After the end of World War II, the Japanese constitution, written by the United States for the defeated Japanese, rejected war as a solution for conflict. Article 9 states: “Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes. In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.”
blogs
John Cusack's War: The Actor Battles to Un-embed Hollywood With "War, Inc."
Submitted by jaymarx on Fri, 05/16/2008 - 9:02pm.By Jeremy Scahill
t r u t h o u t | Film Review
Friday 16 May 2008
Back in 1989, in his smash hit, "Say Anything," John Cusack famously stood with a boom box above his head outside the home of the woman he loved blasting Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes." With his latest films on the Iraq war, Cusack is standing outside Hollywood with a TV above his head broadcasting his political movies calling on the public to wake up and "Do Something."
John Cusack began working on his new film, "War, Inc.," which premieres in LA and New York May 23, about a year into the US occupation of Iraq. From the moment US tanks rolled into Baghdad, Cusack was a voracious consumer of news about the war. He took it deadly seriously, regularly calling independent journalists and asking them questions as he sought as much independent information as he could. Watching the insanity of the erection of the Green Zone and the advent of the era of McWar, complete with tens of thousands of "private contractors," Cusack set out to use the medium of film to unveil the madness. He wanted to do on the big screen what independent reporters like Naomi Klein, Nir Rosen and Dahr Jamail did in print. Over these years of war and occupation, Cusack has become one of the most insightful commentators on a far-too-seldom-discussed aspect of the occupation: the corporate dominance of the US war machine.
Of War and Golf - Olbermann Indignant
Submitted by jaymarx on Fri, 05/16/2008 - 6:12am.By Keith Olbermann
MSNBC Countdown
Wednesday 14 May 2008
Transcript:
Finally tonight, as promised, a Special Comment on two topics a lot of us had foolishly thought, had naively hoped, we would not again have to address… and a third topic nobody thought a president would ever seriously mention in public unless perhaps he'd just been hit in the head with something and was not in full possession of his faculties - how he expressed his "empathy" to the families of the dead in Iraq - by giving up golf.
Report from Vietnam
Submitted by et on Tue, 05/13/2008 - 11:48am.5/13/08 Vietnam
When I was 14, my dad took me to Tahiti and Bora Bora. Vietnam reminds me of Papeete (extended for many miles). Lush, green, monster trees, banana trees, coconut trees, bougainvilla and hibiscus, tiny shops, swift rain squalls, people with big smiles who love to test their English on you, motor scooters (multiplied by several million).
[I had my first ride on a motor scooter behind a polyn/asian girl in Papeete. Come to think of it, it was my most recent, as well.]
We're guided by Mr. Loc (pronounced "Lo") of the YMCA, and driven everywhere through the honking streets in a big maroon van by Mr. Thong. Those accompanying us are Sayuri and Eiko of the Dream Bridge Project, and Kozumi of Toyama YMCA. Sayuri and I have a room three times the size of our hotel rooms in Tokyo (about which Jay remarked, "I found the closet, but where's the room?").
The scooters are an overwhelming force here. I stepped out on the balcony at 6 am and rush hour had already started, four lanes plus two sidewalks of motor scooters weaving perilously between buses and cars. Other than a few lights on the main roads (fortunately all one-way) there are seemingly no traffic laws. Traffic circles are bedlam, but Mr. Thong negotiates them with aplomb, a horn, and a shocking lack of alarm as others surge toward him. Many people wear face masks. The pollution is horrid!
The food is marvelous, particularly the noodles. Breakfast yesterday was truly french rolls with butter and pate, pineapple, papaya. Lunch was on the Saigon River, one course after another, starting with the sweetest grapefruit juice imaginable. Grapefruits are the size of bowling balls. Green coconut milk for dinner through a straw, then the waiter lopped the top off the coconut and I scooped out the jelly for dessert. Trees reach to the heavens. There's a huge lumpy green fruit at stands along the roadside in the poorer section (where migrant workers and the YMCA reside), which I'm told smells like Camembert but tastes delicious. I can't wait to try it.
I wish I could stay a month, walk the streets rather than zooming past, rent a scooter, talk to the people. This is a tour, Japanese style, very directed. Not much time for aimless gawking.
Anyhow, having painted the scene, I want to get to the story.
