|
|
Post by Moses on Jan 8, 2005 19:10:50 GMT -5
This report explains why Muslim world dislikes America Norman Phillips, Merrimack[/b] Published: Saturday, Jan. 8, 2005Shortly after 9/11, President Bush described why he thought Muslim terrorists attacked us. He said: “Americans are asking, why do they hate us? They hate what we see right here in this chamber - a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms - our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.”This interpretation is not realistic, according to the Defense Science Board report released recently, and available at www.acq.osd.mil/dsb/reports/2004-09-Strategic Communication.pdf . On page 41 of that report, we find the following statement. It is important enough to merit consideration by all citizens. This interpretation is far different than federal officials and politicians of either party have expressed. If true, it shows that we have been operating under dangerously foolish assumptions, and thought should be given to changing our policies and approach.
|
|
|
|
Post by Moses on Jan 8, 2005 19:20:30 GMT -5
Published on Saturday, January 8, 2005 by CommonDreams.org Fear and Adrenaline
by Virginia Hoffman <br>There is no doubt that war is a catalyst for atrocities committed against noncombatants. The report of wholesale shootings at My Lai and the 2003 Toledo Blade account of the Tiger Force collecting ears of those they killed made US brutality in Viet Nam inescapably clear. Last year’s pictures of torture at Abu Ghraib, along with analyses by the Red Cross and Major General Antonio Taguba, seared the image of US abuse in Iraq into our minds. Did all the GIs sent to Viet Nam or Iraq participate? No. But these stories are a grim reminder of the doors our nation opens every time it chooses war. <br> People in battle operate on fear and adrenaline. When they hear the shooting and feel the homemade bombs explode, when they see a bloody mess where their friend used to be, they experience a surge of hate for those responsible. Whoever killed a buddy from their hometown does not even deserve the name “human.” <br> Soldiers create their own slang epithet for their foes—something connoting less-than-human beasts—and construct a bullet-proof loyalty for their mates. “We” fight for justice and freedom against those brutes. “They” despise all we hold dear; “they” only understand force; “they” want us all dead. In this chaos with death all around, operating on war stereotypes and their own view of the world, last year’s high school grad may make a snap decision—kill or be killed—on the basis of nationality alone. Fear and adrenaline. <br> Troops in the field, and we at home, lose track of the fact that these wars did not begin in the trenches. They have been started by political decisions, usually made by middle-aged people in the comfort of well-appointed rooms. Who decides to put our young sons and daughters into the madness and desperation of war? What noble-sounding reasons do they give us to win our support? And what are the real pay-offs these decision-makers seek, for which they’re willing to trade our children’s peril? <br> The fear and adrenaline of war can push some of our young people to risk their lives to help others, some to keep their heads down hoping to survive. It also pushes some to brutalize members of the enemy group. Fear and adrenaline can push soldiers to violate their deepest sense of right and wrong, to override what all our values say we must never do. Returning soldiers tell the stories—their own or others’—and live their lives haunted by them. Who decides to grind our children in the moral crucible of war? What reward of land or oil or political power can justify the choices, and the memories, that are forced upon our young? <br> The Gulf of Tonkin “attack,” the supposed precipitating event for sending troops to Viet Nam, we now know never occurred. It was a lie by our government. Then why were so many of our brothers and classmates sent to Viet Nam? Why were they ever in the chaotic hell that gave rise to such atrocities? The Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that could have caused a mushroom cloud, support for Al Qaeda in the 9/11 attacks, were also lies by our government. Why were the decision-makers so eager to send our sons and daughters, students and neighbors to Iraq that they would craft such elaborate lies to do it? Why were our young people ever put in a position where shooting confused civilians at checkpoints was a daily choice? <br> Once the political decision is made, once the invasion starts, life in the war zone keeps soldiers operating on fear and adrenaline. The evening news and political rhetoric keep their families and the nation in the same highly charged and reactive state. The “enemy” is anyone who kills our kids; their reasons are never worth discussing. If they can be killed in greater numbers by high-tech weapons, it is a victory. Yes, send more money, more hardware, even more of our young to lay waste to those “demons.” Fear and adrenaline. And it doesn’t end with the last blast of gunfire. Some of our sons and daughters, sisters and brothers, come home in body bags, some permanently maimed and disabled. Some, still pumped up on fear and adrenaline, or having have crossed too many limits of conscience and conduct, abuse or kill their own family members. Some commit suicide to escape the horror of their memories; some drink themselves to death. This does not happen to all, but it always happens to some: it is the roulette of war. <br> How many alternatives should we demand be examined and exhausted before we allow politicians to spin that roulette wheel for children not their own? <br> Political rhetoric ignores the fact that, whenever our government decides to invade a country, fear and adrenaline work the same way in the people they choose to attack. According to international reports, this now applies to an estimated 200,000 Iraqis who cannot accept that those who killed their families, leveled their houses, rounded up cousins and friends and tortured them, deserve to be called human. They cannot see how anyone who destroys hospitals, water and electricity, who reduces whole cities to rubble, has their best interests at heart. They cannot believe, looking at fourteen permanent US military bases, that an election staged by the occupier will change the real seat of power in their country. They, too, have their own slang epithet for their occupiers, those “less-than-human” beasts, and have as well a bulletproof loyalty for their mates. “We patriots” fight for justice and freedom, they say, against these brutes. “They” despise all we hold dear; “they” only understand force; “they” want us all dead or to own us and our oil. In this chaos with death all around, operating on war stereotypes and their own view of the world, they make the decision to join the resistance or not—kill or be killed—on the basis of nationality alone. Fear and adrenaline is not creating peace. <br> This administration started a war on rhetoric they knew to be false; even the currently advertised reason—to deliver democracy—covers a multitude of practices that belie that altruistic objective. No one who is trying to protect family and homeland from foreign occupiers, no one operating on fear and adrenaline, will be won to democracy by tanks and ultimatums. <br> Since the US began this invasion, upwards of 100,000 Iraqi men, women and children have died, over 1300 US soldiers have died, countless persons have been maimed for life, and millions on both sides hate each other for what they have suffered at each other’s hands. <br> Whose decision, whose gain, is worth continuing this hell for one more day? <br>
Virginia Curran Hoffman, PhD, LMFT (vhoffman@calcon.net) is a senior lecturer at Loyola University Chicago###
|
|
|
|
Post by Moses on Jan 8, 2005 23:30:09 GMT -5
Vote, Declare Victory and Come Home
By Joseph L. Galloway
Knight Ridder Newspapers Wednesday 05 January 2005 Washington - There may be 50 ways to leave your lover, but there may be only one good way out of the deepening disaster that is Iraq: Hold the elections on Jan. 30, declare victory and begin leaving. Anything less, any more "staying the course," and we're likely doomed to an even bloodier and more costly defeat in a country divided along ethnic and religious fault lines and headed toward civil war. A large number of Americans, perhaps even a majority, believe that pulling out now would lead to an American defeat that undermines U.S. credibility and endangers the global war on terrorism. They worry it would create either an Afghan-style terrorist haven in Iraq or an anti-American Shiite regime that would only be a new source of instability in the Mideast, a region vital to American interests. The problem is that there is no way we can win - defeat the insurgents and install a stable, democratic, friendly government - and bad things are going to happen anyway. There is no way Americans are willing to pay the price even of stalemate, never mind an unattainable victory. That would mean half a million American soldiers on the ground, maybe more, and a new draft to find enough people for the force. It would mean an escalating drain of hundreds of billions more dollars, and a bloodbath on both sides. Why can't we win? Because we charged in with false premises and bogus assumptions. Because for every insurgent we kill, two or three more join the cause. Because even our advertised victories - like Fallujah, where we apparently had to destroy the city in order to save it, or Samarra or Ramadi - only turned the entire Sunni population against the United States and its Iraqi allies. And in the end, election or no, there is nothing we can do to produce an Iraqi government that will be considered legitimate by the entire population. The Sunnis hate the interim government as an American creation. They will hate any elected government dominated by the Shiite majority. They and a growing number of Shiites will hate us because we are there, because we are an occupying army. If we learned nothing else from the bitter history of Vietnam it should be that there are places and people who won't accept change and won't quit fighting until even the most powerful nation and army in the world wearies of the killing and dying. The fallout from staying the course will be thousands more American soldiers killed and wounded, an Army so broken that repairs and reconstruction could take a decade or more and a federal budget deficit staggering under the costs of this war. Consider these stories published this week: * Lt. Gen. James R. Helmly, commander of the U.S. Army's 200,000 Reserve soldiers, tells his boss, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker, that the Reserves are "rapidly degenerating into a broken force." The cause: The war in Iraq and dysfunctional Pentagon and congressional policies. (Baltimore Sun, Jan. 5) * U.S. casualties as of this week: 1,340 killed in action, 10,252 wounded in action and an estimated 12,000 ill or injured. More than half the wounded Americans are hurt so badly they are not able to return to duty. * The Bush administration is preparing to send to Congress a supplemental request for as much as $100 billion to cover unbudgeted costs of the Iraq war this year. That will bring the total cost to American taxpayers of this war to an estimated $230 billion. That against an original Bush administration estimate of total costs of $50 billion to $60 billion[/n].
* Under Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz has signed off on a Pentagon document proposing $30 billion in cuts in once untouchable Air Force and Navy weapons projects to help pay for Iraq and help reduce the overall budget deficit.
* Gen. Muhammad Abdullah Shahwani, director of the Iraq government's new intelligence service, told The Times of London that he estimates there are more than 200,000 insurgents and active supporters opposing American, coalition and government forces in Iraq. "I think the resistance is bigger than the U.S. military in Iraq," Shahwani said.
Perhaps the only good things to emerge from this misbegotten war will be an end to our infatuation with high-tech weaponry and our willingness to continue paying for "new" fighter planes and nuclear submarines designed for the Cold War.
It would also be good if it rekindles a new appreciation for boots on the ground to win our wars, an end to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's fixation with the kind of transformation that revolves around PowerPoint presentations focused on faster, lighter, cheaper.
As we approach the second anniversary of our invasion of Iraq we need to be discussing and debating what we are gaining, if anything, from this war and what we are losing[/n\b].
Joseph L. Galloway is the senior military correspondent for Knight Ridder Newspapers and co-author of the national best-seller "We Were Soldiers Once ... and Young."
<br>
|
|
