[Peace-discuss] why Justin Raimondo is not a credible source of information

[Robert Naiman]

PKM is too nice to point out that a real journalist would have
investigated before making this accusation against Peace Action.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: paul kawika martin [Peace Action]
Date: Wed, Apr 8, 2009 at 11:37 AM
Subject: ‘Progressive’ Warmongers

I appreciate Mr. Raimondo writing about the left's response to
Afghanistan.  He states "Peace Action is not making a whole lot of
noise about this, in spite of the issue’s relative importance. They
are confining their opposition to an online petition."  I can see why
one might say that with a cursory look at our website.  We don't
necessarily publicize all of our work for various reasons.  For over
50 years Peace Action has been opposing U.S. imperialism at nearly
every turn despite that the abolition of nuclear weapons was our
founding issue.  While we are not necessarily a pacifist organization,
historically we have opposed military action in places where others
were silent such as Vietnam and the Balkans.  Peace Action was one of
the few organizations to vociferously oppose invading Afghanistan in
the first place.  Since then, we have continued to raise our voice on
the issue, perhaps not as much as we would have liked, as working to
stop and end the occupation of Iraq, prevent a war on Iran, thwart new
nuclear weapons and reacting to a plethora of insane Bush policies has
consumed scarce resources.  Some of our activists and colleagues have
been to Afghanistan, have offices on the ground and plan to go again
to talk about the plight of Afghans and to push for nonmilitary
solutions.
Being in the heart of the beast in Washington, DC, this year Peace
Action's national office has, with help from other organizations, put
together a list of nearly 60 leaders, and held a meeting with 33 of
them, to share resources and strategize the best ways to change
Afghanistan policy.  We have reached out to conservative groups that
agree with us like The CATO Institute.  We organized 20 organizations
to send a letter to congress asking them to sign former presidential
candidate, Rep. Ron Paul's (D-TX), letter to President Obama asking
him to reconsider escalation in Afghanistan.  15 Representatives
signed the letter.
We have been pressuring congress to oppose the occupation; to go to
Afghanistan and talk to diverse Afghan voices and NGOs other than
those pushed by the administration, the Pentagon, the Dept. of State
and the Afghan government; to ask the right questions in hearings with
the right witnesses; to stop or investigate Air and Predator drone
strikes and night raids that tend to kill and traumatize innocent
civilians; and provide more funding for Afghan-led humanitarian and
development aid and for demining of the United States' and others'
land mines and cluster munitions.
Our affiliates and other local groups have been pressuring congress
too.  Additionally, they have been protesting, holding vigils and
educating the public on Afghanistan.  Our largest and most powerful
affiliate, Peace Action West, has been working with Robert Greenwald
of Brave New Films, who recently returned from Afghanistan, to speak
out against escalation, pressure congress for serious public hearings
with progressive voices, publicize segments of his upcoming
documentary -- Rethink Afghanistan -- and organizing grassroots groups
in the west.
Last Saturday, on the anniversary of MLK's Riverside church speech
against the Vietnam war and his assassination, United for Peace and
Justice (UFPJ) organized a 10,000 person -- including Peace Action
members and affiliates -- march against the war in Afghanistan and for
more money at as well as other issues that surrounded the NY stock
exchange.
As I write, Peace Action affiliates and chapters and members of UFPJ
are meeting with Members of Congress in their district, during this
congressional break, to demand an end to the Afghanistan war and other
issues.  This is part of coordinated days of actions going on now from
the 6th to the 9th.  A good web search will find that Peace Action,
our affiliates and colleagues have been in numerous newspapers, on
radio and TV shows, speaking out against occupation and escalation,
including countless mentions in The Nation.

And yes, we also have a petition, which you can find here:
http://www.Peace-Action.org.  Raimondo is right the petition is not a
whole lot of noise, but perhaps the above rises above a whisper.  I
certainly know many progressives who have been or have become against
the occupation of Afghanistan.  I think as public opinion continues to
sway on the issue, we will see other groups follow our lead.  We
welcome other organizations to join us as we are up against great
resources.  My guess is that the budget of all the military bands
dwarfs that of the peace movement an perhaps other progressive
movements.  I look  forward to working with others on Peace Action's
main priorities for this year:  ending the Iraq and Afghanistan
occupations, preventing a war on Iran, abolishing nuclear weapons and
reducing the military budget.

