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Recent
Stories
April
3, 2003
Uri
Avnery
A Crooked Mirror: Presstitution and
the Theater of Operations
David
Vest
Can You Hear the Silence?
Anthony
Gancarski
Colin Powell Telemarketer
David
Lindorff
Takoma: the Dolphin Who Refused
to Fight
Michael
Roberts
War, Debts and Deficits
Ramzy
Baroud
Now That Iraqis Are Being Killed Is Israel Any More Secure?
Jo Wilding
From Baghdad with Tears
Anton
Antonowicz
Cluster Bombs on Babylon
Alison
Weir
Israel, We Won't Forget Rachel Corrie
Bruce
Jackson
Hating Wolf Blitzer's Voice
Eliot Katz
War's First Week
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 04/03
April
2, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
The Politics of Casualties
David
Lindorff
Making America Safer...for Iraqi
Fighters
William
Blum
Some Observations on the Recent Behavior of the Empire
Gustavio
Sierra
The Morning After the Slaughter at
Nasser
Patrick
Cockburn
Playing Into Saddam's Hands
Robert
Jensen
Peter Arnett: Whipping Boy of the
Pentagon
Jeremy
Brecher
Uniting for Peace Update
N.D.
Jayaprakash
The Siege of Basra
LaDawn
Haglund
You Can Jail the Resisters, But You
Can't Arrest the Resistance
Robert
Fisk
Truth and Subterfuge
Jemima
Khan
I'm Ashamed to be British
Steve
Perry
War Web Log
Stew Albert
Total War
Website
of the Day
Traitor List: Sign Up Now!
April
1, 2003
Jason
Leopold
Rumsfeld: "Get Me Rewrite"
William
S. Lind
The Pitfalls of War Planning
Jorge
Mariscal
Latinos on the Frontlines, Again
Paul
de Rooij
Arrogant Propaganda
Jo
Wilding
From Baghdad: "I Am His Mother"
Tarif
Abboushi
Operation Embedded Folly
Lee
Sustar
Labor's War at Home
Akiva Eldar
Israeli Dreams of Iraqi Oil
Bernard
Weiner
The Vietnam Connection
Robert
Fisk
The Graveyard at Baghdad's North
Gate
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 04/01
Website
of the Day
A Collectible War
March
31, 2003
David
Lindorff
Liberating Iraqis from Their Homes
Neve Gordon
A Different Kind of Despair
John
Chuckman
Absurdities and Contradictions
Ron Jacobs
Bernie Sanders Voting Maybe on
War
Wayne
Madsen
The Siege of Washington
Mark Franchetti
Slaughter at the Bridge of Death
Robert
Fisk
Blood and Bandages of the Innocent
Robin Cook
Send Our Soldiers Home
Anthony
Gancarski
Investigate Perle
Uri Avnery
The Devil's Dictionary
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 03/31
March
29, 2003
Kathy and
Bill Christison
"Like Being Autistic with
Power": an Interview with Jeff Halper
Ben
Tripp
"My Empire for a Map!": Geography
American Style
Ann Harrison
The War on Protesters: San Francisco's
Berserk Cops
Kurt
Nimmo
Dead People: Don't Go There
Chris Floyd
Blood on the Tracks: Cheney the
War Profiteer
Ann
Pettifer
Israelis: Victims No Longer?
Jo Wilding
Dispatch from Baghdad: Nowhere
is Safe
Ramzy
Baroud
Horror Chamber: Inside the Al-Amiriya
Shelter
David Krieger
Perle is Gone, But the Looting
Continues
John
Gershman
Dreams of Empire; Eulogies for International
Law
Robert
Fisk
Bombing the Phone System
Brice Abel
War, Bush and the Jesus Torilla
Tom
Stephens
The Chickenhawk Circle of Hell
Alexander
Cockburn
"War Not Going According
to Plan"
March 28,
2003
Robert
Fisk
Bitter Truths About Basra
Daniel
Wolff
A Road Trip in Wartime
Chris
Clarke
We Never Spit on Any Baby Killers
David Lindorff
Saddam, a Hero Made in Washington
Pierre
Tristam
Icarus on Crack: American Hubris
and Iraq
Jason Leopold
Richard Perle: the Enterprising
Hawk
Saul
Landau
Technological Massacre
Carol Norris
The Mother of All Bombs
Riad
Abdelkarim, MD
Iraq War Lingo 101
Adam Engel
Schlock and Awe
Steve
Perry
War Web Log
March 27,
2003
Anthony
Gancarski
Somebody Blew Up Baghdad
Rahul
Mahajan
The New Humanitarianism: Basra as
Military Target
Simon Jones
A Letter from Uzbekistan
William
S. Lind
No Exit
Diane Christian
A Day of Reckoning
The
Black Commentator
Onward
Embedded Soldiers: the Press and the War
Mickey
Z.
