The Washington Post reports that “senior intelligence officials” at the CIA felt pressured Vice President Dick Cheney’s multiple visits to CIA headquarters over the past year. These visits created “an environment in which some analysts felt they were being pressured to make their assessments fit with the Bush administration’s policy objectives.”
Quaker Ranter
A Weekly Newsletter and Blog from Martin Kelley
Category Archives ⇒ Nonviolence
From 1995 – 2008 I was the publisher of Nonviolence.org, a ground-breaking portal and blog about peace. Many of these articles are archived from that period.
Important Posts:
* The Revolution will be Online (1995)
* NYTimes Profile of Nonviolence.org (1998)
* The Early Blogging Days (2005)
* The History of Nonviolence.org, 1995 – 2008 (2008)
The Peace Movement Between Wars
May 31, 2003
The War Resisters League’s excellent editorial about continuing as an anti-war activist throughout this Permanent War. From their magazine, the Nonviolent Activist.
Who Lied About Weapons of Mass Destruction?
May 31, 2003
It’s time to state the obvious: there weren’t any “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq. The stated rationale for this war was “simply wrong” (see below). Either U.S. Intelligence agencies made the biggest mistake of the new century or there’s been systematic, premeditated lying at the highest levels of the U.S. government. Mid-level intelligence and military commanders are starting to duck and weave to avoid the fallout: U.S. Insiders Say Iraq Intel Deliberately Skewed and Did Iraq really have weapons of mass destruction? and Was the Intelligence Cooked?
President Bush and his insiders will surely continue to deny the obvious and bully on with more lies and misformation. Will the American public stop believing? Or have we entered a phase in American history in which the Big Lie can justify outright imperialism and perpetual war? Posted 5/31/2003
Shouting with Anger and Love for America’s True Greatness
March 19, 2003
The horrific events of 9/11 would make any country tremble. But with the right leadership we could have shown the world our steady resolve and courage and we could have celebrated an American love and life and liberty that no airplane could destroy. But President George W. Bush has had uses for terror. For eighteen months he has beaten the drums of revenge till fear has become a second heartbeat in our pysche. Simmer America over a low flame of fear and spice it with contempt for the world and you can bring her and her people to cry hungrily for blood [continued on defunct Nonviolence.org discussion board]
Make Noise Now: War is Not Inevitable!
September 26, 2002
There are certain moments when just about anything is possible. Moments when people start asking questions they thought they knew the answers to. A skillful politician will close down these moments to make their own agenda seem all but inevitable. A strong movement will ask the questions anyway and shout them out until answers are given. Friends, it is time to shout.
Our generation may well be defined by the wars we fight in the Middle East and Asia but we will be just as defined by the wars we stop. There are a dozen countries that could easily erupt into violence and precipitate an ever-larger global war.
The President of the United States has set forth a new doctrine for a military might. War has been declared not on nations or even on specific terrorist organizations but instead on the slippery chimera of “terrorism.” A war on terror can never be won because terror is always the bedmate of political oppresion and where oppression is left to grow terrorism will fester.
Rather than face the hard work of fixing problems the American military hand threatens to crush all violent dissent and revolution. We are on the brink of history now, where we could easily slide into ever crazier cycles of terrorism between groups like Al Qaida’s and the U.S. military.
The Bush Doctrine, if passed, would let the U.S. attack any country it found hostile to it’s dominance and a threat to it’s ego. No credible evidence of a renewed Iraqi threat has been presented, but then none is really needed. Bush is ready to attack anyone independent of the United States and that readiness increases with every drop of oil under its sands.
What Must Be Done
It is time to shout out about hypocracy, to ask “why war,” “why now.” To ask who gets rich when oil flows get disrupted. To ask whose approval ratings go up just because bullets are flying. This war is not inevitable. And we must not acquience to it. We must shout out every day that this is NOT our war and that WE WILL STOP IT.
How? Over the next few weeks we need to contact Washington. I usually smile indulgently about those who advocate writing one’s congressperson. But right now, it really is needed and really can make some changes. Politicians in Washington will do nothing unless the folks back home are making a stink. Call or fax Washington. Organize speakers, hold signs at intersections, give them a grassroots outcry which they can respond to.
