Art Pearl Against the World, The Mess We Are In. Part 3: Peace Movement

Art Pearl Against the World,  The Mess We Are In. Part 3

In 3 sub parts this one 3c

WARIII

We desperately need a powerful peace movement.

There is no possible improvement in life conditions without peace.

There is no escape from the oppressiveness of fascism without a peace movement.

There are no civil rights without peace.

There is no preservation of the environment without peace.

Everything worth saving, everything good and decent depends on a powerful and persuasive peace movement.

And here we are,16 years of war with Afghanistan, and not even a whiff of a peace movement.

How could we possibly be in a war with Afghanistan?

Afghanistan never attacked us.

We supported Afghanistan in its war with the soon to end Soviet Union.

One reason we supported the war in Afghanistan is because Barrack Obama told us it was a “good war.”

Barrack Obama while campaigning for the presidency contrasted

the Iraq War he opposed, with the Afghanistan war that he called “the good war.’

And maybe that got him elected president. It certainly didn’t hurt him.

There was no marching in the streets against the war,

The American People must have thought it was a “good War,” whoops,

thought is the wrong word, there was little thinking going on.

The American people must have felt it was a “good war” 88% supported it

When the invasion began in October 2001, polls indicated that

about 88% of Americans and about 65% of Britons backed

military action

"WPO Poll: Afghan Public Overwhelmingly Rejects al-Qaeda, Taliban"

Even though Afghanistan never attacked us, and none of terrorists

involved were from Afghanistan.

The justification was harboring

U.S. President George W. Bush demanded that the Taliban hand over Osama bin Laden and expel al-Qaeda; bin Laden had already been wanted by the United Nations since 1999. The Taliban declined to extradite him unless given evidence of his involvement in the September 11 attacks and also declined demands to extradite others on the same grounds(Wikipedia)

  

That was it. When Congress voted for Authorization for Use of Military Force it not only launched the war in Afghanistan, it also authorized all the wars that have followed,

Not one senator spoke against it, or even expressed reservations.

Just one, one solitary Congresswoman voted, and spoke, against it, Barbara Lee (D) Berkeley, California.

.

Vote Authorization for Use of Military Force (Afghanistan War)

For Against Didn’t Vote

Senate  98      0 2

House 420 1 10    

And she was maligned and demonized.

(she) was deluged with rancid insults and death threats to the point where she needed around-the-clock bodyguards. She was vilified as “anti-American” by numerous outlets including the Wall Street Journal. The Washington Times editorialized on September 18 that “Ms. Lee is a long-practicing supporter of America’s enemies — from Fidel Castro on down” and that “while most of the left-wing Democrats spent the week praising President Bush and trying to sound as moderate as possible, Barbara Lee continued to sail under her true colors.”

Glenn Greenwald Barbara Lee’s Lone Vote on Sept. 14, 2001, Was as Prescient as It Was Brave and Heroic, The Guardian, September 11 2016

She defended her voted on the floor of Congress September 14, 2001

We are not dealing with a conventional war, we cannot respond in a conventional manner. I do not want to see this spiral out of control … If we rush to launch a counterattack, we run too great a risk that women, children and other noncombatants will be caught in the cross-fire … Finally, we must be careful not to embark on an open-ended war with neither an exit strategy nor a focused target. We cannot repeat past mistakes. As we act, let us not become the evil that we deplore.

Sixteen years later that resolution has been used to get is into wars in Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Yeman.

In 2016 Lee tried to get a resolution passed to limit President Obama war making. It lost 285 to 138 apongpary lines.

A report from the Congressional Research Service requested by Lee shows the current authorization has been used to justify unclassified military action 37 times in 14 countries since 2001, including 19 times by Obama.

Sarah B, Wise, U.S. House rejects Rep. Barbara Lee's push to end war authorization, Los Angeles Times,Mya 16, 2016.

And we have become “the evil we deplore.”

What needs to be clearly understood and we need take time to help our friends and neighbors understand:

There are no good wars!!!!

All wars are horrible, almost too horrible to contemplate, and we seem unable or unwilling to avoid blundering into them,

The only justifiable war is an unavoidable war.

