End the War on Freedom

But first…It looks like just about everyone in the blogosphere is talking about Newsweek and Sarah Palin’s legs. For those of you who haven’t yet heard, the latest issue of Newsweek features a picture of Sarah Palin striking a rather sexy pose in a jogging outfit.So conservatives are having a hissy fit. Robert Stacy McCain complains that Newsweek is attempting to “diminish and belittle Palin, to portray her as a cheesecake bimbo, the political equivalent of Lindsay Lohan.” David Brody claims that this is yet another example of the mainstream media’s left-winged bias.I, on the other hand, don’t really give a f*ck.I really don’t. I mean, I don’t know if these bloggers have noticed, but there’s actually a lot of important stuff going on in the world. Wars, rumors of wars. And yet all these nitwits can do is whine that the big bad media has once again victimized Shit-for-Brains Palin.So, needless to say, I felt a sense of relief upon seeing that someone had blogged about something that actually matters. His name is Andy D., and, although I don’t agree with what he’s written, I can’t help but respect him for not writing about Sarah Palin.So Andy D., this one’s for you.And now for the main event…In a post titled “Terrorists in Civilian Court: What Does History Say?” Andy D. basically reiterates GOP talking points and argues that the Obama administration should not try Khalid Sheikh Mohhamed or any other 9/11 suspect in federal court. Andy cites three cases that supposedly illustrate that such trials run a high risk of compromising sensitive government information.Case #1: The Blind SheikhAndy writes that the Blind Sheikh’s trial is “believed to have provided valuable intelligence for Al-Queda.” He goes on to quote Michael Mukasey, who presided over the proceedings. In the trial, Mukasey has written,the government was required to disclose, as it is routinely in conspiracy cases, the identity of all known co-conspirators, regardless of whether they are charged as defendants. One of those co-conspirators, relatively obscure in 1995, was Osama bin Laden. It was later learned that soon after the government's disclosure the list of unindicted co-conspirators had made its way to bin Laden in Khartoum, Sudan, where he then resided. He was able to learn not only that the government was aware of him, but also who else the government was aware of.While all this might be true, Human Rights First notes [.pdf] that the government “did not seek to invoke CIPA [Classified Information Protection Act] or other protections regarding the names on the list of unindicted coconspirators.” As I wrote on Sunday, the whole point of CIPA is to enable the government to prevent classified information from being disclosed in such a trial. So, in other words, had it chosen to, the government could have prevented this information from being released.Case #2: Zacarias MoussaouiRegarding the “twentieth hijacker,” Andy writes:Since Moussaoui represented himself, the prosecution had to turn over their case to the “defendants lawyer” [sic] under discovery. According to CNBC News, the government admitted they turned over classified documents to Moussaoui that he shouldn’t have had access too [sic]. This is important because KSM has decided to represent himself in the upcoming New York trials.I haven’t been able to find Andy’s source here (he doesn’t provide a link). But if the government in fact gave Moussaoui access to confidential information, then it should be noted that they weren’t required to. Court records show [.pdf] that Moussaoui’s request to be given classified information was denied:The district court denied the pro se request for access to classified information, pointing to Moussaoui’s “repeated prayers for the destruction of the United States and the American people, admission to being a member of al Qaeda, and pledged allegiance to Osama Bin Laden” as “strong evidence that the national security could be threatened if the defendant had access to classified information.”And Andy’s implication that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed would be given confidential information if he chose to defend himself is factually inaccurate. As legal scholar James J. Benjamin Jr. recently told the New York Law Journal, under CIPA, “It is pretty well established that the [pro se] defendant [i.e., defendant who represents himself] does not have the right to see any classified evidence in discovery.”Case #3: Ramzi YousefHere, Andy again quotes Mukasey, who wrote in a 2007 Wall Street Journal op-ed:Again, during the trial of Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, an apparently innocuous bit of testimony in a public courtroom about delivery of a cell phone battery was enough to tip off terrorists still at large that one of their communication links had been compromised. That link, which in fact had been monitored by the government and had provided enormously valuable intelligence, was immediately shut down, and further information lost.Human Rights First notes that this allegation cannot be substantiated by publicly available information. But even if such information were in fact compromised, it should be noted that, just as in the Blind Sheikh case, the government did not invoke CIPA.ConclusionAs Human Rights First states [.pdf], “The Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA), although subject to being improved, is working as it should: we were unable to identify a single instance in which CIPA was invoked and there was a substantial leak of sensitive information as a result of a terrorism prosecution in federal court.”But obviously the mere existence of CIPA will not guarantee that confidential information will not be compromised. As we just saw, in order for CIPA to work, government prosecutors need to use it.

by the Last Ditch StandLyrics:dad saw a man in vietnamput the barrel of his gunin between the legs of a little girlvietnameseshe was the enemyof the kingempires crumble but the fool plays ones que esta extranjerounconscious and upside downhasta otro dialook at all the peoplewith their circus and breadthey lie in a lie and call it a lifeand they work to forgetthat every thought in their headis rigged from the tier aboveand not the heavenly onenot the heavenly onei'm one with the sunin more ways than oneand if you want to be freeif you even know what that meansit's a long long rowit's a long long rowempires crumble but the fool plays ones que esta extranjerounconscious and upside downhasta otro dialook at all the peoplewith their circus and breadthey lie in a lie and call it a lifeand they work to forgetthat every thought in their headis rigged from the tier aboveand not the heavenly onenot the heavenly onedad saw a man in vietnamthrow the barrel of his gunin between the legs of a little onejust for fun, she was the enemywe are the enemy

Attorney General Eric Holder has announced that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other Guantanamo Bay detainees will be tried in New York federal courts and not, as many conservatives had hoped, in military tribunals. Needless to say, this is good news for those who champion due process. As Human Rights Watch states, “Unlike the deeply flawed military commission proceedings, the federal civilian courts can give the defendants a fair and credible trial.”Predictably, many on the right have reacted to this decision with the sense of alarm you’d expect from Chicken Little. Fox New reports:Former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy [not to be confused with the St. Elmo’s Fire hunk]…said public trials will provide a “banquet of intelligence information” for the vast Al Qaeda network, especially operatives in Afghanistan.“It’s a massively stupid decision when we’re actually at war with them,” McCarthy said in an interview with FoxNews.com. “We have to give them all kinds of information about our methods of intelligence that can only make them more efficient at killing us.”Now such fears would perhaps be warranted if it weren’t for the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA). Passed by Congress in 1980, CIPA provides different ways in which the government can prevent classified information from being disclosed in a trial—for example, by substituting classified documents with redacted versions.A 2008 Human Rights First report shows [.pdf] that CIPA has a successful track record (from the perspective of prosecutors, anyway):For example, in the [1998 East African] Embassy Bombings case, the government offered the testimony of L’Houssaine Kherchtou, a former al Qaeda member…Prior to Kherchtou becoming a cooperating witness, he had been questioned by a foreign intelligence service for five days concerning his knowledge of al Qaeda. That questioning was taped, provided to the United States, and contained information relevant to the case, but the foreign intelligence service insisted that its involvement not be disclosed. “CIPA effectively resolved the issue: in discovery, a transcript of the debriefing was provided to defense counsel with references to the foreign intelligence service blacked out; at trial, defense counsel’s questioning of Kherchtou on the witness stand was monitored to ensure that the foreign intelligence service was not identified” [Turner & Schulhofer, The Secrecy Problem in Terrorism Trials]. It is our understanding that foreign intelligence agencies have become more willing to share information with the United States over time, as CIPA has proved to be effective in a number of cases. Even in cases where CIPA’s procedures have not been involved, Courts have permitted the government to maintain the secrecy of sensitive law-enforcement information. For example, in United States v. al-Moayad, Judge Sterling Johnson granted motions in limine to preclude defense cross-examination of German law-enforcement witnesses on sensitive, technical aspects of electronic surveillance that had been employed in Germany.According to one of the prosecutors from the Embassy Bombings case:When you see how much classified information was involved in that case, and when you see that there weren’t any leaks, you get pretty darn confident that the federal courts are capable of handling these prosecutions. I don’t think people realize how well our system can work in protecting classified information.Now surely Andrew McCarthy (the attorney, not the actor) must know about CIPA. Therefore, unless we assume that his fearmongering is politically motivated, it’s difficult to understand why he would make such obviously ridiculous claims.Several Republicans in Congress have echoed McCarthy’s warning and added some sky-is-falling forecasts of their own. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, for instance, claims that “our cities will face enormous security problems; and our communities will be potential targets for attack.”What McConnell fails to mention is that the US has already prosecuted many terrorists, including al Qaeda members, in civilian court, all without incident (h/t Human Rights First [.pdf]). The real threat to American security lies, not in giving terror suspects fair trials, but in continuing to deprive them of justice. As the New York Times warned in a November 2001 editorial:Using secretive military tribunals would ultimately undermine American interests in the Islamic world by casting doubt on the credibility of a verdict against Osama bin Laden and his aides. No amount of spinning by Mr. Bush’s public relations team could overcome the impression that the verdict had been dictated before the trial began. Reliance on tribunals would also signal a lack of confidence in the case against the terrorists and in the nation’s democratic institutions [h/t Glenn Greenwald].And sure enough, the Bush administration’s deprivation of human rights radicalized many in the Islamic world. In 2006, Air Force interrogator Matthew Alexander reported that, more than anything else, foreign fighters were coming to fight American troops in Iraq because of “the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.” General Counsel of the Navy Alberto Mora reached the same conclusion in 2008. More recently, the Center for Strategic & International Studies concluded that “the United States has been damaged by Guantánamo beyond any immediate security benefits. Our enemies have achieved a propaganda windfall that enables recruitment to violence, while our friends have found it more difficult to cooperate with us.”By announcing that it would close Guantanamo Bay, the Obama administration took an important step in restoring America’s image in the Muslim world and thus enhancing American security. By announcing that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and these four other Guantanamo detainees will be given fair, public trials, the administration has taken another important step. Of course, more—much more—still needs to be done, but these steps are significant nonetheless.

