Tag: anti-war

Enough Is Enough

W.J. Astore

My Speech for the Rage Against the War Machine Rally

February 19th is the Rage Against the War Machine rally in DC.  It just so happens to be my dad’s birthday as well.  He was born on that date in 1917, endured the Great Depression, worked in the Civilian Conservation Corps and in factories until being drafted in 1942, and after the war became a firefighter, serving for more than thirty years until retiring.  With my dad in mind, here’s the speech I’d give if I was invited on the stage.  (The rally already has 27 speakers, but hopefully I can add a bit of rage and inspiration of my own.)

[To be clear: this is an “imaginary” speech. I am not one of the 27 speakers.]

My dad in the Army during World War II

Hello everyone.  Today would have been my dad’s 106th birthday.  Happy Birthday, Dad!

In the late 1930s, when my dad was working hard for low pay in a factory, he tried to enlist in the U.S. Navy.  The Navy recruiter rejected him because he was roughly a half inch too short.  After Pearl Harbor, and remembering his rejection, my dad didn’t join the eager volunteers.  He waited to be drafted and reported to the Army.  He served in an armored headquarters group but never went overseas to fight.  That fact, and his earlier rejection by the Navy, is perhaps why I’m alive today to add my voice of rage against the military-industrial complex and America’s permanent state of undeclared war.

Dad and Mom raised me during the Cold War.  I was conceived around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis and was in diapers when John F. Kennedy was shot and killed in Dallas.  As a boy, I embraced military things, played with toy soldiers, GI Joes, imitation M-16s, and similar toys of war.  I built model tanks, model warplanes, model warships.  I blew them up with firecrackers, imagining heroic battles. 

As a teenager in the 1970s, I believed the Soviet Union was an insidious threat to American democracy.  We faced the prospect of nuclear destruction.  My dad was philosophical about this.  Even if Americans and Russians killed each other in mutual assured destruction, known appropriately as MAD, a billion Chinese would survive to kickstart humanity, he quipped.

But there were two harsh realities my dad and I didn’t know back then.  Nuclear winter was one.  Any major exchange between nuclear powers, we now know, wouldn’t just kill the people in those countries.  The soot and ash thrown into the atmosphere from thermonuclear war would likely lead to mass starvation globally.  (Let’s not forget global radioactivity, sickness, and death as well.)  The second one was that America’s nuclear plans, known as the SIOPs, envisioned not just massive attacks on the USSR but China as well, even if China hadn’t attacked the United States. 

Sorry, Dad: In case of a major nuclear war, China’s goose was cooked, as was most other forms of life on our planet.

When I graduated from college in 1985, a brand-new 2nd lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force, my first assignment took me to Colorado Springs and Cheyenne Mountain, America’s very own Mount Doomsday.  Cheyenne Mountain was America’s nuclear command and control center, literally blasted and tunneled out of a mountain, protected by 2000 feet of solid granite above it.  Giant blast doors and buildings mounted on immense springs theoretically enabled us to ride out a nuclear war.  But we few under the mountain knew that if DEFCON 1 came to pass, we’d likely be among the first to die in a nuclear war, even with all that rock over our heads.

You might say I’ve been to the mountain, Cheyenne Mountain, that is, both inside and outside.  I much preferred the outside, hiking in the cool crisp Colorado air.

Once, when I was inside the mountain, the “battle staff” ran a wargame that ended with a nuclear attack on U.S. cities.  In a sense, then, I’ve seen the missiles fly, I’ve seen their tracks end at American cities, if only on a monochrome monitor.  Even that low-tech video screen convinced me that I never, ever, want to see the real thing.

A few years later, I walked the desert wilderness of Alamogordo, New Mexico, site of the first atomic blast in July of 1945, the Trinity test that preceded Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  I’ve seen what little remained from that test, a test that changed everything, after which the survival of humanity as a species became problematic, precarious, and uncertain, dependent on men and their control over their thermonuclear toys, the playthings of the demented.

I’ve been to doomsday mountain, I’ve walked in an atomic wilderness, and I’ve come here to say: enough is enough.