WORLD WAR II ENDED 69 YEARS AGO. IT WAS OUR LAST UNAVOIDABLE WAR!!!

The justification that Afghanistan was harboring terrorists.  Other countries were “harboring,” including ourselves. It would have made just as good

sense bombing Florida as bombing Afghanistan, considering how Florida has been voting, maybe better.

Furthermore, war is not a way to overcome terrorism.

It is a way to recruit terrorists!!!!

Got that?

It is a way to recruit terrorists!!!!

Every drone that results in deaths or injuries, recruits terrorists.

Every “boot on the ground,” that results in death or destruction of the country we occupy, recruits terrorists

Don’t take my word for it. This is Osuma bin Laden justification for 9/11:

(d) The American people are the ones who employ both their men and their women in the American Forces which attack us.

(e) This is why the American people cannot be not innocent of all the crimes committed by the Americans and Jews against us.

(f) Allah, the Almighty, legislated the permission and the option

    to take revenge. Thus, if we are attacked, then we have the  

    right to attack back. Whoever has destroyed our villages and towns, then we have the right to destroy their villages and towns. Whoever has stolen our wealth, then we have the

    right to destroy their economy. And whoever has killed our civilians, then we have the right to kill theirs.

Excerpt from bin Laden’s reasons for 9/11

How little we learn from history

On August 10, 1964 the Senate voted on the Tonkin Resolution authorizing the Vietnam War

Vote Tonkin Resolution

For Against

Senate  88 2

Just Two senators, Wayne Morse, (D) Oregon, Ernest Gruening (D) Al;aska, voted against the Tonkin Resolution.

The Vietnam war sparked an enormous opposition

Wayne Morse made it his sole concern. To me and to everybody he

repeatedly said

Compared to the Vietnam War everything else pales to

insignificance

The war split the Democratic Party. Lyndon Johnson. who won in a landslide

in 1964, chose not to run for reelection because of public opposition to his support of the war.

The 1968 Chicago Democratic Party Convention was an unmitigated disaster

The modern Democratic Party has always had its internal

divisions. Right now, in the run-up to the 2016 presidential

contest, many partisan Democrats support the presumptive candidacy of Hillary Clinton while some so-called “economic populists” are seeking a challenger to attack Clinton from the

left. But no matter how intense the conflict between those two camps becomes, it probably won’t have anything on the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. That was where American liberalism cracked wide open, police truncheons

bloodied countless anti-Vietnam protesters, and the party itself was severely hobbled by civil strife.

    That outcome might not have been inevitable, but certainly

all the ingredients for a combustible situation were present from the beginning. President Lyndon B. Johnson’s tenure had already fractured the Democratic Party; liberals hated the White House

for stepping up U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, while Southern Dixiecrats were defecting over Johnson’s push for civil rights legislation. When Johnson decided not to pursue another term in office, he set the stage for a vicious battle between the establishment candidate, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, and Humphrey’s anti-war challengers.

The two senators who voted against were both defeated in 1968

Two prominent opponents of the War, Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther

King, Jr., were assassinated in 1968. One year before he was assassinated, Martin Luther King, Jr. gave a sermon at the Riverside Church in New York.

Vietnam was the symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and, if left untreated, if the malady continued to fester, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

. . .

We again fell victim to the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long, We as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military

defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. (King warned of a time of endless war, when the U.S.

would be trapped in one overseas entanglement after another

while the gap at home between the rich and poor grew ever

larger).

United States was on the side of the wealthy, and the secure, while we create a hell for the poor. (He was talking about

Vietnam, but the sickness that he named, that) far deeper malady, (could be detected in everything America did).

(Excerpts from sermon Riverside Church, New York, April 4, 1967)

Fifty years later everything King prophesized has materialized.

There was some very important difference between the Vietnam War

and the current wars in the Middle East and Africa.

1. There was a huge peace movement during the Vietnam War,

    there is none now.

2. There was a draft in Vietnam war, none in Afghan and Iraq war.

Since the draft loomed over students’ futures and provided an avenue for direct resistance to war on an individual level, much student activism was concerned with the draft. Beginning in 1964, students began burning their draft cards as acts of defiance. By 1969, student body presidents of 253 universities wrote to the White House to say that they personally planned to refuse induction, joining the half million others who would do so during the course of the war.

