Veterans for Common Sense

Washington (Reuters) – With President George W. Bush expected to use his State of the Union address to bolster his case for attacking Iraq, top Senators on Wednesday urged him to cool the war rhetoric and seek more support from allies and the American people.

“I think it would be a huge mistake if the president went forward without the support of our allies and the United Nations,” Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota told reporters.

Daschle complained that a White House report to Congress earlier in the week did not discuss key issues — how to keep the international coalition together to deal with Iraq; rising opposition from allies as U.S. troops mass in the Gulf; and stabilizing the country after President Saddam Hussein is removed.

The administration has sounded closer to war in recent days, saying it is losing patience with Iraq for not coming clean on the weapons program that Washington insists it has. Iraq denies having weapons of mass destruction.

U.N. weapons inspectors are to report on their findings on Monday, but say they have months more work to do to complete inspections. A number of key allies insist that the inspectors be given time to finish their work.

Bush gives his State of the Union address on Tuesday, when Democrats and some Republicans say he will have to strengthen his case if he intends to go to war.

“In terms of trying to gain more of an international consensus for what the president hopes to do, assuming that is his decision, yes we have to do more of that, and we have to get more of a consensus here at home as well,” said Arizona Republican Sen. Jon Kyl.

BIDEN URGES CAUTION

Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Bush either should “commit to letting the weapons inspectors finish their job,” or give the inspectors “the intelligence information that we have to make the case” that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction.

Biden, in an interview, said he was urging fellow Democrats to take the position that “absent some compelling evidence, we should let the inspectors run out their string.” He said the nuclear standoff with North Korea, which has expelled U.N. monitors, was the more serious threat to U.S. security.

Biden said he believed a majority of senators do not back a war with Iraq now, although they might not vote against it.

“I think you’d get a majority voice that would say if they had a chance to counsel the president personally, they’d say Mr President, cool it,” Biden said.

But he said Bush would get support in a vote because few Republicans would want to be viewed as “pulling the rug out from under him, and an awful lot of Democrats would say we’d be blamed if this thing falls apart if we look like we’re not supporting him.”

Biden also said Bush had done little to prepare the American people for the hardships and costs of war and of rebuilding and stabilizing Iraq afterward. “There is no informed consent at this point,” he said.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, in a speech in Los Angeles, said “the massive increase” of U.S. troops in the Gulf indicated that “regardless of the findings of the U.N. inspectors, the president may well intend to use military force to bring about regime change … This is deeply disturbing.”

Feinstein said the administration had been pursuing contradictory policies, “beating the drums of war” with Iraq while seeking a diplomatic solution for North Korea, which had “confused and angered many of our closest friends and allies.”

The poll didn’t ask questions about going to war with or without United Nations support. The poll didn’t ask about going to war without allied support.

November 2001: 78{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} favored attacking Iraq, 17{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} were opposed. However ….

January 2003: 57{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} favor attacking Iraq, 41{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} were opposed.

January 2003: 58{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} want more evidence against Iraq.

January 2003: 53{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} think Bush might act “too quickly” to attack Iraq

The fierce Vietnamese resistance, resulting in 58,000 U.S. deaths, soured the American public on U.S. adventurism abroad for years to come — a development that greatly frustrated hawks on the American right.

It wasn’t until the 1983 invasion of Grenada, when the U.S. military overwhelmingly subdued the tiny Caribbean island’s teensie military force, that Washington was said to have shaken the “Vietnam syndrome.” Pundits hailed Ronald Reagan for making Americans proud again.

As Washington prepares now to invade Iraq, it’s clear the Bush administration has taken to heart that key Vietnam lesson — never pick on someone your own size; pick on someone much weaker. Certainly, Washington prefers waging war against countries that don’t fight back (something the feisty North Koreans seem to have figured out.)

But President George Bush has clearly noticed how his popularity soared with all his post-9/11 tough talk, and seems determined to get a solid war victory under his belt before facing the U.S. electorate next year.

(Afghanistan just didn’t work out; after Bush swaggered around threatening to take him “dead or alive,” Osama bin Laden proved harder to find than a weapon of mass destruction in Baghdad.)

Enter Iraq — so oil-rich, so under the thumb of a cartoon-style bad guy, so defenceless. Now there’s a war worth fighting.

In fact, “war” isn’t really the right term. It takes two to make a war; someone’s got to fight back. What the U.S. is about to do in Iraq is more like shooting fish in a barrel.