Remembering the Real Moynihan:
Genocide in East Timor
Richard
Thieme
The Problem of Empathy
Jason Leopold
Energy Scams: Bilking California
Out of Billions
Tariq
Ali
A Naked Display of Imperial Power
Alexander
Cockburn
Up the Creek
March 26,
2003
Bruce Jackson
A Battlefield from Hell
Pablo
Mukherjee
Watch
Their Lips
David Krieger
Shock But Not Awe
Linda
Heard
Winning
Hearts and Minds Bush-Style
Imad Jadaa
The Beautiful Face of America
Adam
Engel
Buckets
of Blood
Patrick
Cockburn
Kurds Unimpressed
David
Lindorff
POWs,
Torture and Hypocrisy
Robert
Fisk
The Coup That Didn't Happen
April
Hurley, MD
A
Doctor's Outrage in Baghdad
Gloria
Bergen
Chretien's Shame
Reema
Abu Hamdieh
The
Smell of Death Surrounds Me
March 25,
2003
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Life During Wartime
Gary
Leupp
What
Democracy Looks Like: the Streets of Cairo
Bill and
Kathleen Christison
An Interview with Hanan Ashrawi
Bruce
Jackson
Why
Protest? Why Write?
Uri Avnery
Bitter Rice: Thoughts and Warnings
on the War
Jason
Leopold
Blood
Indicator: Casualties and the Stock Market
Ralph Nader
A Pre-emptive War on a Defenseless
Country
March 24,
2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Ominous Signs
David
Lindorff
Peacekeepers
at Ground Zero
Diane Christian
Blood Sacrifice
Kathy
Kelly
The
Morning After Shock and Awe
John Stanton
US Bombs Iran
Wayne
Madsen
How
to Live with a Rogue Superpower
Anthony
Gancarski
Iraq and the Death of the West
David
Vest
Earth vs. Bush
Ahmad Faruqui
The Liberation of Iraq in Perspective
Robert
Fisk
We
Bomb, They Suffer
March 22 / 23, 2003
Edward Said
The Other
America
Saul Landau
The Threats of Empire
Kathleen and Bill Christison
On the Road in the West Bank
Joanne Mariner
Suing Seymour Hersh
Ann Harrison
The Battle of San Francisco
Robert Fisk
A Cauldron of Fire
Hani Shukrallah
The Gates of Hell
Chris Floyd
Memory Lane
Kathy Kelly
Imagine Chicago Under This Kind of Attack
Ramzi Kysia
Bombing Away a Chance for Joy
Linda Heard
Baghdad Burns While Bush Does Lunch
Bradley Burston
Could the US be at War for Years?
Salvador Peralta
Mass Murder as Liberation?
Tom Gorman
Now That's a Coalition!
Jorge Mariscal
Johnny Mack, When Are You Coming Back?
Cindy Milstein
The Grassroots Go Global
Josh Frank
Blocking Portland's Bridges
Elaine Cassel
The Case of Elizabeth Smart: Kidnapping and Insanity
Gordon Solberg
Drowning in Niceness: the Lessons of Elizabeth Smart
Tom Crumpacker
Getting to Know the Real Havana
Poets' Basement
Dobie, Guthrie, Alam, Wechsler
March 21, 2003
Ben Tripp
Blood
for Oil: the Exchange Rate
Cathy Breens
Report from Baghdad: Mothers, Kids and Crash Kits
Scott Handleman
Fourth
Generation Protesting: Shutting Down San Francisco
Vanessa Jones
Paint
Them Red
Brian J. Foley
Patriotic
Protest for Professors
Zoltan Grossman
After Saddam, a War on Iraqi Rebels?
Philip S. Golub
Inventing Demons
Richard Lichtman
On the Current Experience of Terror
Milan Rai
Blitz-Coup
Pepe Escobar
A Cheap Family Farce
Floyd Rudmin
The Nightmare at the Back Door: Nuclear Plant's as Terror Targets
Chris Floyd
See Rome (poem)
Website of the War
Iraq
Body Count
March 20, 2003
Jo Wilding
From
Waiting to War: a Day and a Night in Baghdad
Stephen Banko
I Was
a Soldier Once
Kevin Alexander Gray
How Did
We Become an Outlaw Nation?
