M.B. Dallocchio's Blog, page 4

Surviving Disappearance

Re-Imagining & Humanizing Native Peoples: Matika Wilbur at TEDxSeattle

Matika Wilbur, one of the Pacific Northwest's leading photographers, has exhibited extensively in regional, national, and international venues such as the Seattle Art Museum, the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, The Tacoma Art Museum, the Royal British Columbia Museum of Fine Arts, and the Nantes Museum of Fine Arts in France. She studied photography at the Rocky Mountain School of Photography in Montana and received a bachelor's degree from Brooks Institute of Photography in California. Her work led her to becoming a certified teacher at Tulalip Heritage High School, providing inspiration for the youth of her own indigenous community.

Matika, a Native American woman of the Swinomish and Tulalip Tribes (Washington), is unique as an artist and social documentarian in Indian Country. The insight, depth, and passion with which she explores the contemporary Native identity and experience are communicated through the impeccable artistry of each of her silver gelating photographs.

See her gallery here: http://project562.com/gallery

Bringing Back Girls Everywhere

In the past few weeks, we've seen a spike in the use of the popular hashtag #BringBackOurGirls.  While the idea of a group like Boko Haram running amok anywhere in the world is frightening, it wasn't unreasonable that so many jumped aboard and began to voice their concerns from a distance and via social media.

However, the skeptic in me began to nudge my conscience.  Before jumping onto any fad bandwagon or any "us versus them" war cry, I'd like to know the facts first.   After all, having served in the Iraq war, which was brought on by misinformation via the US government and mainstream media, I'm a bit skeptical of any knee-jerk reactions coming from elected officials or any media zeitgeist sweeping the country.  Not to mention the First Lady holding up the hashtag sign.  Just, wow.  Can we get a family of drone victims in Yemen to do the same photo op?

The skepticism I have is for how the US is handling human trafficking here and is selectively listening to this particular incident could very well be an excuse for further military "intervention" under the guise of eradicating Boko Haram.  It would be logical to ask oneself if this could have anything to do with our interests in Nigeria via AFRICOM, or perhaps the European Union's Economic Partnership Agreement and Nigeria's response? We could go on.  However, you won't see this sort of conversation or even the slightest sense of introspection occurring on any major news network in the US.

My question is, amid all the hashtags and somber faces, where's the outrage regarding human trafficking here in the United States?  Or anywhere else in the world?

In the United States alone, there have been 9,928 unique cases of reported incidents of human trafficking via hotline through one organization in the past 5 years.  Not 200, but 9,928.  These statistics come from The Polaris Project and their National Human Trafficking Hotline.  Think about these numbers the next time you book a room in
Additionally, human trafficking that includes, but is not limited to, forcing victims into prostitution, subjecting victims to slavery or involuntary servitude, and coercing victims to commit sex acts. Worldwide, around 80% of said trafficking involves sexual exploitation, half of which are minors, and around 19% involves labor exploitation.  The average age a teen enters the sex trade in the U.S. is 12 to 14-year-old and between 14,500 and 17,500 people are trafficked into the U.S. each year.  It is a $32 billion industry at minimum.

We could go on about human trafficking as well as what's going on in Nigeria, especially considering we now have US and UK personnel "advising" in person.  I really couldn't have put my perspective on Nigeria any better than Jumoke Balogun for Compare Afrique via The Guardian:

"Here’s the thing though, when you pressure western powers, particularly the American government, to get involved in African affairs and when you champion military intervention, you become part of a much larger problem. You become a complicit participant in a military expansionist agenda on the continent of Africa. This is not good. 

You might not know this, but the United States military loves your hashtags because it gives them legitimacy to encroach and grow their military presence in Africa. Africom (United States Africa Command), the military body that is responsible for overseeing US military operations across Africa, gained much from #KONY2012 and will now gain even more from #BringBackOurGirls."

Read the rest of this article here.

As the saying goes, mind the plank in your own eye before examining the speck in your neighbor's.

Additional Resources:

https://www.soroptimist.org/trafficking/faq.html

http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/10-surprising-and-counterintuitive-facts-about-child-sex-trafficking?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

http://www.polarisproject.org/index.php

http://www.ncadv.org/files/HumanTrafficking.pdf

Where the Buck Stops, ACT!

By Ray McGovern - Posted on 04 May 2014

Needed: Obama-Putin Summit on Ukraine

Editor Note: As the death toll mounts in an incipient civil war between east and west Ukraine, a group of retired U.S. intelligence professionals urges President Obama to hold a summit with Russia’s President Putin to defuse the crisis. 

May 4, 2014
MEMORANDUM FOR: The President 
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

SUBJECT: Urgent Action on Ukraine The buck stops with you, Mr. President. If you want to stop a bloody civil war between east and west Ukraine and avert Russian military intervention in eastern Ukraine, you may be able to do so before the violence hurtles completely out of control. You need to take the initiative and do it now.

We recommend that you publicly disavow any wish to incorporate Ukraine into NATO and that you make it clear to Moscow that you are prepared to meet personally with Russian President Vladimir Putin without delay to discuss ways to defuse the crisis and recognize the legitimate interests of the various parties.

You are surely aware by now that some of your key advisers do not share the goal of heading off even more serious violence. Or, if they do, it is hard to understand why they are giving you such a one-sided picture of the genesis of and the culpability for what has become an almost inexorable slide toward still wider hostilities and untold human misery among Ukrainians.

We believe you need to overrule those, like Secretary of State John Kerry, whose words and actions Kremlin leaders regard as aimed at giving Russia a bloody nose in its own backyard and – not incidentally – destroying the working relationship enjoyed earlier by you and Russian President Vladimir Putin. You were able to do something similar late last summer when, at the last minute, you canceled plans to attack Syria.

Back then, Secretary Kerry and other advisers came within a hair’s breadth of misleading you into a major war based on what they knew were highly dubious claims of Syrian government responsibility for chemical attacks near Damascus on August 21. Actions by those same advisers on Ukraine, reflexively supported by the “mainstream media” that accept their guidance as gospel truth, threaten to bring full-scale civil war to Ukraine, Russian military intervention, and a long-term poisoning of relations with Russia.

This would be to no-one’s advantage, except for those who (as in the Syrian case last summer) see incentive in closing down the kind of bilateral U.S.-Russian cooperation that has been so helpful on thorny problems like Syria and Iran – including frittering away the trust between you and President Vladimir Putin that played a significant role in defusing the Syrian crisis.

Russian Troops Into Ukraine? 

We see little reason to believe that President Putin wants to send Russian troops into Ukraine. It now appears likely, however, that he will feel forced to do so – especially after atrocities like the killing of more than 30 people from an anti-Ukrainian government dissident encampment in Odessa. The victims were among those seeking refuge in a building from violent pro-Ukrainian “soccer fans,” when firebombs were thrown into the building.

According to the Washington Post’s lead story on Saturday: “Police said 31 people were killed when they choked on smoke or jumped out of windows. Asked who had thrown the Molotov cocktails, pro-Ukrainian activist Diana Berg said, ‘Our people – but now they are helping them to escape the building.’”

Mr. President, if you do not move swiftly, it may be impossible to resuscitate the Geneva agreement of April 17, which the Kremlin has already declared a dead letter. And Moscow’s repeated warnings that Russia will intervene in the Ukraine in order to protect ethnic Russians is a threat that must be taken seriously.

