Author: John Grant

It’s considered unsportsmanlike to say, “We told you so.” But since all’s fair in love and war and we’re definitely at war, it’s fair to say the peace movement has been right about the whole sordid reality of US war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

That may sound audacious or ridiculous to some, especially to those knee-jerks who love to ridicule the peace movement while knowing nothing about what it really stands for.

It’s important to note here, that the peace/antiwar movement doesn’t have quite as extensive a public relations and propaganda program as that employed by the military and its supporters in the federal government and the mainstream media.

For instance, the peace movement doesn’t have well-funded, highly-trained Psy-Ops Teams such as Rolling Stone has shown the military has. So no one is able to brainwash US Congress members into cutting the military budget and de-funding the wars.

The peace movement also tends to be concerned about the poor, long-term ecological sustainability issues, improving education, creating jobs and figuring out affordable health care for all Americans, which is why we’re always attacking the Pentagon sacred cow and the runaway wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Finally, the peace movement suffers because we live in a world gone mad and few today seem to have the courage to listen to, and give credence to, a movement without guns and prisons.

Interestingly, current reports surrounding Afghanistan are in synch with what the peace movement has been saying since the beginning about the dismal outlook for the Petraeus counter-insurgency program in that ancient, rugged land.

For instance, one of the fundamental mantras of Veterans For Peace, the antiwar organization I have worked with for 26 years, is: “Wars are easy to start and very difficult to stop. So it’s best not to start them.”

Defense Secretary Robert Gates, the Pentagon and the Pech Valley

What Defense Secretary Robert Gates just told cadets at West Point was a distinct echo of this mantra. Here’s what he said:

“(A)ny future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should have his head examined.”

Hayes Carll and band on Fox-TV's "Imus in the Morning"

From the WTF Department, here’s something from Fox TV’s Don Imus Show last December.

Hayes Carll is a young country singer from Texas with a fantastic surreal song about an 18-year-old soldier in Afghanistan that is up there with the best of Dylan, with elliptical lyrics like Desolation Row you never get tired of reaching for to figure out.

It’s called KMAG YOYO, which in military argot means “Kiss My Ass Guys. You’re On Your Own.” (This version is the one broadcast on Sirius Radio, because the lyrics are easier to hear. If you want the Fox Imus show performance, which has more of a live feel to it, it’s here.)

A well-known Philadelphia poor peoples advocate has decided to try something different. She’s running for Sheriff of Philadelphia.

Cheri Honkala, founder of the local Kensington Welfare Rights Union and national director of the Poor Peoples Economic Human Rights Campaign, announced on Thursday, February 17, she will be running in the November election as the Green Party candidate for Sheriff in the City Of Philadelphia.

“I’m running for Sheriff because something needs to be done to address the plague of home evictions being faced by poor and working families in Philadelphia,” Honkala said. The theme of the Honkala campaign is: “Keeping Families In Their Homes.”

Since evictions and Sheriff’s sale auctions of foreclosed properties are a core task undertaken by the Office Of Sheriff, Honkala’s entrée adds a provocative dimension to an already interesting race.

Cheri Honkala announces she's running for Sheriff of Philadelphia

As “The People’s Sheriff,” Honkala says she will fulfill all the traditional functions of the office that includes transport of inmates to and from city prisons and courthouses, as well as courthouse security. “We will green the transporting of prisoners,” she said, which includes preserving both public safety and the dignity of Philadelphia inmates.

Currently, the Sheriff’s office is facing subpoenas from a US Attorney in a federal grand jury probe addressing things like $53 million missing from the Real Estate Department, the department Honkala has her sights set on. The problems came to light after an audit by City Controller Alan Butkovitz.

When Sheriff John Green, who held the elected office for 22 years, was asked about the absence of records covering his staff’s vacation days, he reportedly said he didn’t need records, since Sheriff’s Office workers worked 24/7. Presumably they were working even if they were at one of the new casinos in the city.

Hosni Mubarak has chosen not to fold his losing hand and to play it to the bitter end.

After the CIA and the Egyptian military said he was going to resign, he didn’t, which further escalated the tension around the question hanging over Cairo: Who is the military going to side with?

Is it the bloated kleptocrat and his bloody sidekick Omar Suleiman – the inseparable ally the generals have been in bed with since the State Of Emergency was declared in 1981 — or the Egyptian citizens who refuse to leave Tahrir Square and demand a suspension of the constitution, then fair and open elections.

For the military the choice seems like whether to let go of your 300-pound mother as she’s pulling you into powerfully raging floodwaters. If you don’t let her go, she’s going to drag you into even more dangerous waters that will assure all your doom.

As a veteran of decades of anti-militarism activism in America – child’s play here compared to Tahrir Square — I feel the people in Tahrir are my brothers and sisters. Like many, I’m moved by their bravery and determination.

