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Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2003 17:52:54 -0700 (PDT)
From: "Eli Pariser, MoveOn.org"
Subject: The Israel-Palestine Road Map
THE ISRAEL-PALESTINE ROAD MAP
MoveOn Bulletin
Friday, June 20, 2003
Noah T. Winer, Editor
noah.winer@moveon.org
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------------------------------
SPECIAL FEATURE: GRASSROOTS INTERVIEW WITH DANIEL ELLSBERG
This week, the second of our new Grassroots Interviews. Daniel
Ellsberg leaked the top-secret Pentagon Papers to the press in 1971,
exposing the U.S. government's motives for involvement in the Vietnam
War. Last fall, he published "Secrets," which relates his changing
attitudes toward Vietnam and raises crucial questions of government
transparency in times of war. Ellsberg has responsed to five of the
top questions written and ranked by MoveOn members over the last two
weeks. Here's an excerpt:
"Are we 'only' 5%, 10%, of the population? Isn't that five to ten
million adults? One percent? A million. More than that were in
demonstrations, in this country alone: as part of a far larger global
movement, the largest worldwide protest ever seen before or during any
war! That's enough activists to move and change any country in the
world, even (with courage) a police state. And we're far from that,
yet. We can avert that real danger if we continue using to the fullest
all the freedoms we still have."
The rest of Mr. Ellsberg's responses follow this week's bulletin.
------------------------------
CONTENTS
1. Introduction: Where Does the Road Map Lead?
2. One Link
3. Read the Road Map
4. Critique
5. Facts on the Ground: Terrorism
6. Facts on the Ground: Outposts and Settlements
7. Facts on the Ground: The Separation Wall
8. Conclusion
9. Credits
10. Grassroots Interview: Daniel Ellsberg
11. About the Bulletin
------------------------------
INTRODUCTION: WHERE DOES THE ROAD MAP LEAD?
In July, 2000 Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak broke off talks with
Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat at the Camp David summit
hosted by U.S. President Bill Clinton. That September, Ariel Sharon,
chairman of the Likud party, made a provocative visit to the Haram
al-Sharif/Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Control over this holy site for
both Muslims and Jews is contested by Palestinians and Israelis. The
visit implied Israeli sovereignty over all Jerusalem, the eastern
portion of which is considered occupied territory by the international
community. So began the second intifada, or Palestinian uprising.
As in the first intifada in the late 1980s, the demand is for an end
to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East
Jerusalem -- which has persisted since 1967 -- and acknowledgment of
the Palestinian refugees right to return to the villages from which
they were forced to leave during the 1948 war that established the
State of Israel. In the 33 months since, human death has saturated the
region: 816 Israelis (source below, #1) and 2,384 Palestinians (2)
have been killed.
Early in his presidency, George W. Bush avoided substantial
involvement in the Israel-Palestine conflict. After September 11, 2001
a number of factors -- escalating violence in the area and Israel's
attempt to link September 11th with Palestinian suicide bombings,
pressure from the Israel lobby and the Christian Right, and the desire
for an increasing U.S. influence in the oil-rich Middle East --
prompted Bush to take an active, personal role in promoting an
agreement.
That proposed agreement is the Road Map. While the initiative has been
praised for calling for an end to violence and for endorsing the
formation a Palestinian state, the Road Map provides no mechanism for
actually ending the violence, leaves uncertain the borders of the
proposed state, and postpones determining the status of the 380,000
Israeli settlers (3) and four million Palestinian refugees (4). With
matters so central to the resolution of the conflict left to be
decided at a future date or ignored entirely, the Road Map is still
far from being a bona fide peace proposal.
True and lasting peace begins with justice for all the people of the
region. That the Road Map will lead in that direction is not at all
evident.
Sources:
1. Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
http://www.israel.org/mfa/go.asp?MFAH0ia50
2. Palestine Red Crescent Society,
http://www.palestinercs.org/intifadasummary.htm
3. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, http://www.moveon.org/r?451
4. UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East,
http://www.un.org/unrwa/refugees/whois.html
------------------------------
ONE LINK
From the UK Guardian, a good summary of the Israel-Palestine Road Map.