Other Implications 

We are reluctant to believe that you countenance with equanimity the predictable carnage that will result if the current trend in Ukraine is not stemmed, not to mention the implications of reverting to the dark days of the Cold War. Aside from those who profiteer on war, the only real beneficiaries of this would be Israel and China. The Israelis and their neoconservative supporters are still licking their wounds over your decision on August 31 NOT to allow yourself to be mousetrapped into attacking Syria.

They want an abrupt end to the kind of Russia-U.S. cooperation that helped facilitate that decision (and that has also helped advance negotiations with Iran). As for China, it is playing a cautious game, refusing to join in with Western vilification of Russia and Putin. In the triangular relationship, China stands to gain handsomely from deterioration in U.S.-Russia relations. This can have profound practical consequences. Russia, too, can “pivot” eastward. 

Let us suppose you are confronted with the following scenario: Tokyo provokes armed hostilities with China over the issue of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands and then invokes Japan’s mutual defense treaty with the U.S. to draw the United States in. At that point, Russia weighs in on China’s side. What do you do? And, more specifically, what do you do when you cannot get through the Kremlin switchboard and are reduced to having to leave Putin a voicemail?

“Tough” Stagnant Advice 

Back to Ukraine, hopefully it is becoming clear that you need advice from people beyond Kerry and the others to whom you have so far given the lead. There are many seasoned former government specialists on Russia – including several of the undersigned former intelligence officials – whom your White House (and the mainstream media) seem to have effectively cordoned off from offering you advice and sharing their expertise. We suggest you open the door to those of us not already wedded to – and highly defensive about – recent U.S. policies and actions regarding Ukraine. You need to hear alternative, agenda-free views. This memo is the 30th that we (VIPS) have issued in this genre. We are reminded of the advice presented at the end of our first Memorandum to the President, dated February 5, 2003, sent to your predecessor immediately after Colin Powell’s UN speech about Iraq’s (non-existent) weapons of mass destruction.

We knew he was not telling the truth, but decided to take a more diplomatic approach in what we told Present Bush: “But after watching Secretary Powell today, we are convinced that you would be well served if you widened the discussion … beyond the circle of those advisers clearly bent on a war for which we see no compelling reason and from which we believe the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic.” 

There is zero joy to be taken at having been right – but ignored – about things of such sadness, dishonor, and misery. But, experiences like that do tend to strengthen our confidence that we are worth listening to this critical time, as well. In any event, the stakes are so high that we must try. Here’s what we suggest for now: 

Recommendations 

In view of the speed at which things are sliding downhill in the Ukraine, there are steps that you should take without delay.

1. Since Russia’s fear of further NATO encroachment eastward lies at the core of the troubles in Ukraine, we repeat the recommendation made in our April 28 memo to you that: “… you ask NATO to formally rescind the following part of the declaration agreed to by the NATO heads of state in Bucharest on April 3, 2008: ‘NATO welcomes Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO. We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO.’” Once that overreaching aspiration is disavowed, you, Putin, and Ukrainian leaders should be able to work toward a Ukraine with considerable regional autonomy domestically and neutrality in foreign policy. Finland is a good model. It lives in Russia’s shadow but, since it shuns membership in NATO, it is not seen as a threat to Russian national security and is left alone to prosper.

2. We urge you to try to schedule a meeting, one-on-one, with President Putin as quickly as possible. He may be wondering who is really in charge in Washington these days. Putin himself has dismissed Kerry as a “liar.” And, while Russian intelligence presumably has already provided Putin chapter and verse about what CIA Director John Brennan was doing in Kiev on April 13, Putin may wish to ask you about that. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov commented at the time, “We would like, in particular, to understand the meaning of these reports about CIA Director Brennan’s recent visit to Kiev. So far we haven’t received any intelligible explanations.”

Was it Brennan who came up with the answer to the thorny question as to what label Kiev’s new leaders should attach to Ukrainians in the east who are resisting Kiev’s diktat. “Terrorists,” of course. And was it upon Brennan’s advice that the interim leaders of Ukraine decided to send the army east in its fateful “anti-terrorist” campaign? 

We believe the stakes are too high for you to exclude the possibility of trying to re-establish a modicum of personal trust with President Putin – enough to prevent events in Ukraine from falling into a state of complete disrepair. Arranging to meet with him at this critical juncture would be seen as a sign that you are sensitive to the danger of further escalation and are prepared to act from “where the buck stops.” It would be taking the high road.

For the Steering Group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity 


William Binney, former Technical Director, World Geopolitical & Miitary Analysis, NSA; co-founder, SIGINT Automation Research Center (ret.) Thomas Drake, former Defense Intelligence Senior Executive Service, NSA Larry Johnson, former CIA and Department of State David MacMichael, former Senior Estimates Officer, National Intelligence Council Ray McGovern, former chief of CIA’s Soviet Foreign Policy Branch & presidential briefer (ret.) Elizabeth Murray, former Deputy National Intelligence Officer of the Near East, National Intelligence Council (ret.) Todd E. Pierce, US Army Judge Advocate General Corps (ret.) Coleen Rowley, former Chief Division Counsel & FBI Special Agent (ret.) Peter Van Buren, former Foreign Service Officer, Department of State (ret.) 

This memorandum appeared first on consortiumnews.com.

“We’re going to take out 7 countries in 5 years: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan & Iran..”

