BOOKS / Jonah Raskin : Medea Benjamin on 'Killing by Remote Control'

Killing by Remote Control:
Medea Benjamin's 'Drone Warfare'

By Jonah Raskin / The Rag Blog / June 20, 2012

“The drones were terrifying... the buzz of a distant propeller was a constant reminder of imminent death.” -- Journalist David Rohde

[Drone Warfare: Killing By Remote Control by Medea Benjamin. Foreword by Barbara Ehrenreich (2012: OR Books); Paperback; ISBN 978-1-935929-81-2; 262 pp.; $16. E-book ISBN 978-1-935928-82-9.]

President Obama makes jokes about them; Pakistanis -- and others around the world -- live in fear of them. They’re fast and efficient and they save the lives of Americans troops -- their advocates insist. Drones -- unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) -- are here now bigger and bolder than ever before, spying on more people than ever before and killing more people than ever before by remote control and at the behest, more often than not, of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Medea Benjamin -- the author of the new book, Drone Warfare, and the cofounder of CODEPINK and Global Exchange -- isn’t buying any of the buzz about the UAV’s. She thinks they’re illegal and immoral and ought to be banned except for peaceful purposes -- like fighting forest fires.

Drone Warfare is a useful guidebook for organizers and activists, whether they want to educate themselves and others, or join the global movement that is calling for an immediate end to killing by remote control, and an end to the unending reign of terror that has been imposed from above on innocent civilians -- men, women and children-- ever since 9/11. Imperfect drones have also killed Americans soldiers in Asia.

As in all previous wars, the drone war has led to “doublethink,” as George Orwell called it. Senior White House counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, noted in April 2012 that “Unfortunately in war, there are casualties, including among the civilian population,” and that “sometimes you have to take life to saves lives.”

About a hundred years ago, General William Tecumseh Sherman said “war is hell” and led Union troops on a rampage through Georgia, burning, looting, and killing. He was no less deadly on the ground that the drones are in the air, but he seems to have been more honest than the White House and its advisers are today.

Benjamin has talked to the pro-drone technocrats and to the representatives from anti-drone organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union, as well as to lawyers and their clients who have been arrested and gone on trial for demonstrating against UAVs.

She’s read the articles and the editorials about them, too, and she writes clearly and concisely about real people caught up in the machinations of war and with vivid quotations from them, some as recently as February 2012, which means that this book is as up-to-date on the subject as a book can be.

Some of the most powerful comments are by Americans who have experienced drone warfare while in Afghanistan. Perhaps the most electrifying is by David Rohde, a journalist who shared a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and who was kidnapped by the Taliban. Like everyone else on the ground, he lived under the threat of death by remote control.

After his escape and return to the United States, he wrote an article entitled “The Drone War” in which he said that, “The drones were terrifying.” He added that “the buzz of a distant propeller was a constant reminder of imminent death,” and that “drones fire missiles that travel faster than the speed of sound.” The victims, he explained, never even hear the missiles that kill them.

Indeed, the main point of the drones seems to be to terrify human beings en masse in whole regions and across nations, whether Afghanistan, Pakistan, or Yemen. Granted, drones have killed thousands of people, including American citizens, such as Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen in 2011. The body count is not insignificant and at times the killing of a single individual may be critical to a military campaign.

But the psychological impact is the hideous big bonus of the drones, much as the threat of nuclear annihilation was a big hideous bonus of nuclear warfare. For the moment, the use of the drone as a psychological weapon by the United States government seems to have tipped the balance of power in favor of American military forces and American spy agencies, though debates about the efficacy of the drones can be followed on the Internet and TV.

The drone is much in demand and highly praised, with thousands of them named the Predator and the Reaper coming off assembly lines and with no end in sight. Indeed, U.S. taxpayers are shelling out more than $3 billion a year for them, and even if they can’t see what they’re doing, they’re hurting American citizens financially.

Benjamin breaks the “sordid” drone saga down into its component parts, looking at its economic, legal, moral, and political aspects. She also puts all the pieces together and shows how drone warfare has led to spirited opposition from citizens in Asia, in Europe, and in the United States. She even works up sympathy for the drone operators who are, after all, no more than lowly workers in the immense, hierarchal hive of military activity.

“For up to twelve hours a day, they stare at 10 overhead television screens, monitoring a constant stream of images being relayed to them from the battlefield while communicating on headsets with drone pilots at other bases and instant messaging with commanders on the ground,” Benjamin writes.

Reading her description of a day in the life of a drone operator makes it obvious that the highly touted drones are greatly imperfect and hardly efficient or inexpensive killing machines. Right now, though, they’re making millions for the super-duper, high-tech weapons industry.

Outlawing drones seems to be not only a worthwhile goal but also achievable. It wasn’t that long ago that governments tested atom bombs and that airplanes loaded with cancer-causing DDT sprayed millions of acres of American farmlands, forests, and suburban backyards, too. The world woke up to the deadly reality of atomic bomb testing and DDT-spraying and put an end to them.

Benjamin offers useful suggestions for readers who want to put drones out of business. At the back of the book, she provides a list of organizations that can help activists and organizers from New York to Nevada. If you want to get started you could go to “Robot Wars” which can be found here.

[Jonah Raskin is a regular contributor to The Rag Blog and the author of Marijuanaland: Dispatches from an American War, For the Hell of It: The Life and Times of Abbie Hoffman, and The Radical Jack London: Writings on War and Revolution. Read more articles by Jonah Raskin on The Rag Blog.]

Also see "Drones Don't Talk Back" by Danny Schechter / The Rag Blog / May 2, 2012

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Lamar W. Hankins : 'Truth, Lies and Afghanistan'

Lt. Colonel Daniel Davis. Image from Eideard.
'Truth, Lies and Afghanistan':
Lt. Colonel Davis reveals futility
and folly of our war in Afghanistan

By Lamar W. Hankins / The Rag Blog / April 16, 2012

How quickly Americans lose interest in war when so few families are affected by its consequences. The wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan have done little more than acquaint much of the public with the geography of the Middle East.

Now, a rare truth-teller who works at the Pentagon has filed an extensive report, one year in the making, telling the military brass, the Congress, and the President just how dishonest the Pentagon and its civilian leadership have been about the war in Afghanistan.

Lt. Colonel Daniel Davis has risked his career -- in just two and a half years he will be eligible to retire -- to tell our government and the American people the truth about the futility and folly of continuing to risk the lives of our men and women in uniform serving in Afghanistan. He reports his concerns, as well, that continuing the war will kill countless innocents. This is a country that has known virtually perpetual war for more than 40 years, and been the locus of periodic war since the days of Alexander the Great nearly two and a half millennia ago.

This war has lasted for over 10 years, yet many Americans seem to have lost focus about what took us there. We were trying to capture or kill Osama bin Laden and his al Queda supporters who were then living in Afghanistan. But they all left shortly after the bombing started, and we committed more than 100,000 troops to the deadly affair.

After that, the mission morphed into occupation and regime change, then to the promotion of democracy, followed by training Afghans to control their own country with military power through counterinsurgency.

The Afghanistan War began after the terrorism of September 11, 2001, with congressional approval, opposed only by one congressional official, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA).

The faulty foundation of this American debacle has been explained by law professor Marjorie Cohn (Thomas Jefferson School of Law), a specialist in international law:

[T]he U.N. Charter provides that all member states must settle their international disputes by peaceful means, and no nation can use military force except in self-defense or when authorized by the Security Council. After the 9/11 attacks, the council passed two resolutions, neither of which authorized the use of military force in Afghanistan.

Resolutions 1368 and 1373 condemned the Sept. 11 attacks and ordered the freezing of assets (of those who commit terrorist acts); the criminalizing of terrorist activity; the prevention of the commission of and support for terrorist attacks; and the taking of necessary steps to prevent the commission of terrorist activity, including the sharing of information. In addition, it urged ratification and enforcement of the international conventions against terrorism.

