Letters and news from People for Peace

Letter from Jane about David's trip to Haiti

2009-07-20T08:32:00.000-07:00

"My" David is taking a trip to Haiti to go back to the
the orphanage which he helped build and lived at from
age 8 to about 12.  He asked me if I could get
together any clothes for kids or adults that he
can take with him.  I have him checking on size of
boxes he can check and cost.  I don't know how he
is managing to do this, but I think it is a good
thing and would like to support him in wanting to
do something for someone else.  Sue, maybe the kids
or you have something they could bring up on the
25th.  P4P, could we help him in some way?  Keep in
mind that this is Haiti, not Wisconsin.  He is
leaving August 5th so this is immediate.  I am also
going to try to take the one solar cooker I have
left apart for him to take to the orphanage.  I am
asking the young men at CAP services if they could
do this.  He needs a ride to Milwaukee on the 4th.
just mentioning this in case anyone is going.

I just found out David can only check one bag to Haiti.
It can weigh 50# so if anyone can help...

Here is what David had to say about his family:

"i have a brother who's over 6'2 ft tall.... another
5'11 (over that) and a sister thats bigger and
about 5 nephew and nieces
boys and girls, toys and clothes, tooth brush,
food, books, anything for kids and adults... all
brothers and sisters are older then me so they
all over 30 years of age.... some donation of
money would be great but i mostly want stuff
that i could take down there ok, thanks
i am not sure on their sizes and what's not....
anything you can think a person could use would
be great, shoes would be great too any sizes what
they do not need can be taking to the orphanage."


Jane

Letters from Larry about Iran and UFPJ

2009-07-20T08:30:00.000-07:00

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Take action now:

Endorse this statement; demand "U.S./Israeli hands off Iran!" - http://stopwaroniran.org/iran2009endorse.shtml
Forward this message to your listserves, or link to it from your Facebook, MySpace, and other sites (use http://stopwaroniran.org/iranstatement.shtml)
Please consider making an emergency donation. Stop War on Iran was founded in early 2005 as an international campaignto oppose a U.S. military attack on Iran and other acts of war, including sanctions and covert destabilization. Initial signers included former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, author and activist Leslie Feinberg, Michael Parenti, Larry Holmes of the Troops Out Now Coalition, Howard Zinn, George Galloway, Harold Pinter, former First Lady of Greece Margarita Papandreou, and hundreds more. Since that time we have organized meetings and forums from coast to coast, and brought Stop War On Iran placards, banners, buttons, and literature to antiwar demonstrations across the country. Stop War On Iran does not receive funds from U.S. government agencies or corporate-run foundations, which means we need your help to continue to mobilize in the face of the latest threats against Iran. You can donate online at http://stopwaroniran.org/donate.shtml
Consider organizing a local action on August 1 to demand "U.S./Israeli Hands Off Iran." List your action at http://stopwaroniran.org/iran2009volorgcent.shtml
Volunteer! The Stop War On Iran Campaign relies entirely on volunteers to get things done, and we need your help - http://stopwaroniran.org/iran2009volorgcent.shtml

Stop War on Iran says: Clarity needed

Why the U.S. anti-war movement should stand firmly against any military attack, sanctions or demonization of Iran.
Boycott the Phony State Department/NED pro-war events on July 25
Nationally-coordinated actions on August 1 to say "U.S. Hands Off Iran!"

U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden’s new public threat against Iran underlines the dangers of a new war in the Middle East and the desperate need for political clarity within the anti-war movement concerning Iran.

With his June 6 comments on ABC's This Week, Biden opened the door to a military attack when he said that the U.S. would not stand in the way of an Israeli strike against Iranian nuclear facilities, calling such an attack is Israel’s “sovereign right.” Israel, he said, was “free to do what it needed to do.”

The Geneva Conventions call it a war crime even to threaten to attack another state. This is not just rhetoric. Only with U.S. satellite, radar and the use of air space over U.S.-occupied Iraq could the Israeli bombing raid take place. Biden should be denounced as a war criminal for making such a reckless and dangerous encouragement of unprovoked war against Iran.

A U.S.-funded Israeli attack would immediately unleash a wider war. It would have catastrophic results for the whole Middle East and the Iranian people, even beyond what has already been done to the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Palestine.

Biden’s new threat comes during a full corporate media offensive against Iran. Its timing should serve as an alert to the entire progressive and anti-war movement. U.S. aircraft carriers, destroyers, nuclear submarines, jet aircraft and drones clog the seas that wash up on Iranian shores.

Subversion, media lies target Tehran

In this dangerous war climate the entire U.S. and Western corporate media is again demonizing the Iranian government. It is using the media and well-funded, subversive organizations in a massive effort of destabilization and sabotage. Too often in the past this same combination of phony “human rights” organizations, who are given endless coverage in a corporate media frenzy, have helped to create a war climate through demonization, frauds and fabricated charges. This has happened before every U.S. attack or invasion, along with a concerted campaign of psychological warfare and internal destabilization in the target country.

One such organization leading this effort is the newly formed “United 4 Iran,” a fraudulent “left cover” for organizations funded by the U.S. government and big corporations. It is designed to use “human rights” and “democracy” to justify U.S. threats to attack Iran. This group has called phony “human rights” internationally coordinated protests for July 25. United 4 Iran is a front for organizations awash in money from the National Endowment for Democracy, a CIA cover organization for intervention, subversion, covert action in countries around the world. These same groups are supported by funds from Rockefeller, Soros, and Mellon foundations.

It is telling that United 4 Iran makes NO mention of the U.S. wars currently ripping apart the entire region. Hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops along with an army of private military contractors and mercenaries have created havoc in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Pakistan. U.S. funds and equipment have supported Israeli occupation and war on Palestine, Lebanon and Syria. Nor does this group mention the decades of U.S. military encirclement, sanctions, sabotage, attempted and actual coups against the people of Iran.

If these organizations were genuinely concerned with democracy, human rights and respect for elections why have they not called emergency actions in defense and support of the democratic elections in Gaza? In Gaza there was a democratic election overseen by Western international monitors. Hamas won overwhelmingly. The U.S. funded Israeli response was blockade and starvation against an entire people. Thousands of Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli bombardment.

Why the movement must reject anti-Iran provocations -
UFPJ should withdraw support of anti-Iran actions.

How we respond to these actions is a crucial question for the movement. Are we for another brutal U.S. war or against it?

It is profoundly disturbing that United for Peace and Justice UFPJ and other anti-war organizations have chosen to add their endorsement to these actions targeting the Iranian government. These anti-war groups should be in the forefront of opposing current U.S. wars and threats of wider war.

Stop War On Iran urges them and other honest anti-war forces to reconsider their endorsement of the anti-Iran actions. Anti-war activists in the United States, while demanding an end to the occupations of Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine, have an additional responsibility to oppose any military moves by the Pentagon or its allies against Iran and to oppose any moves by the former colonial powers to weaken Iran’s sovereignty.

Why U.S. imperialism targets Iran

The U.S. imperialist wars throughout the region are an effort by U.S. corporations to gain strategic domination of the vast oil and energy resources.

Since its 1979 revolution, Iran’s independence has been a thorn in the side of corporate billionaires in the U.S. and Britain and of the U.S.-funded Israeli settler state. When the Iranian people overthrew the brutal U.S.-backed shah dictatorship they finally regained control of their rich oil and gas resources. In 30 years time Iran developed industrially and vastly improved the educational and health level of the entire population.

Any intervention by the imperialist powers in Iran and any weakening of Iranian sovereignty will only diminish the rights of women, workers, and the access to democratic institutions there, just as it has happened in the rest of the region. Any intervention by the imperialists in Iran’s internal struggles is aimed either at aiding the side the imperialists see as more conciliatory to their plans, or to exacerbate the internal conflict in order to compromise and weaken the Iranian government.

U.S. wars don’t bring democracy

U.S. wars and occupations from Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan have never brought democracy or human rights. They have brought only oppressive military dictatorships, massive refugee crises, torture and millions of deaths.

Also, we cannot forget that it is U.S. troops, military equipment, and bases that keep corrupt feudal anti-woman monarchies in power in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and Jordan, as well as the brutal dictatorship in Egypt.

The hypocrisy of U.S. politicians is staggering, as they condemn the actions of the Iranian government while sweeping their own crimes under the rug. Iran’s elections and disputes are an internal matter, to be resolved by the Iranian people and not the governments of imperialist countries with agendas of dominating Iran and a track record of using internal issues to justify military invasion.

Money for jobs and benefits, not for more war

In this time of global capitalist crisis, when millions are unemployed and millions more facing evictions and foreclosures, we must demand that the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on current U.S. wars and the trillions that would criminally wasted in a new war be spent for jobs, health care and housing for poor and working people in the U.S. and around the world.

We urge your endorsement and support of these simple demands.

1. We oppose military aggression by the U.S., Britain, or Israel against Iran.

2. We oppose economic, diplomatic or other sanctions against Iran whatever their excuse.

3. We demand an end to subversion, de-stabilization, covert actions instigated by the U.S. and its military or spy agencies directed at Iran.

Endorse here: http://stopwaroniran.org/iran2009endorse.shtml

We urge you NOT to march in the anti-Iran event, which is designed to give humanitarian cover to U.S. threats of war against Iran. Instead, come out AGAINST current U.S. wars and the threats of a new war on the following week in a National Day of Coordinated Actions on Saturday, August 1.

Contact Stop War On Iran if you are interested in organizing or supporting an action opposing U.S. threats on Iran on Saturday, August 1

In NYC join us at Times Square, 42nd & 7th Ave at 1pm, August 1 for a march to the Israeli Mission.

STOP WAR ON IRAN
55 W. 17th St. 5th Fl., NY NY 10011
www.StopWarOnIran.org 212.633.6646

Letters from Larry about Iran and UFPJ

2009-07-20T08:27:00.000-07:00

Subject:

Update from Gaza Convoy - Viva Palestina delegation

From:

International Action Center

Date:

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 20:48:58 -0400

To:

action.news@organizerweb.com

Viva Palestina US update – July 11, 2009

Update #1

The largest ever US humanitarian aid convoy is now gathering in Egypt to head across the border into Gaza on Monday, July 13.

Vehicles are coming from Alexandria, the medical supplies from Cairo and the advanced party of nearly 100 US citizens is heading for the staging post of Al Arish, just before the border with Gaza.

That group, of four buses, has, however, been stopped from crossing over the Suez Canal and into the Sinai region, which leads to Gaza.

The buses, carrying people, medical aid and bearing US, Egyptian and Palestinian flags in a spirit of international cooperation, have been held at a security checkpoint and given various, conflicting reasons for why they cannot proceed to their destination at Al Arish.

New York Councilman Charles Barron is leading the group and is negotiating with security officials to resolve the situation. He has contacted Washington and other elected officials in an effort to clarify the reasons for the delay and address any concerns as efficiently as possible.

Former US Congresswoman and Presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney will join the convoy on Sunday, July 12, and British Member of Parliament George Galloway will also be heading to meet up with Councilman Barron and the advance group.

He and the rest of the advance group of the convoy, however, are insisting on their right to travel with their supplies to Al Arish, where the rest of the convoy is to rendezvous with them before heading for the border crossing into Gaza.

This medical convoy is on the way to Gaza a month after US President Barack Obama described the situation in Gaza as a “humanitarian crisis.”

“Our convoy is on an aid mission,” says Galloway, “We come in peace; but we will not be stopped.”

Viva Palestina Convoy, July 12, 2009, 2:45 am Cairo

Update #2

The 100 Viva Palestina humanitarian volunteers have decided to stay the night in their buses at the Mubarak Peace Bridge over the Suez Canal despite pressure from the Egyptian security officials to return to Cairo.

The official reason given at the checkpoint for refusing to allow them to cross is that the officials there did not have a list of the names of the members of the convoy. Such a list was, however, at the request of the Egyptian authorities before any of the convoy members set foot in Egypt sent to the Egyptian ambassadors to Washington, D.C., and London.

The US Embassy in Cairo has now stepped in to forward a newly provided list of those convoy members aboard the buses at the bridge to the Egyptian foreign ministry to clear the way for the convoy's passage.

Nancy Mansour Leigh, a spokeswoman for the Viva Palestina delegation at the Suez crossing, says, “It's going to be an uncomfortable night, but it's nothing compared with what the people of Gaza must live through every day. We've already succeeded in securing internet access and are negotiating other necessary facilities. But whatever facilities are provided or not, our determination will see us through the night and all the way to Gaza.”

New York City Councilman Charles Barron is on the scene at the Suez Canal and acting as chief negotiator with Egyptian security officials. “The Viva Palestina movement has had a great success this morning with our stand at the Suez crossing. We've now got an agreement for us to stay until the list of our convoy members reaches the foreign ministry. It shows what can be achieved with the determination and commitment of a collective body of people. We are determined to cross onto Gaza, and no matter what happens next, out of this first small confrontation, we've achieved a success for the movement in support of the Palestinian people. The convoy is going to move on, and we ain't gonna let nobody turn us around.”

British Member of Parliament George Galloway offered these words of encouragement for the delegation being held up at the crossing:“This is an American convoy. And Americans are used to refusing to give up seats on buses in the struggle for justice. I regard everyone who's putting themselves on the line tonight at the Suez Canal for the success of this humanitarian mission as nothing short of a hero.”

Kevin Ovenden
Viva Palestina coordinator

Report from John Parker, West Coast Coordinator of the International Action Center. Parker is one of four IAC activists participating in the Viva Palestina delegation to Gaza.

A delegation of about 200 people left for Cairo, Egypt from July 4th to July 7th, en route to Gaza to make the political demand of breaking and defying Israel's illegal and genocidal siege of Gaza and to provide much-needed humanitarian aid to the people--wheelchairs, walkers and medical supplies.

We are currently split up into two groups. One group is made up of the drivers of the vehicles that will transport some of the aid from Alexandria, Egypt, through the border of Gaza. I am part of this group. The other group is gathering and organizing other medical supplies in Cairo, and they will meet up with us at the border.

New York City Councilmember Charles Barron has already joined the group in Cairo and will also be at the border for the crossing. Former U.S. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney will also be joining us at the border of Gaza before we cross. McKinney was released only a few days ago from an Israeli jail, where she and 20 other activists were held after being abducted by the Israeli navy from the Spirit of Humanity boat which was carrying aid to Gaza.

I am proud to be a part of building and participating in this tremendous effort to expose the horror of Israel's war against the Palestinian people, which the media tries to hide from the world. As Ron Kovic, one of the initiators of this campaign in the U.S., along with British MP George Galloway said, "We are going there to offer a hand of friendship and solidarity, not bombs and terror."

Israel's bombing of Gaza for 23 days starting last December caused an immense and terrifying amount of damage. At least 20 percent of the children there suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as a result of the bombing. Half of the hospitals in Gaza and 47,000 homes were damaged.

However, one thing wasn't damaged--the will of the people of Gaza to survive and to strongly demand self-determination. This is what inspires us to do all we can.

Judging from the reaction we receive here in Egypt from people who see our Viva Palestina USA T-shirts, many of the Egyptian people are proud and inspired by the courageous people of Gaza. For example, a young woman who spoke English asked Judy Greenspan, another IAC organizer on the trip, what her T-shirt meant. After Judy told her, she replied that a family member of hers works in a pharmacy and she wanted to donate medical supplies for the convoy.

This delegation is the second such convoy initiated by British MP George Galloway. He organized the first in the UK. The second one, which left from the U.S., was organized in collaboration with Vietnam veteran and anti-war activist Ron Kovic, author of "Born on the Fourth of July."

However, in the U.S., this effort is the result of the work of many in the Arab community, in the Mosques, in organizations like Al-Awda and others, in addition to anti-war and social justice organizations. On the delegation are members of CAIR, Middle East Childrens Alliance, Cuba Coalition, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, MECHA, International Action Center, International Socialist Organization, Workers World Party, ANSWER Coalition and many more. All of the organizations participated in making this campaign possible. However, along with the UK team of Viva Palestine, the lion's share of the credit must go to the Arab and Muslim communities in the U.S., which raised much of the funding for this effort.

Media coverage of our trip has been good. Photographs here are from the most recent press conference in Cairo. The press conference held on July 9 was covered by Al Jazeera and by one of the largest media outlets in Egupt. In addition, there have been many interviews of individuals on the trip. With Cynthia McKinney joining us at the border and the presence of Councilmember Charles Barron, that coverage will increase.

I should also mention the very impressive showing of support by members of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement represented by four Black youth. One of them, Brandon, is shown here holding a red, black and green African Liberation flag. He began his remarks at the press conference by giving a "shout out" to the people of Africa on the continent and referenced the people of Africa on the U.S. delegation, who were showing their solidarity with Palestine. He made the links between the racism and repression faced by Palestinian people and the occupation of Gaza with the repression faced by Black people in the U.S. by police brutality and occupation of their neighborhoods. He said he was inspired to come on the delegation by the actions of Cynthia McKinney.