[responding to:]

http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2009/04/07/progressive-warmongers/

‘Progressive’ Warmongers

Liberals rally 'round Obama's war

by Justin Raimondo, April 08, 2009
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As President Barack Obama launches a military effort that promises to
dwarf the Bush administration’s Iraqi adventure in scope and
intensity, the "progressive" community is rallying around their
commander in chief as obediently and reflexively as the
neocon-dominated GOP did when we invaded Iraq. As John Stauber points
out over at the Center for Media and Democracy Web site, the takeover
of the antiwar movement by the Obamaites is nearly complete. He cites
MoveOn.org as a prime but not sole example:

"MoveOn built its list by organizing vigils and ads for peace and by
then supporting Obama for president; today it operates as a full-time
cheerleader supporting Obama’s policy agenda. Some of us saw this
unfolding years ago. Others are probably shocked watching their peace
candidate escalating a war and sounding so much like the previous
administration in his rationale for doing so."

Picking up on this in The Nation, John Nichols avers that several
antiwar groups arenot toeing the Afghanistan-is-a-war-of-necessity
line, including Peace Action, United for Peace and Justice, and the
American Friends Service Committee, yet there is less to this than
meets the eye. Naturally, the Friends, being pacifists, are going to
oppose the Afghan "surge" and the provocative incursions into
Pakistan: no surprise there. Peace Action is not making a whole lot of
noise about this, in spite of the issue’s relative importance. They
are confining their opposition to an online petition. As for UFPJ,
their alleged opposition to Obama’s war is couched in all kinds of
contingencies and ambiguous formulations. Their most recent public
pronouncement, calling for local actions against the Af-Pak offensive,
praises Obama for "good statements on increasing diplomacy and
economic aid to Afghanistan and Pakistan." Really? So far, this
"diplomacy" consists of unsuccessfully finagling the Europeans and
Canada toincrease their "contributions" to the Afghan front – and
selling the American people on an escalation of the conflict.

Although energized and given a local presence nationwide by a
significant pacifist and youth contingent, UFPJ is organizationally
dominated by current and former members of the Communist Party, USA,
and allied organizations, and you have toremember that Afghanistan is
a bit of a sore spot for them. That’s because the Kremlinpreceded us
in our folly of attempting to tame the wild warrior tribes of the
Hindu Kush and was soundly defeated.

The Soviet Union did its level best in trying to accomplish what a
number of liberal think-tanks with ambitious agendas are today busily
concerning themselves with solving the problem of constructing a
working central government, centered in Kabul, which would improve the
lot of the average Afghan, liberate women from their legally and
socially subordinate role, eliminate the drug trade, and provide a
minimal amount of security outside the confines of Kabul – in short,
the very same goalsenunciated by the Bush administration and now the
Obama administration. The Kremlin failed miserably in achieving its
objectives, and there is little reason to believe the Americans will
have better luck.

In retrospect, the Soviet decision to invade and create a puppet
government propped up by the Red Army was arguably a fatal error, one
that delivered the final crushing blow to a system already moribund
and brittle enough to break. The domestic consequences inside the
Soviet Union – the blowback, if you will – sounded the death knell of
the Communist system and revealed the Kremlin’s ramshackle empire in
all its military and moral bankruptcy.

What is to prevent the U.S. from courting a similar fate, at a time
when our economy is melting down and the domestic crisis makes such
grandiose "nation-building" schemes seem like bubble-think at its most
hubristic?

That’s where the pro-war progressive think-tanks come in: their role
is to forge a new pro-war consensus, one that commits us to a
long-range "nation-building" strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
These are the Center for a New American Security, explicitly set up as
home base for the "national security Democrats" who make up the
party’s hawkish faction; Brookings; and, last but not least, the
Center for American Progress, which was an oasis of skepticism when
Team Bush was "liberating" Iraq, and a major critic of the occupation.
Now the leadership of CAP is making joint appearances with the neocons
over at the newly christened Foreign Policy Initiative and issuing
lengthy white papers outlining their Ten Year Plan [.pdf] for the
military occupation of Afghanistan.

