Why it is your duty to stop supporting the government →
the danger of “feel-good” protests →
liberals can be infuriating →
shallow criticism of the war
Bits & Pieces from around the web:
Have you ever been tempted to want to expand the federal government with a new bureaucracy?
Lord knows, many people have.
But those few libertarian hold-outs may have finally met the ultimate temptation — the anti-agency agency:
The Government Reorganization and Program Performance Improvement Act of 2005 would create a standing sunset commission, which would review all federal agencies and programs every 10 years and recommend changes.
If lawmakers did not vote to continue a program, its funding, not just its authorization, would automatically cease.
Of course, the commissions (it will take two, apparently) would be full of people appointed by the politicians, so I’d be a fool to expect much good to come out of them, but daydreams are free.
Rahul Mahajan at Empire Notes takes a critical look at the U.S. anti-war movement:
I begin with the observation that criticism of the war has been almost entirely as a fiasco, a failed and reckless venture, and not as a moral failure.…
In one breath, one mentions torture by U.S. troops, checkpoint killings, the savage destruction of Fallujah, and then in the next one talks about the great bravery and nobility of the troops that did it and of one’s complete support for them.
Well, such a complete disjunction between the evil of the enterprise and the nobility of those who carry it out is just untenable.
There is no need to paint the American soldiers as any more monstrous than the cogs in other monstrous machines have been.
But neither are they any less so.
More important, the way they have conducted themselves and the way that Iraq has been treated since the regime change doesn’t just reveal something about the Bush administration.
It doesn’t just reveal something about the military-industrial complex and corporate CEOs. It reveals something about American culture and about the deeper morality of this country and its people.…
The Iraq occupation is a mirror in which to look at this country, and so far nobody wants to take a serious look.
Zeynep Toufe of Under the Same Sun examines the implications of a recent claim by a U.S. General that “U.S. and Iraqi forces have killed or arrested more than 50,000 Iraqi insurgents in the past seven months.”
And here’s a little something for the “harm reduction” advocates.
Alcohol prohibition finally ended in in Athens, Tennessee — one of those freakish “dry town” hold-outs in our nation’s noble experiment.
Well, when you keep an experiment going that long, you’re bound to pick up a few data points along the way.
For instance:
According to court records, Athens police made one less misdemeanor driving under the influence arrest in than in .
The Sheriff’s Department and troopers made 37 fewer DUI arrests last year.
That figure includes Athens police’s felony arrests.
Driving under the influence includes alcohol and drugs.
The city’s numbers are not staggering, but Athens police Capt. Marty Bruce said he sees an impact.
On the weekends since Athens went wet, police typically arrest two to three drivers for DUI, Bruce said.
“Before, it was eight to 10 people,” he said.
How did legalizing alcohol cut down on drunk driving?
The Decatur Daily decided to ask a drunk driver for his opinion:
Kendall Dowell of Athens, who has four DUIs on his record, making him a felon, said going wet has kept people from driving to Huntsville and Decatur for alcohol.
“It is much easier for people to get the alcohol here, stay home and stay safe,” Dowell said.
In any society of the future worth talking about and working toward, independent moral decision will be the dominant cultural habit — the universal goal and the highest abstract good.
So, when it comes to making a living, here and now, the primary task is to build a pattern of endeavor which permits that kind of decision — a pattern which, if and as it is successful, increases the opportunity for that kind of decision.
In this regard…
We recall the story [of] an eminent engineer whose professional abilities led him most naturally to municipal employment.
This man, who was young in his career at the time of this episode, realized that municipal governments are sometimes corrupt.
For him, right livelihood meant foresight in respect to the possibility that he might some day be asked to participate in dishonest practices, under pressure from the city fathers.
Confronted by this abstract possibility, he laid plans for a small business of his own, so that he would be economically free, should he feel morally obliged to resign as city engineer.
He was a man with a wife, two small children, and a mortgage, which made a steady income of substantial importance.
It eventually happened that the small business was the means of preserving this man’s integrity without harm to his family.
People sometimes tell me that they admire the stand I’ve taken, and “wish” they could do such a thing themselves, but for some financial reason or other, they cannot.
Sometimes these reasons are unforeseeable and urgent — more often, they’re ordinary but expensive lifestyle choices.
It is a rare person who, like the engineer in the example above, has the foresight to consider moral autonomy an asset worth valuing as such and worth including in financial calculations.
Norman Solomon observes:
In the United States, while the lies behind the Iraq war become evermore obvious and victory seems increasingly unreachable, much of the opposition to the war has focused on the death and suffering among U.S. soldiers.
That emphasis has a sharp political edge at home, but it can also cut another way — defining the war as primarily deplorable because of what it is doing to Americans.
One danger is that a process of withdrawing some U.S. troops could be accompanied by even more use of U.S. air power that terrorizes and kills with escalating bombardment (as happened in Vietnam for several years after President Nixon announced his “Guam Doctrine” of Vietnamization in ).
An effective antiwar movement must challenge the jingo-narcissism that defines the war as a problem mainly to the extent that it harms Americans.
The war in Iraq is destroying the international prestige of the United States, degrading its military, and plunging its government further into bankruptcy.
In spite of all this, I still think the war was unjustified.
While I share these goals, I would not endorse a course of action that sacrifices the lives and livelihoods of innocent Iraqis to achieve them.