Delegates here in Alexandria are anxiously waiting to load up and decorate the vehicles and begin their journey to Gaza. These vehicles will be donated to the people of Gaza.

*Click here to follow Viva Palestina's updates from the convoy.

*Click here to donate to Viva Palestina USA

*Click here to donate to help with the costs of the International Action Center's delegation.



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Winning essays in our scholarship contest!

2008-06-24T07:07:00.000-07:00

But first...

About the People for Peace Scholarships
by Pat Reckrey

For many years one of the most important efforts of Waupaca People for Peace has been to raise enough money to provide a scholarship to a graduating senior of the area who is committed to pursuing an education that will further the peace process.

Through an essay of about 250 words an applicant is asked to discuss his/her views on peace and how he/she intends to pursue them in life and through his/her education.

This year 6 seniors applied for the scholarship money and we were fortunate to be able to award $750.00 scholarships to both Robin ***** and Alicia Taggatz, outstanding graduates of Waupaca High School.

(We were able to give an increased scholarship amount and to award two scholarships because of the whopping success of our People for Peace rummage sale which was earmarked for this cause. Special thanks are due Sandy Testin and all the Rathjens for hosting the sale, all who contributed their “treasures”, as well as all the workers and purchasers!)

The essays that Robin and Alicia submitted follow. They speak remarkably of the passion of these young people in their pursuit of peaceful solutions to complex problems. A special congratulations to them and to all the other applicants as well. With young people like them working toward peace, there is great hope for our world.

Alicia Taggatz's Essay

I define peace as a state where an individual can pursue their own happiness undeterred by others. Peace is a hard thing to come by in a world where our economy is globalizing and people are using terror to get their point across. More than ever the pursuit of peace across not only our nation, but the world is becoming a seemingly impossible task. However, I believe that through cohesive leadership we can make peace a worldwide goal. In my own life I plan to pursue peace through my education, career, political awareness, and community projects.

Next year I will be attending Carthage College. While on campus I plan to be active in many organizations such as Carthage College Democrats, Amnesty International, Planeteers, Habitat for Humanity and Carthage United to Rescue the Earth. These organizations provide means of bettering my own community and those around me, which is the first step to peace. I have high ambitions to be an effective leader in society. Peace can’t come about if only one person wants it. It has to be something people work together for which is why working with others is so important to me.

After college my goal is to go on to law school and eventually gain the knowledge necessary to become an effective lawyer. I hope to get involved with criminal law, specifically sexual assault cases so I can promote peace by faithfully using the courts to stop people in society who infringe on their civil liberties and peace. I can’t think of a more rewarding career path to follow.

Other ways I hope to promote peace are through political awareness. I’m already very involved in politics. This year I have campaigned for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign several times. I think politics are the best way to get involved with spreading peace because with the right leader out nation can spread the message of peace across the world. President Bush has currently put a huge worldwide damper on peace negotiations because his foreign relations tactics were more about promoting war than peace. I feel with a leader who is able and willing to motivate change, it can occur. In the future, my goal is to get involved with politics by running for office in the Senate or the House. Government, when used appropriately, can be the most effective way to promote peace and change.

One of the last ways I hope to promote peace is through community projects. Peace has to start at home, and your own community is the easiest place to start. I have been involved in several projects to implement change in my own community such as clean up projects for lakes, parks, and the River Ridge Trail. I have done service by being involved with Bread Basket, the Veteran’s Home, and other key organization in Waupaca. Nationally I’ve made trips to Tennessee, Alabama, and New Orleans, Louisiana, to do service projects. I don’t plan to stop anytime soon. Service is the best way to get involved in a community and to help others attain happiness. Together peace isn’t impossible. By getting involved in service projects, groups promote peace together and help change the world through their own eyes and others.

Peace is a hard thing for anyone to attain, but I believe with the right motivators the world can change for the better. I hope to promote peace throughout my whole life through my education, career, political awareness, and service. I believe peace isn’t that far off if we combine efforts with high hopes of changing the world. A little ambition and motivation can go a long way.

Bibliography of books pertaining to middle east, available at local public libraries.

2007-08-07T06:40:00.000-07:00

BIBLIOGRAPHY/adult collection
Materials to reference in preparation for the Women to Women for Peace visit to Waupaca, WI, October 22-25, 2007
Public forum @ The Waupaca Public Library on Tuesday October 23, 2007

The following is a partial list of materials available at the Waupaca Public Library (you may have to request them from other libraries within the OWLS system). Many additional materials are available. You will need to access the library computers to do more research. None of these materials are recommended over another, this list is simply a beginning point for those who may want to become more informed about the history and ongoing issues in the Middle East. We hope that we can bring informed questions for the British, Israeli and Palestinian women who will be visiting us in October.

Title Israel : opposing viewpoints
Publisher San Diego, CA : Greenhaven Press, c1994.
Description 288 p. : ill., maps ; 23 cm.

Title Enough of dying! Voices for peace.
Author Boyle, Kay, 1902-
Publisher [New York, Dell Pub. Co., 1972]
Description 351 p. 18 cm

Title
The battle for peace

Author
Weizman, Ezer, 1924-

Publisher
Toronto ; New York : Bantam Books, 1981.

Description
viii, 395 p., [32] p. of plates : ill., maps ; 24 cm.

Title
Breakthrough : a personal account of the Egypt-Israel peace negotiations

Author
Dayan, Moshe, 1915-1981.

Edition
1st American ed.

Publisher
New York : Knopf : Distributed by Random House, 1981.

Description
368 p. : ill., map ; 24 cm.

Title Ain't gonna study war no more : the story of America's peace seekers
Author Meltzer, Milton, 1915-
Edition 1st ed.
Publisher [New York, N.Y.] : Harper & Row, c1985.
Description 282 p. : ill. ; 22 cm.

Title Yasser Arafat
Author Brexel, Bernadette.
Edition 1st ed.
Publisher New York : Rosen Pub. Group, 2004.
Description 112 p. : ill. (some col.), col. maps ; 25 cm

Title
Palestinian Authority

Author
Hall, John G., 1950-

Publisher
Philadelphia, Pa. : Chelsea House Publishers, c2003.

Description
131 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.

Title
U.S. involvement in the Middle East : inciting conflict

Author
Miller, Debra A.

Publisher
San Diego : Lucent Books, 2005.

Description
112 p. : ill., maps ; 24 cm.

Title The Israeli-Palestinian conflict : crisis in the Middle East
Publisher Upper Saddle River, NJ : Prentice Hall, c2003.
Descriptio vii, 232 p. : col. ill., col. maps ; 25 cm

Title In search of peace. Part one, 1948-1967 [videorecording]
Publisher New York, NY : Koch Lorber Films LLC : Distributed by Koch Entertainment, 2003.
Description 1 videodisc (112 min.) : sd., col. ; 4 3/4 in.

Title
Burning issues : understanding and misunderstanding the Middle East : a 40-year chronicle

Publisher
New York : Americans for Middle East Understanding, 2007.

Description
viii, 439 p. : maps ; 23 cm.

Title Power, faith, and fantasy : America in the Middle East, 1776 to the present
Author Oren, Michael B., 1955-
Edition 1st ed.
Publisher New York : W.W.Norton & Co., c2007.
Description xxii, 778 p., [32] p. of plates : ill., maps, ports. ; 25 cm.

Title
The lemon tree : an Arab, a Jew, and the heart of the Middle East

Author
Tolan, Sandy.

Edition
Pbk. ed.

Publisher
New York : Bloomsbury USA : Distributed to the trade by Holtzbrinck Publishers, 2007, c2006.

Description
xix, 362 p. : maps ; 21 cm.

Title Conflicts of the Middle East
Author Downing, David, 1946-
Publisher Milwaukee, WI : World Almanac Library, 2006.
Description p. cm.

Title
The iron cage : the story of the Palestinian struggle for statehood

Author
Khalidi, Rashid.

Edition
1st ed.

Publisher
Boston : Beacon Press, c2006.

Description
xlii, 281 p. : maps ; 23 cm.

Title Palestine [sound recording] : peace not apartheid
Author Carter, Jimmy, 1924-
Edition Unabridged.
Publisher New York : Simon & Schuster Audio, p2006.
Description 5 sound discs (ca. 5 hr.) : digital ; 4 3/4 in.

Title Palestine : peace not apartheid
Author Carter, Jimmy, 1924-
Edition Doubleday Large Print Home Library ed.
Publisher New York : Simon & Schuster, c2006.
Description 360 p. (large print) : maps ; 25 cm

Title Man in the shadows : inside the Middle East crisis with the man who led the Mossad
Author Halevy, Efraim, 1934-
Edition 1st ed.
Publisher New York : St. Martin's Press, 2006.
Description x, 292 p. ; 25 cm.

Title Human rights in the Middle East
Author Stewart, Gail, 1949-
Publisher Detroit : Lucent Books, c2005.
Description 112 p. : ill., maps ; 24 cm

Title
Inheriting the Holy Land : an American's search for hope in the Middle East

Author
Miller, Jennifer.

Edition
1st ed.

Publisher
New York : Ballantine Books, c2005.

Description
xxxiii, 261 p. : map ; 24 cm.

Title The missing peace : the inside story of the fight for Middle East peace
Author Ross, Dennis.
Edition 1st ed.
Publisher New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004.
Description xvi, 840 p., [16] p. of plates : ill., maps

Title
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict : crisis in the Middle East

Publisher
Upper Saddle River, NJ : Prentice Hall, c2003.

Description
vii, 232 p. : col. ill., col. maps ; 25 cm.

Title Middle East illusions : including peace in the Middle East? : reflections on justice and nationhood
Author Chomsky, Noam.
Publisher Lanham, MD : Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, c2003.
Description xiii, 299 p. ; 23 cm

Title Palestinian Authority
Author Hall, John G., 1950-
Publisher Philadelphia, Pa. : Chelsea House Publishers, c2003.
Description 131 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.

Title We just want to live here : a Palestinian teenager, an Israeli teenager : an unlikely friendship
Author Rifa'i, Amal.
Edition 1st U.S. ed.
Publisher New York : St. Martin's Griffin, c2003.
Description xx, 154 p. : maps ; 18 cm

Title Shattered dreams : the failure of the peace process in the Middle East, 1995-2002
Author Enderlin, Charles.
Publisher New York : Other Press, c2003.
Description xviii, 458 p. : col. ill., col. maps ; 24 cm

Title Revenge : a story of hope
Author Blumenfeld, Laura.
Publisher New York : Simon & Schuster, c2002.
Description 382 p., [8] p. of plates : ill. ; 25 cm

Title The stakes : America and the Middle East : the consequences of power and the choice for peace
Author Telhami, Shibley.
Publisher Boulder, Colo. : Westview Press, 2002.
Description xiii, 204 p., [4] p. of plates : ill., maps ; 22 cm.

Title
The Middle East [videorecording]

Publisher
Wynnewood, PA : Schlessinger Video Productions, c2001.

Description
1 videocassette (23 min.) : sd., col. ; 1/2 in. + 1 teacher's guide (5 p. ; 19 cm.)

Title The Palestinian-Israeli accord
Author Corzine, Phyllis, 1943-
Publisher San Diego, CA : Lucent Books, c1997.
Description 112 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.

Title Anwar el-Sadat : Middle East peacemaker
Author Rosen, Deborah Nodler.
Publisher Chicago : Childrens Press, c1986.
Description 152 p. : ill., maps, ports. ; 21 cm.

Title
Leap of faith : memoirs of an unexpected life

Author
Noor, Queen, consort of Hussein, King of Jordan, 1951-

Edition
1st ed.

Publisher
New York : Miramax Books, c2003.

Description
xi, 467 p., [16] p. of plates : ill. (some col.) ; 24 cm.

Title Leap of faith [sound recording] : [memoirs of an unexpected life]
Author Noor, Queen, consort of Hussein, King of Jordan, 1951-
Edition Unabridged.
Publisher Auburn, CA : The Audio Partners Publishing Corp., p2003.
Description 13 sound discs (996 min.) : digital ; 4 3/4 in.

Title
The blood of Abraham : insights into the Middle East

Author
Carter, Jimmy, 1924-

Edition
New ed.

Publisher
Fayetteville : University of Arkansas Press, 1993.

Description
xxv, 243 p. : maps ; 22 cm

Title
Talking peace : a vision for the next generation

Author
Carter, Jimmy, 1924-

Edition
1st ed.

Publisher
New York : Dutton Children's Books, 1993.

Description
xv, 192 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.

Bibliography/Youth oriented materials
For the Women to Women for Peace visit to Waupaca, WI October 22-25, 2007
The Women are speaking to the student body of Waupaca High School
Wednesday, October 24 @ 1:00 PM

The following references are available through the Waupaca Library. Each book/video/CD or DVD is available through the OWLS library network. This is a partial list. If you wish to find more information, you will need to access the library computers.

Title The Palestinians
Author Sharp, Anne Wallace.
Publisher Detroit : Lucent Books Thomson/Gale, c2005.

Title Understanding the Holy Land : answering questions about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
Author Frank, Mitch.
Publisher New York : Viking Children's Books, 2005.
Description 152 p. : ill., maps ; 25 cm.

Title Human rights in the Middle East
Author Stewart, Gail, 1949-
Publisher Detroit : Lucent Books, c2005.
Description 112 p. : ill., maps ; 24 cm

Title The Arab-Israeli conflict
Author Miller, Debra A.
Publisher San Diego, Calif. : Lucent Books, c2005.
Description 112 p. : ill., maps ; 24 cm.

Title The Middle East : opposing viewpoints
Publisher San Diego, CA : Greenhaven Press, 2004.
Description 203 p. : ill., maps ; 23 cm.

Title
The Arab-Israeli conflict

Publisher
Farmington Hills, Mich. : Greenhaven Press ; San Diego [Calif.] : Thomson/Gale, c2004.

Description
160 p. : map ; 24 cm.

Title We just want to live here : a Palestinian teenager, an Israeli teenager : an unlikely friendship
Author Rifa'i, Amal.
Edition 1st U.S. ed.
Publisher New York : St. Martin's Griffin, c2003.
Description xx, 154 p. : maps ; 18 cm

Title Palestine
Author Sacco, Joe.
Publisher Seattle, WA : Fantagraphics Books, 2003, c2001.
Description vi, 285 p. : chiefly ill. ; 28 cm.

Title
The Middle East [videorecording]

Publisher
Wynnewood, PA : Schlessinger Video Productions, c2001.

Description
1 videocassette (23 min.) : sd., col. ; 1/2 in. + 1 teacher's guide (5 p. ; 19 cm.)

Title Youth in the Middle East : voices of despair
Author Abodaher, David J.
Publisher New York : F. Watts, 1990.
Description 111 p. : ill., map ; 24 cm

Title
Talking peace : a vision for the next generation

Author
Carter, Jimmy, 1924-

Edition
1st ed.

Publisher
New York : Dutton Children's Books, 1993.

Description
xv, 192 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.

Contributed by Mary Naylor, mother of two Iraq War veterans

2007-02-19T09:34:00.000-08:00

Message from sender: It is heartbreaking but I need everyone to understand what our soldiers are going through. Thanks, Mary

The Hotel Aftermath
Inside Mologne House, the Survivors of War Wrestle With Military Bureaucracy and Personal Demons

By Anne Hull and Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, February 19, 2007; A01

The guests of Mologne House have been blown up, shot, crushed and shaken, and now their convalescence takes place among the chandeliers and wingback chairs of the 200-room hotel on the grounds of Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Oil paintings hang in the lobby of this strange outpost in the war on terrorism, where combat's urgency has been replaced by a trickling fountain in the garden courtyard. The maimed and the newly legless sit in wheelchairs next to a pond, watching goldfish turn lazily through the water.

But the wounded of Mologne House are still soldiers -- Hooah! -- so their lives are ruled by platoon sergeants. Each morning they must rise at dawn for formation, though many are half-snowed on pain meds and sleeping pills.

In Room 323 the alarm goes off at 5 a.m., but Cpl. Dell McLeod slumbers on. His wife, Annette, gets up and fixes him a bowl of instant oatmeal before going over to the massive figure curled in the bed. An Army counselor taught her that a soldier back from war can wake up swinging, so she approaches from behind.

"Dell," Annette says, tapping her husband. "Dell, get in the shower."

"Dell!" she shouts.

Finally, the yawning hulk sits up in bed. "Okay, baby," he says. An American flag T-shirt is stretched over his chest. He reaches for his dog tags, still the devoted soldier of 19 years, though his life as a warrior has become a paradox. One day he's led on stage at a Toby Keith concert with dozens of other wounded Operation Iraqi Freedom troops from Mologne House, and the next he's sitting in a cluttered cubbyhole at Walter Reed, fighting the Army for every penny of his disability.

