Medea Benjamin

The 38 dead in Saturday’s helicopter crash in Afghanistan include 31 Americans, making this the deadliest day for U.S. forces since the war began. The tragic loss of American lives might be worth the sacrifice if it were making America safer, or if our presence were significantly improving the well-being of the Afghan people. But neither of these is true.

Our presence in Afghanistan is not making us safer because Afghanistan is not a threat to us. This was clearly acknowledged by a senior Obama administration official in a background briefing to reporters on June 21.“United States hasn’t seen a terrorist threat from Afghanistan, for the past seven or eight years,” he said. He noted that al-Qaeda had moved on to Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia.

Meanwhile, thanks to President Obama’s surge, over 100,000 U.S. troops are bogged down chasing an indigenous Afghan ragtag army, the Taliban, who have no interest in attacking anyone inside the United States. The only reason they are attacking U.S. soldiers is that U.S. soldiers are occupying their country.

Even if there were a reason for U.S. forces to fight the Taliban, our presence only strengthens them. The Obama administration has been trying to convince the American people that the surge in U.S. troops has been successful in weakening the Taliban. But a recent string of high-profile attacks that the Taliban have taken credit for belie that rosy assessment. The killing of Kandahar’s police chief, Kandahar’s mayor, President Karzai’s brother Ahmed Wali Karzai, a top presidential aide, and the deadly attack on the seemingly secure Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul — and now this helicopter downing — show that the Taliban are far from defeated.

The truth is that the presence of foreign forces gives the Taliban their raison d'être. Every time NATO forces kill Afghan citizens, the Taliban benefit. And that happens all the time. In fact, the very day the helicopter was shot down, Aug. 2, NATO troops attacked a house in southern Helmand province and “inadvertently killed eight members of a family, including women and children.” You can bet that some of their relatives will soon be placing IEDs along the road to blow up U.S. tanks.

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Medea Benjamin

("ΛΕΦΤΑ" means MONEY)

The people of Greece are fed up with this wasteful military spending.

When U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Greece, she praised the Greek government’s austerity measures to reduce deficits and cut spending. The U.S. and Greece face a common challenge of dealing with soaring deficits, but they also face something else in common: a refusal to deal with out-of-control military spending. And given that the United States is a major arms seller to Greece, Hillary Clinton will encourage the Greeks to slash workers’ wages and pensions, but not its enormous military appetite.

With a population of just 11 million, Greece is the largest importer of conventional weapons in Europe—and ranks fifth in the world behind China, India, the United Arab Emirates and South Korea. Greece spends a whooping 3 percent of its gross domestic product on military hardware, compared to an average 1.7% in the other European NATO countries, including nations involved in international conflicts such as Britain, France and Germany.

The justification has been the ongoing disputes with Turkey over Cyprus and disagreement over the sovereignty of certain islets of the Aegean. But for years now there has been no military conflict over these decades-old disputes, and relations with Turkey have been steadily improving.

I recently spent time with Greek activists who have been camping out in Athens’ Syntagma Square to protest the austerity program. They are not happy with Clinton’s visit, or her thumbs up for a financial package that slashes wages, reduces pensions, increases joblessness and privatizes government services. And they noted that the very nations in the European Union and the United States that have been pushing the Greek government to squeeze Greek workers are the same ones that have been, for the last decade, pushing Greece to purchase massive amounts of worthless weapons.

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Medea Benjamin

Instead of high-fiving each other for their success in thwarting the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, Israeli officials should be throwing overboard the propaganda hacks who catapulted the flotilla into headline news for weeks and left Israel smelling like rotten fish.

Last year, when the Israeli military killed nine aboard the Turkish ship, the incident made waves around the world. But in previous years, the same international coalition had sent boats to Gaza five times, successfully reaching their destination with a symbolic shipment of humanitarian aid. No blood, no military interception, no story. That’s why the advice of many of Israel’s best buddies, including the lobby group AIPAC, was to just ignore the flotilla.

But no, the Israeli government refused to listen and instead announced with great bravado that it was prepared to stop the flotilla with lethal force—including snipers and attack dogs. Smelling blood, the media frenzy began. Before even leaving home, passengers were besieged with press calls inquiring why we were willing to risk our lives and giving us a chance to talk about the plight of the people of Gaza. Worse yet from the Israeli government perspective, mainstream media began bombarding us with requests to come along. With space for only ten media on our boat, we ended up choosing reps from CNN, CBS, Al Jazeera, AP, The Nation and Democracy Now. Other boats in the flotilla also started scrambling to accommodate more press. Thanks to Israel, we were guaranteed that no matter what happened, the whole world would be watching.