Shane Claiborne
Nomadic
Solidarity: Glimpses of Life in Baghdad on the Eve of War
Kathy Kelly
Waiting on the Baghdad Skies to Crack
Anthony Gancarski
Michelle
Makin's "Liberty Shields"
Rahul Mahajan and Robert
Jensen
Myths
and Facts About the War on Iraq
Jason Leopold
Cheney's
Lies About Halliburton and Iraq
Ron Jacobs
If War is Business as Usual, There Should be No Business as Usual
Chuck O'Connell
Predictions About the Iraq War
Douglas Herman
US Air Force Veteran on the Coming Air Campaign
Ralph Nader
Come
On Democrats, Stand Up for Peace
William Hughes
War is Theft
Sima Saeedi
Dispatch
from Iran
Hammond Guthrie
John Philip Sousa
Website of the Day
Iraq
Body Count
Hot Stories
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
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April 4,
2003
The Mantra of
Our Time
"Support"
or Treason?
By TOM GORMAN
In his memoir "Man of the House," former
Speaker Tip O'Neil described his response to being informed about
the 1983 Granada invasion: "The invasion was already under
way, so even if we opposed it, there was nothing any of us could
do. I had some serious reservations, and I'm sure my Democratic
colleagues did as well, but I'd be damned if I was going to voice
any criticism while our boys were out there."
O'Neil thought the invasion nothing more
that a cover for the Reagan Administration's blunder in Lebanon,
where a few days before a suicide bomber had killed 248 US Marines
who were on a "peacekeeping mission" in Beirut. "Over
a hundred American troops were killed or wounded in [the Granada
invasion]. . . . And as far as I can see, it was all because
the White House wanted the country to forget about the tragedy
in Beirut."
When I first read this book years ago,
I was struck then by the vexing incongruity of these sentiments.
Whatever one thinks of Tip O'Neil, it is impossible to think
he was naïve or stupid, yet he seems to argue that he didn't
want to criticize the President when "our boys were out
there" while, in almost the same breath, he admits to feeling
that they were "out there" as some sort of human sacrifice
for the President's shattered prestige. If a person does not
know that a horrible crime is being committed, they cannot be
blamed for not acting to stop it. If O'Neil knew that American
lives were being sacrificed to boost the President's poll numbers,
his failure to act (even if he could not have prevented the Granada
invasion but could preclude the next betrayal of our troops),
is, by any fair definition, an act of treason. O'Neil, I'm sure,
bought in to the insane notion that to support the troops, one
has to keep silent as they are being killed.
If the mantra of "support the troops"
has such an effect on as bright an individual as Tip O'Neil,
the current use of the phrase by those in "pro-war"
circles is problematic. The key word that needs analysis in the
phrase "support the troops" is "support,"
for it is safe to say that there is convention on the meaning
of "the troops." "Support," according to
the seventh, and most appropriate, definition at www.dictionary.com,
means "to aid the cause, policy, or interests of" or
"to argue in favor of." We must then determine what
the causes, policies, or interests of the US troops in Iraq are,
and see who is arguing in favor of those ends.
A war supporter would reflexively argue
that one who doesn't support the war does not support the troops.
This would only be true if the interests of those who sent the
troops to war were the same as the troops themselves. It can
be argued that there has never been a war in which the motivations
of war planners and the troops coincided, and this is mostly
certainly true to even a casual observer of the current war in
Iraq. The "cause, policy, or interests" of the war
planners is, by their admission, the control of Iraq, regardless
of the effects on the health and well-being of the men and women
fighting the war. (Their indifference to the well-being of the
troops is proven by the neglect shown to those veterans of the
first Gulf War, who were poisoned either by reckless American
attacks on Hussein's chemical weapon stockpiles, or by the US's
utterly criminal use of depleted uranium weapons. Over 10,000
Gulf War veterans have died since the end of the war. Or note
the cutting of veteran's benefits by $15 billion in current budget
proposals, a level of depravity I thought even below the ilk
of the Bush Administration). While individual troops may share
the goal of ousting Hussein, no sane member of the military wants
to get killed. As Patton said to his troops, "your job is
not to be some poor son of a bitch who dies for your country;
your job is to make the other poor son of a bitch die for his
country." There is, then, a divergence between "supporting
the war" and "supporting the troops." Conventional
thought, however, would have us believing the opposite.
Last weekend, after attending an antiwar
rally in downtown Los Angeles, I returned home to watch coverage
of the protest on local news. After a standard report about the
turnout at the antiwar event (police estimates of 5,000, organizer
estimates of 25,000), the anchor intoned that there were "also
rallies in support of the troops today," emphasizing the
word "support," the implication being that the peace
rally was not in support of the troops. One gentleman interviewed
at a "support the troops" rally argued that, as a Vietnam
veteran, he knew how his comrades had not received any support
and had suffered as a result, necessitating Americans to "support
the troops" fighting today in Iraq. (This man was extrapolating
on a myth meant to discredit antiwar protesters, as detailed
in a recent CounterPunch article by Chris Clarke, "We
Never Spit on Any Babykillers" . Also see Jerry Lembcke's
excellent book, "The
Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam".