McLeod, 41, has lived at Mologne House for a year while the Army figures out what to do with him. He worked in textile and steel mills in rural South Carolina before deploying. Now he takes 23 pills a day, prescribed by various doctors at Walter Reed. Crowds frighten him. He is too anxious to drive. When panic strikes, a soldier friend named Oscar takes him to Baskin-Robbins for vanilla ice cream.

"They find ways to soothe each other," Annette says.

Mostly what the soldiers do together is wait: for appointments, evaluations, signatures and lost paperwork to be found. It's like another wife told Annette McLeod: "If Iraq don't kill you, Walter Reed will."

After Iraq, a New Struggle

The conflict in Iraq has hatched a virtual town of desperation and dysfunction, clinging to the pilings of Walter Reed. The wounded are socked away for months and years in random buildings and barracks in and around this military post.

The luckiest stay at Mologne House, a four-story hotel on a grassy slope behind the hospital. Mologne House opened 10 years ago as a short-term lodging facility for military personnel, retirees and their family members. Then came Sept. 11 and five years of sustained warfare. Now, the silver walkers of retired generals convalescing from hip surgery have been replaced by prosthetics propped against Xbox games and Jessica Simpson posters smiling down on brain-rattled grunts.

Two Washington Post reporters spent hundreds of hours in Mologne House documenting the intimate struggles of the wounded who live there. The reporting was done without the knowledge or permission of Walter Reed officials, but all those directly quoted in this article agreed to be interviewed.

The hotel is built in the Georgian revival style, and inside it offers the usual amenities: daily maid service, front-desk clerks in formal vests and a bar off the lobby that opens every afternoon.

But at this bar, the soldier who orders a vodka tonic one night says to the bartender, "If I had two hands, I'd order two." The customers sitting around the tables are missing limbs, their ears are melted off, and their faces are tattooed purple by shrapnel patterns.

Most everyone has a story about the day they blew up: the sucking silence before immolation, how the mouth filled with tar, the lungs with gas.

"First thing I said was, '[Expletive], that was my good eye,' " a soldier with an eye patch tells an amputee in the bar.

The amputee peels his beer label. "I was awake through the whole thing," he says. "It was my first patrol. The second [expletive] day in Iraq and I get blown up."

When a smooth-cheeked soldier with no legs orders a fried chicken dinner and two bottles of grape soda to go, a kitchen worker comes out to his wheelchair and gently places the Styrofoam container on his lap.

A scrawny young soldier sits alone in his wheelchair at a nearby table, his eyes closed and his chin dropped to his chest, an empty Corona bottle in front of him.

Those who aren't old enough to buy a drink at the bar huddle outside near a magnolia tree and smoke cigarettes. Wearing hoodies and furry bedroom slippers, they look like kids at summer camp who've crept out of their rooms, except some have empty pants legs or limbs pinned by medieval-looking hardware. Medication is a favorite topic.

"Dude, [expletive] Paxil saved my life."

"I been on methadone for a year, I'm tryin' to get off it."

"I didn't take my Seroquel last night and I had nightmares of charred bodies, burned crispy like campfire marshmallows."

Mologne House is afloat on a river of painkillers and antipsychotic drugs. One night, a strapping young infantryman loses it with a woman who is high on her son's painkillers. "Quit taking all the soldier medicine!" he screams.

Pill bottles clutter the nightstands: pills for depression or insomnia, to stop nightmares and pain, to calm the nerves.

Here at Hotel Aftermath, a crash of dishes in the cafeteria can induce seizures in the combat-addled. If a taxi arrives and the driver looks Middle Eastern, soldiers refuse to get in. Even among the gazebos and tranquility of the Walter Reed campus in upper Northwest Washington, manhole covers are sidestepped for fear of bombs and rooftops are scanned for snipers.

Bomb blasts are the most common cause of injury in Iraq, and nearly 60 percent of the blast victims also suffer from traumatic brain injury, according to Walter Reed's studies, which explains why some at Mologne House wander the hallways trying to remember their room numbers.

Some soldiers and Marines have been here for 18 months or longer. Doctor's appointments and evaluations are routinely dragged out and difficult to get. A board of physicians must review hundreds of pages of medical records to determine whether a soldier is fit to return to duty. If not, the Physical Evaluation Board must decide whether to assign a rating for disability compensation. For many, this is the start of a new and bitter battle.

Months roll by and life becomes a blue-and-gold hotel room where the bathroom mirror shows the naked disfigurement of war's ravages. There are toys in the lobby of Mologne House because children live here. Domestic disputes occur because wives or girlfriends have moved here. Financial tensions are palpable. After her husband's traumatic injury insurance policy came in, one wife cleared out with the money. Older National Guard members worry about the jobs they can no longer perform back home.

While Mologne House has a full bar, there is not one counselor or psychologist assigned there to assist soldiers and families in crisis -- an idea proposed by Walter Reed social workers but rejected by the military command that runs the post.

After a while, the bizarre becomes routine. On Friday nights, antiwar protesters stand outside the gates of Walter Reed holding signs that say "Love Troops, Hate War, Bring them Home Now." Inside the gates, doctors in white coats wait at the hospital entrance for the incoming bus full of newly wounded soldiers who've just landed at Andrews Air Force Base.

And set back from the gate, up on a hill, Mologne House, with a bowl of red apples on the front desk.

Into the Twilight Zone

Dell McLeod's injury was utterly banal. He was in his 10th month of deployment with the 178th Field Artillery Regiment of the South Carolina National Guard near the Iraqi border when he was smashed in the head by a steel cargo door of an 18-wheeler. The hinges of the door had been tied together with a plastic hamburger-bun bag. Dell was knocked out cold and cracked several vertebrae.

When Annette learned that he was being shipped to Walter Reed, she took a leave from her job on the assembly line at Stanley Tools and packed the car. The Army would pay her $64 a day to help care for her husband and would let her live with him at Mologne House until he recovered.

A year later, they are still camped out in the twilight zone. Dogs are periodically brought in by the Army to search the rooms for contraband or weapons. When the fire alarm goes off, the amputees who live on the upper floors are scooped up and carried down the stairwell, while a brigade of mothers passes down the wheelchairs. One morning Annette opens her door and is told to stay in the room because a soldier down the hall has overdosed.

In between, there are picnics at the home of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a charity-funded dinner cruise on the Potomac for "Today's troops, tomorrow's veterans, always heroes."

Dell and Annette's weekdays are spent making the rounds of medical appointments, physical therapy sessions and evaluations for Dell's discharge from the Army. After 19 years, he is no longer fit for service. He uses a cane to walk. He is unable to count out change in the hospital cafeteria. He takes four Percocets a day for pain and has gained 40 pounds from medication and inactivity. Lumbering and blue-eyed, Dell is a big ox baby.

Annette puts on makeup every morning and does her hair, some semblance of normalcy, but her new job in life is watching Dell.

"I'm worried about how he's gonna fit into society," she says one night, as Dell wanders down the hall to the laundry room.

The more immediate worry concerns his disability rating. Army doctors are disputing that Dell's head injury was the cause of his mental impairment. One report says that he was slow in high school and that his cognitive problems could be linked to his native intelligence rather than to his injury.

"They said, 'Well, he was in Title I math,' like he was retarded," Annette says. "Well, y'all took him, didn't you?"

The same fight is being waged by their friends, who aren't the young warriors in Army posters but middle-age men who left factory jobs to deploy to Iraq with their Guard units. They were fit enough for war, but now they are facing teams of Army doctors scrutinizing their injuries for signs of preexisting conditions, lessening their chance for disability benefits.

Dell and Annette's closest friend at Mologne House is a 47-year-old Guard member who was driving an Army vehicle through the Iraqi night when a flash of light blinded him and he crashed into a ditch with an eight-foot drop. Among his many injuries was a broken foot that didn't heal properly. Army doctors decided that "late life atrophy" was responsible for the foot, not the truck wreck in Iraq.

When Dell sees his medical records, he explodes. "Special ed is for the mentally retarded, and I'm not mentally retarded, right, babe?" he asks Annette. "I graduated from high school. I did some college. I worked in a steel mill."

It's after 9 one night and Dell and Annette are both exhausted, but Dell still needs to practice using voice-recognition software. Reluctantly, he mutes "The Ultimate Fighting Challenge" on TV and sits next to Annette in bed with a laptop.

"My name is Wendell," he says. "Wendell Woodward McLeod Jr."

Annette tells him to sit up. "Spell 'dog,' " she says, softly.

"Spell 'dog,' " he repeats.

"Listen to me," she says.

"Listen to me." He slumps on the pillow. His eyes drift toward the wrestlers on TV.

"You are not working hard enough, Dell," Annette says, pleading. "Wake up."

"Wake up," he says.

"Dell, come on now!"

For Some, a Grim Kind of Fame

No one questions Sgt. Bryan Anderson's sacrifice. One floor above Dell and Annette's room at Mologne House, he holds the gruesome honor of being one of the war's five triple amputees. Bryan, 25, lost both legs and his left arm when a roadside bomb exploded next to the Humvee he was driving with the 411th Military Police Company. Modern medicine saved him and now he's the pride of the prosthetics team at Walter Reed. Tenacious and wisecracking, he wrote "[Expletive] Iraq" on his left leg socket.

Amputees are the first to receive celebrity visitors, job offers and extravagant trips, but Bryan is in a league of his own. Johnny Depp's people want to hook up in London or Paris. The actor Gary Sinise, who played an angry Vietnam amputee in "Forrest Gump," sends his regards. And Esquire magazine is setting up a photo shoot.

Bryan's room at Mologne House is stuffed with gifts from corporate America and private citizens: $350 Bose noise-canceling headphones, nearly a thousand DVDs sent by well-wishers and quilts made by church grannies. The door prizes of war. Two flesh-colored legs are stacked on the floor. A computerized hand sprouting blond hair is on the table.

One Saturday afternoon, Bryan is on his bed downloading music. Without his prosthetics, he weighs less than 100 pounds. "Mom, what time is our plane?" he asks his mother, Janet Waswo, who lives in the room with him. A movie company is flying them to Boston for the premiere of a documentary about amputee hand-cyclers in which Bryan appears.

Representing the indomitable spirit of the American warrior sometimes becomes too much, and Bryan turns off his phone.

Perks and stardom do not come to every amputee. Sgt. David Thomas, a gunner with the Tennessee National Guard, spent his first three months at Walter Reed with no decent clothes; medics in Samarra had cut off his uniform. Heavily drugged, missing one leg and suffering from traumatic brain injury, David, 42, was finally told by a physical therapist to go to the Red Cross office, where he was given a T-shirt and sweat pants. He was awarded a Purple Heart but had no underwear.

David tangled with Walter Reed's image machine when he wanted to attend a ceremony for a fellow amputee, a Mexican national who was being granted U.S. citizenship by President Bush. A case worker quizzed him about what he would wear. It was summer, so David said shorts. The case manager said the media would be there and shorts were not advisable because the amputees would be seated in the front row.

" 'Are you telling me that I can't go to the ceremony 'cause I'm an amputee?' " David recalled asking. "She said, 'No, I'm saying you need to wear pants.' "

David told the case worker, "I'm not ashamed of what I did, and y'all shouldn't be neither." When the guest list came out for the ceremony, his name was not on it.

Still, for all its careful choreography of the amputees, Walter Reed offers protection from a staring world. On warm nights at the picnic tables behind Mologne House, someone fires up the barbecue grill and someone else makes a beer run to Georgia Avenue.

Bryan Anderson is out here one Friday. "Hey, Bry, what time should we leave in the morning?" asks his best friend, a female soldier also injured in Iraq. The next day is Veterans Day, and Bryan wants to go to Arlington National Cemetery. His pal Gary Sinise will be there, and Bryan wants to give him a signed photo.

Thousands of spectators are already at Arlington the next morning when Bryan and his friend join the surge toward the ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknowns. The sunshine dazzles. Bryan is in his wheelchair. If loss and sacrifice are theoretical to some on this day, here is living proof -- three stumps and a crooked boyish smile. Even the acres of tombstones can't compete. Spectators cut their eyes toward him and look away.

Suddenly, the thunder of cannons shakes the sky. The last time Bryan heard this sound, his legs were severed and he was nearly bleeding to death in a fiery Humvee.

Boom. Boom. Boom. Bryan pushes his wheelchair harder, trying to get away from the noise. "Damn it," he says, "when are they gonna stop?"

Bryan's friend walks off by herself and holds her head. The cannon thunder has unglued her, too, and she is crying.

Friends From Ward 54

An old friend comes to visit Dell and Annette. Sgt. Oscar Fernandez spent 14 months at Walter Reed after having a heart attack in Afghanistan. Oscar also had post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD, a condition that worsened at Walter Reed and landed the 45-year-old soldier in the hospital's psychiatric unit, Ward 54.

Oscar belonged to a tight-knit group of soldiers who were dealing with combat stress and other psychological issues. They would hang out in each other's rooms at night, venting their fury at the Army's Cuckoo's Nest. On weekends they escaped Walter Reed to a Chinese buffet or went shopping for bootleg Spanish DVDs in nearby Takoma Park. They once made a road trip to a casino near the New Jersey border.

They abided each other's frailties. Sgt. Steve Justi would get the slightest cut on his skin and drop to his knees, his face full of anguish, apologizing over and over. For what, Oscar did not know. Steve was the college boy who went to Iraq, and Oscar figured something terrible had happened over there.

Sgt. Mike Smith was the insomniac. He'd stay up till 2 or 3 in the morning, smoking on the back porch by himself. Doctors had put steel rods in his neck after a truck accident in Iraq. To turn his head, the 41-year-old Guard member from Iowa had to rotate his entire body. He was fighting with the Army over his disability rating, too, and in frustration had recently called a congressional investigator for help.

"They try in all their power to have you get well, but it reverses itself," Oscar liked to say.

Dell was not a psych patient, but he and Oscar bonded. They were an unlikely pair -- the dark-haired Cuban American with a penchant for polo shirts and salsa, and the molasses earnestness of Dell.

Oscar would say things like "I'm trying to better myself through my own recognizance," and Dell would nod in appreciation.

To celebrate Oscar's return visit to Walter Reed, they decide to have dinner in Silver Spring.

Annette tells Oscar that a soldier was arrested at Walter Reed for waving a gun around.

"A soldier, coming from war?" Oscar asks.

Annette doesn't know. She mentions that another soldier was kicked out of Mologne House for selling his painkillers.

The talk turns to their friend Steve Justi. A few days earlier, Steve was discharged from the Army and given a zero percent disability rating for his mental condition.

Oscar is visibly angry. "They gave him nothing," he says. "They said his bipolar was preexisting."

Annette is quiet. "Poor Steve," she says.

After dinner, they return through the gates of Walter Reed in Annette's car, a John 3:16 decal on the bumper and the Dixie Chicks in the CD player. Annette sees a flier in the lobby of Mologne House announcing a free trip to see Toby Keith in concert.

A week later, it is a wonderful night at the Nissan Pavilion. About 70 wounded soldiers from Walter Reed attend the show. Toby invites them up on stage and brings the house down when he sings his monster wartime hit "American Soldier." Dell stands on stage in his uniform while Annette snaps pictures.

"Give a hand clap for the soldiers," Annette hears Toby tell the audience, "then give a hand for the U.S.A."

A Soldier Snaps

Deep into deer-hunting country and fields of withered corn, past the Pennsylvania Turnpike in the rural town of Ellwood City, Steve Justi sits in his parents' living room, fighting off the afternoon's lethargy.

A photo on a shelf shows a chiseled soldier, but the one in the chair is 35 pounds heavier. Antipsychotic drugs give him tremors and cloud his mind. Still, he is deliberate and thoughtful as he explains his path from soldier to psychiatric patient in the war on terrorism.

After receiving a history degree from Mercyhurst College, Steve was motivated by the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to join the National Guard. He landed in Iraq in 2003 with the First Battalion, 107th Field Artillery, helping the Marines in Fallujah.

"It was just the normal stuff," Steve says, describing the violence he witnessed in Iraq. His voice is oddly flat as he recalls the day his friend died in a Humvee accident. The friend was driving with another soldier when they flipped off the road into a swamp. They were trapped upside down and submerged. Steve helped pull them out and gave CPR, but it was too late. The swamp water kept pushing back into his own mouth. He rode in the helicopter with the wet bodies.

After he finished his tour, everything was fine back home in Pennsylvania for about 10 months, and then a strange bout of insomnia started. After four days without sleep, he burst into full-out mania and was hospitalized in restraints.

Did anything trigger the insomnia? "Not really," Steve says calmly, sitting in his chair.

His mother overhears this from the kitchen and comes into the living room. "His sergeant had called saying that the unit was looking for volunteers to go back to Iraq," Cindy Justi says. "This is what triggered his snap."

Steve woke up in the psychiatric unit at Walter Reed and spent the next six months going back and forth between there and a room at Mologne House. He was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. He denied to doctors that he was suffering from PTSD, yet he called home once from Ward 54 and shouted into the phone, "Mom, can't you hear all the shooting in the background?"