Complete Transcript of Program, Democracy Now  Today we spend the hour with General Wesley Clark, the retired four-star general. He was the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO during the Kosovo War. In 2004 he unsuccessfully ran for the Democratic presidential nomination. He recently edited a series of books about famous U.S. generals including Dwight Eisenhower and Ulysses Grant – both of whom became president after their military careers ended.Well for the rest of the hour we are going to hear General Wesley Clark on the possibility of a U.S. attack on Iran, the impeachment of President Bush, the use of cluster bombs, the bombing of Radio Television Serbia during the Kosovo War and much more. I interviewed Wesley Clark on Tuesday at the 92nd Street Y in New York.Gen. Wesley Clark. Retired 4-star US Army general. Supreme Allied Commander of NATO during the Kosovo War.AMY GOODMAN: Today, an exclusive hour with General Wesley Clark, the retired four-star general. He was Supreme Allied Commander of NATO during the Kosovo War. He has been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2004, he unsuccessfully ran for the Democratic presidential nomination. He recently edited a series of books about famous US generals, including Dwight Eisenhower and Ulysses Grant, both of whom became president after their military careers ended.On Tuesday, I interviewed Wesley Clark at the 92nd Street Y Cultural Center here in New York City before a live audience and asked him about his presidential ambitions.AMY GOODMAN: What do you think of these generals who run for president?GEN. WESLEY CLARK: I like them. It’s happened before.AMY GOODMAN: Will it happen again?GEN. WESLEY CLARK: It might.AMY GOODMAN: Later in the interview, I followed up on that question.AMY GOODMAN: Will you announce for president?GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, I haven’t said I won’t.AMY GOODMAN: What are you waiting for?GEN. WESLEY CLARK: I’m waiting for several different preconditions, which I’m not at liberty to discuss. But I will tell you this: I think about it every single day.AMY GOODMAN: Well, for the rest of the hour, we’ll hear General Wesley Clark in his own words on the possibility of a US attack on Iran; the impeachment of President Bush; the use of cluster bombs; the bombing of Radio Television Serbia during the Kosovo War under his command; and much more. I interviewed General Clark on Tuesday at the 92nd Street Y in New York.AMY GOODMAN: Now, let’s talk about Iran. You have a whole website devoted to stopping war.GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Www.stopiranwar.com.AMY GOODMAN: Do you see a replay in what happened in the lead-up to the war with Iraq — the allegations of the weapons of mass destruction, the media leaping onto the bandwagon?GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, in a way. But, you know, history doesn’t repeat itself exactly twice. What I did warn about when I testified in front of Congress in 2002, I said if you want to worry about a state, it shouldn’t be Iraq, it should be Iran. But this government, our administration, wanted to worry about Iraq, not Iran.I knew why, because I had been through the Pentagon right after 9/11. About ten days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the Joint Staff who used to work for me, and one of the generals called me in. He said, “Sir, you’ve got to come in and talk to me a second.” I said, “Well, you’re too busy.” He said, “No, no.” He says, “We’ve made the decision we’re going to war with Iraq.” This was on or about the 20th of September. I said, “We’re going to war with Iraq? Why?” He said, “I don’t know.” He said, “I guess they don’t know what else to do.” So I said, “Well, did they find some information connecting Saddam to al-Qaeda?” He said, “No, no.” He says, “There’s nothing new that way. They just made the decision to go to war with Iraq.” He said, “I guess it’s like we don’t know what to do about terrorists, but we’ve got a good military and we can take down governments.” And he said, “I guess if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail.”So I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, “Are we still going to war with Iraq?” And he said, “Oh, it’s worse than that.” He reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper. And he said, “I just got this down from upstairs” — meaning the Secretary of Defense’s office — “today.” And he said, “This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.” I said, “Is it classified?” He said, “Yes, sir.” I said, “Well, don’t show it to me.” And I saw him a year or so ago, and I said, “You remember that?” He said, “Sir, I didn’t show you that memo! I didn’t show it to you!”AMY GOODMAN: I’m sorry. What did you say his name was?GEN. WESLEY CLARK: I’m not going to give you his name.AMY GOODMAN: So, go through the countries again.GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, starting with Iraq, then Syria and Lebanon, then Libya, then Somalia and Sudan, and back to Iran. So when you look at Iran, you say, “Is it a replay?” It’s not exactly a replay. But here’s the truth: that Iran, from the beginning, has seen that the presence of the United States in Iraq was a threat — a blessing, because we took out Saddam Hussein and the Baathists. They couldn’t handle them. We took care of it for them. But also a threat, because they knew that they were next on the hit list. And so, of course, they got engaged. They lost a million people during the war with Iraq, and they’ve got a long and unprotectable, unsecurable border. So it was in their vital interest to be deeply involved inside Iraq. They tolerated our attacks on the Baathists. They were happy we captured Saddam Hussein.But they’re building up their own network of influence, and to cement it, they occasionally give some military assistance and training and advice, either directly or indirectly, to both the insurgents and to the militias. And in that sense, it’s not exactly parallel, because there has been, I believe, continuous Iranian engagement, some of it legitimate, some of it illegitimate. I mean, you can hardly fault Iran because they’re offering to do eye operations for Iraqis who need medical attention. That’s not an offense that you can go to war over, perhaps. But it is an effort to gain influence.And the administration has stubbornly refused to talk with Iran about their perception, in part because they don’t want to pay the price with their domestic — our US domestic political base, the rightwing base, but also because they don’t want to legitimate a government that they’ve been trying to overthrow. If you were Iran, you’d probably believe that you were mostly already at war with the United States anyway, since we’ve asserted that their government needs regime change, and we’ve asked congress to appropriate $75 million to do it, and we are supporting terrorist groups, apparently, who are infiltrating and blowing up things inside Iraq — Iran. And if we’re not doing it, let’s put it this way: we’re probably cognizant of it and encouraging it. So it’s not surprising that we’re moving to a point of confrontation and crisis with Iran.My point on this is not that the Iranians are good guys — they’re not — but that you shouldn’t use force, except as a last, last, last resort. There is a military option, but it’s a bad one.AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to get your response to Seymour Hersh’s piece in The New Yorkerto two key points this week, reporting the Pentagon’s established a special planning group within the office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to plan a bombing attack on Iran, that this is coming as the Bush administration and Saudi Arabia are pumping money for covert operations into many areas of the Middle East, including Lebanon, Syria, and Iran, in an effort to strengthen Saudi-supported Sunni Islam groups and weaken Iranian-backed Shias — some of the covert money has been given to jihadist groups in Lebanon with ties to al-Qaeda — fighting the Shias by funding with Prince Bandar and then with US money not approved by Congress, funding the Sunnis connected to al-Qaeda.GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, I don’t have any direct information to confirm it or deny it. It’s certainly plausible. The Saudis have taken a more active role. You know, the Saudis have —AMY GOODMAN: You were just in Saudi Arabia.GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Hmm?AMY GOODMAN: You just came back from Saudi Arabia.GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Yeah. Well, the Saudis have basically recognized that they have an enormous stake in the outcome in Iraq, and they don’t particularly trust the judgment of the United States in this area. We haven’t exactly proved our competence in Iraq. So they’re trying to take matters into their own hands.The real danger is, and one of the reasons this is so complicated is because — let’s say we did follow the desires of some people who say, “Just pull out, and pull out now.” Well, yeah. We could mechanically do that. It would be ugly, and it might take three or four months, but you could line up the battalions on the road one by one, and you could put the gunners in the Humvees and load and cock their weapons and shoot their way out of Iraq. You’d have a few roadside bombs. But if you line everybody up there won’t be any roadside bombs. Maybe some sniping. You can fly helicopters over, do your air cover. You’d probably get safely out of there. But when you leave, the Saudis have got to find someone to fight the Shias. Who are they going to find? Al-Qaeda, because the groups of Sunnis who would be extremists and willing to fight would probably be the groups connected to al-Qaeda. So one of the weird inconsistencies in this is that were we to get out early, we’d be intensifying the threat against us of a super powerful Sunni extremist group, which was now legitimated by overt Saudi funding in an effort to hang onto a toehold inside Iraq