[Peace-discuss] Fwd: FW: [usgp-media] Draft - GP RELEASE Green Party: It's time for a new peace movement to oppose endless war

Fri Oct 17 10:07:36 EDT 2014

David--

As an ex-Green I'm glad to see the current Green Party call for a "new peace movement," but this statement is inadequate.

It is not the case that the Obama administration's "foreign policy [is] incoherent." It's rational, in Weber's sense of setting means to ends, and it's immensely dangerous.

Nor is it accurate to refer to "the endless conflict that President Bush unleashed eleven years ago." You will recall that the Carter administration invented jihadism - and the Reagan administration announced that its foreign policy would be "a war on terrorism."

As the late Fred Branfman pointed out, "Executive Branch leaders have killed, wounded and made homeless well over 20 million human beings in the last 50 years, mostly civilians" - and not because they were stupid.

The ends of US foreign policy, as well as the vicious means, have been consistent throughout our lifetimes.

We should have a chance to discuss these matters on today's News from Neptune.
'
Regards, CGE 
> 

On Oct 17, 2014, at 7:56 AM, David Johnson via Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:

> GP RELEASE Green Party: It's time for a new peace movement to oppose endless war
> 
> 
> WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The Green Party of the United States is calling for a new antiwar movement in response to the renewal of U.S. military involvement in Iraq.
> 
> Greens said that dropping bombs in Iraq and Syria is unlikely to bring peace and stability to the region. The open-ended campaign includes more than a thousand U.S. troops on the ground in Iraq.
> 
> NAME: "ISIS learned from al-Qaeda that the U.S. can be manipulated into going to war and inflicting death and mayhem on civilians. They witnessed how easily major U.S. media can be seduced into beating drums for more military action. The confusion over who the U.S.'s allies are, with attacks on the same militias in Iraq that President Obama recently wanted to arm in Syria against President Assad, has rendered foreign policy incoherent. The U.S. even aided and trained ISIS rebels in Syria. The U.S. bombing campaign is likely to function as a recruiting tool for violent religious movements like ISIS that are targeting northern Iraqi Yazidis and other helpless civilian populations."
> 
> NAME: "It's time to speak out against perpetual war. The Obama Administration's recent actions in Iraq, as well as airstrikes and drone warfare in Libya, Pakistan, and other nations tell us that endless war is now a bipartisan policy. We're raising a younger generation of Americans who have never known peace. Unfortunately, most of the antiwar movement of the last decade disbanded after Barack Obama's inauguration, under the delusion that they had helped elect an antiwar president. The demand for peace should have become even louder in 2009. Meanwhile, the Green Party has maintained its opposition to U.S. military aggression around the world and remains the nation's peace party."
> 
> NAME: "It's not possible to meet the country's human needs or solve the climate crisis while engaged in perpetual war. Wars require huge budgets and reallocation of resources. The winners in endless war are weapons manufacturers and dealers, crony military contractors like Halliburton, and a rapidly expanding homeland-security industry that's chiseling away our rights and freedoms. The Green Party calls for deep cuts to military funding and reinvestment in social programs and the fight against climate change."
> 
> NAME: "When the Bush-Cheney Administration ordered the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 based on propaganda and cooked intelligence, the result was hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqi civilians, destroyed infrastructure, over 4,000 dead U.S. troops and thousands more suffering from physical and psychological injuries. Another effect was that the war opened Iraq's borders to al-Qaeda and, more recently, ISIS militias. Recent war history shows that such groups are seldom defeated by military incursions, that they often thrive in the chaos of war. It's all too likely that current U.S. actions are setting the stage for the next phase in the endless conflict that President Bush unleashed eleven years ago."
> 
> 
>  
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