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Today's
Stories
January 10, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Bush
as Hitler? Let's Be Fair
Diane Christian
On Lying and Colin Powell
Lisa Viscidi
Exhumations: Unearthing Guatemala's Macabre Past
Saul Landau
Homeland Anxiety
Elaine Cassel
Who's Winning the War on Civil Liberties?
January 9, 2004
David Lindorff
The
Misers of War: Troop Strength and Chintzy Bonuses
Kurt Nimmo
Saddam's Defense: Summon Bush Sr. to the Stand
Mike Whitney
Orange Jumpsuits for the Bush Clan?: The Carnegie Report on Iraq's
Non-existent WMDs
Deb Reich
Palestinians and Israelis: This War is Unwinnable
David Vest
Disabled
Vets Fire Back at Rumsfeld
January 8, 2004
Neve Gordon
Israeli
Refuseniks Sentenced to Jail
Lenni Brenner
Dr.
Dean and the Godhead
Ray McGovern
Bush: Driving Without Breaks
Mark Scaramella
Inside
the DA's Office: Lies, Errors and Tedium
Yves Engler
Bush's Mexican Gambit
James Hollander
Journalists
Under Fire: the Death of José Couso in Baghdad
January 7, 2004
Democracy Now!
Uncharitable
Care: How Hospitals are Gouging and Even Arresting the Uninsured
Greg Weiher
The
Bush Administration's Ongoing Intelligence Problem
Ben Tripp
The Word of the Year, 2003
Dave Lindorff
Dean and His Democratic Detractors
Michael Leon
The NYT Does Chomsky
Bob Boldt
God Talk
Ramon Ryan
Small
Victories and Long Struggles: the 10th Anniversary of the Zapatista
Uprising
January 6, 2004
Dave Lindorff
RNC
Plays the Hitler Card: MoveOn Shouldn't Apologize for Those Ads
Ron Jacobs
Drugs
in Uniform: Hashish and the War on Terrorism
Josh Frank
Coffee and State Authority in Colombia
Doug Giebel
Permanent Bases: Leave Iraq? Hell No, We Won't Go
John Chuckman
Sick Puppies: David Frum's New Neo-Con Manifesto
Rannie Amiri
The Politics of the Iranian Earthquake
John L. Hess
A Record
to Dissent From
Thacher Schmid
A Cheesehead's Musings on the Sunday NYT
David Price
"Like
Slaves": Anthropological Thoughts on Occupation
January 5, 2004
Al Krebs
How
Now Mad Cow!
Kathy Kelly
Squatting
in Baghdad's Bomb Craters
Jordy Cummings
The Dialectic of the Kristol Family: Putting the Neo in the Cons
Fran Shor
Mad Human Disease: Chewing the Fat Down on the Farm
Fidel Castro
"We Shall Overcome": On the 45th Anniversary of the
Cuban Revolution
Gary Leupp
North
Korea for Dummies
January 3 / 4, 2004
Brian Cloughley
Never
Mind the WMDs, Just Look at History
Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan
The Wrong War at the Wrong Time
William Cook
Failing to Respond to 9/11
Glen Martin
Jesus
vs. the Beast of the Apocalypse
Robert Fisk
Iraqi Humor Amid the Carnage
Ilan Pappe
The Geneva Bubble
Walter Davis
Robert Jay Lifton, or Nostalgia
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft vs. the Left
Mike Whitney
The Padilla Case
Steven Sherman
On Wallerstein's The Decline of American Power
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Taiwan Hypocrisy
William Blum
Codework Orange!
Mitchel Cohen
Learning from Che Guevara
Seth Sandronsky
Mad Cow and Main Street USA
Bruce Jackson
Conversations with Leslie Fiedler
Standard Schaefer
Poet Carl Rakosi Turns 100
Ron Jacobs
Sir Mick
Adam Engel
Hall of Hoaxes
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert & Curtis
January 2, 2004
Stan Cox
Red Alert
2016
Dave Lindorff
Beef, the Meat of Republicans
Jackie Corr
Rule and Ruin: Wall Street and Montana
Norman Solomon
George Will's Ethics: None of Our Business?