The one flaw is the claim that the Israeli government has accepted the
Road Map; in fact, it has only conditionally accepted the Road Map,
maintaining 14 reservations.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theissues/article/0,6512,679445,00.html
------------------------------
READ THE ROAD MAP
The Road Map itself is only a few pages long with few details. Drafted
under the auspices of the Quartet -- the United States, European
Union, United Nations, and Russia -- the Road Map envisions three
phases of negotiation, resulting in the end of the Israel-Palestine
conflict and a permanent status agreement in 2005.
http://www.moveon.org/r?452
------------------------------
CRITIQUE
From the only joint Palestinian-Israeli public policy think-tank in
the world:
"The Road Map is severely lacking in detail. It mentions that the
sides will have to negotiate the permanent status issues such as
borders, Jerusalem, settlements, refugees, etc. but makes almost no
mention of these issues throughout the process in the earlier phases."
http://www.ipcri.org/files/roadmapgb.html
From the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz:
"According to the facts on the ground, the [Palestinian] 'state' will
apparently be comprised of three enclaves cut off from one another
inside the West Bank -- in addition to the Gazan enclave, and with no
guarantee the settlements inside the enclave will be dismantled. The
'separation fence' has been described as 'temporary,' but it is a wall
with hefty fortifications taking up a lot of land, and it has already
scarred the Tul Karm-Qalqiliyah area, the most prosperous Palestinian
farmland, thus sabotaging one of the cornerstones of Palestinian
economic security."
http://www.moveon.org/r?456
From The Nation:
"For in failing to focus on the Israeli occupation of the West Bank,
Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, about to enter its 37th year, and on
Israeli settlements, which underpin that occupation, the Road Map
misses an opportunity to end this conflict. Instead, it concentrates
on Palestinian violence and how to combat it -- as if it came out of
nowhere, and as if, were it to be halted, the situation of occupation
and settlement would be normal."
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030609&s=khalidi
------------------------------
FACTS ON THE GROUND: TERRORISM
Human Rights Watch condemns suicide bombing attacks against Israeli
civilians as war crimes and crimes against humanity.
http://www.hrw.org/reports/2002/isrl-pa/
Gush Shalom, an Israeli peace group, on the Rantisi assassination
attempt.
http://www.gush-shalom.org/archives/article254.html
An Israeli parliament member and 25 former Israeli generals have
raised questions about the timing of Sharon's assassination attempt.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0612-05.htm
Senator Dick Lugar (R-Indiana), chairman of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, has raised the possibility of U.S. military
intervention "to root out the terrorism that is at the heart of the
problem."
http://www.moveon.org/r?453
------------------------------
FACTS ON THE GROUND: OUTPOSTS AND SETTLEMENTS
From the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz:
"Don't make do with the outposts. There are more
than 100 of them, and about 60 went up in
Sharon's days. If he takes down 7-10 he hasn't
done a thing. Many were put up just to pull
them out, like a goat from a crowded corral."
http://www.moveon.org/r?454
From The Nation:
"A recent poll by Israel's Jaffee Institute for Strategic Studies
shows that 56 percent of Israelis -- up from 48 percent last year --
would 'support a unilateral withdrawal from the territories in the
context of a peace accord, even if that meant ceding all settlements.'
Here is the signpost for a realistic road map that could be charted by
the Bush Administration."
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030630&s=carey
------------------------------
FACTS ON THE GROUND: THE SEPARATION WALL
Gush Shalom reports that the separation wall Israel is constructing in
the West Bank is not at all along the internationally recognized 1967
"green line" border. The wall, officially being built for security,
annexes illegal settlements into Israel.
http://www.gush-shalom.org/thewall/
A troubling report on the 25-foot tall separation wall from Israeli
newspaper Yediot Ahronot describes how the system of barbed concrete
walls and armed watchtowers will imprison hundreds of thousands of
Palestinians without access to their agricultural lands.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article1546.shtml
The Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the
Environment on legal efforts to block the wall.
