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War Should Be an Election Issue
Just days away from crucial midterm elections, WikiLeaks, the whistle-blower website, unveiled the largest classified military leak in history. Almost 400,000 secret Pentagon documents relating to the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq were made available online. The documents, in excruciating detail, portray the daily torrent of violence, murder, rape and torture to which Iraqis have been subjected since George W. Bush declared “Mission Accomplished.” The WikiLeaks release, dubbed “The Iraq War Logs,” has been topping the headlines in Europe. But in the U.S., it barely warranted a mention on the agenda-setting Sunday talk shows.
First, the documents themselves. I spoke with Julian Assange, the founder and editor in chief of WikiLeaks.org. He explained: “These documents cover the periods of 2004 to the beginning of 2010. It is the most accurate description of a war to have ever been released ... each casualty, where it happened, when it happened and who was involved, according to internal U.S. military reporting.”
David Leigh, investigations editor at the Guardian of London, told me the leak “represents the raw material of history ... what the unvarnished version does is confirm what many of us feared and what many journalists have attempted to report over the years, that Iraq became a bloodbath, a real bloodbath of unnecessary killings, of civilian slaughter, of torture and of people being beaten to death.”
The reports, in bland bureaucratic language and rife with military jargon, are grisly in detail. Go to the website and search the hundreds of thousands of records. Words like “rape,” “murder,” “execution,” “kidnapping” and “decapitation” return anywhere from hundreds to thousands of reports, documenting not only the scale and regularity of the violence, but, ultimately, a new total for civilian deaths in Iraq.
The British-based Iraq Body Count, which maintains a carefully researched database on just the documented deaths in Iraq, estimates that the Iraq War Logs document an additional 15,000 heretofore unrecorded civilian deaths, bringing the total, from when the invasion began, to more than 150,000 deaths, 80 percent of which are civilian.
In one case, in February 2007, two Iraqi men were attempting to surrender, under attack by a U.S. helicopter gunship. The logs reveal that the crew members called back to their base and were told, “They cannot surrender to aircraft and are still valid targets.” The two were killed. The helicopter unit was the same one that, months later, attacked a group of civilians in Baghdad, killing all of the men, including two Reuters employees, and injuring two children. That case, also documented in the Iraq War Logs, was the subject of another high-profile WikiLeaks release, which it called “Collateral Murder.” The Apache helicopter’s own video of the violent assault, with the accompanying military radio audio, revealed soldiers laughing and cursing as they slaughtered the civilians, and made headlines globally.
Imagine if the military operations were not subject to such secrecy, if the February murder of the two men with their arms raised, trying to surrender, had become public. If there was an investigation, and appropriate punitive action was taken. Perhaps Reuters videographer Namir Noor-Eldeen, 22 years old, and his driver, Saeed Chmagh, the father of four, would be alive today, along with the civilians they were unlucky enough to be walking with that fateful July day. That’s why transparency matters.
Sunday’s network talk shows barely raised the issue of the largest intelligence leak in U.S. history. When asked, they say the midterm elections are their main focus. Fine, but war is an election issue. It should be raised in every debate, discussed on every talk show.
I see the media as a huge kitchen table, stretching across the globe, that we all sit around, debating and discussing the most important issues of the day: war and peace, life and death. Anything less than that is a disservice to the servicemen and -women of this country. They can’t have these debates on military bases. They rely on us in civilian society to have the discussions that determine whether they live or die, whether they are sent to kill or be killed. Anything less than that is a disservice to a democratic society.
Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.
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72 Comments so far
Show Allmay be in a democracy.
does anyone here besides me spend an increasing amount of time wondering when Karma is going to deal a decisive blow to the US? How much longer does the rest of the world have to wait for relief?
Sadly, they don't get relief, because we're so big that when we get ours, it's going to get them, too. In fact, many of them are going to get it before us, and some already are due to rising water levels. Whether we get taken out by nukes or by environmental devastation, we're taking everyone else with us.
"War Should Be an Election Issue"
It is only an election issue [by Democrats] when the Republicans are in power and is used to attract voters. Then when the Democrats get power, they continue the neocon war policies and avoid talking about war.
Obama has rendered the Nobel Peace Prize MEANINGLESS!!!
If any President wanted the political cover to end the wars, all he would have to do is suggest a national referendum on the wars to let the people decide if they want their country and their wealth to be used to kill people in other countries.
A simple vote of yes or no on Iraq and Af-Pak. If the majority says "get out" we get out. It's that simple.
But they dont dare offer us this option.
