If Everyone Reading this Gave a Dime …

I didn’t mean if everyone reading this gives a "damn" because you already do.  I really mean a dime — ten cents from each of you reading this would quickly make the $4,000 still needed to pay for two weeks worth of this ad on Rolling Stone.

 

Interview with author Michael Hastings on Democracy Now!

 

Rolling Stone’s readership spiked with millions reading Michael Hasting’s article The Runaway General on General McChrystal.  The s— McChrystal and his crew talked about Obama, and the frankness with which the US problems in Afghanistan were thrown about led to his firing last week.
 

One would assume many reading the article are in, or veterans of, the war.  We who want to stop the illegitimate occupations in Iraq/Afghanistan must reach them where they are.  This outreach is something new and important.

Miller Francis, a former contributing writer to Rolling Stone, sent a donation with this quote from Bertolt Brecht’s Galileo: "Nowadays, anyone who wishes to combat lies and ignorance and to write the truth must overcome at least five difficulties. He must have the courage to write the truth when truth is everywhere opposed; the keenness to recognize it, although it is everywhere concealed; the skill to manipulate it as a weapon; the judgment to select those in whose hands it will be effective; and the running to spread the truth among such persons."

So, right now, send your dimes, dollars, hundreds, and allow this outreach to happen regularly!

I was at the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing this week to confirm General Petraeus.  The drama was not about whether Petraeus will be confirmed, but in how he, and his boss Obama, will pull out a "win" when their own military, to quote Rolling Stone says, "we’re f—ing losing this thing."

John McCain and Lindsay Graham, speaking with all the initiative the right has on this directed their demands through Petraeus to Obama for an end to a beginning withdrawal date of July 2011.  For his part, Obama’s already backed off that date, and Petraeus took pains to say that July 2011 is when the US might start thinking about when they might start planning to draw down troops.  Or not.

There was a lot of talk about the "limitations" of Counter-Insurgency (COIN).  Most of the talk was deliberate lies.  Petraeus, one of the principal authors of the strategy, took it directly from the US suppression of the people of Vietnam, though it’s now, for public relations purposes, billed as somehow "saving civilians lives."  As Revolution newspaper this week reminds, "in 2009, civilian casualties in Afghanistan climbed to their highest number since the start of the war. (UN Annual Report on Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict, 2009)."

The US night raids kill civilians form the air, and on the ground, setting up the dynamic where every death leads to more resistance.  McCain, Graham, and the FOX News cabal whine that the troops "hands are tied" preventing them from wiping out the Taliban, which is growing in influence.  People who write me, often, saying that the war in unwinnable are correct.  But the problem remains, that even if it could be "won" by the U.S., it’s illegitimate, immoral, and unjust.

Thanks to Code Pink for protesting the war, repeatedly, inside the hearing room, with the message "new general, same old war."  See Warisacrime.org for news about protests today over the vote on extending war funding.

 

Peace of the Action July 4-17 is back in Washington DC beginning Sunday.  Protest US fostering of fossil fuel on Sunday July 4th at the White House; protest US use of un-manned drones in Pakistan & elsewhere on Monday July 5th.  Full schedule.

Two weeks of direct actions and programs, and a trial. Monday July 12, Cindy Sheehan, Elaine Brower, Matthis Chiroux and 4 others go on trial for an anti-war protest at the White House on March 20.  

 

Come out and join in!

 

1st Amendment/Peace Rally and Press Conference in front of the Courthouse Monday July 12  8:15 am DC Superior Court    500 Indiana NW, Washington DC

 

See Cindy’s piece Where have all the Peaceniks Gone?