W.J. Astore
An Open Letter from the Eisenhower Media Network
I’m a member of the Eisenhower Media Network, or EMN. We’re a small network of retired military types and former U.S. government officials who are openly critical of the military-industrial-congressional complex, America’s open-ended forever wars (the global war on terror; the cold war against Russia and China), and rising militarism within and across our society.
Recently, EMN issued a new letter in opposition to the Washington bipartisan consensus for war and more war. I’m proud to say I had a hand in writing it, as did Matthew Hoh and other members of EMN. Here’s what we had to say:
Military and Foreign Policy Experts Open Letter on U.S. Diplomatic Malpractice
Does America inspire the world by the power of its example or the example of its power? Far too often, and despite President Joe Biden’s words during his inaugural address, America’s overmilitarized power and diplomatic malpractice are its examples to the world.
We must change that. To make America truly essential and indispensable, we must not remain the world’s leading arms maker and weapons exporter. We must instead become the world’s greatest and most committed peacemaker and diplomat.
The problem is that America continues to make war, continues being “essential” only as the world’s leading merchant of death, and continues seeking dominance through military supremacy that ends, in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, and earlier in Vietnam, in mass death and colossal folly.
In our first open letter last spring in The New York Times, we, the undersigned, argued that a thoroughly militarized U.S. foreign policy would generate ruinous and worsening consequences and increasingly limited options for the U.S. and the world. Recent events bear this out.
The results of U.S. diplomatic malpractice are cruelly displayed in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific. Risks of further escalation and a world war are rising. Predictably, a militarized foreign policy characterized by rejecting or ignoring international laws and treaties and by disingenuous negotiations and talks has offered no solutions to volatile wars in Eastern Europe and the Middle East while making war more likely in the Indo-Pacific.
Militarized solutions breed and feed more war. Earnest and deliberate diplomacy is the best hope to bring peace, stability and reconciliation to the world.
War in Ukraine
The failure to pursue diplomacy in Eastern Europe, both before and after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, has resulted in a costly and destructive stalemate for which there are two likely futures:
- The collapse of the Ukrainian state due to a deteriorating economic and military situation hastened by corruption.Here, Ukraine’s fragility resembles that of previous houses of cards built by the U.S. in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Vietnam.
- A harrowing and bloody stalemate in Ukraine where firepower, made more lethal by technological advances, rules a battlefield where neither side can achieve decisive tactical or operational gains. The pursuit of ways out of this stalemate likely entails horizontal and vertical escalation, neither of which offers solace to those seeking an end to death and destruction in Ukraine and the establishment of peace and stability.
Horizontal escalation sees the war extending further to civilian population centers and infrastructure and includes the possibility of other nations joining the conflict. Vertical escalation sees the expansion of arsenals to weapons of greater range, lethality, and consequence, including nuclear weapons. These two forms of escalation may be intertwined and reinforcing. So, as the war may expand horizontally to resemble The War of Cities between Iran and Iraq in the 1980s, it may expand vertically as well with more powerful weapons being introduced by both sides. The use of nuclear weapons is increasingly conceivable under these conditions.
These two likely futures may intersect. For example, a Ukrainian collapse could see NATO forces, likely Polish and Romanian, marching into western and central Ukraine to counter a Russian push to fill a collapsing Ukrainian state. Such an event could lead to a war between NATO and Russia, a war that conceivably could go nuclear.
Hamas, Israel and the Middle East
The Russia-Ukraine War now rages concurrently with the war between Hamas and Israel. This war, too, is born of a U.S. refusal to foster diplomacy. Unlike the conventional war between Russia and Ukraine, we are witnessing an asymmetrical conflict more akin to the wars of insurgency many of us experienced in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
Worse, the Hamas/Israel bloodletting in Gaza is characterized by an ethnic cleansing campaign that would be impossible without U.S. diplomatic, economic, media, military and political support. We are disgusted by and find repugnant the brazen and bipartisan support by the U.S. government for rampant violations of international law by Israel. Ethnic cleansing in Gaza, long planned by senior members of the Israeli government and powerful elements of Israel’s reactionary right wing, follows in the ghastly wake of Hamas atrocities against civilians on October 7.
Here, the U.S. government isn’t just passively witnessing war crimes; it is enabling them. With the frightening possibility of escalation to a regional or even a world war, the violence in Gaza has fed and feasted upon decades of deliberate diplomatic malpractice in America. Decades of putting Israel first, second, and last while ignoring the plight and pleas of Palestinians have made political settlements to the blockade of Gaza and the occupation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank nearly impossible.
Whereas a month ago, we lived with the risk of nuclear war as an outcome of escalating conflict in Ukraine, we now face the elevated risk of a rightfully feared world war as a consequence of entangling alliances between nuclear-armed Moscow and Washington in the Middle East.