http://www.lawsociety.org/Press/Preleases/2002/oct/oct15e.html
------------------------------
CONCLUSION: ALTERNATIVE MAPS
Eyad El Sarraj is the director of the Gaza Community Mental Health
Program in Gaza City. His vision for peace involves addressing the
issues of mistrust and despair in order to cease violence.
http://www.bitterlemons.org/previous/bl260503ed20.html#is2
Yakov M. Rabkin is a professor of history at the University of
Montreal. He describes how Israel-Palestine could become neither a
Jewish state, nor an Arab state, but a state of all its citizens.
http://www.moveon.org/r?455
------------------------------
CREDITS
Research team:
Leah Appet, Lisa Bhungalia, Lita Epstein, Russ Juskalian, Janelle
Miau, Anugraha Palan, Christina Schofield, Ryan Senser, and Ora
Szekely.
Editing team:
David Taub Bancroft, Madlyn Bynum, Melinda Coyle, Nancy Evans, Eileen
Gillan, Judy Green, Mary Anne Henry, Vicki Nikolaidis, Rebecca Sulock,
and Rita Weinstein.
------------------------------
GRASSROOTS INTERVIEW: DANIEL ELLSBERG
The following are the personal responses of Daniel Ellsberg to the
top-ranked questions MoveOn members posed last week:
First, let me say that the messages accompanying the questions below,
and many of the others, are eloquent, impassioned, and very
well-informed despite perplexities that I fully share. I'm grateful to
have had the opportunity to read them. To be reminded that there are
American citizens so thoughtful and so concerned both to understand
and to alleviate our condition has the same effect for me of
witnessing and taking part in the large demonstrations and actions of
civil disobedience during the first stage of the ongoing war in Iraq.
It sustains my hope that we have a chance to avert the disasters this
administration is heading for at home and abroad.
As those demonstrations did for me, and I'm sure for other
participants, these letters remind me that although those of us who
actively oppose this war of aggression and occupation -- and the
ominous abridgements of the Bill of Rights that are accompanying it --
are only a small proportion of the American public: We are America,
too, and there are a lot of us.
Are we "only" 5%, 10%, of the population? Isn't that five to ten
million adults? One percent? A million. More than that were in
demonstrations, in this country alone: as part of a far larger global
movement, the largest worldwide protest ever seen before or during any
war! That's enough activists to move and change any country in the
world, even (with courage) a police state. And we're far from that,
yet. We can avert that real danger if we continue using to the fullest
all the freedoms we still have.
On to the questions:
1. Should a special prosecutor investigate charges of racketeering by
members of the Bush administration who personally profited from the
war on Iraq?
-- Gerald Kleiner, Middletown, New York, USA
I'm not a lawyer -- I'm a defendant -- so I consulted movement
lawyers, one of whom helped me look up the RICO Act:
http://caselaw.1p.findlaw.com/casecode/uscodes/18/parts/i/chapters/96/
toc.html. Another lawyer who is familiar with that act confirmed my
layman's sense, as I read it, that it would be quite a stretch,
legally, to apply that particular statute to the war-profiteering of
this administration's favorite firms. If you happen on an adventurous
prosecutor who wants to take it on, good luck! But it doesn't really
look like a promising approach.
Your mention of racketeering in this context, though, sent me onto the
web to recapture a staggering quotation by the Marine hero Major
General Smedley Butler, summing up his thirty-years of service largely
in U.S. colonial wars from Nicaragua and Cuba to China: "During that
time I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big
Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a
racketeer, a gangster for capitalism...The best [Al Capone] could do was
to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three
continents." Look up the whole quote, which would have been an
eye-opener for me if I had read it when I was in the Marines:
www.fas.org/man/smedley.htm. Butler doesn't mention there that in
colonial operations in Mexico (Vera Cruz) and Haiti he was awarded two
Congressional Medals of Honor. How many medals will be won, some
posthumously, by pre-enlightened American officers and troops in Iraq
and elsewhere, now that we've extended our protection rackets from the
Caribbean to the Persian Gulf?