Chance and Circumstance: The Draft, The War, and the Vietnam Generation. by Lawrence M. Baskir; William A. Strauss. (1978). New York, Alfred A. Knopf, p. 68

3. there was no aftermath the Vietnam War, the wars in the Middle East have destabilized the area.

There was no major unrest in the Middle East before we decided to invade. Sunnis and Shias lived compatibly in Iraq. There were tensions between

Israel and Palestine but that hasn’t changed and is only minimally responsible for the chaos in rest of the area, We not only destabilized the area we have increased the terrorist threat to the US and everywhere.

It is not that we have done great in these wars.

  . . . there’s just one institution in American society that gets uniformly staggeringly positive votes of “confidence” from Americans in polls and that’s the U.S. military (83%).  And this should be the greatest mystery of them all.

    That military, keep in mind, hasn’t won a significant conflict since World War II. (In retrospect, the First Gulf War, which once seemed like a triumph beyond compare for the globe’s highest-tech force, turned out to be just the first step into the never-ending quagmire of Iraq.) In this century, the U.S. military has, in fact, stumbled from one “successful” invasion to another, one terror-spreading conflict to the next, without ever coming up for air. Meanwhile, the American taxpayer has poured money into the Pentagon and the rest of the national security state in amounts that should boggle the mind. And yet, the U.S. hasn’t been able to truly extricate itself from a single country it's gotten involved in across the Greater Middle East for decades.  In the wake of its ministrations, nations have crumbled, allies have been crippled, and tens of millions of people across a vast region of the planet have been uprooted from their homes and swept into the maelstrom. In other words, Washington’s version of imperial war fighting should be seen as the record from hell for a force regularly hailed here as the “finest” in history.  The question is: finest at what?

   All of this is on the record. All of this should be reasonably apparent to anyone half-paying attention and yet the American public’s confidence in the force fighting the “forever wars” is almost off the charts. For that, you can undoubtedly blame, in part, the urge of the military high command never again to experience a citizen’s army roiled by antiwar protests and in near revolt as in the Vietnam era. As a result, in 1973, the draft was ended and in the decades that followed the public was successfully demobilized when it came to American war. George W. Bush’s classic post-9/11 suggestion that Americans respond to the horror of those falling towers by visiting Disney World and enjoying “life the way we want it to be enjoyed” caught that mood exactly.

Rebecca Gordon, America at War Since 9/11: Reality or Reality TV?, TomDispatch, 27 June 2017

At the very least we can get people to realize how futile these wars are, their costs, not only in dollars but in wasted lives, veterans psychologically destroyed as unwelcome “liberators” unable to distinguish friend from foe.

Why no peace movement

1). The Military Industrial Complex that President Eisenhower warned

     us about in his farewell address.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger

our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing

for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can

compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so

that security and liberty may prosper together

The Military Industrial Complex is if anything more influential now

than it was in 1960, with a president proposing to add 48 billion

dollars to an already bloated military budget that is more than the

next seven nations combined while the gap at home between the rich and poor grows and makes more difficult any challenge to corporate

control.

. . . the war has continued, because it serves powerful interests that have nothing to do with Afghanistan itself: the careers of the US officers who serve there; the bureaucratic stakes of the Joint Special Operations Command and the CIA in their huge programs and facilities in the country; the political cost of admitting that it was a futile effort from the start. Plus, the Pentagon and the CIA are determined to hold on to Afghan airstrips they use to carry out drone war in Pakistan for as long as possible.

        Thus Afghanistan, the first of the United States' permanent wars, is in many ways the model for all the others that have followed -- wars that have no other purpose than to serve the US war system itself.

Gareth Porter, Why Afghanistan? Fighting a War for

the War System Itself, , Truthout, June 13, 2017

2). Neocons and the American Empire. With the end of the Soviet

    Union rather than cutting back on military spending an influential

    group of neocons advocated the  creation of an American empire

    and were able to use their influence in the military budget to

    establish overseas bases all over the world. Although not always

    advocating war, neocons were instrumental in producing regimes changes and maintained a powerful influence in both political parties and were instrumental in support of the Iraq War, for increasing overseas military bases, for supporting Israel and opposing any

    effort to recognize Palestine as a nation.

