Category Archives: War

Prelude To 9/11.

Posted on by

Understandably, 9/11 is a very sensitive subject. It was the only attack on US soil since Pearl Harbor. The people who died in the attacks are still being mourned, and those who gave their lives trying to save the victims are legitimately American heroes. Additionally, there are still many questions about how the attacks happened and why they were not stopped.

To be clear, I’m not a “Truther”…never have been. I believe it’s nonsense to think that the attacks of 9/11 were engineered and carried out by our own government. Not only would it be difficult to hire people to commit such heinous acts, it would be impossible for anyone with any knowledge of such treason to remain silent. However, I do believe there is abundant evidence that the Bush administration willfully ignored numerous and dire warnings of an impending al Qaeda attack prior to 9/11.

Why would the administration do such a thing?

You’ll have to draw your own conclusions. But I suspect that it was a matter of convenience for Bush, Richard “The Dick” Cheney and the rest of their neocon Project for a New American Century (PNAC) crowd to allow them to display our military might in order to force our economic will on the world. In their defense, I doubt that they could have imagined that an attack from a few extremist Muslims could result in so many casualties. After all, only a year earlier, Bush dismissed Clinton’s attempt to destroy Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda training camp as “sending a million dollar cruise missile to blow up a camel tent.”

Nevertheless, even a relatively minor attack on US soil would give the Bush neocons an opportunity to unleash our military to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein. It would provide a showcase for our “Shock and Awe” weapons. The spectacle would serve as a warning to potential opponents and “encourage” other governments to accept our corporate demands. And, by “liberating” Iraq or, more precisely, Iraqi oil, I believe the neocons assumed they would be able to accomplish their goal of establishing a US military presence in the region to counterbalance the influence of Iran and protect our access to all Middle East oil reserves.

Pretty crazy, huh?

But when you look at the events leading up to the al Qaeda attack, it’s the Bush/Cheney neocons that look crazy. (And that’s being polite!)

National Security Council Counter-terrorism Chief, Richard Clarke, has testified that he tried to get the attention of Bush officials to warn them of an imminent attack by al Qaeda as early as January of 2001. Almost immediately after the administration had assumed office, he asked for a cabinet-level meeting with National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Cheney and Colin Powell. But Rice ignored him until September 4. In the meantime, according to Clarke, he and CIA Director George Tenet were running around with their “hair on fire” in order to get the administration’s attention. Clarke recalled Tenet saying, “I feel it coming. This is going to be the big one.”

Additionally, Bush was handed a Presidential Brief on August 6, 2001 that was headlined “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US.” But, according to those close to the situation, Bush dismissed the brief by telling the CIA briefer, “Alright, you’ve covered your ass now.” Further, there is evidence that the administration was warned of an impending strike as many as 40 times! But officials in the administration, particularly Rice, not only ignored the threat, according to Clarke and others, they seemed disinterested.

Immediately following 9/11, Rice, Cheney and Bush claimed that there were no credible warnings prior to the strikes. They accepted no responsibility. Instead, they blamed the intelligence community for not communicating effectively. They claimed that, had they known in advance, they would have done everything in their power to save the country.

They then set about planning an invasion of Iraq which had absolutely no role in 9/11.

To this day, Bush, Cheney, Rice and the rest of the neocons have never been forced to answer for their treachery. Instead of being impeached, Bush was re-elected. Instead, of being charged with war crimes; with invading Iraq under false pretenses; with authorizing torture; with causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands, Bush and his posse have ridden off into the sunset. A presidential library has been erected in Bush’s honor. Rice has been awarded a cushy position at Stanford University and given the honor of helping to select the college football teams that will participate in the championship playoffs. And Cheney walks around with someone else’s heart beating in his chest, still trying to justify the invasion of Iraq and still pushing the PNAC.

These people have not only escaped justice. They have proven that there is no justice.

Who Speaks For The Poor And The Hungry?

