protecting America

Yesterday morning I was having breakfast with my friend Ben and we got talking about where we were and what we were doing when the first plane hit the towers some eleven years ago.  This led to a discussion about the mythologies of the Republican Party, in particular the line "Bush kept us safe..." to which Ben responded, "except that one time."  The reality is that one of the largest attacks on US soil happened under his watch. 

Shortly after the event, there were stories that claimed the Bush administration had intelligence which had been ignored which may have enabled them to stop the attacks.  An op-ed in yesterday's New York Times indicated that the degree of negligence was greater than previously reported.  Of course, the right wing talk radio world has become apoplectic, yelling that liberals are blaming Bush for 9/11. 

Yet, they give Bush praise for no attacks on his watch... other than the one, the only one since Pearl Harbor... but that doesn't count.  It does count.  And worse than that, while there may not have been another attack on US soil after that, the reality is that the Bush administration's policies destroyed any sense of security that we had as a people.  They played on our fears.  They curtailed our rights.  And perhaps worst of all, they destroyed our economy by rushing into two unnecessary wars which consumed incredible resources while at the same time cutting taxes.  They presided over the destruction of our economy, in large degree the results of their policy choices.  Losing one's job, one's home, one's future is anything but being "safe."

The Republicans want us to forget all of that.  They want to go back to the same economic policies that got us into this mess.  They are rattling sabres at Iran and threatening yet another protracted and expensive war while at the same time talking about more tax cuts.  They say that after creating one of the largest messes the country has ever experienced, because a Democratic administration has not cleaned it all up in four years while dealing with a congress that was/is of the least interested in actually solving problems of any congress ever, we should allow them back into power. 

Was Bush responsible for 9/11?  No.  Could he have stopped it?  Maybe.  Are the Republicans responsible for what happened afterwards which led to one of the largest recessions we've known and the slowest recovery, the loss of more lives than have been counted, and the virtual destruction of two countries on top of allowling ours to go down the toilet?  Absolutely.

So, if you want to protect America and to help keep it safe, do not vote for the party that has been working to destroy it since 9/11.

Viet Nam, Iraq, Afghanistan

Cheryl and I have been listening to The Things They Carried, a very powerful novel about Viet Nam, based on the authors real experiences there. I have to say that I was very hesitant to "read" this book. I was born in 1954 and grew up hearing the body count on the news every evening. I didn't have a lot of friends who served but I did know some folk who were there and that war was always at the edge of my generation's consciousness. The final year they drafted was 1972, the year I graduated high school. They continued to assign numbers for the next 4 years, just in case they decided to reinstate the draft. FWIW, info regarding the draft and links to charts of the draft numbers can be found here. My number was 32. Had the draft been in effect, I would have seen sunny South Viet Nam... or had to make some other life changing decision. I remember thinking about cutting off a toe, leaving for Canada, doing something to make myself ineligible. I do not know what I would have done - whether I would have served or not.

If I had ended up there, I don't know how the experience would have affected me. I have friends and acquaintances who have adjusted to the experience as well as anyone can. Like a scar, it has left something behind but doesn't impair their ability to function. In some ways it may have even helped them come to terms with the fragility and arbitrariness of life. Or there may be a cold, numb place in their hearts that will never completely heal. I know others who never recovered and as the John Gorka song, Semper Fi says, "Sometimes the wounds that never heal are easiest to hide," and "Some of the men who did survive were not the lucky ones." Our streets and homeless shelters are still littered with those men. I do know that as I listen to this powerful book, I feel a constant ache in my stomach as I imagine myself there, and I do imagine myself there. I feel a sadness at the dreams lost, at young men who never became old men, at families that never happened.

And then I think about Iraq and Afghanistan and the men and women there... those who will not come home... those who will come home with horrific injuries... and those who will come home with wounds we cannot see. Then, along with the ache in my stomach I feel an anger, a disgust, a profound sense of emptiness. I think of those who make decisions to go to war and wonder how they can sleep at night knowing the pain and loss and destruction their decisions have caused and I wonder whether they truly understand the cost...

more on Iraq

My good friend Tom pointed me to an interview on NPR - Fresh Air - with Donovan Campbell. Campbell was a platoon leader in Iraq and put his experience there into a book called Joker One.

If Ricks' book talks about the big picture in Iraq, Campbell's talks about the personal. His memoir is at the top of my to read list. The little I heard in the interview when added to what I've learned from Fiasco has told me one thing. The cost of the mistakes made by both the civilian leadership and the military leadership in Iraq must never be allowed to be made again.