My lawyer friend points out that it will be hard to find that
businessmen broke any laws in their current profiteering, since it was
effectively businessmen who wrote the laws. The secret, no-bid
contracts awarded to Cheney's Halliburton and George Shultz's Bechtel
(and WorldCom! As Molly Ivins exposes in her column Friday on the Iraq
Gold Rush) certainly deserve congressional examination. Fat chance.
But take the effort to thank journalists like Ivins and Arianna
Huffington who bring sunlight onto these scavengers and use their
information in letters to the editor and call-in shows, to reopen the
discussion of corporate scandals and influence that was interrupted,
not by coincidence, by war on Iraq.
2. Why can't Bush and Cheney be impeached?
-- Susan Petry, Durham, North Carolina, USA
The familiar metaphor seems painfully apt here. As the world can see,
Uncle Sam is holding a smoking gun, above a stricken nation in the
Middle East; and despite his claim of self-defense -- the need to beat
an aggressor to the draw--no weapons of mass destruction are to be
found on the victim.
Thanks to an unprecedented flood of leaks from the intelligence
community, it is increasingly clear that whatever the personal beliefs
of the officials claiming to "know," to be "absolutely convinced" that
Saddam Hussein "possessed weapons" that were an intolerable threat to
us and his neighbors -- from Bush and Powell and Rumsfeld to
Wolowitz--their statements about the secret evidential basis for these
confident assertions were wildly misleading. Those assurances -- which
were critical to justifying, on grounds of "necessity," a "preemptive"
war that would otherwise appear blatantly criminal--look like lies.
[See an excellent discussion in this week's New Republic, by John
Judis and Spencer Ackerman: "The Selling of the War: The First
Casualty."
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030630&s=ackermanjudis063003] Exactly
so, their claims of "bullet-proof" evidence of significant links of
Iraq to 9-11. If so, we were lied into war. Tens of thousands of
Iraqis -- including more innocent civilians than were murdered (not by
Saddam Hussein) on 9-11 -- were lied to death, along with American KIA
in numbers that are increasing week by week (and will continue to
increase, I believe, every week that George W. Bush and Richard Cheney
remain in office).
That's a serious charge. But I'm prepared to believe it on the basis
of my own experience, not only in Vietnam -- which is looking
painfully relevant to our prospects in the occupation of Iraq -- but
in Washington under Robert McNamara and President Lyndon Johnson. I
watched -- and, I'm sorry to say, kept my mouth shut outside the
Pentagon -- as they lied Congress into a delegation of war powers by
claiming certainty about an unprovoked attack on our warships [See
http://www.ellsberg.net/sample.htm]. I knew at the time that the
evidence for that attack was highly ambiguous: just like, it appears,
evidence before the war that Saddam still possessed and had deployed
WMD's. In fact, there had been no attack at all, but Congress scarcely
suspected that for years: I didn't tell them, nor did anyone else in
the Executive branch who had reached that conclusion. Suspicions of
the total absence of WMD's have emerged, this time, within months of
the exaggerated claims.
Was that manipulation in 1964 an impeachable offense? I would say
flatly yes: of the most serious kind. Likewise if President Bush and
his vice president and cabinet officers (all, by the way, subject to
impeachment) are guilty of the same misrepresentation of the secret
intelligence available to them in their justification for a war
unauthorized by the UN Charter and Security Council. I personally
suspect that's true. That doesn't mean that I see any prospect
whatever that this Republican Congress (or the majority of these
Democrats!) would actually impeach or convict this President for this
war, no matter what evidence is produced. Yet I think it's important
for our democracy, and our security, to argue forcefully right now
that lying us into war -- as has happened before -- was and would be
now a high crime, an impeachable offense.
So far our evidence that this has happened is almost entirely from
leaks (as was true in 1971, with the Pentagon Papers). Not enough has
been disclosed yet to call credibly for impeachment, which amounts to
indictment. To raise the issue of Executive accountability, yes. To
investigate, certainly.
