As Obama, His House And Senate Allies, His “Coalition Of The Willing” Ramp Up The War Drums-Again- Stop The Bombings-Stop The Incessant Escalations-- Immediate Withdrawal Of All U.S. Troops And Mercenaries From The Middle East! –Stop The U.S. Arms Shipments …
A New American Military Push In Iraq
Ralph Morris comment:
This is my first effort at writing for a blog so bear with me but I have been incensed, no, worse than that, in a rage, over the recent announcement by the Obama administration that he is sending more American “advisers” into the hell-hole in Iraq. The classic incremental mission creep anybody who knew anything about the situation in Iraq could have told you was going to happen after the last set of escalations Obama announced over a year ago. My old friend Sam Easton whom I have worked with in the anti-war struggles since we met in RFK stadium in Washington, D.C. when we were trying to shut down another government, the Nixon one of unblessed memory, to end the bombing escalations of the already lost Vietnam War, and got nothing but a few days in the bastinado for our efforts is also livid about the latest Obama stunt which has all the earmarks of previous “mission creeps”-escalations to call a thing by its right name. Sam usually is the one who actually likes, if you can believe this, to write his little pieces about what is on his mind and I contribute on the ideas end but Sam has convinced me that I should go public on this one.
See Sam is always one for symbolism, has been as long as I have known him and learned why he was back in 1971 so incensed about the Vietnam War since he had had an exemption due to the fact that he was the sole support of his mother and four younger sisters. Actually had met him first on that May Day after my own arrest for trying to march with a group of ex-veterans to the Pentagon to stage a symbolic shutdown and I had noticed him wandering around the football field wearing a button as a supporter of my organization, Vietnam Veterans Against The War (VVAW) and asked if he was a member since I had not seen him at any of our actions. Then he told me the story about Jeff Mullin his closest high school friend being blown away in 1968 in some nondescript village near Pleiku up in the Central Highland not all that far from where my unit was located for most of 1967. He said that he had become an anti-warrior with a vengeance and a supporter of VVAW in Jeff’s memory sitting in at draft boards, military bases, recruiting stations and the like in the Boston area and had come down with a group of radicals from Cambridge when they, he, had gotten totally fed up with the Nixon government’s continuation of a war that could only tear the country apart further.
My own story when I told it to Sam as we lingered in that stadium for a few days before we figured out (based on somebody else’s information) that there were some unguarded side exits in which to get out was not untypical of a lot of guys, a lot of working class guys anyway, maybe a few college guys too early on in the war. I had been working in my father’s high skill electrical shop in Troy, New York which had a number of contracts with General Electric, in those days the largest private employer in the area, who had a ton of contracts with the Defense Department. When my draft notice came in early 1967 I flipped out, decided that I did not want to be “cannon fodder” (I did not know that term then or would not have used it then if I did, that can later) and joined up, RA (Regular Army), figuring or rather my recruiting sergeant figuring that I would get into electronics, something I could be useful at. But see in 1967, 1968 what Uncle wanted was cannon fodder in Vietnam to go out into the bush and kill commies. And I did, extending my tour six months in 1968 to get out of my three year commitment a little early. But when I got out I freaked out, freaked out about what I had done to those poor villagers who got in the way, got in the cross-fire, freaked about what my buddies had done too, but mainly was disgusted that the government had made animals out of us, nothing less. So sure I headed to VVAW like a moth to a flame.
And not just giving a couple of years in my youth either since Sam and I have been putting on the good fight against this damn government’s endless wars ever since, especially since the start of the 2003 Iraq endless war. So when a guy like Obama, a Nobel Peace Prize winner if you can believe that (hell, whatever criterion they used probably George Bush I and II could have qualified too), starts rattling off about how we need to go in and stiffen up the Iraq Army which has this tendency to run the minute there is an conflict (heck, maybe they should be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, or some prize for running away) then I dust off my “Not Another War in Iraq” sign and hit the streets. Sam too.
You know why-because we have heard that one before, heard it in the American death pits of Vietnam, know it is the same old government rot with a new name, ISIS this time but Viet Cong then (we called them Charlie amongst ourselves when we had to face his relentless fire). So Sam and I urge you to get out in the streets-again. It is the only way to make them listen. And if they don’t well remember May Day 1971 and maybe this time we can shut down the damn wars.