China and the Path Ahead
To this, we must add the dangers of war with China, something hyped by leading U.S. politicians; the still unpaid costs of the $8 trillion wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; a militarized federal budget for which 60% of discretionary spending goes to war and all its wounds; and a hollowed American economy.
Decades of reckless U.S. war-making, both direct and via proxies, while coddling corrupt, ruthless, and unjust foreign governments has, not surprisingly, made the world more dangerous and less stable. Failure to invest in and maintain our country has weakened and corroded America’s infrastructure, institutions, and industries. A hypocritical flaunting of international law and an espousal of an ethereal rules-based order, coupled with an arrogant disregard for past U.S. crimes and blunders, have caused dozens of nations to flock to competitors – a movement away from America that will undoubtedly accelerate if we remain on our current militaristic path.
Moreover, decades of colossal military spending have witnessed few strategic gains for the U.S. Our military, often saluted as the world’s greatest by politicians, hasn’t won a major war since World War II. That same military annually faces significant recruiting shortfalls that cast considerable doubt on the integrity and staying power of the All-Volunteer Force. America’s legacy of failed wars is not redeemed by ongoing displays of vacuous military boosterism. Feel-good patriotism can’t suppress the bitterness many of us military veterans feel toward the past, nor does it calm the worries we have about our nation’s future.
Pope Francis has spoken of a “famine of peace” that exists in the world today. In this spirit, we call for immediate ceasefires, without conditions, in Gaza and Ukraine.
The surest way to prevent wars from exploding into uncontainable wildfires is to starve them of fuel. To think or speak that these conflagrations can be managed, adjusted as if by damper or thermostat, is a fool’s conceit or a liar’s word. We have been burned too many times in our professional lives to believe hot wars can be “won” by throwing more gasoline on them, whether rhetorically or in the form of cluster munitions, depleted uranium shells, and similar forms of “aid.”
A better path ahead is clear. Peace, not war, must be fostered. In embracing peace through diplomacy conducted in good faith, America would indeed exhibit the power of its example, becoming essential to a world that cries out for liberty and justice for all.
Bracing Views 
Answer: Bobby Kennedy
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I agree: RFK Sr. What a shame he was assassinated in 1968.
RFK Jr. is better than Biden or Trump, but it’s a shame to see him kowtowing to Israel.
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THE MORAL CONSEQUENCES OF WAR IN GAZA by Hugh Curran, pub in “Informed Comment”
https://www.juancole.com/2023/12/moral-consequences-gaza.html https://www.juancole.com/2023/12/moral-consequences-gaza.html
The moral high ground has been lost by Israel in the Gaza onslaught while it attempts to avenge the Hamas attacks on Oct 7. The leaders of the Knesset seem convinced that the slaughter of 15,000 civilians is justified and that there will be no moral consequences. Does this attitude rest on an ancient Biblical story concerning the Amaleks who became the enemy of Israel. “God then commands Saul to destroy the Amalekites by killing man, woman, infant and suckling” This kind of revenge is primitive in the extreme but Netanyahu has been quoted as saying Israel needs an Amallek response, Whether this is metaphorical or not, the bombing of Gaza is a primitive act of wanton destruction on a scale reminiscent of WWII.
For Americans a question that should be asked is why Israel is receiving $3.8 billion annually from the U.S. in military aid with another $14 million being promised by the Biden administration. This is taking place while one million Americans are homeless and many more are living near the poverty line? Under such circumstances why is America enabling the destruction of Gaza, the forced homelessness of tens of thousands, and on the West Bank the continued expropriation of Palestinian land by Israeli settlers. America is making itself a moral spectacle to the world as it becomes an accomplice to the deliberate destruction of an indigenous people.
In her book “And Then your Soul is Gone” Kelly Denton -Borhaug describes “moral injury and war culture”. She writes: “U.S. citizens don’t really want to know what has gone on in our name, with our money and with the tacit permission…of U.S. violence around the world”….we distance ourselves from the suffering caused by war yet “*moral injury results from participation in the moral distortion of the world that is created by war”. *The writer quotes Hannah Arendt concerning the “banality of evil” when Arendt notes how [moral injury] becomes most pernicious when it is “routinized and normalized”.
What is taking place in Gaza is the most transparent of age-old motives: to dispossess the indigenous people of their land by any means possible. The truth is that dispossession of indigenous land worldwide has a long sordid history, often dressed up in religious language such that, as Borhaug notes: “to present a divinized portrayal of war and militarism as a sacred enterprise”.
The recent display of overwhelming military power by Israel is also intended to cast fear into “enemies” nearby, but in this war against the Palestinians it is achieving the opposite effect. Arab countries are not in awe nor are they made more fearful, even as the American navy sits at anchor ready to intervene. Large segments of the population of Arab countries are disgusted and are taking action by boycotting businesses and products coming from America and Israel. We may see that small actions, carried out by large numbers of people, can result in widespread consequences.