The current MoveOn petition drive has it exactly right: only citizen
pressure on Congress to establish an independent bipartisan commission
will provide a basis for Executive accountability. The
currently-planned "review" in secret sessions of the Senate
Intelligence Committee (the Republican chairman will not even let it
be called an "investigation"!), confined to the performance of the
intelligence agencies, will not do that job. Republicans, under White
House pressure, will resist our calls for an independent commission,
or even for open hearings in other relevant committees. But our own
citizens' pressure, which should start now (good ad last week,
MoveOn!) to investigate how we got into this quagmire and whether
there was official betrayal of the public trust will get harder to
resist as weeks and months go by of continued bloodletting and growing
opposition in Iraq to our occupation.
3. What do we, as a nation, have to do to stop this type of abuse of
power, corruption, conflict of interest, lying, cheating,
powermongering, and fraudulent behavior?
-- N. Webster, Pasadena, California, USA
The founders of our nation, the drafters of our Constitution and Bill
of Rights, had better answers to these age-old problems of Executive
abuse of power than the world had ever seen before, and better than
we've been taught to accept in the last sixty years of Cold War and
hot wars. Their distrust of mortals in power, their insights on the
need for checks and balances, separation of powers, impeachment,
constitutional guarantees of citizens' rights as against legislative
or executive authority, have been steadily obscured and repressed on
spurious grounds of national security. The effect has been to make the
president just what the founders meant to prevent: an elected monarch.
Or, as it turns out this year, a nearly-elected emperor.
If monarchy is corrupting -- and it is -- wait till you see what overt
empire does to us. It's time to read Tom Paine again (another good
website, as it happens) and wake up from our dreams of kingship and
lording it over others, to reconstruct a republic. The Constitution,
as written and amended, really deserves our loyalty and our defense of
it, against all enemies foreign and domestic: and this administration
has within it more domestic enemies of the Constitution and Bill of
Rights than any we've seen before. They've got to go; but that's just
a start, for our recovery from an addiction to arms-building and (till
just now, covert) empire.
Only we, the public, can force our representatives to reverse their
abdication of the war powers that the Constitution gives exclusively
to the Congress. (See Abraham Lincoln -- before he became president
himself -- writing from Congress in 1848: "The provision of the
Constitution giving the war-making power to Congress was dictated, as
I understand it, by the following reasons: Kings had always been
involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending
generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object.
This our convention understood to be the most oppressive of all kingly
oppressions, and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no
one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us."
http://www.watchpost.org/lincoln.htm).
Except for 123 House members and 23 Senators, members of Congress,
Republican and Democratic (including several presidential candidates)
covered themselves with shame by giving the president, with no
hearings and scant deliberation or debate, an undated,
unconstitutional, declaration of war. This was some improvement over
1964 -- when only two Senators voted against the equivalent Tonkin
Gulf Resolution -- and considerably better than their own performance
one year earlier in September, 2001, when exactly one lawmaker,
Barbara Lee of Oakland, had the conscience and courage to vote against
giving the president, without prior hearings or debate,
almost-unlimited power to go to war (in Afghanistan, or wherever he
might claim a link to 9-11: Rumsfeld, we now know, wanted invade Iraq
right away, but was put off). But in 2001 and 2002 the majority didn't
even have the excuse that the president had lied to them, like Lyndon
Johnson in 1964, about his intent to cash this blank check for war.
(Bush appears to have lied only about his reasons). The Vietnam
quagmire got Congress to enact (over Nixon's veto) the War Powers Act,
which remained an abdication of the constitutional responsibilities of
Congress and which subsequently elected kings all ignored. With the
Iraq fiasco (as I believe it will soon appear) let's educate our
fellow citizens to demand a return to the Constitution.
4. How can the people take a stance against unjust wars when the media
and Congress play a complicit role in either keeping the truth from
the public or refusing to question supposed "evidence" without
demanding proof?
-- April Cartright, Lake Worth, Florida, USA
How can we best convince the public that they're being deceived?
-- M. McGee, Columbus, Ohio, USA
Why did not one of Barbara Lee's Congressional colleagues -- many of
whom had districts as safe as hers -- join her in voting against an
unconstitutional delegation of their war powers, without deliberation?