He was on the ward for the sixth time when he was notified that he was being discharged from the Army, with only a few days to clear out and a disability rating of zero percent.

On some level, Steve expected the zero rating. During his senior year of college, he suffered a nervous breakdown and for several months was treated with antidepressants. He disclosed this to the National Guard recruiter, who said it was a nonissue. It became an issue when he told doctors at Walter Reed. The Army decided that his condition was not aggravated by his time in Iraq. The only help he would get would come from Veterans Affairs.

"We have no idea if what he endured over there had a worsening effect on him," says his mother.

His father gets home from the office. Ron Justi sits on the couch across from his son. "He was okay to sacrifice his body, but now that it's time he needs some help, they are not here," Ron says.

Outside the Gates

The Army gives Dell McLeod a discharge date. His days at Mologne House are numbered. The cramped hotel room has become home, and now he is afraid to leave it. His anxiety worsens. "Shut up!" he screams at Annette one night, his face red with rage, when she tells him to stop fiddling with his wedding ring.

Later, Annette says: "I am exhausted. He doesn't understand that I've been fighting the Army."

Doctors have concluded that Dell was slow as a child and that his head injury on the Iraqi border did not cause brain damage. "It is possible that pre-morbid emotional difficulties and/or pre-morbid intellectual functioning may be contributing factors to his reported symptoms," a doctor wrote, withholding a diagnosis of traumatic brain injury.

Annette pushes for more brain testing and gets nowhere until someone gives her the name of a staffer for the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. A few days later, Annette is called to a meeting with the command at Walter Reed. Dell is given a higher disability rating than expected -- 50 percent, which means he will receive half of his base pay until he is evaluated again in 18 months. He signs the papers.

Dell wears his uniform for the last time, somber and careful as he dresses for formation. Annette packs up the room and loads their Chevy Cavalier to the brim. Finally the gates of Walter Reed are behind them. They are southbound on I-95 just past the Virginia line when Dell begins to cry, Annette would later recall. She pulls over and they both weep.

Not long after, Bryan Anderson also leaves Mologne House. When the triple amputee gets off the plane in Chicago, American Airlines greets him on the tarmac with hoses spraying arches of water, and cheering citizens line the roads that lead to his home town, Rolling Meadows.

Bryan makes the January cover of Esquire. He is wearing his beat-up cargo shorts and an Army T-shirt, legless and holding his Purple Heart in his robot hand. The headline says "The Meaning of Life."

A month after Bryan leaves, Mike Smith, the insomniac soldier, is found dead in his room. Mike had just received the good news that the Army was raising his disability rating after a congressional staff member intervened on his behalf. It was the week before Christmas, and he was set to leave Walter Reed to go home to his wife and kids in Iowa when his body was found. The Army told his wife that he died of an apparent heart attack, according to her father.

Distraught, Oscar Fernandez calls Dell and Annette in South Carolina with the news. "It's the constant assault of the Army," he says.

Life with Dell is worsening. He can't be left alone. The closest VA hospital is two hours away. Doctors say he has liver problems because of all the medications. He is also being examined for PTSD. "I don't even know this man anymore," Annette says.

At Mologne House, the rooms empty and fill, empty and fill. The lobby chandelier glows and the bowl of red apples waits on the front desk. An announcement goes up for Texas Hold 'Em poker in the bar.

One cold night an exhausted mother with two suitcases tied together with rope shows up at the front desk and says, "I am here for my son." And so it begins.

Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

How the Jews and Secularists Did Not Steal Christmas

2006-12-18T07:12:00.000-08:00

by Rabbi Michael Lerner
Submitted to PFP by Bonni Miller

"Our most effective path is to acknowledge what is legitimate in the Christians' concern -- and lead it into a powerful spiritual critique of the ethos of selfishness and materialism fostered by our economic arrangements. It's time for our liberal and progressive Christian leaders and neighbors to stand up again on behalf of Jews and on behalf of their own highest spiritual vision..."

Some leaders of the Christian Right have decided to make an issue of the secularization of Christmas. Objecting to the move by Macy's and some other retailers to wish their shoppers "Happy Holidays" or "Season's Greetings," instead of the traditional Merry Christmas, they accuse secularists in general, and, on some of the right-wing talk shows, Jews in particular, of undermining Christmas.

The assault has been led by Bill O'Reilly, the most popular cable newscaster, who told millions of viewers that there was a systematic assault on Christmas by secularists. When challenged by a Jewish caller who said he felt uncomfortable being subject to frequent attempts to convert him by Christians at his college, O'Reilly responded: "All right. Well, what I'm tellin' you is, I think you're takin' it too seriously. You have a predominantly Christian nation. You have a federal holiday based on the philosopher Jesus. And you don't wanna hear about it? Come on -- if you are really offended, you gotta go to Israel then.''

I told O'Reilly that my grandfather didn't come here from Russia to be in a "Christian country," but rather in a country that welcomes many different faith traditions and officially privileges none.

Meanwhile, Richard Viguerie, the master of right-wing direct-mail campaigns, interviewed by Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air, repeated the charge that Christians were the victims of a systematic secularists assault against Christmas. On MSNBC, William Donahue of the Catholic League insisted, "Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular. It's not a secret, OK? They like to see the public square without nativity scenes."

Liberals and civil libertarians would be making a huge mistake to see this as merely the rantings of a few overt anti-Semites and anti-civil-liberties extremists. They articulate a legitimate concern that many Christians say privately: their children have learned that Christmas is about buying -- and the person with the most expensive gifts wins!

There is a beautiful spiritual message underlying Christmas that has universal appeal: the hope that gets reborn in moments of despair, the light that gets re-lit in the darkest moments of the year, is beautifully symbolized by the story of a child born of a teenage homeless mother who had to give birth in a manger because no one would give her shelter, and escaping the cruelty of Roman imperial rule and its local surrogate Herod, who already knew that such a child would grow up to challenge the entire imperialist system. To celebrate that vulnerable child as a symbol of hope that eventually the weak would triumph over the rule of the arrogant and powerful is a spiritual celebration with strong analogies to our Jewish Hannukah celebration, which also celebrates the victory of the weak over the powerful, and the triumph of hope (symbolized by the Hannukah candles) over fear and the darkness of oppression (both ancient and contemporary). Many other spiritual traditions around the world have similar celebrations at this time of year around the winter equinox. The loss of this message, its subversion into a frenetic orgy of consumption, rightly disturbs Christians, Jews and other people of faith.

Yet, this transformation is not a result of Jewish parents wanting to protect their children from being forced to sing Christmas carols in public school, or secularists sending Season's Greeting cards. It derives, instead, from the power of the capitalist marketplace, operating through television, movies and marketers, to drum into everyone's mind the notion that the only way to be a decent human being at this time of year is to buy and buy more. Thus, the altruistic instinct to give, which could take the form of giving of our time, our skills and our loving energies to people we care about, gets transformed and subverted into a competitive frenzy of consumption.

Not surprisingly, the Christian Right is unwilling to challenge the capitalist marketplace -- because their uncritical support for corporate power is precisely what they had to offer the Right to become part of the conservative coalition. Their loyalty to conservative capitalist economics trumps for them their commitment to serving God. But for those of us who want to prevent a new surge of anti-Semitism and assaults on the First Amendment, our most effective path is to acknowledge what is legitimate in the Christians' concern -- and lead it into a powerful spiritual critique of the ethos of selfishness and materialism fostered by our economic arrangements. It's time for our liberal and progressive Christian leaders and neighbors to stand up again on behalf of Jews and on behalf of their own highest spiritual vision -- and challenge the real Christmas and Hannukah thieves! Meanwhile, the rest of us can consciously resist by giving gifts of time rather than gifts of things. Give your friends a certificate saying "I'll give you five hours to do ... " and then fill in the blanks with something that they might need that you could offer. Teach their child a skill or help that child with homework? Paint part of their home or fix a leaky pipe or mow their lawns or shovel their snow or give child-care time or do food shopping? Sharing your time could be far more meaningful, allow for real contact, etc. For those with whom you don't want that contact, don't buy -- just send them a lovingly written personal note affirming the values you want this season to teach. Resist the pressure to join the orgy of consumption!

Rabbi Michael Lerner is editor of Tikkun Magazine, www.Tikkun.org, and national chair of the Network of Spiritual Progressives www.spiritualprogressives.org

Art Becomes Yet Another Victim of War

2006-12-14T06:45:00.000-08:00

Published on Wednesday, December 13, 2006 by USA Today
Submitted to WPFP by Bonni Miller

Several Lebanese artists lost their works during the Israeli bombardment of Lebanon. Though the loss of innocents during fighting rightfully garners the most attention, the loss of fine art also can have lasting effects on a society and its culture.

by Souheila Al-Jadda

Youssef Ghazawi, a prominent Lebanese abstract artist, was preparing to hold an exhibit showcasing 25 years of his life's works when the war between Israel and Lebanon suddenly erupted on July 12.

Three weeks later, Israeli missiles landed on his home and studio, destroying almost all of his paintings, mosaics, sketches and thousands of books. His wife, Suzanne Chakaroun, also an artist, lost many of her works as well.

A dozen of the most prominent Lebanese artists, and possibly more, reportedly lost their works in the Israeli bombardment of Lebanon this summer. Their numbers might be small, but the loss of such artworks can have lasting effects on Lebanese society and culture. As in Iraq and other war zones, the nation's identity falls victim to violence, sometimes to be replaced with a new, wounded culture that carries the resentments of past conflicts. "This war was very hard on us," Ghazawi said in a telephone interview from Beirut. He has had artworks destroyed in conflicts three times during his lifetime. "I couldn't save them this time."

Rising Lebanese artist Nour Ballouk also lost her home (left) in Nabatiya and eight of her paintings inside during the war. Her workshop was severely damaged. Ballouk believes this war was partly aimed at erasing Lebanon's Arab and Lebanese identity by igniting divisions in the country along sectarian, religious and political lines. Such divisions have recently become more pronounced with the assassination of Lebanese Minister of Industry Pierre Gemayel, violent sectarian clashes, and current political demonstrations in Beirut aimed at toppling the government.

"But it won't work because we, the Lebanese people, are strong. We will resist," she said in a phone interview. To protest the war, Ballouk recently held an exhibition of all of her paintings, including the damaged ones.

Art, as a testimony of history, offers a perception of truth for current and future generations to learn from and admire. With the destruction of these testaments, windows into a particular society and people as well as connections to the past are irreversibly erased.

"I will not stop painting," Ballouk said. "Rather than paint about peace, I will be painting about war, showing what happened in Lebanon."

Ballouk's resolve to portray Lebanese history through the arts reminded me of first lady Dolley Madison's determination to keep American art history alive during the British-American war of 1812. In 1814, before British troops set fire to the White House, she saved the famed Gilbert Stuart portrait of President George Washington from destruction by ordering it removed from the frame and brought to safety.

Museums of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., the Halls of Congress and the White House walls are all lined with similar paintings depicting U.S. history. First lady Madison must have understood the priceless value of the arts to a nation's heritage.

Worth more than money

Paintings by famed artists can be worth millions of dollars, such as Vincent Van Gogh's The Starry Night or one of Wassily Kandinsky's Compositions. An estimated $100 million worth of artworks were lost in the Sept. 11 attacks. But no dollar amount can be assigned to the loss of a nation's qualitative cultural and social identity.

How does one quantify the loss to Iraqi civilization after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, when art galleries and museums housing ancient artifacts and paintings were looted or destroyed?

How does one enumerate the damage to the collective conscience of the Palestinian people after Israeli forces raided the Palestinian Ministry of Culture and the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center in 2002, destroying and defacing art pieces and artifacts?

Human spirit endures

Conflicts can destroy relics of history, but they cannot destroy the human spirit to create a better future on the foundations of an often troubled past.

Saeed, a Palestinian farmer in the Gaza Strip, collects and paints the shrapnel from the hundreds of Israeli missiles that have landed in his fields, turning tools of war into instruments of peace. "We should not be depressed by living among the weapons of death around us," he told Egypt's Nile TV. "Instead, we decided to use them as toys for children and artwork. ... So we started painting the missiles."

Perhaps to begin the process of national healing in Iraq, one prominent Iraqi artist, Qasim Sabti, opened his gallery in Baghdad for artists to exhibit their renditions of the Abu Ghraib scandal through sculptures and paintings.

In September, in a southern suburb of Beirut, under tents and atop the rubble of bombed-out buildings, artists showcased their creative works that were inspired by the Israeli-Lebanese war.

Several Lebanese music artists, such as Julia Boutros, composed songs about the war. Boutros released a single and music video, entitled My Loved Ones. The song's lyrics were adapted from a speech made by Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah to Lebanese resistance fighters during the war.

Peace the only compensation

I asked Ghazawi how Lebanese artists should be compensated for their lost works. "My works can never be recovered for future generations to see," Ghazawi said. "My only compensation will be that there is real peace here."

But achieving peace might take years, even decades. For now, an international donors' conference is scheduled for January in Paris, where representatives from countries throughout the world will meet to pledge funds to assist Lebanon's development and reconstruction. Consideration must be given to artists such as Ghazawi and Ballouk to help them recover some of what they've lost.

Such compensation will never bring back any of the destroyed works, but perhaps it could bring some consolation to the art community in Lebanon and the heritage of the Lebanese people.

Souheila Al-Jadda is associate producer of a Peabody award-winning show, Mosaic: World News from the Middle East, on Link TV. She's also a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors.

© Copyright 2006 USA TODAY

Message from Tricia Henneman

2006-12-06T06:44:00.000-08:00

To PFP. We just watched Farenheit 911 and it is a recommend. I think we need to leave Iraq even though it seems cruel to not rebuild. Why? Because I think we will only bring in another U. S. led cruel puppet (Shite?) dictator and another war and its better to let the masses in Iraq do leadership self determination no matter how difficult. Apparently Bush is talking to Syria and Iran about support for a united Iraq and letting the Shites know the Sunnis need rights. Hats off to the new ideas and projects with PFP. Many people are tired of war and learned a hard lesson. The 'soccer moms' afraid of terrorism are now wondering where the gas money is coming from and how to heat the house this winter. A new referendum on limiting divorce is in the works from the Fundy's. Can we get a peace referendum? Peace to all, Tricia

Letter from Michael Moore

2006-11-26T07:00:00.000-08:00

Forwarded to us by Larry Craig:

Cut and Run, the Only Brave Thing to Do

Sunday, November 26th, 2006

Friends,
Tomorrow marks the day that we will have been in Iraq longer than we were in
all of World War II.
That's right. We were able to defeat all of Nazi Germany, Mussolini, and the
entire Japanese empire in LESS time than it's taken the world's only
superpower to secure the road from the airport to downtown Baghdad.
And we haven't even done THAT. After 1,347 days, in the same time it took us
to took us to sweep across North Africa, storm the beaches of Italy, conquer
the South Pacific, and liberate all of Western Europe, we cannot, after over 3
and 1/2 years, even take over a single highway and protect ourselves from a
homemade device of two tin cans placed in a pothole. No wonder the cab fare
from the airport into Baghdad is now running around $35,000 for the 25-minute
ride. And that doesn't even include a friggin' helmet.
Is this utter failure the fault of our troops? Hardly. That's because no
amount of troops or choppers or democracy shot out of the barrel of a gun is
ever going to "win" the war in Iraq. It is a lost war, lost because it never
had a right to be won, lost because it was started by men who have never been
to war, men who hide behind others sent to fight and die.
Let's listen to what the Iraqi people are saying, according to a recent poll
conducted by the University of Maryland:
** 71% of all Iraqis now want the U.S. out of Iraq.
** 61% of all Iraqis SUPPORT insurgent attacks on U.S. troops.
Yes, the vast majority of Iraqi citizens believe that our soldiers should be
killed and maimed! So what the hell are we still doing there? Talk about not
getting the hint.
There are many ways to liberate a country. Usually the residents of that
country rise up and liberate themselves. That's how we did it. You can also do
it through nonviolent, mass civil disobedience. That's how India did it. You
can get the world to boycott a regime until they are so ostracized they
capitulate. That's how South Africa did it. Or you can just wait them out and,
sooner or later, the king's legions simply leave (sometimes just because
they're too cold). That's how Canada did it.
The one way that DOESN'T work is to invade a country and tell the people,
"We are here to liberate you!" -- when they have done NOTHING to liberate
themselves. Where were all the suicide bombers when Saddam was oppressing
them? Where were the insurgents planting bombs along the roadside as the
evildoer Saddam's convoy passed them by? I guess ol' Saddam was a cruel despot
-- but not cruel enough for thousands to risk their necks. "Oh no, Mike, they
couldn't do that! Saddam would have had them killed!" Really? You don't think
King George had any of the colonial insurgents killed? You don't think Patrick
Henry or Tom Paine were afraid? That didn't stop them. When tens of thousands
aren't willing to shed their own blood to remove a dictator, that should be
the first clue that they aren't going to be willing participants when you
decide you're going to do the liberating for them.
A country can HELP another people overthrow a tyrant (that's what the French
did for us in our revolution), but after you help them, you leave.
Immediately. The French didn't stay and tell us how to set up our government.
They didn't say, "we're not leaving because we want your natural resources."
They left us to our own devices and it took us six years before we had an
election. And then we had a bloody civil war. That's what happens, and history
is full of these examples. The French didn't say, "Oh, we better stay in
America, otherwise they're going to kill each other over that slavery issue!"