Professor Cohn explains further that

the invasion of Afghanistan was not legitimate self-defense under article 51 of the United Nations charter (to which we subscribe) because the attacks on Sept. 11 were criminal attacks, not "armed attacks" by another country. Afghanistan did not attack the United States. In fact, 15 of the 19 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia.

Had there been an imminent threat of an armed attack on the United States after September 11, President Bush would not have waited three weeks before initiating his bombing campaign against Afghanistan.

Professor Cohn cites a classic principle of self-defense found in international law and affirmed by the Nuremberg Tribunal and the UN General Assembly: the necessity for self-defense must be "instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation."

This principle was not in play in our attack on Afghanistan.

In the fall of 2001, President Bush explained his reason for attacking Afghanistan: the Afghan rulers, the Taliban, were harboring Osama bin Laden and training terrorists. Most Americans seem to have forgotten that the Taliban offered to negotiate with the United States, but Bush did not want to reveal the specifics about why he thought Osama bin Laden and al Queda were responsible for the attacks, an assumption that few have quarreled with.

He preferred to attack rather than talk, even for a few days. And Afghan citizens and American and allied fighters have paid the price with their lives ever since -- about 40,000 civilian deaths; nearly 3,000 military coalition deaths.

American taxpayers are on the hook for over half a trillion dollars (and counting) that has been borrowed to carry out the changing missions of the Afghan war. Together, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are approaching $1.5 trillion on the American credit card. So much for fiscal responsibility!

Now, in the midst of all this fiscal and human carnage, Lt. Colonel Davis spent a year during 2010 and 2011 on special assignment from the Pentagon to assess the war, especially to find out what our troops on the ground need and get that assistance to them. This assignment came after he had completed four tours of duty since 9/11 -- two in Iraq and two in Afghanistan.

What he reported demonstrates the deceit inherent in governments gone mad with war as the solution to international problems. Davis had hoped to find evidence to support the assessments made by our military leaders in Afghanistan, but his report -- “Truth, Lies and Afghanistan” -- arrived at this conclusion:

Senior ranking U.S. military leaders have so distorted the truth when communicating with the U.S. Congress and American people in regard to conditions on the ground in Afghanistan that the truth has become unrecognizable.

His report was produced in two versions. The main difference is that the classified version is starker in its details than the unclassified one, but they tell the same story.

Davis traveled over 9,000 miles in Afghanistan during 12 months to complete his assignment. He spoke to American military personnel at every level. He went on mounted patrols, dismounted patrols, and coalition patrols in every part of the country where the current counter-insurgency is occurring.

He explained in an interview on Democracy Now! how a counter-insurgency has to be managed if it is to succeed:

[I]f you’re going to go into one and to try to win it, there are several things that have to happen, and all of them have to happen to one degree or another. Number one is that the host nation government has to be at least minimally capable, within cultural norms. The local security forces have to be minimally capable to be able to handle the security environment that exists, whatever that happens to be.

The people of the country have to be supportive of the host nation military forces and government. And the enemy forces, the insurgent force, has to be at least knocked down enough to where they can eventually be handled by the local forces alone. All of those things have to happen to one degree or another. And as I’ll argue, virtually none of them are the case in Afghanistan.

To drive his point home about the inadequacy of the Afghan security forces, he found everywhere he went that Afghan forces would engage the enemy only if attacked directly by them, but would not go outside their compounds or checkpoints to chase them, attack them, or harass them.

The insurgents have virtual free rein in Afghanistan anywhere coalition troops are not working or Afghan security forces are not stationed. And what American troops are doing he calls tactical activity -- “We went on patrols, we went on attack missions, etc., but never enough to actually turn the tide militarily. And we now see graphically that’s exactly what didn’t happen.”

Lt. Colonel Davis’s assessment of our Afghan war is blunt:

[W]hen you’re given a mission that cannot -- cannot -- succeed militarily, then what is the purpose of the mission? I mean, why are we even doing this, if the United States is not benefited? ... But we have to be incredibly careful about giving those soldiers and those leaders missions to ask them to put people’s lives at risk, to risk their own lives, when the United States is not going to be benefited militarily or any other way. That’s a problem.

When asked why he is willing to risk his military career to speak the truth as he discovered it in Afghanistan, Davis explains:

[T]here are thousands of Americans [fighting in Afghanistan] who are alive, full of body, full of hope, full of dreams, want to accomplish many things, have families, etc., who, known but to God, are marked for either death or wounding or having their limbs blown off or their genitals blown off in between now and this so-called end of fighting season 2013.

And if you can’t tell me that they’re going to gain some benefit for my country, I just morally cannot keep quiet. ... I mean, the Army is built on what’s called the Army Seven Values, and it’s so important that we constantly reinforce those -- you know, honor, integrity, moral courage, you know, those kinds of things that need to animate everything that you do.

And one of the things we’re taught is that, you know, if you see something that’s wrong, you’ve got to have the moral courage to do something about it. And in my view, this fell right into that category. So, you know, loyalty is one of those values, and I believe that I -- my loyalty to the soldiers in the service who are still alive and who are still not wounded, but... will lose their lives or will lose their limbs or... suffer casualties and wounds in between now and then, I just owed it to them to do whatever I could to try to bring light to this, so that we can avoid that, if at all possible.

Author Chris Hedges has written about a “myth of candor” that envelopes all wars:

There is no more candor in Iraq or Afghanistan than there was in Vietnam, but in the age of live satellite feeds the military has perfected the appearance of candor. What we are fed is the myth of war. For the myth of war, the myth of glory and honor sells newspapers and boosts ratings, real war reporting does not.

Lt. Colonel Davis has exploded that myth of candor, and given us truth. No American can now say that he or she didn’t know.

This column is dedicated to the memory of my friend, the late Margret Hofmann, who as a teenager survived the horror of the allied bombing of Dresden before immigrating to the U.S. and becoming a life-long opponent of war. She died this past February.

[Lamar W. Hankins, a former San Marcos, Texas, city attorney, is also a columnist for the San Marcos Mercury. This article © Freethought San Marcos, Lamar W. Hankins. Read more articles by Lamar W. Hankins on The Rag Blog.]

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Lamar W. Hankins : What Have We Learned From the Iraq War?

President Obama shown speaking to troops at Fort Bragg, N.C. Photo by Gerry Broome / AP.
Lessons we should have learned from the Iraq War

After all the phony reasons for war in Iraq were found wanting, Bush and his neoconservative advisers resorted to saying that the venture was a humanitarian mission to free the Iraqis.

By Lamar W. Hankins / The Rag Blog / December 28, 2011

By one measure -- the announcement by President Obama that the War in Iraq is over -- that war has finally come to an end. But it remains to be seen how long that country will be destabilized, dysfunctional, and at war with itself, after the phony, deceptive, and precipitous actions the George W. Bush administration took nearly nine years ago when it introduced “shock and awe” as a simple war, a virtual cakewalk for the mighty U.S.

In light of what we know now (and should have known then), it is difficult to see that war as the “success” President Obama called it.

At least 2 million Iraqis have been displaced within their own country, and another 3 million elsewhere -- a total of 20% of the country. Some reputable demographers have estimated that over a million Iraqi civilians were killed during the war, along with over 4,400 U.S. servicemen and women.

Inexplicably, the U.S. will maintain an embassy in Iraq, the largest in the world, with 15,000 people in it; pay nearly 10,000 mercenaries to continue operating in Iraq; and maintain an unknown number of drones, which will fly out of Iraq to wherever they are deemed useful to U.S. control in the region.

And we have not yet fully accounted for the atrocities our military committed, nor have those Americans responsible for authorizing torture been brought to justice.

The lead-up to the war (which I opposed vigorously beginning in the late summer of 2002, as Bush and his neoconservative cronies started their fear-based propaganda offensive to soften up the American public) followed a familiar plan to sell the war. It was a plan explained in an interview over 60 years ago by Hermann Goering, Hitler’s understudy:

Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don't want war neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood.