The Israeli journalist, Gideon Levy, in a talk at the Israel Lobby spoke of three principles believed in by Israelis: 1st is the belief that Israelis are the chosen people”; 2nd is the belief that Israelis are always the victim; 3rd is the belief that Palestinians are less than human, compared to Israelis.
In another talk Gideon Levy noted that “Israeli rage and desire for revenge are not justified…you have to completely ignore the last 100 years in order to believe that Israel is entitled to revenge. They have far more to answer for than the Palestinians. The only way all this can possibly end well is if the U.S. intervenes. I don’t see Israel coming to its senses and developing a conscience without pressure from the outside”.
He also noted that “ethnic cleansing” by the settlers in the West Bank is supposedly “illegal” but the Israel military protects the settlers. These are Jewish terrorists…burning down houses and fields of Palestinians…under the smokescreen of the Gazan war, There is encouragement of the government…the suffering of Arabs in East Jerusalem…still to some extent, Jerusalem has been annexed by Israel, so these neighborhoods have been invaded by settlers with the help of the police…”
This dehumanization of Palestinians is not a new phenomenon. When the British General Dyer massacred 500 nonviolent protestors in Amritsar, India in 1919 he was not reprimanded by the British hierarchy. This flagrant injustice ignited all of India against British rule while Gandhi, who at one time admired the British, became extremely critical of the “evil” that British leaders had succumbed to. Despite being frequently jailed by the British he continued to devote two decades to expelling Britain from India.
Coincidentally, Britain, during the same period placed tens of thousands of troops in Palestine and assigned a High Commissioner, Sir Herbert Samuel who encouraged Jewish immigration. Following him were eleven other High Commissioners who held authority over Palestine until 1948. The British withdrew from India and Palestine in 1947 and 1948, within a year of each other, even as violence was widespread in both withdrawals. Some parties were aggrieved for differing reasons. In India it was a partition between a Muslim and Hindu territory and British withdrawal in August, 1947. In Palestine the Zionist leadership attacked both the British and the Palestinians but withdrawal did not take place until May, 1948. Gandhi did not live to see the formal withdrawal due to his assassination by a Hindu nationalist in January, 1948 who was convinced that Gandhi was too supportive of Muslims.
The Gandhian phrase: “an eye for an eye makes everyone blind” was quoted by Ofer Cassif, a member of the Israeli Knesset who was being interviewed. We are, he said “in a vicious cycle”. Most of the people of Israel have to rid themselves of their rage” He said: “the government includes psychopaths and bigots who are happiest when they are destroying the opposition. Such people “don’t even care for Israeli people, they believe in the greater Israel, “Eretz Israel” [the largest expanse of biblical Israel] “Obviously the intention is to drive the Palestinians out of Gaza…to expel the Gazans…it is not a secret….they believe it..there are thousands who oppose this but the majority will only be able to change their minds when it is too late. The fascists in the Knesset do not want to see any opposition. [They now demand] that the police totally forbid any demonstrations against the present war against Gaza. One Knesset member wants to give M16 rifles to the west bank settlers. “Americans must understand that these fascists in the Knesset may use their power eventually against us…the regular people of Israel.”
Ofer has been struggling for many years concerning peace and reconciliation with the Palestinians and their right of return to their homeland. He predicts that “Israel is dooming itself not only by committing genocide against the Palestinians and shocking the entire world, but by arming its own citizens to the teeth. Civil war is around the corner as society grows ever more extremist while its democratic institutions are being dismantled. Unless there is rapid change, Israel will self-destruct from the inside.”
In the case of the bombing of Gaza, a recent poll notes that a majority of Israelis support it despite its lethal consequences, As a result, they become complicit in the sin of a conflagration of another people, and in a vast moral universe of pain and suffering; all this from anger and vengeance and dispossession. When is enough not enough? How long will people suffer the traumas of injury after the death of friends and relatives? There are always consequences to violence, especially on a scale of what is now taking place, whether it is due to Hamas or Israel or America. The bigger the sin perpetrated against others (in this case the Palestinians) the more consequential the long- term psychological suffering, not only to the victims, but inevitably, to the aggressors as well. Moral injury is deep-seated and involves a long difficult process of healing and atonement. Such a process demands acknowledgement of the pain and suffering inflicted, and a willingness to face one’s complicity to the consequences of collective decision making.
Hugh Curran is a Lecturer in Peace and Reconciliation Studies at the University of Maine
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Admirable sentiments that I completely agree with were expressed in assessing the three areas of conflict as well as the bloated military budget. The inability of President Biden to do little to nothing to rein in the fanatic fascistic lleader of Israel will have disastrous consequences in terms of international shame and domestic shifting of younger voters away from supporting this President in the 2024 elections
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I think, hopes that the United States is capable of pursuing a peaceful policy are naive. This has never happened before. America has been at war throughout its history, and moreover, the entire American culture is based on violence. Therefore, there is no reason to believe that the existence of a peaceful America is possible.
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