Of course, we’re told exactly the opposite, that Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein threatens the world.

What’s never explained is why this “threat to the world” wasn’t able to muster even minimal resistance when Iraq was repeatedly bombed by the U.S. during the 1991 Gulf War.

The U.S. military “met no resistance from Iraqi aircraft and no effective anti-aircraft or anti-missile groundfire,” notes University of Illinois law professor Francis Boyle. “Iraq was basically defenceless.”

Since then, Iraq has been weakened still further by a decade of crushing sanctions and bombing raids by U.S. and British warplanes.

Iraq has failed to shoot down even one of those planes.

And the U.N. inspections of recent weeks have so far failed to find any cache of deadly weapons. Unless the fighting ends up street-to-street in Baghdad — something Washington is keen to avoid — U.S. casualties should be minimal.

Given the staggering weakness of Iraq, war is not only unnecessary, it’s downright absurd. If the inspectors do find some deadly weapons, why don’t they simply confiscate them? Who’s going to stop them?

If deadly weapons could be removed without pulverizing the Iraqi people, would that be so bad? (A confidential U.N. report predicted 500,000 Iraqi casualties in a war, the New York Times reported earlier this month.)

Bush impatiently insisted last week that “time is running out.” But for what?

With the Iraqis on their knees, offering no resistance to U.N. inspectors, it’s hard to imagine what time pressures are posing problems here — other than the U.S. election timetable. (Doesn’t that infernal Hans Blix realize Bush needs a war victory to launch his re-election bid? What the hell is Blix thinking, dragging these inspections out like this?)

Prime Minister Jean Chrétien signalled last week that Canada won’t join a unilateral U.S. attack — a welcome development — but Chrétien suggested we would participate in a U.N. action.

A more principled position — and one that would also, incidentally, make our lives here safer — would be to refuse to take part in the bloodbath in Iraq, no matter what the U.S. manages to get the U.N. to agree to.

There was another important lesson from Vietnam — that war is best fought by others.

Some of those keenest for war in the Bush administration — including Bush, vice-president Dick Cheney, senior officials Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle — never served in Vietnam.

Sometimes called “chickenhawks,” they make up for their shyness about going into battle themselves with their enthusiasm for others doing so. (Bush avoided Vietnam by joining the National Guard, and then failing to show up for guard duty for months at a time.)

But with the massive U.S. assault about to be unleashed on enfeebled Iraq, the Pentagon may have finally found a way to wage a war so safe (for U.S. soldiers) that even a young George Bush wouldn’t have been scared to participate.

Washington – Known primarily through his combative, and self-confident, press conferences on C-SPAN, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has won boffo reviews from critics who rarely agree.

Rumsfeld’s “wit and charismatic candor” were praised on the liberal New York Times op-ed page, while the editorial page chief of the conservative Washington Times, proclaimed as “most charismatic” of the year the defense secretary “who’s the heartthrob of neo-cons and mature women around the country, and Republicans everywhere.”

Well, this is a different year, and in his first 2003 press conference, Rumsfeld shamefully smeared American veterans and then deliberately fibbed about how there is absolutely “no need ” to consider reinstating the draft because the nation’s all-volunteer military was, he assured us, working perfectly.

First, the smear of veterans. Speaking of the 11 million Americans who, during the Vietnam years, answered their country’s draft call and the 2 million who served in Vietnam, Rumsfeld alleged that these draftees “added no value, no advantage, really, to the United States armed services over any sustained period of time, because the churning that took place, it took enormous amount of effort in terms of training, and then they were gone.”

I’ll say “then, they were gone!” Of the 58,152 Americans who gave their lives in Vietnam 20,352 of them were draftees. How dare the secretary of defense say these good and brave Americans “added no value, no advantage, to the United States armed services?”

Why would he slander the sacrifice of these brave men, dishonor their memory and rub salt in their families’ wounds?

Certainly a man as smart as Rumsfeld knows that the draft was specifically intended to trigger volunteers. Faced with the certainty of a future draft call, many young men chose to “volunteer” because then they could select which branch of the service they preferred and, if qualified, the specialized training they desired.

So, the overwhelming majority of the American veterans — from 1940 to 1973 — had entered the service directly — or indirectly — because of the draft law.