The Pentagon plans to spend as much as $2 trillion over the next 30 years on a refreshed nuclear triad.  Sentinel ICBMs.  B-21 stealth bombers.  Columbia-class nuclear subs.  When will the insanity end?

As the doomsday clock ticks ever closer to midnight, we must act to stop it, to turn it back.  We must act so that it never has the remotest chance of striking midnight.

We must walk – better yet, run – out of the dark and dank tunnel of doomsday mountain into the glorious light awaiting us.  We must relish the wondrous sights and sounds of life.  We must embrace each other, share the warmth of our common humanity as we seek a better, peaceful future for everyone everywhere.

Because mountains won’t protect us.  Missiles won’t save us.  Weapons won’t warm us, unless by warmth you mean death by nuclear fire.

Ending war will protect us.  Ending missiles will save us.  Compassion, tolerance, and love will warm us.

I know because I’ve been to doomsday mountain.  I’ve witnessed nuclear war, if only during an exercise.  I’ve walked in a desert where an atomic blast obliterated and irradiated most everything in its path.  And that’s not a future I want.  That’s not a future any sane person wants.  That way lies madness.

Come, take my hand.  Join me in leaving Cheyenne Mountain.  Let’s run like children, with joy, away from tunnels and blast doors, toward the light of peace.

And, once we’re out, let’s put the darkness of war and nuclear terror behind us and never look back.

Thank you.

Wednesday Worries

W.J. Astore

I’ve been meaning to post more about President Biden’s decision to throw $33 billion in weapons and money at Ukraine, followed by the decision in the House to boost that to $40 billion, and the vote that took place in which all Democrats, including the so-called Squad, voted for it, with a few dozen Republicans voting against. The implications of this are staggering. The U.S. has already committed more than $50 billion to the proxy war against Russia as Americans stagger under rising costs for everything.

We need Russia to attack the American working class — only then might workers in America get some financial relief from “their” government.

Democrats are “all-in” on being pro-war and pro-military (and pro-police, since Biden has called for even more police to be hired), leaving anti-war positions to a smattering of Republicans with various motivations. All credit to Senator Rand Paul for holding up the $40 billion Ukraine “aid” package. He wants an Inspector General to monitor and control how this immense sum of money will be spent for Ukraine. A smidgen of accountability — imagine that! I actually wrote a note to Senator Paul to salute him for this and for his opposition to the DHS Disinformation Governance Board.

More unaccountable billions for Ukraine and the military-industrial complex, more government censorship for Americans: a couple of worries for our Wednesday.

Anyhow, here are a few good articles I’ve been meaning to cite on this:

Caitlin Johnstone, “The Squad” doesn’t exist outside of social media https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2022/05/13/the-squad-doesnt-exist-outside-of-social-media/

The US House of Representatives has voted 368-57 to spend $40 billion on a world-threatening proxy war while ordinary Americans struggle to feed themselves and their children. All 57 “no” votes were Republicans. Every member of the small faction of progressive House Democrats popularly known as “The Squad” voted yes.

The massive proxy war bill then went to the Senate, where it was stalled with scrutiny not from progressive superstar Bernie Sanders, but from Republican Rand Paul.

This is because the left-wing Democrat is a myth, like the good billionaire or the happy open marriage. It’s not a real thing; it’s just a pleasant fairy tale people tell themselves so they don’t have to go through the psychological turmoil of acknowledging that their entire worldview is built on lies.

Glenn Greenwald:

The Bizarre, Unanimous Dem Support for the $40b War Package to Raytheon and CIA: “For Ukraine”

Video Transcript: “The US Anti-War Left is Dead. The Squad’s $40b War Vote Just Killed It.” Many Dems voting YES have long denounced exactly these sorts of bills. What happened?

What happened, indeed? Not a single Democrat has a principled stance against weapons and war.

Another article by Caitlin Johnstone details a war game on NBC News that addresses a war with China over Taiwan: https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2022/05/16/pentagon-funded-think-tank-simulates-war-with-china-on-nbc/

Funded by the American taxpayer!