Always hanging over them is a relentless wet blanket, an oppressive, smothering force represented by the militarist juggernaut reaching from Washington DC, through Israel and Saudi Arabia, to the deeply funded and entrenched military class of Egypt.

Tahrir Square and Presidents Mubarak and Obama

After Mubarak’s speech on Thursday, the chants rose in Tahrir Square: “The people and the army! Hand in hand!”

Amazingly, the Egyptian Army, by all standards probably one of the more corrupt military institutions in the world, is now the peacemaker in Egypt, perched above it all like a vulture calculating how long the Tahrir Square forces can hold out and how long Mubarak and his fat cronies can keep believing they’re leading Egypt.

Do the generals appease the demonstrators and essentially pull off a coup for democracy, pushing Mubarak into exile, then suspend the constitution and arrange real elections? Or do they appease Mubarak and Suleiman and start shooting demonstrators in front of the international media?

 
It was a dark and stormy night and Scat Horbath was glad to be out of the weather in the Washington DC metro, where he was to meet the sinister Ali Ben al-Masseur in the last car of the Blue Train.

Al-Masseur ran the Brothers Of Islam Charity Center in Arlington, and he held the clue to a two-thousand-year-old secret that had been scratched in code into the bottom of John Hancock’s pewter chamber pot. The fate of the free world hung in the balance.

The doors opened, and Scat entered the nearly empty car. As the car moved off he became aware of the subtle smell of falafal. Then he saw his man, seated at the end of the car chewing as he read from a copy of The Koran.

Al-Masseur looked up and flicked his tongue, projecting little pieces of yogurt sauce into the air.

“So, Scat, we meet again.”

That’s the opening of my new thriller, The Last Zealots, to be published under my pseudonym Rand Wotan. It’s the first in a series featuring Scat Horbath, a US assassin suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder who, for reasons of grave national security, is recruited back into the business by his colleagues in The Agency.

You know the drill: Scat has to come in from the cold and do one last mission.

If my calculations are correct, the novel will bring a fatwah down on me, and the book will sell millions. I plan to Save America one bestseller at a time.

OK. OK. All the above is hogwash. It’s actually a lame satire on the bestselling thrillers of Brad Thor, author of The Last Patriot and The Apostle. Thor is a regular on the Glenn Beck Show and on blogs like Military.Com where he sells his clever books and spreads anti-Islamic phobia.

Discovering how Thomas Jefferson blew the lid on Radical Islam

The similarities between Thor’s fantasy approach to history and that of certain right wing commentators and politicians would seem to suggest a trend.

Recent indicators suggest the US military mission in the Middle East and Southwest Asia is waning in influence, leaving us mired down with hundreds of thousands of soldiers and billions of dollars of equipment and bases. And a lot of face to save.

According to a New York Times analysis, Turkey and Iran are rising in regional influence as the United States is falling. And let’s not forget, arguably the single-most important historical act that boosted Iran to this level of regional influence was the 2003 US invasion and occupation of Iraq.

“The jockeying might be a glimpse of a post-American Middle East,” writes Anthony Shadid in the Times analysis.

Still, you have to admire US leaders for their talent and tenacity in never publicly recognizing the obvious. George Bush, of course, was an underestimated master at this.

He and his gang of cutthroats stumbled around in the world like drunken fat men knocking over furniture and vomiting on the couch. Then, at the press conference when a reporter asked if there was anything he could say had been a “mistake,” he’d give us that famous vacant look

“Gee. I’m thinking,” he’d say with an aw-shucks grin and a shy chuckle. “I’m trying but I just can’t come up with anything right now.” Another chuckle and a little shrug. Then: “I’ll take it under advisement and get back to you in a couple decades.”

In other words, “Buzz off and leave me alone. I’m the leader of the free world. I don’t make mistakes. I make history.”

Hello darkness my old friend,
I’ve come to talk with you again,
– Paul Simon, 1964

Jared Loughner with Glock

The same year the Tet Offensive in Vietnam made it clear that war was a quagmire, there was a spate of domestic political assassinations in America. It was a highly polarized and volatile time when people struggled with issues of race and class. Civility suffered.

Forty-three years later, the similarities are stark. The economy is distressed to the point poor and working class Americans are fearful and uncertain about the future. Meanwhile, the world of high finance has rebounded and is again thriving; and the military budget consumes more than half of US tax resources.

The National Security State keeps Americans in the dark about exactly what it is doing around the world. Citizens are told US troops will be removed from Iraq next year — maybe — if everything is stable and leaving is in our interest. Meanwhile, our leaders are escalating the war in Afghanistan and expanding it into Pakistan.

The fact is US military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan is not really a “war,” as much as it is an expensive, and virtually permanent, imperial occupation that began under Bush and is continuing with little change under Obama.