Who cares? Murdering civilians in war is so passé. But the TP is on a roll! Absorbent as parchment, soft as sandpaper, and great for ratings. But sit while you can. We'll all have the red @ss after the mid-terms.
These wars do not touch 97% of American lives. This tragic statistic is a triumph of social engineering for the war industry.
Americans have demonstrated for the last decade that they don't care about war as long as it's "someone else's" kid. Are we a nation of sociopaths?
Yes.
Yes
Yes.
Yes.
I disagree, egg2001. If you really think that our wars that're presently being fought abroad don't affect you, I suggest that you think again. The reason that our infrastructure is still crumbling, there are no jobs out there, and that our healthcare system is so shoddy, and that there's not enough research being done to find a cure various medical conditions is because our military budget, as always, is way too high. As the USA has been doing for the past half-century or more, it's throwing good money after bad to fighting illegal, wrongheaded and immoral wars abroad.
You are absolutely correct. The war IS touching everyone, but they can't see it, because they've been brainwashed to believe that military spending is good, that somehow buying guns helps stimulate the buying of butter, rather than what has been known by economics since before that field had a name. They are not taught in school what Eisenhower said in his first address to the nation, where he declared flatly that every penny spent on armaments is money taken away from schools, roads, and everything else to which public resources must be devoted, and there is certainly no discussion of it in the media. Hell, we've actually been convinced that spending on domestic needs hurts the economy and the taxpayers, and that spending on war is good for both, even though it should be obvious from a simple common sense perspective that in terms of impact on my personal budget, a dollar taken out of my pocket is equal to any other dollar out of my pocket.
Which brings us back to egg's question about whether our majority national character is sociopathic. The answer is an unqualified yes. And our economic system is sociopathic, too.
Yes.
"I see the media as a huge kitchen table..."
And that table has one honest leg and three corporate legs. And wars are corporate endeavors.
Viva Amy Goodman, an honest leg.
When the US media started calling civilian deaths "collateral damage" in 1991 to get buy-in for the Gulf War from sociopath Americans the Miltary Industrial Complex became the Military Industrial/Media Complex.
I plan to not vote for anyone who has supported or who continues to support the U.S. illegal wars of aggression. This will mean i have no one to vote for, most likely. I might write in Pogo, then.
It's astounding that all the pre-election coverage of all the candidates in all races has, as far as I have been able to see, absolutely ignored the war issue and the Wikileaks story.
Well said, Frodnonag!!! I'm with you!!! I cannot possibly vote for a continuation of this carnage!!!
Vote Green or Libertarian. Both are fundamentally anti-war, for different reasons. I vote Green.
I'd love to vote Green Party -- but it wouldn't knock out one Republican
or one Democrat.
We need IRV voting --
.
"According to all myth, the female - not the male -- gives life"
It is important to always remember that the wars themselves are war crimes.
They are wars of aggression, the supreme war crime, all other war crimes following from it.
Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and certain others must be charged with treason and war crimes or our country will never heal.
FROD: Important point. Aggressive war is THE SUPREME crime.
Reports like this, with soldiers laughing as they slay other, take the heroism out of war. Here we have the Smedley Butler/John Perkins updated version of guns for hire operating to secure resources not for American citizens, but for a handful of diabolical corporations and the politicians whose palms are greased by these insidious operations.
Unfortunately, so long as the entire media pays homage to military "leaders," and movies turn killers into glamorous figures, while fundamentalists clamor for the death of "infidels," added to sports massaging raw atavistic team identifications... war will emerge as a "natural" outcome of these conditioning mechanisms.
The real heroes are those who find ways NOT to go to war, added to those who know that negotiation is the real art of the deal, and far more cost-effective to lives, liberty, and livelihoods.
Did you read the Chomsky interview “Media Subdues The Public. It’s So In India, Certainly” on Znet on 10/24? He also says the invasion of Iraq is the supreme international crime for which people were hanged in Nuremberg. But what difference does it make if the guns for hire are securing resources for corporations rather than American citizens?
SWZA: I did not read that interview, but The Geneva Conventions cite war of aggression as the supreme crime. That ruling became THE established law, universally respected, until Bush-Cheney and nefarious friends defecated on it, along with The Constitution and Bill of Rights. Apparently Obama ran out of morality, as well as toilet paper. And how the blood has been spilt since.
Remember that these "Supreme Crimes" predate the Invasion of Iraq.
Vietnam, Panama and Granada are just some examples. The Gulf Of Tonkin resolution was based on a lie and no one was tried for that.