David Vest
As the Top Wobbleth
January 1, 2004
Randall Robinson
Honor
Haiti, Honor Ourselves
David Krieger
Looking
Back on 2003
Robert Fisk
War Takes an Inhuman Twist: Roadkill Bombs
Stan Goff
War,
Race and Elections
Hammond Guthrie
2003 Almaniac
Website of the Day
Embody Bags
December 31, 2003
Ray McGovern
Don't
Be Fooled Again: This Isn't an Independent Investigation
Kurt Nimmo
Manufacturing Hysteria
Robert Fisk
The Occupation is Damned
Mike Whitney
Mad Cows and Downer George
Alexander Cockburn
A Great Year Ebbed, Another Ahead
December 30, 2003
Michael Neumann
Criticism
of Israel is Not Anti-Semitism
Annie Higgins
When
They Bombed the Hometown of the Virgin Mary
Alan Farago
Bush Bros. Wrecking Co.: Time Runs Out for the Everglades
Dan Bacher
Creatures from the Blacklight Lagoon: From Glofish to Frankenfish
Jeffrey St. Clair
Hard
Time on the Killing Floor: Inside Big Meat
Willie Nelson
Whatever Happened to Peace on Earth?
December 29, 2003
Mark Hand
The Washington
Post in the Dock?
David Lindorff
The
Bush Election Strategy
Phillip Cryan
Interested Blindness: Media Omissions in Colombia's War
Richard Trainor
Catellus Development: the Next Octopus?
Uri Avnery
Israel's
Conscientious Objectors
December 27 / 28, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
A
Journey Into Rupert Murdoch's Soul
Kathy Kelly
Christmas Day in Baghdad: A Better World
Saul Landau
Iraq
at the End of the Year
Dave Zirin
A Linebacker for Peace & Justice: an Interview with David
Meggysey
Robert Fisk
Iraq
Through the American Looking Glass
Scott Burchill
The Bad Guys We Once Thought Good: Where Are They Now?
Chris Floyd
Bush's Iraq Plan is Right on Course: Saddam 2.0
Brian J. Foley
Don't Tread on Me: Act Now to Save the Constitution
Seth Sandronsky
Feedlot Sweatshops: Mad Cows and the Market
Susan Davis
Lord
of the (Cash Register) Rings
Ron Jacobs
Cratched Does California
Adam Engel
Crumblecake and Fish
Norman Solomon
The Unpardonable Lenny Bruce
Poets' Basement
Cullen and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Activism Through Music
December 26, 2003
Gary Leupp
Bush
Doings: Doing the Language
December 25, 2003
Diane Christian
The
Christmas Story
Elaine Cassel
This
Christmas, the World is Too Much With Us
Susan Davis
Jinglebells, Hold the Schlock
Kristen Ess
Bethlehem Celebrates Christmas, While Rafah Counts the Dead
Francis Boyle
Oh Little Town of Bethlehem
Alexander Cockburn
The
Magnificient 9
Guthrie / Albert
Another Colorful Season
December 24, 2003
M. Shahid Alam
The Semantics
of Empire
William S. Lind
Marley's
List for Santa in Wartime
Josh Frank
Iraqi
Oil: First Come, First Serve
Cpt. Paul Watson
The
Mad Cowboy Was Right
Robert Lopez
Nuance
and Innuendo in the War on Iraq
December 23, 2003
Brian J. Foley
Duck
and Cover-up
Will Youmans
Sharon's
Ultimatum
Michael Donnelly
Here
They Come Again: Another Big Green Fiasco
Uri Avnery
Sharon's
Speech: the Decoded Version
December 22, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Pray
to Play: Bush's Faith-Based National Parks
Patrick Gavin
What Would Lincoln Do?