And then there’s this article by Dan Froomkin: “CBS helps world’s biggest arms dealer hone his pitch”

CBS helps world’s biggest arms dealer hone his pitch

Here’s the beginning of Froomkin’s article:

You could see something new playing out on the Sunday shows this past weekend: Some TV news networks are starting to raise questions about whether the U.S. involvement in the Ukraine might have some downsides.

But not on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

After hearing from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — who called for “more weapons, more sanctions” — and Ukrainian Ambassador to the U.S. Oksana Markarova — who asked for “more military support, more sanctions” — “Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan warmly welcomed Jim Taiclet, the chairman and CEO of Lockheed Martin, tossing him questions that weren’t even softballs, they were bouquets.

One can imagine how that might have come about. Earlier in the week, President Biden visited a Lockheed Martin factory in Alabama that makes Javelin anti-tank missiles, pitching his requests for $33 billion in aid to Ukraine and subsidies for American microchip production. So Ukraine and supply-chain issues were in the news, and Taiclet could address both.

But still, what it came down to was a major television network inviting onto its marquee news show the head of the largest weapons manufacturer in the world — the company that profits more from war than any other company worldwide — and not asking a single pointed question.

Watch the entire six-minute segment and ask yourself if state television in a totalitarian country would have done it any differently.

In the 1970s and into the 1980s, the mainstream media occasionally did challenge the military-industrial complex. Those days are gone. I no longer see articles that criticize waste, fraud, abuse, threat inflation, and so on. The mainstream media, like the Democrats, have become pro-war and pro-weapons and pro-Pentagon. Rare indeed do you hear any sustained criticism or meaningful opposition. (You do get posturing from the Squad, but only when their posturing has no effect on legislation and money.)

What good is freedom of the press when the press muzzles itself on issues that could very well lead to a wider war, even a nuclear one? Why is America shoveling scores of billions of dollars to sustain a bloodletting in Ukraine? What is our strategy to end this war, rather than simply prolonging it and profiting from it?

So I worry.

Stamping Out War

merlin_169482531_87d89290-a35f-4a5b-8ea3-9f3e607ffa81-jumbo
The face of the Afghan War is an unfamiliar one to Americans

W.J. Astore

In my latest article for TomDispatch.com, I detail America’s lack of an antiwar movement — which is partly due to war being literally out of sight for us.  Who knows, for example, of extensive U.S. bombing in Somalia and the innocents killed in that bombing?  Nick Turse has a powerful article on that here.  Wars are rarely covered critically in the mainstream media, and the Trump administration, even more so than previous administrations, has essentially issued blackout orders on information pertaining to U.S. wars and casualty figures.

One piece of encouraging news comes from Afghanistan, where a truce with the Taliban offers hope of an end to that disastrous war.  Yet, as the New York Times reports, the reconciliation process won’t be easy:

In the second decade of this conflict, begun as an act of vengeance by the United States in 2001 and at its peak involving a force of more than 100,000 American troops, the war has increasingly fallen on the backs of young Afghans.

Over the past five years alone, about 50,000 Afghan police officers and soldiers have died fighting. The number for the Taliban is estimated to be the same if not more. The fighting has been brutal, intimate, the same forces on each side often battling each other in familiar localities over long stretches of time.

It’s relatively straightforward for U.S. troops to withdraw from Afghanistan.  But what about the Afghan peoples themselves and their struggles with the legacy of this brutal war?

Here’s the beginning of my article:

There is no significant anti-war movement in America because there’s no war to protest. Let me explain. In February 2003, millions of people took to the streets around the world to protest America’s march to war against Iraq. That mass movement failed. The administration of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney had a radical plan for reshaping the Middle East and no protesters, no matter how principled or sensible or determined, were going to stop them in their march of folly. The Iraq War soon joined the Afghan invasion of 2001 as a quagmire and disaster, yet the antiwar movement died down as U.S. leaders worked to isolate Americans from news about the casualties, costs, calamities, and crimes of what was by then called “the war on terror.”

And in that they succeeded. Even though the U.S. now lives in a state of perpetual war, for most Americans it’s a peculiar form of non-war. Most of the time, those overseas conflicts are literally out of sight (and largely out of mind). Meanwhile, whatever administration is in power assures us that our attention isn’t required, nor is our approval asked for, so we carry on with our lives as if no one is being murdered in our name.