But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.

If anything, Goering overestimated the difficulty of convincing the American people to go to war. On March 24, 2003, the entire San Marcos City Council, under the leadership of then Mayor Robert Habingreither, and including our now newly-minted Congressional candidate Susan Narvaiz, Bill Taylor, Jacob Montoya, Ed Mihalkanin, Paul Mayhew, and Martha Castex Tatum, adopted a resolution that was intended to show that war is patriotic.

So strong was the war-induced patriotism that only a few people opposed the resolution and the war. But not one of these pro-war people or any other San Marcos supporter of the War in Iraq has issued a public apology for their muddleheaded mistake in supporting this war, about which they had no doubts. Apparently none have crossed their minds since.

By way of disclosure, I had a personal reason, as well as political and humane reasons, for opposing the war. My son-in-law, who was then in Special Forces, was sent into Iraq with the first wave of U.S. fighters. To see his life risked for the phony, illegal, and unconstitutional excuses of the Bush administration was almost more than I could bear.

One of the problems with having a volunteer military is that many people see those servicemen and women as disposable, to be used for whatever purpose the President has in mind. After all, they volunteered for military service. Such a view is, of course, callous and indifferent to human life, and stands in stark contrast to the view of Karen U. Kwiatkowski, a retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel, who said, “If you join the military now, you are not defending the United States of America, you are helping certain policy-makers fulfill an imperialist agenda.”

To read a confirmation of this view by a U.S. Marine who fought in the second siege of Fallujah, go here.

Historian Andrew Bacevich provided recently a slightly different view: “...a Churchillian verdict on the war might read thusly: Seldom in the course of human history have so many sacrificed so dearly to achieve so little.”

The people of the United States have become, in large part, adherents of both imperialism and a view of exceptionalism which holds that the U.S. has the right to tell the world what to do in the name of furthering democracy and American interests. What this view actually furthers is economic dominance through military might.

Many in the U.S. give lip service to supporting the troops, but this sentiment is largely a cover to allow people to feel good about using our servicemen and women as pawns in a giant reality-based, death-inducing chess game. Few of these war supporters have been as passionate about fully funding veterans health care (including mental health care) and rehabilitation as they have been about sending our service members to war.

In a recent statement, the Iraq Veterans Against the War wrote,

Our fight in Iraq has cost the nation nearly 4,500 American lives and left about 32,000 physically wounded plus tens of thousands more suffering from psychological trauma. Every 36 hours, an American soldier commits suicide, and a staggering 18 veterans take their own lives every day. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers are attempting to transition into civilian life during one of the worst economies in our nation's history... The challenges facing our veterans and service members are just beginning...

Military Families Speak Out, of which I am a member, recently wrote, “Over $800 billion was wasted on this war that never should have started while our legislators squabble over budget cuts to the Veterans Administration, Social Security, education, and other necessary social services.”

While a majority of the American public may have come to realize the futility, if not the madness, of the War in Iraq, along with its unspeakable violence, there is no evidence that most of our citizens have understood that we are just a few weeks or months away from another manipulation by our “leaders” to involve us in another war (in Iran), while we still have not extricated ourselves from Afghanistan, a war that is over 10 years old.

There is no evidence that we now understand -- better than we did nine years ago -- that our elected officials, both in Washington and at City Hall, do not possess any special wisdom, in spite of their intelligence, that should guide us in such endeavors.

After all the phony reasons for war in Iraq were found wanting, Bush and his neoconservative advisers and supporters resorted to saying that the venture was a humanitarian mission to free the Iraqis.

It is now obvious instead that it became a humanitarian nightmare, mainly because in the throes of American arrogance, our “leaders” never understood much about the culture of Iraq, the schism between the two main Islamic groups, the geopolitical relations between the Sunnis and the Saudis and between the Shiites and the Iranians, the desires of the Kurds for autonomy, the nationalism felt by most Iraqis, the hatred engendered toward the U.S.by years of sanctions and killings in the north and south no-fly zones, and the complete folly of occupation of others by a foreign and hostile army.

From his perspective as an Army career officer and historian focused on international relations, Andrew Bacevich has concluded about the War in Iraq,

The disastrous legacy of the Iraq War extends beyond treasure squandered and lives lost or shattered. Central to that legacy has been Washington's decisive and seemingly irrevocable abandonment of any semblance of self-restraint regarding the use of violence as an instrument of statecraft.

With all remaining prudential, normative, and constitutional barriers to the use of force having now been set aside, war has become a normal condition, something that the great majority of Americans accept without complaint. War is US.

It is time for the American people to find and follow our own moral compasses and say that we will never again be led down the path of grotesque violence that creates its own kind of terror for both those we kill and those we pay to do the killing.

But I fear that most Americans will not find their moral compasses. It is too convenient to ignore morality and legality when what we want most is to win and show the world who is boss.

[Lamar W. Hankins, a former San Marcos, Texas, city attorney, is also a columnist for the San Marcos Mercury. This article © Freethought San Marcos, Lamar W. Hankins. Read more articles by Lamar W. Hankins on The Rag Blog.]

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Eric Newhouse : Half of Returning Warriors are Wounded

Photo by RunItsTheFuz / Flickr / Truthout.
Half of vets returning from Iraq and
Afghanistan need medical attention

By Eric Newhouse / Truthout / November 16, 2011

More than half of America's former warriors are returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan with medical and mental problems that need treatment, according to new statistics from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).

"These are unprecedented numbers," said Dr. Sonja Batten, assistant deputy chief of patient services care for the VA Mental Health Division.

But they're surprising numbers, in some ways.

While they bear out the controversial 2008 Rand Report that one soldier in three will return home with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), major depression and/or traumatic brain injury (TBI), the TBI component is dramatically less than predicted.

By last June, Batten said, 1.3 million of the two million-plus soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002 had left military service and were eligible for VA health care. About 700,000 of them (53 percent) have sought health care from the VA.

While this reflects the difficulties facing today's vets after 24-7 combat and multiple tours of duty, it also reflects the new resources provided the VA by the Obama administration. The president's 2012 budget request for the VA was $132.2 billion, a 23 percent increase since he took office in 2009. That's even more remarkable, considering the collapse of the economy in that period.

But it's still not enough, according to Mike Zacchea, a Marine Corps lieutenant colonel now retired on a medical disability after serving in Iraq, and a staunch member of Veterans for Common Sense.

"Wait times for VA treatment are still way too long," Zacchea said last week. "And this is just the beginning. The VA is going to be overwhelmed by vets from Iraq and Afghanistan for health care, and if the VA can't handle the demand it has now, it's going to be powerless against the tsunami that's yet to come."

Among the returning soldiers, the main complaint was joint pain (neck, back, hips, and knees), all consistent with the kinds of injuries you would expect to find among soldiers with heavy packs jumping in and out of big trucks, said Batten. The VA has treated 396,552 vets for musculoskeletal complaints, about 30.5 percent of the returning soldiers.

But the second largest complaint has been with mental health issues.

According to the VA's not-yet-published statistics, 367,749 Iraqi and Afghan vets have sought mental health care treatment. That's 51.7 percent of the total caseload -- and also 28.2 percent of the returning 1.3 million vets -- a number that's sure to grow larger as those who returned home recently begin acknowledging cases of delayed PTSD. It's common for vets not to begin experiencing combat stress until after the euphoria of being home has waned, typically six months to a year or more.

PTSD was the most common mental health complaint with 197,074 vets receiving treatment, which is about 15 percent of the returning vets. The second most common complaint was depression, with VA treatment provided to 147,659 vets, 11.3 percent of the total returning. Third was anxiety disorder, with treatment provided to 126,673 vets, 9.7 percent of those returning. There's some overlap, with some vets being treated for more than one disorder.

The VA's real surprise is the low number of diagnoses for traumatic brain injury (TBI), which has become one of the signature injuries in the Iraqi/Afghanistan conflict due to the large number of roadside bombs, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades.