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Stephen Lendman

The humanitarian excuse for the attack on Libya is nothing
but a preparation for an invasion.

After three and a half terror bombing months and counting, destroying Libya for wealth and power continues, each imperial nation playing its part in this sinister dirty game, masquerading as liberation.

France finally admitted what's already known, that it's been supplying mercenary cutthroats with automatic weapons, rocket launchers, assault rifles, anti-tank missiles, and who knows what else. So have Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, perhaps other US imperial allies, and the Pentagon itself. In mid-April, The New York Times said Benghazi-based rebels got weapons from abroad without naming names.

For months, US and UK special forces provided training, The Times saying "professional training centers" were used to do it. In fact, recruiting, funding, and arming rebels began well before bombing began. America's war was planned many months, perhaps years earlier. Obama picked his moment to launch it.

Even the International Criminal Court (ICC) is complicit, functioning as an imperial tool, not a legitimate tribunal. Its chief prosecutor Jose Luis Moren-Ocampo, in fact, targets victims, not criminal Washington, London and Paris conspirators, attacking a nonbelligerent country. It's been standard US practice since WW II.

In May, Ocampo sought arrest warrants for Gaddafi, his son Saif al-Islam, and brother-in-law intelligence chief, Abdullah Al-Sanousi, on "charges of orchestrating systematic attacks against civilians (amounting) to crimes against humanity," with no evidence whatever to prove it.

Then end of June he issued arrest warrants against all three on alleged crimes against humanity, saying reasonable grounds exist to believe they're "criminally responsible as indirect perpetrators of civilian killings and repression" - again with no corroborating evidence or authority. Libya, in fact, isn't an ICC member, nor are America, China, Russia and India, some nations, openly critical of how it operates with good reason.

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Ray McGovern
Antiwar

For those who engage in the common struggle for Justice, an invaluable grace comes from getting to know new friends similarly engaged—and equally willing to speak with more than words.

Thus, it has been a great grace to get to know folks like Alice Walker personally as well as through her writings—including some new ones. In one recent article, Alice addressed her reasons for joining the other 49 of us by putting her body on the line in sailing with The Audacity of Hope, the U.S. boat to Gaza. She wrote:

There is for me an awareness of paying off a debt to the Jewish civil rights activists who faced death to come to the side of black people in the South in our time of need. I am especially indebted to Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman who heard our calls for help—our government then as now glacially slow in providing protection to nonviolent protesters—and came to stand with us.

They got as far as the truncheons and bullets of a few “good ol’ boys” of Neshoba County, Mississippi, and were beaten and shot to death along with James Chaney, a young black man with formidable courage who died with them. So even though our boat will be called The Audacity of Hope, it will fly the Goodman, Chaney, Schwerner flag in my own heart.”

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Medea Benjamin

“I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsam and jetsam in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him.” ~ Dr. Martin Luther King as he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.

These words will guide me and other passengers aboard the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, a fleet of nine boats scheduled to set sail for Gaza on June 25 from various Mediterranean ports. While the Israelis try to label us provocateurs, terrorists and Hamas supporters, we are simply nonviolent advocates following the teachings of Dr. King. We refuse to sit at the docks of history and watch the people of Gaza suffer.

The U.S. boat, which will carry 50 Americans, is called The Audacity of Hope. It is named after Obama’s bestselling political autobiography in which he lauds our collective audacity of striving to become a better nation. But I prefer to think of our boat as part of Dr. King’s legacy. He, too, talked about audacity, about his audacious faith in the future. “I refuse to accept the idea that the ‘isness’ of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal ‘oughtness’ that forever confronts him,” Dr. King said.

Our intrepid group has its moral compass aimed at the way things ought to be. Our cargo is not humanitarian aid, as some of the other ships are carrying, but thousands of letters from the U.S. people, letters of compassion, solidarity and hope written to people living in the Gaza Strip. We travel with what Dr. King called “unarmed truth and unconditional love.”

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Medea Benjamin & Charles Davis

After campaigning as the candidate of change, the man awarded a Nobel Prize for peace has given the world nothing but more war. Yet despite Barack Obama's continuation – nay, escalation – of the worst aspects of George W. Bush's foreign policy, including his very own illegal war in Libya, you’d be hard-pressed to find the large-scale protests and outrage from the liberal establishment that characterized his predecessor's reign (and only seems to pop up when a Republican's the one dropping the bombs).