Kissinger walks the world a "free man" still cited as en "expert" of Foreign affairs.
Hey but they got Milosevic.
If one Catalogs the US Presidents and member sof Administrations that were NOT in fact war Criminals since Nuremberg you would very likely come up with a blank page.
Can anyone think of one?
Agree totally. If any of the talking heads in the media or in government actually cared about changing minds and influencing the world to a "better" way, they would have realized a long time ago that violence only creates fear, enemies, death, destruction and profits for those who cater to the tools of violence - weapons, military, media, etc. It's ideas that change the world and good ideas do not need the tools of violence.
Certain others? Obama, Biden, Clinton, Clinton, Emmanuel, Axlerod, Gates, Petraeus, most of the Senate, most of the House...
Correct! Absolutely correct!
And that's why Obama & the Congressional Dems will NEVER obey the law and the oaths of office they took and prosecute ALL the war criminals.
If they did, there would be fewer than ten unindicted members of Congress, and an empty White House, Supreme Court, Pentagon, and CIA headquarters.
And the Corporate-Militarist Media would have to face its own shameful complicity in these wars of aggression and other war crimes.
Only in a true democracy which actually practices justice and obeys the law would that all happen, but certainly never in the current U.S.
"And the Corporate-Militarist Media would have to face its own shameful complicity in these wars of aggression and other war crimes."
The warmongering New York Times cheerleader for war Judith Miller comes to mind.
But they are all going to be very very rich once said and done and YOU will be working for them.
THAT lies at the heart of all their crimes. They are the class that will OWN everything.
War? What war? The Democrats are in power now!
The only problem is that the Kitchen Table is owned and operated by the MIC.
War is not an election issue because there is no mass movement to press it as an issue. Politicians don't pick which issues they address based on how expensive they are, or how many lives they cost (see anyone talking about the thousands of deaths in the workplace every year, or the 50,000 killed by DUI?). They pick them based on what voters say will impact their voting choices. So every candidate goes to fundamentalist Christian conventions and lets pastors host presidential debates. There are many who go to the NRA. There are many who go to the NAACP. There are none who visit peace groups to explain why they are worthy of our votes. That's because there is no such thing as a peace convention. That is the only reason.
Those of us who believe in peace, who want the military budget reduced, who are against proliferation, even those who would support war but only in clearly defensive situations -- we are atomized, doing nothing, maybe going to our local vigil (the few that did not demobilize when Obama got elected), and posting a lot on the internet. Why would war be an election issue?
For three years I have been begging the 217,000 subscribers of Common Dreams to start an active, regularly meeting peace group. If anyone had started in Sept. of 2007 according to the simple principles I suggested at www.commonplans.blogspot.com, we'd have had our first convention by the summer of 2010. If no candidates showed up, we'd use the convention to organize a plan to make them pay for that, so they'd either show up the next time or risk unemployment.
Please visit www.commonplans.blogspot.com and www.eisenhowerproject.org to start organizing your thoughts around how to start your local chapter of what could become a movement, if we want it. Note that there is nothing in this for me -- no Pay Pal button, no requests to speak. You are the leader. And please consider unsubscribing from cable TV and devoting the time and money you save to organizing your local region. As I've shown here before, if all CD subscribers did just those two things, we'd have a minimum of $180 million and at least 78.1 million hours per year. If only half would try it, that would still be $90 million and 40 million hours. You could rent Madison Square Garden once a month and still have millions left over. It is completely possible to start a peace movement and have it well-funded and fully staffed.
It is likely that a troll or two will enter this thread. I ask that you not engage. Will anyone consider taking up my proposals?
Yes Steve, I tried to leave this comment but your site wont accept my "Wrong Password".
So here is the comment I tried to leave.
"I think the Peace Movement is now a small circle of friends in local areas all over the world.
We are still the "Underground" like they called us in the 60's.
How do we plan for peace?
In reality it is politics, controlled by the big money and most everyone would like to have peace if it was not an inconvenience.
I haven't decided even if I will vote, Maybe I will vote on one issue or two and just leave out the major parties since there is no peace candidate in Florida. None of the Dems want me to be able to FREELY travel to Cuba SO I WILL NOT SUPPORT THEM.
My point here is just as this site has little support, don't let that bring you down, because the more we try to pretend that we can have a huge mass peace march that will change anything in this reality, we will just discredit ourselves as peace cons.
Do this or that and "bring the system down to its knees" and all false promises we hear on internet posts.
I guess my point is Small is beautiful and is the future.