Rumsfeld, himself, was “drafted.” He chose, after graduating from Princeton in 1954, to serve three years on active duty as a Navy aviator. More than two out of three of his Princeton classmates, also motivated by the reality of the draft, served on active duty. Two years ago — with no draft — exactly two members of the Princeton graduating class chose to become officers in the United States military.

Now to Rumsfeld’s fiction about the all-volunteer service. Asked about legislation introduced to re-institute the draft on the eve of war, Rumsfeld was emphatic: “We’re not going to re-implement the draft. There is no need for it at all. … We have people serving today — God bless ’em — because they volunteered. They want to be doing what it is they’re doing.”

Sounds good, except that it is not true. Two days after these unequivocal words, the United States Marine Corps — which reports to the secretary of defense — froze for the next 12 months every one of its 174,312 members currently on active duty. Marines who had completed their voluntary enlistments or their 20 years and had chosen to return to civilian life or retirement will instead remain, involuntarily, in the service.

Marines being Marines, they will answer their country’s call. But let us be clear: This action, along with other more limited freezes affecting other thousands in uniform imposed by the other services, means the volunteer U.S. military is no longer all-volunteer.

The unavoidable question that now must be answered by Rumsfeld and the president is not whether Americans ought to be “drafted” to defend the country, because we are already doing that, but exactly which Americans will be drafted.

Maybe the war-hawk Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill can now explain why it is more just to retain on active duty involuntarily an American who has fulfilled his voluntary obligation to his country than it would be to bring to active duty involuntarily those Americans — including the sons of senators and CEOs — who have yet to serve.

Now before the bullets fly and before the bombs drop and before the brave young widows again climb the hill at Arlington Cemetery, we must face that test of whether we have the will to stand together on individual sacrifice for the common good and determine whose brothers, whose sons and whose fathers will fight in war.

Special to NewsMax E-mail News Alert Subscribers:

We hear that Secretary of State Powell recently summoned all U.S. ambassadors in European capitals back to Foggy Bottom for a pep rally for the coming war.

The ambassadors were not too happy to attend, we hear, and echoed European sentiments that the administration has not provided proof that Iraq was involved with al-Qaeda or has progressed in developing weapons of mass destruction.

Powell promised the evidence would be forthcoming, but confided to one ambassador, “I have not seen the evidence yet myself.”

Denouncing the war plan as an administration idée fixe that will undermine America’s standing in the world, stir unrest in the Mideast and damage the American economy, the protesters in Washington massed on Saturday for what police described as the largest antiwar rally at the Capitol since the Vietnam era.

It was impressive for the obvious mainstream roots of the marchers — from young college students to grayheads with vivid protest memories of the 60’s. They gathered from near and far by the tens of thousands, galvanized by the possibility that President Bush will soon order American forces to attack Iraq even without the approval of the United Nations Security Council.

Mr. Bush and his war cabinet would be wise to see the demonstrators as a clear sign that noticeable numbers of Americans no longer feel obliged to salute the administration’s plans because of the shock of Sept. 11 and that many harbor serious doubts about his march toward war.

The protesters are raising some nuanced questions in the name of patriotism about the premises, cost and aftermath of the war the president is contemplating. Millions of Americans who did not march share the concerns and have yet to hear Mr. Bush make a persuasive case that combat operations are the only way to respond to Saddam Hussein.

Other protests will be emphasizing civil disobedience in the name of Martin Luther King Jr. But any graphic moments to come of confrontation and arrest should be seen in the far broader context of the Capitol scene: peaceable throngs of mainstream Americans came forward demanding more of a dialogue from political leaders.

Mr. Bush and his aides, to their credit, welcomed the demonstrations as a healthy manifestation of American democracy at work. We hope that spirit will endure in the weeks ahead if differences deepen and a noisier antiwar movement develops.

These protests are the tip of a far broader sense of concern and lack of confidence in the path to war that seems to lie ahead.

It is the largest ground force identified so far among the nearly 100,000 U.S. troops included in deployment orders signed by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld since Christmas Eve. One of the first ground units to get orders was the 3rd Infantry Division’s two brigades in Georgia, which began shipping out in early January.

At Fort Hood, Texas, spokesman Cecil Green said 12,500 soldiers from the 4th Infantry Division, plus nearly 4,000 from the division’s 3rd Brigade at Fort Carson, Colo., received orders to deploy to the Central Command area of responsibility, which includes the Persian Gulf region.