Yesterday we visited four of the projects of the YMCA, which was resurrected in 1992 after a hiatus of 17 years. Between 1968 and 1975, the YMCA was active in Vietnam helping young orphans of the war and providing refugees medical and emergency services, but it became outspokenly anti-war, and Hanoi shut it down after the Americans left. Their purpose is to help poor children develop their gifts in safety, particularly focused on providing a loving environment for disabled children.
We visited a vocational school which housed the students for free during one year courses in motorcycle and scooter repair (a mainstay of the economy, it seems from all the workshops that line the roads), computers, industrial electricity, refrigerator repair, industrial sewing. We visited a club for physically disabled people who learn embroidery and beadwork and computers.
The most inspiring part of the day was when we visited a school for 23 blind children, ranging from ages 9 to 27, who learn English, computers (which require English), produce books in braille, and study music together. They also learn to give massage. The idea is to make the children self-sufficient and happy. The school is the inspiration of a marvelous man, Thien An, who lost his eyesight 17 years ago after an accident. He had already learned French, English, computers, and music. The children are marvelous musicians, and perform publicly. Many of these children have been blind since birth (blindness occurs at a rate five times higher than other countries, and Agent Orange genetic defects are mostly to blame).
The reason Jay and I were blessed with this opportunity is because of the Dream Bridge Concert we have agreed to facilitate this November 15th at UDC.
The purpose of the concert is to raise money for a new project of the Vietnamese YMCA (Youth Movement for Cooperative Action) and the Japanese Dream Bridge Project. We want to help them establish a community center and restaurant for the graduates of the school for the blind, who will help provide good food, music, and massage and live in dormitories at the center, which is near a national tourist site. Whatever money comes in will be applied to construction and provisioning of the community center until it becomes self-supporting.
Let's make this concert a huge success. We need to make broad contacts in the DC community, and keep everyone updated through a web page. We also need to find performers equal to those we've seen in Japan, and Vietnam.
Off to the Mekong Delta. More later.
Burma, Day 10: Answering Your Question on Aung San Suu Kyi
Submitted by jaymarx on Sat, 05/10/2008 - 2:14pm.Dear friends,
Many thanks to all of our supporters who are now holding events across the country to help raise funds for victims of the Cyclone. The situation gets more dire everyday. It appears that still only a trickle of humanitarian aid is reaching the people most in need, and yesterday even the United Nations World Food Program briefly suspended shipments of aid to Burma after the military regime impounded aid planes. Reports indicate that supplies that should be reaching the Burmese people are literally sitting on the tarmac.
We are going to send you a full update about the Cyclone, we are pulling it together right now. For a quick moment though, we wanted to answer a question that hundreds of you (including many journalists) have been asking us: what is the condition of Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of Burma's struggle for human rights and democracy and the world's only imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize recipient?
Article: War dead cremated at facility for pets (story link)
Submitted by jaymarx on Sat, 05/10/2008 - 11:56am.Link here: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2004404786_cremains10.html
How bad does it have to get before we finally say Enough.?
How much disrespect do they have to demonstrate? How much will we tolerate?
Who can justify this Administration?
Article text:
The Washington Post
WASHINGTON — The U.S. military has, since 2001, cremated some of the remains of U.S. service members killed in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere in a Delaware facility that also cremates pets, a practice that ended Friday when the Pentagon banned the arrangement.
Despite Bush Administration Pressure, the Japanese People Continue to Say ‘No More War’
Submitted by jaymarx on Thu, 05/08/2008 - 6:43pm.Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Doesn’t Mince Words About War and Justice
Submitted by jaymarx on Thu, 05/08/2008 - 10:34am.by Olga Bonfiglio
Shirin Ebadi wants Americans to do what they can to stop the Bush administration’s threats to bomb Iran as punishment for presumably making nuclear weapons.
“Nuclear weapons are not a daily concern of the people,” said Ebadi. “They want jobs; they want houses; they want health; they want more freedom.”
However, she predicted that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would whip up nationalistic support if Iran were forced into a face-off with the United States, just as it did when Saddam Hussein invaded Iran in 1980. The invasion resulted in an eight-year war between the two countries.
Greetings from Guantanamo Bay ... and the sickest souvenir shop in the world
Submitted by jaymarx on Wed, 05/07/2008 - 8:42am.By ANGELA LEVIN - More by this author » Last updated at 00:06am on 4th May 2008
Mockery: A child's T-shirt proclaiming the camp a tourist spot
The sands are white, the sea laps gently and crowds of bronzed Americans laze in the Caribbean sunshine.