3). The decline of the political parties. If the Democratic Party never recovered from 1968, what has happened to the Republican Party is even worse. Its rational leaders have quit or were deposed, a Tea Party has undue influence and offers no solutions. Both parties have lost membership.

As party power has declined, the relative strength of special interests has grown. Outside groups often have more money and flexibility than the parties themselves

4). The ignorance coupled with the disinterest in important issues and with a maze of diversions, the internet, cell phones, sports teams, entertainers, videogames, television with a station for every taste and nothing that pulls people together, little celebration of diversity, a lot of self exclusion, e.g., bowling alone.

5). Espionage act of 1917, Sedition Act of 1918. two            terrible acts passed during WW I and resulting in thousands imprisoned for speaking against the war or bad mouthing Woodrow Wilson. Those Acts, dragged out of moth balls and used to send Chelsea Manning to prison for 35  years. OK sentence was commuted to seven years, but the threat of 35 is used against Edward Snowden spared for the moment in asylum in Russia. Their crimes: Manning leaked information that revealed what we were really doing in Iraq, no secret for the Iraqis. If not for the war, the worse punishment Manning would have received  -- unfavorable discharge from army. Snowden revealed to newspapers how the NSA was spying on everybody. If not at war, he would have had the contitutional protection of the First Amendment -- freedom of the press.

No Jane Addams, Smedley Butler, Jeannette Rankin, Wayne Morse, or Dwight Eisenhower.

Jane Addams was a truly great American. She gained fame with Hull House she and her partner established in the slums of Chicago. It became the model settlement  house in the US. Noted for its help of children. Immigrants, unions, adult education, a force for social justice and for effectively combating poverty; She opposed war. She with women from all over the world to try to prevent World War I. She continued to oppose the war after the US became part of it. Before the war, although she never shied away from controversy, Hull House welcomed labor unions, immigrants, women seeking a vote, African Americans, she had become almost universally respected and admired. That changed.

Addams delivered a speech at Carnegie Hall in New York City on July 9, 1915, in which she questioned nationalism (exceptionally strong support of one's own nation above all others) and support for war. She also criticized the glorification of war itself. Addams encouraged the public to recognize the futility of war and support other ways to resolve international disputes.

Addams was surprised by the strong negative reactions of the media and the public to her speech. She maintained her pacifist views even when the United States entered the war in 1917. Addams suddenly found herself used as a symbol of those considered disloyal to America and was cast in the role of national villain.

href="http://law.jrank.org/pages/12153/Addams-  Jane-Peace-activist.html

Among those unhappy with her position on peace were the Daughters of the American Revolution who expelled her. Her Response:

I had supposed at the time that (my membership) had been for life but it was apparently only for good behavior.

Smedley Butler joined the marines as teenager, distinguished himself as he rose up the ranks to reach the highest possible rank as a marine – Major General. Recipient of TWO Medals of Honor, an American hero if ever there was one. He summarized his military career thusly:

   I spent thirty-five years and four months in active service as a member of our country's most agile military force - the Marine Corps.  I served in all commissioned ranks from a second lieutenant to a major-general.  And during that period, 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 for capitalism....

   Thus, I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914.  I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City boys to collect revenues.  I helped purify Nicaraugua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912.  I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916.  I helped make Honduras "right" for American fruit companies in 1903.  In China, in 1927, I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.

   During those years I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket.  i was rewarded with honors, medals, promotion.  Looking back on it, I feel I might have given Al Capone a few hints.  The best he could do was operate his racket in three city districts.  We Marines operated on three continents.

  We must give up the Prussian ideal-carrying on offensive warfare and imposing our wills upon other people in distant places.  Such doctrine is unAmerican and vicious. . .

  There must be no more reactionary and destructive intelligence work.  The true domestic enemies of our nation-hunger, injustice and exploitation-should concern the military intelligence; not the subversive shadows of their own creation..