The 4th Infantry Division will be the headquarters element of a Task Force Ironhorse, which also will have more than 20,000 soldiers from 10 other Army installations, for a total force of about 37,000 soldiers, Green said. He said he could not discuss other details, including the other units involved.

The only country in the Gulf where large numbers of American ground troops are assembling is Kuwait, which has at least 12,000 U.S. troops engaged in training for desert warfare. Turkey, to Iraq’s north, has been considering a U.S. request that it be permitted to base tens of thousands of ground forces there.

Separately, Rumsfeld dismissed suggestions that U.N. weapons inspectors would need months of additional time to determine whether Iraq is meeting its obligation to disarm.

“The U.N. resolution put the burden directly on Iraq to prove that it is disarming and that it does not have these weapons or, if it does, it is willing to give them up, “ Rumsfeld said in a speech to a Reserve Officers Association conference. “Thus far, Iraq has been unwilling to do so.”

While emphasizing that President Bush prefers a peaceful solution in Iraq, Rumsfeld said the way to avoid war is to be persuaded by Iraq that it has finally decided to cooperate with the U.N. weapons inspectors.

“It will not take months to determine whether or not they are cooperating,” he said.

Last Friday the U.N.’s top nuclear inspector, Mohamed ElBaradei, said “a few more months” of inspections would be worthwhile if it meant avoiding war.

Rumsfeld also dismissed the idea that the United States might be forced to act alone against Iraq if the U.N. Security Council does not authorize an offensive.

“Let there be no doubt, there are large numbers of countries that are signed up to be helpful in the event that force is needed in dealing with Iraq,” he said. “This business about going it alone or unilateral is nonsense. There are a substantial number of countries that are ready to help. There are also a number of countries that are ready to help after it’s over in terms of a coalition to assist with the humanitarian aspects of the country.”

January 19, 2003

8:30 a.m.

Most Americans want the United States to take more time seeking a peaceful solution in Iraq rather than moving quickly into a military confrontation, a new poll says.

By 60 percent to 35 percent, people in the Newsweek poll released Saturday they would prefer that the Bush administration allow more time to find an alternative to war.

Support for a military option would be strong, 81 percent, if the United States were to act with full allied support and the backing of the U.N. Security Council. A majority would be opposed should this country act without the support of the United Nations and had no more than one or two allies.

U.S. officials and their allies currently are discussing the appropriate timetable for military action against Iraq, which faces a U.N. demand that it abandon its weapons of mass destruction. Europeans are urging that President Bush give United Nations weapons inspectors more time.

The president’s job approval was at 56 percent in the Newsweek poll and 53 percent in a CNN-Time poll released over the weekend. His approval rate was in the 60s in both polls in November. According to the CNN-Time poll, the decline comes as a result of slightly higher disapproval among Republicans, independents and Democrats.

Half in the CNN-Time poll, 50 percent, said they approve Bush’s handling of foreign policy, while 42 percent disapprove. In July, before the administration began its public campaign about Iraq, 64 percent approved his handling of foreign policy.

People worry about the impact of the United States’ taking military action against Iraq. More than half in the Newsweek poll, 54 percent, said they expect it would cause serious divisions with allies. And more than two-thirds thought it would cause serious problems throughout the Arab countries and would cause Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to use biological or chemical weapons against Israel.

The CNN-Time poll of 1,010 adults was taken Jan. 15-16, and the Newsweek poll of 1,002 adults was taken Jan. 16-17. Both have error margins of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

The rest of Europe must be wondering whether Britain has gone into hibernation. At the end of this month our Prime Minister is likely to announce the decision he made months ago, that Britain will follow the US into Iraq.

If so, then two or three weeks later, the war will begin.

Unless the UN inspectors find something before January 27, this will be a war without even the flimsiest of pretexts: an unprovoked attack whose purpose is to enhance the wealth and power of an American kleptocracy.

Far from promoting peace, it could be the first in a series of imperial wars. The gravest global crisis since the end of the Cold War is three weeks away, and most of us seem to be asking why someone else doesn’t do something about it.

It is not often that the people of these islands have an opportunity to change the course of world events.

Bush knows that the Americans’ approval of his war depends, in part, upon its credibility overseas: opinion polls have shown that many of those who would support an international attack would withdraw that support if they perceived that the US was acting alone.

An international attack, in this case, means an attack supported by Britain. If Blair pulled out, Bush could be forced to think again. Blair will pull out only if he perceives that the political cost of sticking with Bush is greater than the cost of deserting him. Bush’s war, in other words, depends upon our indifference.

