New Clear Vision

But Too Late for Those Suffering in Iraq, and the U.S.?

by Pat LaMarche

Dick Cheney has once again beaten the odds. He’s one of very few heart transplant recipients over the age of seventy. And he’ll need his luck to continue because older patients don’t do as well post-surgery as younger folks do. It’d be a real shame if he got to use this heart even less than he used his last one.

Timing is everything. And the irony of Cheney’s heart transplant — missing the ninth anniversary of the Iraq War by only a few days — should remind us of the hearts stopped by his “shock and awe” policy in that country. An undisputed architect of the War in Iraq, he and the other hawks of the George W. Bush administration presided over the senseless killing of tens of thousands of innocents who did the U.S. no harm.

The New York Times reports that the Cheney family is grateful to the donor as well as the doctors and staff at George Washington University Hospital. Cheney and his family are no doubt appreciative that his life was saved regardless of his limited odds and advanced years. How fortunate for them that the decision was made to give him that donor’s heart. (more…)

Exploring the Prospects for Peace on Earth

by David Swanson

This time of year is ideal for reflecting on the miracle of Christmas 1914, that famous temporary truce and friendship between opposing sides in the midst of a war. Here was a new type of slaughter confronted with a new type of humanism, the leading edges of two opposing trends.

An op-ed in the New York Times last week by Steven Pinker and Joshua Goldstein argues that peace, rather than war, was the dominant development, and that over the millennia, centuries, decades, and right up to this moment, “War Really Is Going Out of Style.”

Of course, war can potentially be eliminated, and that is already a very valuable point to be making. War isn’t in our genes. We aren’t doomed to always have it with us. Even more valuable would be a successful argument that all types of violence have been decreasing, including war. (more…)

War Is Over (Sort of), if We Want It…

by Robert C. Koehler

The war is over, sort of, but the Big Lie marches on: that democracy is flowering in Iraq, that America is stronger and more secure than ever, that doing what’s right is the prime motivator of all our military action.

And the troops will be home for Christmas. Hurrah! Hurrah!

(The men will cheer, the boys will shout, and we’ll all feel gay, except maybe Rick Perry.)

“The war in Iraq will soon belong to history,” President Obama told the troops at Fort Bragg last week. “Your service belongs to the ages. Never forget that you are part of an unbroken line of heroes spanning two centuries — from the colonists who overthrew an empire, to your grandparents and parents who faced down fascism and communism, to you — men and women who fought for the same principles in Fallujah and Kandahar, and delivered justice to those who attacked us on 9/11.” (more…)

The Empire Sticks Around; Will Democracy Strike Back?

by Robert C. Koehler

“Mr. Obama and his senior national security advisers have sought to reassure allies and answer critics, including many Republicans, that the United States will not abandon its commitments in the Persian Gulf even as it winds down the war in Iraq and looks ahead to doing the same in Afghanistan by the end of 2014.”

I pluck a paragraph from the New York Times and for an instant I’m possessed by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, aquiver with puzzlement down to my deepest sensibilities. I hold you here, root and all, little paragraph. But if I could understand what you are, root and all, and all in all, I should know what empire is, and hubris . . . and maybe even, by its striking absence, democracy. (more…)

Finding Hope in the Failure of War

by Robert C. Koehler

This won’t be Vietnam, exactly. No helicopter whisking the last remaining Americans off the roof of the embassy. A contingent of 16,000 State Department contract employees — over 5,000 of them armed mercenaries — will be staying on, running what’s left of the American operation in Iraq.

But there’s little doubt we lost this war — by every rational measure. Everyone lost, except those who profited from (and continue to profit from) the trillions we bled into the invasion and occupation; and those who planned it, most of whom remain in positions to plan or at least promote the wars we’re still fighting and the wars to come. (more…)

Charting a New Course, a Decade After 9/11

by Ian Harris

September 11, 2011, marked the tenth anniversary of a terrible tragedy, when almost 3,000 Americans were killed by coordinated attacks by 19 Al-Qaeda terrorists. Within a month the Bush administration declared war on Afghanistan, “Operation Enduring Freedom,” even though the terrorists involved in the attack did not come from Afghanistan. Seventeen months later the Bush administration invaded Iraq, supposedly to remove the threat of weapons of mass destruction from that country. Ten years later the American people, while commemorating the tragedy wrought by the terrorists, would do well to examine the morality and utility of such militaristic responses to crises.

The 10-year war in Afghanistan has cost more than 2600 U.S./Coalition lives (and rising weekly, often daily), more than $439 billion, and we’ve killed more than 8,000 Afghan civilians — two and one half times the number killed in the initial attacks in this country. (more…)

Remembering MLK’s Legacy, and Resisting Today’s Wars

by William Loren Katz

This weekend it has taken a hurricane to postpone the dedication of the long-awaited monument to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Washington — the first time a man who is not a president, not a white man, and not a war leader has been so honored on the Mall. Major corporations contributed to this monument, so the question is how will Dr. King be presented to the American public and remembered by children. One clear viewpoint was offered this January 13th when the Pentagon commemorated Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day with an address by Jeh C. Johnson, the Defense Department’s general counsel.

In the final year of his life, King became an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War, Johnson frankly told a packed auditorium of Defense Department officials. (more…)