[Peace-discuss] Help Prog. Caucus move DC on war vote

Mon Oct 13 20:09:03 EDT 2014

" We should be opposing Obama's war-making, not trying to find ways to 
support it. "

Very well said Carl !

This just shows how deluded and morally bankrupt liberal democrats have 
become.

David Johnson

On 10/13/2014 4:44 PM, Carl G. Estabrook via Peace-discuss wrote:
> Bob--
>
> Obama became president by co-opting the anti-war movement and 
> pretending that he opposed his predecessors' war-making. He was lying, 
> and his war policy is thoroughly consistent with Bush's - indeed with 
> that of all US presidents who have killed, wounded, and made homeless 
> well over 20 million human beings in the last 50 years, mostly civilians.
>
> He has not been the lesser evil but, as Glen Ford says, the more 
> effective evil - effective in carrying out the policy of control of 
> the world's greatest energy producing region, as a means for the 
> control of the Eurasian economy for the benefit of the US 1%.
>
> Obama's had to kill a lot of people to achieve this goal, and few have 
> been more helpful than those liberals who contend that they can "have 
> little long-term positive impact, so [they] are not campaigning for a 
> no vote"! With opponents like that, who needs allies?
>
> It's duplicitous to twist a call for Turkey "to open a humanitarian 
> aid corridor in its own territory to transmit the humanitarian and 
> military aid from the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government" to Kobane 
> into support for more US and Turkish military action in the region, 
> even if done with feigned reluctance.
>
> We should be opposing Obama's war-making, not trying to find ways to 
> support it.
>
> --CGE
>
>
> On Oct 13, 2014, at 4:04 PM, Robert Naiman 
> <naiman at justforeignpolicy.org <mailto:naiman at justforeignpolicy.org>> 
> wrote:
>
>> Hi, Carl.
>>
>> 1. I disagree that Kobane now equals Benghazi then, for many reasons 
>> that I won't go into right now because I'm up against a writing 
>> deadline, but am happy to come back to later on this thread or 
>> elsewhere. For example, as you yourself noted, Chomsky has joined 
>> others in calling for a Turkey to allow a "humanitarian corridor" to 
>> protect Kobane.
>> 2. We are not calling for people to support the U.S. war against 
>> ISIS. We think it's a foregone conclusion that Congress will 
>> overwhelmingly vote yes on any AUMF that reaches the floor. We think 
>> that whether there a few or fewer no votes will have little long-term 
>> positive impact, so we are not campaigning for a no vote. Instead, we 
>> are campaigning for any AUMF to prohibit the use of ground combat 
>> forces and to be narrow and limited, as the Progressive Caucus has 
>> called for. We think that these are winnable fights that if won will 
>> have a significant, positive long-term impact.
>>
>> In particular, we are campaigning for any AUMF to have a time limit, 
>> a "sunset," as I wrote in my Nation piece in August. And we want the 
>> sunset to be as short as possible. So far, Kaine's is the best: one 
>> year.
>>
>> Also, we want the targets of any AUMF to be named and limited, e.g. 
>> limited to ISIS, Nusra, and other Al Qaeda type groups, as in Kaine's 
>> AUMF.
>>
>> Finally, we want Congress to impose public reporting requirements on 
>> civilian casualties from U.S. airstrikes, so we won't continue the 
>> "he said/she said" unaccountability soap opera on civilian casualties 
>> of the drone strike policy, which has, as I predicted, already 
>> started with respect to U.S. airstrikes in Syria.
>>
>> These points are explained in the text and background of our MoveOn 
>> petition in support of the Progressive Caucus resolution:
>>
>> Help the Progressive Caucus Limit the Iraq-Syria war
>> http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/help-the-progressive?source=c.em&r_by=1135580
>>
>> All best,
>>
>> RN
>>
>> ===
>>
>> Robert Naiman
>> Policy Director
>> Just Foreign Policy
>> www.justforeignpolicy.org <http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/>
>> naiman at justforeignpolicy.org <mailto:naiman at justforeignpolicy.org>
>> (202) 448-2898 x1
>>
>> On Mon, Oct 13, 2014 at 11:59 AM, Carl G. Estabrook 
>> <galliher at illinois.edu <mailto:galliher at illinois.edu>> wrote:
>>
>>     Bob--
>>
>>     /'...mere slogans of “no war” and “stop the bombing” aren’t
>>     morally, politically, or strategically sufficient right now...'/
>>
>>     That's a curiously periphrastic way to call for support for the
>>     Obama administration's war in the Mideast.
>>
>>     It suggests that you do recognize that you're reversing what you
>>     seemed formerly to be saying about a 'just foreign policy.'
>>
>>     Kobane seems to be playing something like the role that Benghazi
>>     did in the preparation for the US/NATO attack on Libya.
>>
>>     'When a non-violent uprising began, Qaddafi crushed it violently,
>>     and a rebellion broke out that liberated Benghazi, Libya's second
>>     largest city, and seemed about to move on to Qaddafi's stronghold
>>     in the West. His forces, however, reversed the course of the
>>     conflict and were at the gates of Benghazi. A slaughter in
>>     Benghazi was likely, and as Obama's Middle East adviser Dennis