The only way a war of liberation has a chance of succeeding is if the
oppressed people being liberated have their own citizens behind them -- and a
group of Washingtons, Jeffersons, Franklins, Ghandis and Mandellas leading
them. Where are these beacons of liberty in Iraq? This is a joke and it's been
a joke since the beginning. Yes, the joke's been on us, but with 655,000
Iraqis now dead as a result of our invasion (source: Johns Hopkins
University), I guess the cruel joke is on them. At least they've been
liberated, permanently.
So I don't want to hear another word about sending more troops (wake up,
America, John McCain is bonkers), or "redeploying" them, or waiting four
months to begin the "phase-out." There is only one solution and it is this:
Leave. Now. Start tonight. Get out of there as fast as we can. As much as
people of good heart and conscience don't want to believe this, as much as it
kills us to accept defeat, there is nothing we can do to undo the damage we
have done. What's happened has happened. If you were to drive drunk down the
road and you killed a child, there would be nothing you could do to bring that
child back to life. If you invade and destroy a country, plunging it into a
civil war, there isn't much you can do 'til the smoke settles and blood is
mopped up. Then maybe you can atone for the atrocity you have committed and
help the living come back to a better life.
The Soviet Union got out of Afghanistan in 36 weeks. They did so and
suffered hardly any losses as they left. They realized the mistake they had
made and removed their troops. A civil war ensued. The bad guys won. Later, we
overthrew the bad guys and everybody lived happily ever after. See! It all
works out in the end!
The responsibility to end this war now falls upon the Democrats. Congress
controls the purse strings and the Constitution says only Congress can declare
war. Mr. Reid and Ms. Pelosi now hold the power to put an end to this madness.
Failure to do so will bring the wrath of the voters. We aren't kidding around,
Democrats, and if you don't believe us, just go ahead and continue this war
another month. We will fight you harder than we did the Republicans. The
opening page of my website has a photo of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, each
made up by a collage of photos of the American soldiers who have died in
Bush's War. But it is now about to become the Bush/Democratic Party War unless
swift action is taken.
This is what we demand:
1. Bring the troops home now. Not six months from now. NOW. Quit looking for
a way to win. We can't win. We've lost. Sometimes you lose. This is one of
those times. Be brave and admit it.
2. Apologize to our soldiers and make amends. Tell them we are sorry they
were used to fight a war that had NOTHING to do with our national security. We
must commit to taking care of them so that they suffer as little as possible.
The mentally and physically maimed must get the best care and significant
financial compensation. The families of the deceased deserve the biggest
apology and they must be taken care of for the rest of their lives.
3. We must atone for the atrocity we have perpetuated on the people of Iraq.
There are few evils worse than waging a war based on a lie, invading another
country because you want what they have buried under the ground. Now many more
will die. Their blood is on our hands, regardless for whom we voted. If you
pay taxes, you have contributed to the three billion dollars a week now being
spent to drive Iraq into the hellhole it's become. When the civil war is over,
we will have to help rebuild Iraq. We can receive no redemption until we have
atoned.
In closing, there is one final thing I know. We Americans are better than
what has been done in our name. A majority of us were upset and angry after
9/11 and we lost our minds. We didn't think straight and we never looked at a
map. Because we are kept stupid through our pathetic education system and our
lazy media, we knew nothing of history. We didn't know that WE were the ones
funding and arming Saddam for many years, including those when he massacred
the Kurds. He was our guy. We didn't know what a Sunni or a Shiite was, never
even heard the words. Eighty percent of our young adults (according to
National Geographic) were not able to find Iraq on the map. Our leaders played
off our stupidity, manipulated us with lies, and scared us to death.
But at our core we are a good people. We may be slow learners, but that
"Mission Accomplished" banner struck us as odd, and soon we began to ask some
questions. Then we began to get smart. By this past November 7th, we got mad
and tried to right our wrongs. The majority now know the truth. The majority
now feel a deep sadness and guilt and a hope that somehow we can make make it
all right again.
Unfortunately, we can't. So we will accept the consequences of our actions
and do our best to be there should the Iraqi people ever dare to seek our help
in the future. We ask for their forgiveness.
We demand the Democrats listen to us and get out of Iraq now.
Yours,
Michael Moore
www.michaelmoore.com
mmflint@aol.com

Poem by Agaila

2006-09-03T11:47:00.000-07:00

[editor's note: Agaila is a young woman from the Western Sahara who lived most if not all of her life in a refugee camp. She was given relief by Waupaca native Jon Peterson who arranged to have her brought to the U.S. to study.]

Saharawi Child

Saharawi child, take hold of a paper and pencil

and learn literature, math and science.

Saharawi child, sit closely by your elders

and listen carefully to the wisdom; this is the way which in the

future will come to your rescue.

Saharawi child, have your mind open to understanding.

Let wisdom be your best friend.

Let wisdom be your professor.

Let wisdom be your Father your Mother and your Brother.

Let wisdom embrace you; its path will never let you down.

Saharawi child, open your eyes to the world around you;

choose your friends wisely, let every choice be guided

by a good counsellor.

Saharawi child, take advantage of every opportunity

wherever you go, but don’t forgot your principles, language or

culture, or that you are “Saharawi!”

Saharawi child, accept every nation, every race and

every language and the door of blessing will be opened to your

house and to your nation. (Western Sahara)

Saharawi child, don’t be afraid of making mistakes or

be afraid of correction because that is where the lesson is and that is when

you will learn who you are, because you are valuable.

Saharawi child, share your seat with justice and reconciliation that

you may become the turban of peace.

Saharawi child, let the truth be the foundation of your dignity.

It will let your light shine and will build the walls of your generation and your nation.

Saharawi child, be independent!

Be strong

Be humble

Be kind

Be patient

Be honest

Be joyful

Be just

Be trustworthy

Be righteous

Be generous

Be diligent

Be faithful

and the favor of life will always be yours!

Saharawi child, listen, learn, grow, laugh, teach, forgive, love, share, trust, heal, hope,

dream, sing and dance; do this and you will never lose your smile.

This Poem is dedicated to all the Saharawi children, especially the children who lost their fathers in the war for the freedom of Western Sahara. Our nation depends on all of you.

Agaila Abba Hemeida

Student in the United States

America's Blinders

2006-09-03T11:19:00.000-07:00

Submitted by Larry Craig

By Howard Zinn
The Progressive
April 2006 Issue

Now that most Americans no longer believe in the war, now that they no longer
trust Bush and his Administration, now that the evidence of deception has
become overwhelming (so overwhelming that even the major media, always late,
have begun to register indignation), we might ask: How come so many people
were so easily fooled?

The question is important because it might help us understand why
Americans--members of the media as well as the ordinary citizen--rushed to
declare their support as the President was sending troops halfway around the
world to Iraq.

A small example of the innocence (or obsequiousness, to be more exact) of the
press is the way it reacted to Colin Powell's presentation in February 2003 to
the Security Council, a month before the invasion, a speech which may have set
a record for the number of falsehoods told in one talk. In it, Powell
confidently rattled off his "evidence": satellite photographs, audio records,
reports from informants, with precise statistics on how many gallons of this
and that existed for chemical warfare. The New York Times was breathless with
admiration. The Washington Post editorial was titled "Irrefutable" and
declared that after Powell's talk "it is hard to imagine how anyone could
doubt that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction."

It seems to me there are two reasons, which go deep into our national culture,
and which help explain the vulnerability of the press and of the citizenry to
outrageous lies whose consequences bring death to tens of thousands of people.
If we can understand those reasons, we can guard ourselves better against
being deceived.

One is in the dimension of time, that is, an absence of historical
perspective. The other is in the dimension of space, that is, an inability to
think outside the boundaries of nationalism. We are penned in by the arrogant
idea that this country is the center of the universe, exceptionally virtuous,
admirable, superior.

If we don't know history, then we are ready meat for carnivorous politicians
and the intellectuals and journalists who supply the carving knives. I am not
speaking of the history we learned in school, a history subservient to our
political leaders, from the much-admired Founding Fathers to the Presidents of
recent years. I mean a history which is honest about the past. If we don't
know that history, then any President can stand up to the battery of
microphones, declare that we must go to war, and we will have no basis for
challenging him. He will say that the nation is in danger, that democracy and
liberty are at stake, and that we must therefore send ships and planes to
destroy our new enemy, and we will have no reason to disbelieve him.

But if we know some history, if we know how many times Presidents have made
similar declarations to the country, and how they turned out to be lies, we
will not be fooled. Although some of us may pride ourselves that we were never
fooled, we still might accept as our civic duty the responsibility to buttress
our fellow citizens against the mendacity of our high officials.

We would remind whoever we can that President Polk lied to the nation about
the reason for going to war with Mexico in 1846. It wasn't that Mexico "shed
American blood upon the American soil," but that Polk, and the slave-owning
aristocracy, coveted half of Mexico.

We would point out that President McKinley lied in 1898 about the reason for
invading Cuba, saying we wanted to liberate the Cubans from Spanish control,
but the truth is that we really wanted Spain out of Cuba so that the island
could be open to United Fruit and other American corporations. He also lied
about the reasons for our war in the Philippines, claiming we only wanted to
"civilize" the Filipinos, while the real reason was to own a valuable piece of
real estate in the far Pacific, even if we had to kill hundreds of thousands
of Filipinos to accomplish that.

President Woodrow Wilson--so often characterized in our history books as an
"idealist"--lied about the reasons for entering the First World War, saying it
was a war to "make the world safe for democracy," when it was really a war to
make the world safe for the Western imperial powers.

Harry Truman lied when he said the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima
because it was "a military target."

Everyone lied about Vietnam--Kennedy about the extent of our involvement,
Johnson about the Gulf of Tonkin, Nixon about the secret bombing of Cambodia,
all of them claiming it was to keep South Vietnam free of communism, but
really wanting to keep South Vietnam as an American outpost at the edge of the
Asian continent.

Reagan lied about the invasion of Grenada, claiming falsely that it was a
threat to the United States.

The elder Bush lied about the invasion of Panama, leading to the death of
thousands of ordinary citizens in that country.

And he lied again about the reason for attacking Iraq in 1991--hardly to
defend the integrity of Kuwait (can one imagine Bush heartstricken over Iraq's
taking of
Kuwait?), rather to assert U.S. power in the oil-rich Middle East.

Given the overwhelming record of lies told to justify wars, how could anyone
listening to the younger Bush believe him as he laid out the reasons for
invading Iraq? Would we not instinctively rebel against the sacrifice of lives
for oil?

A careful reading of history might give us another safeguard against being
deceived. It would make clear that there has always been, and is today, a
profound conflict of interest between the government and the people of the
United States. This thought startles most people, because it goes against
everything we have been taught.

We have been led to believe that, from the beginning, as our Founding Fathers
put it in the Preamble to the Constitution, it was "we the people" who
established the new government after the Revolution. When the eminent
historian Charles Beard suggested, a hundred years ago, that the Constitution
represented not the working people, not the slaves, but the slaveholders, the
merchants, the bondholders, he became the object of an indignant editorial in
The New York Times.

Our culture demands, in its very language, that we accept a commonality of
interest binding all of us to one another. We mustn't talk about classes. Only
Marxists do that, although James Madison, "Father of the Constitution," said,
thirty years before Marx was born that there was an inevitable conflict in
society between those who had property and those who did not.

Our present leaders are not so candid. They bombard us with phrases like
"national interest," "national security," and "national defense" as if all of
these concepts applied equally to all of us, colored or white, rich or poor,
as if General Motors and Halliburton have the same interests as the rest of
us, as if George Bush has the same interest as the young man or woman he sends
to war.

Surely, in the history of lies told to the population, this is the biggest
lie. In the history of secrets, withheld from the American people, this is the
biggest secret: that there are classes with different interests in this
country. To ignore that--not to know that the history of our country is a
history of slaveowner against slave, landlord against tenant, corporation
against worker, rich against poor--is to render us helpless before all the
lesser lies told to us by people in power.

If we as citizens start out with an understanding that these people up
there--the President, the Congress, the Supreme Court, all those institutions
pretending to be "checks and balances"--do not have our interests at heart, we
are on a course towards the truth. Not to know that is to make us helpless
before determined liars.

The deeply ingrained belief--no, not from birth but from the educational
system and from our culture in general--that the United States is an
especially virtuous nation makes us especially vulnerable to government
deception. It starts early, in the first grade, when we are compelled to
"pledge allegiance" (before we even know what that means), forced to proclaim
that we are a nation with "liberty and justice for all."

And then come the countless ceremonies, whether at the ballpark or elsewhere,
where we are expected to stand and bow our heads during the singing of the
"Star-Spangled Banner," announcing that we are "the land of the free and the
home of the brave." There is also the unofficial national anthem "God Bless
America," and you are looked on with suspicion if you ask why we would expect
God to single out this one nation--just 5 percent of the world's
population--for his or her blessing.
If your starting point for evaluating the world around you is the firm belief
that this nation is somehow endowed by Providence with unique qualities that
make it morally superior to every other nation on Earth, then you are not
likely to question the President when he says we are sending our troops here
or there, or bombing this or that, in order to spread our values--democracy,
liberty, and let's not forget free enterprise--to some God-forsaken
(literally) place in the world.
It becomes necessary then, if we are going to protect ourselves and our fellow
citizens against policies that will be disastrous not only for other people
but for Americans too, that we face some facts that disturb the idea of a
uniquely virtuous nation.

These facts are embarrassing, but must be faced if we are to be honest. We
must face our long history of ethnic cleansing, in which millions of Indians
were driven off their land by means of massacres and forced evacuations. And
our long history, still not behind us, of slavery, segregation, and racism. We
must face our record of imperial conquest, in the Caribbean and in the
Pacific, our shameful wars against small countries a tenth our size: Vietnam,
Grenada, Panama, Afghanistan, Iraq. And the lingering memory of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. It is not a history of which we can be proud.

Our leaders have taken it for granted, and planted that belief in the minds of
many people, that we are entitled, because of our moral superiority, to
dominate the world. At the end of World War II, Henry Luce, with an arrogance
appropriate to the owner of Time, Life, and Fortune, pronounced this "the
American century," saying that victory in the war gave the United States the
right "to exert upon the world the full impact of our influence, for such
purposes as we see fit and by such means as we see fit."

Both the Republican and Democratic parties have embraced this notion. George
Bush, in his Inaugural Address on January 20, 2005, said that spreading
liberty around the world was "the calling of our time." Years before that, in
1993, President Bill Clinton, speaking at a West Point commencement, declared:
"The values you learned here . . . will be able to spread throughout this
country and throughout the world and give other people the opportunity to live
as you have lived, to fulfill your God-given capacities."

What is the idea of our moral superiority based on? Surely not on our behavior
toward people in other parts of the world. Is it based on how well people in
the United States live? The World Health Organization in 2000 ranked countries
in terms of overall health performance, and the United States was
thirty-seventh on the list, though it spends more per capita for health care
than any other nation. One of five children in this, the richest country in
the world, is born in poverty. There are more than forty countries that have
better records on infant mortality. Cuba does better. And there is a sure sign
of sickness in society when we lead the world in the number of people in
prison--more than two million.

A more honest estimate of ourselves as a nation would prepare us all for the
next barrage of lies that will accompany the next proposal to inflict our
power on some other part of the world. It might also inspire us to create a
different history for ourselves, by taking our country away from the liars and
killers who govern it, and by rejecting nationalist arrogance, so that we can
join the rest of the human race in the common cause of peace and justice.

Howard Zinn is the co-author, with Anthony Arnove, of "Voices of a People's
History of the United States."

_______________________________________________________

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Raging Grannies

2006-04-19T07:32:00.000-07:00

Grandmothers of Invention
Older is bitter—when it comes to the war in Iraq. A peek inside the granny-power movement.

by Kristen Lombardi
April 18th, 2006 11:36 AM
from the Village Voice

Grannies hold court at their weekly vigil outside Rockefeller Center.

Two weeks before going to trial in Manhattan Criminal Court for disorderly conduct, Joan Wile was stirring things up again. The founder of Grandmothers Against the War—better known for being one of 18 grandmas who got arrested last October after trying to enter the Times Square Recruitment Office—Wile had just taken center stage at a recent luncheon for 1199/SEIU retirees.

Dozens of retired union members, most grandma types themselves, had come to hear Wile speak about the plight of the New York anti-war grannies, who face prosecution this week. But Wile, a former TV jingles writer, didn't do much talking. Instead, she seized a piano, tickling the keys and belting out a tune.