Major General Smedley D. Butler, Interview, New York Times, 21 August 1931)

Jeannette Rankin was an inspired and effective organizer for the woman’s vote. Having played a leadership in states that won the vote before her home state, Montana, she returned to Montana and helped that state attain the vote in 1914. In1916 she was elected to the US Congress, the first woman elected anywhere on the world to a national office. Not long after she was elected she voted with 49 others against the US entering World War I. In 1942 she ran unsuccessfully for the senate. In 1940 she was elected again to the US Congress and cast the only vote against World War II (actually against Japan. She abstained on the vote to declare War on Germany). She continued to be for peace and led the Jeannette Rankin Brigade opposition to the Vietnam War.

You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.

Quoted in: Hannah Josephson, Jeanette Rankin: First Lady in Congress, ch.8 (1974).

Wayne Morse, senator Oregon, the youngest law dean in US at University of Oregon ran and won election to the US Senate as a Republican in 1944. Reelected as a Republican in 1950. In 1953 he left the Republican Party, allegedly because of unhappiness with President Eisenhower. He won election as a Democrat in 1956 and 1962. He was well respected as hard working no nonsense senator with special emphasis on the Constitution, foreign relations, education and labor. Became very well known because of opposition to war in Vietnam

Our government has no right to send American boys to their death in any battlefield in the absence of a declaration of war, and Article One, Section Eight of the Constitution vests the prerogative of declaring war in the Congress of the United States. And no war has been declared in Southeast Asia, and until a war is declared, it is unconstitutional to send American boys to their death in South Vietnam, or anywhere else in Southeast Asia. I don't know why we think, just because we're mighty, that we have the right to try to substitute might for right. And that's the American policy in Southeast Asia. It's just as unsound when we do it as when Russia does it.

War Storis: The Gulf of Tonkin and Wayne Mor NPR October 13, 1999

What to do?  What to do?

A  peace movement begins with each one of is recognizing it has to be done.

Once we realize there can be no democracy, even more stark, no way to stop the intensification of a total fascism, we make ourselves peace advocates.

Chris Hedges says already too late:

Our constitutional rights—due process, habeas corpus, privacy, a fair trial, freedom from exploitation, fair elections and dissent—have been taken from us by judicial fiat. These rights exist only in name. The vast disconnect between the purported values of the state and reality renders political discourse absurd.

Corporations, cannibalizing the federal budget, legally empower themselves to exploit and pillage. It is impossible to vote against the interests of Goldman Sachs or ExxonMobil. The pharmaceutical and insurance industries can hold sick children hostage while their parents bankrupt themselves trying to save their sons or daughters. Those burdened by student loans can never wipe out the debt by declaring bankruptcy. In many states, those who attempt to publicize the conditions in the vast factory farms where diseased animals are warehoused for slaughter can be charged with a criminal offense. Corporations legally carry out tax boycotts. Companies have orchestrated free trade deals that destroy small farmers and businesses and deindustrialize the country. Labor unions and government agencies designed to protect the public from contaminated air, water and food and from usurious creditors and lenders have been defanged. The Supreme Court, in an inversion of rights worthy of George Orwell, defines unlimited corporate contributions to electoral campaigns as a right to petition the government or a form of free speech. Much of the press, owned by large corporations, is an echo chamber for the elites. State and city enterprises and utilities are sold to corporations that hike rates and deny services to the poor. The educational system is being slowly privatized and turned into a species of vocational training.

One thing we can all do is contact our local representatives in Washington and ask them what they are doing for peace,

The following is the letter I sent my congressman

May 30, 2017

Dear Congressman DeFasio

        These wars have to end. I realize that you are far more informed about them than I am but I think you need to evaluate where we are and what we face. They have gone o far too long and coats have been astronomical

        Yes we have a terrorist problem, one of our making. The ostensible beginning of the war on terror was 9/11 when the first mistake was made, calling it a war when it was really a crime. We responded by congress giving to president the authority to declare war in Afghanistan and Iraq, neither of whom had attacked us. Candidate Obama called Afghanistan the “good” war and only Barbara Lee in either the house or senate voted against it.

          There are no good wars, there may be unavoidable wars, which neither Iraq nor Afghanistan are.