Many of them, she told me, had assured her they would vote with her up
till the moment of the vote; she was startled to find herself alone.
Her guess was that they were afraid, at the moment of truth, to be
accused, however unjustly, of lack of patriotism, of disloyalty to the
president, even of treason. (She got all those charges. They were
nearly all from outside her own district. But those words aren't easy
for any American, or anyone, to hear: as I can testify). But she did
what she knew was right. And courage is contagious. A year later,
against the next Tonkin Gulf-like Resolution for Iraq, she and Dennis
Kucinich organized 123 votes in favor of the Constitution.
Lincoln's comment above related to what he saw as President Polk's
illegal and deceptive provocation of war with Mexico, which he opposed
as a Congressman. His later Commander of the Union Army, Ulysses S.
Grant, saw that war the same way, when he participated in it as a
second lieutenant. In his memoirs he described that war as "one of the
most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation. It was
an instance of a republic following the bad example of European
monarchies, in not considering justice in their desire to acquire
additional territory."
He describes the process of getting into a war of aggression against
Mexico in terms very familiar to me from our "reprisal" against the
supposed Tonkin Gulf attack and later "retaliation" for attacks at
Pleiku and Qui Nhon, and their effects on Congressional opposition.
"We were sent to provoke a fight, but it was essential that Mexico
should commence it. It was very doubtful whether Congress would
declare war; but if Mexico should attack our troops, the executive
could announce, ﾔWhereas, war exists by the acts of, etc.," and
prosecute the contest with vigor. Once initiated there were but few
public men who would have the courage to oppose it. Experience proves
that the man who obstructs a war in which his nation is engaged, no
matter whether right or wrong, occupied no enviable place in life or
history. Better for him, individually, to advocate ﾔwar, pestilence,
and famine,' than to act as obstructionist to a war already begun."
Lincoln, nicknamed "Spotty" at the time for his Spot Resolutions
against the Mexican war, was denounced as "unpatriotic" by his own
Whig party in his home district in Illinois, to which he was returned
after one two-year term in the House. Grant served in the war he
opposed, but he looked back later on a heavy national price: "The
Southern rebellion was largely the outgrowth of the Mexican war.
Nations, like individuals, are punished for their transgressions. We
got our punishment in the most sanguinary and expensive war of modern
times." [http://home.nycap.rr.com/history/grant1.html#Ch-4]
A quote on the subject by Hermann Goering, Hitler's deputy in the Nazi
regime, interviewed by a psychologist during his trial at Nuremburg in
1943, has been going around the Internet over the last six months, but
usually in a truncated form that leaves out its direct reference to
U.S. democracy. Here's the whole quote, from G. M. Gilbert's Nuremberg
Diary (N.Y. 1947, pp. 278-279), Gilbert being the psychologist, an
American intelligence office who spoke German:
We got around to the subject of war again and I said that, contrary to
his attitude, I did not think that the common people are very thankful
for leaders who bring them war and destruction.
"Why, of course, the people don't want war," Goering shrugged. "Why
would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the
best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one
piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia
nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is
understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who
determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the
people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a
Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."
"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people
have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and
in the United States only Congress can declare wars."
"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can
always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you
have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the
pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.
It works the same way in any country."
At this moment, many of us firmly believe, it is the policies of our
president and his advisors, not our own skepticism and protest, that
are exposing this country to increased danger: danger of initiating
unnecessary, illegal and stalemated or escalating wars; danger of
vengeful terrorist attacks (exploiting U.S. vulnerabilities he has
neglected to mend and a flow of recruits his wars will swell); and
increased danger of nuclear proliferation, eventually to such
terrorist groups.
There is a personal and national price to be paid by silence and
passive obedience, in the face of such folly, that is greater than the
pain of being called names, greater even than the loss of a job or
career. It is the price of participating in and failing to expose and
resist national disasters, unnecessary and wrongful wars. That was the
price -- of accepting a definition of patriotism as unquestioning
support of national Executive leadership -- paid in Hitler's Germany,
Emperor Hirohito's Japan (see John Dower in this week's Nation on the
myths that evoked patriotic support for Japan's "liberation" of
Manchuria, China and Southeast Asia, and its "pre-emptive" attack on
Pearl Harbor
[http://www.nationinstitute.org/tomdispatch/index.mhtml?pid=771], in
the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the U.S. invasion of Vietnam:
and now Iraq.