"Grandmas, get offa your tush," she sang, her glasses perched on her nose so she could read the lyrics she'd written for her own anthem to anti-war grand-mothers. "We've got to go after Bush."

"That's right!" someone yelled, instantly lightening the mood. The retirees stomped their feet and clapped their hands to the snappy beat. Wile, meanwhile, let loose:

Grandmas, let's unite
While we are still upright
Let's protest that parasite
Watch out! We've just begun to fiiiiiiiiiight!

At 74, Wile still moved like a spring chicken, working the crowd, winning converts. The room erupted in applause, with audience members calling for an encore. Instead, Wile announced her next gig.

"We're going to trial on April 20," she told her newfound fans, who listened as she relayed how she and her 17 aging colleagues tried to enlist on October 17. How they were arrested and hauled off to jail. How the Manhattan district attorney's office has yet to drop their disorderly- conduct charges.

"We would like to pack the courtroom," she added, "so if you can come, please do."

One person requested a flyer so she could remember the date. Another asked if she should wear her union T-shirt to court. And from the back of the room came this show of support: "I'm with you! See you there!"

It's the kind of response that Wile and friends have become accustomed to these days. City prosecutors may think it's worth pressing their case against 18 gray-haired women who range in age from 50 to 91. But the eclectic bunch—women accomplished in their own right, who've worked as counselors, teachers, actresses, politicians, and therapists, and who still keep busy with all kinds of activism—has already triumphed in some quarters.

Wile is savvy enough to know how the word grandma plays in the court of public opinion—indeed, she has even encouraged the New York anti-war grannies to hand out cookies on the street. She first got the idea to organize older women against the Iraq war back in the fall of 2003, when the death toll among U.S. troops and Iraqi citizens began rising. "Grandmother struck me as a powerful word," she says, thinking that someone seen as wise, nurturing, and loving could appeal to people's consciences like no one else. So, as Wile explains, "I thought that to see grandmothers on the street would impress people with the gravity of the situation."

At the very least, the anti-war grandmas are getting noticed in ways that younger protesters aren't. On a recent Wednesday afternoon, some 20 Grandmothers Against the War stood on Fifth Avenue outside of Rockefeller Center, where they gather for a weekly vigil. They displayed the standard messages—the signs that read, "Thousands of Iraqi children are victims of this war," the pins that said, "Bush lies." They shouted the standard lines—"Bring the troops home now!" Plenty of passersby didn't give the grandmas the time of day. But plenty of others did. Tourists snapped photographs of them. Shoppers stopped and stared. Even those who support the war were nonplussed. One middle-aged man walked along the vigil line, shaking his head but smiling as he told the grandmas, "God bless you! I disagree with you, but God bless you for getting out here."

These grandmothers may be filling a void in the anti-war movement. Jonathan Zimmerman, a professor of U.S. history at New York University, notes that campuses have yet to become the epicenter of the anti-war scene as they did during the Vietnam War. One reason is obvious. "The draft created an imminent and urgent reason for young people to protest the Vietnam War," Zimmerman says. Most of his students oppose the war, he says, but none of them are in danger of being sent to Iraq or even know people who are there now.

The Granny Peace Brigade, as the 18 grannies now call themselves, has captured attention far beyond New York, generating buzz on the Internet, on progressive websites and political listservs. Media outlets have covered the grannies with fawning fascination, playing up the images of little old ladies clutching their walkers and hanging onto their flowered hats, flanked by beefy cops. Carol Huston, a veteran peace activist and granny brigade member, tried to enlist at the Times Square recruiting center to protest the Iraq war three years ago. Not one reporter showed up. This time, as she puts it, "the press went nuts over us like I've never seen before and all of a sudden—zoom!—this action takes off."

Similar granny groups have popped up across the country, staging their own protests at military recruiting centers, fueling the larger anti-war movement. Now there are as many as 38 anti-war granny groups in the United States, from Pittsburgh to Detroit, Berkeley to Sarasota. Just last month, three of the New York grandmas flew to Berlin, where they gave speeches to hundreds of people on why they've hit the streets to protest the Iraq war.

Canadian filmmaker Magnus Isacsson calls the trend "granny power." At least, that's the title of his current documentary, which will feature the local grandmas on trial. "It's an idea that spreads like a contagion," he says.

But the idea isn't new—indeed, Isacsson focuses his film on the Canada-born Raging Grannies, a decades-old grassroots group promoting peace and social justice. Likewise, the Grandmothers for Peace have existed for 24 years, boasting members all over the world, including in New York.

Still, it didn't take hold in this country until last July, when a feisty bunch of grandmas in Tucson, Arizona, arrived at a local recruitment center. The Tucson Raging Grannies had been marching outside the center since the start of the Iraq war. But they took a different tack on July 13. Inspired by their Canadian counterparts, eight grannies marched into the facility and demanded to enlist.

"We read our statement of how we want to change the world," Pat Birnie, 76, the head granny, recalls. She and her colleagues were promptly arrested. The charges were later dropped, but not before the grannies made international headlines.

When Wile, a Manhattan grandma of five, heard about the Tucson event, she grew inspired. By then, she had formed Grandmothers Against the War and had organized the Rockefeller Center vigils. Yet the attempted enlistment seemed fresh, provocative, the kind of protest the average person would notice.

"It was obviously the thing to do," says Corrine Willinger, 78, a local Raging Granny who heard about Tucson through the grapevine and who attended Wile's vigils.

Willinger and Wile got cracking, sending out word to the Gray Panthers, the Raging Grannies, and Code Pink, calling any activist in their Rolodexes. To grandmas all over, they made their pitch to enlist, thus symbolizing a desire to spare kids—their grandkids—from a senseless war. It wasn't an especially tough sell.

"I said, 'Sure, see you there,' " recounts Marie Runyon, the oldest of the New York brigade at 91. Runyon is legally blind and walks with two canes, yet she trekked from Harlem to Times Square. "I thought it was a great idea to get the message through to that son of a bitch in the White House," she explains. "Our men are dying and the Iraqi people are dying and for what—for that idiot Bush!"

Betty Brassell, 76, of the Lower East Side, decided to shuffle uptown with her walker after spotting a leaflet on the enlistment. She didn't know the grandmas who would become her fellow defendants. Simply put, she says in a soft Southern lilt, "the flyer said Grandmothers Against the War and I'm strongly against this war."

By October 17, 18 grandmas had committed to enlist. They convened in Times Square across the street from the recruiting center, where they met their attorney, veteran New York civil liberties lawyer Norman Siegel, who was serving as a witness, not to mention dozens of senior supporters draped in "RAGING GRANNIES" signs and signature floppy hats.

When the anti-war grannies approached the station, the door was locked. No one appeared inside, though Wile says she saw someone peek from behind a desk. Evidently, the military had foiled the grannies' plan, so they improvised what occurred next. "I was so angry," Runyon recalls with a chuckle, "I started banging on the door, singing, 'If I had a hammmerrrr!' "

The grandmas took over a building ramp near the station door and, one by one, crouched to the ground. "That was the hardest part," Wile confides, "all these old, beat-up broads with arthritic problems getting down on the ground."

Eventually, a police officer warned the grannies to disperse or face arrest. Minutes later, a half-dozen cops were gingerly escorting them to a midtown precinct, where the grandmas remained for four hours.

For the granny brigade, the entire action lasted six hours. Their court proceedings, by contrast, have dragged on for six months. City prosecutors tried to offer the grannies a plea—no arrests for six months and the charges would be dropped. But these anti-war protesters didn't want to stay silent and off the streets. In court, Siegel has tried to argue for dismissal, to no avail.

"I never thought we would go to trial," Siegel observes. After all, he has represented thousands of peaceful demonstrators who, like the grannies, cooperated with the police. He argues that the 18 grandmas didn't do anything illegal—they sat outside the recruiting center, he notes, not in the street or in front of the doorway. In these instances, he says, things rarely make it this far.

"I don't know why the district attorney's office is prosecuting grandmothers," he adds.

Calls by the Voice to the Manhattan D.A.'s office were not returned by press time. In any event, these grandmas are having a whale of a time, using the trial as a chance to highlight their continued opposition to the war. Many have already prepared statements to read to reporters, friends, and anyone else who will listen to them during breaks. They've sent out a flurry of alerts to allies in attempts to pack the courtroom, even securing a promise from Cindy Sheehan to be there.

"I'm not too worried about the trial," Wile says confidently.

Jail time doesn't faze some of the more experienced types. Huston, 74, of Brooklyn, has decided she'd rather spend time behind bars than accept any other form of punishment—such as community service or a $250 fine.

"Oh hell!" says Runyon. "I would go to jail if I had to just to make the goddamn point! You've got to make a statement."

Of course, the New York grannies have done more than make a statement. They've sparked something of a movement. When Marjorie Lasky, 66, of Berkeley, read the headlines about the local grannies, she recalls, "I said to myself and to a group of women friends, 'We could do this.' "

By November, she and dozens of other grandmas had formed the Bay Area Grandmothers Against the War, in honor of their New York counterparts. By February, they had designated Valentine's Day a national enlistment action day, prompting 15 anti-war granny groups to try to enlist in 15 cities from Oakland to Cleveland and Baltimore to Barre, Vermont. Last Monday, the Bay Area group spearheaded another action around tax day, with anti-war grannies hitting the streets in Philadelphia, Madison, Detroit, and naturally, New York City.

"Our numbers are growing," Lasky says. Her group has plans to host a national gathering of anti-war granny groups some day. "Cool, huh?" Lasky enthuses. "Isn't it cool?"

So why are all these little old ladies taking to the streets? Simple, says NYU's Zimmerman. "These grandmothers come out of a political context in which vivid and loud protest was the norm," he notes. Ask the grannies, and they will likely tell you that they took to the streets to end the Vietnam War and segregation and a myriad of other causes that defined the 1960s and '70s. By contrast, Zimmerman says, "it seems to me that young people haven't engaged in that kind of mass protest. It isn't part of their political experience."

Maybe that's why the 18 members of the Granny Peace Brigade remind their own lawyer of the good old protest days. As Siegel has it, "The grannies remind me of the whole 'We Shall Overcome' movement. They're very positive and upbeat and warm. Recently in New York, I have not found that spirit."

Nominate Dan Naylor for Progressive Patriot Fund Support

2005-12-05T08:46:00.000-08:00

Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold has organized the Progressive Patriots Fund to support likeminded candidates in races around the country. I have nominated Dan Naylor, local candidate in the 40th assembly district race, for support from that fund and encourage all those who also support Dan to go the website and submit your own nomination for him. In the current selection round, whichever candidate receives the most votes gets $5000. I'm sure that money would go a long way in Dan's campaign.

So please, take a minute, say nice things about Dan, and maybe help get him some funds.

Cheers,
Bonni Miller

Questions and answers about war toys

2005-12-05T07:48:00.000-08:00

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ABOUT WAR TOYS

by Kate Donnelly, War Resisters League

These are ten questions and comments we often hear when speaking about war toys or violence in cartoons. There are no right or wrong answers; these represent one person's opinions.

1. I played with guns as a child and I grew up to be ok.

I answer this comment in three different ways:

a) War toys have changed quantitatively and qualitatively since many of us were children. Kids no longer have just a gun or a few toy soldiers. They own arsenals of weapons backed up with scenarios from cartoons. They show realistic people fighting out good and evil. There is no room for negotiation, cooperation or creative problem solving. Scenarios are often racist and sexist and expose children to incredible violence. Even if your own children don't watch the cartoons they can read about the characters on the packaging of the toys, and they quickly learn is from kids who do watch. When children play with these war toys there is little positive creativity.

b) You may have turned out ok, but our society is extremely violent. Children growing up in a warm loving environment with people who discuss the issues of violence and war may be able to overcome the influence of war toys and cartoons in their lives. Unfortunately we don't live in a society where most kids have that kind of childhood. We need to take societal responsibility for violent behavior.

c) I played with guns as a child too, and I consider myself a good person striving to be nonviolent but there is violence within me that is hard to overcome and a temper that sometimes prevents me from seeing a clear solution. The toys I played with as a child did not encourage ways to resolve conflict in a creative, nonviolent way.

2. If kids don't have guns they'll use their fingers, sticks, bananas, etc. to make guns.

The biggest problem I have with buying war toys is that by buying them we are telling our children that we condone them and therefore condone violence and war a solutions to problems. Just because children will use their fingers doesn't mean we have to provide them with the war toys. I wish my children wouldn't make gestures that replicate guns in any way, but I don't stop them unless it involves fighting.

3. Denying children guns and war toys makes a bid deal out of it and it makes them want them more.

Do we allow our children to put their fingers on a hot stove or in a socket or let them smoke or use cocaine because telling them not to will make them want it more? NO! Because our job as parents and teachers is to raise our children in a safe place, teaching them the morals we believe in. If we believe this includes restricting war toys and cartoons then we say no and explain why. They may rebel, they may want them, but, we can only hope they will end up with the values we believe in. We need not make a big deal about war toys to our children which may make it the forbidden fruit, but simply let them know how we feel and why.

4. War toys provide a catharsis for children's anger.

Giving children war toys does not purge them of violence. It often creates or escalates it. Most children do not repress their anger. They are very up-front about it. We need to give them channels to express their anger in helpful ways. I recommend that people whose children play with war toys try an experiment. Play with your children and their friends for awhile with blocks, balls, puzzles, artwork, etc. After awhile introduce guns, GI Joe, etc. and see if the behavior and play changes.

5. How do you channel kids' anger and aggression without giving them these kinds of outlets?

There are many ways of letting a child be angry or use their aggression without hurting or pretending to hurt others. I believe the best way is to build a child's self-esteem and praise them for positive behavior, get to the root of the anger, and try to help your child use words, cooperate and develop creative ways to solve problems. Also, physical play and exercise helps reduce anger and stress. There are many excellent books that deal with these problems. It is important to understand the stages of development in children to help them understand their own anger and changes due to growth.

6. How do I help my child deal with peer pressure to have war toys and watch violent cartoons?

There is so much peer pressure to have lots of kinds of toys. It is important to help you child have a sense of self-worth as a foundation. Then provide them with alternative experiences and toys that they can share with their friends. Above all, talk with them about their feelings and yours. They should understand why they don't have certain things and understand that possessing things is not a good basis for friendship or popularity. Teach them to think for themselves and share examples of the many great people who have done so throughout history. It's not only peer pressure but pressure from advertisers that children must contend with. This can be used as an opportunity for an economics lesson. Your children should know that the first concern of most toy manufacturers is profit, not good toys.

7. How do you handle guns and war toys at home, in school, and with friends?

We do not allow our children to have guns or war toys at home or in school. Also, we avoid Saturday morning cartoons by doing other things with the kids. We do not restrict our kids from playing with other kids' war toys on their turf, but if we see that it is causing fights, we will try to focus them on something else. Often an adult's attention in creating an alternative is all that's needed.

8. I can understand why you oppose guns but what's wrong with Transformers and toys that change into robots?

Transformers and Gobots turn into robots with guns, not just robots. They transform so they can fight. I have no problem with toys that turn into other toys that are not for fighting and I think toy manufacturers should be encouraged to make such toys; some do. The main problem is these toys are backed up by extremely violent cartoon shows. Gobots has 66 acts of violence per hour. Transformers has 61. Even if they miss the cartoons, they learn about them from other kids and the packaging explains the violent nature of the toys, often in graphic detail.

9. Even if we don't give our children war toys, they still play at war with their fingers or other objects-turned-weapon. How should we handle war play?

Nancy Carlsson-Paige and Diane E. Levin add an important dimension to this debate with their book, "The War Play Dilemma: Balancing Needs and Values in the Early Childhood Classroom." The recommend that, rather than forbid war play, parents and teachers should actively take part in it. Help children develop both the quality of their war play and their political understanding of it. One way to do this is to change the negative war scenario children often mimic from television and interject humanity into the "enemy." Change the play in ways that challenge their stereotypes of war and the enemy. It is important to understand the developmental and political issues children are working on in their war play. Talk to them about their feelings and understandings of weapons and war play outside of the playtime itself.

10. When there are so many serious problems in the world, why focus on children's toys?

People who work on the issue of domestic violence often talk about the need to "break the cycle" of violence. Those who are battered become batterers. I believe that is also true on a societal level. Children who are led to believe that violence is condoned through what they see on television or the toys they are given will have no problem accepting violent solutions to their own and the world's problems. Our struggle for peace and justice in the world is a long one and will not be completed in one generation. Children grow up quickly. They reach draft age and voting age. The become the people who make policy and those who allow policies to be made. If we choose to bring children into this world, we must take responsibility for them. Even if we don't have children of our own, we must remember that they will soon be running our world. Helping children to be peaceful, justice-seeking individuals without prejudice is a full-time job but it cannot be done in a vacuum - we must change society's values as we try to raise our children.