That is the political action part here is how Sam and I have been putting our heads together over the last couple of years as we could see with un-blinkered eyes the nightmare scenario which Obama and his military gurus and hangers-on have unleashed. Listen up:
One night not long ago when my friend from high school, Carver High Class of 1967 down in southeastern Massachusetts, Sam Eaton, who I hadn’t seen in a while were, full disclosure, having a few high-shelf whiskeys at Jack Higgin’s Sunnyvale Grille in Boston, arguing over the increasing use of and increased dependence on killer/spy drones in military doctrine, American military doctrine anyway. I also mentioned which is germane here in discussing the broader category of the seemingly endless wars that the American government is determined to wage at the close of our lives so that we never again utter the word “peace” with anything but ironic sneers that I, again for full disclosure, am a supporter of Veterans For Peace and have been involved with such groups, both veteran and civilian peace groups, since my own military service ended back during Vietnam War days. For those not in the know that organization of ex-veterans of the last couple of generations of America’s wars has for over a quarter of a century been determinedly committed to opposing war as an instrument, as the first instrument, of American policy in what it sees as a hostile world (a view that it has held for a long time, only the targeted enemy and the amount of devastation brought forth has changed).
But Sam is nothing if not determined just like me to carry on in his views and so another night at Jack Higgin’s found us arguing over the more recent egg-in-face aspects of American war policy in the Middle East with the rise of ISIS, the demise of the failed states of Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan and with it whatever rationale made the American government built a thing from which it had to run. Here is some of our thinking as this damn Iraq War started escalating a couple of years ago:
“Nobel “Peace” Prize Winner, U.S. President Barack Obama (and yes that word peace should be placed in quotation marks every time that award winning is referenced in relationship to this “new age” warmonger extraordinaire), abetted by the usual suspects in the House and Senate (not so strangely more Republicans than Democrats, at least more vociferously so) as internationally (Britain, France, the NATO guys, etc.), has over the past year or so ordered more air bombing strikes in the north of Iraq and in Syria, has sent more “advisers”, another fifteen hundred at last count (but who really knows the real number with all the “smoke and mirrors” by the time you rotate guys in and out, hire mercenaries, and other tricks of the trade long worked out among the bureaucratiti), to “protect” American outposts in Iraq and buck up the feckless Iraqi Army whose main attribute is to run even before contact is made, has sent seemingly limitless arms shipments to the Kurds now acting as on the ground agents of American imperialism whatever their otherwise supportable desires for a unified Kurdish state, and has authorized supplies of arms to the cutthroat and ghost-like moderate Syrian opposition if it can be found to give weapons to, quite a lot of war-like actions for a “peace” guy (maybe those quotation mark should be used anytime anyone is talking about Obama on any subject ).
Of course the existential threat of ISIS has Obama crying to the high heavens for authorizations, essentially "blank check" authorizations just like any other "war" president, from Congress in order to immerse the United States on one side in a merciless sectarian war which countless American blunders from the get go has helped create.
All these actions, and threatened future ones as well, have made guys who served in the American military during the Vietnam War and who, like me, belatedly, got “religion” on the war issue from the experience (and have become a fervent anti-warrior ever since), learn to think long and hard about the war drums rising as a kneejerk way to resolve the conflicts in this wicked old world. Have made us very skeptical. We might very well be excused for our failed suspension of disbelief when the White House keeps pounding out the propaganda that these actions are limited when all signs point to the slippery slope of escalation (and the most recent hikes of whatever number for "training" purposes puts paid to that thought).
And during all this deluge Obama and company have been saying with a straight face the familiar (Vietnam-era familiar updated for the present)-“we seek no wider war”-meaning no American combat troops. Well if you start bombing places back to the Stone Age, or trying to, if you cannot rely on the weak-kneed Iraqi troops who have already shown what they are made of and cannot rely on a now virtually non-existent “Syrian Free Army” which you are willing to give whatever they want and will still come up short what do you think the next step will be?
Now not every event in history gets repeated exactly but given the recent United States Government’s history in Iraq those old time Vietnam vets who I like to hang around with might be on to something. In any case dust off the old banners, placards, and buttons and get your voices in shape- just in case. No New War In Iraq!–Stop The Bombings!- Stop The Arms Shipments!-Vote Down The Syria-Iraq War Budget Appropriations!
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Here is something to think about picked up from a leaflet I picked up at a recent (small) anti-war rally:
Workers and the oppressed have no interest in a victory by one combatant or the other in the reactionary Sunni-Shi’ite civil war in Iraq or the victory of any side in Syria. However, the international working class definitely has a side in opposing imperialist intervention in Iraq and demanding the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops and mercenaries. It is U.S. imperialism that constitutes the greatest danger to the world’s working people and downtrodden.
[Whatever unknown sister or brother put that idea together sure has it right]