Not only that, but they are moving to the front lines in a battle
against Obama’s antiwar opponents, with the Nichols piece – which
merely reported growing opposition to Obama’s war on the Left –
eliciting a testy response from CAP honchoLawrence Korb and one of his
apparatchiks. In it, the CAPsters aver, wearily, that none of this is
new – the "schism" within the "progressive community" over Afghanistan
is "long-standing" – and they remind their audience that the release
of CAP’s latest apologia for occupying Afghanistan is hardly
precedent-setting. After all, their two previous reports supported
precisely the same position, which was taken upby Obama during the
2008 campaign: Iraq was the wrong war, Afghanistan is the "right" war,
and the Bush administration diverted vital resources away from the
latter to fight the former. Now that Obama is doing what he said he’d
do all along – escalating and extending the Long War on the Afghan
front – CAP is supporting him. It’s as simple as that.

Still, it’s perhaps perplexing to those who followed the debate over
the Iraq war to see CAP in the vanguard of the War Party. Or, as Korb
& Co. put it:

"Given our organization’s (and our personal) long-standing assertion
that a U.S. military withdrawal from the war in Iraq was and is a
necessary precondition for Iraq’s competing parties to find a stable
power-sharing equilibrium, perhaps it comes as a surprise to some that
we would ‘now’ call for such a renewed U.S. military, economic, and
political commitment to the war in Afghanistan."

Well, yes, now that you mention it, this cheerleading for Obama’s war
is a bit of a turnaround for CAP and the Washington "progressive"
community. Their Stalinesque about-face – which recalls the
disciplined hypocrisy of Communist cadre who were just as fervently
antiwar in the moments before Hitler invaded Russia as they were
pro-war every moment since – requires some explanation. Korb, however,
is not very forthcoming. He does little to refute objections to the
occupation of Afghanistan, which would seem to reflect the very same
critique leveled at Bush’s conquest of Iraq. Yet we get relatively
little out of him, except the bland assertion that "Afghanistan is not
Iraq." Not convinced yet? Well then, listen to this: "Unlike the war
in Iraq, which was always a war of choice, Afghanistan was and still
is a war of necessity."

There, that ought to quiet any qualms about embarking on a 10-year or
more military occupation and a hideously expensive "nation-building"
effort in a country that has defied would-be occupiers for most of its
history.

One searches in vain for a reasoned rationale for the Afghan
escalation, or even a halfway plausible justification for lurching
into Pakistan, either in Korb’s brief and dismissive piece for The
Nation or in CAP’s latest [pdf.] 40-plus page defense of the
administration’s war plans. The latter is long on sober assessments of
how difficult it will be to double-talk the American people into
supporting another futile crusade on the Asian landmass, and it has
plenty of colorful graphics, including one showing how much they want
the U.S. troop presence to increase over the next few years. Yet this
"war of necessity" concept is never explained beyond mere reiteration,
although there are a few subtle hints. At one point, the CAP document,
"Sustainable Security in Afghanistan," declares:

"Al-Qaeda poses a clear and present danger to American interests and
its allies throughout the world and must be dealt with by using all
the instruments in our national security arsenal in an integrated
manner. The terrorist organization’s deep historical roots in
Afghanistan and its neighbor Pakistan place it at the center of an
‘arc of instability’ through South and Central Asia and the greater
Middle East that requires a sustained international response."

If al-Qaeda has "deep historical roots" in Afghanistan and Pakistan,
then they run far deeper in, say, Saudi Arabia – where most of the
9/11 hijackers were from. If we go by Korbian logic, that merits a
U.S. invasion and decade-long military occupation of the Kingdom.

Is it something in the water in Washington, or is it just the
water-cooler in CAP’s D.C. offices?

Yes, by all means, let us examine the "deep historical roots" of
al-Qaeda, which originated in what Korb obliquely refers to as "the
anti-Soviet campaign." Thiscampaign was conducted by the U.S.
government, which armed, aided, and gave open political support to the
Afghan "mujahedin," who were feted at the Reagan White House. Supplied
with Stinger missiles and other weaponry, which enabled them to drive
the Red Army out, al-Qaeda developed as an international jihadist
network in the course of this struggle, which later turned on its
principal sponsor and enabler. None of this, of course, is mentioned
by the authors of the CAP report.