A Felon for Peace: A Tomdispatch Interview with Ann Wright

2005-11-17T06:22:00.000-08:00

Contributed by Larry Craig

Tomdispatch Interview: Ann Wright on Service to Country

[Note to Tomdispatch readers: This is the fifth in an ongoing series of
interviews at the site. The most recent of these were: Cindy Sheehan and
Juan Cole (parts 1 and 2). This interview also represents the first follow-up
at the site to Nick Turse's The Fallen Legion: Casualties of the Bush
Administration.]

A Felon for Peace: A Tomdispatch Interview with Ann Wright

She's just off the plane from Tulsa, Oklahoma, the cheapest route back from a
reunion in the little Arkansas town where she grew up in the 1950s. For
thirty years, she and her childhood friends have climbed to the top of
Penitentiary Mountain, where the local persimmon trees grow, for a
persimmon-spitting contest. ("All in the great spirit of just having fun and
being crazy.") She holds out her hands and says, "I probably still have
persimmon goop on me!"

We seat ourselves at a table in my dining room, two small tape recorders
between us. She's dressed all in black with a bright green over-shirt, a
middle-aged blond woman wearing gold earrings and a thin gold necklace. As
she settles in, her sleeves pull back, revealing the jewelry she'd rather talk
about. On her right wrist is a pink, plastic band. "This one was to be a
volunteer in the Astrodome for Hurricane Katrina. I did two days work there,
then three days in Covington, Louisiana, the first week after." On her left
wrist, next to a watch from another age, are two blue plastic bands: "And
this one," she says with growing animation, fingering the nearest of them,
"was my very first arrest of my whole life on September 26th in front of the
White House with 400 of my closest friends. This is the bus number I was on
and this is the arrest number they gave me and then, later on, I had to date
it because now I have two." She fingers the second band. "Last week 26 of !
us were arrested after a die-in right in front of the White House in
commemoration of the two thousandth American and maybe one hundred thousandth
Iraqi who died in this war. So now," she announces, chuckling heartily, "I'm
a felon for peace."

When she speaks -- and in the final g's she drops from words ("It's freezin'
in Mongolia!") -- you can catch just a hint of the drawl of that long-gone
child from Bentonville, Arkansas. In her blunt, straightforward manner, you
can catch something of her 29 years in the Army; and in her ease perhaps, the
16 years she spent as a State Department diplomat. Animated, amused by her
foibles (and those of her interviewer), articulate and thoughtful, she's just
the sort of person you would want to defend -- and then represent -- your
country, a task she continues to perform, after her own fashion, as one of the
more out-of-the-ordinary antiwar activists of our moment.

Last August, she had a large hand in running Camp Casey for Cindy Sheehan at
the President's doorstep in Crawford, Texas; then again, that wasn't such a
feat, given that in 1997 she had overseen the evacuation of 2,500 foreigners
from the war zone that was then Sierra Leone, a harrowing experience for which
she was given the State Department's Award for Heroism. "That's why I joined
the foreign service," she comments, her voice still filled with some residual
excitement from those years. "I wanted to go to places you wouldn't visit on
vacation." In fact, the retired colonel opened and closed embassies from
Africa to Uzbekistan and took some of the roughest diplomatic assignments on
Earth, including the reopening of the American embassy in Kabul in December
2001.

On March 19, 2003, the day before the first Cruise missiles were launched
against Baghdad, she resigned from the Foreign Service in an open letter sent
from the U.S. embassy in Mongolia (where she was then Deputy Chief of Mission)
to Secretary of State Colin Powell. In it she wrote, in part:

"This is the only time in my many years serving America that I have felt I
cannot represent the policies of an Administration of the United States. I
disagree with the Administration's policies on Iraq, the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict, North Korea and curtailment of civil liberties in the U.S. itself. I
believe the Administration's policies are making the world a more dangerous,
not a safer, place. I feel obligated morally and professionally to set out my
very deep and firm concerns on these policies and to resign from government
service as I cannot defend or implement them."

Once used to delivering official U.S. statements to other governments, she
now says things like: "Everyone should have to be handcuffed with the
flexi-cuffs they use now and feel just how unflexible they are, just how they
cut, and then imagine Iraqis, Afghans, and other people we pick up in them 24
hours a day." She relaxes, sits back, awaits the first question, and responds
with gusto.

Tomdispatch: I thought we'd start by talking about two important but quite
different moments in your life. The first was not so long ago. Let me quote
from a New York Times article on a recent Condoleezza Rice appearance before
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "It was a day that echoed the
anguish, anger and skepticism that opinion polls show have begun to dominate
the thinking of Americans. The hearing was punctuated by a heckler who called
for an end to the war, only to be hustled out." Now, I believe this was you.

Ann Wright: [She chuckles.] Yes! Not a heckler, I was a protester.

TD: Tell me about it.

AW: It was as much a protest against the Senators as against Condoleezza
Rice, because they were not holding our Secretary of State responsible. I
picked up the Washington Post that morning and noticed that Condoleezza was
going to testify on Iraq, and I thought, well, I'm free until noon. When I
walked in, I was not planning on doing anything.

But I sat there for two hours and Senators were saying: We've heard the
administration is discussing a military option in Syria and perhaps Iran. The
committee needs to be brought in on this, because we've only given you
authorization for military action in Iraq. In an almost rude, dismissive
tone, the Secretary of State essentially replied: We'll talk to you when we
want to; all options are on the table; and thank you very much. Then the
senators just kind of sat there. It was like: Come on, guys talk! Pin that
woman down! We, the people, want to know. I want to know. And then they
just started off on something else. It was like: No! Come back to this
question. We don't want to go to war in Syria or Iran…

TD: And did you stand up?

AW: So I stood up. I was back in the peanut gallery. I've never done
anything like it before in my whole life. I took a deep breath and went,
"Stop the killing! Stop the war! Hold this woman accountable! You, the
Senate, were bamboozled by the administration on Iraq and you cannot be
bamboozled again! Stop this woman from killing!"

At that point, I ran out of things to say because I hadn't really planned it.
[She laughs.] I was looking around. There was only one police officer and
he was just ambling toward me. It was like he enjoyed what I was saying. I
thought, until he gets here I've got to say something more, so I went: "You
failed us in Iraq, you can't fail us on Syria!" The police office finally
said, "Uh, ma'am, you've got to come with me." This is the first time --
somebody told me later -- anyone's ever seen a protester put her arm around a
police officer. [She laughs.]

TD: So you weren't "hustled" out?

AW: Noooooo. It was a slow walk and there was silence in the room, so I
thought: Well, I can't let this go by and I started another little rant on
the way out. That part wasn't mentioned in the news reports.

TD: At least some papers like the Washington Post mentioned you by name.
The Times merely called you a heckler.

AW: Well, how rude! I wasn't heckling anyway. I was speaking on behalf of
the people of America.

TD: This obviously takes you a long way from your professional life, because
you were in the Foreign Service for…

AW: Sixteen years…

TD: … and in all those years this would have been rather inconceivable.

AW: Having testified at congressional hearings as a Foreign Service officer,
particularly on Somalia issues back in '93 and '94, I was always humbled to go
into those rooms as a government employee. I always found it interesting when
people in the audience stood up to say something. You know, I learned later
that most protestors do it in the first ten minutes because that's when the
cameras and all the reporters are sure to be there.

As it happened, the chairman of the committee declined to have me arrested.
The police officer said, "Well, if you're disappointed, I can arrest you." I
replied, "If you don't mind, I'll just run on over to my lunch appointment."
I was actually on my way to a presentation by Larry Wilkerson, Colin Powell's
former chief of staff, where he would describe the secrecy of the
administration and the way the State Department was isolated by the White
House and the National Security Council.

TD: Another moment of protest, one I'm sure you thought about very
carefully, took place the day before the shock-and-awe campaign against Iraq
began. That day you sent a letter of public resignation to Colin Powell which
began -- and not many people could have written such a sentence -- "When I
last saw you in Kabul in 2002…"

AW: Indeed I had volunteered to go to Kabul, Afghanistan in December 2001 to
be part of a small team that reopened the U.S. embassy. It had been closed
for twelve years. I have a background in opening and closing embassies. I
helped open an embassy in Uzbekistan, closed and reopened an embassy in Sierra
Leone. I've been evacuated from Somalia and Sierra Leone. And with my
military background, I've worked in a lot in combat environments.

I volunteered because I felt the United States needed to respond to the
events of 9/11, and the logical place to go after al-Qaeda was where they
trained, knowing full well that you probably weren't going to get a lot of
people. The al-Qaeda group is very smart and few of them, in my estimation,
would have been hanging out where we were most likely to go after them in
Afghanistan. Actually, I was amazed the administration went in physically. I
thought, like the Clinton administration, they would send in cruise missiles.
Considering the severity of September 11, I guess the military finally said:
Well, it looks like we're going into that hell-hole where the Russians got
their butts whipped. Everybody knew it was going to be tough.

TD: You've commented elsewhere that a crucial moment for you was watching
the President's Axis of Evil State of the Union address from a bunker in
Kabul.

AW: A bunker outside the chancellery building meant to protect against the
rockets the mujahedeen were sending against each other after they defeated the
Soviets. We had taken [then interim leader] Hamid Karzai, who had been
invited to the State of the Union, to Bagram Air Base and sent him off three
days before. We told him, "You've got to start getting together some detailed
plans for economic development funds because the attention of the United
States doesn't stay on any country for long; so, get your little fledgling
cabinet moving fast." Well, the President started talking about other
interests that the United States had after 9/11 and these interests were Iran,
Iraq, and North Korea. Just as he said that, the cameras focused on Karzai
and you could almost see him going: Hmmmm [she mugs a wince], now I know what
they were telling me at the embassy. And we were sitting there thinking, Oh
my God…

TD: You had a functioning TV?

AW: Barely. We had a satellite dish made of pounded-out coke cans -- these
were being sold down in Kabul -- and a computer chip sent in from Islamabad,
because we wanted to hear from Washington what was going to happen with
Afghanistan. When, instead of talking much about Afghanistan, the President
started in on this axis-of-evil stuff we were stunned. We were thinking:
Hell's bells, we're here in a very dangerous place without enough military.
So for the President to start talking about this axis of evil… everyone in
the bunker just went: Oh Christ, here we go! No wonder we're not getting the
economic development specialists in here yet. If the American government was
going after al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, and clearing out the Taliban and
preparing to help the people of Afghanistan, why the hell was it taking so
long? Well, that statement said it all.

TD: Did you at that moment suspect a future invasion of Iraq?

AW: I'm a little naïve sometimes. I really never, ever suspected we would
go to war in Iraq. There was no attempt at that moment to tie 9/11 to Iraq,
so it didn't even dawn on me.

Anyway, that was the preface to my letter of resignation. I wanted to
emphasize that I had seen Colin Powell on his first trip to Kabul. I wanted
to show that this was a person who had lots of experience.

TD: In the whole Vietnam era, few, if any, government officials offered
public resignations of protest, but before the invasion of Iraq even began,
three diplomats -- Brady Kiesling, John Brown, and yourself -- resigned in a
most public fashion. It must have been a wrenching decision.

AW: I had been concerned since September 2002 when I read in the papers that
we had something like 100,000 troops already in the Middle East, many left
behind after the Bright Star [military] exercise we have every two years in
Egypt. I thought: Uh-oh, the administration is doing some sneaky-Pete stuff
on us. They were claiming they wanted UN inspectors to go back into Iraq,
when a military build-up was already underway. It's one thing to put troops
in the region for pressure, but if you're leaving that many behind, you're
going to be using them. Then, as the mushroom-cloud rhetoric started getting
stronger, it was like: Good God! These guys mean to go to war, no matter
what the evidence is.

By November, I was having trouble sleeping. I would wake up at three, four
in the morning -- this was in Mongolia where it was freezing cold -- wrap up
in blankets, go to the kitchen table, and just start pouring my soul out. By
the time I finally sent that resignation letter in, I had a stack of drafts
like this. [She lifts her hand a couple of feet off the table.] I did know
two others had resigned, but quite honestly I hadn't read their letters and I
didn't know them.

TD: You were ending your life in a way, life as you had known it…

AW: Thirty-five years in the government between my military service and the
State Department, under seven administrations. It was hard. I liked
representing America.

TD: Was there a moment when you knew you couldn't represent this government
anymore?

AW: I kept hoping the administration would go back to the Security Council
for its authorization to go to war. That's why I held off until virtually the
bombs were being dropped. I was hoping against hope that our government would
not go into what really is an illegal war of aggression that meets no criteria
of international law. When it was finally evident we were going to do so, I
said to myself: It ain't going to be on my watch.

TD: Was it like crossing a border into a different world?

AW: It was a great relief. During the lead-up to war, I had begun showing
symptoms of an impending heart attack. The State Department put me on a
medivac flight to Singapore for heart tests. The doctors said, "Lady, you're
as strong as a horse. Are you just under some kind of stress?" "Yes, I am!"
The moment I sent in that letter, it was like a great burden had been lifted
from my shoulders. At least I had made my stand and joined the other two who
had resigned.

TD: And what of those you left behind?

AW: In the first couple of days, while I was still in Mongolia, I received
over 400 emails from colleagues in the State Department saying: We're so sad
you're not going to be with us, but we're so proud of the three of you who
resigned because we think this going-to-war is just so horrible; then each one
would describe how anti-American feeling was growing in the country where they
were serving. It was so poignant, all those emails.

TD: Why don't you think more people in the government -- and in the military
where there's clearly been opposition to Iraq at a very high level -- quit and
speak out?

AW: There were a few. [General] Eric Shinseki talked about the
shortchanging of the [Iraq] operations plan by a couple of hundred thousand
people. He was forced out. But see, in the military, in the Foreign Service,
you're not supposed to be speaking your own mind. Your job is to implement
the policies of an administration elected by the people of America. If you
don't want to, your only option is to resign. I understood that and that's
one of the reasons I resigned -- to give myself the freedom to talk out.

There are a lot of people still in government service speaking out, but
you've got to read between the lines. The senior military leaders in Iraq,
what they've been saying is very different from what Donald Rumsfeld and the
gang in Washington say. These guys are being honest and truthful about the
lack of Iraqi battalions really ready for military work, the dangers the
troops are under, the days when the military doesn't go out on the streets.
They're signaling to America: We're up a creek on this one, guys, and you,
the people of America, are going to have to help us out.

TD: …Let's talk about [Colin Powell's chief of staff] Larry Wilkerson as an
example. He assumedly left after the election when Colin Powell did, so
almost a year has passed. He saw what he believed was a secret cabal running
the government and it took him that long after he was gone to tell us about
it. I'm glad he spoke out. But I wonder why there isn't a more urgent
impulse to do so?

AW: If you look at Dick Clarke [the President's former chief adviser on
terrorism on the National Security Council], he had all the secrets from the
very beginning and he retired in January 2003. Yet he didn't say anything for
over a year and a half, until he published that book [Against All Enemies] in
2004. If he had gone public before the war started, that man could have told
us those same secrets right then. So could [the National Security Council's
senior director for combating terrorism] Randy Beers. I worked with both of
them on Somalia, on Sierra Leone. I know these guys personally and it's like:
Guys, why didn't you come forward then?

As you probably know, on the key issues of the first four years of the Bush
administration, the State Department was essentially iced out. I mean, look
at the Iraq War. Colin Powell and the State Department were just shoved aside
and all State's functions put into the Department of Defense. Tragically,
Colin Powell, who was trying to counsel Donald Rumsfeld behind the scenes that
there weren't enough troops in Iraq, never stood up to say, "Hold it, guys,
I'll resign if we don't get this under control so that logical functions go in
logical organizations and you, the Defense Department, don't do post-combat
civil reconstruction stuff. That's ours." He just didn't do it. To me, he
was more loyal to the Bush family than he was to the country. His resignation
was possibly the one thing that could have deterred the war. Then the people
of America would really have looked closely at what was going on. But
tragically he decided loyalty to the administration was more valuabl!
e than loyalty to the country. I mean, it breaks my heart to say that, but
it's what really happened.

TD: So what is it that actually holds people back?

AW: I think the higher up you go, the more common it is for people to
retire, or maybe even resign, and not say what the reasons are, because they
may hope to get back into government in a different administration. Dick
Clarke had served every administration since George Washington and maybe he
was looking toward being called back as a political appointee again.
Sometimes such people don't speak out because they feel loyalty to the person
who appointed them. Nobody appointed me to nothin', except the American
people. I'm a career foreign service officer and I serve the American people.
When an administration wasn't serving the best interests of the American
people, I felt I had to stand up.

TD: And are you now pretty much a full-time antiwar activist?

AW: [She laughs.] That's the way it's turned out.

TD: What, if anything, do you think your military career, your State
Department career, and this… well, I can't call it a career… have in
common?

AW: Service to America. It's all just a continuation of a real concern I
have about my country.

TD: And what would you say to your former compatriots still in the military
and the State Department?

