Your planet’s burning war and torture’s madness
Bodies burning, whole countries torn to bits
First you’re cannonfodder, now you’re accomplices
I can see the scars from your arms to your conscience

Video: www.youtube.com

Check out more from the band at www.outernational.net.

“No You Can’t!” Protesters To Tell Obama at December 12  Rally

Peace Movement Groups Unite Against Obama War Escalation - Warning of Reprisals to Troop Surge

WASHINGTON DC, December 1, 2009 - More than 100 leading peace activists have announced an “Emergency Anti-Escalation Rally” at the White House on December 12, from 11a.m. to 4 p.m., to reject President Obama’s announced military escalation in Afghanistan. The rally is organized by End US Wars, a newly formed coalition of national and grass-roots antiwar organizations, with endorsements from leading peace activists.

Rally organizers are calling for the left to end its support for Obama now that he has committed to a troop surge, and to condemn and oppose Obama’s war policy. In addition, the process will begin to replace Obama with an anti-war candidate, and to remove any pro-war legislators. Protests will intensify against U.S. war involvement in Afghanistan, Iraq and any other countries.

Speakers include: Cynthia McKinney, Sen. Mike Gravel, Kathy Kelly, Chris Hedges, David Swanson, Rev. Graylan Hagler, Coy McKinney, Debra Sweet, Brian Becker, Mathis Chiroux, Lynne Williams, Hon. Betty Hall, Elaine Brower, Marian Douglas, Michael Knox, Ralph Lopez, Ron Fisher. Statements will also be read from Col. Ann Wright, Stephen Zunes and Granny D (turning 100). Jordan Page and Emma’s Revolution will be among the musical performers.

End US Wars’ “Open Letter to Obama,” posted on the website, demands that Obama keep his promise and end the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars; call a cessation of Predator drone attacks over Pakistan; and begin immediate reconstruction and recovery in war-torn regions.

Prior to the rally on Saturday, December 12 at 11 a.m. in Lafayette Park, the film “Rethink Afghanistan” will be shown Friday December 11, from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m., at Busboys & Poets, 14th and V Streets, NW, Washington, DC.

More Info: www.enduswars.org

Facebook Group: www.facebook.com

Dear supporter

We are asking you to make a donation on veterans day to Iraq Veterans Against the War.  Not much thought is given to the actual veterans who have been to war on veterans day but we must realize that they are a community that has been deeply scared by war.  These scars can not always be seen but they are always there and IVAW is working to empower veterans and GIs to stand up to fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan from within the military.  So on veterans day please go to ivaw.org/support and make a donation to a veterans group that is leading veterans!

Geoff Millard
Chair
Iraq Veterans Against the War
National Board Of Directors

Tom’s follow-up:

“I am honored to stand with some of my fellow musicians in donating all of my Veteran’s Day touring, record sales, and merchandise proceeds to Iraq Veterans Against the War. It is the epitome of courage for a soldier to stand up against an unjust war and that is exactly what these brave men and women have done. They have served their country bravely on the battlefield and now they are serving their country bravely at home  by demanding an end to the US military occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. It is the heroic voices of these soldiers and veterans who cannot be denied and must not be ignored.”

Once on the battlefield, some of these soldiers have second thoughts, or have their eyes forcibly opened by the reality of war. Many have come to question the goals and motives of the conflict. But their economic survival has now become dependent upon their new military career. If they quit, or are dishonorably discharged, how are they going to support themselves and their families? What are these people to do?

According to journalist Dahr Jamail, a small but increasing number of these soldiers are choosing to resist.

Some are outright refusing to deploy to Iraq or Afghanistan, and are facing courts martial, and prison time for doing so. Some return from their tours of duty and try to spread the word about the horrors they’ve seen (or participated in). Others are more covert, pretending to carry out their orders while doing their best to stay alive without killing others.

Jamail has an article on the subject available at Tom Dispatch where he discusses these tactics and this “movement” (if you can call it that). This article is based on his new book, The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, all about these warriors who practice dissent in the name of peace.

Jamail also gave an interview to Anti-War Radio where he talks about the wars, his experiences, GI resistance, and how regular Americans can help these soldiers in their efforts. While the US is slowly withdrawing from Iraq, its soldiers still face over a year of duty, and may soon find themselves facing similar hostility and danger on the frontlines in Afghanistan.