They have a cinema, a golf course and, naturally, a gift shop stocked with mugs, jaunty T-shirts and racks of postcards showing perfect sunsets and bright green iguanas.
Only the barbed wire decoration, a recurring motif, hints at anything wrong.
Welcome to "Taliban Towers" at Guantanamo Bay, the most ghoulishly distasteful tourist destination on the planet.
As these astonishing mementoes show, the US authorities are promoting the world's most notorious prison camp as a cheap hideaway for American sunseekers – a revelation that has drawn international anger and condemnation.
Just yards from the shelves of specially branded mugs and cuddly toys, nearly 300 "enemy combatants" lie sweltering in a waking nightmare.
It is six years since foreign prisoners, many captured in Afghanistan, were first taken to this US-occupied corner of Cuba. Yet even now, no charges have been brought against them.
While the detainees lie incarcerated, visitors can windsurf, take boat trips and go fishing for grouper, tuna, red snapper and swordfish.
The United States' 1.5million service personnel and Guantanamo's 3,000 construction workers are eligible to visit the "resort", which boasts a McDonald's, KFC and a bowling alley.
They even have a Wal-Mart supermarket.
The vacation comes at a knock-down price: just $42 (£20) per night for a suite of air-conditioned rooms, including a kitchen, bathroom, living room and bedrooms.
But it is the souvenirs that have led to the greatest criticism. One T-shirt from the gift shop is decorated with a guard tower and barbed wire. It reads: "The Taliban Towers at Guantanamo Bay, the Caribbean's Newest 5-star Resort."
Another praises "the proud protectors of freedom". A third displays a garish picture of an iguana and states: "Greetings from paradise GTMO resort and spa fun in the Cuban sun."
A child-sized shirt says: "Someone who loves me got me this T-shirt in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba."
Scroll down for more...
Exposed: An array of the ghoulish gifts on sale at the Guantanamo Bay 'resort' catering for American sunseekers
Al-Nakba Comemoration: Palestine, 60 Years of Ethnic Cleansing
Submitted by dove16 on Tue, 05/06/2008 - 1:41pm.Al-Nakba Comemoration: Palestine, 60 Years of Ethnic Cleansing 1948 – 2008 Where: Washington, DC On the National Mall. West of the Reflecting Pool in view of the U.S. Capitol, Jefferson Dr SW and 3rd St SW When: Saturday May 17th, 2008 Time: 2:00 PM – 4:00 PM As Israel celebrates its 60th birthday, Palestinians worldwide commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Nakba "the catastrophe": The expulsion and dispossession of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes and land, and the destruction of their villages in 1948.
Article 9 Conference: Updates from Japan
Submitted by jaymarx on Sat, 05/03/2008 - 4:27pm.Washington Peace Center Coordinator Jay Marx and Proposition One Committee Director Ellen Thomas are presently in Japan for the Global Article 9 Conference to Abolish War. They arrived on Friday, May 2, and the conference runs from Sunday, May 4, until Tuesday, May 6.As they have time, Jay and Ellen will post reports, photos, and other information to this blog, and they will deliver a full report-back about the Conference and their other journeys upon their return.Please continue checking below for updates.Cheers! JM & ET
Peace? What Peace?
Submitted by Start Loving on Sat, 05/03/2008 - 11:15am.From my sisters Teresa of Calcutta and Nancy:
"Whatever You Did Unto One of the Least, You Did Unto Me"
by Mother Teresa of Calcutta
by Mother Teresa of Calcutta
From the National Prayer Breakfast
Washington, D.C., February, 1994
"He came not to give the peace of the world
which is only that we don't bother each other.
He came to give the Peace of heart
which comes from loving - from doing good to others."