War without dire consequences poses a conundrum. In a representative democracy, waging war should require the people’s informed consent as well as their concerted mobilization. But consent is something that America’s leaders no longer want or need and, with an all-volunteer military, there’s no need to mobilize the rest of us.

Back in 2009, I argued that our military was, in fact, becoming a quasi-foreign legion, detached from the people and ready to be dispatched globally on imperial escapades that meant little to ordinary Americans. That remains true today in a country most of whose citizens have been at pains to divorce themselves and their families from military service — and who can blame them, given the atrocious results of those wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and elsewhere across the Greater Middle East and Africa?

Yet that divorce has come at a considerable cost. It’s left our society in a state of low-grade war fever, while accelerating an everyday version of militarism that Americans now accept as normal. A striking illustration of this: President Trump’s recent State of the Union address, which was filled with bellicose boasts about spending trillions of dollars on wars and weaponry, assassinating foreign leaders, and embracing dubious political figures to mount illegal coups (in this case in Venezuela) in the name of oil and other resources. The response: not opposition or even skepticism from the people’s representatives, but rare rapturous applause by members of both political parties, even as yet more troops were being deployed to the Middle East.

Please read the rest of my article here.  Let’s do our best to stamp out war.

America Needs a Stronger Anti-War Movement

W.J. Astore

Remember that saying from the Vietnam War era, “Suppose they gave a war and no one came?”  Considering present events, we need to modify that.  Suppose they kept giving us war after war and no one cared?

It’s remarkable that, even as President Trump expands our military involvement overseas, there is no significant anti-war protest movement in America.  Why is this?  Perhaps Americans don’t recognize the reality of today’s wars?

Tom Engelhardt has a great article today in which he reflects about World War II, the Vietnam War, and current conflicts around the world.  He ends his article with this powerful question:

In many ways, from its founding the United States has been a nation made by wars. The question in this century is: Will its citizenry and its form of government be unmade by them?

The answer to that is “yes,” if we continue largely to ignore them.

no-more-war
Protesters who shouted “No more war!” at the Democratic National Convention were silenced

Let me give you an example; it may sound trivial, but I think it’s indicative.  I just finished watching a seven-part series on HBO, “Big Little Lies.”  Set on the Monterey peninsula in California, the series revolved around several sets of mostly affluent, mostly White, parents and the travails of their privileged children.  The series did tackle serious issues, especially spousal abuse, and did feature fine acting.  What it did not feature was any sense that the U.S. has a military, let alone that America is at war around the world.

Wait a minute, you’re saying.  Why should a series featuring mostly affluent adults and their precocious children have said anything about the U.S. military and its wars?  Because of the setting.  I lived in Monterey for three years while serving as the military dean of students at the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center at the Presidio of Monterey.  I also taught at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey.  The U.S. military has a high profile there, but you’d never know it from watching “Big Little Lies.”  From that series, you’d think nearly everyone lived in sleek and expensive houses gazing out on the Pacific Ocean.  You’d never think that American adults had any concern whatsoever about what their military was up to around the world.  And perhaps that’s even true.

One teenager in “Big Little Lies” stirs family controversy by plotting to sell her virginity on the Internet to raise awareness of human trafficking.  (She eventually backs down.)  Perhaps she might have protested America’s wars instead?

So, why aren’t Americans protesting war?  Besides the unreality of these wars to the “Big Little Lies” crowd, here are some reasons that come to mind:

  • They’re couched as “necessary” wars against terrorism.
  • Unlike WWII or Vietnam, there’s no draft, hence the wars directly impact only American “volunteers” and their families/friends.
  • Recent U.S. casualties are much lower than they were from 2004-10 before, during, and after the “surges” in Iraq and Afghanistan, and much lower than in Vietnam. Americans care most when Americans die.  Witness the reaction to one Navy SEAL dying in a raid in Yemen.  If comparatively few American are dying, we don’t care much.
  • There is no major anti-war political party in the USA; the Democrats have embraced war as tightly as the Republicans. In short, there’s no strong rallying point against war.
  • The U.S. military has developed a form of war, based on technologies such as “smart” munitions and drones, that at least to us seems antiseptic and low cost.
  • American exceptionalism also plays a role, the government/mainstream media spin that Americans always enter wars reluctantly and only to do good.
  • Fear.  And nationalism (America First!) disguised as patriotism.