and block Iranian expansionism.AMY GOODMAN: And interestingly, today, John Negroponte has just become the number two man, resigning his post as National Intelligence Director to go to the State Department, Seymour Hersh says, because of his discomfort that the administration’s covert actions in the Middle East so closely echo the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s, and Negroponte was involved with that.GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, I’m sure there are a lot of reasons why John would go back to the State Department. John’s a good — he’s a good man. But, you know, the question is, in government is, can you — are you bigger than your job? Because if you’re not bigger than your job, you get trapped by the pressures of events and processes into going along with actions that you know you shouldn’t. And I don’t know. I don’t know why he left the National Intelligence Director’s position. He started in the State Department. Maybe he’s got a fondness to return and finish off his career in State.AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about — do you know who the generals are, who are threatening to resign if the United States attacks Iran?GEN. WESLEY CLARK: No, I don’t. No, I don’t. And I don’t want to know.AMY GOODMAN: Do you agree with them?GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, I’ll put it this way. On Labor Day weekend of 1994, when I was the J5 — I was a three-star general. I was in the Pentagon. And it was a Saturday morning, and so I was in the office. Walt Kross was the director of the Joint Staff, and he was in the office. And I think it was either Howell Estes or Jack Sheehan who was the J3 at the time. The three of us — I think it was Jack still on the job for the last couple of days. And the three of us were in Shalikashvili’s office about 11:00 in the morning on a Saturday morning, and he had just come back from a White House meeting. And he was all fired up in the way that Shali could be. And he said, “So,” he said, “we will see who will be the real soldiers this weekend! There’s much work to be done! This operation on Haiti has to be completed! The planning must be done correctly, and it must be done this weekend! So we will see who are the real soldiers!”Then the phone buzzed, and he got up from this little round table the four of us were sitting at to take the call from the White House. We started looking at each other. We said, “Gosh, I wonder where this came from.” I mean, we were all getting ready to check out of the building in an hour or so. We had finished off the messages and paperwork. And we just usually got together because there was normally a crisis every Saturday anyway, and so we normally would come in for the Saturday morning crisis. And so, Shali came back, and so I said to him, I said, “Well, sir, we’ve been talking amongst ourselves, and we’re happy to work all weekend to get all this done, but this is just a drill, right, on Haiti?”He looked at me, and he said, “Wes,” he said, “this is no drill.” He said, “I’m not authorized to tell you this. But,” he said “the decision has been made, and the United States will invade Haiti. The date is the 20th” — I think it was this date — “of the 20th of September. And the planning must be done, and it must be done now. And if any of you have reservations about this, this is the time to leave.” So I looked at Jack, and I looked at Walt. They looked at me. I mean, we kind of shrugged our shoulders and said, “OK, if you want to invade Haiti, I mean, it’s not illegal. It’s not the country we’d most like to invade. The opposition there consists of five armored vehicles. But sure, I mean, if the President says to do it, yeah, we’re not going resign over it.” And so, we didn’t resign. Nobody resigned.But Shali was a very smart man. He knew. He knew he was bigger than his job, and he knew that you had to ask yourself the moral, legal and ethical questions first. And so, I’m encouraged by the fact that some of these generals have said this about Iran. They should be asking these questions first.AMY GOODMAN: General Wesley Clark. He says he thinks about running for president again every day. We’ll come back to my interview with him in a minute.[break]AMY GOODMAN: We go back to my interview with General Wesley Clark.AMY GOODMAN: What about the soldiers who are saying no to going to Iraq right now?GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Iraq?AMY GOODMAN: To going to Iraq. People like First Lieutenant Ehren Watada, first commissioned officer to say no to deploy. And they just declared a mistrial in his court-martial. He will face another court-martial in a few weeks. What do you think of these young men and women — there are now thousands — who are refusing? But, for example, Ehren Watada, who says he feels it’s wrong. He feels it’s illegal and immoral, and he doesn’t want to lead men and women there.GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, I think, you know, he’s certainly made a personally courageous statement. And he’ll pay with the consequences of it.AMY GOODMAN: Do you think he should have to go to jail for that?GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, I think that you have to have an effective armed forces. And I think that it’s not up to the men and women in the Armed Forces to choose where they’ll go to war, because at the very time you need the Armed Forces the most is — there will be a certain number of people who will see it the other way. And so, I support his right to refuse to go, and I support the government’s effort to bring charges against him. This is the way the system works.Now, the difference is, the case that I described with Shalikashvili is, we would have been given the chance to retire. We would have left our jobs. We might not have retired as three-star generals, because we hadn’t done our duty. But we weren’t in the same circumstance that he is, so there wasn’t necessarily going to be charges brought against us.But an armed forces has to have discipline. It’s a voluntary organization to join. But it’s not voluntary unless it’s illegal. And you can bring — the trouble with Iraq is it’s not illegal. It was authorized by the United States Congress. It was authorized by the United Nations Security Council resolution. It’s an illegitimate war, but not an illegal war.AMY GOODMAN: Do you think it’s wrong?GEN. WESLEY CLARK: It’s wrong to fight in Iraq? Well, I think it’s a mistake. I think it’s a bad strategy. I think it’s brought us a lot of grief, and it will bring us a lot more grief. I think it’s been a tremendous distraction from the war on terror, a diversion of resources, and it’s reinforced our enemies. But on the other hand, his case is a moral case, not a legal case. And if you’re going to be a conscientious objector morally like this, then what makes it commendable is that you’ll take your stand on principle and pay the price. If there’s no price to be paid for it, then the courage of your act isn’t self-evident. So he’s taken a very personally courageous stand. But on the other hand, you have to also appreciate the fact that the Armed Forces has to be able to function.So, you know, in World War I in France, there were a series of terribly misplaced offensives, and they brought — they failed again and again and again. The French took incredible losses. And these were conscript armies. And after one of these failures, a group of thousands of soldiers simply said, “We’re not doing this again. It’s wrong.” You know what the French did? They did what they call decimation. They lined up the troops. They took every tenth soldier, and they shot them. Now, the general who ordered that, he suffered some severe repercussions, personally, morally, but after that the soldiers in France didn’t disobey. Had the army disintegrated at that point, Germany would have occupied France. So when you’re dealing with the use of force, there is an element of compulsion in the Armed Forces.AMY GOODMAN: But if the politicians will not stop it — as you pointed out, the Democrats joined with the Republicans in authorizing the war — then it’s quite significant, I think, that you, as a general, are saying that this man has taken a courageous act. Then it’s up to the people who are being sent to go to say no.GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Yeah. But the courage that we need is not his courage. We need the courage of the leaders in the United States government: the generals who could affect the policy, the people in Congress who could force the President to change his strategy. That’s the current — that’s the courage that’s needed.AMY GOODMAN: And how could they do that?GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, you start with a non-binding resolution in the United States Congress, and you build your momentum from there. And you keep hammering it. The Congress has three principal powers. It has the power to appoint, power to investigate, power to fund. And you go after all three. On all three fronts, you find out what the President needs, until he takes it seriously. I think it’s a difficult maneuver to use a scalpel and say, “Well, we’re going to support funding, but we’re not going to support funding for the surge,” because that’s requiring a degree of micro-management that Congress can’t do.But you can certainly put enough squeeze on the President that he finally calls in the leaders of the Congress and says, “OK, OK, what’s it going to take? I’ve got to get my White House budget passed. I’ve got to get thirty judges, federal judges, confirmed. I’ve got to get these federal prosecutors — you know, the ones that I caused to resign so I could handle it — they’ve got to get replacements in place. What do I have to do to get some support here?” I mean, it could be done. It’s hard bare-knuckle government.AMY GOODMAN: Do you think Congress should stop funding the war?GEN. WESLEY CLARK: I think Congress should take a strong stand to get the strategy changed. I don’t think that if you cut off funding for the