Teresa of Calcutta
Fight for the Homeless, NOW. Eric Sheptock
Submitted by Start Loving on Sat, 05/03/2008 - 10:43am.MEETING ABOUT THE MAYOR'S HOUSING PLAN:
If you have comments:
A. Contact Sanja Partalo, Chief, Office of Policy, Research and Analysis.
Address: District of Columbia Department of Human Services, 64 New York Ave. N.E. , 6th Floor, Room 6150, Washington DC 20002
A Revolution of Democracy for U.S. - George Ripley
Submitted by Start Loving on Sat, 05/03/2008 - 10:41am.Impeach for Peace Picnic Videos
Submitted by jaymarx on Mon, 04/28/2008 - 8:27pm.More video interviews with participants can be found at this website link: http://www.youtube.com/user/StartLoving1
The Woman Who Nearly Stopped the War
Submitted by Aaron Penny on Thu, 04/24/2008 - 2:56pm.The Woman Who Nearly Stopped the War
By Martin Bright
The New Statesman
Wednesday 19 March 2008
Five years ago, Katharine Gun, a translator at GCHQ, learned something
so outrageous that she sacrificed her career to tell the truth. Martin
Bright on a brave deed that should not be forgotten
Of all the stories told on the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War, there
is one important episode that took place during the build-up to the conflict
that has gone largely unreported. It concerns a young woman who was a
witness to something so outrageous, something so contrary to the principles
Counter-Recruitment Is Not Counter-Military: A Letter From a Colonel
Submitted by Aaron Penny on Thu, 04/24/2008 - 2:39pm.by Ann Wright
As a 29 year US Army/Army Reserves Colonel and a U.S. diplomat who
resigned in March 2003 in opposition to the war on Iraq, I am very proud
of the city of Berkeley, California. Berkeley and her citizenry have had
the courage to stand on their peace convictions and declare that it does
not want its youth recruited into the illegal Iraq war. Neither the
action of Berkeley City council, nor the actions of the anti-war groups
that oppose the location of the office in Berkeley, mean they are
anti-military, or that they are "traitors" to their country. Rather, the
The Dilbert Strategy
Submitted by Aaron Penny on Thu, 04/24/2008 - 2:09pm.
The Dilbert Strategy
By Paul Krugman
The New York Times
Monday 31 March 2008
Anyone who has worked in a large organization - or, for that matter,
reads the comic strip "Dilbert" - is familiar with the "org chart" strategy.
To hide their lack of any actual ideas about what to do, managers sometimes
make a big show of rearranging the boxes and lines that say who reports to
whom.
You now understand the principle behind the Bush administration's new
proposal for financial reform, which will be formally announced today: it's
Historian Plows Through New Assassination Research
Submitted by Aaron Penny on Thu, 04/24/2008 - 1:58pm.Historian plows through new research
By Roman Modrowski
History Unfolding - March 23, 2008
historyunfolding.blogspot.com
http://historyunfolding.blogspot.com/2008/03/review-of-road-to-dallas.html
There have been so many analyses, fantasies and theories devoted to the
assassination of John F.Kennedy that anything purporting itself as a fresh
perspective runs the risk
of suffocation. Anything less than a smoking gun -- or two -- will cause
The Greenback Effect
Submitted by Aaron Penny on Thu, 04/24/2008 - 1:43pm.By Bill McKibben
Mother Jones
May/June 2008 Issue
Greed has helped destroy the planet - maybe now it can help save it.
Since I spend most of my time haplessly battling global warming, I
encounter a fair number of climate-change skeptics. They're usually
clutching some tattered study about tropospheric temperatures from six years
back, or muttering about sunspots, but they're almost never carefully
weighing the actual current science. The wellspring of their skepticism lies
not in chemistry or in physics but in ideology, and their syllogism goes
Welcome to the Washington Peace Center
Submitted by jspri on Wed, 04/02/2008 - 1:11pm.Thank you for visiting. Scroll down for the good stuff.
To gain access to all this site has to offer, please register. It's free, simple, and enables you to participate. Registered users can access the blog, add events, vote in polls, and more in the future. To register, just click on "Create new account" in the left side column under the "User Login" link. (We regret that access cannot be granted immediately. Please allow up to 48hrs for activation.)
ALSO, if you would like to subscribe to our email list and receive weekly updates about peace related events in the area, and occasional bulletins, please send us an email at wpc@igc.org (subject line: SUBSCRIBE) and we will add your name to our list. (We will never sell or give your email to anyone else. We support the First Amendment; we don't believe in peace through spam.)
Peace Tent at McPherson Square, 3/19/008
Submitted by jaymarx on Tue, 03/25/2008 - 9:25pm.In the Dome Tent! Friends from Student Peace Action Network posted up next to the Washington Peace Center at McPherson Square on 3/19/008.