Military

Anyone who has read much of my stuff knows that I am a pacifist. And I have that stand for religious reasons. There is more to it though. I grew up during the Viet Nam era and an anti-military stance was easy to come by. While family members of my father's generation all served - one uncle was in a German prisoner of war camp in WWII and my father served in Korea - we did not have a strong military tradition in the family. There is not a significant military presence in Pittsburgh, PA, where I grew up. I had few friends who served after Viet Nam and not a lot who served there. Those who did, never spoke of their experiences. Since moving to California, where the military has a significant presence, I have had more friends and church members with military backgrounds but even playing with guys stationed at Vandenberg Air force Base didn't give me much real information. All of that adds up to a serious ignorance about the way the military works. Any impressions I had were just that... and had various degrees of accuracy.

I heard Tom Ricks speak the other day at UCSB and was fascinated by what he had to say about Iraq. So I've started to work through his first book on Iraq Fiasco and when I'm finished with it, I will read The Gamble. I'm fascinated at his portrayal of the way the military works... even though I don't have any sense of how accurate it is. The philosophical and organizational principles really are significant to understand.

I was particularly taken by his discussion of "strategy," which he says is a technical term in the military, not to be confused with tactics. Strategy, he says, emerges from the answers to 4 straightforward questions and the clarity with which those questions are answered is foundational to everything that comes afterward.
1. Who are we in this situation?
2. What are we ultimately trying to do in this conflict?
3. How will we do it?
4. What resources will we use to accomplish these goals?

Good questions... that apply to just about any area of life but critical in situations where the decisions made can have lethal consequences.

I highly recommend the books. And I'd love to hear back from folk with a military background on the accuracy of his descriptions.

McCain and Iraq

These words are from a foreign policy speech given by John McCain

By January 2013, America has welcomed home most of the servicemen and women who have sacrificed terribly so that America might be secure in her freedom. The Iraq War has been won. Iraq is a functioning democracy, although still suffering from the lingering effects of decades of tyranny and centuries of sectarian tension. Violence still occurs, but it is spasmodic and much reduced. Civil war has been prevented; militias disbanded; the Iraqi Security Force is professional and competent; al Qaeda in Iraq has been defeated; and the Government of Iraq is capable of imposing its authority in every province of Iraq and defending the integrity of its borders. The United States maintains a military presence there, but a much smaller one, and it does not play a direct combat role.

While some of the goals seem wonderful, others are either ridiculous or just wrong. Even if you agree with all of the goals, the rest of the speech gives no indication of any new initiatives to get there. Essentially, he wants to continue the Bush policies in Iraq but somehow will achieve these radically different. It reminds me of the old definition of insanity - doing the same thing over and over again, hoping to get different results.

My only hope is that the American public doesn't elect this man... doing the same thing over yet again, hoping to get different results.

The ants suffer

There is an African aphorism... "when elephants fight, it is the ants who suffer."

All too often we have forgotten the ants in the mess we have caused in Iraq. The government uses words like "collateral damage" to describe the deaths of civilians and never even began counting them let alone stopped counting. We rarely see images or hear stories of the civilians, mostly too poor to escape, left behind. Of course, every dead child is the seeds of an entire family of terrorists yearning for revenge.

In an air attack on Sadr City, 2 year old Ali Hussein was injured as his house fell in on him. He died at the hospital.



The Washington Post published this photo and was castigated by some readers for showing an "anti-war" image and for publishing a photo in poor taste. As Helen Thomas reminded us in her column, "so is war."

what would you do with $16500?

What would you do with an extra $16500? Pay off some debt? Put it towards a car or a new flat screen tv? Buy a new guitar? Pay for school for one of your kids? Make a contribution to your church or some important charity? Just have enough cash to make ends meet in this time when things are pretty shaky for a lot of us...
Think of that number $16,500 when your $1200 "economic stimulus" check arrives. Why? Because that is the amount that your household is paying towards the Iraq war.
Is it worth it? Are you getting your money's worth?

4000

Five years and now the official death count of US military in Iraq is now 4000. There are officially 29314 wounded. And the department of defense reports that 145 US military personnel in Iraq have committed suicide. Of course, nobody is really counting the Iraqis. You can see all of the statistics at Iraq Coalition Casualties.

Bring them home.

But ending this war is not enough. We must address the mindset in this country that sees violence as the primary and best response to conflict. This must be changed.

The Fall of the Soviet Union and Iraq

What do these two subjects have to do with one another? Let's first talk briefly about the Soviet Union. It fell not because of the strength of America but because of the weakness of its own economy which was overburdened by a military budget that bled everything else dry. Military spending is not productive spending. It doesn't provide infrastructure or goods to the public. Instead it is just a little better than throwing the money away. It is the epitome of the disposable product. So all of this wasteful spending as they tried to keep up with us in an arms race while sustaining a war in Afghanistan was more than they could afford. When their economy collapsed, as was inevitable because of the percentage of non-productive sending, the nation crumbled.