We are what we are and I am skeptical of anyone who tells me what to do for peace and who to vote for.
love folk"
I had no idea my blog needed a password to leave messages. I have noticed that blogspot usually needs Explorer as your browser in order to leave posts. Good old corporations helping us out. No need to worry about monopoly.
As far as I know, both Dems and Reps will allow you to go to Cuba if you're a right-wing Cuban from the emigre community built by the CIA in the 1960's. But they won't let you go to have a nice beach vacation, smoke a cigar, or drink rum. But I digress.
I agree that small is the way to go. That's why I always recommend keeping our efforts right-sized and do the work we can readily do right around us, rather than awaiting a messiah or for George Soros to endow a foundation to tell us all what to do.
I have no specifics on what to do to establish peace. I do know that most countries are at long-term peace even though most countries have economic interests and tribal bigotries that could easily be served by war, so there's no getting around the fact that there must be something that can be done. I think it stems from some combination of not having a warlike majority culture mixed with some rationality about cost-benefit. I would suggest that just as missionaries cultivate a culture that welcomes their efforts to recruit participants with their belief systems, people who want a culture of peace could spend their time trying to cultivate it around them, and to recruit participants.
Things do change. For many thousands of years most tribes and/or nations on Earth got the matter of the morality of slavery completely wrong. Even the infallible God of fundamentalist Christianity got it wrong, and kept it up for 3000 years. But today, although slavery still exists, there is no political or religious belief system that professes to its morality and encourages it with legal and economic support systems. This represents a complete reversal of thousands of years of worldwide tradition, accomplished in a relatively short period of activism from the late 1700's to the late 1800's. The American global militarist tradition of massive full-time standing armies, weapons systems, and industrial infrastructure, with its power to ensure that only politicians who support its continuing expansion can get elected to meaningful decision-making positions, is only 65 years old. Historic evidence shows that it is in fact possible for a change in culture to alter even the most accepted and economically entrenched institutions.
I hope that everyone reading this will begin doing what they can to get this process under way.
There is a massive anti-war movement .... which gets no coverage from
corporate-press.
Largest anti-war sentiments ever, IMO.
FBI has infiltrated anti-war groups in an attempt to label them as "terrorists" --
and last week arrested anti-war activists again trying to label them as
"terrorists" in an attempt to get Homeland Security $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$.
Those who believe in violence are still very much with us --
Our insanity grows daily!!
.
"According to all myth, the female - not the male -- gives life"
Yes, there's plenty of anti-war sentiment. But there's no anti-war movement. None. And that's why there's no press, too. Give them something to infiltrate. If there were a real movement instead of isolated meetings, they wouldn't even be able to recruit sufficient manpower.
With the absence of democracy in America, it is rare to find such articles reaching the public. Corporate media's first obligation is to their corporate sponsors. Meanwhile the killing goes on, ironically, in the name of democracy.
America's first priority should be restoring democracy here at home. That means exterminating the corporate influence in politics once and for all. Until we accomplish this goal, all other goals are impossible.
"Words like “rape,” “murder,” “execution,” “kidnapping” and “decapitation” return anywhere from hundreds to thousands of reports, documenting not only the scale and regularity of the violence, but, ultimately, a new total for civilian deaths in Iraq."
" ... more than 150,000 deaths, 80 percent of which are civilian."
"The Apache helicopter’s own video of the violent assault, with the accompanying military radio audio, revealed soldiers laughing and cursing as they slaughtered the civilians, and made headlines globally."
I don't know why this would shock or upset anyone. This is the norm for warfare. It happens in every war, and in spite of official pronouncements to the contrary it is official policy. It is war. War. The ultimate obscenity. It is useless. It is barbaric. It is psychopathic. Anyone who willingly goes to war is beneath contempt, from the supreme leader to the lowliest private. What the hell does anyone who enlists expect, chocolate and roses?
80% of 150,000 deaths are civilians? Big shrug here. Dresden? Hiroshma? Official policy. Fallujah? Official policy.
As for the helicopeter crews committing mass murder? One can only hope that ultimately they will do the honorable thing and publicly commit suicide.
"One can only hope that ultimately they will do the honorable thing and publicly commit suicide."
They won't. They believe they are doing the right thing as you believe you are doing the right thing. If you expect them to have an epiphany and do themselves in you'd best not hold your breath. None of the atrocities you mentioned produced any such actions. Bomber Harris went through the rest of his life justifying his bombing of Dresden. Paul Tibbets lived till he was in his 90s and sold souvenirs of his bombing of Hiroshima. The Fallujah people are still in charge and doing nicely thank you...