war, it’s in the — right now that’s not in the United States’ interest. What is in the United States’ interest is to change the strategy in the war. You cannot succeed by simply stopping the funding and saying, “You’ve got six months to get the Americans out.” That’s not going to end the misery in Iraq. It’s not going to restore the lives that have been lost. And it’s not going to give us the power in the region to prevent later threats.What we do have to do is have a strategy that uses all the elements of America’s power: diplomatic, economic, legal and military. I would send a high-level diplomatic team into the region right now. I’d have no-holds-barred and no-preconditioned discussion with Iran and Syria. And I would let it be known that I’ve got in my bag all the tricks, including putting another 50,000 troops in Iraq and pulling all 150,000 troops out. And we’re going to reach an agreement on a statement of principles that brings stability and peace and order to the region. So let’s just sit down and start doing it. Now, that could be done with the right administrative leadership. It just hasn’t been done.You know, think of it this way. You’re on a ship crossing the Atlantic. It’s a new ship. And it’s at night. And you’re looking out ahead of the ship, and you notice that there’s a part of the horizon. It’s a beautiful, starry night, except that there’s a part of the horizon, a sort of a regular hump out there where there are no stars visible. And you notice, as the ship plows through the water at thirty knots, that this area where there are no stars is getting larger. And finally, it hits you that there must be something out there that’s blocking the starlight, like an iceberg. So you run to the captain. And you say, “Captain, captain, there’s an iceberg, and we’re driving right toward it.” And he says, “Look, I can’t be bothered with the iceberg right now. We’re having an argument about the number of deck chairs on the fore deck versus the aft deck.” And you say, “But you’re going to hit an iceberg.” He says, “I’m sorry. Get out of here.” So you go to the first officer, and he says, “I’m fighting with the captain on the number of deck chairs.”You know, we’re approaching an iceberg in the Middle East in our policy, and we’ve got Congress and the United States — and the President of the United States fighting over troop strength in Iraq. It’s the wrong issue. The issue is the strategy, not the troop strength.AMY GOODMAN: General Clark, do you think Guantanamo Bay should be closed?GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Absolutely.AMY GOODMAN: If Congress cut off funds for the prison there, it would be closed. Should they?GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, I think the first thing Congress should do is repeal the Military Commissions Act. I’m very disturbed that a number of people who are looking at the highest office in the land have supported an act which advertently or inadvertently authorizes the admission into evidence of information gained through torture. That’s not the America that I believe in. And the America that I believe in doesn’t detain people indefinitely without charges. So I’d start with the Military Commissions Act.Then I’d get our NATO allies into the act. They’ve said they don’t like Guantanamo either. So I’d like to create an international tribunal, not a kangaroo court of military commissions. And let’s go back through the evidence. And let’s lay it out. Who are these people that have been held down there? And what have they been held for? And which ones can be released? And which ones should be tried in court and convicted?You see, essentially, you cannot win the war on terror by military force. It is first and foremost a battle of ideas. It is secondly a law enforcement effort and a cooperative effort among nations. And only as a last resort do you use military force. This president has distorted the capabilities of the United States Armed Forces. He’s used our men and women in uniform improperly in Guantanamo and engaged in actions that I think are totally against the Uniform Code of Military Justice and against what we stand for as the American people.AMY GOODMAN: Do you think that President Bush should be impeached?GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, I think we ought to do first thing’s first, which is, we really need to understand and finish the job that Congress started with respect to the Iraq war investigation. Do you remember that there was going to be a study released by the Senate, that the senator from Iowa or from Kansas who was the Republican head of the Senate Intelligence Committee was going to do this study to determine whether the administration had, in fact, misused the intelligence information to mislead us into the war with Iraq? Well, I’ve never seen that study. I’d like to know where that study is. I’d like to know why we’ve spent three years investigating Scooter Libby, when we should have been investigating why this country went to war in Iraq.AMY GOODMAN: The Center for Constitutional Rights has filed a complaint against Donald Rumsfeld, General Miller and others in a German court, because they have universal jurisdiction. Do you think that Donald Rumsfeld should be tried for war crimes?GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, I’d like to see what the evidence is against Rumsfeld. I do know this, that there was a lot of pressure put on the men and women in uniform to come up with intelligence. I remember — I think it was either General Sanchez or General Abizaid, who stated that we don’t need more troops — this is the fall of 2003 — we just need better information. Well, to me, that was immediate code words that we were really trying to soak these people for information.And it’s only a short step from there to all the kinds of mistreatment that occur at places like Abu Ghraib. So we know that Al Gonzales wrote a couple of really — or authored, or his people authored and he approved, a couple of outrageous memos that attempted to define torture as deliberately inflicted pain, the equivalent of the loss of a major bodily organ or limb, which is — it’s not an adequate definition of torture. And we know that he authorized, to some degree, some coercive methods, which we have — and we know President Bush himself accepted implicitly in a signing statement to a 2005 act on military detainees that he would use whatever methods were appropriate or necessary. So there’s been some official condoning of these actions.I think it’s a violation of international law and a violation of American law and a violation of the principles of good government in America. There have always been evidences of mistreatment of prisoners. Every army has probably done it in history. But our country hasn’t ever done it as a matter of deliberate policy. George Washington told his soldiers, when they captured the Hessians and the men wanted to run them through, because the Hessians were brutal and ruthless, he said, “No, treat them well.” He said, “They’ll join our side.” And many of them did. It was a smart policy, not only the right thing to do, but a smart policy to treat the enemy well. We’ve made countless enemies in that part of the world by the way we’ve treated people and disregarded them. It’s bad, bad policy.AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask — you’re a FOX News contributor now?GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Oh, at least.AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you what you think of the dean of West Point, Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, together with a military interrogator named Tony Lagouranis and the group Human Rights First, going to the heads of the program 24, very popular hit show on FOX, to tell them that what they’re doing on this program, glorifying torture, is inspiring young men and women to go to Iraq and torture soldiers there, and to stop it?GEN. WESLEY CLARK: And not only that, but it doesn’t work. Yeah, Pat Finnegan is one of my heroes.AMY GOODMAN: So what do you think about that?GEN. WESLEY CLARK: I think it’s great.AMY GOODMAN: And have you been involved in the conversation internally at FOX, which runs 24, to stop it?GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, as far as I know, they actually put out a call to all the writers in Hollywood. My son’s a writer, and he was one of them who got a call. They were all told: stop talking about torture. It doesn’t work. So I think it was an effective move by Pat Finnegan.AMY GOODMAN: So you support it?GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Absolutely.AMY GOODMAN: General Wesley Clark. I’m interviewing him at the 92nd Street Y. We’re going to come back to the conclusion of that interview in a minute.