Posted on by

Not Republicans. They continue to vote to cut unemployment benefits, food stamps, Head Start, minimum wage, labor unions and public education. Indeed, last year’s standard bearer was caught on tape deriding the bottom 47 percent for paying “no taxes” and wanting “free stuff.” Certainly not the Tea Party parasites. They contemptuously refer to the working poor as “freeloaders.”

Even Democrats seem far more concerned with the middle class and labor unions than the poor.

Christian churches? Some actually care enough to try to help. But many of today’s mega-churches are mere social clubs, more interested in politics and social engineering than the poor and the hungry. They talk about “tough love” to “free” the poor from safety net programs that they claim create dependency.

As a result, many of the nation’s poor are left to survive any way they can in our cities’ ghettos and in small rural communities. One in six don’t know where their next meal will come from. Many of these people work, but are paid so little, they can’t afford to live. Many single parents make less at the available jobs than the cost of day care, so unless they have friends or family who can babysit, they can’t afford to work. Thousands of families are homeless despite working one or more jobs. (Imagine a family trying to make ends meet in a large city on $15,000-$20,000 a year.) And none have health insurance, so they can’t afford to seek help unless it’s an emergency.

Despite all of the stark, all too depressing evidence of poverty in the US, few in government are motivated to help. After all, the poor can’t afford to make campaign contributions. They have no lobbyists to finance political campaigns. They can’t afford to wine and dine elected officials on junkets to resorts and exotic places.

Even when the working poor do have a roof over their heads and a small budget for food (usually the result of food stamps), the food they can afford is loaded with more sugar and fat than nutrition. This not only affects their health. It contributes to our nation’s obesity problem and rising health care costs.

And for the children of the poor, good luck with school. It’s hard to concentrate on assignments with your stomach growling. Not surprisingly, most schools in impoverished areas are underfunded and overpopulated. With few resources and large class sizes, teachers do what they can before they pass the struggling children along to the next grade. Moreover, because of their work schedules, many parents have little time to help their children with homework…homework they, themselves, may have failed. This all but ensures that the family economic problems continue generation after generation.

How can we change things?

To begin, we can raise the minimum wage. (No one who works a full-time job should be paid a wage that leaves them below the poverty line.) We can fully fund programs such as food stamps, instead of cutting them as Teapublicans demand. We can fund Head Start, unemployment benefits and welfare (welfare for the poor, not corporations). We can create safe and affordable day care programs for low income families. We can make certain that all schools are adequately funded and we can create after-school programs for children who want to put in the extra work to succeed. We can make sure that every American has access to health care…especially preventative care. We can drop the farm subsidies for big corporations and redirect them to small independent growers who make fresh and healthy food available to poor neighborhoods.

If you think our nation can’t afford to fund such common-sense humane programs, think again. We need only take a fraction of the money from our bloated war industry (In a country that has spent all but a few years of its history engaged in war, calling it a defense department is a misnomer.).

It’s long past time that our nation invested in people not corporations…humanity not war.

“A Holocaust In Slow Motion.”

Posted on by

That’s how one interview subject described our War on Drugs and mandatory sentencing in Eugene Jarecki ‘s film, The House I Live In. The film won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, but I only recently had the opportunity to see it, and I can tell you I left the screening feeling as though I had been eviscerated.

Seeing the reality of how our nation deals with issues such as poverty and race will not only shake your belief in our justice system. It will make you question the ideals of our nation.

As the film shows, our justice system has long been used to oppress certain groups by separating them, confiscating their property and concentrating (incarcerating) them. From our nation’s very beginnings, the group most notably affected by the system is African-Americans. But the system has been used against other groups, as well. For example, laws against opiates were created to punish Chinese laborers who began taking manual labor jobs away from whites in the 1800’s. Laws against cocaine were created to punish African-Americans who began taking jobs away from whites in the early 1900’s. Laws against marijuana were created to punish both African-Americans and Mexican-Americans who were taking jobs away from whites in the 1900’s.

Things actually got worse for these communities in the 1970’s.