Four years ago, the Rand Corporation interviewed 1,965 vets and projected that 19 percent (about 320,000 soldiers at that time) would experience a probable TBI while overseas. But the VA says only 54,070 vets (a little over 4 percent of the returning vets) qualified for that diagnosis.

"That's absurd, preposterous, erroneous," snorted Zacchea, who survived a bomb in a mess hall, almost daily sniper attacks, mortar attacks on his unit's convoy, and a rocket wound during intense combat in Fallujah in 2004/2005. All of those took a huge physical and emotional toll on Zacchea.

As of last June, the VA had data on 544,481 vets whose brains might have been affected by battlefield explosions, according to Dr. David Cifu, national director of the VA's Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation program. Of that number, he said, "19.8 percent have screened positive for a mild TBI (concussion), that is were exposed to explosions that might have caused traumatic brain injury.

"When those 19.8 percent of veterans were evaluated by one of the 100 TBI specialty teams across the nation, approximately one third (or 7.8 percent of the original 544,481) tested positive for TBI with persistent symptoms," said Cifu. "Another approximately 2 percent were found to have a TBI that pre-dated their military service. Those two figures (the 7.8 percent plus the 2 percent) add up to 54,070 veterans."

The difference, said Cifu, is that the Rand Report used the total number of injuries as its TBI figure, while the VA used only the number of vets still showing TBI symptoms a year after their injuries.

"The Rand Report was pretty accurate on the number of those who may have had injuries due to a blast, but didn't take into consideration that many of those may have injuries that will fairly quickly get better over time," said Cifu. "We know that up to 97 percent of those who experience concussions are normal without symptoms within a year. So we're tracking just the people who continue to have difficulties."

But Zacchea charged that the VA is trying hard to deny this disability. "Today's cutting-edge neurology is that any symptoms that last longer than two weeks indicate traumatic brain injury," said Zacchea. "They're using the one-year time frame because that benefits them, but that's just medieval."

Zacchea said he was quickly diagnosed with PTSD after returning from combat, but that he had to fight for his TBI diagnosis. "They wouldn't even let me see a neurologist," he said. So, he took his case to the Yale Medical School, got a private diagnosis of TBI and challenged the VA to disprove it. After a number of verification tests, he was finally granted a TBI diagnosis by the VA in 2008.

His ongoing symptoms include migraine headaches, sensitivity to light and noise, and loss of fine motor skills. "My fingers are numb, and I'm always dropping things," he said. "I have difficulty tying my shoes so I usually wear slip-on shoes." He also has a distinct taste in his mouth. "I've lost most of my taste sensation," he explained, "so I put hot sauce on pretty much everything."

A new book, The Concussion Crisis, concludes that even minor concussions repeated regularly can be harmful, leading to impaired cognition and, ultimately, early-onset dementia among athletes such as boxers and football players, as well as among soldiers. In reviewing the book, Connie Goldsmith wrote:

There is no such thing as a minor concussion. Every concussion is a potentially devastating injury. These stories focus on concussions among athletes of all ages, as well as concussions among soldiers and victims of auto accidents. Some of the stories are heartbreaking: adolescents who suddenly die after what appear to be minor head injuries; boxers and football players with early-onset Alzheimer's disease and dementia; and returning veterans left to wander through the medical system seeking treatment for their unrecognized or misdiagnosed concussions.

Dr. Allen Brown, head of the Mayo Clinic's Brain Injury Unit, defines a TBI as an external mechanical force impacting a body and creating a brain injury. Thus, by definition, every concussion is a TBI and should be part of the medical record.

But in the civilian world, he said, only about 8 percent of brain injuries are severe enough to be labeled a "definite TBI," as opposed to a "probable TBI," which is milder, or a "possible TBI," which is symptomatic. A "definite TBI" involves any of the following: loss of consciousness for more than 30 minutes, post-traumatic amnesia for more than 24 hours, significant loss of motor skills as measured on the Glasgow Coma Scale, or intracranial bruising or bleeding.

Brown agreed with Cifu that "an overwhelming majority" of brain injuries resolve themselves, although repeated injuries increase the risk of significant damage. "It's pretty clear to me that the cumulative effect of any injury increases the risk for secondary problems, including repeated TBIs that could lead to loss of cognition later in life," he said last week. "It may not happen in every case, but the risk is whoppingly high."

And he called the disparity between the Rand Report and the VA's definitions of TBI "one of the most argued-over controversies in medicine."

[Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Eric Newhouse is the author of Faces of Combat. His blog, "Invisible Wounds," on vets' mental health issues, is at Psychology Today. This article was published and distributed by Truthout.]

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Jay D. Jurie : The Return of ROTC

Navy ROTC cadets from Florida's Jacksonville University. U.S.Navy photo by Spc. 2nd Class Gary Granger Jr. / 4GWar.
ROTC resurgent
Part II: ROTC's history and return to campus

When the military's 'don't ask, don't tell' policy was dropped in 2010, some institutions began to consider reestablishing their relationship with ROTC.

By Jay D. Jurie / The Rag Blog / August 18, 2011

[This is the second of a two-part series on ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corps) -- dealing with the militant opposition to ROTC during the Vietnam War era, and with the program's recent resurgence on college campuses. In Part I , Jurie described an escalating series of demonstrations against ROTC in 1969-1970 at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he was a student. Part II covers the history of the ROTC program, the issue of discrimination against gays, and the recent return of ROTC to a number of U.S. campuses.]

While the concerted and militant campaign against ROTC in Boulder may have been unique, it was far from the only protest against ROTC during the anti-Vietnam war era, and, in fact, there had been substantial opposition to the program prior to the War in Vietnam. Since its inception, ROTC has proven controversial.

Part of the original purpose of ROTC was found in the Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862, which gave states federal land that included a stipulation for military coursework. In 1898 the War Department attempted to clarify this by proposing military instruction be provided by officers assigned as faculty, that students in those courses be required to wear uniforms, and that this instruction be made mandatory. Enactment of the National Defense Act of 1916 formally established ROTC and extended it to private as well as public colleges.

Some have argued ROTC played an essential role in keeping the military grounded in civil society. According to Michael S. Neiberg, unlike officers trained in elite military academies,

civilian educated officers would bring to military service a wider and more rounded background. They would also bring to the military a value system more consistent with American society by virtue of having lived in a civilian environment.

On the other hand,others have argued that ROTC desensitizes the civilian population to the militarization of society and the inimical purposes that may be served by the military. According to Neiberg, the University of Washington SDS in 1969 contended that,

If the university's role in cooperating with ROTC is the production of officers, our universities have become, in part, mere extension schools of our government's military establishment... The university continues to produce the tools to make possible policies such as those which led the U.S. into war in Asia.

ROTC had become so well-established by the 1920s that John Dewey and others became sufficiently alarmed to create a Committee on Militarism and Education. Concerns over its growing presence by the 1930s caused a few educational institutions to either drop the program or change its status from mandatory to voluntary.

However, most schools that had the program retained it, usually with the requirement that two years of participation in the program were obligatory for all male students.

ROTC received a boost during World War II, but after the war the controversy returned. Motivated by the Cold War and the threat of nuclear annihilation in the late 1950s and early 1960s, ROTC sparked protest. In May 1960, protestors at Boston University picketed, leafleted, petitioned, and placed a table with a protest sign in a ROTC parade route.

As the Vietnam war heated up in the mid- and late-1960s, so did protests against ROTC. In addition to demonstrations, ROTC facilities were set on fire at Stanford, Michigan, Kent State, and the University of Colorado. There was a perception held by a number in the anti-war movement that this violence paled in comparison with, and was justified by, the widespread use of napalm and the tonnage of bombs dropped in Vietnam.

Some schools, in response to these protests, removed the mandatory requirement. Others, like the Colorado School of Mines, kept it in place into the 1970s.

