Antiwar.com Blog

On Wednesday, in my hometown of Austin, Texas, I took part in a march of – my best guess – a thousand or so people, from the Texas state capital building to city hall, where we met up with the buses from Cindy Sheehan’s Bring Them Home Now Bus Tour. It was a quite impressive turnout, even for an Austin protest, and there wasn’t much publicity beforehand.

There are 3 separate bus tours: one southern, one central, and one northern. All are headed to Washington DC for the antiwar rally the weekend of the 26th of September. (All the info you need is at bringthemhomenowtour.org)

Many protesters and speakers pointed out, as Paul Craig Roberts has detailed, the disaster in Louisiana would be much less had George Bush not sent the national guard units to Iraq to die. Their job is moving sandbags, rescuing people and suppressing looting in just such situations.

Now he will claim credit for helping.

Local populist rabble rouser Jim Hightower gave an entertaining speech. Though he seems to support every type of welfare/regulatory scheme the politicians can imagine, I give the man credit, he is consistently antiwar.

Turning tables on Bush’s childlike rhetoric, Sheehan said that he could “run but not hide” from her. Now, if I were some lowlife, scumbag, Republican, bootlicking, Smithers type, I would advise my masters to take her seriously. She made it very plain that having lost a son, she no longer has any other passion than the end of this war, and is beyond having any fear of what might happen to her.

In her speech, Cindy attacked the hollow slogans Bush relies on to fool fools into believing in his war:

Complete the mission, honor the sacrifice of those who have lost. Translation: Because we got a bunch of people killed, we have to keep getting them killed.

Fight for freedom and Democracy. The Democracy elected the Ayatollah’s men. No freedom there.

Apparently, not even Bush is stupid enough at this point to cite anything but abstractions. The last time he tried to stick to excuses that exist, he told Israeli TV (remember the “All options are on the table” for dealing with Iran story from a few weeks back?) that Saddam “refused to disarm” and harbored Abu Nidal who was not Al Qaeda, and died in 2002. Someone must’ve pulled Bush’s choke chain, because it’s been pure “finish the mission,” “fight for freedom” crap since then.

Cindy Sheehan has a question for congress now too:

“How many more of our innocent lives and innocent Iraqi lives are you going to be willing to sacrifice for lies?”

Next stop, Tom Delay’s office in Houston. Though he is far too cowardly to go toe to toe with this 100 pound woman, it’ll be worth the trip because they’re taking all the extra food and provisions from Camp Casey, and donating it to Katrina evacuees stranded at the Astrodome.

This stupid war and other factors have conspired to raise gas prices to extraordinary levels. The Cindy Sheehan, “What noble cause?” movement at this point seems to really be gaining steam it would be a shame for them to run out of gas. Go here to donate. Support Cindy Sheehan! She is the lightning rod for the antiwar movement, and needs your help.

Side note – Lawrence of Arabia is playing at the Paramount.

Previous Camp Casey blog entries here and here

Following Pat Robertson’s call for the assassination of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, the station ‘ABC Family’ has apparently decided to run a new disclaimer at the end of the 700 Club’s broadcasts. The previous message read “The preceding program was brought to you by CBN.”; the new message goes like this; “The preceding CBN telecast does not reflect the views of ABC Family.” There are screenshots here.
I think it should read “The preceding program did not contain any serious demands for political assassination. No really it didn’t. DON’T LAUGH.”, or perhaps “The preceding program was not intended for an audience over the age of 6”.

Via James Wolcott, this prewar letter to the president from boy neocon John Podhoretz:

There’s a luscious double trap in starting the war as soon as possible, Mr. President. Your enemies are delirious with excitement about the corporate-greed scandals and the effect they might have on your popularity and the GOP’s standing in November.

If you get troops on the ground quickly, they will go berserk. Incautious Democrats and liberal pundits will shriek that you’ve gone to war solely to protect yourself from the corporate-greed scandal. They will forget the lesson they so quickly learned after Sept. 11, which is that at a time of war the American people want their political leaders to stand together.