>>     Ross pointed out, "everyone would blame us for it." That would be
>>     unacceptable, as would a Qaddafi military victory enhancing his
>>     power and independence. The US then joined in UN Security Council
>>     resolution 1973 calling for a no-fly zone, to be implemented
>>     by France, the UK, and the US, with the US supposed to move to
>>     a supporting role.
>>
>>     'There was no effort to institute a no-fly zone. The triumvirate
>>     at once interpreted the resolution as authorizing direct
>>     participation on the side of the rebels. A ceasefire was imposed
>>     by force on Qaddafi's forces, but not on the rebels. On the
>>     contrary, they were given military support as they advanced to
>>     the West, soon securing the major sources of Libya's oil
>>     production, and poised to move on.
>>
>>     'The blatant disregard of UN 1973, from the start began to cause
>>     some difficulties for the press as it became too glaring to
>>     ignore. In the New York Times, for example, Karim Fahim and David
>>     Kirkpatrick (March 29) wondered "how the allies could justify
>>     airstrikes on Colonel Qaddafi's forces around [his tribal center]
>>     Surt if, as seems to be the case, they enjoy widespread support
>>     in the city and pose no threat to civilians." Another technical
>>     difficulty is that UNSC 1973 "called for an arms embargo
>>     that applies to the entire territory of Libya, which means that
>>     any outside supply of arms to the opposition would have to
>>     be covert" (but otherwise unproblematic).' [Noam Chomsky]
>>
>>     --CGE
>>
>>     On Oct 13, 2014, at 11:06 AM, Robert Naiman
>>     <noreply at list.moveon.org <mailto:noreply at list.moveon.org>> wrote:
>>
>>>     Dear C G ESTABROOK,
>>>
>>>     Yesterday I wrote to you, urging you to sign and share our
>>>     MoveOn petition urging the Obama Administration to do all it can
>>>     to pressure Turkey to allow Kurds to save Kurds resisting the
>>>     ISIS siege of Kobane:
>>>
>>>     Obama: Press Turkey to Stop Massacre of Syrian Kurds
>>>     http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/save-kobane
>>>
>>>     Press reports since Friday have made me cautiously optimistic
>>>     that Kobane can still be saved. Kurdish defenders are fighting
>>>     bravely and creatively, and having some success in holding ISIS
>>>     back. Tens of thousands of Kurds demonstrated in Germany on
>>>     Saturday, showing that world Kurdish public opinion has not
>>>     given up on saving Kobane. And while I don’t think that the
>>>     Obama Administration is yet doing all that it could be doing in
>>>     terms of putting pressure on Turkey, the Obama Administration is
>>>     clearly doing some things that are helping Kurdish defenders
>>>     save Kobane – so say Kurdish officials in Kobane.
>>>
>>>     To me, the situation in Kobane shows that – contrary to what
>>>     some people on the left have been saying – mere slogans of “no
>>>     war” and “stop the bombing” aren’t morally, politically, or
>>>     strategically sufficient right now for Americans who are rightly
>>>     concerned about endless war to engage Washington and U.S. public
>>>     opinion about the war against ISIS in Iraq and Syria. In my
>>>     view, Americans are right to be concerned about civilians
>>>     threatened by ISIS, and right to have sympathy for civilians
>>>     threatened by ISIS who support some degree of U.S. military
>>>     intervention against ISIS.
>>>
>>>     This is a key reason why – again, contrary to what some people
>>>     on the left have been saying – I think that the Congressional
>>>     Progressive Caucus was very wise to stake out a more nuanced
>>>     position than simply “supporting” or “opposing” the war. And
>>>     this is a key reason why Just Foreign Policy is supporting the
>>>     CPC resolution, which neither supports nor opposes the war per
>>>     se, but says that Congress should debate and vote on the war,
>>>     just like the U.S. Constitution and the majority of Americans
>>>     say, that no U.S. ground combat troops should be used, just like
>>>     President Obama and the majority of Americans say, and that any
>>>     Congressional authorization of force should be narrow and
>>>     limited, just as the Obama Administration has said.
>>>
>>>     On Wednesday, we are doing petition delivery events at local
>>>     Congressional offices in support of the CPC resolution together
>>>     with Progressives for Democratic Action. I’m sorry for the late
>>>     notice if you are seeing this information for the first time; I
>>>     originally planned to write you about this over the weekend, but
>>>     we diverted ourselves to address the Kobane emergency.
>>>
>>>     Here is the alert that we sent to the Just Foreign Policy list
>>>     on Friday evening. At this writing, we have almost ten thousand
>>>     signatures on our petition in support of the CPC resolution.
>>>
>>>     Thanks for all you do for justice,
>>>     Robert Naiman, Just Foreign Policy
>>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Peace-discuss mailing list
> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/attachments/20141013/09bd244e/attachment-0001.html>