In an editorial entitled “The case for withdrawal from Afghanistan is not yet made,” the British Independent acknowledges that the argument for withdrawing Western forces from Afghanistan has “grown considerably stronger” over the past few months. “However,” the paper avers, “the case is not yet overwhelming; not least because no convincing alternative strategy for protecting Western security interests in the region has been put forward.”The Independent goes on to find fault with two different withdrawal strategies, one of them being Vice President Joe Biden’s plan to primarily fight militants with remote-operated drones. The problem with this plan, the paper states, is that “these weapons are already causing heavy civilian casualties and provoking popular anger in the region. Such strikes might succeed in eliminating terrorist targets, but the problem is that, in the long term, they merely feed the problem of Western resentment.”Now the paper’s analysis here is undoubtedly correct. It’s impossible to drop bombs in Afghanistan without killing innocent people. No matter how good your intelligence, no matter how precise your weapons, you’re going to end up killing civilians. And this in turn inflames the population and drives many into the arms of militants.So The Independent is smart enough to understand that killing more innocent Afghans isn’t going to make Westerners any safer. And yet the paper believes that we should continue our current campaign, which, of course, largely consists of dropping bombs in civilian areas. Because if we pull back now, the paper fears, then the Taliban will return to power and consequently al Qaeda will again be given a safe haven.So, in other words, we’re damned if we do and we’re damned if we don’t. We’re damned if we continue dropping bombs—because that just inflames the population. And we’re damned if we stop dropping bombs—because that will just enable the Taliban, and thus al Qaeda, to return.One strategy The Independent never considers is the one that should be most obvious. Since killing Muslims engenders terrorism, then it seems to follow that the best way to combat terrorism would be to stop killing Muslims, not just in Afghanistan but everywhere. Let’s remember why Osama bin Laden attacked us in the first place. Unlike George W. Bush claimed, it had nothing to do with us being free. Rather, Osama bin Laden attacked us because we—that is, our governments—have long been attacking Muslims.For several decades, the West has supported Israel in its oppression of the Palestinian people. For several decades, the West has propped up corrupt regimes throughout the Muslim world. For over ten years, the West imposed sanctions on the Iraqi people, sanctions that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children.These and other similarly immoral actions led to 9/11.And yet the West continues its assault against Muslims. And for this reason, I agree with The Independent that merely withdrawing from Afghanistan would not pacify al Qaeda. For even if there were no longer any NATO troops in Central Asia, there would still be American troops in the Persian Gulf, there would still be money going to the governments in Jerusalem and Cairo, there would still be Guantanamo Bay.But if the West reconsidered all of its relations with the Muslim world, if it started treating Muslims like actual human beings, and not means to their own corrupt ends, then the global jihadist movement would suffer immeasurably.Violence only begets more violence, and until Western governments learn this important lesson their own citizens will not be safe.-----Photo by daweiding

Sometimes writing this blog feels like mental masturbation.You know what I mean. I study hard, I write the best, most persuasive antiwar articles I can—and yet the wars continue. When you get down to it, nothing I say, nothing you say, seems to make any difference.Mental masturbation, I tell you—mental masturbation!Not that I plan on stopping.First of all, I’ve always been a big fan of masturbation—mental and otherwise.Secondly, who the hell knows, maybe we can actually make a difference. Little by little, one seed planted here, another one there.I’m not sure where it comes from, but I’ve always been somewhat of an optimist. Perhaps this is just what Ernest Becker would call my “denial of death.” By forcing myself to believe that change is possible, that the future will be better than the past, I’m able to go on living, to endure what I fear is an ultimately purposeless and meaningless existence.Whatever the case, I can’t help but hope.I can’t help but believe that, by writing this blog, by reading your blogs, by educating myself, by living the best life I know how, I’m helping to make this world a better place. And even if I’m not, at least I know that I’m trying.And with that I’d like to end this rambling little inspirational speech.Good night, and good luck.

It didn’t take the hate-Islam crowd long to start blaming the Ft. Hood shooting on Islam. Almost as soon as the media began reporting on the shooting, Jihad Watch, for instance, started highlighting Nidal Hasan’s Islamic faith, attempting to tie his act of murder to the teachings of the Qur’an.One right-winged blogger described this as “a case of a fully coherent, Muslim man, who also happens to be a diligent practioner [sic] of his Islamic faith. This has nothing to do with ‘bullying’ or feelings of discrimination, but of a pious Muslim acting out on his beliefs.”Click through the hate-o-sphere and you’ll find many similar comments.So it seems that Islam is to blame. It seems that Islam is always to blame. According to the hate-Islam mindset, whenever a Muslim engages in evil—be it an honor killing or act of terrorism—Islam is to blame.Of course, the logic here is atrocious.For example, if Islam is to be blamed when Muslims do evil, then why isn’t it to be praised when Muslims do good? Why, for instance, don’t the Jihad Watch types give kudos to Islam when Palestinians in the West Bank village of Ni’lin engage in nonviolent protests? Why didn’t they feel that this summer’s peaceful protests in Iran in some sense validated Islam?Personal experience has led me to believe that the world contains more—many more—good Muslims than bad Muslims. So why then does the hate-Islam crowd base their conclusions of Islam on the bad minority and not the good majority?Moreover, if the Jihad Watch crowd blames Islam when Muslims do evil, then why don’t they blame Judaism when Jews do evil? If the Ft. Hood shooting discredits Islam, then why doesn’t Israel’s assault in Gaza or why don’t all the incidents of settler violence in the West Bank discredit Judaism?The truth, of course, is that Islam does not promote terrorism. As Bernard Lewis (himself no Islamophile) has written: “At no point do the basic texts of Islam enjoin terrorism and murder. At no point—as far as I am aware—do they even consider the random slaughter of uninvolved bystanders.”Christian Americans are actually more likely to justify terrorism than are those living in many predominantly Muslim countries. That’s right. One in four Americans—and remember, 83% of Americans identify themselves as Christians—one in four Americans believe that “bombing and other attacks intentionally aimed at civilians” are “often or sometimes justified.” The corresponding numbers in Indonesia, Pakistan, and Turkey are 10%, 14%, and 17%.So Islam is not to blame. For the ten billionth time, Islam is not to blame. Just as Sergeant John Russell’s Catholic upbringing was not to blame when he gunned down five fellow soldiers in Baghdad earlier this year.So don’t join the kooks. Don’t condemn the religion of one billion (mostly good-hearted and peace-loving) people because a small number of them commit evil actions. Don’t hate.

“You are going to war!” Michael Anthony remembers a drill instructor telling him and some fellow recruits during basic training. “It is no longer a question of if you are going to go, but a question of when. Look around! In a few years, or even a few months, several of you will be dead. Some of you will be severely wounded or so badly mutilated that your own mother can’t stand the sight of you. And for the real unlucky ones, you will come home so emotionally disfigured that you wish you had died over there.”Soon thereafter, Anthony found himself in Iraq, where he spent the next year working as an operating room medic. In his newly-released memoir, Mass Casualties, he tells about this year, describing how all of his drill instructor’s predictions came to fruition. As I wrote last week, Mass Casualties is an extraordinary work, enjoyable to read but also important for its honest portrayal of life in the military.I recently had the opportunity to interview Anthony. Here’s what we talked about.You’ve written on your blog that the TV show M*A*S*H does a better job portraying the realities of military life than many of the “real life” stories you’ve seen in the news. Explain to those who haven’t read your book, why you feel this way. What does M*A*S*H get right that so many news stories don’t? The first thing that comes to mind is the word “Absurdity.” M*A*S*H got across the real absurdity that comes with war, and it has nothing to do with pro or anti war, just the realities. So many times, I see war movies or a war related TV show/episode, or books, and they all seem too perfect. As if everything is worded perfectly, and all the situations come full circle beginning, middle, end. It’s almost so dull, that I could probably (and this goes for most Veterans I know) watch, any TV show or movie, and if it’s about the military or war, predict what’s going to happen or how things are going to be portrayed. It’s like people already have this perception of the military and war, that the media just fills in the perception rather than tell what really goes on. And anything against the grain, they don’t report because it’s outside of people’s perceptions.But that’s what M*A*S*H was all about, the craziness of war, that people would never believe goes on. I remember watching one episode and there was a man walking around in woman’s clothes, and I thought that was so funny because, I do remember a few instances where there were guys walking around in drag. It’s little things like that, when most people think of war, they don’t think of men/women goofing around and walking around in drag or doing crazy things. So when you tell them crazy little stories like that, they never believe them; but if you told them a story of a building blowing up, thirty people getting shot, etc., etc., they’d believe that in a heart-beat.People often assume that just because people go to war, there’s no fun. I think M*A*S*H showed that people make do with what they do. In Iraq, I had the worst times of my life, my worst month, week, day, and hour, all happened in Iraq; but you know what, some of the most fun times of my life also happened over there. So, I go back to my original word, M*A*S*H captured the Absurdity of the situation, and that everything isn’t perfect.I definitely got the impression that people in your unit were always trying their hardest to create some sense of normalcy. Which, I imagine, largely explains the clowning around, the obsession with office gossip, etc. Of course, it’s impossible to create a sense of normalcy when you’re in a war zone, when you know you might get blown to pieces by a mortar rocket at any given moment. So, in an attempt to escape from reality, many in your unit turned to drugs. Exactly how many people do you think were using drugs? Well, you’re absolutely right; people did take and get into drugs for a way to escape what was going on. I mean, you’re over there, and if you close your eyes, your thoughts go to the last several things you’ve seen—death, and destruction, and if you open your eyes you see all the death and destruction going on. In an attempt to get out of the circle, people would take drugs, and then when you close your eyes, you see spirally lines and different colors, instead of death. I mean if those were your options, what would you choose? I can’t say for certain how many people were doing drugs, but I can say there’s enough going on that it’s a problem.What types of drugs are we talking about?Some of the drugs I’ve heard of going on over there, and have seen—and done—and that are being abused are: Percocet, Vicodin, Pot, Coke, Heroin, Hash, Salvia Divornium, Ambien, Robitusin, Dust-Off, Whip-its, Opium and NyQuil.And if people weren’t popping pills to escape, they were popping them to sleep! Many people were popping sleeping pills like Pez, or some type of sleep medication/remedy.Suicide, of course, is another—really, the ultimate—way to escape from reality. At one point in Mass Casualties, you describe how a fellow soldier started to show signs that he was suicidal. Although it seemed clear that this individual might try to harm himself, his officers refused to send him away to receive the care he needed, fearing that doing so might make them look bad. Was this an isolated incident? I wish I could say that was an isolated incident of one suicidal-soldier not getting the care he needs. However, if you look at the statistics for active duty soldiers and veterans, more soldiers have killed themselves than have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. The statistics say five active duty service members commit suicide a day, and some statistics have up to eighteen veteran suicides a day, and a thousand attempts a month! And on top of all this, Katie Couric recently did a series of news casts that exposed that the Veterans Administration was actually trying to cover up these suicide numbers!When you went over to Iraq, you knew there’d be Sunni insurgents trying to kill you. But did you have any idea that so many of your problems would come from your own commanders? Obviously you didn’t expect to be coddled, but some of your leaders seemed completely self-absorbed, at times even sadistic. There was a joke that our unit had while in Iraq. Someone would ask us: “Do you hate the Iraqis?” and we’d answer: “No, the only people I hate are in my unit.”What I can’t understand is how our leaders saw fit to treat the soldiers as they did. We worked in a hospital and a severely wounded patient didn’t get seen for one hour, because there was an awards ceremony going on. Our commander didn’t want to open our hospital early so he lied and said we were operating when we weren’t. I had to do extra guard duty just because two higher ranking people wanted to have an [adulterous] affair.There are too many peccadilloes of human nature that are missed and not talked about, and it’s to the detriment of our soldiers that these situations aren’t talked about. And the only way to fix them, or to do something about them, is to admit them—that’s always the first step.I keep reading in the news that returning soldiers aren’t getting the care they need, which seems to be one reason why veterans have such high rates of drug addiction, alcoholism, divorce, suicide, etc., etc. Are these reports accurate? What’s been your personal experience with the VA? Absolutely, these reports are accurate. Being a veteran makes you more likely to smoke cigarettes, have an alcohol/drug problem, to attempt to kill yourself, kill yourself, and end up homeless.As far as the VA goes, recently Katie Couric did a series of newscasts that exposed the VA for trying to cover up suicide numbers.So what’s the answer? What should we—what should the VA, what should the average citizen—be doing to better help veterans?Recently the Army Times had an article stating that the only consistent cure for PTSD is exposure therapy. This is where Veterans get together and share their stories and hear the stories of other veterans. The only cure is to understand and to be understood.If people want to help our returning veterans then they’ve got to be willing to hear the full story and not just the parts they want to hear. We’ve got to listen to the worst, most decadent parts of the war, because this is where real growth is going to come from. We’ve got to learn and share the real stories!