Your enemies will hurl ugly accusations at you, Mr. President. And at least one of them will be true – the accusation that you began the war when you did for political reasons.

But that won’t matter. It won’t matter to the American people, and it won’t matter as far as history is concerned. History will record that you and the U.S. military brought an end to a barbaric regime on its way to threatening the world.

Luscious: to a glutton all experiences are gustatory, I suppose. Though “experience” might be the wrong word to describe savoring mass death and destruction on Fox News from the comfort of one’s recliner.

Hey, Democrats: ready to show your party pride? If so, this T-shirt is a must-have: “Truman Dropped the Bomb.” Via Radley Balko, who suggests some other slogans for the worst opposition party in the history of democracy:

Front: “My Lai?” Back: “Brought to You by the Johnson Administration.”

Front: “Who’s Gonna’ Stand Up to China?” Back: “Our President Blew Up Their Embassy.”

Front: “Don’t Mess With the Left.” Back: ” We’ll Bomb Your Damned Aspirin Factories, Too”

I woke this morning to terrible news: Jude Wanniski is dead of a heart attack. He was 69.

Jude was one of the leading ex-conservatives who had turned antiwar, and hard-core antiwar at that. His writings had been among the strongest antiwar articles featured in conservative publications. Earlier this month, Jude wrote a wonderful article urging people to support Antiwar.com.

Jude coined the term “supply-side economics.” Along with economist Arthur Laffer (of the Laffer Curve fame), Jude shaped modern-day conservative economics and influenced leaders including Ronald Reagan, Jack Kemp and Steve Forbes. He was author of the 1978 book The Way the World Works,” named one of the 100 most influential books of the 20th century by the editors of the National Review. At the heart of the book is his 1978 discovery of the cause of the 1929 stock market crash, a discovery that vindicates the classical economics, which had been blamed for the crash and the Great Depression. He writings over many years appears on his Web sites, Wanniksi.com and Polyconomics. You can also read his writings on Antiwar.com and LewRockwell.com, and listen to his radio interviews with Scott Horton.

Read his obituary.

He was one of the true conservatives who refused to abandon his principles when world events and the neocons brought pressure to bear.

We at Antiwar.com mourn the loss of Jude: we will miss him a lot.

My radio show has moved to a new time (Saturdays 5-7pm), and my Weekend Interview Show fundraiser is doing rather well so far. (Any help from fans of the show is greatly appreciated.)

Saturday afternoon I went to Dr. Ron Paul‘s birthday party / fundraiser and had a fun time. The barbecue was great, I got to speak with the congressman again briefly, see some old friends and meet a bunch of good folks from Dr. Paul’s congressional office. In his speech, Dr. Paul emphasized congress’s total disregard for the US constitution, the role of the internet in spreading ideas of individual liberty, the warfare state’s dependence on inflationary fiat currency to disguise its true costs and the reason for suicide terrorism: foreign occupation. The best part was that I finally had the chance to meet that “implacable foe of the warfare state,” Lew Rockwell.

On Sunday, I hitched a ride with two local concerned citizens (of which there is no shortage in Austin, TX) up to Camp Casey.

Notes on Camp Casey II

As I set out with my trusty tape recorder in hand (Thanks Mike (in Tokyo)!) among the supporters of Cindy Sheehan’s effort to call Bush out on his lies at the new Camp Casey, I was floored by the scene. Having only been to the first camp on a Monday and Tuesday two weeks ago, I was amazed to see at least 1,500 people of all descriptions set up under giant tents with wi-fi, live radio broadcasts (bradblog was in his 38th hour of coverage when I met him) and professional catering. The protest has come along way in a very short time. Though I didn’t get a chance to speak with Sheehan this time, IVAW, the Iraq Veterans Against the War, was there in force.