Most Americans have no personal stake in either occupation, and a majority of them consistently tell pollsters they’re opposed to the occupations. Yet, our military presence continues.

Americans have become cynically acclimatized to this state of affairs, which amounts to a passive moral accommodation to their government’s use of lethal violence in the far reaches of the globe.

The top-down message of these wars that seeps into the pores of all Americans is that violence is an acceptable, even honorable, means to solve problems. We are Americans, and no one pushes us around, and if they do, they will face “shock and awe.” Violence makes things happen. That message inevitably filters down and nestles in the minds of even the most crackpot citizen. Violence clarifies like nothing else.

The War On Drugs, fought mostly in poor and person-of-color communities (despite the fact that whites are more than 70 percent of all drug users) has contributed dramatically to the growth of a prison-industrial-complex that is quickly sapping resources from education, job training and other vital programs.

–Tim Wise

I’ve taught creative writing in Philadelphia’s maximum-security prison for ten years. I joke with the inmates that most of them are POWs in the Drug War. Of course, for reasons Tim Wise points out, most of the men in the class are African American.

Last week only two men showed up for the class, which gave me and my co-teacher the opportunity to talk with them about their lives.

Both men are in their thirties, one white, one black. Not surprisingly, the white guy was in for drug use and the black guy was in for dealing. Both are intelligent, thoughtful men. They are not saints – but who is anymore in a society where the stone cold killer is a pop culture hero and the so-called “free market” rules?

The white guy, who I will call Bill, was raised in a hard-working, blue-collar family. His father busted his tail and sent his son to St Joseph’s Prep School in North Philadelphia. Bill played football at the school but could not relate to many of his peers, who were often headed for places like Harvard or Yale.

Bill fell into a disastrous cycle of drug use and got hooked on heroin, the tragic horrors of which he didn’t grasp until it was too late. Shame at being a failure further fueled the cycle, and he was a junkie before he was 30. There was the inevitable collision with police, courts and prison. He is now on an in-prison methadone program.

Soldiers clearing out marijuana plants in a raid

On December 18, David House, an MIT researcher, visited Bradley Manning at the Quantico, Virginia, military prison where he is being held in solitary confinement. Other than Manning’s attorney, House is the rare person allowed to visit him.

House’s report is quite thorough in pointing out instances where the military authorities are lying — or to use philosopher Harry Frankfurt’s formulation, “bullshitting” — about how the 23-year-old Army intelligence worker is being treated.

Here’s some of psychologist Dr. Jeffrey Kaye’s comment on House’s report:

“The human nervous system needs a certain amount of sensory and social stimulation to retain normal brain functioning. … From what can be ascertained, the effects of solitary confinement are having some effects already on Bradley Manning. His concentration and thinking processes appear somewhat slowed. He avoids certain topics. He has little access to humor. His color is pale, and his musculature is starting to look soft and flabby.”

There is, unfortunately, a long and sordid history behind this kind of “slow torture,” and the use of it should be a battleground for all Americans still interested in compassion, fairness and justice.

Washington–Defense Secretary Robert Gates may be the consummate insider bureaucrat and a nice man, but his calling our war in the Pashtun homeland “the meat in the sandwich” begins to get at the real problem of the Afghanistan/Pakistan War.

Besides being a preposterously flippant and insensitive metaphor presumably uttered for the consumption of the more clueless elements of middle America, his sandwich image is as misleading as all the war-selling PR coming out of the Pentagon and the Obama White House.

Robert Gates

Here’s how he described his sandwich: “The Pakistanis come in behind the insurgents from the Pakistani side and, coordinating with us and the Afghans, we’re on the other side.” Of course, he’s referring to what is informally dubbed Pashtunistan, down the middle of which Sir Mortimer Durand drew the Afghanistan/Pakistan border in 1893 to divide and conquer the Pashtun people. The border is a Western illusion. And, of course, the Taliban are largely Pashtun.

What’s misleading is the assumption any part of this war is anything but a US manufactured disaster. WikiLeaks and other revelations have made it clear the Pakistanis are highly reluctant to make military assaults into the Pashtun tribal areas. Last week the Pakistanis even outed the CIA chief running the US drone war there; the man was forced to flee due to threats on his life.

So the Obama administration is increasing its lethal drone attacks and deadly night special operations raids into Pakistan, both of which are highly controversial and contribute to the hatred Pakistanis have for the US.

This increase of US military intervention into Pakistan was announced at a White House press conference last Thursday that focused on the release of a much-anticipated assessment from General David Petraeus on the Afghanistan/Pakistan War.

President Obama spoke about the “significant progress” achieved in “disrupting, dismantling, and defeating al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan and preventing its capacity to threaten America and our allies in the future.”