How could this man possibly think that supporting the war on
Iraq is supporting the troops? How is wanting troops to stay
and continue to kill and be killed in an illegal war considered
"support"? Returning to our definition, it is certainly
not in the "cause, policy, or interests" of troops
that they continue to be killed, so support for the war is definitely
not support for the troops. As a letter to the Los Angeles Times
stated last Saturday, "Saying that being pro-war is 'supporting
our troops' is like saying that arson is supporting our firefighters."
Indeed, the only way to support the troops is to be against the
war.
I would argue further and say that those
who do support the war are committing treason. The United States
Constitution defines treason in Article III, § 3: "Treason
against the United States, shall consist only in levying War
against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid
and Comfort." The enemy being adhered to in the case of
the war on Iraq is Bush and his inner circle. They have systematically
threatened the security of the people of this country, not only
by reckless military ventures that are, according to CIA Director
George Tenet, increasing the likelihood of terrorist attacks
and therefore decreasing national security, but also by violations
of the Constitution. When an American joins the military, he
or she swears (or affirms) an oath to "support and defend
the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign
and domestic"; the obligation is to defend the Constitution,
the rule of law, not any one person who may be President. President
Bush and his cohorts have violated the Constitution in numerous
ways, but perhaps most significant, and most relevant for the
troops in Iraq, is their abrogation of Article VI, which makes
all treaties entered into by the United States the "supreme
law of the land." (The Supreme Court, over the years, has
brooked no latitude when it comes to this clause; it is binding
on federal, state, and local governments, as well as individual
citizens.) The United Nations Charter, the Geneva Convention,
the Nuremberg Principles, and the Genocide Convention, just to
name a few, are supreme laws of the land which are now being
violated by the Bush Administration. Presidents swear to "preserve,
protect, and defend the constitution of the United States,"
and are constitutionally required to "take care that the
laws be faithfully executed." Bush is therefore violating
both his oath of office and the United States Constitution, and
he and anyone giving him "Aid and Comfort" are guilty
of treason. Military personnel are obliged to defend the Constitution,
and therefore must resist these illegal, unconstitutional, and
treasonous actions.
The Uniform Code of Military Justice
specifically states that members of the military must obey the
lawful orders of their superiors; implicit in this is that they
are allowed to disobey unlawful orders. More explicit is one
of the supreme laws of the land mentioned above, the Nuremberg
Principles: "The fact that a person acted pursuant to order
of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from
responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice
was in fact possible to him." This was the principle under
which people were hanged at Nuremberg; you cannot argue that
you were "just following orders." Thus, any person,
military or civilian, is responsible for their actions if they
violate international law. There is an important exception, though.
An individual is responsible only if "a moral choice was
in fact possible to him [or her]." It is debatable whether
members of the American military have such a choice, given that
they are so often pushed into the service by socioeconomic circumstance,
are relentlessly brainwashed into following orders without question,
and have a diminished capacity for moral reasoning intentionally
drilled into them. (For more on this, see "On
Killing" by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman [<].) Still,
those who are aware of this moral choice are required to disobey
unlawful orders. Those of us outside of the military, who have
only the brainwashing of comparatively weak government/media
propaganda to contend with, have an even greater obligation to
resist the treason of the Bush Administration.
So we return to the critique lobbed at
those of us being against the war as not "supporting the
troops." Do I support the troops? In as far as they are
willing to abide by their obligations to defend the Constitution
and resist treason, yes I support the troops. I believe that
anyone who truly professes to love this country should feel the
same.
Tom Gorman
is the president of the Antiwar Coalition at California State
University, Los Angeles. He welcomes comments at tgorman222@hotmail.com,
and you can join his email list by sending an email to tgorman222-subscribe@topica.com.
Today's
Features
Uri
Avnery
A Crooked Mirror: Presstitution and
the Theater of Operations
David
Vest
Can You Hear the Silence?
Anthony
Gancarski
Colin Powell Telemarketer
David
Lindorff
Takoma: the Dolphin Who Refused
to Fight
Michael
Roberts
War, Debts and Deficits
Ramzy
Baroud
Now That Iraqis Are Being Killed Is Israel Any More Secure?
Jo Wilding
From Baghdad with Tears
Anton
Antonowicz
Cluster Bombs on Babylon
Alison
Weir
Israel, We Won't Forget Rachel Corrie
Bruce
Jackson
Hating Wolf Blitzer's Voice
Eliot Katz
War's First Week
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 04/03
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