         Largely as a result of our meddling the Middle East has been destabilized. Not only has terrorism NOT been brought under control but our efforts have increased the threat. We now are in the business of recruiting terrorists. Every bomb we explode, every drone we use to bring more and more of the area under attack, every invasion of troops recruits terrorists.

         But terrorism is not the greatest threat, The wars have been used to destroy what is left of our once vaunted democracy. Rights of expression, privacy, due process have been seriously undermined as we find the noose of corporate control tightening. Here is now Chris Hedges  put it recently

Our constitutional rights—due process, habeas corpus, privacy, a fair trial, freedom from exploitation, fair elections and dissent—have been taken from us by judicial fiat. These rights exist only in name. The vast disconnect between the purported values of the state and reality renders political discourse absurd.

Chris Hedges, The Death of the Republic, Truthdig, May 21, 2017

        Hedges goes on “Corporations, cannibalizing the federal budget, legally empower themselves to exploit and pillage. It is impossible to vote against the interests of Goldman Sachs or ExxonMobil” creating a list of catastrophes visited on us by corporate America. I, too, have examined what corporations have wrought. I argue we are now where it is going to be either democracy or fascism with nothing in between. I am more hopeful than Hedges. I see gaps where corporations have not as yet ventured. One of them is education, for almost 40 years corporations have attacked public schools, starting with Ronald Reagan’s Commission on Excellence and have inflicted enormous damage, none greater than what currently being attempted by Donald Trump. And yet local schools have wiggle room. For the last ten years I have worked with a fifth grade teacher in Eugene teaching the students about their rights, precisely those that Hedges says they no longer have. They know how threatened they are because of the longest war in our history and have taken positions against the Patriot Act and have drawn attention on NSA spying on everyone. They have published articles in international journals, appeared before the schoolboard. This particular class, not the most outstanding will report what it has learned next Tuesday, Edison Elementary School, one pm, Ms. Dwoskin’s classroom, If you are in town you may want to attend otherwise you may want to send one of your staff.  

         We live in perilous times. Without a peace movement there is little hope. I refuse to believe that only Rand Paul and Barbara Lee in all of congress believe in peace.

      As you may remember I was once politically active in Eugene, Wayne Morse persuaded me to run for governor in 1970 to keep alive his political organization so he could run again in 1972 for the seat he lost in 1968. The only area where McCall and I disagreed was the Vietnam War. I was chided ‘governors had no foreign policy.’ My response was the same as Eisenhower’s every penny spent on an unnecessary war is money that could be spent on education, health, the environment.

         Apologies for a long rambling letter. I very much  appreciate all you have done and are doing in a very difficult time.

Art Pearl

1625 Braeman Village

Eugene, OR. 97405

apoilart@aol.com

541-357-4300

This is the response from Congressman DeFasio, if it is a response, addressed to Friends” and doesn’t address my concerns.

A Message From Congressman Peter DeFazio

Dear Friends,

For far too long Congress has outsourced its war power responsibilities to the executive branch. While Congress continues to shirk its war powers responsibilities, I am concerned that President Trump’s decisions in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa are propelling us closer to war. Rather than employing effective diplomacy, this administration has decided to pursue a policy of further escalation.

The American people have expended enough blood and taxpayer money on interventionist warfare. The U.S. needs to engage in diplomatic approaches with our adversaries and continue leading the effort to reduce the role and number of nuclear weapons globally. As a co-equal branch of the federal government, it is imperative that Congress defend its power granted by the Constitution to declare war. Below is an update of what I am doing in Congress to hold President Trump accountable.

Military Action in Syria

On April 6, President Trump ordered the firing of 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles from the USS Ross and USS Porter, located in the Mediterranean Sea, on Shayrat Air Base in Syria. The strike was a retaliatory response to a chemical weapons attack that Bashar al-Assad authorized on his own people. This comes on the heels of President Trump's deployment of hundreds of ground troops to Syria. While I condemn the brutal actions of the Syrian dictator whose inhumane attacks against his own people are an unspeakable atrocity, President Trump’s actions were taken without congressional authorization.

For this reason, I sent a letter with my colleagues urging the president to withdraw troops from Syria or seek Congress’s authorization to extend their stay.