[break]AMY GOODMAN: General Wesley Clark recently edited a series of books about famous US generals: Grant, LeMay, Patton and Eisenhower. When I interviewed him at the 92nd Street Y, I asked him a question about the presidency of General Dwight EisenhowerAMY GOODMAN: 1953 was also a seminal date for today, and that was when Kermit Roosevelt, the grandson of Teddy Roosevelt, went to Iran and led a coup against Mohammed Mossadegh under Eisenhower.GEN. WESLEY CLARK: People make mistakes. And one of the mistakes that the United States consistently made was that it could intervene and somehow adjust people’s governments, especially in the Middle East. I don’t know why we felt that — you can understand Latin America, because Latin America was always an area in which people would come to the United States, say, “You’ve got to help us down there. These are banditos, and they don’t know anything. And, you know, they don’t have a government. Just intervene and save our property.” And the United States did it a lot in the ’20s. Of course, Eisenhower was part of that culture. He had seen it.But in the Middle East, we had never been there. We established a relationship during World War II, of course, to keep the Germans out of Iran. And so, the Soviets and the Brits put an Allied mission together. At the end of World War II, the Soviets didn’t want to withdraw, and Truman called their bluff in the United Nations. And Eisenhower knew all of this. And Iran somehow became incorporated into the American defense perimeter. And so, his view would have been, we couldn’t allow a communist to take over.AMY GOODMAN: But wasn’t it more about British Petroleum?GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Oh, it’s always — there are always interests. The truth is, about the Middle East is, had there been no oil there, it would be like Africa. Nobody is threatening to intervene in Africa. The problem is the opposite. We keep asking for people to intervene and stop it. There’s no question that the presence of petroleum throughout the region has sparked great power involvement. Whether that was the specific motivation for the coup or not, I can’t tell you. But there was definitely — there’s always been this attitude that somehow we could intervene and use force in the region. I mean, that was true with — I mean, imagine us arming and creating the Mujahideen to keep the Soviets out of Afghanistan. Why would we think we could do that? But we did. And, you know, my lesson on it is, whenever you use force, there are unintended consequences, so you should use force as a last resort. Whether it’s overt or covert, you pay enormous consequences for using force.AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about what you think of the response to Jimmy Carter’s book, Peace, Not Apartheid.GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, I’m sorry to say I haven’t read the book. And it’s one of the things I’ve been meaning to read, and I just haven’t. I will tell you this, that we’re in a very, very difficult position in Israel. I say “we,” because every American president has committed to the protection and survival of the state of Israel. And I think that’s right. And I certainly feel that way, and I’m a very strong supporter of Israel.But somehow we’ve got to move off top dead center in terms of these discussions with the Palestinians. And this administration has failed to lead. They came into office basically determined not to do anything that Bill Clinton did. I think that was the basic guideline. And so, they have allowed unremitting violence between Israel and the Palestinians with hardly an effort to stop that through US leadership. And now, it’s almost too late. So Condi was over there the other day, and she didn’t achieve what she wanted to achieve, and people want to blame the Saudis. But at least the Saudis tried to do something at Mecca by putting together a unity government. So I fault the administration.Jimmy Carter has taken a lot of heat from people. I don’t know exactly what he said in the book. But people are very sensitive about Israel in this country. And I understand that. A lot of my friends have explained it to me and have explained to me the psychology of people who were in this country and saw what was happening in World War II, and maybe they didn’t feel like they spoke out strongly enough, soon enough, to stop it. And it’s not going to happen again.AMY GOODMAN: General Clark, I wanted to ask you a tough question about journalists.GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, now, that would be the first tough question you’ve asked me tonight.AMY GOODMAN: There are more than a hundred journalists and media workers in Iraq who have died. And particularly hard hit are Arab journalists. I mean, you had Tariq Ayoub, the Al Jazeera reporter, who died on the roof of Al Jazeera when the US military shelled Al Jazeera, then went on to shell the Palestine Hotel and killed two reporters, a Reuters cameraman and one from Telecinco in Spain named Jose Couso. Many Arab journalists feel like they have been targeted, the idea of shooting the messenger. But this tough question goes back to your being Supreme Allied Commander in Yugoslavia and the bombing of Radio Television Serbia. Do you regret that that happened, that you did that?GEN. WESLEY CLARK: No, I don’t regret that at all. That was part of the Serb command and control network. And not only that, I was asked to take out that television by a lot of important political leaders. And before I took it out, I twice warned the Serbs we were going to take it out. We stopped, at one news conference in the Pentagon, we planted the question to get the attention of the Serbs, that we were going to target Serb Radio and Television.AMY GOODMAN: RTS.GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Yeah. And that night, in fact, Milosevic got the warning, because he summoned all the foreign journalists to come to a special mandatory party at RTS that night. But we weren’t bombing that night. We put the word out twice before we actually I did it.AMY GOODMAN: You told CNN, which was also there, to leave?GEN. WESLEY CLARK: I told — I used — I think I used CNN to plant the story and to leak it at the Pentagon press conference. But we didn’t tell anyone specifically to leave. What we told them was it’s now a target. And it was Milosevic who determined that he would keep people there in the middle of the night just so there would be someone killed if we struck it. So we struck it during the hours where there were not supposed to be anybody there.AMY GOODMAN: But you killed civilians.GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Six people died.AMY GOODMAN: I think sixteen. But I think it’s the media — it’s the beauticians, the technicians. It was a civilian target.GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Yeah, they were ordered to stay there by Milosevic. Yeah.AMY GOODMAN: But it was a civilian target.GEN. WESLEY CLARK: It was not a civilian target. It was a military target. It was part of the Serb command and control networkAMY GOODMAN: What do you think of Amnesty International calling it a war crime?GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, I think it was investigated by the International Criminal Tribunal in Yugoslavia and found to be a legitimate target. So I think it’s perfectly alright for Amnesty International to have their say, but everything we did was approved by lawyers, and every target was blessed. We would not have committed a war crime.AMY GOODMAN: Upon reflection now and knowing who died there, the young people, the people who worked for RTS, who — as you said, if Milosevic wanted people to stay there, they were just following orders.GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, it was a tragedy. But I’ll tell you something. If you want to talk about tragedies, how about this one? We bombed what we thought was a Serb police station in Kosovo. We saw the Serb vehicles. We flew unmanned aerial vehicles over it. And we did everything we could to identify it. And we found that there were Serb police vehicles parked there at night, so we sent an F-16 in, dropped two 500-pound laser-guided bombs and took it out. We killed eighty Albanians who had been imprisoned by the Serbs there. They were trying to escape, and the Serbs locked them up in this farmhouse and surrounded them with vehicles. So, I regret every single innocent person who died, and I prayed every night that there wouldn’t be any innocent people who died. But this is why I say you must use force only as a last resort.I told this story to the high school kids earlier, but it bears repeating, I guess. We had a malfunction with a cluster bomb unit, and a couple of grenades fell on a schoolyard, and some, I think three, schoolchildren were killed in Nish. And two weeks later, I got a letter from a Serb grandfather. He said, “You’ve killed my granddaughter.” He said, “I hate you for this, and I’ll kill you.” And I got this in the middle of the war. And it made me very, very sad. We certainly never wanted to do anything like that. But in war, accidents happen. And that’s why you shouldn’t undertake military operations unless every other alternative has been exhausted, because innocent people do die. And I think the United States military was as humane and careful as it possibly could have been in the Kosovo campaign. But still, civilians died. And I’ll always regret that.AMY GOODMAN: Do you think cluster bombs should be banned?GEN. WESLEY CLARK: You know, we used, I think 1,400-plus cluster bombs. And there’s a time when you have to use cluster bombs: when they’re the most appropriate and humane weapon. But I think you have to control the use very carefully. And I think we did in Yugoslavia.AMY GOODMAN: Right now, the US has rejected an international call to ban the use of cluster bombs. On Friday, forty-six countries were in Oslo to develop a new international treaty to ban the use of cluster munitions by — I think it’s 2008. Would you support that?GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, you know, people who are against war often make the case by trying to attack the weapons of war and stripping away the legitimacy of those weapons. I’ve participated in some of that. I’d like to get rid of landmines. I did participate in getting rid of laser blinding weapons. And I was part of the team that put together the agreement that got rid of laser blinding weapons. I’d like to get rid of nuclear weapons. But I can’t agree with those who say that force has no place in international affairs. It simply does for this country. And I would like to work to make it so that it doesn’t. But the truth is, for now it does. And so, I can’t go against giving our men and women in uniform the appropriate weapons they need to fight, to fight effectively to succeed on the battlefield, and to minimize their own casualties.AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’ll have to leave it there. I thank you very much, General Wesley Clark.GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.AMY GOODMAN: General Wesley Clark. I interviewed him at the 92nd Street Y, the cultural center here in New York, on the publication of the Great General Series, on Grant, LeMay, Patton and Eisenhower.  