The current articles linked on the Nonviolence.Org homepage are full of ideas and actions. Let’s get out there and stop this war. And let’s not be discouraged as the inevitable seems to start unfolding. It is time to stand for truth and time to mark our generation. We must stop war and we must stop all cause of war. War is to stop today. War is to stop with us.
Dick Cheney’s Rambo Complex
March 12, 2002
U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney is touring England this week, trying to find co-producers on Gulf War II, the sequel to the disappointing minor hit of 1991. You remember the original: it was briefly popular until Bill Clinton’s “Peace and Properity” broke all previous records for an unprecedented run.
In Gulf War II, Dick Cheney is playing Rambo. It’s twelve years later and he and his sidekick George Bush Jr. are going to re-fight the war against Iraq singlehandedly. No other countries will join them this time in their fight for justice.
Like all shot-em-up movies, this one needs a convincing villain. There’s no connection between Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden but so what? They’re both shifty Arabs with facial hair. Throw in a spicy subplot if you want – “Dashing American pilots secretly held prisoner since 1991.” Americans barely notice plot and motivations. After 9/11 the White House is betting that the audience wants more war and retribution.
Unfortunately, this isn’t a Hollywood movie. Dick Cheney and the second President Bush are indeed trying to start a second war against Iraq. There’s no new provocation from Saddam Hussein. There’s no connection between him and Osama bin Laden or the 9/11 terrorist attacks. None of our allies from the first Gulf War want to join us in a second.
But Cheney and Bush want a fight anyway. It’s hard not to conclude this is some sort of “Rambo Complex.” The U.S. is led by two men fighting legacies that won’t let them put 1991 behind them. One is the son of the president accused of prematurely stopping the 1991 war before U.S. troops got to Baghdad. The other is the dying aide to both father and son, who has waited almost twelve years for a chance to prove he was right.
This week rumors of an American pilot supposedly held for eleven years have appeared out of nowhere. President Bush has been diverting attention to Saddam Hussein even while Osama bin Laden runs free. And Dick Cheney is indeed in England trying to drum up support for a new Gulf War.
While the Vice President is off wandering the margins of stage right, real tragedy and drama are holding the world’s attention center stage. Palestine and Israel are close to an all-out war. The mounting violence has worried important countries like Saudi Arabia and Syria so much that they’re proposing new peace plans. So much of the Mideast’s anger against the U.S. revolves around the Palestinian question. A war there could topple friendly Muslim governments and rip apart our current alliances.
This is where the world’s attention is focused. But President Bush and Cheney are ignoring the situation. They have not followed past Presidents’ lead in leading peace negotiations. American pressure and involvement is certainly needed to craft real peace between Palestine and Israel.
But Bush and Cheney are snoring in the bleacher seats when it comes to the world’s most pressing and intractable conflict. They’re dreaming of cinematic glory. It’s 2002 and two lone G.I.‘s are paratrooping into Iraq, knives clenched in teeth, machine guns at the ready. One dreams of avenging the cowardice and failure of his father. The other of winning just one more war before the curtains close in on him.
Stopping the Next War Now: More Victims Won’t Stop the Terror
October 7, 2001
Originally published at Nonviolence.org
The United States has today begun its war against terrorism in a very familiar way: by use of terror. Ignorant of thousands of years of violence in the Middle East, President George W. Bush thinks that the horror of September 11th can be exorcised and prevented by bombs and missiles. Today we can add more names to the long list of victims of the terrorist airplane attacks. Because today Afghanis have died in terror.
The deaths in New York City, Washington and Pennsylvania have shocked Americans and rightly so. We are all scared of our sudden vulnerability. We are all shocked at the level of anger that led nineteen suicide bombers to give up precious life to start such a literal and symbolic conflagration. What they did was horrible and without justification. But that is not to say that they didn’t have reasons.
The terrorists committed their atrocities because of a long list of grievances. They were shedding blood for blood, and we must understand that. Because to understand that is to understand that President Bush is unleashing his own terror campaign: that he is shedding more blood for more blood.
The United States has been sponsoring violence in Afghanistan for over a generation. Even before the Soviet invasion of that country, the U.S. was supporting radical Mujahadeen forces. We thought then that sponsorship of violence would lead to some sort of peace. As we all know now, it did not. We’ve been experimenting with violence in the region for many years. Our foreign policy has been a mish-mash of supporting one despotic regime after another against a shifting array of perceived enemies.