I also led a group of lawmakers in sending a letter to President Trump demanding that he come before Congress with a clear scope of his campaign in Syria and his exit strategy. Additionally, I am a cosponsor of H.R. 1473, the Prohibit the Expansion of U.S. Combat Troops into Syria Act, which would prohibit President Trump from continuing to deploy ground troops to Syria for military operations.

History has shown that U.S. involvement in sectarian conflicts as well as civil wars raging in the Middle East does not benefit our interests. In fact, U.S. military actions in the Middle East only create more hatred directed at our nation and increase the risk of terrorism both here and abroad.

Nuclear War with North Korea?

The issue of foreign policy with North Korea is among the most complicated questions this administration, and previous administrations, have faced. Under the leadership of Kim Jong-un, North Korea has aggressively increased its pursuit of sophisticated nuclear weaponry.

Instead of deterring North Korea’s weapons systems development through common sense diplomacy, President Trump continues to increase tensions by conducting diplomatic relations via Twitter, flexing U.S. military might by sending an aircraft carrier strike group to waters off North Korea, and threatening the authoritarian regime with a pre-emptive strike. This has only emboldened North Korea as their missile and nuclear tests continue and their vice foreign minister warned that President Trump's actions could lead to war. With Seoul, South Korea, only 35 miles from the border, countless U.S. military personnel and tens of thousands of South Koreans are at risk in any military conflict with North Korea.

The U.S. should be pursuing all diplomatic approaches available to bring North Korea to the negotiating table, not threatening the country with a pre-emptive strike, which could ultimately provoke the unstable regime into starting a war.

Recently, I sent a letter with more than 20 of my colleagues to President Trump urging him to pursue policies that will steadily reduce the role and size of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy. I am also a cosponsor of H.R. 669, the Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act, which would prohibit the president from conducting a first-use nuclear strike unless a declaration of war is issued by Congress.

There is no easy approach to dealing with North Korea’s evolving nuclear capabilities. However, it is in the best interests of our national security to deescalate military engagement.

Strengthening the War Powers Resolution

The U.S. Constitution grants Congress, not the executive branch, the power to declare war. The president only has the power to introduce U.S. Armed Forces into hostilities under three explicit circumstances: a declaration of war, a specific statutory authorization, or if there is a national emergency created by an attack on the U.S. or its armed forces. However, the war powers of the legislative branch have eroded over time. It is time for Congress to reassert its constitutional authority.

I have always been vocal against executive overreach. In fact, during my entire tenure in Congress, I introduced legislation to defend the constitutional division of powers between Congress and the president as they apply to the use of U.S. military force. This Congress,

I introduced H.J.Res. 75, the War Powers Amendments of 2017, to strengthen the War Powers Resolution. My legislation would make clear that before the president undertakes any offensive military action, prior authorization from Congress is required.

Looking Ahead

Let me be clear, we cannot resolve our problems by acting as the world’s policeman. I have a long history of being a public watchdog of Congress's power to declare war and you can be sure that I won't hesitate to criticize and take action to hold this administration accountable, as I have with previous Republican and Democratic administrations.

As always, please don't hesitate to contact me either byemail or by calling my Oregon office toll-free at 1-800-944-9603.

Sincerely,

Peter DeFazio

The Problem with Congressman DeFasio’s response it has no chance of ending the wars, or reducing corporate control. He basically asserts no worries we can take care of things, when in truth his party is out of power in all three branches and needs desperately a reinvigorated mass of people actively involved in the political process. Nowhere is that mass more important than in restoring peace and nowhere is it more missing.

I am sending letters similar to what  I sent DeFasio to my senators and will relay their responses to you.

You might suggest to your representatives that they do a George Aiken. George Aiken was a Republican senator from Vermont. This was his response to the Vietnam War

The United States could well declare unilaterally that this stage of the Vietnam war is over—that we have "won" in the sense that our Armed Forces are in control of most of the field and no potential enemy is in a position to establish its authority over South Vietnam.

Speech in the U.S. Senate [October 19, 1966)

It would have to be modified a bit, we don’t seem to be in control of the fields, but we have established military supremacy were it not for those terrorists who refuse to play by the rules.