Award US Army Captain Jennifer Moreno with the Medal of Honor

Photo Credit: Lebanon City Manager
Women have been serving in combat for years, in spite of not receiving the credit for doing so, and often in the face of public scrutiny and even blatant bigotry. US Army Captain Jennifer Moreno was one of them.

Far too often, the contributions of women combat veterans are watered down to suit a gender discriminatory palate within the American public. The aim appears to be an effort to ensure that female soldiers are not viewed as equals or even peers to their male counterparts.

CPT Jennifer Moreno, 25, of San Diego, CA, died on October 6, 2013 in Zhari District, Afghanistan. CPT Moreno was assigned to Madigan Army Medical Center, Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington, when she died of injuries sustained when enemy forces attacked her unit with an improvised explosive device while attempting to rescue injured soldiers from a series of explosions that injured 14 Army Rangers in a raid force of 40.

Reports persistently depict that in spite of Moreno's heroism, that she was just "there" and "serving in the role of cultural support." Such claims would be on par with reports depicting that the US Army's 3rd Infantry Division was merely "there" for "support" during WWII in Europe.

The Medal of Honor was created during the American Civil War and is the highest military decoration presented by the United States government to a member of its armed forces. The recipient must have distinguished themselves at the risk of their own life above and beyond the call of duty in action against an enemy of the United States. Due to the nature of this medal, it is commonly presented posthumously.

We petition you today to award CPT Jennifer Moreno with a posthumous Medal of Honor for going above and beyond the call of duty as a female combat veteran who was not given the credit or equal access to training as male soldiers, yet she still ran into an explosives-filled area to rescue fallen comrades and lost her life in the process. Even the US Army has stated that her sacrifice stymied an attack "that would have resulted in the deaths of unknown multitudes of innocent civilians."

Please give CPT Jennifer Moreno the honor and respect that she deserves by joining this campaign to award her with a Medal of Honor: http://chn.ge/1io2a28

As Regards Patriotism

Mark Twain explains America’s nationalistic fervor as a false religion. 

By Mark Twain 

It is agreed, in this country, that if a man can arrange his religion so that it perfectly satisfies his conscience, it is not incumbent upon him to care whether the arrangement is satisfactory to any one else or not.

In Austria and some other countries this is not the case. There the State arranges a man's religion for him, he has no voice in it himself. Patriotism is merely a religion—love of country, worship of country, devotion to the country's flag and honor and welfare.

In absolute monarchies it is furnished from the throne, cut and dried, to the subject; in England and America it is furnished, cut and dried, to the citizen by the politician and the newspaper. The newspaper-and-politician-manufactured Patriot often gags in private over his dose; but he takes it, and keeps it on his stomach the best he can. Blessed are the meek.

Sometimes, in the beginning of an insane and shabby political upheaval, he is strongly moved to revolt, but he doesn't do it—he knows better. He knows that his maker would find it out—the maker of his Patriotism, the windy and incoherent six-dollar sub-editor of his village newspaper—and would bray out in print and call him a traitor. And how dreadful that would be. It makes him tuck his tail between his legs and shiver. We all know—the reader knows it quite well—that two or three years ago nine-tenths of the human tails in England and America performed just that act. Which is to say, nine-tenths of the Patriots in England and America turned traitor to keep from being called traitor. Isn't it true? You know it to be true. Isn't it curious?

Yet it was not a thing to be very seriously ashamed of. A man can seldom—very, very seldom—fight a winning fight against his training; the odds are too heavy. For many a year—perhaps always—the training of the two nations had been dead against independence in political thought, persistently inhospitable toward Patriotism manufactured on a man's own premises, Patriotism reasoned out in the man's own head and fire-assayed and tested and proved in his own conscience. The resulting Patriotism was a shop-worn product procured at second hand. The Patriot did not know just how or when or where he got his opinions, neither did he care, so long as he was with what seemed the majority—which was the main thing, the safe thing, the comfortable thing. Does the reader believe he knows three men who have actual reasons for their pattern of Patriotism—and can furnish them? Let him not examine, unless he wants to be disappointed. He will be likely to find that his men got their Patriotism at the public trough, and had no hand in their preparation themselves.

Training does wonderful things. It moved the people of this country to oppose the Mexican war; then moved them to fall in with what they supposed was the opinion of the majority—majority-Patriotism is the customary Patriotism—and go down there and fight. Before the Civil War it made the North indifferent to slavery and friendly to the slave interest; in that interest it made Massachusetts hostile to the American flag, and she would not allow it to be hoisted on her State House—in her eyes it was the flag of a faction. Then by and by, training swung Massachusetts the other way, and she went raging South to fight under that very flag and against that foretime protected-interest of hers.

Training made us nobly anxious to free Cuba; training made us give her a noble promise; training has enabled us to take it back. Long training made us revolt at the idea of wantonly taking any weak nation's country and liberties away from it, a short training has made us glad to do it, and proud of having done it. Training made us loathe Weyler's cruel concentration camps, training has persuaded us to prefer them to any other device for winning the love of our "wards."

There is nothing that training cannot do. Nothing is above its reach or below it. It can turn bad morals to good, good morals to bad; it can destroy principles, it can re-create them; it can debase angels to men and lift men to angelship. And it can do any one of these miracles in a year—even in six months.

Then men can be trained to manufacture their own Patriotism. They can be trained to labor it out in their own heads and hearts, and in the privacy and independence of their own premises. It can train them to stop taking it by command, as the Austrian takes his religion.

The Downside of Optimism

In this animated talk, acclaimed journalist, author and political activist Barbara Ehrenreich explores the darker side of positive thinking. Watch the full lecture here: 

http://www.thersa.org/events/video/archive/barbara-ehrenrich-smile-or-die

This has to be one of my favorite RSA videos as it relates to a lot of the seemingly "mandatory optimism" that pervades American culture.  While one might be viewed as a downer or a pessimist when raising awareness on real problems, whether in a corporation or interpersonal interactions, being too optimistic can hurt everyone.  The video above highlights that the opposite of this brand of blind optimism is not pessimism, but realism and vigilance.

While I've personally coached people to go into job interviews with a positive attitude in spite of dismal personal circumstances, I've also pointed out the other side of the coin.  It's important to encourage people to remain vigilant in order to keep a job, but to not get caught up wearing rose-colored lenses in any environment - personal or professional.  Wearing a smile to an interview and on the job may be part of surviving, but buying into the idea that your thoughts change your surroundings and dissolve potential corruption in any environment can prove to be detrimental on both the macro and micro level.

As humans, and as Ehrenreich points out, we are hard-wired to be vigilant, which is how we've come to evolve and survive physical dangers and disasters.  Optimism can be dangerous when we drop our guard, and while pessimism may very well be a delusion itself, vigilance above all else is key to survival.  A "smile or die" mentality is a powerful method of social control which has been used throughout history, and keeps populations complacent and complicit.  Imagine this level of passivity in the wild, or even in combat.  Your best bet, in any case, is to stay alert in order to stay alive.

The RSA is a 258 year-old charity devoted to creating social progress and spreading world-changing ideas. For more information about our research, RSA Animates, free events programme and 27,000 strong fellowship. Find out more about the RSA at http://www.thersa.org Join the RSA on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/thersaorg

Poorest Place in America

When you typically find a "Poorest Places in America" list, it's typically done by city and you might find a place like Brownsville, Texas or a small town in Arkansas taking first place for poverty with a median income barely swimming above the surface of $30,000 per annum.