If you only got your news from the Jerusalem Post, you’d think that Amnesty International was the vilest, most hate-filled organization on the planet. You’d probably think it was a branch of Hamas. You’d probably have no idea that it’s actually a well-respected human rights organization with a long history of speaking out for, well, for human rights.In a recent editorial, the Post, which has a history of slandering Amnesty, claimed:Israel is under fire yet again for supposed human rights contraventions. Hot on the heels of the Goldstone Report, which at the behest of the UN Human Rights Council charged Israel with war crimes against Gazan civilians in Operation Cast Lead, Amnesty International this week accuses Israel of depriving the Palestinians of the most basic and vital of all commodities—water.In question is an Amnesty International report that accuses [pdf] Israel of severely restricting the Palestinians’ access to fresh water. The report points out that there are just two main fresh water resources in the West Bank—the Jordan River and the Mountain Aquifer. As is well known, Israel denies the Palestinians access to the Jordan River, forcing them to rely solely on the Mountain Aquifer. But it turns out that Israel only allows Palestinians to use around 20% of this water. Consequently, “Palestinian consumption in the OPT [Occupied Palestinian Territory] is about 70 litres a day per person—well below the 100 litres per capita daily recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO)—whereas Israeli daily per capita consumption, at about 300 litres, is about four times as much.”The Post never disputes any of the above facts. What it does instead is claim that Israel “might possess legal rights [to the Mountain Aquifer] by virtue of the fact that it was first to discover, develop and pump from it.” Now this line of reasoning seems obviously flawed. Do any of us really believe that someone is the rightful owner of something simply because he found and developed it? So, for example, if I’m in your backyard, shooting for some food, and up from the ground comes a bubbling crude, do any of us really believe that, even though the bubbling crude is in your backyard, I’ve suddenly become the rightful owner of it?The Mountain Aquifer, let’s remember, lies underneath both Israeli and Palestinian territory, primarily Palestinian territory. Which, according to commonly accepted notions of justice, would seem to mean that Palestinians should at least have equal access to the aquifer’s water and not a mere 20%. Similarly, since the Jordan River runs along both Israeli and Palestinian borders, it would seem that both people are entitled to that water. But, again, Israel prohibits Palestinians from using any water from the Jordan.The Post goes on to note:Water availability to Israelis has fallen sharply in recent decades. In 1967 it stood at 500 cu.m. [cubic meters]—so today's figure represents a 70% drop. Until the Six Day War, Palestinians could count on a mere 86 cu.m. yearly. Their situation has improved by 22%.In other words: We’re not screwing over the Palestinians nearly as badly as the Jordanians did—so yay for us!The Post continues:Had it been given the opportunity, the Water Authority would also have highlighted that Israel supplies water to the PA [Palestinian Authority] well in excess of its 1995 Oslo Accords undertakings.In other words: We’re not screwing over the Palestinians nearly as badly as we could be—so another yay for us!And the Post isn’t done yet:Systematically overlooked by Amnesty, meanwhile, are Palestinian breaches of these accords—including pirate drilling, water theft and routine damage to pipelines, failures to purify waste water (despite massive contributions by donor nations), irrigating crops with fresh rather than reclaimed water, dumping untreated sewage into streams, severely contaminating Israel's Coastal Aquifer and forcing Israel to deal with PA sewage.Now, first of all, it’s simply untrue to say that the Amnesty report overlooks Palestinian wrongdoing. In fact, it contains an entire section entitled “PA/PWA [Palestinian Water Authority] Failures and Mismanagement.” Of course, Amnesty also notes that Israel’s permit regime has largely prevented the Palestinians from improving their situation. “Projects for which the PWA and local municipalities have secured funding from international donors have been delayed, in some cases for several years, of the Israeli authorities’ refusal to grant permits or because they have imposed unreasonable conditions relating to the type of treatment and reuse of the wastewater.”Moving on, the Post’s charges of “pirate drilling” and “water theft” only make sense if we assume that Israel owns the West Bank. But this clearly isn’t the case. According to international law, all of the West Bank, including all of its natural resources, belongs to the Palestinians.As far as the charge of polluting water goes, Amnesty reminds us that “the pollution of both the Mountain Aquifer and the Jordan River predates the establishment of the PWA in 1996 and occurred on a large scale during the preceding 30 years when Israel had full responsibility for civil affairs throughout the entire OPT. It is also continuing in the 60 per cent of the West Bank in which Israel retains full control of civil affairs and where the PA has no jurisdiction.”Moreover, Israel has long used Palestinian territory as a “dumping ground for its waste, establishing dumpsites throughout the OPT without lining them, leaving dangerous substances, including hazardous industrial waste, to permeate through the soil and pollute the aquifer.” Amnesty further notes that much of the West Bank’s water is being polluted by Israeli settlers. According to figures provided by the Israeli government, an astonishing one-third of Israel’s 121 settlements do not use wastewater treatment facilities.Of course, the court intellectuals at the Jerusalem Post never bother to mention any of this. After all, they have such important propaganda to write.

Anyone thinking about going into the military would do well to read Specialist Michael Anthony’s memoir, Mass Casualties: A Young Medic’s True Story of Death, Deception, and Dishonor in Iraq. While the title might suggest that this is the work of some renegade peacenik, another soldier-turned-antiwar-activist, Anthony in fact seems proud of his military service, and he never criticizes the US mission in Iraq. Not that any of that matters. Mass Casualties isn’t about the politics of war. It’s simply what it claims to be, a memoir, one soldier’s remembrance of his time in Iraq.A natural storyteller, Anthony populates his book with memorable characters, some loveable, some not so loveable. There’s Denti, a fellow operating room medic. “Denti’s always been a storyteller, and I quickly learned to never believe anything he says, including the fact that he was a pimp, a drug dealer, gang member, and a weightlifting power-lifter—he says he only joined the Army because he wanted to get away from the hectic lifestyle.” There’s also Gagney, the staff sergeant in charge of the operating room who’s not exactly the world’s most gracious loser. “Then a month ago Gagney, Reto, Denti, and I were playing Risk, a game of global domination. I had an alliance with Reto, and we attacked Gagney’s armies. Gagney flipped out, knocked the game board over, called us all ‘fucking idiot cheaters,’ and stormed off.”One can’t read Mass Casualties without at some point being reminded of M*A*S*H. People are often joking around. People are often—okay, usually—okay, almost always—having sex—lots and lots of sex. But, more to the point, nobody wants to be there. This isn’t summer camp. This is the Army. This is war. And everyone knows that at any given moment his life could come to a sudden, tragic end.The more we read, the more we realize that the practical jokes and adulterous escapades are really just a desperate attempt to create some sense of normalcy. But, of course, normalcy can’t be created in the hellishness of war. No matter how hard Anthony and his cohorts try to escape the horrors of their present reality, there they find themselves, operating on a soldier who’s just had his face blown off, running into a bunker as mortar rockets rain down from the sky. “When I close my eyes,” Anthony writes, “I dream of death and war. When I open my eyes I see death and war. I blink and as my eyes close I see images of death, and as they flutter open I see death—there is no escaping it.”Many who went to Iraq undoubtedly had it worse than Anthony. Indeed, his experience appears to have been a relatively good one. (Let me stress the word relatively.) And this is precisely why those wanting to join the military should read Mass Casualties. Because, as Anthony so masterfully illustrates, war thrusts all of its participants, even those who don’t end up getting shot full of holes, into a situation that the human psyche is simply not equipped to handle.Contrary to what most eighteen-year-olds think, war isn’t like a game of Halo. It’s certainly nothing like the latest Army recruitment video. And to make matters worse, the military is largely run by a bunch of self-absorbed, even sadistic, people who don’t seem to give a damn about those serving under them. At one point, Anthony describes how a colonel postpones treating a severely wounded soldier so he can finish attending an awards ceremony. Another time, the unit’s officers refuse to send a suicidal soldier away to receive the care he needs, fearing that doing so might make them look bad.Yes, the military might “make you a man,” that is, if you come back alive. But, as Mass Casualties demonstrates, as the record number of soldiers returning home with drug and alcohol addictions, with brain damage, with PTSD and other mental disorders further demonstrates, it’s also likely to destroy you.

for today's post, i'm not going to be using capital letters. why would i do such a thing? simply to honor the guy who sent me my latest piece of hate mail. (technically, hate e-mail.) this person didn’t use capital letters in his hate mail, so, for today, i've decided not to either.this hate mailer accused me of being anti-semitic. never mind that i'm jewish. never mind that i actually have family members living in southern israel. because i dare defend the palestinians, because i think they're entitled to the same rights as their israeli counterparts, i'm evidently anti-semitic. oy vey.i'm not going to quote this guy's entire email, mainly because writing in all lowercase letters is starting to annoy me and i want to end this post as soon as possible. but here's a portion:palestinian arab identity is novel, artificial, and synthetic. in the last 3,000 [years], there was not a state of indigenous people that was not Jewish. the historical/archaeological evidence is all over Israel.you are a such a big defender of the stupidity that has elicited international sympathy and support, consider this: what were the ancient borders of arab palestine? what was its anthem? what is the date of its ancient national festival? what was its currency called? who were its national heroes? name works of ancient palestinian poetry, literature. who were the national poets, authors, artists? if you have not realised it yet, there was no palestinian arab identity that dates back more than 80 years. it was contrived to oppose the Jews. even after syria and egypt supported the idea of an arab palestine, they had no intention of seeing the creation of an independent arab state in palestine. and on and on he continues. (as a sidenote, i just realized that the only words he capitalizes are "israel" and "jewish.")anyway, i have no idea what his points have to do with the price of tea in ramallah. it's no secret that modern zionism predates palestinian nationalism. but so what? that doesn't change the fact that, going into the 20th century, there were brown people living in the land, people whose descendants we now refer to as palestinians. just because these people didn't have their own anthem doesn't mean that the israeli army had the right to prevent the 1948 refugees from returning to their homes. just because these people didn't have their own currency doesn't mean that the israeli army had the right to expropriate land from the west bank. and so on.this hate mailer later writes:I suspect that you know some of the foregoing or that you are indifferent. what you care about is your obsession with Israel. you don't know much but you have your hate. that hate is called "anti-semitism." you wear it. own it. (another sidenote: he also capitalizes "i." he capitalizes "israel," "jewish," and "i." kind of telling, i think.)anyway, this is all so absurd that i feel the need to resort to his level and will end this post with a simple, yet i think profound, response:i'm rubber, you're glue, whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you.please join me later in the week as i resume blogging in both lowercase and uppercase letters. ttfn.