That was when President Nixon announced the War on Drugs and directed all levels of law enforcement to attack drug use. Nixon’s war also included substantial resources for drug treatment. But that changed in the 1980’s under President Reagan. Reagan cut funding for treatment and pushed Congress to institute mandatory sentencing guidelines which forced judges to hand down draconian sentences for minor offenses. In other words, he took the ability to judge out of the hands of judges and allowed the system to more easily target African-Americans who were increasingly being displaced by layoffs in large manufacturing plants.

With the introduction of cheap crack cocaine, the laws were changed to include the so-called 100 to 1 rule – it took 100 times more powder cocaine to be charged with felony possession than crack cocaine. You see, since crack cocaine is cheaper, it tends to be used by poor African-Americans, while powder cocaine tends to be the drug of choice for upper middle-class white people. Of course, this rule led to our prisons being disproportionately filled with African-Americans. (The laws have recently been changed to a standard of 18 to 1 under the Obama administration.)

Law enforcement agencies were further encouraged to focus on drugs through laws that permitted them to confiscate property – cash, vehicles, even buildings – used in drug crimes. As a result, many police departments have begun to rely on this property in order to finance their operations. That, in turn, led to even more focus on drug crimes.

When President Clinton pushed for the “Three Strikes and You’re Out” law, judges were bound to level draconian sentences against people convicted of three offenses, no matter how minor the crimes. This led to so much prison overcrowding, it opened the opportunity for corporations to build and operate prison complexes at substantial profits.

Our white population was relatively unaffected by the War on Drugs, other than the occasional interruption of drug supplies and exposure to the scare tactics used by politicians to get elected. That changed with the introduction of methamphetamine. Suddenly, a large number of poor, unemployed white people became drug users and were eventually sent to prison. This created yet another source of revenue for the prison industry.

Most of the prisoners now languishing in prison on drug charges are non-violent drug users and small-time dealers. They are disproportionately minorities, even though drug use for minorities is about the same as that for white people. (According to Michelle Alexander who wrote The New Jim Crow, as many African-Americans are now in some stage of our “justice” system as there were slaves at the beginning of the Civil War!) Most prisoners come from poverty. Most grew up in deplorable circumstances. Many were unable to find jobs that would allow them to support their families. Most sought to escape their misery by resorting to the use and sale of drugs. Many have had their families torn apart, leaving children without mothers and fathers, and likely perpetuating the problem and creating future sources of income for the prison industry.

As one law enforcement officer said, “We may as well make it illegal to be poor.”

What are the consequences of our failed War on Drugs? Taxpayers are forced to pay enormous sums to house, feed and care for our prisoners. At the end of 2012, we had 1,571,013 prisoners in the US, more than any other country. We have 176 prisoners for every 100,000 of our population, surpassing every other nation on Earth, including China, Cuba and Russia.

And how much has the War on Drugs reduced drug use in the US? Zero, zip, zilch, naught, nada!

Meanwhile, we have painted ourselves into a corner. We have built entire industries upon the War on Drugs. We have police, judges, attorneys, prison guards, and corporations that rely on a steady stream of offenders to fill our courts and our prison beds. We have manufacturers dedicated to designing, developing and building weapons systems for the drug war. Even if we can elect politicians with the will to change the system, a large portion of our economy has become dependent on the system. It’s much the same as our war culture. If we ever decide to quit outspending other nations by a hundred, a thousand or a million to one to feed our bloated war machine, our economy could be devastated.

Give into our better nature and we will not only return thousands of people to their families. We will put thousands of people out of work. And what will become of those prisoners who are rightfully returned to society? Many of those who were non-violent when they entered prison have been forced to become violent in order to survive prison. How will they support themselves? Many have little education and few desirable skills. Many will be forced back into the same environment that led to their problems in the first place. Most will be unable to find a job, especially when unemployment is already high.

In order to fully address the problem, we will have to create jobs that pay a livable wage. We will have to fund treatment programs, along with education and training programs. We will have to reduce or eliminate poverty. We will have to rebuild entire communities. We will have to improve public transportation to expand the area in which these people can seek jobs. We will have to change the way we police those communities. And we will have to give judges the latitude to mete out justice…real justice.

America, land of the free? Not yet.

The Cost Of “Wanting To Kick Some Ass.”

