Antiwar.com Blog

As Antiwar.com holds our quarterly fundraising drive, the US military announces its plans for the upcoming quarter as well.

Major General Rick Lynch promises us an increase in US soldiers being killed in Iraq, primarily a result of the latest troop surge. Major General William Caldwell reminds us that things will also likely get even worse for the Iraqi people.

Is this the same surge that was supposedly going to be a major turning point in the American occupation of Iraq? Because it seems to me that a rising body count and an ever worsening situation for the Iraqi populace is essentially the same thing they’ve been giving us for the last four years.

On my radio show May 7th, I spoke with former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel, who made a big splash April 26th at the first debate among Democrats seeking the nomination for president when he said that the “top tier” candidates all “frighten” him with their “all options must remain on the table for dealing with Iran” rhetoric and with his proposal to make it a felony for the president to continue the occupation of Iraq.

“Some of these people [the other candidates] frighten me. When you have mainline candidates that turn around and say “there’s nothing off the table with respect to Iran. That’s code for using nukes, nuclear devices. I’ve got to tell you, if I’m President of the United States, there will be no preemptive wars with nuclear devices. In my mind, it’s immoral, and it’s been immoral for the last 50 years as part of American foreign policy. …

“How do you get out? You pass the law, not a resolution, a law making it a felony to stay there.”

You can watch the debate on the Web or you can read the transcript here. Just Senator Gravel here.

I gave him an hour to elaborate on these ideas and others, including how the Iraq war has strengthened Iran’s position in the Middle East, their nuclear program, his proposal for opening friendly relations rather than threatening them, the neoconservatives’ doctrine of global hegemony, his plan for direct democracy and the U.S. military’s war against their veterans.

You can listen by clicking here. (58:54)

Senator Gravel enlisted in the U.S. Army (1951-54) and served as special adjutant in the Communication Intelligence Services and as a Special Agent in the Counter Intelligence Corps. He received a B.S. in Economics from Columbia University, New York City, and holds four honorary degrees in law and public affairs.

Mike Gravel served in the Alaska House of Representatives from 1963-66, and as Speaker from 1965-66. He then represented Alaska in the U.S. Senate from 1969-81. He served on the Finance, Interior, and Environmental and Public Works committees, chairing the Energy, Water Resources, Buildings and Grounds, and Environmental Pollution subcommittees.

In 1971, he waged a successful one-man filibuster for five months that forced the Nixon administration to cut a deal, effectively ending the draft in the United States. He is most prominently known for his release of the Pentagon Papers, the secret official study that revealed the lies and manipulations of successive U.S. administrations that misled the country into the Vietnam War. After the New York Times published portions of the leaked study, the Nixon administration moved to block any further publication of information and to punish any newspaper publisher who revealed the contents.

From the floor of the senate, Gravel (a junior senator at the time) insisted that his constituents had a right to know the truth behind the war and proceeded to read 4,100 pages of the 7,000 page document into the senate record. The Supreme Court ultimately ruled that Senator Gravel did not have the right and responsibility to share official documents with his constituents.

He then published The Senator Gravel Edition, The Pentagon Papers, Beacon Press (1971). This publication resulted in litigation, Gravel v. U.S., resulting in a landmark Supreme Court decision (No. 71-1017-1026) relative to the Speech and Debate Clause (Article 1, Section 6) of the United States Constitution.

He has worked as a cab driver in New York City, a clerk on Wall Street and as a brakeman on the Alaska Railroad. He founded and served as president of The Democracy Foundation, Philadelphia II, and Direct Democracy, nonprofit corporations dedicated to the establishment of direct democracy in the United States through the enactment of the National Initiative for Democracy by American voters.

Other books authored by Senator Gravel are Jobs and More Jobs, and Citizen Power. He lectures and writes about governance, foreign affairs, economics, Social Security, tax reform, energy, environmental issues and democracy.

Former Alaska Senator and Democratic Presidential Candidate Mike Gravel discusses his plan for the Congress to criminalize the Iraq war, the cowardice of the Congress, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards’s aggressive position against Iran, his proposal for opening of friendly relations with them instead, how the Iraq war has strengthened Iran’s position in the region, the neoconservatives’ doctrine of global hegemony, Iran’s nuclear program, his plan for direct democracy and the U.S. military’s war against their veterans.

MP3 here. (58:54)

Senator Gravel enlisted in the U.S. Army (1951-54) and served as special adjutant in the Communication Intelligence Services and as a Special Agent in the Counter Intelligence Corps. He received a B.S. in Economics from Columbia University, New York City, and holds four honorary degrees in law and public affairs.

Mike Gravel served in the Alaska House of Representatives from 1963-66, and as Speaker from 1965-66. He then represented Alaska in the U.S. Senate from 1969-81. He served on the Finance, Interior, and Environmental and Public Works committees, chairing the Energy, Water Resources, Buildings and Grounds, and Environmental Pollution subcommittees.

In 1971, he waged a successful one-man filibuster for five months that forced the Nixon administration to cut a deal, effectively ending the draft in the United States. He is most prominently known for his release of the Pentagon Papers, the secret official study that revealed the lies and manipulations of successive U.S. administrations that misled the country into the Vietnam War. After the New York Times published portions of the leaked study, the Nixon administration moved to block any further publication of information and to punish any newspaper publisher who revealed the contents.

From the floor of the senate, Gravel (a junior senator at the time) insisted that his constituents had a right to know the truth behind the war and proceeded to read 4,100 pages of the 7,000 page document into the senate record. The Supreme Court ultimately ruled that Senator Gravel did not have the right and responsibility to share official documents with his constituents.