It looks like the Israel Lobby has found itself a new butt boy in Robert Bernstein. And I know what you’re thinking. “Don, did you really just say butt boy?” And, yes, I did just say butt boy. Not sure why, but I’ve been trying to work that into a post for some time now.Anyway, writing in the New York Times, Bernstein complains that Human Rights Watch, which he once headed, has lost its way. Specifically, he feels that HRW has been unfairly singling out Israel over the past few years. The Middle East, he writes, is “populated by authoritarian regimes with appalling human rights records. Yet in recent years Human Rights Watch has written far more condemnations of Israel for violations of international law than of any other country in the region.”Now I’m not sure if HRW does in fact spend more time criticizing Israel than its neighbors. As a regular reader of HRW’s news feed, I can tell you that it produces lots of reports on lots of different nations. But, for the sake of argument, let’s assume that Bernstein is right in this accusation. In response, I can only say, so what? Really, so what?As readers of this blog can testify, I myself spend much more time criticizing Israel than its neighbors. But this isn’t because I’m anti-Semitic. This isn’t because I hold a special place in my heart for ruthless Arab dictatorships. I don’t spend much time condemning the regimes in such places as Iran, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia for the simple reason that there’s no need to. Everyone already knows how the governments in Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, etc., etc., oppress and brutalize their people.But Israel’s a different story. Most people don’t see through the establishment’s rhetoric. Most people don’t understand the full extent of Israel’s crimes, not just in the Occupied Territories, but also in Israel Proper. Most people don’t understand that Israel has become a terrorist state. Therefore, I tend to focus on Israel, not because it’s worse than its neighbors, but because, unlike its neighbors, its sins still need to be brought to light. So if it’s true that HRW spends a disproportionate amount of time chronicling Israeli human rights abuses, then I imagine its being guided by similar motives.Butt Boy Bernstein doesn’t buy this, however. “At Human Rights Watch,” he continues, “we always recognized that open, democratic societies have faults and commit abuses. But we saw that they have the ability to correct them—through vigorous public debate, an adversarial press and many other mechanisms that encourage reform. That is why we sought to draw a sharp line between the democratic and nondemocratic worlds, in an effort to create clarity in human rights.”He makes a point, of course. There certainly is a difference between democratic and nondemocratic societies. I just wonder what this has to do with the State of Israel. Israel, you might have heard, currently rules over 11 million people. And of those 11 million people, 4 million of them (that is, everyone living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip) cannot vote. Now I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t exactly sound like a democracy to me.Bernstein continues in this vein, at one point all but justifying Israel’s January assault in the Gaza Strip, telling us that “there is a difference between wrongs committed in self-defense [Israel’s war crimes] and those perpetrated intentionally [Hamas’ war crimes].” Not surprisingly, he never explains exactly how killing defenseless Palestinians is a wrong “committed in self-defense.” Nor does he explain why dropping bombs in civilian population centers isn’t a wrong “perpetrated intentionally.” Call me crazy, but it seems pretty clear to me that if you know that civilians are living in a certain neighborhood but go ahead and bomb that neighborhood anyway, then you’re intentionally killing civilians.Anyway, I’m not going to spend any more time dealing with Robert Bernstein and his non-arguments. He is, after all, just a butt boy.Related Posts:● Israel Doesn’t Want Peace● And They Say There’s No Israel Lobby● The Liberation of Palestine

A name you should knowSibel Edmonds is a name that every American should know.Because of our derelict media, however, most people have never heard of her, and many of those who have don’t know why she’s so important. But I hope to remedy all this. Not singlehandedly, of course. But I’m determined to do my part, and in what follows I’m going to provide a brief overview of her story.It’s a fascinating story, one that unfolds much like a John Grisham novel. It’s a story that involves espionage and blackmail. It’s a story that implicates high-ranking members of the US Congress, State Department, and Pentagon of treason.It’s a story that, you’ll soon realize, needs to be heard.Turkish spies?Born in Iran in 1970, Edmonds fled with her family to Turkey shortly after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. After graduating from high school, she moved to the United States, went to college, and eventually became an American citizen. Just days after the September 11 attacks, she went to work as a translator for the FBI. Her job there was to listen to wiretapped conversations and decide which conversations were “pertinent” and needed to be translated and passed on to her supervisors.One Sunday morning, fellow FBI translator Melek Can Dickerson and her husband, Air Force Major Douglas Dickerson, paid Edmonds an unexpected visit. Before long, it became clear that the Dickersons had an agenda—to get Edmonds to join the American-Turkish Council. If the ATC knew that she worked for the FBI, Douglas said, they’d be more than happy to see that all her financial needs were taken care of. He proceeded to describe how he and his wife had benefited from their “network of high-level friends.”Aware that the FBI was currently investigating the American-Turkish Council, Edmonds reported this conversation to Special Agent Dennis Saccher. Saccher in turn asked Edmonds and another colleague to go back and translate some of the wiretaps that Melek Can Dickerson had marked “not pertinent.” In one of these conversations, a Turkish official could be heard offering $7,000 to a US State Department official in exchange for certain undisclosed secrets. In another conversation, officials discussed paying a Pentagon official for weapons. In yet another conversation, Turkish officials implied that they’d been putting doctoral students inside various US institutions in order to obtain information about nuclear weapons. By marking these wiretaps “not pertinent” and thus not translating them, Dickerson had prevented them for being heard by anyone else in the bureau.Needless to say, this seemed to suggest that she was engaging in treason, and Saccher immediately passed the information onto FBI Headquarters. But, to his surprise, they told him not to investigate the matter any further, calling it a “can of worms.” Undeterred, Edmonds appealed to the two Justice Department agencies responsible for investigating the FBI, as well as the senior members of the Senate Judiciary Committee.Just the tip of the icebergAll the while, Edmonds continued listening to wiretaps, some of which she claims involved other American officials—including high-ranking members of the US Congress, State Department, and Pentagon—engaging in similarly treasonous behavior. The Dickersons, it seemed, were just the tip of the iceberg.Though Edmonds subsequently shared this information with the Senate Judiciary Committee, the 9/11 Commission, and the Department of Justice’s Inspector General, a 2002 Bush administration gag order prevented [.pdf] any of it from becoming public. The nature of the gag order seemed to suggest that she was telling the truth. As former CIA analyst Philip Giraldi has noted, the gag order “was not requested by the FBI but by the State Department and Pentagon—which employed individuals she identified as being involved in criminal activities. If her allegations are frivolous, that order would scarcely seem necessary.”The FBI fired Edmonds in March 2002, claiming she had a “disruptive effect” on her department.Though unable to give specifics, she spent the next six years telling parts of her story to anyone who would listen. In 2004, she told The Independent that, contrary to the claims of National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, senior US officials knew months before 9/11 that al-Qaeda was planning to attack major American cities with airplanes. In 2008, she told the London Times that a high-ranking State Department official had knowingly provided Israeli and Turkish “moles” with “security clearance to work in sensitive nuclear research facilities.” She further claimed that Turkish officials “often acted as a conduit for the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s spy agency.” Given everything we know about the ISI, this means that some of these secrets were very likely passed on to al-Qaeda, as well as Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.Ungagged This past August, former Ohio Congressional candidate David Krikorian subpoenaed Edmonds to testify in a libel case that indirectly involved several Turkish organizations. In what came as a surprise to many, the Obama Justice Department didn’t step in, and Edmonds was finally able to elaborate upon some of her allegations and even name names.First, she identified former Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman as the State Department official from the London Times story. According to Edmonds, Grossman was receiving money from various Turkish operatives. On one occasion, he allegedly arranged for a State Department colleague to go and collect a bag filled with $14,000 in cash. Aside from providing Israeli and Turkish moles with “security clearance to work in sensitive nuclear research facilities,” she claims that Grossman “assisted his Turkish and Israeli contacts directly, and he also facilitated access to members of Congress who might be inclined to help for reasons of their own or could be bribed into cooperation.”Edmonds further alleges that Grossman was working closely with Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, both of whom provided him with the names of Pentagon employees with access to top-secret information relating to policy, weapons, and nuclear technology. She contends that Perle and Feith also gave Grossman “highly sensitive personal information” about these individuals—information, for instance, disclosing that “this person is a closet gay; this person has a chronic gambling issue; this person is an alcoholic.” Turkish operatives in turn could have used this information to blackmail government secrets from these employees.During her deposition, Edmonds also identified former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (R-IL). She allegedly heard Turkish individuals claiming that they’d “arranged for tens of thousands of dollars to be paid to Hastert’s campaign funds in small checks.” According to journalist David Rose, who has interviewed others familiar with the wiretaps, “the recordings also contained repeated references to Hastert’s flip-flop, in the fall of 2000, over an issue which remains of intense concern to the Turkish government—the continuing campaign to have Congress designate the killings of Armenians in Turkey between 1915 and 1923 a genocide.” In August 2000, Hasteret promised to bring the resolution to a vote before the entire House. “He had a clear political reason, as analysts noted at the time: a California Republican incumbent, locked in a tight congressional race, was looking to win over his district’s large Armenian community. Thanks to Hastert, the resolution, vehemently opposed by the Turks, passed the International Relations Committee by a large majority. Then, on October 19, minutes before the full House vote, Hastert withdrew it.” Rose notes that “a senior official at the Turkish Consulate is said to have claimed in one recording that the price for Hastert to withdraw the resolution would have been at least $500,000.”Along with Hastert, Edmonds claimed that Congressmen Roy Blunt ( R, Mo) and Dan Burton (R-IN) and former Congressmen Tom Lantos (D-CA), Bob Livingston (R-LA), and Stephen J. Solarz (D-NY) have performed favors for various Turkish connections in exchange for money. Lantos, she told Philip Giraldi in a recent interview, had an associate named Alan Makovsky working “very closely with Dr. Sabri Sayari in Georgetown University, who is widely believed to be a Turkish spy. Lantos would give Makovsky highly classified policy-related documents obtained during defense briefings for passage to Israel because Makovsky was also working for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).” AIPAC would then weed out the information that they believed would be helpful to Israel. “The Turks would go through the leftovers, take what they wanted, and then try to sell the rest. If there were something relevant to Pakistan, they would contact the ISI officer at the embassy and say, ‘We’ve got this and this, let’s sit down and talk.’ And then they would sell it to the Pakistanis.”Edmonds claims that many other government employees—including Congressional staffers and several lesser known officials at the Pentagon and State Department—were also involved in such illicit activities.“She’s credible”“If Sibel Edmonds is a fabricator,” writes Philip Giraldi, “she is a damned good one. I would also note that there is a fundamental flaw to the criticism of Sibel, which is that she claims that every single statement made by her is backed up by actual documents in FBI investigative files dealing with the activities of foreign agents who were suborning our elected officials and senior bureaucrats. She has even provided the numbers of the files. At the end of the day, either the files and the evidence they contain are there or they are not. If they are not, then the government should make its case publicly that fraud is being committed by Sibel and her supporters and take whatever legal action they consider to be appropriate. I would suggest that the silence from the government over this matter in itself confirms that the allegations are true in every detail.”Senator Chuck Grassley, the senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, has found Edmonds trustworthy. “She’s credible,” he told 60 Minutes in 2004. “And the reason I feel she’s very credible is because people within the FBI have corroborated a lot of her story.”After conducting a fairly extensive investigation into some of Edmonds’ claims, the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General concluded that "many of her core allegations” regarding Melek Can Dickerson were “supported by either documentary evidence or witnesses other than Edmonds.” Regarding “an allegation that focused on the co-worker’s [Dickerson’s] performance, which Edmonds believed to be an indication of a security problem, the evidence clearly corroborated Edmonds’ allegations.”The report further notes that both Edmonds and Dickerson had been given lie detector tests in March 2002. Both women passed their tests, but the report notes that an FBI Security Officer and other FBI managers later complained that Dickerson was not asked any specific questions about Edmonds’ claims.More recently, former FBI Counterintelligence and Counterespionage Manager John Cole has corroborated many of Edmonds’ claims. He’s confirmed that the FBI spent several years investigating Marc Grossman and that the case was ultimately “buried and covered up.” Moreover, Cole “says that from 1993 to 1995 alone, he had ‘125 open cases’ of Israeli espionage, representing nearly half of all the investigations carried on in his Global Unit.” “Inside the FBI itself, Cole said, tracking suspected Israeli spies was hush-hush. In a sharp break with FBI procedures, he was prohibited from notifying field offices when an investigation crept into their jurisdictions. ‘No one was supposed to know we were investigating the Israelis.’”There is also considerable circumstantial evidence supporting her allegations. For instance, upon retiring from the State Department in 2005, Grossman became a consultant for a Turkish holding company and began earning a salary of $100,000 a month. Kind of smells like payback money to me. Similarly, since leaving Congress, Hastert, Livingston, and Solarz have all received enormous salaries lobbying for the Turkish government.Call to actionAlthough Congress has previously investigated all sorts of relatively trivial matters, from steroid use in Major League Baseball to consensual oral sex in the White House, there’s been no move to investigate any of Edmonds’ allegations. Given that Edmonds has implicated both Democrats and Republicans, this is hardly surprising. In the same way, Clinton would have never been impeached had Republicans learned that he’d been fellated by New Gingrich and not some unknown intern.If you go to Edmonds’ website, you’ll see that she’s asking people to send the following message to their representatives in Congress:I am requesting the immediate release of the entire report completed in July 2004 by the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General (DOJ-IG) of its investigation into confirmed reports by FBI Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds, but which has remained classified; and further insist that it be followed by a joint investigation by Congress, including open public hearings, into those reports of wrongdoing, criminal activities, and cover-ups against the security and interests of the United States and its citizenry.Of course, writing to Congress isn’t enough. In order to force investigations, it’s important to get her story out there. The mainstream media—and I hate to break it to you Republicans out there, but this includes Fox News—has its own corporate-mandated agenda and has refused to do its job. Which means that the burden falls to us.So go to it, fellow bloggers.For more on Edmonds’ story, see:

• “Who’s Afraid of Sibel Edmonds?” by Philip Giraldi, American Conservative, September 2009
• Sibel Edmonds’ deposition (video and transcript), BradBlog.com, August 2009
• Scott Horton interview with Philip Giraldi and Joe Lauria, Antiwar Radio, September 2009
• “For sale: West’s deadly nuclear secrets,” London Times, January 2008
• Kill The Messenger (documentary), September 2006
• “An Inconvenient Patriot” by David Rose, Vanity Fair, August 2005
• Sibel Edmonds archive at BradBlog.com
• Sibel Edmond’s “Just a Citizen” website

While reading through the news this morning, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of horror when coming across an AP story that began:The top military commander in Afghanistan is asking for up to 80,000 more American troops even as he warns that rampant government corruption there may prevent victory against the Taliban and al-Qaida.What I found horrifying was not just that General McChrystal’s asking for 80,000 more troops but that he’s asking for these troops while, at the same time, admitting that his plan “carries a high risk of failing.” Yes, you heard me right. Citing officials at the Pentagon and White House, the AP story noted that McChrystal has prepared a document which admits that, even with these additional troops, the counterinsurgency “carries a high risk of failing.”Now I’m personally not against taking chances. Whenever I’m playing a game of Risk, for instance, I’ll often try my luck. If I have ten pieces on Alaska and my buddy has twenty on Kamchatka, I might roll the dice a few times, see what happens.But McChrystal’s not playing a fucking board game. He’s not sacrificing plastic game pieces but actual human beings. Now I’m not saying that I’d support the escalation if it had “a high risk of succeeding.” Of course I wouldn’t. I’m absolutely against this war. Period. I’m just astounded by the general’s brazen disregard for human life, for American life no less.If President Peace Prize approves McChrystal’s plan, then many more American soldiers will be killed and injured and maimed. Many more soldiers will come home with brain damage and PTSD. Many of these returning soldiers, after being denied proper care from the VA, will turn to drugs and alcohol. Many will ultimately commit suicide.Even those of you who think the war is justified would be hesitant to sacrifice your son or daughter or niece or nephew for a plan that “carries a high risk of failing.” But, of course, the war isn’t justified. It has nothing to do with keeping America safe from terror. We’re no longer even fighting al Qaeda. We killed most of those guys back in 2001, and even Obama’s National Security Advisor admits that there are currently less than one hundred al Qaeda operatives in the country. Rather, we’re fighting a homegrown insurgency, one being lead by a nationalist organization that has never even attacked the United States. Don’t get the wrong idea, I definitely don’t want these Taliban scumbags returning to power. But, as it is, the US is just propping up Hamid Karzai, a truly despicable man, one who’s aligned himself with warlords, one who stole the August presidential election and recently signed a bill into law which effectively legalizes rape within marriage.Of course, McChrystal insists that, if the Taliban comes back into power, they will again provide a safe haven for al Qaeda. Oh give me a break. “Protecting al Qaeda back in 2001 brought no end of trouble to Mullah Omar and his associates,” Harvard’s Stephen Walt has written, “and if they were lucky enough to regain power, it is hard to believe they would give us a reason to come back in force.”And even if the Taliban allowed al Qaeda to return, Walt continues, “the United States isn’t going to sit around and allow them to go about their business undisturbed. The Clinton administration wasn’t sure it was a good idea to go after al Qaeda’s training camps back in the 1990s (though they eventually did, albeit somewhat half-heartedly), but that was before 9/11. We know more now and the U.S. government is hardly going to be bashful about attacking such camps in the future.”I don’t exactly know why this war is being fought. I don’t know why McChrystal and the politicians so desperately want to rule Afghanistan. I just know that they’re lying. By now, anyone with half a brain should know that they’re lying. And I know that more people—many, many more people—are going to die as a result. And, in the end, we might never know what it was all really about.Related Posts:● General McChrystal’s Afghan Plan● Time to Leave Afghanistan● Adventures in Imperialism

From Democracy Now!:Guam Residents Organize Against US Plans for $15B Military Buildup on Pacific Island“The United States is planning an enormous $15 billion military buildup on the Pacific island of Guam. The project would turn the thirty-mile-long island into a major hub for US military operations in the Pacific in what has been described as the largest military buildup in recent history. We speak with Julian Aguon, a civil rights attorney from the Chamoru nation in Guam.”Forcibly Exiled Nearly 40 Years Ago, Diego Garcia Natives Fight to Return to Island Home Now Used as Key US Military Outpost“We turn now to another island that is a key military outpost for the United States. Located in the Indian Ocean, Diego Garcia has often been used for strikes on Iraq and Afghanistan and played a critical role in the US extraordinary rendition program. Unlike Guam, Diego Garcia has no inhabitants resisting the US military. All of the island’s residents were forcibly removed in the early 1970s. For the last four decades, former residents of Diego Garcia and their descendants have been fighting for the right to return. We speak with Olivier Bancoult, a leader of the exiled people of Diego Garcia and president of the Chagos Refugees Group; and David Vine, author of the book Island of Shame: The Secret History of the US Military Base on Diego Garcia.”(h/t Scott Horton)

Over seventy years ago, Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler wrote:War is a racket. It always has been.It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes. Sadly, little has changed since Butler penned those words. America continues sending its soldiers into harm’s way, while the likes of Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) and General Dynamics (GD) continue raking in the dough. Of course, none of this war profiteering would be possible without politicians, whose job it is to trick the public into believing that war, or at least the current war, really is necessary, that if we don’t keep bombing all those defenseless Cambodians or Iraqis or Afghans, then somehow the world won’t be safe for democracy, somehow the things Americans most value will be jeopardized. Our politicians don’t actually believe that wars will make the world a better place. They start wars, they send other people’s sons and daughters into harm’s way, because they themselves stand to profit. According to an April 2008 study by the Center for Responsive Politics, members of Congress have between $79 million and $196 million of their own money invested in defense firms. (Because lawmakers are “only required to report their assets in broad ranges,” the exact amount is unknown.) The Congressmen with the most money invested are:

• Sen. John Kerry (D-MA): $28,872,067 to $38,209,020
• Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-NJ): $12,081,050 to $49,140,000
• Rep. Robin Hayes (R-NC): $9,232,037 to $37,105,000
• Rep. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-WI): $5,207,668 to $7,612,653
• Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA): $2,684,050 to $6,260,000
• Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI): $2,469,029 to $8,360,000
• Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV): $2,000,002
• Rep. Tom Petri (R-WI): $1,365,004 to $5,800,000

Not surprisingly, all of the above individuals are warmongers. All of them, for instance, voted for the Iraq War in 2002. (See Senate vote here, House vote here.)Also not surprisingly, the above individuals receive money—lots and lots of money—from defense firms in the form of campaign contributions. For instance, Frelinghuysen’s top donor is Lockheed Martin, and four of Jane Harman’s top five donors are Northrop Grumman (NOC), Raytheon (RTN), Boeing (BA), and SAIC (SAI). The same is true of other congressional warmongers. If you don’t believe me, just go to OpenSecrets.org and look at all the money that such firms as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and General Dynamics have doled out over the years. Now unless you’re a real idiot, it’s not tough to connect the dots here. Simply put, more war means more money for defense firms, which in turn means more money for members of Congress. The answer to all this is, first of all, to get pissed, to get really pissed. I mean, let it all out. The system’s a fraud! You’re being used! Your sons and daughters are being sent out to die so a bunch of sleazy politicians can make a buck! After you’ve gotten this out of your system, you need to do something about it. Follow Jim Davidson’s lead and divest from the death merchants. If you own stocks in any of these companies, sell them. If you have US Savings Bonds, cash them in. And, of course, do all you can to kick these sleazebags out of office. And then tell others what’s going on. Blog about it, yell it out your window, whatever.Look, I’m not exactly an optimist. I’m not saying we’re going to end the wars. But we at least have to try.