Even where ROTC was no longer compulsory, such as the University of Colorado, the program became a focal point of the anti-war movement. During the late 1960s and into the early 1970s over 80 ROTC programs were dropped, mostly from the elite universities where ROTC had drawn the most opposition. While ROTC was dropped from some schools, it was established in less "controversial," mostly public university locations.

Women's ROTC in the Sixties. Photo from Fortune City / Broad Recognition (Yale).
It should be pointed out that ROTC programs were never formally banned by host institutions. In most cases, either academic credit was withdrawn, or regular faculty status was not accorded ROTC instructors. In these cases, ROTC decided to withdraw its own program. Responding to the changes that occurred during that decade, women's programs were created in ROTC beginning in 1969.

Nonetheless, a rough status quo was maintained for decades after the Vietnam war ended. During that time frame many colleges and universities enacted policies banning discrimination against gays. Because the military engaged in such discrimination, this effectively kept ROTC off campus at those schools.

Nearly two and half decades later, renewed support for ROTC grew with the passage of the Solomon Amendment. Named after Gerald Solomon (R-NY) who initially introduced the legislation in 1994, this legislation prohibited colleges and universities that received federal funding from prohibiting military recruitment on campus or dropping ROTC programs.

Several law schools combined to file a lawsuit against this prohibition. In the 2006 Rumsfeld v. FAIR decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed an appeals court ruling and upheld the constitutionality of the Solomon Amendment

When the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy was dropped in 2010, some institutions began to consider reestablishing their relationship with ROTC.

For at least two institutions of higher education, reinstatement was not seamless. At Stanford, a women's group objected that while discrimination in the military against gays had been lifted, it continued against transgender individuals. Nonetheless, on April 28, 2011, the Stanford Faculty Senate voted overwhelmingly to invite ROTC back to campus.

At Yale, a representative of a women's group wrote that discrimination and harassment against women in the military was a problem of such significance that it ought to be addressed before welcoming a return of ROTC to that campus.

Another concern has cropped up even more recently. An August 9, 2011 CNN report revealed that Air Force ROTC training has included a slide show that violates the separation of church and state. According to reporter Jennifer Rizzo, "many of the slides in the 43 page production use a Christian justification for war."

Both the ROTC and military launch officer training were developed by the Air Force's Air Education and Training Command (AETC). After 31 Air Force missile launch officers objected to this training, Mikey Weinstein of the Military Religious Foundation is quoted as saying, "they're trying to teach that, under fundamentalist Christian doctrine, war is a good thing."

Harvard, Yale, and Columbia, are among those that have brought ROTC back, and Brown has been considering the matter. ROTC has regained a certain popularity among students. Not only have the draft and the memory of Vietnam faded, but military service is seen as patriotic in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and an employment option in a tough economy.

University of Florida ROTC cadets participate in leadership exercise April 25, 2010 at Camp Blanding, Fla. Photo by Cadet Scott Stallings / USAF / Fox News.
While the military may no longer be engaged in overt discrimination against gays, there are unresolved issues involving ROTC. Among these, the objections raised during the Vietnam eara largely remain in place. So long as the U.S. maintains an interventionist foreign policy based on resource exploitation and the containment of those at odds with elite interests, it is evident that ROTC will provide officers to serve that policy.

Sources: Allan Brick, "The Campus Protest Against ROTC," Southern Student Organizing Committee, no date; Chuck Colbert, Stanford Faculty OK ROTC Proposal, Bay Area Report, June 5, 2011; Editorial: "Reconsidering ROTC," The Brown Daily Herald; "Larry Gordon, Once a Campus Outcast, ROTC is Booming at Universities," Los Angeles Times, June 1, 2011; Tim Lange & Carol Lease, "ROTC: An Analysis," Boulder, CO: Student Peace Union, 1969; Diane H. Mazur, "The Myth of the ROTC Ban," The New York Times, October 24, 2010; Tara W. Merrigan & Zoe A.Y. Weinberg, "Harvard to Officially Recognize Naval ROTC," Harvard Crimson, March 3, 2011; Michael S. Neiberg, Making Citizen-Soldiers: ROTC and the Ideology of American Military Service, Cambridge: Harvard, 2000; Fahmida Y. Rashid, "The Return of ROTC to Columbia," The Village Voice, April 6, 2011; Emily Rappoport, "Should Yale Allow ROTC to Return to Campus?" Yale: Broad Recognition, May 3, 1011; Otis Reid, "Women's Coalition Rejects ROTC's Return to Campus," Stanford Review, March 14, 2011; Jennifer Rizzo, "Air Force's Use of Christian Messages Extends to ROTC," CNN.com, August 9, 2011.

[Jay D. Jurie was a student at the University of Colorado at Boulder, a member of SDS, and one of the "Boulder 18" arrested as a result of the ROTC demonstrations. Jay now teaches public administration and urban planning and lives near Orlando, Florida. Read more articles by Jay D. Jurie on The Rag Blog.]

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Jay D. Jurie : Vietnam and the Historic Struggle Against ROTC

Marchers in 1970 want ROTC removed from the campus of Ohio University. Image from Cape Girardeau History and Photos.
ROTC resurgent
Part I: ROTC and the anti-war movement

They held regular drills on an open field approximately two blocks from the heart of campus. It was viewed as an affront that ROTC paraded so openly while the carnage mounted in Vietnam.

By Jay D. Jurie / The Rag Blog / August 18, 2011

[This is the first of a two-part series on ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corps) -- dealing with the militant opposition to ROTC during the Vietnam War era, and with the program's recent resurgence on college campuses. The author was at Boulder and participated in the demonstrations he describes. Similar actions occurred at campuses throughout the country.]

Carrying an upside-down U.S. flag tacked onto a short wooden stake, a student at the head of a column of anti-Vietnam war students marching onto a University of Colorado practice field was tackled by several pro-war student athletes.

As the protest column continued to press onto the field the "jocks" and police struggled to bring it to a halt. They were unsuccessful and the protestors made their way through the ranks of parading cadets, turning the drill into a melee. This April 30, 1970 event was not the first time such a drill had been disrupted on the Boulder campus.

Early in the fall of 1969, members of the Student Peace Union (SPU) approached their counterparts in the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) with a proposal.

SPU had decided the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC, pronounced "rotsee" by friend and foe alike) was the most visible manifestation of the Vietnam War on campus. While SDS elsewhere had devoted some attention to ROTC, this had not particularly filtered down to the Boulder chapter as an "action item." SPU's proposal was that SDS partner in demonstrating against ROTC.

At that time, ROTC held regular drills on an open field approximately two blocks from the heart of campus. SDS readily agreed with the SPU proposal, not only because of the high profile, but because it was viewed as an affront that ROTC paraded so openly while the carnage mounted in Vietnam.

It was agreed that the target of the protest would not be the individual cadets enrolled in ROTC, but the program itself and its relation to the University, the military, and the war. SDS put out a very simple flyer that read only:

1) end ROTC. 2) reimburse students on ROTC scholarships.

When the day of protest came, the two organizations, along with their supporters, met at the student union fountain area and marched to the field where the ROTC drill was already under way. Proceeding onto the field protestors marched to and fro through the ranks of parading cadets and confusion reigned. There was no violence, but the drill was disrupted. ROTC instructors sized up the situation and called off the exercise.

At the next ROTC parade, the protest was repeated. Though they again marched from the fountain area together, relations between SPU and SDS were cool. From the outset it was clear there was a tactical dispute. SPU wanted to be a visible presence and make a statement in opposition to the war and ROTC on campus, while SDS wanted to do everything in its power to "stop the war machine" and end the killing.

Nearing arrival at the field, the column of protestors split into two, with SPU heading to the side of the field, and SDS marching toward the drill. This time, campus police were better prepared. They formed a cordon along the edge of the parade ground to prevent the SDS contingent from reaching the drill. However, SDS moved quickly and did an end run around the police line. As before, protestors managed to run through the ranks of drilling cadets and chaos ensued. There was no violence, but the drill was again disrupted.