Posted on by

Our role in the Iraq War may be over, but the costs are still mounting up. According to a study by a Harvard researcher, the financial cost to the US has surpassed $4 trillion, and if the cost of care for wounded warriors is included, the overall cost could grow to as much as $6 trillion!

Yet that cost pales in comparison to the human cost. The US lost 4,486 soldiers in Iraq. Our allies lost an additional 318. And, according to a new report by Johns Hopkins University, an estimated 500,000 Iraqis died, including 200,000 who died from disease because of failed infrastructure and the fact that they couldn’t get to hospitals or doctors in order to receive treatment.

What makes these numbers even worse is that Bush’s neocon nincompoops used visions of mushroom clouds to sell this unnecessary war of choice. They claimed that the invasion would only last “a matter of days, not weeks,” that it would “pay for itself” and the Iraqis would “welcome us as liberators.” Most disturbing, an official who was inside the Bush administration said that the real reason we went to war in Iraq was that Afghanistan had been “too easy,” and after 9/11, “we wanted to kick some ass.”

The invasion of Iraq also conveniently fit Richard “The Dick” Cheney’s Plan for a New American Century which called for using our position as the world’s lone superpower to force our economic will on the world. He also called for the transformation of America’s defenses by establishing a firm military foothold in the Middle East, but warned that the process would likely be a long one, “absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.”

9/11 was just such an event.

Given the opportunity, Cheney and his fellow neocons took charge and began planning the invasion of Iraq immediately following 9/11. It made no difference that Iraq had absolutely no role in the attacks. This knowledge should weigh heavily on the conscience of every American. It should cause us to reconsider the process with which we make decisions to go to war. Such decisions should never be opportunistic. They should be the result of a careful, reasoned and agonizing debate. They should be viewed as an absolute last resort.

“Wanting to kick some ass” as a justification to go to war rightfully ranks those in the Bush administration right alongside Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi as bullies, despots and war criminals.

Despite being at war for most of our history, it seems Americans still don’t understand the consequences of war. Maybe that’s because the last war to be fought on US soil was the Civil War. For nearly 150 years, Americans have largely viewed war as something that happens to someone else. Moreover, our most recent wars have been fought by a tiny percentage of Americans.

It’s incredibly easy for people who have no real stake in combat to be war hawks…or, more accurately, chicken hawks. They want to fight…but on someone else’s land with someone else’s children. As demonstrated by the large number of deaths and the widespread destruction in Iraq, war has consequences – terrible, tragic, deadly consequences. War is rarely noble and honorable. War is ugly and bloody. Some people do extraordinarily brave things. But just as many commit awful, regrettable acts that stay with them for a lifetime.

Until we understand that, we can only dream of living in a world at peace.

Who’s Really Responsible For Our National Debt?

Posted on by

It’s popular for the Republican Party to blame our $16.7 trillion debt on President Obama. Certainly, like all presidents, he has some responsibility for it. But a much larger share of the responsibility goes to President Reagan, President George H.W. Bush and, most especially, President George W. Bush.

You see, the increase in spending in 2009 following the economic collapse of 2008 should rightfully be attributed to the Bush administration. That’s because the 2009 deficit was the result of a spending bill, including the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), authorized by Congress in October of 2008 and signed by President Bush months before Obama took office. In fact, spending in the first year of any administration is always the result of the previous administration. Properly credit 2009 spending to Republicans, and you’ll discover that President Obama has been responsible for the lowest spending increases since Eisenhower. Similarly, he is responsible for the most rapid cuts to our deficit in more than 50 years!

While it’s true that the debt has increased 18.5 percent since Obama became president, as discussed, he should not be held responsible for most of that increase. Even so, it’s still less than the 20.7 percent increase in national debt that accrued during George W. Bush’s second term. And it’s only marginally greater than the 13 percent increase during Bush Sr’s term, and the 11.3 percent increase during Reagan’s first term.

A better measure of Obama’s spending comes courtesy of Rick Ungar, a contributor to Forbes Magazine (hardly a bastion of liberalism). According to Ungar, in President Obama’s first term, overall government spending grew just 1.4 percent as compared to 7.3 percent in George W. Bush’s first term and 8.1 percent in Bush’s second term!