by Major General Smedley Butler, 1935I. War Is A RacketWar is a racket. It always has been.It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.In the World War a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few -- the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.And what is this bill?This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it. Now that I see the international war clouds gathering, as they are today, I must face it and speak out.Again they are choosing sides. France and Russia met and agreed to stand side by side. Italy and Austria hurried to make a similar agreement. Poland and Germany cast sheep's eyes at each other, forgetting for the nonce, their dispute over the Polish Corridor.The assassination of King Alexander of Jugoslavia complicated matters. Jugoslavia and Hungary, long bitter enemies, were almost at each other's throats. Italy was ready to jump in. But France was waiting. So was Czechoslovakia. All of them are looking ahead to war. Not the people -- not those who fight and pay and die -- only those who foment wars and remain safely at home to profit.There are 40,000,000 men under arms in the world today, and our statesmen and diplomats have the temerity to say that war is not in the making.Hell's bells! Are these 40,000,000 men being trained to be dancers?Not in Italy, to be sure. Premier Mussolini knows what they are being trained for. He, at least, is frank enough to speak out. Only the other day, Il Duce in "International Conciliation," the publication of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said:"And above all, Fascism, the more it considers and observes the future and the development of humanity quite apart from political considerations of the moment, believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace. . . . War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the people who have the courage to meet it."Undoubtedly Mussolini means exactly what he says. His well-trained army, his great fleet of planes, and even his navy are ready for war -- anxious for it, apparently. His recent stand at the side of Hungary in the latter's dispute with Jugoslavia showed that. And the hurried mobilization of his troops on the Austrian border after the assassination of Dollfuss showed it too. There are others in Europe too whose sabre rattling presages war, sooner or later.Herr Hitler, with his rearming Germany and his constant demands for more and more arms, is an equal if not greater menace to peace. France only recently increased the term of military service for its youth from a year to eighteen months.Yes, all over, nations are camping in their arms. The mad dogs of Europe are on the loose. In the Orient the maneuvering is more adroit. Back in 1904, when Russia and Japan fought, we kicked out our old friends the Russians and backed Japan. Then our very generous international bankers were financing Japan. Now the trend is to poison us against the Japanese. What does the "open door" policy to China mean to us? Our trade with China is about $90,000,000 a year. Or the Philippine Islands? We have spent about $600,000,000 in the Philippines in thirty-five years and we (our bankers and industrialists and speculators) have private investments there of less than $200,000,000.Then, to save that China trade of about $90,000,000, or to protect these private investments of less than $200,000,000 in the Philippines, we would be all stirred up to hate Japan and go to war -- a war that might well cost us tens of billions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of lives of Americans, and many more hundreds of thousands of physically maimed and mentally unbalanced men.Of course, for this loss, there would be a compensating profit -- fortunes would be made. Millions and billions of dollars would be piled up. By a few. Munitions makers. Bankers. Ship builders. Manufacturers. Meat packers. Speculators. They would fare well.Yes, they are getting ready for another war. Why shouldn't they? It pays high dividends.But what does it profit the men who are killed? What does it profit their mothers and sisters, their wives and their sweethearts? What does it profit their children?What does it profit anyone except the very few to whom war means huge profits?Yes, and what does it profit the nation?Take our own case. Until 1898 we didn't own a bit of territory outside the mainland of North America. At that time our national debt was a little more than $1,000,000,000. Then we became "internationally minded." We forgot, or shunted aside, the advice of the Father of our country. We forgot George Washington's warning about "entangling alliances." We went to war. We acquired outside territory. At the end of the World War period, as a direct result of our fiddling in international affairs, our national debt had jumped to over $25,000,000,000. Our total favorable trade balance during the twenty-five-year period was about $24,000,000,000. Therefore, on a purely bookkeeping basis, we ran a little behind year for year, and that foreign trade might well have been ours without the wars.It would have been far cheaper (not to say safer) for the average American who pays the bills to stay out of foreign entanglements. For a very few this racket, like bootlegging and other underworld rackets, brings fancy profits, but the cost of operations is always transferred to the people -- who do not profit. II. Who Makes The Profits?The World War, rather our brief participation in it, has cost the United States some $52,000,000,000. Figure it out. That means $400 to every American man, woman, and child. And we haven't paid the debt yet. We are paying it, our children will pay it, and our children's children probably still will be paying the cost of that war.The normal profits of a business concern in the United States are six, eight, ten, and sometimes twelve percent. But war-time profits -- ah! that is another matter -- twenty, sixty, one hundred, three hundred, and even eighteen hundred per cent -- the sky is the limit. All that traffic will bear. Uncle Sam has the money. Let's get it.Of course, it isn't put that crudely in war time. It is dressed into speeches about patriotism, love of country, and "we must all put our shoulders to the wheel," but the profits jump and leap and skyrocket -- and are safely pocketed. Let's just take a few examples:Take our friends the du Ponts, the powder people -- didn't one of them testify before a Senate committee recently that their powder won the war? Or saved the world for democracy? Or something? How did they do in the war? They were a patriotic corporation. Well, the average earnings of the du Ponts for the period 1910 to 1914 were $6,000,000 a year. It wasn't much, but the du Ponts managed to get along on it. Now let's look at their average yearly profit during the war years, 1914 to 1918. Fifty-eight million dollars a year profit we find! Nearly ten times that of normal times, and the profits of normal times were pretty good. An increase in profits of more than 950 per cent.Take one of our little steel companies that patriotically shunted aside the making of rails and girders and bridges to manufacture war materials. Well, their 1910-1914 yearly earnings averaged $6,000,000. Then came the war. And, like loyal citizens, Bethlehem Steel promptly turned to munitions making. Did their profits jump -- or did they let Uncle Sam in for a bargain? Well, their 1914-1918 average was $49,000,000 a year!Or, let's take United States Steel. The normal earnings during the five-year period prior to the war were $105,000,000 a year. Not bad. Then along came the war and up went the profits. The average yearly profit for the period 1914-1918 was $240,000,000. Not bad.There you have some of the steel and powder earnings. Let's look at something else. A little copper, perhaps. That always does well in war times.Anaconda, for instance. Average yearly earnings during the pre-war years 1910-1914 of $10,000,000. During the war years 1914-1918 profits leaped to $34,000,000 per year.Or Utah Copper. Average of $5,000,000 per year during the 1910-1914 period. Jumped to an average of $21,000,000 yearly profits for the war period.Let's group these five, with three smaller companies. The total yearly average profits of the pre-war period 1910-1914 were $137,480,000. Then along came the war. The average yearly profits for this group skyrocketed to $408,300,000.A little increase in profits of approximately 200 per cent.Does war pay? It paid them. But they aren't the only ones. There are still others. Let's take leather.For the three-year period before the war the total profits of Central Leather Company were $3,500,000. That was approximately $1,167,000 a year. Well, in 1916 Central Leather returned a profit of $15,000,000, a small increase of 1,100 per cent. That's all. The General Chemical Company averaged a profit for the three years before the war of a little over $800,000 a year. Came the war, and the profits jumped to $12,000,000, a leap of 1,400 per cent.International Nickel Company -- and you can't have a war without nickel -- showed an increase in profits from a mere average of $4,000,000 a year to $73,000,000 yearly. Not bad? An increase of more than 1,700 per cent.American Sugar Refining Company averaged $2,000,000 a year for the three years before the war. In 1916 a profit of $6,000,000 was recorded.Listen to Senate Document No. 259. The Sixty-Fifth Congress, reporting on corporate earnings and government revenues. Considering the profits of 122 meat packers, 153 cotton manufacturers, 299 garment makers, 49 steel plants, and 340 coal producers during the war. Profits under 25 per cent were exceptional. For instance the coal companies made between 100 per cent and 7,856 per cent on their capital stock during the war. The Chicago packers doubled and tripled their earnings.And let us not forget the bankers who financed the great war. If anyone had the cream of the profits it was the bankers. Being partnerships rather than incorporated organizations, they do not have to report to stockholders. And their profits were as secret as they were immense. How the bankers made their millions and their billions I do not know, because those little secrets never become public -- even before a Senate investigatory body.But here's how some of the other patriotic industrialists and speculators chiseled their way into war profits.Take the shoe people. They like war. It brings business with abnormal profits. They made huge profits on sales abroad to our allies. Perhaps, like the munitions manufacturers and armament makers, they also sold to the enemy. For a dollar is a dollar whether it comes from Germany or from France. But they did well by Uncle Sam too. For instance, they sold Uncle Sam 35,000,000 pairs of hobnailed service shoes. There were 4,000,000 soldiers. Eight pairs, and more, to a soldier. My regiment during the war had only one pair to a soldier. Some of these shoes probably are still in existence. They were good shoes. But when the war was over Uncle Sam has a matter of 25,000,000 pairs left over. Bought -- and paid for. Profits recorded and pocketed.There was still lots of leather left. So the leather people sold your Uncle Sam hundreds of thousands of McClellan saddles for the cavalry. But there wasn't any American cavalry overseas! Somebody had to get rid of this leather, however. Somebody had to make a profit in it -- so we had a lot of McClellan saddles. And we probably have those yet.Also somebody had a lot of mosquito netting. They sold your Uncle Sam 20,000,000 mosquito nets for the use of the soldiers overseas. I suppose the boys were expected to put it over them as they tried to sleep in muddy trenches -- one hand scratching cooties on their backs and the other making passes at scurrying rats. Well, not one of these mosquito nets ever got to France!Anyhow, these thoughtful manufacturers wanted to make sure that no soldier would be without his mosquito net, so 40,000,000 additional yards of mosquito netting were sold to Uncle Sam.There were pretty good profits in mosquito netting in those days, even if there were no mosquitoes in France. I suppose, if the war had lasted just a little longer, the enterprising mosquito netting manufacturers would have sold your Uncle Sam a couple of consignments of mosquitoes to plant in France so that more mosquito netting would be in order.Airplane and engine manufacturers felt they, too, should get their just profits out of this war. Why not? Everybody else was getting theirs. So $1,000,000,000 -- count them if you live long enough -- was spent by Uncle Sam in building airplane engines that never left the ground! Not one plane, or motor, out of the billion dollars worth ordered, ever got into a battle in France. Just the same the manufacturers made their little profit of 30, 100, or perhaps 300 per cent.Undershirts for soldiers cost 14¢ to make and uncle Sam paid 30¢ to 40¢ each for them -- a nice little profit for the undershirt manufacturer. And the stocking manufacturer and the uniform manufacturers and the cap manufacturers and the steel helmet manufacturers -- all got theirs.Why, when the war was over some 4,000,000 sets of equipment -- knapsacks and the things that go to fill them -- crammed warehouses on this side. Now they are being scrapped because the regulations have changed the contents. But the manufacturers collected their wartime profits on them -- and they will do it all over again the next time.There were lots of brilliant ideas for profit making during the war.One very versatile patriot sold Uncle Sam twelve dozen 48-inch wrenches. Oh, they were very nice wrenches. The only trouble was that there was only one nut ever made that was large enough for these wrenches. That is the one that holds the turbines at Niagara Falls. Well, after Uncle Sam had bought them and the manufacturer had pocketed the profit, the wrenches were put on freight cars and shunted all around the United States in an effort to find a use for them. When the Armistice was signed it was indeed a sad blow to the wrench manufacturer. He was just about to make some nuts to fit the wrenches. Then he planned to sell these, too, to your Uncle Sam.Still another had the brilliant idea that colonels shouldn't ride in automobiles, nor should they even ride on horseback. One has probably seen a picture of Andy Jackson riding in a buckboard. Well, some 6,000 buckboards were sold to Uncle Sam for the use of colonels! Not one of them was used. But the buckboard manufacturer got his war profit.The shipbuilders felt they should come in on some of it, too. They built a lot of ships that made a lot of profit. More than $3,000,000,000 worth. Some of the ships were all right. But $635,000,000 worth of them were made of wood and wouldn't float! The seams opened up -- and they sank. We paid for them, though. And somebody pocketed the profits.It has been estimated by statisticians and economists and researchers that the war cost your Uncle Sam $52,000,000,000. Of this sum, $39,000,000,000 was expended in the actual war itself. This expenditure yielded $16,000,000,000 in profits. That is how the 21,000 billionaires and millionaires got that way. This $16,000,000,000 profits is not to be sneezed at. It is quite a tidy sum. And it went to a very few.The Senate (Nye) committee probe of the munitions industry and its wartime profits, despite its sensational disclosures, hardly has scratched the surface.Even so, it has had some effect. The State Department has been studying "for some time" methods of keeping out of war. The War Department suddenly decides it has a wonderful plan to spring. The Administration names a committee -- with the War and Navy Departments ably represented under the chairmanship of a Wall Street speculator -- to limit profits in war time. To what extent isn't suggested. Hmmm. Possibly the profits of 300 and 600 and 1,600 per cent of those who turned blood into gold in the World War would be limited to some smaller figure.Apparently, however, the plan does not call for any limitation of losses -- that is, the losses of those who fight the war. As far as I have been able to ascertain there is nothing in the scheme to limit a soldier to the loss of but one eye, or one arm, or to limit his wounds to one or two or three. Or to limit the loss of life.There is nothing in this scheme, apparently, that says not more than 12 per cent of a regiment shall be wounded in battle, or that not more than 7 per cent in a division shall be killed.Of course, the committee cannot be bothered with such trifling matters.III. Who Pays The Bills?Who provides the profits -- these nice little profits of 20, 100, 300, 1,500 and 1,800 per cent? We all pay them -- in taxation. We paid the bankers their profits when we bought Liberty Bonds at $100.00 and sold them back at $84 or $86 to the bankers. These bankers collected $100 plus. It was a simple manipulation. The bankers control the security marts. It was easy for them to depress the price of these bonds. Then all of us -- the people -- got frightened and sold the bonds at $84 or $86. The bankers bought them. Then these same bankers stimulated a boom and government bonds went to par -- and above. Then the bankers collected their profits.But the soldier pays the biggest part of the bill.If you don't believe this, visit the American cemeteries on the battlefields abroad. Or visit any of the veteran's hospitals in the United States. On a tour of the country, in the midst of which I am at the time of this writing, I have visited eighteen government hospitals for veterans. In them are a total of about 50,000 destroyed men -- men who were the pick of the nation eighteen years ago. The very able chief surgeon at