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“Darn Good Intelligence”

July 15, 2003
· Martin Kelley

The Wash­ing­ton Post has a remarkably-wrong asser­tion by George W. Bush. The Pres­i­dent says he decid­ed to start the war after he gave Sad­dam Hus­sein “a chance to allow the inspec­tors in, and he would­n’t let them in.”

Memo to Bush: Hus­sein did let them in (they were there when U.S. troop buildup start­ed in the Mideast). Over the last few weeks the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion has had a lot of trou­ble keep­ing its ali­bis straight but now the Pres­i­dent him­self is just being out of touch with real­i­ty. (This is start­ing to feel like the glo­ry days of the Rea­gan Admin­is­tra­tion.) He con­tin­ues to bul­ly real­i­ty out of the way, despite the expo­sure of forg­eries and the non-discovery of weapons of mass destruction:

“I think the intel­li­gence I get is darn good intel­li­gence. And the speech­es I have giv­en were backed by good intel­li­gence. And I am absolute­ly con­vinced today, like I was con­vinced when I gave the speech­es, that Sad­dam Hus­sein devel­oped a pro­gram of weapons of mass destruc­tion, and that our coun­try made the right decision.”

North Korean nukes and cowboy politics

June 16, 2003
· Martin Kelley

Yes­ter­day North Korea claimed that it has processed enough plu­to­ni­um to make six nuclear weapons. I’ve often argued that wars don’t begin when the shoot­ing actu­al­ly begins, that we need to look at the mil­i­taris­tic deci­sions made years before to see how they plant­ed the seeds for war. After the First World War, the vic­to­ri­ous allies con­struct­ed a peace treaty designed to humil­i­ate Ger­many and keep its econ­o­my stag­nant. With the onslaught of the Great Depres­sion, the coun­try was ripe for a mad dem­a­gogue like Hitler to take over with talk of a Greater Germany.

In his Jan­u­ary 2002 State of the Union address, Pres­i­dent Bush’s team added North Korea to the “axis of evil” that need­ed to be chal­lenged. By all accounts it was a last minute addi­tion. The speech­writ­ing team nev­er both­ered to con­sult with the State Depart­men­t’s East Asia experts. In all like­li­hood North Korea was added so that the evil three coun­tries would­n’t all be Mus­lim (the oth­er two were Iraq and Iran) and the “War on Ter­ror” would­n’t be seen as a war against Islam.

North Korea saw a bull­dog pres­i­dent in the White House and judged that its best chance to stay safe was to make a U.S. attack too dan­ger­ous to con­tem­plate. It’s a sound strat­e­gy, real­ly only a vari­a­tion on the Cold War’s “Mutu­al­ly Assured Destruc­tion” doc­trine. When faced with a hos­tile and militaristically-strong coun­try that wants to over­throw your gov­ern­ment, you make your­self too dan­ger­ous to take on. Let’s call it the Rat­tlesnake Defense.

Mil­i­tarism rein­forces itself when coun­tries beef up their mil­i­taries to stave off the mil­i­taries of oth­er coun­tries. With North Korea going nuclear, pres­sure will now build on South Korea, Chi­na and Japan to defend them­selves against pos­si­ble threat. We might be in for a new East Asian arms race, per­haps an East Asian Cold War. Being a paci­fist means stop­ping not only the cur­rent war but the next one and the one after that. In the 1980s activists were speak­ing out against the bru­tal regime of Sad­dam Hus­sein, an Amer­i­can friend who was gassing his own peo­ple. Now we need to speak out against the cow­boy pol­i­tics that is feed­ing insta­bil­i­ty on the Kore­an Penin­su­la, to pre­vent the hor­ror and mass death that a Sec­ond Kore­an War would unleash.

No More Coincidences: Big Bill’s Zipper Strikes Again

December 16, 1998
· Martin Kelley

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.

Uprooting Racism publisher’s note

December 1, 1995
· Martin Kelley

Uprooting Racism: How White People Can Work for Racial Justice, by Paul Kivel.
In 1995, I worked on one of my last books for New Society Publishers, Uprooting Racism, by Paul Kivel. I was both editor and typesetter. It was in my capacity as the former that I wrote this publisher’s note.

 

In this book, Paul Kiv­el is tak­ing on a lot. He’s speak­ing to white peo­ple as a fel­low white per­son about a hush-hush sub­ject: racism. He’s speak­ing with an hon­esty that allows for con­fu­sion and for admis­sion of his own inner prej­u­dices. In an era when many whites express pride of the advance­ment of the civ­il rights move­ment, he asks why so much of our world is still racial­ly proscribed.

Our soci­ety has been built upon a foun­da­tion of racism for so long that it’s become part of the land­scape: always there, sel­dom acknowl­edged. In this book, Kiv­el acknowl­edges and he ques­tions. He asks us where we came from, he asks us what we know. He’s resist­ed the temp­ta­tion to make this a man­u­al of polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness, and has instead allowed us to share our own prej­u­dices with him as we read.

Kiv­el chal­lenges us to look at our place in soci­ety. Just because we’ve begun to unlearn racism does­n’t mean the per­son wash­ing the dish­es of a favorite restau­rant isn’t still African Amer­i­can. Or that the edi­tor of a favorite mag­a­zine isn’t still a white per­son. Or that the taxi dri­ver we hail isn’t still clas­si­fied an ille­gal alien by a gov­ern­ment restrict­ing immi­gra­tion from darker-skinned regions of the world.

Paul Kiv­el does­n’t give us pat answers to these dilem­mas. He knows there will be no point at which we can sit back and con­sid­er our job com­plet­ed. We must con­tin­ue to wres­tle with these ques­tions, and in the con­fu­sion find moments of con­nec­tion and clarity.

Uproot­ing racism is of course a large task, much larg­er than any one of us. But by work­ing in our com­mu­ni­ties, and by engag­ing with our neigh­bors, work­mates, and friends, we can make a dif­fer­ence. May this book inspire and con­fuse you!

Mar­tin Kel­ley, for the New Soci­ety Publishers

June 2016: Found in the Pendle Hill library:2D02AB99-CB27-4A0E-A1EB-DB33AF5F5A7B