So why do Republicans continue to place the blame on Obama? First, it’s a matter of political convenience to portray Obama as a “tax and spend” liberal. Second, the narrative is relatively believable since government spending skyrocketed during the first year of the Obama administration. Third, the media has done a very poor job of countering Republican misinformation.

In order to truly understand the federal debt, you have to look at the history of US borrowing.

Following the Revolutionary War, the US debt stood at roughly 35 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). It again reached that level following the Civil War. In both instances, the debt was brought down by a combination of increased revenues and spending restraint. During WW I, the US debt again rose to approximately 35 percent of GDP. Before it could be paid down, our economy collapsed leading to the Great Depression. That was quickly followed by WWII. The two events caused the debt to soar to more than 117 percent of GDP. But, through a combination of post-war prosperity and income tax rates of up to 91 percent during the Eisenhower administration, the debt was again brought under control.

By the end of the Carter administration, the national debt had been reduced to 32.5 percent of GDP.

President Reagan’s expansive military spending during the Cold War once again caused the debt to soar, reaching more than 66.1 percent GDP. Under Clinton, it was reduced to 56.4 percent of GDP. Then, under George W. Bush, two wars (one of which was a war of choice) and lax government oversight led to the Great Recession – the worst economic calamity in nearly 80 years. At the same time, a Republican-led Congress cut taxes (and, therefore, revenue), particularly for the wealthy.

President Obama inherited a debt of more than 84 percent of GDP, along with a worldwide economic collapse, double-digit unemployment, spiraling health care costs, two wars estimated to have cost more than $6 trillion, a Congress that refused to rescind the Bush tax cuts, and a uniquely obstructionist Republican Party.

All of this was roughly the equivalent of combining the costs of World War II and the Great Depression without the primary mechanism needed to reduce the debt – taxes!

President Obama was left with few choices. He had to stimulate the economy through loans and tax cuts in order to put people back to work. This led to reduced revenue. He had to wind down the war of choice in Iraq as quickly as possible. He needed to stabilize the war in Afghanistan that had been allowed to languish under Bush at a cost of $1 million per soldier per year. Moreover, since few Americans had been asked to sacrifice for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, unlike World War II, they felt no need to pay for the wars through increased taxes. Indeed, even though federal income taxes were at a 50-year low, extremists funded by billionaires created the TEA (Taxed Enough Already) Party.

All of this led to the growth of our debt, which now equals nearly 102 percent of GDP.

Certainly, this debt is of great concern. But it’s not the short-term crisis Teapublicans would have you believe. (It’s the equivalent of a family earning $100,000/year holding a $102,000 mortgage.) And, without modest tax increases, there are few ways to reduce the debt.

One is to grow the economy, and according to most economists, including Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, the economy is on the verge of significant, sustained growth if the nitwits in Congress would just get out of the way and stop dragging us from one self-inflicted crisis to another.

Two is to make cuts without adding to unemployment. (For example, we squander tens of billions each year on weapons systems that our military doesn’t even want, but Congress refuses to defund them because doing so would cost jobs.) And, once the economy shows sustained growth, programs such as food stamps can be cut – especially if we raise the minimum wage to reduce the large number of working poor who have little choice but to rely on government assistance.

In summary, contrary to what Teapublicans would have you believe, our national debt is not Obama’s debt. It’s the result of decades of wars, tax cuts, regulatory indifference, a struggling worldwide economy, out-of-control health care costs, greedy corporations that off-shore both jobs and profits, and a dysfunctional Congress that not only fails to help the economy. It makes decisions that are actually preventing economic recovery!

As a matter of fact, the Tea Party seems determined to force our nation into default. And, like the debt, they would have you believe that it’s all Obama’s fault.

More Guns = More Homicides.