the government hospital, at Milwaukee, where there are 3,800 of the living dead, told me that mortality among veterans is three times as great as among those who stayed at home.Boys with a normal viewpoint were taken out of the fields and offices and factories and classrooms and put into the ranks. There they were remolded; they were made over; they were made to "about face"; to regard murder as the order of the day. They were put shoulder to shoulder and, through mass psychology, they were entirely changed. We used them for a couple of years and trained them to think nothing at all of killing or of being killed.Then, suddenly, we discharged them and told them to make another "about face" ! This time they had to do their own readjustment, sans mass psychology, sans officers' aid and advice and sans nation-wide propaganda. We didn't need them any more. So we scattered them about without any "three-minute" or "Liberty Loan" speeches or parades. Many, too many, of these fine young boys are eventually destroyed, mentally, because they could not make that final "about face" alone.In the government hospital in Marion, Indiana, 1,800 of these boys are in pens! Five hundred of them in a barracks with steel bars and wires all around outside the buildings and on the porches. These already have been mentally destroyed. These boys don't even look like human beings. Oh, the looks on their faces! Physically, they are in good shape; mentally, they are gone.There are thousands and thousands of these cases, and more and more are coming in all the time. The tremendous excitement of the war, the sudden cutting off of that excitement -- the young boys couldn't stand it.That's a part of the bill. So much for the dead -- they have paid their part of the war profits. So much for the mentally and physically wounded -- they are paying now their share of the war profits. But the others paid, too -- they paid with heartbreaks when they tore themselves away from their firesides and their families to don the uniform of Uncle Sam -- on which a profit had been made. They paid another part in the training camps where they were regimented and drilled while others took their jobs and their places in the lives of their communities. They paid for it in the trenches where they shot and were shot; where they were hungry for days at a time; where they slept in the mud and the cold and in the rain -- with the moans and shrieks of the dying for a horrible lullaby.But don't forget -- the soldier paid part of the dollars and cents bill too.Up to and including the Spanish-American War, we had a prize system, and soldiers and sailors fought for money. During the Civil War they were paid bonuses, in many instances, before they went into service. The government, or states, paid as high as $1,200 for an enlistment. In the Spanish-American War they gave prize money. When we captured any vessels, the soldiers all got their share -- at least, they were supposed to. Then it was found that we could reduce the cost of wars by taking all the prize money and keeping it, but conscripting [drafting] the soldier anyway. Then soldiers couldn't bargain for their labor, Everyone else could bargain, but the soldier couldn't.Napoleon once said, "All men are enamored of decorations . . . they positively hunger for them."So by developing the Napoleonic system -- the medal business -- the government learned it could get soldiers for less money, because the boys liked to be decorated. Until the Civil War there were no medals. Then the Congressional Medal of Honor was handed out. It made enlistments easier. After the Civil War no new medals were issued until the Spanish-American War.In the World War, we used propaganda to make the boys accept conscription. They were made to feel ashamed if they didn't join the army.So vicious was this war propaganda that even God was brought into it. With few exceptions our clergymen joined in the clamor to kill, kill, kill. To kill the Germans. God is on our side . . . it is His will that the Germans be killed.And in Germany, the good pastors called upon the Germans to kill the allies . . . to please the same God. That was a part of the general propaganda, built up to make people war conscious and murder conscious.Beautiful ideals were painted for our boys who were sent out to die. This was the "war to end all wars." This was the "war to make the world safe for democracy." No one mentioned to them, as they marched away, that their going and their dying would mean huge war profits. No one told these American soldiers that they might be shot down by bullets made by their own brothers here. No one told them that the ships on which they were going to cross might be torpedoed by submarines built with United States patents. They were just told it was to be a "glorious adventure."Thus, having stuffed patriotism down their throats, it was decided to make them help pay for the war, too. So, we gave them the large salary of $30 a month.All they had to do for this munificent sum was to leave their dear ones behind, give up their jobs, lie in swampy trenches, eat canned willy (when they could get it) and kill and kill and kill . . . and be killed.But wait!Half of that wage (just a little more than a riveter in a shipyard or a laborer in a munitions factory safe at home made in a day) was promptly taken from him to support his dependents, so that they would not become a charge upon his community. Then we made him pay what amounted to accident insurance -- something the employer pays for in an enlightened state -- and that cost him $6 a month. He had less than $9 a month left.Then, the most crowning insolence of all -- he was virtually blackjacked into paying for his own ammunition, clothing, and food by being made to buy Liberty Bonds. Most soldiers got no money at all on pay days.We made them buy Liberty Bonds at $100 and then we bought them back -- when they came back from the war and couldn't find work -- at $84 and $86. And the soldiers bought about $2,000,000,000 worth of these bonds!Yes, the soldier pays the greater part of the bill. His family pays too. They pay it in the same heart-break that he does. As he suffers, they suffer. At nights, as he lay in the trenches and watched shrapnel burst about him, they lay home in their beds and tossed sleeplessly -- his father, his mother, his wife, his sisters, his brothers, his sons, and his daughters.When he returned home minus an eye, or minus a leg or with his mind broken, they suffered too -- as much as and even sometimes more than he. Yes, and they, too, contributed their dollars to the profits of the munitions makers and bankers and shipbuilders and the manufacturers and the speculators made. They, too, bought Liberty Bonds and contributed to the profit of the bankers after the Armistice in the hocus-pocus of manipulated Liberty Bond prices.And even now the families of the wounded men and of the mentally broken and those who never were able to readjust themselves are still suffering and still paying.IV. How To Smash This Racket!Well, it's a racket, all right.A few profit -- and the many pay. But there is a way to stop it. You can't end it by disarmament conferences. You can't eliminate it by peace parleys at Geneva. Well-meaning but impractical groups can't wipe it out by resolutions. It can be smashed effectively only by taking the profit out of war.The only way to smash this racket is to conscript capital and industry and labor before the nations manhood can be conscripted. One month before the Government can conscript the young men of the nation -- it must conscript capital and industry and labor. Let the officers and the directors and the high-powered executives of our armament factories and our munitions makers and our shipbuilders and our airplane builders and the manufacturers of all the other things that provide profit in war time as well as the bankers and the speculators, be conscripted -- to get $30 a month, the same wage as the lads in the trenches get.Let the workers in these plants get the same wages -- all the workers, all presidents, all executives, all directors, all managers, all bankers -- yes, and all generals and all admirals and all officers and all politicians and all government office holders -- everyone in the nation be restricted to a total monthly income not to exceed that paid to the soldier in the trenches!Let all these kings and tycoons and masters of business and all those workers in industry and all our senators and governors and majors pay half of their monthly $30 wage to their families and pay war risk insurance and buy Liberty Bonds.Why shouldn't they?They aren't running any risk of being killed or of having their bodies mangled or their minds shattered. They aren't sleeping in muddy trenches. They aren't hungry. The soldiers are!Give capital and industry and labor thirty days to think it over and you will find, by that time, there will be no war. That will smash the war racket -- that and nothing else.Maybe I am a little too optimistic. Capital still has some say. So capital won't permit the taking of the profit out of war until the people -- those who do the suffering and still pay the price -- make up their minds that those they elect to office shall do their bidding, and not that of the profiteers.Another step necessary in this fight to smash the war racket is the limited plebiscite to determine whether a war should be declared. A plebiscite not of all the voters but merely of those who would be called upon to do the fighting and dying. There wouldn't be very much sense in having a 76-year-old president of a munitions factory or the flat-footed head of an international banking firm or the cross-eyed manager of a uniform manufacturing plant -- all of whom see visions of tremendous profits in the event of war -- voting on whether the nation should go to war or not. They never would be called upon to shoulder arms -- to sleep in a trench and to be shot. Only those who would be called upon to risk their lives for their country should have the privilege of voting to determine whether the nation should go to war.There is ample precedent for restricting the voting to those affected. Many of our states have restrictions on those permitted to vote. In most, it is necessary to be able to read and write before you may vote. In some, you must own property. It would be a simple matter each year for the men coming of military age to register in their communities as they did in the draft during the World War and be examined physically. Those who could pass and who would therefore be called upon to bear arms in the event of war would be eligible to vote in a limited plebiscite. They should be the ones to have the power to decide -- and not a Congress few of whose members are within the age limit and fewer still of whom are in physical condition to bear arms. Only those who must suffer should have the right to vote.A third step in this business of smashing the war racket is to make certain that our military forces are truly forces for defense only.At each session of Congress the question of further naval appropriations comes up. The swivel-chair admirals of Washington (and there are always a lot of them) are very adroit lobbyists. And they are smart. They don't shout that "We need a lot of battleships to war on this nation or that nation." Oh no. First of all, they let it be known that America is menaced by a great naval power. Almost any day, these admirals will tell you, the great fleet of this supposed enemy will strike suddenly and annihilate 125,000,000 people. Just like that. Then they begin to cry for a larger navy. For what? To fight the enemy? Oh my, no. Oh, no. For defense purposes only.Then, incidentally, they announce maneuvers in the Pacific. For defense. Uh, huh.The Pacific is a great big ocean. We have a tremendous coastline on the Pacific. Will the maneuvers be off the coast, two or three hundred miles? Oh, no. The maneuvers will be two thousand, yes, perhaps even thirty-five hundred miles, off the coast.The Japanese, a proud people, of course will be pleased beyond expression to see the United States fleet so close to Nippon's shores. Even as pleased as would be the residents of California were they to dimly discern through the morning mist, the Japanese fleet playing at war games off Los Angeles.The ships of our navy, it can be seen, should be specifically limited, by law, to within 200 miles of our coastline. Had that been the law in 1898 the Maine would never have gone to Havana Harbor. She never would have been blown up. There would have been no war with Spain with its attendant loss of life. Two hundred miles is ample, in the opinion of experts, for defense purposes. Our nation cannot start an offensive war if its ships can't go further than 200 miles from the coastline. Planes might be permitted to go as far as 500 miles from the coast for purposes of reconnaissance. And the army should never leave the territorial limits of our nation.To summarize: Three steps must be taken to smash the war racket.1. We must take the profit out of war.2. We must permit the youth of the land who would bear arms to decide whether or not there should be war.3. We must limit our military forces to home defense purposes. V. To Hell With War!I am not a fool as to believe that war is a thing of the past. I know the people do not want war, but there is no use in saying we cannot be pushed into another war.Looking back, Woodrow Wilson was re-elected president in 1916 on a platform that he had "kept us out of war" and on the implied promise that he would "keep us out of war." Yet, five months later he asked Congress to declare war on Germany.In that five-month interval the people had not been asked whether they had changed their minds. The 4,000,000 young men who put on uniforms and marched or sailed away were not asked whether they wanted to go forth to suffer and die.Then what caused our government to change its mind so suddenly?Money.An allied commission, it may be recalled, came over shortly before the war declaration and called on the President. The President summoned a group of advisers. The head of the commission spoke. Stripped of its diplomatic language, this is what he told the President and his group:"There is no use kidding ourselves any longer. The cause of the allies is lost. We now owe you (American bankers, American munitions makers, American manufacturers, American speculators, American exporters) five or six billion dollars.If we lose (and without the help of the United States we must lose) we, England, France and Italy, cannot pay back this money . . . and Germany won't.So . . . "Had secrecy been outlawed as far as war negotiations were concerned, and had the press been invited to be present at that conference, or had radio been available to broadcast the proceedings, America never would have entered the World War. But this conference, like all war discussions, was shrouded in utmost secrecy. When our boys were sent off to war they were told it was a "war to make the world safe for democracy" and a "war to end all wars."Well, eighteen years after, the world has less of democracy than it had then. Besides, what business is it of ours whether Russia or Germany or England or France or Italy or Austria live under democracies or monarchies? Whether they are Fascists or Communists? Our problem is to preserve our own democracy.And very little, if anything, has been accomplished to assure us that the World War was really the war to end all wars.Yes, we have had disarmament conferences and limitations of arms conferences. They don't mean a thing. One has just failed; the results of another have been nullified. We send our professional soldiers and our sailors and our politicians and our diplomats to these conferences. And what happens?The professional soldiers and sailors don't want to disarm. No admiral wants to be without a ship. No general wants to be without a command. Both mean men without jobs. They are not for disarmament. They cannot be for limitations of arms. And at all these conferences, lurking in the background but all-powerful, just the same, are the sinister agents of those who profit by war. They see to it that these conferences do not disarm or seriously limit armaments.The chief aim of any power at any of these conferences has not been to achieve disarmament to prevent war but rather to get more armament for itself and less for any potential foe.There is only one way to disarm with any semblance of practicability. That is for all nations to get together and scrap every ship, every gun, every rifle, every tank, every war plane. Even this, if it were possible, would not be enough.The next war, according to experts, will be fought not with battleships, not by artillery, not with rifles and not with machine guns. It will be fought with deadly chemicals and gases.Secretly each nation is studying and perfecting newer and ghastlier means of annihilating its foes wholesale. Yes, ships will continue to be built, for the shipbuilders must make their profits. And guns still will be manufactured and powder and rifles will be made, for the munitions makers must make their huge profits. And the soldiers, of course, must wear uniforms, for the manufacturer must make their war profits too.But victory or defeat will be determined by the skill and ingenuity of our scientists.If we put them to work making poison gas and more and more fiendish mechanical and explosive instruments of destruction, they will have no time for the constructive job of building greater prosperity for all peoples. By putting them to this useful job, we can all make more money out of peace than we can out of war -- even the munitions makers.So...I say,TO HELL WITH WAR!