Student Protesters for Stop-Loss Congress 3/12/08
Submitted by Ashley Durr on Tue, 03/25/2008 - 8:32pm."Stop-Loss Congress" Our Spring Break students on March 12, 2008 blocked the parking garage of the Hart Senate Office building.
War is hella expensive; One Week at War in Iraq and Afghanistan for $3.5 Billion
Submitted by AndyK on Tue, 03/11/2008 - 5:54pm.One Week at War in Iraq and Afghanistan for $3.5 Billion
By William D. Hartung
War is hell -- deadly, dangerous, and expensive. But just how expensive
is it?
In a recent interview, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz
asserted that the costs of the Iraq war -- budgetary, economic, and
societal -- could reach $5 trillion
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=acXcm.yk56Ko&refer=home
That's a hard number to comprehend. Figuring out how many times $5
trillion would circle the globe (if we took it all in one dollar bills)
doesn't really help matters much, nor does estimating how many times we
could paper over every square inch of Rhode Island with it. The fact
that total war costs could buy six trillion donuts for volunteers to the
Clinton, Obama, McCain, and Huckabee campaigns -- assuming a bulk
discount -- is impressive in its own way, but not all that meaningful
either. In fact, the Bush administration's war costs have already moved
beyond the human scale of comprehension.
But what if we were to try another tack? How about breaking those
soaring trillions down into smaller pieces, into mere millions and
billions? How much, for instance, does one week of George Bush's wars
cost?
Peace Symbol Says Hope: Icon turns 50
Submitted by AndyK on Fri, 02/15/2008 - 12:27pm.by Kevin Brooker
There is certainly symbolism to the fact that, this month, the peace symbol turns 50 years old. Slightly stooped and timeworn, alas, like humans of that age, it struggles to maintain relevance.
If you don’t count religious emblems, the peace symbol has become one of the world’s most enduring and recognizable of hieroglyphics. Quite a feat for an image which, instead of being based on some famous existing object, was designed precisely for the use that it has most often been made.
Its author was an English commercial artist and anti-nuclear activist named Gerald Holtom. He was one of many intellectuals in Britain during the 1950s who were deeply agitated first by having witnessed the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but then watching their own government, despite being in a time of postwar material hardship, race to join the nuclear club.
Call to Nonviolent Resistance in March
Submitted by AndyK on Fri, 02/01/2008 - 5:31pm.We Need a Nonviolent Revolution: Resist in March
**"You must be the change you want to see in the world."**
~Mahatma Gandhi
**"Many ask: What is the sense of our small effort? They cannot see that we
must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time."** ~Dorothy Day
This year, 2008, brings us all to a crossroads where decisions need to be
made and responsibilities borne by the people who care about a peaceful
world built with justice. However, this crossroads is not about the
electoral choices of this election year.
The Democratic Race and Dr. King
Submitted by AndyK on Fri, 02/01/2008 - 5:24pm.The Democratic Race for the White House and Dr. Martin LutherKing, Jr. By Bill Fletcher, Jr. January 31, 2008, The Black Commentator http://www.blackcommentator.com/262/262_cover_african_world_white_house_and_mlk.html On or around the January 21st celebration of the life andwork of Dr. King, Senator Obama was asked the question of whodid he think Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would have supportedfor President. Senator Obama offered a very profound answer:
MLK, Lockheed Martin and Military Recruitment
Submitted by jaymarx on Wed, 01/23/2008 - 3:12pm.From a recent internet post by Pat Elder.
We held a spirited demonstration yesterday at the corporate headquarters of
Lockheed Martin in suburban Washington to honor Dr. Martin Luther King and
to draw attention to Lockheed's insidious record. Lockheed produces the
Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS). Each MLRS can fire up to 12 rockets at
once, and each rocket contains 644 M77 submunitions, or cluster bombs. Each
bomblet can kill up to a 12 foot radius. The damn things don't all explode
and innocent children are regularly killed by these devices produced by my
Hilda Mason, Presente!
Submitted by jaymarx on Tue, 12/18/2007 - 12:11am.Hilda Mason was a local leader for rights for African Americans and for public school education, one of the founding members of the DC Statehood Party in 1970, a former teacher & principal, a former member of the DC Board of Education, and a former member of the City Council. Ms. Mason last spoke publicly as a party member during an antiwar rally organized by the Green Party in downtown DC in September 2005. Hilda Mason was 91 when she passed away this morning.