It's up to us -- it's time for us -- to prove Goering wrong: it
doesn't have to work that way in our country.
5. How can we best convince the public that they're being deceived?
-- Rosemarie Pilkington, Staten Island, New York, USA
By spreading the word in every way -- in email to our friends, letters
to the editor, call-ins to talk radio, in every discussion and
argument -- that they can inform themselves on matters of public
policy far better on the Internet than on American TV, mainstream
radio (including NPR) or any individual newspaper. The last six months
of an extended book tour and political lecturing and activism all over
the country has revealed to me that the large minority of Americans
opposed to the Iraq war -- largely Internet users, I strongly
suspect-- live in an entirely different world of information from
those who actively or passively supported the war, who rely almost
entirely on presidential declarations and sources strikingly shaped by
official spin.
Daily on the websites like antiwar.com, commondreams.org,
buzzflash.com, I find a compilation of critical, relevant, informative
news stories and editorial comment from all over the country and
abroad which adds up, over time, to something closer to an adequate
understanding of current policies and events than was ever available
to any public in the past. Ironically, most of the items on these
sites do come, after all, from mainstream newspapers in America; but
the impact of access to a broad collection of probing or critical
stories on a daily basis is very different from reading one or two
such analyses or stories in a given hometown newspaper, even a
relatively good one. Moreover, through these sites and through direct
links to the British Guardian, the Independent, the BBC and CBC (far
better than American public radio or TV), and other international news
sources in English, Americans can have access not only to other points
of view but to news and commentary that is often better informed than
we can get in mainstream sources at home.
So the answer to the question (and a number of others like it) is: We
should do what we can to expand the daily readership of these sites,
and others like them, enormously. Our ability to publicize and expand
these sources of information (including relevant history; see my
references above) is the informational and educational equivalent of
the organizational tactics of MoveOn, United for Peace, and other
activist sites.
Still, it's very hard to get the majority of people in this country,
like any other, to believe that their elected leaders are dangerously
deceiving them (routine as that actually is: a secret well-kept by
insiders who want to remain or come back as insiders). To get them to
accept that -- to believe it to the point that they will take up the
burdens and risks of opposing that leadership in committed and
effective ways -- takes unusual evidence. It takes more than news
stories citing unidentified or unofficial sources, even from those who
were recently insiders. It takes documents: large amounts of them. And
in the "national security" realm, such documents (above all, those
demonstrating deception of the public, or major errors, or possible
crimes) will be classified. Congressional hearings can get at some of
those, but only up to a point; any administration will strive, usually
successfully, to keep such documents (or testimony relating to them)
away from Congress altogether, or to postpone their release to the
public till they are no longer dramatically pertinent.
MoveOn member Andy Ayers has asked me: "Are we dependent on another
whistle-blower insider this administration" to act as I did with the
Pentagon Papers in 1971? My answer is yes, but with a difference. I
would say -- as I have been saying since last September to every
audience I've addressed, in hopes my message may reach their friends
and relatives in the federal government -- we need someone to act as I
should have done, but did not, long before 1971, when the documents in
my safe were current.
"Don't do what I did; don't wait till the bombs are falling," I was
saying to potential hearers in government from October through
mid-March. "If you know that your bosses and the President are lying
about their reasons for this war, or about what they are being told
about its prospects and danger and costs, and if you possess documents
that demonstrate that, I urge you to consider doing what I wish I had
done in 1964 or 1965: go to Congress and the press, with those
documents, and tell the truth."
We are hearing now important leaks, mostly anonymous, complaining of
undue administration pressure on intelligence estimates and of
misrepresentation and misuse of intelligence. It would have been
helpful to hear more of those earlier, but I'm in no position to
criticize; as my memoir spells out, it took me years of war to reach
that point or go beyond it, and when I did I no longer had access to
documents that bore on current White House decision-making. (If I had,
I would have released those instead of the history in the Pentagon
Papers).