Another crucial reason: Many if not most Americans are remarkably disconnected from their government and its actions.  As Engelhardt wrote in another article (on the legendary journalist I. F. Stone):

What’s missing is any sense of connection to the government, any sense that it’s “ours” or that we the people matter. In its place—and you can thank successive administrations for this—is the deepest sort of pessimism and cynicism about a national security state and war-making machine beyond our control. And why protest what you can’t change?

Engelhardt wrote this in 2015, when Barack Obama was still commander-in-chief.  Now we have Trump and his unmerry crew, operating in their own bellicose reality.  In 2017 even more Americans are disconnected from the government, which they don’t see as “theirs.”  (Meanwhile, those who do see Trump and Crew as “theirs” probably embrace a bellicose approach to foreign policy.)

Disconnecting from government does not mean one should disconnect from its wars.  Those wars are being waged in our name; it’s up to us to work to end them.

Afterthoughts: Many Americans think that anti-war protest is somehow against “our” troops.  Yet, what could be better for our troops than fewer wars and less fighting?  Also, it’s foolhardy to give the U.S. military a blank check when it comes to war.  We the people are supposed to control our military, which is why America’s Founders gave Congress the power to declare war and to control the budget.  Finally, whether they know it or not, the Pentagon and its generals seriously need push-back from the American people.  When I watch Congressional hearings, most of our representatives are at pains to praise the military, instead of challenging it with tough questions.

Our military gets enough kudos!  What it needs is serious criticism, not unstinting praise along with buckets of money.

A Revealing Moment at the Democratic National Convention

no more war
Honest passion at the DNC

W.J. Astore

Yes, there was a revealing moment at last night’s Democratic National Convention.  No, it wasn’t President Obama’s soaring speech, or Joe Biden’s heartfelt appeal, or Tim Kaine’s “believe me” lampoon of Donald Trump.  All these were scripted.

It was the anti-war protesters who spoke out against drone assassinations and war while former CIA Director and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta spoke.

Good for them.  This democratic convention has been at pains to please the military. Last night, Panetta called the U.S. military our greatest national treasure.  Obama repeated his claim that the U.S. military is the finest fighting force since Cain slew Abel.  Tim Kaine opened his remarks by mentioning the Marines and shouting Semper Fi.

The Democrats are the new Republicans: they’re going “all in” on military boosterism and ra-ra patriotism.

Which is why the anti-war protest was so refreshing.  End the wars — end the killing — what’s wrong with these protesters for expressing such crazy sentiments at a Democratic political rally?  (An aside: my favorite sign read “Fauxmocracy.”)

The DNC response was swift.  Apparently, they cut the lights to the section where the main body of protesters sat (the Oregon delegation), but the protesters simply pulled out their Smart phones for light.  Panetta, of course, ignored them, carrying on with his prepared speech that vilified Trump for his remarks about Vladimir Putin and hacking.  (Pretty dumb by The Donald, but the man is an empty barrel, an Archie Bunker who loves to make lots of noise.)

Most interesting of all was media response.  I was watching MSNBC (I think) when a commentator attacked the anti-war protesters for undercutting Panetta’s speech against Trump.  Yes, it was the protesters who were TOTALLY in the wrong!  How dare they chant “no more war” at a former CIA Director and secretary of war? How dare they challenge an olympian like Panetta while he’s on the stage?  How dare they organize and exercise their first amendment rights?

Expect more unbounded praise of the U.S. military tonight by Hillary Clinton. Expect more talk of war.  Just don’t expect any honest talk about the cost of America’s wars or any vows about ending them in our lifetimes.