However, when you do a different search by county rather than city, the results are quite different and you find that Indian Reservations top the list instead of cities or towns with nearby resources, running water, and electricity. Funny how facts are filtered. Here is one of the poorest places in the US: Pine Ridge

Memories of St Augustine

Image: http://gypsyjournalrv.com/Road trips were an integral part of my reintegration process after Iraq.  For the most part, I felt lost in a wonderland that used to be home.  Since my return to the US in late 2005, jumping into my little Kia Spectra was my means of escape, to put myself in a bubble, and drive fast and far away whenever the mood struck; whenever I felt vulnerable.  My desire to be whole again, to be at peace, was undeniable.  It felt like a quest for lost treasure, and I was determined to find it. I could spend hours on the open road. It didn’t matter where I was going, I just needed to keep moving, searching for my sanity.

As I was flying down the I-95 in northeast Florida, I decided to swoop in to St Augustine for a coffee. There was a Cuban restaurant on St. George street with blue ceramic plates decorated with a sunshine yellow, and consistently carried the lovely caramelized sugar scent of crema catalana and coffee. I made my way to an open table, housed under colonial Spanish architecture and colorful tiles with lush green plants surrounding the area, pulled out my travel journal and then sat down to start writing.

With just a few others around me in a slow buzz of late morning traffic, I arrived seemingly unnoticed. I adored the anonymity. Indulging in the life of being a stranger, I sat alone and rifled through the pages of my journal looking for an empty space. I didn’t have the chance to tell anyone of what had happened to me just yet. It was all still fresh, unreal.

I took to writing down my favorite quotes in a postcard-laden travel journal in addition to tracking my observations on every day oddities, pasting magazine cutouts of kitsch and wisdom, and writing short stories. As the pen touched the paper, I breathed deeply and spilled my soul forth.

This was my therapy.  Art, writing, listening to music, and road trips were keeping my head above water.  A mental health clinician friend of mine said that I sounded as though I may have Major Depressive Disorder.  I laughed.

"That sounds like great news for my art.  It should do wonders," I said.

She laughed, knowing my twisted sense of humor, but assured me that I should seriously pay attention to my health, my needs, and getting better.  All kidding aside, I knew what she was talking about and I was paying attention; I just wasn't resorting to psychotropic medication to numb my pain.  My pain was real, ever-present from the time I woke up to the time I went to sleep and in my dreams.  Using creative means and constantly traveling was my therapy, my own journey to find a sense of calm after a period of catastrophe and a homecoming that left me feeling isolated.

More stories from the road to come in, "The Desert Warrior," a memoir.

Affluence Abroad in Prague

In 2006, I had won a scholarship to study in Prague, Czech Republic. It was for a program aimed at Czech language and cultural studies, but I ended up finding myself surrounded in my first semester by a swarm of American college kids "suffering" from affluenza. It's a funny thing, that affluenza.  It's a societal disease that was invented by the rich to crush the poor.

One afternoon while waiting at a tram stop after class at Charles University, an affluent American girl began a conversation with me about the Czech political science class we shared, and the conversation turned to current discussion on World War II.  She then trailed off and started ranting about the war in Iraq.

In 2006, Iraq was still quite a hot topic, and many Americans in Prague seemed to fear being judged for current US involvement in the Middle East.

"I'm against war; therefore, I'm against the troops," she stated, beaming with pride.

Once again, I was faced with a situation where the face of white privilege was shamelessly barking at the poor brown girl, who was obviously doing feminism wrong too. But here's the other absurd aspect of this scenario: this American college brat thought of herself as a revolutionary.  You know, the type who buys Che Guevara shirts purchased from an outlet in Prague owned by Russian mafiosos, made in a sweatshop in Bangladesh. Or perhaps it was The Gap?


In any case, her entitlement and the love of her own voice was very apparent.  But there was also an important tidbit that she certainly didn't know or understand about my position in this budding argument.  It was another layer of my background.

While being small populations, Native Americans and Pacific Islanders make up the highest enlisting groups per capita in the United States Armed Forces. This is no accident. More so, it's a byproduct of indigenous genocide, colonialism, and poverty. When you live on an Indian Reservation or on an island in Oceania that is used for US military strategic purposes, your opportunities for advancement can be quite limited.  Chances are, you have people in your family who chose the military not out of nostalgia or romanticized patriotism, but as a profession.  And when it came to putting our warrior roots to action, the military is one of the very few outlets that we have left.

Bear in mind, much of the criticism against US troops comes from the financially comfortable, much like this young woman. US troop demographics are made up primarily from a poverty draft; not the fight for mom, baseball, and apple pie. Blaming US troops for failed US policies and corporate plutocracy is much like going into a dog fight and beating the dogs some more instead of going after Michael Vick. Sure, some are trained to fight and kill, but they didn't get there by accident or without a larger hand consisting of lobbyist and bought politicians orchestrating the chaos for personal profit.

If you want to kill the weeds, pull them out by the roots as chopping at leaves does nothing to solve the issue - nor is taking on a passive fiddling Nero position.

As soon as she uttered those words so blissfully and ignorantly, I smiled, and disclosed to her that I was an Iraq war veteran. Her eyes lit up in what looked like fear. She had insulted a woman of color, and a combat veteran, and was not surrounded by the security of her like-minded affluent white friends. She was alone with me on a street corner in a foreign country. Could I have pushed her into traffic? I could have, but doesn't my service to this nation in uniform indicate that I've already done more than my fair share of heavy lifting on behalf of people just like her?  I passed up the opportunity for something far more savory.

I let her know that if she held such strong feelings toward US military personnel, that she should really turn to introspection.  What was it that she hated about us?  Many enlisted personnel just like me ended up joining in order to seek a better life; a life beyond poverty where a future seemed attainable. People like her - white, privileged, and living quite the charmed life - had far more in common with the elected officials who started the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and continually botch foreign and domestic policy.  The hatred was clearly displacement, and her attempt to make a bold statement was really a reflection of her own insecurity.

Considering the energy she spent bashing veterans and the poor, I briefly verbalized that her speech on the socioeconomic class in which she held such disdain sounded an awful lot like, "Let them eat cake."

She looked at me, stunned, and said nervously, "I'll definitely take that into consideration."

After a few quiet minutes, the tram arrived and we boarded, yet we stood at a chilly distance.  I was satisfied in what I needed to say, and the painful fact that she wasn't greeted with passive acceptance of her disrespect or typical like-minded validation manifested through her mortified affect.   The manner in which she felt comfortable in shaming other groups while touting superficial textbook liberalism didn't occur to her, possibly until that point, that she was yet another perpetrator of American cognitive dissonance.  Love the world, but ignore that you're living on settled land, right?  Criticize "the empire," but continue to suckle on the teat of imperial opulence.  Her silence was deafening, but it was music to my ears.

How often do the poor in the US truly get to stand in front of their nation's Marie Antoinette's and shove the stale, mass-produced cake of lower class reality back into their mouths?  If anything, I helped her to at least question her own prejudices and perceptions.

After arriving at the stop that led to the dorm near Pražský hrad, she sped-walked back to the dorm. I took my time and inhaled the crisp autumn air in what felt like the first breath of expressing myself with the calm that I needed.

Perhaps it was all the in-class discussions of repressed Czech artists, writers, and filmmakers finding their voice in the face of government censorship that was beginning to light a different fire within, one that was focused on an objective. I was finding my way out of the war in my head, and although it was a strange feeling, I didn't question it nor did I analyze it. I allowed it to happen, and the events that ensued were certainly influenced by this Prague metamorphosis.