Posted on by

Without the heavily-financed propaganda from the NRA, it’s doubtful that anyone would ever question the relationship. But since the gun industry has spent hundreds of millions to convince us otherwise, it has become the job of academia to bring us back to reality.  That’s just what Professor Michael Siegel from Boston University and his two coauthors have done in an exhaustive study to be published in an upcoming issue of the American Journal of Public Health.

The study looked at other academic literature which had concluded that where there are more guns there is more homicide. It compared gun availability and homicides using data from 26 developed nations. It analyzed the relationship between gun ownership and homicides using data from 50 states over a 10-year period.  The study even took into account many other factors including race, poverty and overall levels of violence.

The study’s inescapable conclusion is that more guns equal more homicides.

The plain fact is that guns make it easier to kill others and yourself. When someone snaps, guns become the weapon of choice. And thanks to the NRA, guns are readily available in every US city and every state.

Further, the act of concealing and carrying a gun doesn’t make us safer. It endangers us. That should be clear to everyone following the mass shooting at the Navy Yard in Washington, DC. The shooter, who had a history of gun violence and mental illness, was able to easily purchase a shotgun because all charges had been dropped and thus were not in the national database.

Although he entered the Navy Yard armed with only a double-barreled shotgun, he was able to acquire a semi-automatic pistol and an AR-15 assault weapon. How? The bad guy with a gun shot the good guys with guns and took their weapons.

So much for Wayne LaPierre’s post-Newtown argument.

And, in that regard, the Navy Yard shooting was not unusual. Data shows that most people who carry guns are more likely to be shot with their own guns than to use their guns to shoot an attacker. This is simply common sense. A gun is not a defensive weapon. It’s an offensive weapon. It cannot stop bullets. It can only stop another shooter if you see the shooter first, recognize the threat first and shoot first.

If we are to ever stop mass shootings and reduce gun homicides, we must reduce the number and lethality of guns. There is no justifiable reason why a private citizen should have more firepower and higher capacity magazines than law enforcement.  And there is no reason why we can’t have universal background checks for all gun purchases. Neither of these actions are a breach of the Second Amendment.

At the same time we have to look in the mirror and change our culture. Perhaps our movies and video games would not be so violent if we weren’t at war all the time. Maybe we would have less mental illness if we weren’t sending our citizens off to war zones, traumatizing them and returning them to our streets without careful examination. And maybe we’d have fewer of the criminally ill if we treated mental illness for what it really is…illness. There should be no shame or repercussions for a troubled individual seeking therapy anymore than there is for someone seeking treatment for cancer.

We shouldn’t stigmatize them. But we shouldn’t make it easy for them to purchase guns, either.

How Many Mass Shootings Will It Take?

Posted on by

Recent polls have shown that, after being mired in continuous conflicts for the past 12 years, Americans seem to have lost their appetite for war. Various polls found that more than 6 in 10 Americans were against any form of military action in Syria.

But we’re in the midst of our own war right here at home.

Monday’s shooting at the Washington, DC Navy Yard is just the latest in a long line of mass shootings in America. There has been an average of one a month since early in 2009! The victims have included theater-goers, citizens visiting with their congressional representative, elementary school children…even dozens of military and military contractors. In addition, there are many individual gun homicides – more than 11,000 per year according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The reaction from the NRA and other ideologues is to fight any form of common-sense measures such as universal background checks and bans on high-capacity magazines which allow mass shooters to fire up to 100 rounds as fast as they can pull the trigger without the need to reload. In order to intimidate anyone contemplating such measures, the NRA and other gun nuts targeted two of the Colorado legislators who actually had the intestinal fortitude to help pass such legislation. That may intimidate politicians, but it shouldn’t intimidate the majority of Americans who favor universal background checks.

After all, we’re the ones who elect these people.

Of course, the NRA responds to each shooting by first saying, “This is not the time to discuss gun legislation.” Then, after the shock from each event dies down, they come out with another lame statement such as that following the Sandy Hook massacre. “The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

Obviously, that is utter nonsense.

At both the Navy Yard and Fort Hood, there were dozens, if not hundreds, of armed and trained guards in the immediate area.  At Fort Hood, 13 were killed and 32 were wounded before the armed good guys could stop the shooter. At the Navy Yard, at least 12 were killed before the shooter was stopped.  Those numbers are not significantly different from the mass shootings in which victims were unarmed.