Update (7/28):

I just endured General Allen’s jingoistic speech/scream and all the “USA! USA!” chants, followed by a short speech by a Medal of Honor recipient in favor of Clinton.

After which Brian Williams of MSNBC said, “Sadly,” you could still hear faintly the voices of protesters shouting “No more war.” Why is that so sad, Brian Williams? Why is it so sad for Democrats to be against war? Why must they shut up when a general speaks, a general who boasts of making the U.S. military stronger with even better weaponry with which to kill?

That’s the real “sad” part, Brian Williams: How the Democratic Party has become the war party.

Where’s the Anti-War Movement?

antiwar_peace_rally03_618
Thousands of people with signs of peace gather on Library Mall for the start of an anti-war rally protesting a potential United States-led war against Iraq. Protesters later marched up State Street to the Wisconsin State Capitol Building. ©UW-Madison University Communications 608/262-0067 Photo by: Jeff Miller

W.J. Astore

Yesterday, Ira Chernus had a stimulating article at TomDispatch.com in which he noted the present lack of an American anti-war movement.  When it comes to war and foreign policy, Americans face a Hobson’s choice: the Democrats with drones and Special Ops and bombing against evildoers, or the Republicans with even more drones and Special Ops and bombing against even more evildoers.  The American master narrative, Chernus noted, is essentially all war.

He’s right about this, and I think it’s mainly for five reasons:

  1. The military draft is gone, so our youth can safely (they think) ignore America’s never-ending wars. In Vietnam, with the draft, most of our youth didn’t have the luxury of apathy.  Today, our youth have little personal incentive (as yet) to push back against the prevailing war narrative.
  2. Militarism.  Creeping militarism has shifted the American narrative rightwards.  In the Vietnam period, General Curtis LeMay’s “bomb them back to the stone age” was a fringe opinion; now it’s mainstream with “carpet bombing” Cruz and Trump and Rubio, the “top three” Republican presidential contenders after the Iowa caucuses.
  3. The Democrats have also shifted rightwards, so much so that now both major political parties embrace endless war. War, in short, has been normalized and removed from partisan politics.  As Chernus documents, you simply can’t get an alternative narrative from the U.S. political mainstream.  For that, you have to look to much smaller political parties, e.g. the Green Party.
  4. The U.S. mainstream media has been thoroughly co-opted by corporations that profit from war.  Anti-war ideas simply don’t get published; or, if they do, they’re dismissed as unserious.  I simply can’t imagine any of today’s TV talking heads coming out against the war on terror like Walter Cronkite came out in the 1960s against Vietnam. There is simply no push back from the U.S. media.
  5. Finally, a nebulous factor that’s always lurking: FEAR.  The popular narrative today is that terrorists may kill you at any time right here in America.  So you must be ready to “lockdown“; you must be ready to “shelter in place.”  You must always defer to the police and military to keep you safe.  You must fully fund the military or YOU WILL DIE. Repeated incantations of fear reinforce the master narrative of war.

Chernus makes many good points about how America’s constant warring in the Middle East only feeds radical Islam.  In short, it’s vital to develop a new narrative, not only because the current one feeds war and death, but also because it’s fated to fail.

I doubt pacifism will fly in warrior corp USA.  But why not containment?  Containment worked against the Soviet Union, or so most Americans believe.  If it worked against the far greater threat posed by the USSR, why shouldn’t it work against radical Islam?

Containment suggests several concrete actions: American troops should pull out of the Middle East.  Bombing and drone strikes should stop.  Establish a cordon sanitaire around the area.  Lead a diplomatic effort to resolve the conflicts.  And recognize that violent civil and ideological wars within Islam may need to burn themselves out.

One thing is certain: Because violent U.S. actions are most likely to act as accelerants to radical Islam, we need to stop attacking.  Now.

Yes, the U.S. has a responsibility to help the peoples of the region.  American actions helped to create the mess.  But you don’t “solve” the mess by blowing more people and things to smithereens.

Containment, diplomacy, humanitarian aid.  Not a chest-thumping course of action celebrated by the likes of Trump or Cruz or Clinton, but a new master narrative that would be more likely to spare lives and reduce the chaos in the Middle East.