It's possible for others in the government now to do better than that.
To kick-start a stalled process of Congressional investigation, and
the public campaign of pressure to pursue those investigations, some
with official access must take the responsibility for releasing,
without higher authorization, hundreds or thousands of pages of
documents they believe, on their experienced judgment, to demonstrate
official deception or wrongdoing, without harming national security.
I'm confident there are men and women in this administration with
access to documents of that nature and with the personal courage and
sense of conscience and patriotism to do that, if they reflect on that
possibility and the stakes involved. It would mean risking or
sacrificing their clearances and careers, perhaps going to prison. It
could save several wars' worth of lives, and democracy in this country.
------------------------------
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management page at:
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Date: 21 Mar 2003 21:29:41 -0000
Subject: War has begun. What you can do.
Dear MoveOn supporter,
War has begun.
Our minds immediately and naturally turn to the humanitarian disaster
that will most likely follow from war in Iraq. The Bush
administration is woefully unprepared to face this need.
Today we suggest an important action that will literally save lives.
There are many good charitable organizations that are prepared to
help prevent the many thousands of deaths from the starvation and
disease that could follow the collapse of an already fragile Iraqi
infrastructure. This will be a race against time, as these
incredible organizations supply food, restore water and sanitation
systems, and fight epidemic disease. They need help now.
We are highlighting one of the most prominent and capable of these
organizations -- Oxfam. Go to their donation page to read more and
give a generous contribution today:
http://www.moveon.org/oxfam/
The Bush administration has shown that it has a very short attention
span on post-conflict humanitarian efforts. The White House didn't
request a single dollar for humanitarian aid to Afghanistan in this
year's budget -- Congress had to take the unusual step of adding in
$300 million.
Privately funded organizations like Oxfam are the only ones with
the patience to truly do what it takes to help a war-torn region
rebuild. It's up to us.
Thank you,
-The MoveOn Team
Carrie, Eli, Joan, Peter, Wes, and Zack
March 21, 2003.
________________
ABOUT OXFAM
http://www.OxfamAmerica.org
Oxfam is an international humanitarian and development organization
founded to bring relief and progress to people in crisis. Oxfam, a
world leader in emergency water and sanitation systems, has already
created emergency facilities for refugees along the Iraqi border and
is poised to provide life-saving services throughout the region as
these fast-evolving conditions permit. In addition to providing
immediate relief, Oxfam is committed to helping the Iraqi people
rebuild their lives and livelihoods over the long term.
________________
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from this list, please visit our subscription management page at:
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A Citizens' Declaration
Dear MoveOn supporter,
War in Iraq is imminent. But the outbreak of war is not the
end of the fight for peace -- only the beginning.
Around the globe, people are joining together in a declaration
of our continued commitment to international cooperation. We will
be announcing this declaration in a press conference on Friday, and
we need your help.
Signing up will only take a minute of your time, but it'll send a
message that the demand for diplomacy and peace, built through our
opposition to war in Iraq, will keep growing.
You can sign up at:
http://www.moveon.org/declaration/
Here's the text of the Declaration:
------------
A CITIZENS' DECLARATION
As a US-led invasion of Iraq begins,
we, the undersigned citizens of many countries,
reaffirm our commitment to addressing international
conflicts through the rule of law and the United Nations.
By joining together across countries and continents,
we have emerged as a new force for peace.
As we grieve for the victims of this war,
we pledge to redouble our efforts to put an end to the Bush
Administration's doctrine of pre-emptive attack and
the reckless use of military power.
------------
Please sign now, and then use our web page to pass a
message on to your friends.
Thank you,
--Carrie, Eli, Joan, Peter, Wes, and Zack
The MoveOn Team
March 19th, 2003
P.S. If a war with Iraq starts soon, folks across the
country are planning vigils and other events. You can
find events in your area at the United for Peace website:
http://www.unitedforpeace.org
If you know of an event that isn't listed, you can also
add it to the list there.
REV: 20160625