Apparently the police realized that if they chased the protestors across the field they would only contribute to the disruption. Again, ROTC instructors called off the drill. SDS was elated, believing the system had been beaten twice and one small corner of the war machine had been shut down, at least temporarily.

Army ROTC patch. Image from Eastern Washington University / Flickr.
There was one more "ROTC smash" that fall, but by this time, in disagreement with SDS tactics, SPU had dropped out of the partnership. SDS figured the police would be too well prepared for a third successful march onto the field. Instead, when the marchers neared the field, they abruptly veered off and headed toward the stadium, where ROTC had its offices. Campus police rapidly redeployed and kept pace with the SDS march.

Outside the ROTC offices, a couple of SDS leaders were making the usual anti-war speeches when the campus police chief noticed smoke billowing from the area where the ROTC parade was underway. He quickly realized they'd been duped. Several police officers stayed with the rally to keep an eye on the demonstrators and ensure the ROTC offices were protected, while the main force ran back to the field.

At that point, the protestors had a good laugh and dispersed. In the planning for the event some SDS members had volunteered to throw smoke bombs onto the field. This was not done in such a way as to cause any harm, but to make a symbolic point about the bombing of Vietnam, and to sow confusion and hopefully yet again cause disruption. In this respect the action was a success, as were all the ROTC "smashes" that fall. No one was injured, and remarkably, no one was kicked out of school and there were no arrests.

By the spring of 1970 both the SPU and SDS chapters were defunct. Filling the void of campus anti-war activism at the University of Colorado was the Student Mobilization Committee (SMC), a front group for the Young Socialist Alliance (YSA), the youth affiliate of the Trotskyite Socialist Workers Party (SWP). Meanwhile, the depredations of the Nixon-Kissinger regime in Southeast Asia had intensified. Campus awareness and activism across the country, and at the University of Colorado, reached its zenith that spring.

Students who were more militant, including many previously affiliated with SDS, became the very uneasy left-wing "junior partner" under the SMC umbrella. The dominant YSA faction, strategically if not ideologically, fulfilled the role played by SPU the previous fall. While a variety of anti-war actions took place early in the year, including an occupation of the first floor of the administration building, ROTC was not forgotten.

Hofstra students protest mandatory ROTC on campus. Image from The Hofstra Chronicle, 1967.
It was decided by late April that ROTC would once again be a "smash" target. This time, it was understood well in advance by all in SMC that there would be a divergence over tactics. As before, marchers gathered at the fountain area and set off for the ROTC drill field. This time the protest was larger, with 300-500 participating. When the field was reached, the larger YSA-affliated contingent peeled off and, in keeping with their strategy of mass rallies, like SPU the preceding fall, assumed positions along the sidelines.

Campus police turned out in full force, accompanying the march all the way to the field, where they formed a much larger cordon than before and were more fully equipped for a riot. Determined they were not going to be stopped, the more militant faction of SMC marched directly toward the line of police. Aligned with the police was a contingent of about 30 "jocks."

As the two sides converged, the previously described scuffle broke out. Police chased demonstrators on and off the field. Police parked in cruisers adjacent to the field pursued some who fled across campus. Some students were handcuffed to a nearby chain link fence as the arresting officers returned to the fray. A student who thoughtfully came equipped with a handcuff key surreptitiously set them free.

On this occasion, a number of people were tackled, knocked down, shoved, punched, or grabbed. While there was violence, there were no serious injuries. Most of the violence was initiated by the jocks, a fact which the police ignored, and no jocks were arrested. It was widely believed by protestors that an understanding had been reached between the police and jocks beforehand.

Since some of those arrested had stayed on the sidelines, it was abundantly clear the University strategy was to target and get rid of those they identified as leaders of the campus anti-war movement. Nine of the anti-war students were arrested at the scene and nine more were subsequently charged with violating Colorado's newly-enacted "Campus Disorder Act."

As it turned out, no one was ever tried for the Boulder "ROTC smashes" of 1969-70, though after the 1970 protest several were suspended from school for varying lengths of time. Eventually, the case of the "Boulder 18" wound up in front of the Colorado Supreme Court, which ruled the statute unconstitutionally vague, threw it out, and quashed the charges.

Not knowing this would be the final "smash," the University moved all ROTC drills inside the football stadium, where they could control access. For their part, Boulder's anti-war protestors won at least a minor victory by visibly exposing University complicity with the military and the war. While ROTC was not forced off campus, the protests resulted in some change of "business as usual."

Part II will cover the history of the ROTC program, the issue of discrimination against gays, and the recent return of ROTC to a number of U.S. campuses.

[Jay D. Jurie was a student at the University of Colorado at Boulder, a member of SDS, and one of the "Boulder 18" arrested as a result of the ROTC demonstrations. Jay now teaches public administration and urban planning and lives near Orlando, Florida. Read more articles by Jay D. Jurie on The Rag Blog.]

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Clancy Sigal : Resisting War Takes Guts

"No More War!" Art by Iván Lira /MRZine.
In our war-loving society:
Conscientious resistance takes guts, bravery

By Clancy Sigal / AlterNet / May 30, 2011

War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today. -- John F. Kennedy

I lost a friend recently with whom I'd grown up. As adolescents, we'd shared enthusiasms, and death-defying leaps into Lake Michigan off the Adler Planetarium, and chased the same girls. He had a puckish sense of humor, sometimes ghoulish, the kind of stuff you laugh at only when you're 15.

He could crick his neck with a loud snap, as if being hanged from a gallows, a party trick that revolted grownups but we thought hilarious. He could pick out a tune on a banjo on first hearing and sing political parodies of pop songs. As we grew up, we shared a history, not only of our acne-scarred, ego-obsessed selves, but something broader and deeper I best call anti-fascism.

We ran wild in the streets of Chicago itching for showdowns with anyone who disagreed with us -- we were young Communist-fronters and couldn't wait to enlist or be drafted. In the middle of the second world war, it was patriotic to be a red -- "communism is 20th-century Americanism," went the slogan.

Passion, not cynicism or detachment, was our deal.

With his death, I've lost a big part of the thread, a connection to the original meaning of things. I'm not alone in this broken thread on Memorial Day.

If you're in the United States while reading this, try a little test: ask someone, anyone, what Memorial Day memorializes? I've queried several friends and none could tell me that Memorial Day, once called "Decoration Day," began in the aftermath of the civil war to honor the more than 600,000 dead Confederate and Union soldiers -- the deadliest war in U.S. history.

Once, Memorial Day was a fairly solemn occasion when local communities lowered the courthouse flag to half-mast in salute to the "fallen," with jamboree parades to follow. In the 1960s, Congress changed the date to the last Monday in May so that people might have an extra day off on the weekend. Hence the current barbecues and shopping mall mania -- and national amnesia.

Except for the boy and girl Scouts, who still place little American flags on grave sites in our veterans' cemeteries, like the one almost within sight of my house, and a few soldiers' and sailors' relatives who come to visit, the original meaning of it has fallen into dust.

Curious, this. Because the publishing industry continues to pump out torrents of civil war books to feed a niche audience with pop biographies of bearded generals and Pickett's charge-type battle studies. Historians continue to debate the core cause of the war, and movies get made like Glory, Gettysburg, Cold Mountain, and Robert Redford's recent The Conspirator.

No matter, most of us like to go on a Memorial Day shopping spree, warm up the coals, pull out the cooler and slap shrimp tacos on the broiler.

I don't care how Memorial Day is spent, whether in a relaxed holiday mood or a visit to the dead. I've walked through the military graves at my nearest military graveyard, the 114-acre national cemetery near UCLA with its huge adjacent Veterans Administration hospital and old soldiers' home, full of sick and traumatized ex-combatants, and a homeless encampment of veteranos under the 405 freeway, a grenade's throw away from cemetery where some of their buddies lie under white crosses or stars of David.

Meaning no disrespect, but on this "war heroes' weekend," isn't it time to also honor those who have "fallen" in a different battle -- against the slaughtering wars?