Shorn of sanctimony and partisan rhetoric, what the advocates of
Obama’s war are saying is that Afghanistan and Pakistan are Osama bin
Laden’s home turf, and the 9/11 terrorist attacks give us the right to
militarily occupy the country, in perpetuity if necessary, in order to
prevent a repeat.

This argument lacks all proportion and belies the Obamaites’ appeals
to "pragmatism" and "realism" as the alleged hallmarks of the new
administration. Beneath the unemotional language of faux-expertise –
the technical analyses of troop strength and abstruse discussions of
counterinsurgency doctrine – a dark undercurrent of primordialism
flows through the "progressive" case for a 10-year war in the wilds of
Central Asia. The unspoken but painfully obvious motive for Obama’s
war is simply satisfying the desire of the American people for
revenge.

It is certainly not about preventing another 9/11. The biggest and
deadliest terrorist attack in our history was for the most part
plotted and carried out here in the U.S., right under the noses of the
FBI, the CIA, and all the "anti-terrorist" agencies and initiatives
that had been created during the Clinton years. Earlier, it was
plotted inHamburg, Germany, and Malaysia, and the plot advanced
further still in a small town in south Florida.

Having concluded that another terrorist attack on U.S. soil is for all
intents and purposes practically inevitable, the U.S. government
during the Bush era decided to take up an offensive strategy, to go
after the terrorist leadership in their "safe havens." The Obamaites,
likewise disdaining a defensive strategy, have continued this policy,
albeit with a simple switch in locations and the application of
greater resources. They have furthermore determined – without making
public any supporting evidence – that these alleged terrorist
sanctuaries are located in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The president has
even broadly hinted that Osama bin Laden himself is in Pakistan’s
tribal area. One presumes we are supposed to take this on faith: after
all, the U.S. government would never lie to us, or exaggerate the
known facts – would they?

The CAP report is mostly a rehash of liberal interventionist bromides,
paeans to multilateralism (which ring particularly hollow in view of
Obama’s recent failure to get more than a measly 5,000 European troops
out of NATO), and pious pledges to build clinics, schools, and walk
little old ladies across crowded streets even as our soulless armies
of drones wreak death and devastation.

This use of robots to do our dirty work recalls the bombing of the
former Yugoslavia, during which American pilots dropped their deadly
payloads from a height of 20,000 feet. Sure, it made for somewhat
dicey accuracy, but better Serbian "collateral damage" than American
casualties. The same lesson applies to the Af-Pak war: better a lot of
dead Pakistanis than a few downed American pilots. The U.S. death toll
is already rising rapidly enough, and the shooting down of an American
pilot over Pakistani territory would surely draw unwelcome attention
on the home front, as well as cause an international incident. We
can’t have that.

I am truly at a loss to describe, in suitably pungent terms, the
contempt in which I hold the "progressive" wing of the War Party,
which is now enjoying its moment in the sun. These people have no
principles: it’s all about power at the court of King Obama, and these
court policy wonks are good for nothing but apologias for the king’s
wars.

They are, however, good for an occasional laugh. I had to guffaw when
I read the phrase "arc of instability." This is supposed to be a
reason – nay, the reason – for a military and political campaign
scheduled to continue for at least the next 10 years. Well, then,
let’s take a good look at this "arc," which, we are told, extends
"through South and Central Asia and the greater Middle East." From the
shores of Lebanon to the mountain ranges of Afghanistan, and most
places in between, that "arc of instability" defines the geographical
extent of U.S. intervention in the region from the end of World War II
to the present. If any single factor contributed to the instability
permeating this arc, then it is the one constant factor in the
equation, which has been the U.S. presence and efforts to dominate the
region.

What is Korb’s – and CAP’s – solution to the problem of regional
instability? Why, more of the same. This will lead, as it has in the
past, to more blowback and an increase in the support and capabilities
of the worldwide Islamist insurgency we are pledged to defeat.

NOTES IN THE MARGIN

I am told that we are now enabling comments in a limited number of
original articles, including this column. Have fun, and keep it clean.