While I’m pleased to hear that anti-war sentiment is increasing in the United States, I worry that the war-happy idea people in the Dubya Squad and the image-conscious wanna-be-pragmatists in anti-war circles may be aiming at essentially the same thing: the propping-up of an unpopular and despotic central government in Iraq that is able to rule only while leaning on the strength of the military aid it purchases from the United States, so as to rescue American ground troops who can withdraw from danger while the U.S. relies on air strikes to hit whatever Iraq’s security services fail to target.
In other words, not an end to the war but an American victory.
Because I think something much like this scenario is actually the hoped-for goal of the Dubya Squad.
Criticizing them for not accomplishing an independent and democratic Iraq is kind of missing the point — that isn’t really their goal and never has been.
But so many of the war critics are advocating a course of action that amounts to the same thing, by decrying the terrible loss of American troops, mentioning Iraqi losses as an afterthought if at all, and saying that U.S. ground forces should be withdrawn — not immediately, heavens no, but gradually, and only when the central government’s armed forces can take over and do our job for us.
California Peace Action’s website, for instance, advocates an agenda that looks as though it came directly from last year’s timid Democratic Party talking points: “a drawdown could coincide with the creation of a constitution and new elections, and be completed in 12 to 18 months… an international peacekeeping force under a U.N. mandate… a strong contingent of Muslim and Arab League troops as part of the peacekeeping force… rapid development of the defense capacities of Iraqi security forces…”
I half expect Dubya himself to announce the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq before the bulk of the anti-war movement thinks it quite prudent.
Just imagine the scene if a month from now, or a week from now, or tomorrow, Dubya addresses the nation like so:
My fellow Americans: In I announced that our nation had begun a campaign “to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger.”
I also said that “We have no ambition in Iraq, except to remove a threat and restore control of that country to its own people.”
Our mission has been accomplished and it is time to come home, triumphant and yet humbled by the sacrifice that our noble troops have made for this just cause.
I have asked the Secretary of Defense to begin an orderly withdrawal of our ground troops from Iraq immediately.
We consider the government of Iraq a friend and a partner in the stability of the region, and remain willing to come to her aid in the cause of peace if she requires it.
Thank you and goodnight.
Can you picture the conniption?
Can you hear Karl Rove cackling over his greatest coup ever?
(Imagine how the Democrats would fall all over themselves trying to spin it first one way and then the other!)
Going forward, the political terrain has become dangerous for the anti-war movement.
The tide seems to be turning in favor of withdrawal.
More and more politicians are calling for withdrawal.
Even some congressional hawks, like John P. Murtha (D-Penn.) are calling for an immediate withdrawal of US troops.
But it’s not because of sudden epiphany on the futility of war.
Many Democrats and Republicans are calling for withdrawal because they want to save empire from the Bush administration’s follies.…
The great challenge for the anti-war movement is to avoid having a movement to end the Iraq War transformed into a movement to save Empire.
For better and worse, this task is up to UFPJ because of its central role.…
An exclusive focus on the Iraq War means that the vast majority of protesters will probably pack up their bags and go home once an agreement for withdrawal — even a flawed one — is reached.
This will leave the left powerless to confront the next war.
However, by broadening the struggle while keeping a focus on the Iraq War, the anti-war movement can not only revitalize but also sustain the larger fight for peace and justice.
Chances are, when “withdrawal” happens, it will look something like this: The Dubya Squad will be pulled reluctantly toward withdrawing most American ground troops from Iraq sooner than it would like, it will then declare victory and trumpet this withdrawal as a “mission accomplished” moment.
Meanwhile, in Iraq, what was being accomplished by American ground troops will instead be accomplished by U.S.-allied militia groups and by increasing use of U.S. air power (this ramping-up of aerial bombardment has already begun).
Not all the U.S. troops will be out of Iraq, but enough will be that the wind will be out of the sails of the “bring them home now” crowd.
Most American soldiers will be out of harm’s way, at least until the next war, but Iraqis will likely be no more safe from the threats that face them today — particularly from the shock-and-awe of the U.S. military.
Keep that in mind next time you hear anti-war speakers begging the government to “bring our troops home now” — if that is the beginning and end of their demands, then when our troops in Iraq are replaced by “smart bombs” they may stop complaining.
Someone with the Kafkaesque pseudonym of “Citizen K” has posted an Armistice Day message from an American war tax resister to American veterans.
To me, it seems to have a split personality and a repulsive self-loathing.
On the one hand, the author is “enormously proud” of the veterans and “wholly indebted to their legacy” and “truly thankful” for the “rights and freedoms [that] were hard-won” by such “[b]rave men and women [who] gave their lives for cowards like me.”
Indeed:
My words and actions are an affront to their memory, and I am not worthy of their sacrifice.
But on the other hand, because the author is “a peaceful man” whose “religion prohibits me from participating in any form of violence,” he has been unwilling to pay taxes to support all of that honorable stuff he’s so proud of, because, though he is wholly indebted and truly thankful for the legacy of these brave men and women, “[m]y daughter, my wife, my family deserves better from me.
My efforts should build our lives together, not tear down other lives in lands far away.”
While I don’t agree with the need to enforce our national superiority through violence and bloodshed, I respect those who do.
Without them I would not be free to write this and I know that.
Thank you to all those who came before me, and who continue to fight for what they believe in.
It’s hard to believe anyone could contain this much cognitive dissonance in his head without just going completely around the bend.
