Hi. I got lots of thank you's for my ballot choices, but someone was unclear about whether I favored or opposed the slate noted and someone who thought the programmers listed were candidates. To be clear, I FAVOR the only slate mentioned, which was adopted by our Committee to Strengthen KPFK and endorsed by the programmers listed right above it. -Ed
http://killinghope.org/bblum6/aer85.html The Anti-Empire Report September 1st, 2010 by William Blum www.killinghope.org Things which don't go away. Things the American government and media don't let go of. And neither do I. Iraq "They're leaving as heroes. I want them to walk home with pride in their hearts," declared Col. John Norris, the head of a US Army brigade in Iraq. It's enough to bring tears to the eyes of an American, enough to make him choke up. Enough to make him forget. But no American should be allowed to forget that the nation of Iraq, the society of Iraq, have been destroyed, ruined, a failed state. The Americans, beginning 1991, bombed for 12 years, with one excuse or another; then invaded, then occupied, overthrew the government, killed wantonly, tortured ... the people of that unhappy land have lost everything - their homes, their schools, their electricity, their clean water, their environment, their neighborhoods, their mosques, their archaeology, their jobs, their careers, their professionals, their state-run enterprises, their physical health, their mental health, their health care, their welfare state, their women's rights, their religious tolerance, their safety, their security, their children, their parents, their past, their present, their future, their lives ... More than half the population either dead, wounded, traumatized, in prison, internally displaced, or in foreign exile ... The air, soil, water, blood and genes drenched with depleted uranium ... the most awful birth defects ... unexploded cluster bombs lie in wait for children to pick them up ... an army of young Islamic men went to Iraq to fight the American invaders; they left the country more militant, hardened by war, to spread across the Middle East, Europe and Central Asia ... a river of blood runs alongside the Euphrates and Tigris ... through a country that may never be put back together again. "It is a common refrain among war-weary Iraqis that things were better before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003," reported the Washington Post on May 5, 2007. No matter ... drum roll, please ... Stand tall American GI hero! And don't even think of ever apologizing. Iraq is forced by the United States to continue paying reparations for its own invasion of Kuwait in 1990. How much will the American heroes pay the people of Iraq? "Unhappy the land that has no heroes ... No. Unhappy the land that needs heroes." - Bertolt Brecht, Life of Galileo "What we need to discover in the social realm is the moral equivalent of war; something heroic that will speak to men as universally as war does, and yet will be as compatible with their spiritual selves as war has proved to be incompatible." - William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience Perhaps the groundwork for that heroism already exists ... February 15, 2003, a month before the US invasion of Iraq, probably the largest protest in human history, between six and ten million protesters took to the streets of some 800 cities in nearly sixty countries across the globe. Iraq. Love it or leave it. *** http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/two_wars_dont_make_a_right_20100901/ Two Wars Don't Make a Right By Robert Scheer Truthdig: Sept. 1, 2010 The carnage is not yet complete, and President Barack Obama's attempt to put the best face on the ignominious U.S. occupation of Iraq will not hide what he and the rest of the world well know. The lies that empowered George W. Bush to invade Iraq represent an enduring stain on the reputation of American democracy. Our much-vaunted system of checks and balances failed to temper the mendacity of the president who acted like a king and got away with it. It is utter nonsense for Obama, who in the past has made clear his belief that the Bush administration's case for this war was a tissue of lies, to now state: "The United States has paid a huge price to put the future of Iraq in the hands of its people." We paid a huge price simply to assuage the arrogance of a president that was unfettered by the restraints of common sense expected in a functioning democracy. Particularly shameful was the betrayal by the Congress and the mass media of the obligations to challenge a president who exploited post-9/11 fears to go to war with a nation that had nothing whatsoever to do with that attack. With hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Americans dead and maimed and at a cost of $3 trillion to American taxpayers, the U.S. imperial adventure in Iraq has left that country in a horrible mess, controlled by a corrupt and deeply divided elite that shows no serious inclination to effectively govern. Nor can there be a claim of enhanced U.S. security when the real victors are the ayatollahs of Iran, whose influence in once bitterly hostile Iraq is now immense. The price in shattered lives and dollars will continue, as Iraq remains haunted by ethnic and religious conflict that we did so much to provoke. Remember when most of the once respected mass media, and not just the obvious lunatics on cable, bought the Bush propaganda that democracy in Iraq, a harbinger of a new Middle East, was just around the corner? They based that absurd expectation on the fact that an Iraqi ayatollah disciple of the ones ruining Iran could order millions of his followers to hold up purple fingers. What a joke we have made of the ideal of representative democracy when Iraq is operating under an incomprehensible constitution, which our proconsul ordered, and is still without a functioning government six months after an election that our media once again dutifully celebrated. Mark the obit on this disaster by John Simpson, the highly regarded BBC world affairs editor, writing Tuesday from Baghdad that "nowadays it is hard to find anyone who sees America as a friend or mentor." Dismissing the original American expectation that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein would expand democracy in the Middle East, Simpson concludes: "On the contrary, America's position in the Middle East has been visibly eroded. . America seems to have shrunk as a direct result of its imperial adventure in Iraq." The one positive outcome is that with the formal end of the U.S. occupation many Americans have finally learned the lesson that imperialism does not pay. While Bush fiddled with a nonexistent terrorist threat from Iraq, the U.S. economy burned and the oil loot that some thought would make it all worthwhile never materialized. Remember when the neoconservatives were riding high and Paul Wolfowitz assured a supine Congress that Iraqi oil would pay for it all? Nor did the invasion even make more secure our access to Mideast oil while competitors like China were busily securing foreign energy rights to shore up their bustling economies. Obama acknowledged this reality in his speech when he stated, "We must jump-start industries that create jobs, and end our dependence on foreign oil." For all his talk about turning our attention homeward, Obama reveals his obsession with the imperial adventure in Afghanistan, where "because of our drawdown in Iraq, we are now able to go on offense." Once again there is the expectation that the occupied will embrace the occupiers and that the deployment of massive military power "will disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaida," as if that is any longer relevant to our deep involvement in a treacherous civil war in which we have no reliable partners. Al-Qaida was never present in Iraq before we invaded, and according to Obama's own national security adviser, there are fewer than a hundred members of the group left in Afghanistan, unable to coordinate any actions. Obama deserves credit for extracting this country from a war in Iraq that he inherited, but it is mind-numbing that in his nation-building efforts in Afghanistan he is now repeating the same errors that were made in Iraq. ------------------------------------ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:[email protected]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:[email protected]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:[email protected]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:[email protected]?subject=laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:[email protected]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! 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