Over time, my attitude to conscientious objectors and deserters has shifted. Once, I held them in contempt. But the Vietnam war, when I came into contact with war resisters, changed me. I saw then, and see now, that often it takes a different kind of moral and, yes, even physical courage to resist a call to serve your country in a war you believe is a crime, when all your family, friends, teachers and the vast American majority support joining up.

When I was called to my war, I went with shining eyes and revenge in my heart and couldn't wait to get my hands on a .30-calibre machine-gun to wipe out those Nazi bastards.

But what about those "cowards," "traitors," and "slackers" who don't want to kill other people? They're an odd breed who count among their number such as Muhammad Ali, Mahatma Gandhi, Sergeant York, David Hockney, three U.S. weapon-refusing combat medics who won the medal of honor, and the 27 Israeli air force pilots who refused orders to "track and kill" civilians in Gaza and the West Bank.

I continue to be amazed at the stupendous bravery of any currently serving soldier or marine who goes out on foot patrol in Afghanistan knowing beforehand that his command -- after spending $20 billion on an "anti-IED" project -- still has no clue how to protect him from a cheap roadside bomb that causes 80% of our casualties. (On Wednesday, seven Americans on a single patrol were blown up and killed by an IED in Kandahar province.)

But what kind of guts does it take for war objectors, whether they're Quakers, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mennonites, or secular, who simply don't want to kill?

On this Memorial Day, it might be a time to think about the outcasts who refuse to take life.

[Clancy Sigal, is a screenwriter and novelist in Los Angeles. Chicago-born, he has worked precincts for Democratic candidates since his teens. He emigrated to the UK during what David Caute calls the "Great Fear" and returned to America after the 1984 miners' strike. He is a reformed Fleet Street journalist. This article was distributed by AlterNet.]

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Harry Targ : Salamis, Not Bombs

Send a salami to the troops.
Memorial Day:
'Salamis, not bombs'

By Harry Targ / The Rag Blog / May 29, 2011

Since I live in North Central Indiana I use every opportunity I can to import bagels from Chicago. In the past I have publicly defined socialism as including “bagels for all” (particularly garlic or onion ones). Also I have written about the political economy of the bagel , arguing on good authority that during periods of intense class struggle workers have used day old bagels as weapons against the ruling class.

On a recent visit to a Chicago area bagel bakery, I came across a big sign in front that puzzled me. The sign said:

Naborhood* Bagel and Delicatessen
Join Naborhood and
the USO Sending
A Salami to the Troops

(*Fictitious name.)

My first reaction was to laugh. This sign sounded pretty funny. But on reflection I began to ask myself what it meant. I began to think of different responses to the question and, after I sent out a picture of the sign, some of my friends offered their views on the subject as well.

One interpretation, the patriotic one, suggests that the delicatessen wishes to mobilize all its customers to support our troops in Afghanistan. From a delicatessen point of view, sending salamis is a way that it could support the troops. Salamis could reflect support for the troops alone or for the troops and the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan.

Another, perhaps more neutral, interpretation is about selling salamis, using the patriotism in the old neighborhood to make a few extra bucks. Since the salamis they sell are really good, it could entice troops and Afghan peoples to want more salamis. Before you know it, they could be hooked on them. Who knows: bagels could be next. But this view, I think, is unfairly harsh in its evaluation of the motivations of the delicatessen; too economistic.

Finally, it can be argued, and frankly this was my first thought, that the delicatessen saw the U.S. war in Afghanistan as a mistake that had to be ended as soon as possible. The salami, from this perspective, was a metaphor for a “dud,” a smelly, greasy, and heavy food that can lead to ulcers or heartburn. The 10-year war in Afghanistan therefore was a colossal heartburn in the body politic. (One of my friends wrote that Bush and Obama already had sent Afghanistan the salami.)

This intellectual puzzle, I realized, reflects the various ways in which the sign could be interpreted. Perhaps the delicatessen owners wanted to create a mental construct that could be appreciated by every side of the issue.

That is classic American politics. I bet the Democrats and Republicans who are debating resolutions on the war in Afghanistan in Congress right now would love to come up with a metaphor like this. Maybe Congress should pass an appropriations bill, HR 111: The U.S./Afghanistan Military Nourishment and Rehabilitation Act, or the Send Salamis to Afghanistan Act.

This Memorial Day, as we reflect on the pain and suffering that our wars have caused, perhaps we would all agree that sending salamis overseas is preferable to sending drones and bombs.

[Harry Targ is a professor of political science at Purdue University who lives in West Lafayette, Indiana. He blogs at Diary of a Heartland Radical. Read more of Harry Targ's articles on The Rag Blog.]

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Marc Estrin : Light Unto the Nations

Israeli "Agronomic (sic) flashlight grip (T-GRIP)." (Get 'em while they're hot. Image from IsraelMilitary.com
Light unto the nations

By Marc Estrin / The Rag Blog / April 11, 2011

What is it? It doesn't seem to be a bird. Definitely not a plane. It's... an Israeli Defense Forces flashlight. For only 72 bucks plus shipping and handling, you can own this Agronomic [sic] Flashlight Grip (T-GRIP) Tactile Vertical Foregrip Weapon Lights Holder.

It "comes with a 1 inch flight Adaptor with special activity trigger, and also a place to store additional batteries, AND

• Three in one: special handgrip and a flashlight mount with a built in trigger that
• transform tactical light into a Vertical Fore grip Weapon Light
• This unique ergonomic fore grip will fit perfectly to your hand while holding in up to 1.
• diameter tactical light with Tail cap switch and allow trigger activation of the light
• Ergonomic designed grip, comfortable and natural to use “fighting stance."
• Designed to hold any 1" diameter flashlight and allow quick and easy operation
• Easy to fit and secured by 2 bolts
• Fits hand guards equipped with a Weaver or Picatinny rail system
• No gunsmithing is required
• Molded from reinforced polymer composite
• Super lightweight, Eliminate the need for a ymer compositer"

Now, I don't normally use my blog entries to sell Israeli military accessories, but this piece of equipment serves up much food for thought. As does the website on which you'll find it (search "flashlight"), the Israel Military Products Israeli Army Surplus Store.

I advise you to explore this site, watch the short slide show on the home page, and sift through the various gifts for sale. You don't have to be Jewish. Two of my favorite items are a sweatshirt reading " America Don't Worry. Israel Is Behind You." and a hoodie, reading "UZI DOES IT." With a nice Uzi graphic.

I was brought inadvertently to this page by my novelist's wondering about the details involved in a terse dispatch this week from the Palestinian Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements:

The Israeli army and police occupation forces stormed the village of Bil’in at 1:30 am on Monday 4th April, raiding the houses of Ali Ibrahim Bornat, and Khames Abo Rahma. They searched their houses and tampered with the contents under the pretext of search for solidarity foreigners.

Bil'in is a village of 1,800 people in the central West Bank, near Ramallah. It is famous for its six-plus years of weekly, nonviolent protests against the illegal (International Court of Justice) wall separating it from 60% of its farmland, and its peaceful protests have been met with increasing Israeli violence, now including live ammunition, and my favorite, Israeli trucks spraying human sewage collected from Modi'in Illit, an illegal Israeli settlement of 50,000, towering on the hill above.

Now, imagine this closely. You're asleep in your bed. It's still very dark. Into your tiny town roar not one, but two heavily armed convoys -- one from the military, one from the police. Doors, as normal, are banged on, kicked in with shouts and threats, children cry in fear. Flashlights -- likely those lovely "agronomic" ones, used in "fighting stance" -- search the rooms, peer into faces, blind the eyes.

What are they looking for? Weapons? Terrorists? No. Nonviolent activists, organizers of the weekly protests, and worst of all "solidarity foreigners" -- those peaceniks from abroad who come to witness, document, take part in peaceful demonstrations against the wall or home demolitions, occasionally help with harvests.