By comparison there were 13 fatalities at the Columbine High School, 6 at the Tucson “Congress on Your Corner” event, 12 at the Aurora, Colorado movie theater, and 26 at the Sandy Hook Elementary School. (The number of deaths at Sandy Hook likely had more to do with the size of magazines used by the shooter and the ages of the victims.)

Moreover, the most thorough study to date on the availability and presence of firearms by Professor Michael Siegel and two coauthors at Boston University clearly shows that more guns equal more gun deaths, either by suicide or homicide.

In other words, good guys with guns do not diminish gun homicides.

As for the NRA’s fear that universal background checks will lead to a national gun registry, there is already a gun registry. Not by the government. By the NRA!

Another specious argument by the NRA and its cowboy wannabes is that gun ownership is the only deterrent for a tyrannical government. That presumes that hunting rifles, shotguns, handguns and semi-automatic assault weapons could deter a government military with tanks, fighter jets, bombers, attack helicopters and drones. Besides, if you’re so fearful of our democratically-elected government that you’re watching the skies for the black helicopters, you should just go ahead and join the Sovereign Citizens movement, renounce your US citizenship and move abroad. You’re too paranoid and too dumb to remain in the US!

It only took 17 mass shootings in Australia before the Australian government banned semi-automatic weapons and most other guns. We have nearly that many mass shootings a year and we can’t even pass universal background checks. Are we that much different than our Aussie friends?

Ronald Reagan: Solar Assassin.

Posted on by

When President Obama recently ordered the White House to be fitted with solar panels, he was following the precedent set by President Jimmy Carter in 1979. After the OPEC cartel’s decision to limit oil production in order to drive up oil prices, Carter had recommended a series of measures designed to conserve energy and limit US dependence on oil imports. An aggressive plan to develop solar energy was one of those measures. To promote his plans, Carter ordered the installation of solar panels on the White House.

But when Ronald Reagan defeated Carter in 1980, one of his first actions was to order the panels, which he called “a joke”, removed. He also set about reversing all of Carter’s other energy-saving measures.

As a result of Reagan’s short-sighted decisions, the development of solar energy in the US was set back decades. While European nations and China continued the development of solar and other alternative energies, the US redirected all of its subsidies and resources toward oil exploration and ensuring access to foreign oil.

One could argue that Reagan’s decision culminated in a series of oil wars intended to protect the supply of oil from the Middle East. The US fought Desert Storm in order to secure Kuwait’s oil wells and keep them out of Iraqi hands. Despite the Bush Administration’s statements to the contrary, oil was at the heart of Operation Iraqi Freedom. That fact was made clear when then Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, and his assistants stated that the invasion of Iraq would pay for itself (it didn’t) through profits from Iraqi oil reserves. And since American oil interests had long sought an oil pipeline across Afghanistan in order to deliver Balkan oil onto the world markets, oil was likely part of the equation that led to the invasion of Afghanistan.

Imagine what might have happened if the trillions of dollars used to pursue war had been invested in alternative energy that would free us from oil imports. Imagine where we might be had the Carter administration’s energy conservation initiatives been followed to their conclusion.

In all likelihood, we would not have sent our troops into endless wars. We would have greatly decreased our dependence on oil, especially oil imports from the Middle East. We would not have an enormous federal debt. And, perhaps most important, we would have contributed far less to carbon emissions which have led to climate change.

The Bush Legacy Of War.

Posted on by

Whatever your position on military action in Syria, your decision has likely been influenced by the Iraq War.

In 2003, the Bush administration told the US and the world that the invasion of Iraq was necessary in order to overthrow a sadistic leader; a leader who had used chemical weapons against Iran (with our blessings) and had even used chemical weapons against his own people (we drew no red line then). We were told that there was a growing mushroom cloud over Iraq and that, if we failed to act, that mushroom cloud would likely appear over the US. We were told that the invasion of Iraq would take a matter of days or weeks and that it would pay for itself through the profits from Iraqi oil.