That's not for a lack of things to protest. Since taking office, Obama has doubled the number of troops in Afghanistan and now looks set to break his pledge to begin a significant withdrawal in July. He has unilaterally committed the nation to an unapologetically illegal war in Libya and in two years has authorized more drone strikes in Pakistan than his predecessor authorized in two terms, with one in three of their victims reportedly civilians. In Yemen, he has targeted a U.S. citizen for assassination and approved a cluster bomb strike that, according to Amnesty International, killed 35 innocent women and children.

But these war crimes, which ought to shock the consciences of the president's liberal supporters, haven't spurred the sort of popular protest we witnessed under Bush the Lesser. At a recent congressional hearing on the bloated war budget, a handful of CODEPINK activists were the sole dissenters. Thousands poured into the streets to cheer Osama bin Laden's death, but no Americans were in the streets decrying the drone attack that killed dozens of Pakistani civilians weeks earlier.

While die-hard grassroots peace activists continue to bravely protest U.S. militarism, with 52 people arrested last month protesting outside a nuclear weapons factory in Kansas City – if they'd been Tea Partiers protesting Obamacare, you may have heard of them – there's no denying that the peace movement has taken a beating.

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Stephen Lendman

Manning is being emotionally destroyed, assuring his inability to defend himself properly at trial. The Pentagon plans it, besides extracting vengeance and warning other whistle blowers what they'll face if they dare emulate him. Obama very much concurs, showing he's as lawless as Bush.

A previous article discussed him in detail, accessed through this link. Another discussed torture as official US policy, institutionalized under Bush II, continued under Obama, practiced despite official denials.

Manning, of course, is the Army intelligence analyst allegedly turned whistle blower, who supposedly leaked thousands of diplomatic cables, many from Iraq and Afghan war databases, as well as two or more explosive videos, showing US air strikes murdering civilians. As a result, he may have felt obligated to reveal them. They reveal criminal acts by the US government, demanding prosecution of everyone up the chain of command ordering them.

If Bradley [in fact] disclosed them, he did so at great personal risk. He then would deserve praise, not prosecution. He would be a hero, risking personal harm to reveal disturbing truths, what government and media reports suppress, sanitize and distort, letting warlords plunder lawlessly so war profiteers can cash in. Americans are the worse off for it.

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Ray McGovern
Antiwar

“Show me your company, and I’ll tell you who you are,” my grandmother would often say with a light Irish lilt but a heavy emphasis, an admonition about taking care in choosing what company you keep.

On Thursday, I could sense her smiling down through the snow as I stood pinned to the White House fence with Daniel Ellsberg, Chris Hedges, Margaret Flowers, Medea Benjamin, Coleen Rowley, Mike Ferner, Jodie Evans, and over 125 others risking arrest in an attempt to highlight the horrors of war.

The witness was sponsored by Veterans for Peace, a group comprised of many former soldiers who have “been there, done that” regarding war, distinguishing them from President Barack Obama who, like his predecessor, hasn’t a clue what war is really about.

(Sorry, Mr. President, donning a bomber jacket and making empty promises to the troops in the middle of an Afghan night does not qualify.)

The simple but significant gift of presence was being offered outside the White House. As I hung on the fence, I recalled what I knew of the results of war.

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Marc W. Herold

A child killed in recent airstrikes, western Afghanistan

“The American public is conditionally tolerant of [military] casualties and consistently indifferent to collateral damage.” ~Dr. Karl P. Mueller, School of Advanced Airpower Studies, Maxwell Air Force Base

"General McChrystal’s data provided an opportunity to reveal Pentagon lying (or incompetence) to all, but only the libertarians rose to the occasion. The mainstream U.S media, Obama cultists, and much of the U.S antiwar movement persist in blithely quoting UNAMA and consuming Pentagon and embedded “patriotic” U.S reporters’ characterizations of America’s War in Afghanistan."

The Politics of Counting Dead Afghan Civilians: Responses by the Libertarian Right and Obama Liberals to McChrystal’s Numbers.

The ever-so-faithful stenographer of Pentagon truths, USA Today, printed numbers put forth by General McChrystal on Afghan civilians who perished at the hands of NATO.[1] The article headlined “NATO Strikes Killing More Afghan Civilians,” noted that such deaths rose from 29 during the first three months of 2009, to 72 during 2010.

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