The Afghani forces the United States now bomb were once our allies, as was Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. We have rarely if ever acted on behalf of liberty and democracy in the region. We have time and again sold out our values and thrown our support behind the most heinous of despots. We have time and again thought that military adventurism in the region could keep terrorism and anti-Americanism in check. And each time we’ve only bred a new generation of radicals, bent on revenge.
There are those who have angrily denounced pacifists in the weeks since September 11th, angrily asking how peace can deal with terrorists. What these critics don’t understand is that wars don’t start when the bombs begin to explode. They begin years before, when the seeds of hatred are sewn. The times to stop this new war was ten and twenty years ago, when the U.S. broke it’s promises for democracy, and acted in its own self-interest (and often on behalf of the interests of our oil companies) to keep the cycles of violence going. The United States made choices that helped keep the peoples of the Middle East enslaved in despotism and poverty.
And so we come to 2001. And it’s time to stop a war. But it’s not necessarily this war that we can stop. It’s the next one. And the ones after that. It’s time to stop combat terrorism with terror. In the last few weeks the United States has been making new alliances with countries whose leaders subvert democracy. We are giving them free rein to continue to subject their people. Every weapon we sell these tyrants only kills and destabilizes more, just as every bomb we drop on Kabul feeds terror more.
And most of all: we are making new victims. Another generation of children are seeing their parents die, are seeing the rain of bombs fall on their cities from an uncaring America. They cry out to us in the name of peace and democracy and hear nothing but hatred and blood. And some of them will respond by turning against us in hatred. And will fight us in anger. They will learn our lesson of terror and use it against us. They cycle will repeat. History will continue to turn, with blood as it’s Middle Eastern lubricant. Unless we act. Unless we can stop the next war.
No More Coincidences: Big Bill’s Zipper Strikes Again
December 16, 1998
Back in February, I concluded my “Stop the Zipper War Before it Starts” with the following:
Nothing’s really changed now except U.S. political interests. Hussein is still a tyrant. He’s still stockpiling chemical weapons. Why are U.S. political interests different now? Why does Bill Clinton want U.S. media attention focused on Iraq? Look no further than Big Bill’s zipper. Stop the next war before it starts. Abolish everyone’s weapons of mass destruction and let’s get a President who doesn’t need a war to clear his name.
I put this at the bottom of the piece because then the idea that Clinton might have done this was still way out there.
Since then most every major turning point in the President’s scandals has been echoed by military maneuverings.
On August 17th Clinton gave a televised address which was widely criticized as being “too little, too late” and non-repentant enough. Public opinion turned sharply against him. Three days later Big Bill sent 100 cruise missiles into Afghanistan and Sudan in order to assassinate Osama bin Laden, the previously unknown archenemy of the United States.
And now, on the afternoon before the House of Representatives was scheduled to begin proceedings on his Impeachment, Clinton has ordered an attack on Iraq. Congress will of course delay the vote. Rumors are that this new bombing campaign might last more than a few days, and come January’s new Congressional term there will be five less Republicans.
Each time these coincidences happen, a few pundits that mutter about “Wag the Dog” scenarios before assuring the audience that Clinton would never do that. Everyone talks about coincidence and then moves on.
But coincidence has been Clinton’s friend throughout his scandals. Remember the long-lost Whitewater documents that mysteriously appeared on Hillary Clinton’s coffee-table when investigators were threatening to issue here a subpoena? Remember the job offers that Clinton cronies arranged for key witnesses just before they either recanted their stories or lied under oath? All of Clinton’s scandals have been of the “who cares” variety-shady land dealings twenty years ago in Arkansas, his having sex with an intern in the Oval Office. They displayed a lack of judgment and character, but were not Impeachable. But his scandals have grown and taken a life of their own as Clinton and his wife have been visited by an ever-growing amount of coincidences.
Enough is enough. How much more are we to believe? As I write this the missiles are screaming over Baghdad and Iraqis are dying horrible deaths. This is real. This is not some political game. It is time for Americans to stop denying that these coincidences are really coincidental.
It is time to demand Clinton’s resignation.
And if he refuses, then it is time to subpoena White House records on the last year of military actions. If they show that Clinton has murdered in his desperate attempt to save his Presidency, then it is time not only to impeach him but to put him into jail.