Last Thursday Joseph Stigletz, a Nobel Prize winning economist, and Robert Hormatz, vice chairman of Goldman-Sachs International, testified before the Joint Economic Committee of congress. Stigletz said that he believes the overall cost of the Iraq war will be around 3 trillion dollars with the direct cost to US taxpayers being at least $2 trillion.

Both men testified about the opportunities to make this country better that are rendered impossible because of this war. Stigletz said that for a fraction of the cost, Social Security and Medicare could have been kept easily solvent for at least 50 more years. Each day's spending could put 58,000 children in Head Start, make college affordable for 160,000 students, pay the annual salaries of 11,000 border patrol agents or 14,000 police officers. And that is one day's costs. Watch this little film from the American Friends Service Committee to see more of what could be done with just 1 day's expenditure for this war.

Stigletz also noted that 40% of the vets from the first Gulf War are eligible for disability benefits which will go on for decades. Imagine, he asked, what the numbers will be for this war which will involve 2 million troops and go on for at least the 5 years we already have under our belt? Imagine with me the social costs when the safety net for them fails as it did for the Viet Nam vets - remember how many of them ended up homeless on the streets? How many of these young men and women will end up discarded? And what will happen to their families?

And finally they testified that because of tax cuts during war and what was an already growing deficit, this war is financed almost entirely by deficit spending. Bush has worked to try to hide the costs of the war by bypassing the normal budget process and using emergency appropriations for the funds. The costs will be hanging around our necks like an albatross for decades to come.

And John McCain says we should expect to stay there another 100 year!

Let me make a prediction. If we do, we will fall just like the Soviet Union did and for essentially the same reasons. It will have nothing to do with the strength of our ideals or the beautiful vision upon which this nation was founded. It will be because of a poorly planned and completely unnecessary war that strangled our economy.

A vote for McCain will virtually insure that end. Actually, I think a vote for Hillary will too. It is only Obama who is talking about seeing security in a new way - of building coalitions and negotiating before dropping bombs.

the fragility of life

The last week and half has been a difficult one. The fragility of life has been thrust into our faces yet again.

Misty Yurko, my niece, was 30 years old. She struggled with Crohn's disease for about five years and had had her ups and downs with that until last November she came down with pneumonia. She went into the hospital and never came home again. For eight months she had one issue after another - times when it looked as if she would get better... times when organs would stop working, seemingly at random. Two weeks ago she seemed to be on an upswing and there was hope that she might actually recover. We had seen her in June, and while she was weak, we did have some time to laugh and smile. I hoped that the next time I saw her she would be back to herself.

Misty was doing physical therapy and things were looking good. Then, in a day she went back from the physical therapy department to a regular hospital room. The next day she was in ICU, non-responsive, and on life support. A few days later she was gone.

We always lived a distance from her so we didn't know her as well as I would have liked. She was about 6 years older than Alexis and the times we saw her during childhood, she loved playing the "big sister" to Alexis. I'm left with wondering how things might have been different... how I might have spent my time better with her. My sister is trying to figure out how to face a world without her daughter in it.

Five days ago we received word that a cousin of one of our church members was killed in Iraq. I never met Jimmy but I have heard a little about him and can guess some more. He graduated from high school in 2005 without direction and the family says he joined the military as a way of growing up. I expect that he had to know that he would end up in Iraq so there may have been some patriotism involved, some hope for adventure, even the yearning for the testosterone thrill of the battle... all of the fantasies of an 18 year old who has never seen the horrors of war. I don't have any idea what he experienced while there. Perhaps he felt he was doing something of value, perhaps not... in either case, he is gone. His family is in tatters. All of the dreams for the future are gone.

I want to be furious about his death. Jimmy is the closest that I have come to this needless war. I want to be able to hold him up as the picture of the waste this administration has caused - the waste of resources, but more importantly the waste of lives. I cannot. All I can do is feel grief, and sadness, and loss. I never knew Jimmy but he sounds like he was a great kid. I never will know him now.

In a blink, it is gone. Life is fragile. It ends with a sniper's bullet, a disease that cannot be stopped, a bridge collapsing during an afternoon commute, the long wear of years... sometimes it is long and full, sometimes far too short. Sometimes it is filled with joy, sometimes with pain, most often a mixture of the two, but it is always fragile. And it is always precious. I hope that I remember this a few months from now when the press of work and the day to day is all around. I hope that I take the time to talk with the kids in my church and neighborhood, to hug my family, to smell the flowers and watch the birds... Life is fragile... too fragile to waste on the unimportant.