David Lewis is an Army Reserve specialist from Binghamton New York. He was in Iraq for 11 months, and still has 3 years left in his contract. He wanted to come down to support Cindy Sheehan, but since he couldn’t afford it, he decided to contact IVAW to see about setting up something to show support in his hometown. They instead flew him out to Texas to take part. David never trusted Bush, and never believed the war against Iraq was legitimate. While briefly home on leave before the war, he did his “homework” and had his suspicions confirmed. Lewis now faces the likely prospect of another tour in a war he has known from the start was based on lies. Though he opposes it, he says he can’t file for conscientious objector status because they might make him pay back the money they’ve already given him for education. Money which he fears he could never pay off.

Perhaps this is why Murray Rothbard called it the “warfare/welfare state.”

IVAW’s Jimmy Massey is a former Marine corps staff sergeant from Waynesville, North Carolina. He was part of the original invasion force in 2003. Massey says he he planned to spend a career in the Marines, but after a short amount of time “in country,” he was honorably discharged as “80% percent disabled.” The man looked in shape, and I had a guess where this was going when I asked him to elaborate. Massey has what they call post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). As I learned from the great George Carlin, post-traumatic stress disorder is the third generation euphemism for shell shock – the one they came up with after after “battle fatigue” and “operational exhaustion” had apparently been determined to still be too harsh. As Carlin said, “The pain is completely buried under jargon.” According to Massey, his shell-shock symptoms include: major depression, hyperactivity, nightmares mixed with insomnia, feelings of desperate isolation and fear – all on a daily basis. The worst part he said was the flashbacks. He has nightmares all night, and daydreams all day; flashing pictures in his mind’s eye of the “horrors and realities” and “lack of humanity displayed” by his fellow soldiers against the civilian population of Iraq.

The Department of Veterans Affairs as been helpful to Jimmy Massey, but he says that he is one of the fortunate ones. Fortunate because he had already started showing signs of his condition while in Iraq, and the psych-test questionnaire they had him fill out before leaving reflected that. Every soldier who leaves Iraq must fill out these forms, and, according to Massey, any soldiers who starts having flashbacks, nightmares etc. after coming home are written off by the military. “Oh, now you’re sick? – Tough sh*t pal you’re faking it.” Support the Troops, huh? Obviously, this practice disguises the true numbers of traumatized soldiers, which the state admits is at least a third and now the sick bastards at the DoD want to “review” – that is, deny – the cases they’ve admitted to thus far! Massey said that having seen the things he had over there, it is hard for him to believe that anyone could have been to the Iraq war and not have some of these same problems. And, of course, he reminds me, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, not only from their experience in this war, but dating back to when America started bombing that country in 1991, suffer from the same sort of condition.

So what broke this career marine so thoroughly? It happened, he said, the first time he killed a group of civilians at a checkpoint. They didn’t stop at the right spot, so Massey says, he and his comrades “discharged our weapons.” At the moment he realized what they’d done, Massey says, he “got a conscience,” and all the power the US military’s patriotic rhetoric had over this man’s mind was gone. That was the beginning of the end for Massey’s stay in the Iraq and the marines. The killing of civilians in this fashion at checkpoints in Iraq is, according to this witness and a simple google search, a “common story.” Johns Hopkins University and the British medical journal Lancet have estimated that as many as 100,000 Iraqi civilians have lost their lives due to this war. How many Iraqi humans, whether wounded themselves or having had members of their families wounded or killed deal with the same nightmares as Jimmy Massey? It’s his question, and a good one. Massey now travels the world, speaking out against war, as a true believer in the Greatness of American power, turned steadfast opponent of war and its consequences.

So there I sit near Bush’s photo-op church, hearing stories of men’s lives being risked for no reason, I wonder how the hell Americans ever fall for their politicians lies. How many soldiers have come home from war, knowing the very non-Hollywood reality and uselessness of combat, only to send their sons off to die in the next one?

For all the idiots with your stupid emails, don’t bother unless you have an answer to Cindy’s question: What Noble Cause?