Point is that you can't call them criminals and expect anyone to listen to you. It isn't going to happen.
Change, the kind that lingers and really works comes from individuals and the community. Maybe it is time to move out to the red states and start to show them all another way on the ground, hands on.
JOHN: I don't agree with your post at all. Serial killers no doubt justify their actions to themselves, and there is a percentage of the population that naturally expresses the moral vacuum of sociopaths.
The world has already ruled on wars of aggression. The problem is that the U.S. has dominated the U.N. "Security" council, and up until recently, had the most impressive economy. Between its engorged and ridiculously over-armed military positioned all over the world, and its influence upon the World Bank and WTO; it has essentially appreciated a hegemony no other nation could dare to come up against. It's ironic, bordering upon tragic, that while Russia remained a viable adversary, it kept America's foreign policy relatively in check.
The good news (for mankind's survival, and certainly other lands) is that new power-blocks are forming. Perhaps none alone can thwart the U.S. empire; but taken together, power blocks in South America, Europe, and Asia may very well meet THE mission.
When a nation becomes as lawless as our own, uses the inversion of language in its effort to mask crimes of massive proportions, the guardians of universal justice work through agencies human, and otherwise, to right (or should I say balance) the scales of justice. It's been a painful process and millions of people, victimized by these senseless wars, pray daily for redress... but deliverance DOES arrive, too late for too many, no doubt; but inevitable in its process.
Except that quite a few do commit suicide, though generally not in public. Look up the rising statistics of military suicides the past 9 years. Figures are lower in the Navy and Air Force, but for most other branches, the rate is high, riding around 300 per year total. And of course there are still plenty of the likes of Harris and Tibbets and always has been in any war.
until we unite to reclaim the right to life's inherent necessities, which include free access to air, lands and waters, we must pay those controlling such...
war monies permeate our society...pay our rents and mortgages...
Read Larry Derfner's "American Psychos":
http://www.jewishjournal.com/articles/print/rattling_the_cage_20101026/
An election issue? Why? The vast majority of americans would vote to continue the present course. They simply do not care about death and destruction outside their own country, especially when their own country is the perpetrator. Their only concern is having enough money to accumulate piles of worthless crap.
As long as the defense industry is the largest employer in a majority of Congressional districts, you will never get the majority to do anything but remain silent.
Most sheepies seem to experience cognitive dissonance whenever U.S. war crimes and atrocities are mentioned.
Just try talking about them and watch the necks begin to swell and turn red. Then watch the face and scalp turn red and listen to the vitriol of angry fear spew from their mouths.
The level of success achieved by the conditioning of the populace by fear is truly amazing.....and very scary.
Just look at the number of average folks worried about the Pentagon's document security rather than any concern about high crimes and treasonous conduct.
>>The level of success achieved by the conditioning of the populace by fear is truly amazing.....and very scary.<<
So true. The "vibe" of it reminds me of movies like "The Stepford Wives".
Today I read a comment under an article* about Wikileaks:
"@VinoRouge "Why? Are we measuring the behaviour of our armed forces using the Taliban as a moral yardstick?"
Why? Because I think it's important to get the full story of what's been going on in Iraq."
THAT'S an example of how good the propaganda machine has been!
*which is at http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/26/afghanistan-civilians-ministry-defence-wikileaks
War and destruction are ultimately the symptoms of the power elite's take over of the US government and economy. And certainly, if given a choice in who or what to vote for, the wholesale destruction of all that is good might be an issue. But we all miss the point here, that those currently offered up for "public office" are only visible to us via mass media and brought to us by corporate money and therefor are completely and utterly indebted to the absolutely corrupt and greedy. Thus, the status quo perpetuates itself. Even if war were the only issue, one politician would be for and one against to create what seems like a quandry. To make one portion believe the other portion is not intellectually well off, which of course is true in both camps. And, while the apathetic public argues the virtue of their own stupidity, the "public officials" carry on with their agenda. It matters not what they debate or what they say during a campaign. How much more obvious can this be?
I've been screaming at the top of my voice for years on this website, that the only way to derail this runaway locomotive that is the super wealthy controlling everything and wanting more, at the cost of not only our lives but the very land, water and air needed for future survival, is to withhold your money. Buy local, do not borrow, spend locally, live simpler. Thinking for ourselves is another strategy, but I won't risk being called a hopeless dreamer...
"... withhold your money. Buy local, do not borrow, spend locally, live simpler."
absolutely. that is the ONLY leverage we the people have. the left should stop wasting resources such as time and energy on anything else.