Keith Olbermann on Iraq

I don't watch much TV and almost never MSNBC so I missed this comment when it was aired. I came across it today on Mike Leaptrott's blog. It is long and perhaps not quite as timely as when it was delivered a few days ago but still very much on target and worth watching and sharing.

Thanks Mike!

Arlington West

This photo of is of the Arlington West Memorial at the beach in Santa Barbara. There are 3000 crosses in the sand, most with names, many with photos. Of course there is also a sign that recognizes that as of this writing there are actually 3497.

Memorial Day is always an ambivalent day for me. I am a pacifist. I always think there is another way to solve conflict than with military might. The Iraq War itself involves no ambivalence. I think Bush, Cheney and the rest of them should be tried for war crimes and imprisoned. Now we know that they told yet another lie when they tell us that nobody could predict what has happened. Before the invasion they had received intelligence estimates that predicted exactly what happened. Of course, they ignored those predictions. They must be held responsible for the death and destruction they have caused.

My feelings about the casualties are very different. (here's a link to the names, details, and photos of those who have died). Some who have died signed up for the military because they truly believed in this mission and believed they could make a difference in the world. Some were in the reserves because they believed it was an easy way to supplement their income and never dreamt they would be in combat. At worst they expected to be deployed to help clean up after a natural disaster. Some were confused young people who joined the military in hopes of finding direction for their lives. Someone had told them that "joining the army will make you a man."

The men and women represented by those crosses in the sand, many of whom were too young to really know who they were or where they were going, gave their lives at the bequest of the nation. It is a noble act to be willing to sacrifice your future for the greater good. It is an act to be honored. At the same time, it is an act that should not be required without the most serious of discussion and not until every other option has been exhausted. In this case there was no serious discussion and much of what there was was laced with lies. It wasn't a case where every reasonable option was exhausted, it was a time when the option chosen should not have been on the table at all.

These men and women did not waste their lives. They sacrificed for their country. Still, their lives were wasted. George Bush wasted their lives. They died for his macho fantasy in an unnecessary war that cannot be won.

I seriously doubt that he will be held accountable for his actions in this life, but I believe he will stand before God and listen to each name read, see each face of each soldier who died, of each one who has come back without limbs, of each one who cannot adjust to life after having seen what they saw and done what they did. He will see each face and hear each name of each Iraqi citizen who died as "colateral damage" or in the sectarian violence we fomented. He had better pray that his view of God is not accurate. If we do have a God of violence and vengence, as George Bush seems to believe, he will surely pay for what he has done. I imagine him standing and saying, "But I thought it was the right thing" with that goofy look on his face and God responds, "Go away from me. You never knew me."

mission accomplished

4 years ago Bush stood on an aircraft carrier and proclaimed to the world that major combat operations were concluded. How many have died since then? And what could have been done with the nearly $1trillion spent thus far?

Yesterday, seated behind me on a flight from El Paso was an Army officer recently back from Iraq. I overheard him tell the man sitting next to him that "there is no military solution to Iraq." What he didn't imply but should have is that there is no military solution to any international conflicts. We spend more money on the military than the rest of the world combined and even with that plus the help of over 100,000 mercenaries in Iraq, we still can't beat that little country!?!? War doesn't work any longer. Terrorism cannot be defeated by bombing a village. Economic development, education, medical help, talking... these are the only techniques that can make a difference in today's world.

It may be that military might is needed to contain violence, but as a long term solution, it accomplishes no mission. All one need do is look at the quagmire that is Iraq to see that.

a day of horror

My son is home from school today because of illness and turned on the television at about 1:30 pacific time only to get the news of the horror at Virginia Tech. As I watched the news conference, more than once my eyes filled with tears as I thought of the student's families, some of whom are wondering what has happened and whether their loved ones are safe, others have gotten word and are relieved, and some have gotten the worst news possible. The potential of each of those young people is forever gone...

At this point we don't know exactly what happened or what led a young man to such unspeakable violence. What we do know is that it is not uncommon... 33 killed at random is a typical day in Iraq. 33 dead for no reason is a good day in Darfur. Children traumatized by violence around them is normal in many areas of our world (today's USA Today reports a study that shows 70% of Iraqi school children suffer from traumatic stress).

I pray for comfort for the families of the victims, for healing for those injured and those who will never be able to erase the memories of the day. I pray for a culture, a world where violence is the easy answer to problems. I pray for peace.