[Peace] Continutity in ignoring guidelines #1
Matt Murrey
mytwords at yahoo.com
Fri Dec 19 05:30:39 CST 2008
And the event being announced in entry #1 is...?????
--- On Thu, 12/18/08, peace-request at lists.chambana.net <peace-request at lists.chambana.net> wrote:
From: peace-request at lists.chambana.net <peace-request at lists.chambana.net>
Subject: Peace Digest, Vol 59, Issue 14
To: peace at lists.chambana.net
Date: Thursday, December 18, 2008, 12:05 PM
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Today's Topics:
1. Continuity in killing (C. G. Estabrook)
2. Fwd: [radcaucus] Petition to "Defend the Shoe Man Journalist"
making the rounds (Brian Dolinar)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2008 13:44:33 -0600
From: "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at uiuc.edu>
Subject: [Peace] Continuity in killing
To: Peace <peace at anti-war.net>
Message-ID: <494956A1.2060407 at uiuc.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed
"...the next president has no intention of genuinely getting out of Iraq
... he
will make symbolic withdrawals of combat brigades, but plans to make permanent
most of the 14 military bases constructed since the invasion ... [And his]
commitment to troop escalations in Afghanistan ... represents continuity with
the Bush Doctrine more than it does rupture...
Published on Wednesday, December 17, 2008 by The Providence Journal
A Hypocrite as Our Diplomat in Chief
by John R. MacArthur
WHEN IT COMES to foreign affairs, Barack Obama seems like a serious person with
an authentic liberal's concern about the health of the world beyond our
borders.
After all, he campaigned for president in Berlin and his blurb appears on the
back of a book by Reinhold Neibuhr, the great liberal theologian and
internationalist.
But so far, the president-elect's Cabinet choices make a joke of the
liberals
who backed him in the hope that something fundamental might change in
America's
belligerent behavior abroad. As the neo-conservative Max Boot approvingly
observed, the appointment of Gen. James Jones as chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of
Staff and the retention of Robert Gates as defense secretary "could just
as
easily have come from a President McCain."
So too, in principle, could that of hawkish Hillary Clinton as secretary of
state, which makes Obama's rhetoric of restraint in foreign affairs begin
to
sound as empty as President Bush's professed skepticism about "nation
building"
eight years ago during his race against Al Gore.
It's worth recalling that in the second debate with Gore, Bush even smirked
at
the concept: "I think what we need to do is convince people who live in
the
lands they live in to build the nations. . . . I mean, we're going to have
kind
of a nation-building corps from America? Absolutely not. Our military is meant
to fight and win wars. . . . And when it gets overextended, morale drops."
He had that right. Indeed, you wouldn't recognize the pre-emptive war
fanatic of
post 9/11 if it weren't for Bush's earlier statement during the debate
in
support of the U.S.-led bombing of Yugoslavia/Serbia during the Kosovo crisis
of
1999. It was then that the Clinton administration initiated its own pre-emptive
war - in response to Serbia President Slobodan Milosevic's alleged
"genocide"
against the Kosovar Albanians. The three-month bombing campaign was conducted
under the auspices of NATO, not the United Nations, and thus was every bit as
illegal under international law as the American invasion of Iraq, in 2003. At
the time, Kosovo was formally part of a sovereign Yugoslavia and NATO could not
argue that the Milosevic regime had threatened or attacked a NATO member.
Hillary Clinton favored both pre-emptive wars, and was particularly aggressive
in the case of Serbia, according to Gail Sheehy's book, Hillary's
Choice. Sheehy
quotes Hillary's recollection of a talk with her husband: "I urged him
to bomb."
Challenged by the president on the possible consequences - for example, more
executions of ethnic Albanians and damaging the NATO alliance - Hillary
replied,
"You cannot let this go on at the end of a century that has seen the major
holocaust of our time. What do we have NATO for if not to defend our way of
life?"
At the very least, this was a gross exaggeration. Serb repression of
Kosovo's
national aspirations, while often brutal, was nothing resembling a
"holocaust,"
and the Kosovo Liberation Army's provocation, including the assassination
of
Serb policemen, helped worsen the conflict. No doubt Milosevic was a very bad
man, but that didn't stop U.S. special envoy Robert Gelbard from calling
the
KLA, in 1998, a terrorist organization. Civilian casualties on the two sides
are
impossible to pin down accurately, but they appear to have been comparable,
perhaps 2,000 Albanians killed by Serb forces and 1,500 Serbs killed by NATO
warplanes in Belgrade and elsewhere.