I suppose it could be worse. Rachel Corrie experienced being on the wrong end of a Military Bulldozer, and others have been blinded, brain-damaged, and killed by "non-lethal" weapons shot directly at their heads for their nonviolent protest.

Nevertheless -- harboring peace activists, are you? Take that, and that, and we're really sorry about the door and that laptop. See you soon.

I, the LORD, have called thee in righteousness, and will hold thy hand, and will keep thee, and will make you a covenant of the people, as a light unto the nations. (Isaiah 42:6)

There are extra batteries in the T-GRIP storage compartment.

[Marc Estrin is a writer, activist, and cellist, living in Burlington, Vermont. His novels, Insect Dreams, The Half Life of Gregor Samsa, The Education of Arnold Hitler, Golem Song, and The Lamentations of Julius Marantz have won critical acclaim. His memoir, Rehearsing With Gods: Photographs and Essays on the Bread & Puppet Theater (with Ron Simon, photographer) won a 2004 theater book of the year award. He is currently working on a novel about the dead Tchaikovsky.]

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Joshua Brown : Life During Wartime: Data Overload

Political cartoon and verse by Joshua Brown / The Rag Blog / January 17, 2011.The Rag Blog

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Lamar W. Hankins : After Veterans Day, Business As Usual

Photo by John Gomez / AP.
Now, back to Fox News...
Veterans’ Day is over

Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. -- Mark Twain

By Lamar W. Hankins / The Rag Blog / November 16, 2010

We Americans remember our history for a few minutes each year, often on days set aside for such matters. There is Presidents’ Day, the MLK holiday, San Jacinto Day (if you are a Texan), Memorial Day (the day set aside to honor those who died in our wars), Independence Day (one of two times a year to sell and buy fireworks in honor of the Chinese, though everything we buy seems to come from them now), Labor Day (one of our shopping and barbecuing holidays mostly), Veterans’ Day (a time to express a few patriotic-sounding thoughts before concentrating on the next holiday), Thanksgiving Day (the day for football and turkey, mostly), Christmas Day (a mixture of the commercial and religious), and New Year’s Day (more football and the honoring of our new calendars).

I admit to being cynical about many of these special days. It seems that their main purpose is to give us an opportunity to believe we are better people than we are by paying lip service to some easily held value that the holiday represents. This has seemed especially true of Veterans’ Day.

While I have not supported the creation of veterans, I have thought it hypocrisy of the highest order to claim with our words to honor our veterans, only to largely ignore them in reality. From discussions with my father, who served over four years in World War II, I understand that he was not pleased to be drafted and have his life interrupted by Hitler’s march across Europe, but he served honorably in an antiaircraft battalion.

He recorded his military journey in a small booklet supplied by the Bell Telephone Company of Pennsylvania: Camp Wallace, Fort Bliss, Philadelphia, Westville (New Jersey), Camp Kilmer, a troop ship from New York to Scotland, Llanover (Wales), Folkestone (England), May 24, 1944 -- ”fired at first enemy plane,” July 26-27 -- “knocked down 13 robot planes,” Omaha Beach (about 60 days after D-Day), Paris, Borischot (Belgium), Nijlen (Belgium), Lillo (Belgium), Bergen Op Zoom (Holland), Wuustwezel (Belgium), Fort Querqueville (France), Amberg (Germany), Wiesbaden (Germany), Bad Soden (Germany), Camp Herbert Tareyton (near Le Havre, France).

Dad considered himself fortunate that he had not been in the hand-to-hand combat his younger brother had found in the Pacific theater. He had escaped much of the trauma of war. Dad never wanted to visit any of the places he went as a soldier (except maybe Philadelphia, where he got to see a baseball game), but he did so in the service of his country, just as millions of others have done.

America saw fit to thank the men and women (my mother was in the U.S. Army Nursing Corps) who served in World War II by passing the GI Bill, which provided college or vocational education, along with one year of unemployment benefits, and loans to buy homes or start businesses. Over the years, additional provisions were added to assist veterans.

In 2008, educational benefits were greatly expanded thanks to Senator James Webb. Since President Obama has been in office, additional funding and benefits have been approved for veterans: the Department of Veterans Affairs was provided with more than $1.4 billion to improve services to America's Veterans, and $4.6 billion was added to the Veterans Administration budget to recruit and retain more mental health professionals to help veterans, especially those suffering from PTSD.

But all of these improvements have fallen short of adequately addressing the suffering of more than 200,000 Vietnam veterans exposed to Agent Orange. For decades, the Defense Department refused to acknowledge the connection between that defoliant and the dramatically higher incidence of cancer and neurological, digestive, skin, lung, heart, and reproductive defects experienced by these veterans.

Similarly, as many as one-fourth of the 700,000 Gulf War veterans may suffer from what was called Gulf War Syndrome (now Gulf War illness), the causes of which are now believed to be primarily neurotoxins encountered by our troops in the war. Our government has failed to honor its commitment to these service men and women, as well as those affected by IED blasts, toxic exposure in Iraq, and other results of war.

If we are the nation we claim to be, it is essential that something substantial be done for these veterans (as well as those continuing to serve in the military) suffering from PTSD -- Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The very name explains that war is traumatic and can create stress long after the trauma has ended. This is a condition that our military services prefer be kept under wraps. To most of our leaders, civilian and military, the less said about the trauma of war and the aftermath, the better.

Discussion of the toll war takes on our sons and daughters continues to be taboo, or at least discouraged in polite company. At the end of October, The Public Editor at The New York Times explained in a column how the Times covered the WikiLeaks release of documents from our two Middle East wars. Many of these documents revealed the sickening details of those wars as experienced by our troops on the ground.

There were many complaints that the documents were doing harm to our troops, but so far no one has been able to provide any evidence of this. The statements of former military personnel and authors who support this position are not evidence, merely opinions. The sub rosa implication of many such criticisms, that publication of the documents may be treasonous, is unsupported by any thorough analysis of exactly how the information leaked has harmed anyone, except for the harm to the reputations of military decision-makers and of the United States.

Aside from the specific details of how we have conducted these wars, what this leaked information reminds us is that war is an inhumane activity that morally degrades its participants, and should be undertaken only in self-defense, not out of retribution, hubris, or notions of exceptionalism.

As a country, we have facilitated and instigated torture and murder and rape, and continue to do so. Neither most of the Congress nor our last president apparently worried much about such matters, allowing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to proceed with little oversight or control. Now our new president is allowing, if not directing, the Afghan War to spread into Pakistan.

And the war hawks among us are drumming up support for a war against Iran for its internal policies relating to the development of its nuclear capabilities. It seems that we support sovereignty only when it is ours or that of our allies. And without doubt, our leaders don’t worry about the consequences of such wars on the citizens we call upon to carry out the fighting and dying and suffering.

Mark Twain observed over a century ago how this process works in “Chronicle of Young Satan”:

Statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.

When our government uses the services of psychologists and psychiatrists to manipulate the emotions and behaviors of our service men and women so that they will go to war in the mistaken belief that such wars are necessary to protect this country from harm, the government officials responsible degrade the professions they use, and they dishonor the human beings they manipulate to engage in war.

We should do more for our veterans, but whatever we do for them will be too little to make up for the immorality we have pushed, coaxed, bribed, and coerced them into. It is times like these when I hope that there is a God who will exact retribution for the craven disregard of basic decency. Unfortunately, He seems incapable of preventing the immorality that is war. It is up to us to see that this scourge of humankind is ended, along with its inevitable torture, murder, rape, and other suffering.

All of this brings to mind some other words of Mark Twain in “What Is Man?”:

Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out... and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel... And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for "the universal brotherhood of man" -- with his mouth.

Now, it seems, we no longer have even the small benefit of intervals between wars. If we are the apotheosis of creation, whatever caused that creation is a wretched failure.

[Lamar W. Hankins, a former San Marcos city attorney, is also a columnist for the San Marcos Mercury. This article © Freethought San Marcos, Lamar W. Hankins.]

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