Marjorie Cohn
How to
Try Saddam: Searching for a Just Venue
Kathy Kelly
The
Two Troublemakers: "Guilty of Being Palestinians in Iraq"
December 20 / 21, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
How
to Kill Saddam
Saul Landau
Bush Tries Farce as Cuba Policy
Rafael Hernandez
Empire and Resistance: an Interview with Tariq Ali
David Vest
Our Ass and Saddam's Hole
Kurt Nimmo
Bush
Gets Serious About Killing Iraqis
Greg Weiher
Lessons from the Israeli School on How to Win Friends in the
Islamic World
Christopher Brauchli
Arrest, Smear, Slink Away: Dr. Lee and Cpt. Yee
Carol Norris
Cheers of a Clown: Saddam and the Gloating Bush
Bruce Jackson
The Nameless and the Detained: Bush's Disappeared
Juliana Fredman
A Sealed Laboratory of Repression
Mickey Z.
Holiday Spirit at the UN
Ron Jacobs
In the Wake of Rebellion: The Prisoner's Rights Movement and
Latino Prisoners
Josh Frank
Sen. Max Baucus: the Slick Swindler
John L. Hess
Slow Train to the Plane
Adam Engel
Black is Indeed Beautiful
Ben Tripp
The Relevance of Art in Times of Crisis
Michael Neumann
Rhythm and Race
Poets' Basement
Cullen, Engel, Albert & Guthrie
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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January
10 / 11, 2004
America's Endemic
Cycle of Warfare
The
Deep Scars of War
By FRANCIS BOYLE
After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7
December 1941, my father Francis Anthony Boyle, after whom I
am named (being the oldest of my parents' eight children) applied
for admission to Officer Candidate School for the United States
Marine Corps. After an extended period of investigation, he
was eventually rejected--telling me it was the most disappointing
day of his entire life. He was not given the reason for this
rejection. But as a child he had rheumatic fever, meningitis,
and polio. As a boy he had to walk around with crutches and
gradually weaned himself off them. The rejection by the Marine
Corps Officer Candidate School undoubtedly saved my father's
life and thus made my life possible too. The life of a young
Marine Corps Officer in the Pacific Campaign was infinitesimal.
They were expected to lead their troops into battle from in
front of their men.
Despite his deep disappointment and his
physical limitations, my father then enlisted in the U.S. Marine
Corps on 14 July 1943 at the age of 22 and agreed to serve
for the "Duration" of the war. By contrast, I entered
the Harvard Law School on about September 7, 1971 at the age
of 21. I thought of my father a lot during that first year of
law school. At about my age, he was fighting for his life in
the jungles of the Pacific. The vicissitudes of life. But he
would have wanted it that way for me. My father always strove
to provide a better life for his children, which he did do.
According to his Honorable Discharge
papers (A108534, Series A, NAVMC70-PD) and war stories, my father
invaded Saipan, Tinian and Okinawa. According to my father,
after the battle of Okinawa, there were only two Marines left
from his original Company that were neither killed nor seriously
wounded. The Marine Corps then ordered my father and his friend
to begin training for the invasion of mainland Japan, where
they were scheduled to be among the first Marines ashore because
of their combat experience. My father told me that at the time
he believed it was a miracle that he was still alive, and he
knew that he would never survive the planned invasion of the
Japanese mainland, but that he proceeded to train for this invasion
anyway because he had enlisted for the "Duration"
of the war. Semper Fidelis My father was a very aggressive,
tough, determined, relentless, resilient, fearless, formidable,
and ferocious warrior.