For more information about soldiers who refuse to fight:

• GI Rights Hotline
• Courage to Resist Oakland
• War Resisters League
• Iraq Veterans Against the War
• Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America
• Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors
• Dahr Jamail’s website
• Movie “Sir, No Sir!”

Photo: Courage to Resist Oakland

Despite your feelings about whether a nation should or shouldn’t, the United States government has clearly been torturing people off and on since at least 2002. At least, we can say with the tiniest breath of relief, the nation seems to have stopped debating whether or not the Bush administration’s “enhanced interrogation techniques” were torture. They were. To a society steeped in the psychotic violence of movies like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the intense and righteous anti-terror violence of TV’s 24, and the sadistic machinations of franchises like Saw or Hostel, the Bush team’s actions seemed more like pillow fights than what we know as “torture”.

Some might say “so what? Why do you want to protect the terrorists?” But that’s part of the problem: almost none of the “terrorism suspects” who have been detained by the US were ever found guilty of a single crime. Sure, they were accused of being terrorists, but the reality is that we don’t know if they were innocent or guilty, because the US never gave them trials. Hundreds of people were simply rounded up, and have been held in prison for as many as six years, with no trial, no charges, no nothing. So maybe the US has been torturing the worst villains of all-time, or maybe they’ve been torturing innocent fathers and sons, ruining their lives and the lives of their families. We don’t know, and we won’t as long as the White House thinks it has the right to select anyone in the world, capture them, and hold them as prisoner for as long as they like (unfortunately, President Obama has recently announced that he plans to continue this Bush-era practice during his own term).

But the most powerful argument that torture-proponents trot out is the terrifying hypothetical: “what if terrorists had planted a nuclear bomb in the middle of Los Angeles, and it could go off at any minute, and you had one of the terrorists in custody? Wouldn’t you torture him to try to save the lives of millions?” Which is a difficult question, but THIS DOESN’T EVER HAPPEN. We never see a situation where there is an immediate threat, and we happen to have the responsible party handy, and we can torture our way to safety. Does it make sense to plan our national security around outlandish and unrealistic scenarios?

But despite the morality and need for torture as a method of saving American lives, we have two other key points: 1) it doesn’t work, and 2) it creates new enemies.

Almost any interrogator or intelligence analyst will tell you that torture is not a reliable way of getting useful information from a suspect. The reason is that when a prisoner faces such pain and fear, they will say what they think their tormenter wants to hear, not what is actually true. In fact, from the Spanish Inquisition to the Salem Witch Trials to the Korean War (and there is some evidence it was even used this way during the Bush years), torture has been used primarily to coerce false confessions. In other words, you tortured people so that they would confess to heresy, or admit to committing atrocities on behalf of “Western Imperialists”, not because you wanted to give up their military secrets.

Second, when Muslims around the world see the US abusing their brothers and sisters, it often creates anger and sometimes turns neutral people into haters, and haters into threats. I heard an interview with a journalist (sadly, I can’t remember his name) who had spoken with one of the Iraq insurgency’s top makers of the IED devices that have killed hundreds of American soldiers; the man had had no interest in fighting the Americans until he learned about the treatment of his fellow Iraqis at Abu Ghraib. It is possible that if there had been no Abu Ghraib torture, this man never would have made these bombs, and those soldiers would still be alive today.

Thankfully, it appears that Barack Obama has prohibited the continued use of torture on terrorism suspects. However, he does seem to be preventing any investigations into the past use of torture, prosecution of anyone found to have been involved in the illegal torture, and has actively prevented the release of photographs of alleged abuse of detainees. Torture is a war crime, and covering up for people who have committed war crimes is also a war crime. Maybe someone ought to tell the president that.

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Photo:  John Moore / Getty Images

In addition, the eyes of the public and the media are on the new president and his plans to save the country, both from a near-decade of Bush-era catastrophe and the damage of capitalism unbound. Everyone wants to know what Barack Obama is capable of, if he can pull us out of this nosedive, and at the very least, bring us back to the pre-Bush status quo.

But the Iraq war continues, with its sixth anniversary coming up in March. We’ve been in Afghanistan for more than 8 years. And now that the Obama administration is stepping up bombing in the parts of Pakistan that are likely hiding Al Qaeda and Taliban members, we are edging closer to a third war. Even worse, none of these wars are going well.