He then published The Senator Gravel Edition, The Pentagon Papers, Beacon Press (1971). This publication resulted in litigation, Gravel v. U.S., resulting in a landmark Supreme Court decision (No. 71-1017-1026) relative to the Speech and Debate Clause (Article 1, Section 6) of the United States Constitution.

He has worked as a cab driver in New York City, a clerk on Wall Street and as a brakeman on the Alaska Railroad. He founded and served as president of The Democracy Foundation, Philadelphia II, and Direct Democracy, nonprofit corporations dedicated to the establishment of direct democracy in the United States through the enactment of the National Initiative for Democracy by American voters.

Books authored by Senator Gravel are Jobs and More Jobs, and Citizen Power. He lectures and writes about governance, foreign affairs, economics, Social Security, tax reform, energy, environmental issues and democracy.

I turn on the television. Somehow, I must have slept longer than I thought. It’s already the middle of 2008 and the presidential debates are going on.

The Democrat is Mike Gravel, and he’s attacking the war. He is saying he wants to pull out of Iraq immediately. He promises never to preemptively nuke Iran. How did he get the nomination?

The Republican on stage is Ron Paul. He agrees with Gravel. He wants to go further and end the US foreign policy of imperialism and constant world policing altogether.

I’m surprised to see the Libertarian, Green and Constitution Party represented in the debate, too. Amazingly, all three of them are against the war and want America’s troops to come home. Fortunately, the Libertarians actually nominated a libertarian and not a warmonger, as is always my fear.

I wake up, disappointed. What a wonderful dream, though: The national political scene mostly staging a debate over domestic policy, where everyone agrees for once that the US should stop trying to rule the whole world.

Well, the United States used to have more of a non-interventionist consensus. There was a time both major parties eschewed international imperialism, as opposed to both supporting it. A dedication to peace with all nations once united Americans from across the spectrum.

The government does what it does with the tacit consent of the people. Unfortunately, public ideology has become imperialist. The right has become plagued at various times by Cold War belligerence and then later by neocon fantasies of democratic internationalism. The left has long been inconsistent, favoring many wars, especially Democratic ones, in the name of democratization and human rights.

But ideology is changing, and eventually the politics will reflect it. As Alexander Cockburn notes, only Gravel and Paul get it: Americans are getting sick of the war. Sooner or later, the major parties will have to bend to this trend if it continues.

Antiwar ideology relies on information and communication. Thank goodness for Antiwar.com, which has done so much to show people everywhere the truth about US foreign policy. It is impossible to measure exactly the influence of any one antiwar writer or activist, but without Antiwar.com, constantly speaking truth to the war power, constantly keeping the hawks in check, I am confident we’d be much worse off.

Ideas will eventually be what kicks the war party out of power, and gives voters a choice of at least one major peace candidate. One day, the American consensus might once again be pro-peace and it will be harder to drag the nation on a crazed war based on lies and utopian fantasies.

Help Antiwar.com move the country in that direction. We are coming at a crossroads for America, where the public can reassess our disastrous foreign policy, or be duped by a whole new slate of propaganda for a war with Iran. It really is up to getting the information out there. Help AWC do its great work for peace at this crucial time.

Last week, it was announced that NATO’s anti-Taliban raids in Kandahar province had killed approximately 50 civilians. Afghan President Hamid Karzai, for his part, let it be known that he is ‘losing patience’ with all the civilians NATO has been killing. As the US simultaneously denied that any such thing had happened and promised to look into it and insisted that it was entirely the Taliban’s fault, NATO officials insisted that in the future they would try to keep the civilian massacres to a minimum.

Needless to say, this is quite a messy situation. Italian Foreign Minister Massimo D’Alema warned that the civilian death toll could cost the US the support of Afghanistan’s civilian population (to the extent they ever had it). This is one of those situations that needs to be treated with kid gloves.

Fast forward to Friday, and Afghan officials say that days after the initial killings: the very day NATO promised to be more careful in the future in fact, a US bombing attack killed 13 more civilians. Needless to say, the Pentagon once again had no information that such an incident had ever taken place, but they promised to look into it… again.

Right about now, a lot of you are probably thinking this story sounds kind of familiar. In fact, it happens with surprising regularity, the civilian body counts, the initial denial, the eventually admissions, Karzai’s mock outrage, even the part where NATO promises to make wholesale changes so it doesn’t happen again.

What efforts NATO has actually undertaken in the past (or will undertake in the present incident) I’m not sure, but one thing is painfully obviously to the civilian population living under their occupation, it’s not good enough. NATO troops have killed civilians in at least 12 separate reported incidents in 2007 alone: their bodycount since this ill-conceived war began must simply be astronomical. Most of us manage to get through our entire lives without slaughtering dozens of innocent villagers: is it to much to ask that NATO manage to go more than a few weeks in-between atrocities?

Three more names have just been added to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC—thirty-two years after the war ended. One was actually killed by “friendly fire” in 1966. The other two died recently from wounds they received during the Vietnam War. There are probably hundreds of additional  names that could be added, but Victims of Agent Orange and suicides from PTSD are not eligible. The total number of names inscribed on “The Wall” is now 58,256. And what did they die for? They died for the same thing that U.S. soldiers are currently dying for in Iraq—a lie.

Will U.S. soldiers still be dying thirty years from now because of the wounds they received in Iraq? Will we still have troops in Iraq in thirty years? Why not? We still have troops in Japan, Germany, and Korea.