After his Honorable Discharge from the
Marine Corps on 16 January 1946 as a Corporal with his "Character
of service" being rated as "excellent," my father
attended Loyola University in Chicago, Illinois and graduated
from their Law School in the Class of 1950, shortly after I
was born. He went to work as a plaintiff's litigator for a law
firm in downtown Chicago where, his hiring partner told me,
he was very aggressive in court and otherwise. Eventually, my
father opened his own law firm as a plaintiff's litigator in
downtown Chicago in 1959. On the night he transferred his files
from the old office to his new firm, my father put me into our
1955 Chevy, the first car he ever bought, and brought me along
for the ride and the opening of his new law firm. Soon thereafter,
he designated me as the Clerk for his law firm, and promptly
put me to work at the age of nine running messages, filing documents
in court, taking money to and from the LaSalle National Bank,
etc. all over downtown Chicago on school holidays and during
summer vacations. At the end of a hard day's work around 5:30
p.m., I would walk over to the corner of State and Madison in
order to take the bus home by myself while my father continued
to work away at his law practice late into the night. Now if
I did that to my nine year old son today the Illinois Department
of Children and Family Services would step in and take him away
from me--the "home alone" phenomenon. But that was
a different era, and my father was of the old school: spare
the rod, and spoil the child. It was not easy being the oldest
child and namesake of a World War II Marine Corps combat veteran
of invading Saipan, Tinian, and Okinawa.
I continued to serve as his Clerk until
he died of a heart attack on January 10, 1968 at the age of
46. Because I worked for him at his law firm for all those years,
I was fortunate to have spent an enormous amount of time with
my father. I learned a lot about life from my father. Two of
his favorites were: "Son, there is nothing fair about life."
And: "Just remember, son, no one owes you anything."
Of course he proved right on both counts--and many others as
well.
But in particular, since I was his oldest
child and namesake, at a very young age he began to tell me
these incredible, astounding, unbelievable, horrible, chilling,
hair-raising stories about what hand-to-hand combat in the
Pacific was really like that literally left an otherwise talkative
boy dumb-founded. In addition, my father supplemented these
stories by taking me to see almost every war film ever made
about combat in the Pacific, where he punctuated these war movies
in medias res by telling me whether or not the incidents portrayed
therein were authentic, and always giving an overall critique
of their authenticity compared with his own war experiences
afterwards on the way home. It eventually dawned upon me at
a very young age that it was literally a miracle that my father
had survived the war and thus that I was alive as well.
My father was very proud of his combat
service in the Marine Corps and of course considered himself
to be a Marine for the rest of his life. My father never bragged
about his combat experiences in the war to me or to anyone else
that I was aware of. His record in combat spoke for itself.
Indeed, when I was a young boy his fellow warriors elected him
to be the Commander of the local American Legion Chapter, a
distinct honor as he saw it. He brought my mother, my next
younger sister, and me along for the installation ceremony and
dinner that night. My father had nothing good and nothing bad
to say about the Japanese Imperial Army and its soldiers. But
it was obvious from his tone of voice that he considered them
to be dangerous warriors who were prepared to fight to the death,
as large numbers of them did at his hands. My father and mother
never raised any of us eight children to be biased or prejudiced
against the Japanese people or any other people for that matter.
According to my father, immediately prior
to the invasions of Saipan, Tinian, and Okinawa, his Captain
issued direct orders to his Company not to take Japanese prisoners
of war on the grounds of reciprocity: "The Japs don't take
prisoners of our men, so I don't want to see any Nip soldiers
cluttering up our rear lines!" Notwithstanding, my father
took surrendering Japanese soldiers as prisoners of war, escorted
them to the rear of the line, and then returned to battle. When
the odds are overwhelming that you will meet your Maker in any
instant, you want to do so with a clear conscience. I tell this
story to my law students when they object that it is unrealistic
to expect soldiers to obey the laws of war during the heat of
combat.
At first glance it appeared that my father
had survived the war relatively unscathed. He had picked up
a fungus on his leg that stayed with him for the rest of his
life, which he called his "jungle rot." Also, his
hearing was impaired by the big naval guns bombarding the coasts
while he and his comrades waited on ship to board the landing
transports in order to storm the beaches. Of course, there were
also artillery, grenades, bombs, machine guns, flame throwers,
and other ordnance, advancing under withering enemy fire during
the day, repulsing bonzai charges at night, repeatedly volunteering
for what looked like suicide missions behind enemy lines, etc.