As Gramsci remarked, “what comes to pass does so not so much because a few people want it to happen, as because the mass of citizens abdicate their responsibility and let things be”.

There are several reasons why most British people do not seem prepared to act. New military technology has removed the need for a draft, so the otherwise unengaged young men who might have become the core of the resistance movement are left to blast imaginary enemies on their Gameboys.

The economy is still growing, so underlying resentment towards the government is muted; yet we perceive our jobs and prospects to be insecure, so we are reluctant to expose ourselves to trouble.

It also seems that many people who might have contested this war simply can’t believe it’s happening. If, paradoxically, we were facing a real threat from a real enemy, the debate would have seemed more urgent.

But if Blair had told us that we had to go to war to stop Saruman of Isengard from sending his orcs against the good people of Rohan, it would scarcely seem less plausible than the threat of Saddam of Iraq dropping bombs on America.

These factors may explain our feebleness. They don’t excuse it. It is true that our chances of stopping this war are slight: both men appear determined to proceed, with or without evidence or cause. But to imagine that protest is useless if it doesn’t lead to an immediate cessation is to misunderstand its purpose and power.

Even if we cannot stop the attack upon Iraq, we must ensure that it becomes so politically costly that there will never be another like it. And this means that the usual demos will no longer suffice.

There have, so far, been many well-organised and determined protests, and several more are planned over the next six weeks.

On January 18, demonstrators will seek to blockade the armed forces’ joint headquarters at Northwood, in North London.

Three days later, there’ll be a mass lobby of parliament; at 6pm on the day the war is announced, protesters will gather in almost every town centre in Britain.

On February 15, there’ll be a massive rally in London. These actions are critically important, as they’ll demonstrate the level of public opposition. But they’re unlikely, by themselves, to provoke one of Blair’s famous sweats. We must raise the temperature.

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament has already tried one bold and unprecedented measure: seeking to persuade the courts to rule that attacking Iraq without a new UN resolution would be illegal.

But on December 17th, the judges decided that they do not have the power to interpret the existing resolution. It seems that we now have few options but to launch a massive, though non-violent, campaign of disruption.

CND and the Stop the War Coalition have suggested an hour’s stoppage on the day after the war begins. Many activists are now talking about building on this, and seeking to provoke wider strike action, or even a general strike.

This is, of course, difficult and dangerous. Some general strikes have been effective, forcing the tsar to agree to a constitution and a legislative assembly in 1905, for example, reversing the Kapp Putsch in Berlin in 1920, and overthrowing the Khuri regime in Lebanon in 1952.

Others have been counter-productive, in some cases disastrous. When the French general strike was broken in 1920, the labour movement all but collapsed.

Mussolini used the announcement of a general strike in 1922 to represent himself as the only man capable of restoring order; he seized power, with the king’s blessing, after the fascists had routed the strikers and burnt down the Socialist Party headquarters. If we call for a strike and almost everyone goes to work, Blair will see this as a sign that he can do as he pleases.

But this is the scale on which we should be thinking. If we cannot mobilise the workforce, there are still plenty of means of concentrating politicians’ minds.

We could, for example, consider blocking the roads down which Blair and his key ministers must travel to meet their appointments, disrupting the speeches they make and blockading the most important public buildings.

Hundreds of us are likely to be arrested, but that, as the Vietnam protesters found, serves only to generate public interest. Non-violence, however, is critical: nothing did more harm to the anti-war movement in the late 1960s than the Days of Rage organised in Chicago by the Weathermen.

But peaceful, well-focused and widespread nuisance, even if it irritates other members of the public, forces the issue to the front of people’s minds, and ensures that no one can contemplate the war without also contemplating the opposition to the war.

We must oblige people to recognise that something unprecedented in recent times is taking place, that Bush, assisted by Blair’s moral slipstreaming, is seeking to summon a war from a largely peaceful world. We will fail unless we stage a political drama commensurate with the scale of the threat.

All this will, of course, be costly. But there comes a point at which political commitment is meaningless unless you are prepared to act on it. According to the latest opinion poll, some 42{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} of British people – against the 38{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} who support it – want to stop this war. But if our action is confined to shaking our heads at the television set, Blair might as well have a universal mandate. Are you out there? Or are you waiting for someone else to act on your behalf?

Details of the actions already planned can be found at www.stopwar.org.uk