This all may be blood under the bridge, but it gives us an insight into the
shoot-first temperament of the future secretary of state. According to former
Clinton adviser Dick Morris, "Hillary has a Manichean view of issues,
splitting
the political world into dueling forces of good and evil. . . . She sees
herself
as idealistic, moral, and righteous, and can only conclude that those with
opposing views must have opposite motives."
After Bush offered his solidarity with the Clintons over bombing Belgrade,
Hillary was happy to return the favor over bombing Baghdad. In her Oct. 10,
2002, Senate speech explaining her vote for war authorization, she declared
that
"perhaps my decision is influenced by my eight years of experience on the
other
end of Pennsylvania Avenue in the White House watching my husband deal with
serious challenges to our nation." Like little Serbia's oppression of
its
Albanian minority and its alleged threat to the American "way of
life"?
Politician to the core, Hillary couldn't resist the following hypocrisy:
While
she wanted "to ensure that Saddam Hussein makes no mistake about our
national
unity and support for the president's efforts to wage America's war
against
terrorists and weapons of mass destruction," she insisted that her vote
was not
"a vote for any new doctrine of pre-emption, or of unilateralism, or for
the
arrogance of American power or purpose."
Well, they say you can't have it both ways. And trying to may well have
cost
Hillary the presidency, since Obama's early stance against the war is what
gave
him a leg up in the primaries.
But it's not Hillary's bellicose positions that are surprising. As a
long-standing member of the Washington policy establishment and a
"humanitarian
interventionist," it's easy to see why she went along with the
received
political wisdom on Kosovo and Iraq.
What's harder to understand is why Obama - elected on a platform of greater
prudence - chose a trigger-happy hypocrite, who once mocked his "lack of
experience" in foreign affairs, to be his diplomat-in-chief. I suspect
it's
because the next president has no intention of genuinely getting out of Iraq -
that he will make symbolic withdrawals of combat brigades, but plans to make
permanent most of the 14 military bases constructed since the invasion.
Furthermore, I think that his foolish commitment to troop escalations in
Afghanistan - much of which will come from troops transferred from Iraq -
represents continuity with the Bush Doctrine more than it does rupture.
In the end, maybe Hillary and Barack don't make such an odd couple. We
won't
know for sure, however, until a Democratic Party-sponsored cluster bomb -
dropped in the name of women's rights and democracy - kills a lot of women
and
children in a village near Kandahar.
© 2008 The Providence Journal
John R. MacArthur, publisher of Harper's Magazine. Among other books, he is
the
author of Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War.
------------------------------
Message: 2
Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2008 15:19:13 -0600
From: "Brian Dolinar" <briandolinar at gmail.com>
Subject: [Peace] Fwd: [radcaucus] Petition to "Defend the Shoe Man
Journalist" making the rounds
To: "AWARE peace" <peace at lists.chambana.net>
Message-ID:
<cbbb12c20812171319p50e505eesc69aa81b7a9ec639 at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
* *
*Subject: **[mediawar] "Shoe-thrower did what journalists should have done
long ago"*
Media Workers Against the War www.mwaw.net
1. "Muntadar al-Zaidi Did What We Journalists Should Have Done Long
Ago"
David Lindorff, author and columnist for Counterpunch, recommends that his
former ALMER MATER, Columbia University School of Journalism, hire al-Zaidi
to
teach press conference techniques.
Read it here: http://tinyurl.com/5l4m29
2. PLEASE SIGN AND CIRCULATE:
The 50,000 Signatures Campaign for Zaidi
The campaign will proceed in demand of the release of the Iraqi Journalist,
Montadhar Al-Zaydi who hurled a pair of shoes at George Bush on 12/14/2008
in
Baghdad in reaction to Bush's immoral invasion of Iraq and the war-crimes
committed by the occupying forces with the aid of local warlords.
We hereby sign below to demand the immediate release of the Journalist
Montadhar Al-Zaydi, without any constraints or conditions. We also hold
Al-Maliki's government and the Bush administration accountable and
responsible
for his life, dignity, and well-being.
Sign the petition here:
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/iwffomuntatharalzaidi/index.html
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--
Brian Dolinar, Ph.D.
303 W. Locust St.
Urbana, IL 61801
briandolinar at gmail.com
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