It was Hell on Earth.
Only years later, long after he had died,
and as a result of medical research on Veterans of the Viet
Nam War, did I realize that my father came back with a severe
case of Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, something that was undiagnosed
at the time. Combat veterans of World War II were simply expected
to go home and resume their civilian lives. As my father's Marine
Corps Honorable Discharge papers state: "Requires neither
treatment nor hospitalization." In retrospect, my father
should have had medical treatment for Post Traumatic Stress
Syndrome if it had been available then.
I do not believe it was my father's intention,
but as a result of hearing over many years his stories about
the terrors and horrors of combat in the Pacific, he turned
me against war and violence as a solution to human problems.
War is always the ultimate defeat for the human spirit. War
is an abomination on the face of God's Creation. There had
to be a better way. Law is that better way. I had the same reaction
while reading through Rick Anderson's powerful new book, Home
Front.
We Americans cannot keep sending our
young men and now women off to fight and to die, or to survive
with terrible physical and mental injuries, scarred for the
rest of their lives by the horrors of warfare as my father was.
Every American who has a child contemplating joining the military
for any reason should buy him or her a copy of this book to
read. I have three sons, and I will be sure to give a copy
of this book to each of them.
America's endemic cycle of warfare, bloodshed,
and violence, both internationally and domestically, must stop
with us. We must teach our children that there is a better way.
Given the pervasive American culture of glorifying and worshiping
violence, warfare, death, and destruction, this important book
will enable us American parents to better educate our children
about the absolute necessity of peace, justice, human rights,
and the Rule of Law, both internationally and domestically.
This book provides an extremely moving, compelling and irrefutable
account of what happens to the young men and women of America
when they go into the military, and also when they come home--if
they do.
Rick Anderson's Home
Front should be required reading in every American high
school in order to counteract the outright pro-war propaganda,
militarization, and military solicitation currently being inflicted
upon our children by the Pentagon and the news media. It should
also be required reading for beginning college courses in political
science, history, and the other social sciences. Finally, Home
Front is a very powerful tool for those of us in the American
Peace Movement to use in order to stop the Bush Jr. Administration's
attempt to create an American hydrocarbon empire abroad in
Iraq, Afghanistan, Colombia and elsewhere by means of exploiting
and manipulating the members of U.S. armed forces as pawns in
their geopolitical Game of Chess for oil, natural gas, profits,
and amassing personal family fortunes in the process. We need
as many loyal, patriotic, humanitarian, and principled American
citizens as possible to read this book, contemplate its lessons,
and then act upon them: Stop these wars!
This essay appears as the foreward to
Rick Anderson's vital new book Home
Front: the Government's War on Soldiers, published next month
by Clarity Press.
Francis A. Boyle,
Professor of Law, University of Illinois, is author of Foundations
of World Order, Duke University Press, The
Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence, and Palestine,
Palestinians and International Law, by Clarity Press.
He can be reached at: FBOYLE@LAW.UIUC.EDU
Weekend
Edition Features for January 3 / 4, 2004
Brian Cloughley
Never
Mind the WMDs, Just Look at History
Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan
The Wrong War at the Wrong Time
William Cook
Failing to Respond to 9/11
Glen Martin
Jesus
vs. the Beast of the Apocalypse
Robert Fisk
Iraqi Humor Amid the Carnage
Ilan Pappe
The Geneva Bubble
Walter Davis
Robert Jay Lifton, or Nostalgia
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft vs. the Left
Mike Whitney
The Padilla Case
Steven Sherman
On Wallerstein's The Decline of American Power
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Taiwan Hypocrisy
William Blum
Codework Orange!
Mitchel Cohen
Learning from Che Guevara
Seth Sandronsky
Mad Cow and Main Street USA
Bruce Jackson
Conversations with Leslie Fiedler
Standard Schaefer
Poet Carl Rakosi Turns 100
Ron Jacobs
Sir Mick
Adam Engel
Hall of Hoaxes
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert & Curtis
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