As noted previously unlike Vietnam there is no mass movement today to end the war(s). The mass movement to end them Vietnam War was not successful. The war went on for five years after demonstrations against it were reduced to a trickle. There were serious mistakes made. Rather than seeing supporters of the war as potential allies to be persuaded, they were treated as the enemy and condemned. And a portion of the anti war demonstrators expressed their opposition by breaking store windows and overturning automobiles; not the best way to make friends. If we are to create a successful peace movement we must persuade not condemn. Logic and evidence is on our side and will prevail if we can keep the conversation on topic.

Give up notion of policeman for the world.

If don’t like how another country is running their government, show them what a model of good government looks like. We have a bit of a ways to go to do that.

Dismantle the Military Industrial Complex.

Cut military appropriations in half, would still be almost three times more than what Russia and China spend on their military.

Country    _ Spending $ billions

United States 597.5

China 145.8

Saudi Arabia  85.6

Russia  65.6

United Kingdom  56.2

Source: List by the International Institute for Strategic Studies

Defence Budgets 2015

Close half  of overseas bases

Elect pro peace representatives

Educate for informed and responsible democratic citizenship.

(More on that when we discuss) democracy

The test of democracy will be whether it can become a powerful agency for peace

Each of us need to talk peace and find ways make it a topic of conversation in person to person and in social media. Each of us need to ask each other, “What have you done for peace today?”

In future blogs after I describe and explain democracy we can create some democratic peace movement

Find ways to support peace organizations: World without War, Quakers, Veterans against the War

It is not too late but dangerously close to a situation where any opposition to those in control will be brutally oppressed and silenced; Like Germany in the 30s? No, like the US now, except it won’t be drugs. The drug war targeted African American males and the prison population multiplied.  

"After a 700-percent increase in the US prison population between 1970 and 2005, you'd think the nation would finally have run out of lawbreakers to put behind bars," said the report by Pew's Public Safety Performance Project.

Unless we move toward democracy, it will be thinkers who will overcrowd the prisons and be the victims of capital punishment not considered cruel or unusual by our Supreme Court.

Bring peace into every conversation.

Earlier it was noted that the Vietnam War was opposed by huge crowds, unlike what is happening today. However, the opposition did not produce good results. The two senators that opposed the war lost their senate seats, and the war went on for five years after the demonstrations against slowed to a trickle. Complicating the issue is that Wayne Morse did not lose because of his opposition to the Vietnam War.  Being part of that campaign I realized how important to Morse was his friend and campaign manager.

Did Morse's vote bring him down, too?

No.  Morse's 1968 campaign was not well organized, due to his campaign manager being distracted by his wife's illness and another central Morse staffer being sick. Bob Packwood ran a better campaign than Morse. Morse lost by 3,000 votes.

Vietnam war play follows Oregon senator Wayne Morse's battle with Robert McNamara

By David Stabler | Special to The Oregonian/OregonLive , September 22, 2014

Make sure this blog and all others that advocate peace gets lnto facebook and every other social media.

Please send this blog to everyone you know, and tell me what you think.

There is some hope. Barbara Lee is in the process of determining whether congress is ready to limit the president’s war making powers and was able to do something she was unable to do a year before. She got a bipartisan response.

On Thursday, the House Appropriations Committee opened the door to ending that 2001 authorization when it added Lee's amendment to a Defense Department measure. Congress would have 240 days to debate a new authorization. At the end of that time the 2001 authorization would be repealed.

         Lee has lobbied hard just to get to this first step, which was approved by a voice vote in the Republican led committee.

         "I've been working on this for years and years and years. I'm just really pleased that Republicans and Democrats today really understood what I've been saying and I've been explaining for the last 16 years, and that is, this resolution is a blank check for perpetual war," Lee said.

Sarah D. Wire, Committee unexpectedly opens door to Rep. Barbara Lee's push to end military force authorization, Los Angeles Times, June 29, 2016

Who knows? if we try we may be surprised. There may be a peace movement out there just needing a bit of encouragement. We won’t know until we try. At the very least we will get a sense of what’s out there. Lets do it.

Let me know what you think. What you did and what response you got.