Much has been made of the “surge” strategy in Iraq, and it is popularly believed that this tactic is responsible for the decrease in violence in the country. This is not true.  Most experts and journalists on the ground in Iraq report that the decrease in violence was due to two things: the end of the civil war in Iraq (because one side, the Shia, had effectively defeated their opponents), and the fact that the US began paying money to Sunni insurgents to not attack Americans. The country is still exceptionally violent, and remains largely ruined by the years of war and occupation. To go over the numbers again, over 4000 Americans soldiers have died, and over 30,000 wounded. Before the US invasion, it was estimated that around 27 million people lived in Iraq. Now it is estimated that over 1 million Iraqis have died in the chaos, that over 2 million Iraqis have fled the country, and that nearly 3 million Iraqi refugees remain inside the country, with nowhere to live and nowhere to run to.

Obama now talks about moving US troops from Iraq into Afghanistan to try to “win” the war there. But no one knows what “winning” means. The country has been a war between tribal villages, drug traffickers, religious fundamentalists, and violent warlords for almost three decades.  What would an Afghan peace look like? And how are more American soldiers and rifles going to bring these sides together?

And finally, Pakistan is not a stable place as it is. Since the so-called “war on terror” began, the US has been pushing the Pakistani government to fight against its own anti-American population on our behalf.  Obviously, the people of Pakistan are very hostile to the idea of their government killing their brothers and sisters in the name of some foreign power. Every bit of support for the US or Pakistani blood spilt by the Pakistani government increases the likelihood that the people there will rise up and remove it by force.

Clearly, this madness has to stop.

President Obama ran on a platform of ending the war in Iraq, and he is allegedly taking steps to have all of the troops removed in 16 months. This is a good start, but why the long wait?  And why continue a long, confused war in Afghanistan? And why are we risking turning the nuclear-armed country of Pakistan into an enemy?

We, the people who oppose war, must again make our voices heard. We urge you to start speaking out again. Call the White House, contact your Congressmen, write letters to your local news media, talk to your friends, get out in the streets. Tell them how you feel.

One of the wisest things that I’ve read about the Israel-Palestinian conflict was that there are actually four warring sides in this struggle: 1) Palestinians who want freedom; 2) Palestinians who want to destroy Israel; 3) Israelis who want to protect themselves; 4) Israelis who want to destroy the Palestinians (and one can almost never tell which side is committing the violence and for what reason). And of course, there is always the final side in any conflict, the civilians who will never raise a pistol or drop a bomb, who long for peace, justice and dignity, but may find themselves in the crosshairs just the same. Everyone’s blood is spilled, and the graveyards fill with the innocent and the guilty alike.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has become a perpetual cycle of attacks and revenge. You will read a news story about a raid or a bombing attack by one side, who say that they did so because of a recent attack by the other side. And the other side will then say that their attack was because of an even earlier attack by the first side. And this goes back and back and back.

But we are not saying that everyone is equal. As we mentioned, the Israeli occupation of Palestine is illegal, oppressive, violent, and horrible. In addition, while acts of Palestinian terrorism are terrible, they do not even come close to the frequency or destructive power of Israel. For example, Palestinian militants sporadically fire rockets into southern Israel. In the past 8 years, these rockets have killed 18 Israelis. In the recent Israeli attacks on Gaza, more than 300 Palestinians have been killed in 3 days.

In addition to that, Israel has placed a ruthless economic blockade on Gaza since June of 2007 that has taken a terrible toll on the lives of everyday people living there. This blockade was further tightened in November 2008, and now Israel is blowing up police stations, universities, and government agencies in Gaza.

And Americans should take special notice of this violence: Israel receives billions of dollars in US aid every year, and uses much of that money to buy American weapons, which it then uses in its attacks on the Palestinians.

But Americans are not ignoring this crisis. We have already seen major protests in New York, and San Francisco, and many protests are planned for the near future.

What can you do about this situation?

• Amnesty International is urging people to write to Condoleezza Rice and tell her to use her power to put pressure on Israel. Click here.
• United for Peace & Justice lists a number of ways to take action here.
• The US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation lists a number of the emergency protests calling for an end to the recent violence here.