This is one of several deaths in the DC Statehood Green Party family in the past two months. Party activist Henry Moses died in November, and Gail Dixon's daughter Stephanie died a few days ago. Below are the announcement from Ms. Mason's daughter and a short bio lifted from from 1998, when Ms. Mason last ran for public office. * * * * *
The Odor of Old Promises
Submitted by jaymarx on Tue, 11/27/2007 - 12:47pm.by Tom Driscoll
Perhaps no one is really surprised. It might be that this country has finally lost its capacity for outrage, has long since surrendered the idea of reproach or redress when lied to. We have become the Orwellian farm animals who find it too troubling to remember the promises once posted on the stable wall.
Monday morning, November the 26th, at a closed door teleconference, our president signed an agreement, a "declaration of principles" with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. There are details to be worked out, but the basics are clear. Iraq’s al-Maliki led government will abide by one more year of coalition forces on Iraqi soil per the U.N. authorization that provides for their presence. They will support one more one year renewal of the resolution, which would have the mandate finally coming to a close sometime in late 2008. But this won’t see American soldiers coming home. The “U.S.-Iraq Declaration of Principles for Friendship and Cooperation” that our president signed sees to that.
The document affirms a continued U.S. military presence in Iraq long after the rest of the “Coalition of the Willing” has gone home. There may be welcome home parades in Mongolia and Estonian, but for American troops it will be business as usual for a long time to come... OK, actually the word is 'permanently.'
In a rather quiet press release on the president’s teleconference and agreement signing, the White House points out that U.S. troops will remain “to train and equip Iraqi Security Forces” (more than four years in and another year out we will apparently still be “training and equipping”). We will remain “to provide security assurances to the Iraqi Government” (presumably this is just in case those security forces won’t be all that effectively trained or equipped after all).
According to a statement by Prime Minister Maliki, Americans will remain “to deter any external aggression” and “defend against internal coup” (I guess that just about covers everything). Our troops will remain so as to “codify” our lasting “bilateral relationship” with a “democratic Iraq.”
(Roughly translated: we will remain as a permanent military presence in Iraq, Yes, that’s right: Permanent).
According to the Associated Press, a detachment of about 50,000 U.S. troops would remain, perhaps in a series of bases well outside the major Iraqi cities (there are still details to work out). The Iraqi government would assume "greater control" of how these forces would be used.
Rest assured that the long term “strategic partnership” between Maliki’s embattled government and the U.S. is not without its rewards for American loyalty. Officials of the Iraqi government remind us that they are offering preferential treatment for American investment (All you boys and girls serving over seas, be sure to call your broker.)
What scant attention the "declaration of principles" has received has been answered with the appropriate double-speak. Prime Minister Maliki has announced to his people that this new agreement signals an end to the occupation of Iraq. (Same troops, same mission, but we won't call it an 'occupation' anymore.)
Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, President Bush's adviser on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan explains it to us this way: “Iraq is increasingly able to stand on its own; that's very good news, but it won't have to stand alone.”
(There, don’t you feel better?)
To quote one National Security Council staffer in a briefing on the "declaration of principles," soon, we will no longer occupy Iraq, but rather we will be engaged in a "normalized, bilateral relationship."
As I started to write this piece I was thinking of George Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’ —of the pledges the animals all made to each other as they started on their idealistic adventure, how they posted them proudly at first up there on the stable wall. I thought of how the words could be forgotten, such that they could be so easily ultimately changed.
Come on into this particular barn with me. There are still a couple of scraps pinned to the weathered plank. You can still just make out what they said:
"As a proud and independent people, Iraqis do not support an indefinite occupation and neither does America."
~President George W. Bush, April 13, 2004
"We do not seek permanent military bases in Iraq. Our goal is to help Iraq stand on its own feet, to be able to look after its own security, and to do what we can to help achieve that goal."
~then-U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, August 14, 2005
“We're not seeking permanent bases really pretty much anywhere in the world these days. We are, in fact, in the process of removing base structure from a lot of places.”
~Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, April 4, 2006.
Ah, well. The promises are faded now, forgotten. I suppose it’s best we move on.
It’s starting to smell in here anyway.
Tom Driscoll
Holliston, MA
Tom Driscoll is an opinion columnist, poet, performiing songwriter (let's just say he writes).