We now know that the Bush administration lied. Even General Colin Powell who made the case before the UN admits that he was given faulty information and misled.

Now many of the same people behind the invasion of Iraq are calling for war with Syria’s Assad. John (the Warhawk) McCain was the first to weigh in, along with his partner in war Lindsey Graham. Former Bush Secretary of Offense, Donald Rumsfeld has also made his opinion known. So has Richard (The Dick) Cheney. They tell us that the reputation of the United States is at stake; that if we fail to strike, our enemies will walk all over us.

Really?

Do our enemies not already know that we spend more on our war machine than the next seven nations combined? And most of those are allies. None are actual enemies. Given that fact, it’s hard to imagine that a failure to strike against Assad in Syria will cause our enemies to start assembling their forces off our shores.

Today, our real enemies are small rogue nations and terrorist groups angered by all of our previous missteps, mostly in the Middle East, as the world’s self-proclaimed police force. Some of these enemies are the very people who are trying to defeat Assad. They will not be threatened by any strike against Assad. However, Syria’s allies, Russia and Iran might be.

The consequences of a rushed and ill-considered strike could be devastating. It could provoke Russia and Iran. It could destabilize Syria, much like Iraq. And it could embroil the entire region.

If the Obama administration is determined to send a message to Assad, it is going about it the right way in asking for a vote by Congress. (A strike against another government is, after all, an act of war and only Congress has the power to declare war.) Unlike Bush, the Obama administration should encourage that vote by presenting what we actually know about Assad’s use of chemical weapons. Not just what we think or want to believe.

Once Congress has voted, the US should take a well-substantiated case to the UN. After all, the ban of the use of chemical weapons is the result of an international treaty. We should not go it alone. We should not be rushed into action. We should not be pushed by the warmongers from a few countries in the region. And we should all recognize that, after Bush’s misadventures in Iraq, much of the rest of the world is understandably skeptical.

If the UN does approve military action against Assad, there should be a real coalition. Not some “coalition of the willing” as Bush claimed in Iraq. Any nation that votes for action should be willing to participate. And they should be willing to help pay for it.

Rules Of War?

Posted on by

The assumed response to Syria’s use of chemical weapons raises an obvious question: Where do we draw the line in warfare?

Following World War I and World War II, the world came together at the Geneva Conventions which banned the use of chemical weapons and torture. They also provided for the humane treatment of prisoners of war. The Geneva Conventions did not, however, ban nuclear weapons (the US is still the only nation to use them). They did not ban carpet bombing of cities. They did not prohibit incendiaries that can level cities in a firestorm. They did not ban attacks on food supplies and infrastructure that can turn large populations of civilians into starving refugees. In fact, they did not control many weapons and techniques that are now routinely used in modern warfare.

Why draw the line on one type of weapon of mass destruction while ignoring others? Are unarmed civilians any more dead from a chemical attack than from a remote-controlled bomb? Is it more painful to die from a nerve gas attack than from explosives?

Long ago, many cultures romanticized warfare and bound it by rules of honor. But, with the development of weapons of mass destruction (including automatic weapons, artillery, bombs, chemical and biological weapons, and nuclear devices) today’s warfare has become a glorified video game in which those most at risk are unarmed, innocent civilians.

How absurd that it’s okay to kill masses of people in one way, but not another! How senseless that, although some forms of torture are banned, others are not! How idiotic that we can allow despots in Rwanda and Cambodia to murder tens of thousands, but draw the line in other countries.

Truth is, there has been no real honor between warriors for centuries. No country or culture that willingly participates in warfare has a corner on ethics and morality. The development of ever more lethal weapons has turned today’s warriors into breathing, bleeding killing machines. Is it any wonder, then, that these machines we create have such difficulty adapting to so-called polite society following their service?

What has happened in Syria is awful. But why is a red line drawn at the use of chemical weapons? If we level Damascus and its population with unseen missiles and bombs, is that better than allowing them to be killed by an unseen gas? What will be the outcome of our choosing to participate in this civil war? What will be the benefit?

Personally, I see none.