[Major General Smedley Butler served in the US Marine Corps from 1898-1931. During this time, he fought in several conflicts, including the Boxer Revolution and World War I, and earned two Medals of Honor. Upon his retirement, Butler began traveling the country and speaking out against war profiteering. In 1935, he penned his now-classic work, War is a Racket. Source: Wikipedia.]Smedley Butler begins his masterpiece:War is a racket. It always has been.It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes. What’s that? Evidence? You want evidence? Well, Butler is more than happy to deliver.Take our friends the du Ponts, the powder people -- didn't one of them testify before a Senate committee recently that their powder won the war? Or saved the world for democracy? Or something? How did they do in the war? They were a patriotic corporation. Well, the average earnings of the du Ponts for the period 1910 to 1914 were $6,000,000 a year. It wasn't much, but the du Ponts managed to get along on it. Now let's look at their average yearly profit during the war years, 1914 to 1918. Fifty-eight million dollars a year profit we find! Nearly ten times that of normal times, and the profits of normal times were pretty good. An increase in profits of more than 950 per cent.Take one of our little steel companies that patriotically shunted aside the making of rails and girders and bridges to manufacture war materials. Well, their 1910-1914 yearly earnings averaged $6,000,000. Then came the war. And, like loyal citizens, Bethlehem Steel promptly turned to munitions making. Did their profits jump -- or did they let Uncle Sam in for a bargain? Well, their 1914-1918 average was $49,000,000 a year!Butler goes on to chronicle how numerous other companies profited from the war. And all of their bills, he notes, were footed by the majority of Americans, by the taxpayers. Of course, American soldiers paid the biggest price.If you don't believe this, visit the American cemeteries on the battlefields abroad. Or visit any of the veteran's hospitals in the United States. On a tour of the country, in the midst of which I am at the time of this writing, I have visited eighteen government hospitals for veterans. In them are a total of about 50,000 destroyed men -- men who were the pick of the nation eighteen years ago. The very able chief surgeon at the government hospital, at Milwaukee, where there are 3,800 of the living dead, told me that mortality among veterans is three times as great as among those who stayed at home.Moreover,…they paid with heartbreaks when they tore themselves away from their firesides and their families to don the uniform of Uncle Sam -- on which a profit had been made. They paid another part in the training camps where they were regimented and drilled while others took their jobs and their places in the lives of their communities. They paid for it in the trenches where they shot and were shot; where they were hungry for days at a time; where they slept in the mud and the cold and in the rain -- with the moans and shrieks of the dying for a horrible lullaby. The families of soldiers have also paid, and continue to pay, for the war.They pay it in the same heart-break that he [the soldier] does. As he suffers, they suffer. At nights, as he lay in the trenches and watched shrapnel burst about him, they lay home in their beds and tossed sleeplessly -- his father, his mother, his wife, his sisters, his brothers, his sons, and his daughters.When he returned home minus an eye, or minus a leg or with his mind broken, they suffered too -- as much as and even sometimes more than he. Yes, and they, too, contributed their dollars to the profits of the munitions makers and bankers and shipbuilders and the manufacturers and the speculators made. They, too, bought Liberty Bonds and contributed to the profit of the bankers after the Armistice in the hocus-pocus of manipulated Liberty Bond prices. So how can we end the war racket? Butler offers three solutions. First, we should…conscript capital and industry and labor before the nations manhood can be conscripted. One month before the Government can conscript the young men of the nation -- it must conscript capital and industry and labor. Let the officers and the directors and the high-powered executives of our armament factories and our munitions makers and our shipbuilders and our airplane builders and the manufacturers of all the other things that provide profit in war time as well as the bankers and the speculators, be conscripted -- to get $30 a month, the same wage as the lads in the trenches get.Let the workers in these plants get the same wages -- all the workers, all presidents, all executives, all directors, all managers, all bankers -- yes, and all generals and all admirals and all officers and all politicians and all government office holders -- everyone in the nation be restricted to a total monthly income not to exceedthat paid to the soldier in the trenches!Second, Butler proposes that only soldiers should be allowed to decide whether or not they go to war.There wouldn't be very much sense in having a 76-year-old president of a munitions factory or the flat-footed head of an international banking firm or the cross-eyed manager of a uniform manufacturing plant -- all of whom see visions of tremendous profits in the event of war -- voting on whether the nation should go to war or not. They never would be called upon to shoulder arms -- to sleep in a trench and to be shot. Only those who would be called upon to risk their lives for their country should have the privilege of voting to determine whether the nation should go to war. Finally, Butler claims that we should “make certain that our military forces are truly forces for defense only.”The ships of our navy, it can be seen, should be specifically limited, by law, to within 200 miles of our coastline. Had that been the law in 1898 the Maine would never have gone to Havana Harbor. She never would have been blown up. There would have been no war with Spain with its attendant loss of life. Two hundred miles is ample, in the opinion of experts, for defense purposes. Our nation cannot start an offensive war if its ships can't go further than 200 miles from the coastline. Planes might be permitted to go as far as 500 miles from the coast for purposes of reconnaissance. And the army should never leave the territorial limits of our nation.Writing shortly before World War II, Butler knew that the next war would be fought, “not with battleships, not by artillery, not with rifles and not with machine guns. It will be fought with deadly chemicals and gases.” He continues:If we put them [scientists] to work making poison gas and more and more fiendish mechanical and explosive instruments of destruction, they will have no time for the constructive job of building greater prosperity for all peoples. By putting them to this useful job, we can all make more money out of peace than we can out of war -- even the munitions makers.So...I say,TO HELL WITH WAR! And to that, I can only add a heartfelt, Amen!