AW: Many of the emails I received from Foreign Service officers said, I wish
I could resign right now, but I've got kids in college, I've got mortgages,
and I'm going to try really hard, by staying, to ameliorate the intensity of
these policies. All I can say is that they must be in agony about not being
able to affect policy. There have been plenty of early retirements by people
who finally realized they couldn't moderate the policies of the Bush
administration.

TD: What message would you send to the person you once were from the person
you are now?

AW: You trained me well.

TD: If in this room you had the thirty-five year-old woman about to go into
Grenada, as you did back in 1983, what would you want her to mull over.

AW: I would say: You were a good Army officer and Foreign Service officer.
You weren't blind to the faults of America. In many jobs, you tried to
rectify things that were going badly and you succeeded a couple of times. My
resignation wasn't the first time I spoke out. For instance, I was loaned, or
seconded, from the State Department to the staff of the United Nations
operation in Somalia and ended up writing a memo concerning the military
operations the UN was conducting to kill a warlord named Addid. They started
taking helicopters, standing off, and just blowing up buildings where they had
intelligence indicating perhaps he was there. Well, tragically he never was,
and here we were blowing up all these Somali families. Of course the Somalis
were outraged and that outrage ultimately led to Blackhawk Down.

I wrote a legal opinion to the special representative of the Secretary
General, saying the UN operations were illegal and had to stop. It was leaked
to the Washington Post and I got in a bit of hot water initially, but
ultimately my analysis proved correct. I was also a bit of a rabble-rouser on
the utilization of women in the military back in the eighties, part of a small
group of women who took on the Army when it was trying to reduce the career
potentials of women. I ended up getting right in the thick of some major
problems which ultimately cost the Army millions of dollars in the
reassessment of units that had been given incorrect direct-combat probability
codings. I was also part of a team which discovered that some of our troops
had been looting private homes in Grenada. The Army court-martialed a lot of
our soldiers for this violation of the law of land warfare. We used their
example in rewriting how you teach the code of conduct and, actually, the
Geneva!
Convention on the responsibility of occupiers.

TD: You know a good deal about the obligations of an occupying power to
protect public and private property, partially because in the 1980s you were
doing planning on the Middle East, right?

AW: Yes, from 1982 to 1984, I was at Fort Bragg, North Carolina when the Army
was planning for potential operations using the Rapid Deployment Force -- what
ultimately became the Central Command. One of the first forces used in rapid
deployment operations was the 82 Airborne at Fort Bragg. I was in the special
operations end of it with civil affairs. Those are the people who write up
the annexes to operations plans about how you interact with the civilian
population, how you protect the facilities --sewage, water, electrical grids,
libraries. We were doing it for the whole Middle East. I mean, we have
operations plans on the shelf for every country in the world, or virtually.
So we did one on Iraq; we did one on Syria; on Jordan, Egypt. All of them.

We would, for instance, take the UNESCO list of treasures of the world and go
through it. Okay, any in Iraq? Yep. Okay, mark ‘em, circle ‘em on a map,
put ‘em in the op-plan. Whatever you do, don't bomb this. Make sure we've
got enough troops to protect this. It's our obligation under the law of land
warfare. We'd be circling all the electrical grids, all the oil grids, all
the museums. So for us to go into Iraq and let all that looting happen.
Well, Rumsfeld wanted a light, mobile force, and screw the obligations of
treaties. Typical of this administration on any treaty thing. Forget ‘em.

So everything was Katy-bar-the-door. Anybody could go in and rip up
anything. Many of the explosives now being used to kill our troops come from
the ammo dumps we did not secure. It was a total violation of every principle
we had for planning military operations and their aftermath. People in the
civil affairs units, they were just shaking their heads, wondering how in the
hell this could have happened. We've been doing these operations plans
forever, so I can only imagine the bitchin' and moanin' about -- how come we
don't have this civilian/military annex? It's in every other op-plan. And
where are the troops, where are the MPs?

TD: If back in the early eighties you were planning to save the antiquities
of every country in the Middle East, then obviously the Pentagon was also
planning for a range of possible invasions in the region. Do you look back
now and ask: What kind of a country has contingency plans to invade any
country you can imagine?

AW: One of the things you are likely to do at a certain point in your
military career is operations plans. It did not then seem abnormal to me at
all that we had contingency plans for the Middle East, or for countries in the
Caribbean or South America. At that stage, I was not looking at the
imperialism of the United States. I just didn't equate those contingency
plans with empire-building goals. However, depending on how those plans are
used, they certainly can be just that. Remember as well that this was in the
days of the Cold War and, by God, that camouflaged a lot of stuff. You could
always say: You never can tell what those Soviets are going to do, so you
better be prepared anywhere in the world to defeat them.

TD: And we're still prepared anywhere in the world…

AW: Well, we are and now, let's see, where are the Russians? [She laughs
heartily.]

TD: Tell me briefly the story of your life.

AW: I grew up in Arkansas, just a normal childhood. I think the Girl Scouts
was a formative organization for me. It had a plan to it, opportunity to
travel outside Arkansas, good goals -- working on those little badges. Early
State Department. Early military too. It's kind of interesting, the
militarization of our society, how we don't really think of some things, and
yet when I look back, there I was a little Girl Scout in my green uniform, and
so putting on an Army uniform after college wasn't that big a deal. I'd been
in a uniform before and I knew how to salute, three fingers. [She
demonstrates.]

If you look, we now have junior ROTC in the high schools. We have child
soldiers in America. We're good at getting kids used to those uniforms. And
then there's the militarization of industries and corporations, the necessity
every ten years to have a war because we need a new generation of weaponry.
Corporations in the military-industrial complex are making lots of money off
of new types of weaponry and vehicles.

TD: While you were in the military, did you have any sense that these wars
were actually living weapons labs?

AW: Particularly seeing the privatization after Gulf War I, going into
Somalia. All of a sudden, as fast as military troops were arriving, you had
Halliburton and Kellogg, Brown, and Root in Somalia. They started saying, You
need mess halls, oh, we'll do the mess halls for you. And it turned out they
had staged a lot of their equipment in the Middle East after the Gulf War. So
it was in Somalia lickety-split. The privatization of military functions is
now so pervasive that the military can no longer function by itself, without
the contractors and corporations. These contractors, these mercenaries
really, are now fundamentally critical to the operations of the U.S. military.

TD: So a Girl Scout and…

AW: In my junior year at the University of Arkansas, a recruiter came
through town with the film, "Join the Army, See the World." I had been an
education major for three years. Nurse, teacher, those were the careers for
women. I didn't want any of it. So, in the middle of the Vietnam War, I
signed up to go to a three-week Army training program, just to see if I liked
it. And I found it challenging. Even though there were protests going on all
over America, I divorced myself from what the military actually did versus
what opportunities it offered me. I hated all these people getting killed in
Vietnam, but I said to myself: I'm not going to kill anyone and I'm taking the
place of somebody who will be able to go do something else. All these
arguments that… now you look at it and go: Oh my God, what did you do?

TD: Don't you think this happens now?

AW: Absolutely! I sympathize with the people in the military right now.
The majority didn't sign up to kill anybody. You always prayed that, whatever
administration it was, it didn't go off on some wild goose chase that got you
into a war you personally thought was really stupid.

TD: Would you counsel a young woman now to go into the military?

AW: I think we will always have a military and I think the military is
honorable service as long as the civilian leadership uses it in appropriate
ways and is very cautious about sending us to war. And yes, I would encourage
people to look at a military career, but I would also tell them that, if
they're sent to do something they think is wrong, they don't have to stay in,
though they may have to take some consequences for saying, "Thank you very
much but I'm not going to kill anybody."

In fact, if I were recalled to active duty, which is possible… I put myself
purposely at the Retired Ready Reserve so that, if there was ever an emergency
and my country needed me, I could be recalled, and in fact there are people my
age, 59, who are agreeing to be recalled. The ultimate irony would be
resigning from my career in the diplomatic corps and then having the Bush
administration recall me, because my specialty, civil affairs, reconstruction,
is in really short supply. I'm a colonel. I know how to run battalions and
brigades. I can do this stuff. But I would have to tell them, sorry, I
refuse to be placed on active duty. And if they push hard enough, then I'd
just have to be court-martialed and I'd go to Leavenworth. I will not serve
this administration in the Iraq war which I firmly believe is an illegal war
of aggression.

TD: You know, if someone had said to me back in the 1960s that a Vice
President of the United States might go to Congress to lobby for a torture
exemption for the CIA the way Dick Cheney has done, I would have said: This
couldn't happen. Never in American history. I'm staggered by this.

AW: Me, too. The other thing that's quite interesting is the number of
women who are involved in it. There were something like eighty women I've
identified, ranging from high officers to CIA contractors being used as
interrogators in Guantanamo. Talking about things that will come back to bite
us big time, this is it. And we are complicit, all of us, because, quite
honestly, we're not standing out in front of the White House every single day,
and every time that Vice President leaves throwing our bodies in front of his
car, throwing blood on it. We need to get tough with these guys. They're not
listening to us. They think we're a bunch of wimps. We've got to get tougher
and tougher with them to show them we're not going to put up with this stuff.

TD: You've quoted Teddy Roosevelt as saying: "To announce that there must
be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President,
right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally
treasonable to the American public." I was particularly struck by that word
"servile." Do you want to talk about dissent for a moment?

AW: Well, we shouldn't be hesitant about voicing our opinions, even in the
most difficult of times which generally is when your nation is going to war
and you're standing up to say, this isn't right. That's tough and, in fact,
the first couple of months after I resigned, oh man, all that TV and nothing
on but the war, and very few people wanted to hear me. It probably was a good
four months before anybody even asked me to come speak about why I had
dissented, and that was a little lonely. [She chuckles.]

TD: Any final thoughts?

AW: We now have a two-and-a-half-year track record of being a very brutal
country. We are the cause of the violence in Iraq. That violence will
continue as long as we're there, and the administration maintains that we will
be there until we win. That means to me that this administration is planning
for a long-term siege in Iraq. It means that young men and women in America
should be prepared for the draft because the military right now cannot support
what this administration wants. In fact, yesterday I was talking to about
ninety high school seniors in Fayetteville, Arkansas, a very Republican part
of the United States. I said: Your parents may support this war, but how
strongly do you feel about it? If it drags on for years and there's a draft,
how many of you will willingly go? Only three put up their hands.

We are continuing down a very dangerous road. The United States and its
citizenry are held in disdain in world opinion for not being able to stop this
war machine. So one of the things I'm doing is ratcheting up my own level of
response. A dear friend, Joe Palambo, a Vietnam veteran in Veterans for Peace
who went to hear the President in Norfolk when he talked about terrorism, was
recently cited in the newspapers this way: There was one protestor in the
second row of the audience who stood up and railed against the President,
saying: "You're the terrorist! This war is a war of terrorism!" Joe called
me right after that happened and said, "Hey, Ann, I heard what you did in the
Senate and I thought, I'm going to go do the same thing to the President."

I mean, we're going to dog these guys all over the country. Our Secretary of
State, our Secretary of Defense, our Vice President, our President, our
National Security Adviser, the head of the CIA, any of these people who are
the warmongers, who are the murderers in the name of our country, wherever
they go, the people of America need to stand up to them to say, "No! Stop!
Stop this war. Stop this killing. Get us out of this mess." Because that's
the only time they hear it, when we stand up in these venues. They don't come
out to the street in front of the White House to see the hundreds of thousands
of people who are protesting. They ignore that. But for those fifteen
seconds, if you can stand up so that everybody in that audience sees that
there's one person, or maybe even two or three... Who knows?

Copyright 2005 Tomdispatch
You can read many more dispatches and join our mailing list so they come
directly to your e-mail inbox daily by visiting TomDispatch.com, your antidote
to the mainstream media.

Department of Peace

2005-11-03T07:27:00.000-08:00

Written by Bette Hoover, Maryland DOP co-chair, organizer, facilitator, and member Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) and Grandmothers for Peace.
Sent by Marci Reynolds, November 3:

Department of Peace: A movement whose time has come

3rd Annual Conference held in Washington, D.C.

September 10-12, 2005

Imagine a department of our government dedicated to the research, articulation and promotion of nonviolent solutions to conflict! Think of the possibilities for a peaceful planet if the halls of Congress were filled with conversations similar to those we are having in our circles and in our Meetings. Envision a Secretary of Peace being present in the White House, in the Oval office and at Cabinet Meetings - engaging the president in creative problem solving when a crisis erupts at home or abroad. Imagine a world where peaceful problem solving pre-empts war. Imagine a Department of Peace as a part of the United States government.

That is exactly what an animated group of about 500 people did at a recent conference in Washington, DC. Organized by The Peace Alliance (www.ThePeaceAlliance.org), the lively gathering educated themselves on the possibilities of a cabinet level position for peace within the U. S. government. An impressive array of presenters at this third annual Department of Peace Conference included: Marianne Williamson, Patch Adams, Jan A. Hartke (Earth Voice), Azim Khamisa (Tariq Khamisa Foundation), Barbara Marx Hubbard (1984 vice president candidate who proposed a "peace room" in the White House), Ambassador John W. McDonald, Coleen Rowley (former FBI Special Agent), Samina Faheem Sundas (American Muslim Voice), John and Beverly Titus (parents who lost a child on Flight 175 on 9/11/02), and Judy Collins (singer, performer). Conference participants were privileged to experience many "best practices" already being used around the country to promote the nonviolent resolution of conflict.

On September 22, 2005, Senator Mark Dayton (D-MN) introduced legislation calling for a Department of Peace as Senate Bill 1756 (S.1756). From the floor of the Senate, he said, " If we are to remain the world's leader, and if we are to lead the world into a more secure and more prosperous future, we must become better known and more respected for our peacemaking successes than for our military forces. Peace, to have any lasting value, must be advanced, expanded and strengthened continuously. Doing so requires skill, dedication, persistence, resources, and most, importantly, people." Dayton said he introduced the legislation "for all our youth" and called for the Reagan – established Institute of Peace to be elevated to a Cabinet-level position.

A week earlier House Bill # 3760 was introduced by Dennis Kuccinich (D-Ohio) with 60 co-sponsors. Representative Elijah Cummings (D) of Maryland is one of those signed onto the bill. Maryland organizers believe that success in this preliminary stage of the bill's introduction is crucial in order to stir up the status quo and build a movement. Monthly meetings and frequent conference calls are part of the organizing strategy. Team leaders for all Congressional Districts in Maryland have been identified.

At the September conference, Kuccinich and retired anchorman, Walter Cronkite, chatted about the potential of a Department of Peace. Kuccinich told us, "Violence has metastasized in our world and currently brute force (surgery aka war) is the only treatment being used." He said a Department of Peace would offer the government a whole array of resources and nonviolent options. Cronkite responded, "Wouldn't it have been an advantage in the run-up to the Iraq War to have had a cabinet officer whose department was responsible for training U.S. personnel in human rights, conflict resolution, reconstruction…." Cronkite reminded us that the world needs a strong United States of America and that it is important for us to promote peace rather than the "arrogance that cost us friends and allies among the nations and peoples of the world." The establishment of such a department, he said, does not negate the military. Au contraire. It is meant to strengthen and work with the military.

Retired diplomat John McDonald concurred with Cronkite that it's not an either/or – a Dept of Peace or the military. It's just that "peace needs institutional weight behind it, too", he said. Indeed, a DOP offers the military a broader array of tools to use in the resolution of conflict: strategists and soldiers will benefit from learning methods of peacemaking and conflict resolution. A proposed U.S. Peace Academy will function as a sister organization to the Military Academy and be on the alert with cutting-edge techniques of nonviolent conflict resolution ready to be mobilized. It's time we re-defined weak and strong and war and peace and realized that testosterone does not need to be the only way to respond to conflict.

Naïve, you say? Conference presenters dealt with that question alot. Marianne Williamson reminded us that no serious social change has ever happened in our world that seemed possible at the beginning. "Initially, change has always been counter to the status quo." In fact, she says, "Anyone who thinks we can continue in the same direction we are on and survive is naïve!"

The idea of a Department that promotes justice and democratic principles to expand human rights and address the root causes of violence is not new. In 1949, Senator Dirksen wanted an "office of Peace" within the State Department. Senator Hartje introduced legislation for a Department of Peace into Congress in 1969. Reagan acquiesced to pressure for such a department and established the Institute of Peace in the early 80's.

The Department of Peace is an idea whose time has come – and it is now! Although the soul of our country is beautiful, too often our politics – both domestically and internationally – don't reflect that nature. Peace and the process of peacemaking have too long been marginalized while war making and aggression are aggrandized. A Department of Peace is more than an idea whose time has come. It is necessary for the survival of our planet as well as securing the place of the U.S. as a leader in the world community.

A respected Peace Academy and a cabinet level Secretary of Peace are two of the many components of the House and Senate bills for a Department of Peace (see www.ThePeaceAlliance.org). To get involved at your state and/or local level, sign up through the website or email this writer at dancinrainbow@earthlink.net.

xxx