Ftop-9-reasons-to-stop-bombing-iraq%2F" rel="nofollow" onclick="window.print(); return false;"><span><Mail Attachment.gif></span></a></div><p><big><big><strong>1. It’s not a rescue mission.</strong> The
U.S. personnel could be evacuated without the 500-pound
bombs. The persecuted minorities could be supplied,
moved, or their enemy dissuaded, or all three, without the
500-pound bombs or the hundreds of “advisors” (trained and
armed to kill, and never instructed in how to give advice
— Have you ever tried taking urgent advice from 430
people?). The boy who cried rescue mission should not be
allowed to get away with it after the documented deception
in Libya where a fictional threat to civilians was used to
launch an all-out aggressive attack that has left that
nation in ruins. Not to mention the false claims about
Syrian chemical weapons and the false claim that missiles
were the only option left for Syria — the latter claims
being exposed when the former weren’t believed, the
missiles didn’t launch, and less violent but perfectly
obvious alternative courses of action were recognized. If
the U.S. government were driven by a desire to rescue the
innocent, why would it be arming Israel, Egypt, Jordan,
Bahrain? The U.S. government destroyed the nation of Iraq
between 2003 and 2011, with results including the near
elimination of various minority groups. If preventing
genocide were a dominant U.S. interest, it could have
halted its participation in and aggravation of that war at
any time, a war in which 97% of the dead were on one side,
just as in Gaza this month — the distinction between war
and genocide being one of perspective, not proportions.
Or, of course, the U.S. could have left well alone. Ever
since President Carter declared that the U.S. would kill
for Iraqi oil, each of his successors has believed that
course of action justified, and each has made matters
significantly worse.</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big><p><big><big><strong>2. It’s going to make things worse, again.</strong>
This bombing will aggravate the Sunni-Shia divide,
increase support for ISIS, and create a lasting legacy of
hostility and violence. President Obama says there is no
military solution, only reconciliation. But bombs don’t
reconcile. They harden hearts and breed murderers.
Numerous top U.S. officials admit that much of what the
U.S. military does generates more enemies than it kills.
When you continue down a path that is counterproductive on
its own terms, the honesty of those terms has to be
doubted. If this war is not for peace, is it perhaps —
like every other war we’ve seen the U.S. wage in the area
— for resources, profits, domination, and sadism? The
leader of ISIS learned his hatred in a U.S. prison in
Iraq. U.S. media report that fact as if it is just part
of the standard portrait of a new Enemy #1, but the irony
is not mere coincidence. Violence is created. It doesn’t
arise out of irrational and inscrutable foreignness. It
is planted by those great gardeners in the sky: planes,
drones, and helicopters. A bombing campaign justified as
protecting people actually endangers them, and those
around them, and many others, including those of us living
in the imperial Homeland.</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big><p><big><big><strong>3. Bombs kill.</strong> Big bombs kill a
lot of people. Massive bombing campaigns slaughter huge
numbers of people, including those fighting in the hell
the U.S. helped to create, and including those not
fighting — men, women, children, grandparents, infants.
Defenders of the bombing know this, but ignore it, and
make no effort to calculate whether more people are
supposedly being saved than are being killed. This
indifference exposes the humanitarian pretensions of the
operation. If some humans are of no value to you,
humanitarianism is not what’s driving your decisions. The
U.S. war on Iraq ’03-’11 killed a half million to a
million-and-a-half Iraqis and 4,000 Americans. A war that
puts fewer Americans on the ground and uses more planes
and drones is thought of as involving less death only if
our concern is narrowly limited to U.S. deaths. From the
vantage point of the ground, an air war is the deadliest
form of war there is.</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big><p><big><big><strong>4. There are other options.</strong> The
choice between bombing and doing nothing is as false now
as it was in September. If you can drop food on some
people, why can’t you drop food on everyone? It would
cost a tiny fraction of dropping bombs on them. It would
confuse the hell out of them, too — like Robin Williams’
version of God high on pot and inventing the platypus. Of
course, I now sound crazy because I’m talking about people
who’ve been demonized (and personified in a killer
straight out of a U.S. prison). It’s not as if these are
human beings with whom you can lament the death of Robin
Williams. They’re not like you and me. Etc. Yadda.
Yadda. But in fact ISIS fighters were sharing their
appreciation of Williams on Twitter on Tuesday. The
United States could talk about other matters with ISIS as
well, including a ceasefire, including a unilateral
commitment to cease arming the Iraqi government even while
trying to organize its ouster, including an offer to
provide real humanitarian aid with no nasty strings
attached, but with encouragement of civil liberties and
democratic decision making. It’s amazing how long minority
ethnic groups in Iraq survived and thrived prior to the
U.S. bringing democracy, and prior to the U.S. existing.
The U.S. could do some good but must first do no harm.</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big><p><big><big><strong>5. There are now enough weapons already
there to practically justify one of Colin Powell’s
slides retroactively. </strong>The U.S. accounts for
79% of foreign weapons transfers to Western Asia (the
Middle East). The war on Libya had identical U.S. weapons
on both sides. ISIS almost certainly has weapons supplied
by the U.S. in Syria, and certainly has weapons taken from
Iraq. So, what is the U.S. doing? It’s rushing more
weapons to Iraq as fast as possible. Americans like to
think of the Middle East as backward and violent, but the
tools of the violence trade are manufactured in the United
States. Yes, the United States does still manufacture
something, it’s just not something that serves any useful
purpose or about which most of us can manage to feel very
proud. Weapons making also wastes money rather than
creating it, because unaccountable profits are the single
biggest product manufactured.</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big><p><big><big><strong>6. This is going to cost a fortune.</strong>
Bombing Iraq is depicted as a measure of great restraint
and forbearance. Meanwhile building schools and hospitals
and green energy infrastructure in Iraq would be viewed as
madness if anyone dared propose it. But the latter would
cost a lot less money — a consideration that is usually a
top priority in U.S. politics whenever killing large
numbers of people is not involved. The world spend $2
trillion and the U.S. $1 trillion (half the total) on war
and war preparations every year. Three percent of U.S.
military spending could end starvation on earth. The
wonders that could be done with a fraction of military
money are almost unimaginable and include actual defense
against the actual danger of climate change.</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big><p><big><big><strong>7. Bombs are environmental disasters.</strong>
If someone photographs a big oil fire, some will give a
thought to the environmental damage. But a bombing
campaign is, rather than an environmental accident, an
intentional environmental catastrophe. The poisoned
ground and water, and the disease epidemics, will reach
the United States primarily through moral regret,
depression, and suicide.</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big><p><big><big><strong>8. There go our civil liberties.</strong>
Discussions of torture, imprisonment, assassination,
surveillance, and denial of fair trials are severely
damaged by wartime postures. After all, war is for
“freedom,” and who wouldn’t be willing to surrender all of
their freedoms for that?</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big><p><big><big><strong>9. War is illegal.</strong> It doesn’t
matter if the illegitimate government that you’re trying
to dump invited you to bomb its country. How can anyone
take that seriously, while the U.S. installed that
government and has armed it for years, as it has attacked
its people? War is illegal under the Kellogg Briand Pact
and the United Nations Charter, and pretending otherwise
endangers the world. Domestically, under U.S. law, the
president cannot launch a war. While the Senate has been
silent, the U.S. House voted two weeks ago to ban any new
presidential war on Iraq. Offering Congress a slap in the
face, Obama waited for it to go on break, and then
attacked Iraq.</big></big></p>
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