My "left-leaning" friends had persuaded me that "right-leaning" folk are successful at spreading their message because they know they how to tow the party line, how to follow, and how to obey. And that this is unlike those of us on the "left" who march to our own tune, squabble for meager media attention, and splinter off to form smaller and less effective groups when challenges arise.
So it is with rueful pleasure that I read Kenneth Vogel's article, "Tea Partyers Turn on Each Other." He writes, "a seemingly potent and growing political force, the tea party movement has become embroiled in internal feuding over philosophy, strategy and money and is at risk of losing its momentum."
and
“These groups don’t play as well together as they should...“They’re fractured at the organization level...mainly because there are a lot of people who have not had managerial experience who [suddenly] are thrust into the limelight and become intoxicated with it. And when a potential rift comes up, instead of handling it and maybe agreeing to disagree, they splinter and go off on their own.”
Welcome to the real world of activism, Tea Partyers!
Nevertheless, I am impressed with the right's ability to rally their troops.. Notice how quickly they replaced the term "Tea Baggers" with "Tea Partyers". Didn't take long for word spread that they'd named themselves after a high school bullying tactic: tea bagging refers to someone stronger lowering his testicles -- tea bags -- into a victim's mouth.
Since Obama's election we've seen the "right-wing" increasingly use "left-wing" tactics: creating signs and banners, forming networks of like-minded who fill the streets when called, and protesting with gusto. (Some of my friends ask: "do WE look like that?" Well, yes, we do...we just add more color.)
What can the “right" and the “left" learn from these experiences?
One thing is to recognize what I call "our mutual complex humanity."
We, the people have reached the cul de sac of "westward expansion." We have nowhere else to go. We must turn around and face...ourselves. Then we can begin the real work of recognizing our complex mutual humanity...and cop to our innate glory...and vainglory, intoxication with self, denial, egotism, and our less-than-perfect traits that cross political boundaries.
Despite the gloom about Obama's performance to date – change? what change? -- the man is correct about the need for 'bi-partisanship' (or whatever you call a very necessary coming together to work out differences). His ideals are humane but he avoids a central tenet of American culture: it does not promote self-reflection or collaboration. Indeed, the way in which he/his administration addresses our domestic threats communicates the opposite: grab what you can for you and yours...and tea-bag the rest.
The beauty – and the horror – of being human is that it cannot be sold by an advertising agency or purchased from WalMart. It comes only with hard work, practice, and deep acceptance and understanding. It is time for all of us -- right/left and “evil doers”/”do gooders”, and other dualistic separators – to face ourselves, our neighbors, and our mutual predicament . A tea party that addresses our cultural underpinnings is a good beginning.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Melissa - Raped! -- For Band of Buddies War Series
MELISSA stopped drinking water in the early afternoon so she didn’t have to walk to the latrines after dark. Women were being raped by members of their own battalion and she didn’t want to risk that. She knew the risk of dehydration in 120 degree heat but … raped by fellow troops? Wasn’t going to happen to her.
Some women joked about it but these came from fear of peeing. One said, “Hell, if I dehydrate at least I won’t be afraid of fellow Americans in the infirmary.”
Six years ago she’d joined the National Guard and her contract stipulated she’d never be in combat. She’d really believed she’d be building roads and fighting fires in Montana while saving money for college. Even without the risk of rape, life was a far cry from the recruiter’s promise: “You’ll build houses and orphanages. The Iraqis will love you and greet you with flowers and candy.”
Instead, she'd been stuck in a Humvee gun turret and she’d seen combat...she’d even killed people. Not to mention the tanks and armored vehicles, strewn in the road with bodies still inside. Worse, when she asked why the bodies were still there she learned people were afraid to approach because of chemical contaminants and depleted uranium. She’d been told, “Just don’t breathe the red dust”—but she wasn’t given a mask or protective equipment.
It finally happened because one woman actually died of dehydration and Melissa had stupidly thought things had been tightened up. She and her friend went to the latrines and both were attacked. Through the blanket thrown over her head Melissa heard her friend screaming but no one heard them over the sound of the generators. Then the tearing and the raping with her arms and head held so tight she couldn’t fight back.
Her friend wouldn’t file a complaint. “What good is that? The brass never do anything. No, I’ll take the medical care but I’m not filing a complaint.”
Her friend was so sure of the outcome of a formal complaint that Melissa wondered if she’d been through this before....
(I create the War Series -- mask and accompanying story -- to share the reality of war as I believe too many stories are not being told. The details in this story come from the story Brig. Col. Janis Karpinski shared with investigators regarding Abu Ghraib.)
See other pieces in the Family of War Series:
Daniel, Deployed! - Band of Buddies Series
Ryan, Recruited! - Band of Buddies Series
Bob, Burned in Combat
Luis, Corporate Warrior
Jerry and Candy, family of war
Governor Goldie Myron
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Way to go, Max Cleland....
Max Cleland, the secretary of the American Battle Monuments Commission, was a Democratic senator from Georgia from 1997 to 2003. He is the author, with Ben Raines, of “Heart of a Patriot: How I Found the Courage to Survive Vietnam, Walter Reed and Karl Rove.”
His op ed in the NY Times today is excellent.
The Forever War of the Mind
His op ed in the NY Times today is excellent.
The Forever War of the Mind
Daniel - Deployed! -- Band of Buddies War Series
DANIEL was on the radio at a FOB near Ramadi and Fallujah when the engineer unit called in a “sit rep”: several men had been hit by an IED explosion. Three were dead and two expectant, meaning they wouldn’t survive. The medics and Centurion tried to get a helicopter in the air but that got scratched: the military doesn’t put a bird up unless someone has a chance of surviving.
Daniel hoped they died quickly; there wasn’t much left of their M113 light armored tank, basically an aluminum can on a track: the largest piece was the rear ramp and the engine block, but the recovery crew didn’t need the M88 to lift anything. Over 500 lbs of explosives had been set and that much could have disabled an M1 Abrams tank. At the funeral ceremony Daniel figured that counting those five, they’d lost around 20 soldiers and officers since they’d arrived in Iraq.
Col. C. of Devil 6 came for the occasion, along with the 1st Engineers LTC and higher-level people. Daniel felt pretty cynical that those folks only came when it involved death but never came to see their toughest guys in action.
Actually, Daniel was getting pretty cynical overall: heck, he’d heard the guys in Fallujah were scared to do nighttime missions which was why IEDs exploded outside the gates each morning and why giant truck bombs rocked Champion base and Camp Junction City.
He didn’t write home anymore; how could he tell his family they were hurting bad, supply lines were compromised because of increased attacks, they’d lost services and supplies -- fuel, water, and food – and convoys got hit on the highways and back routes.
Everyone was scared to bring fuel up to the FOB; they were cutting back on everything including food because there wasn’t fuel to cook with. They ate MRE lunches and soon they’d be eating MRE dinners. The guys who delivered water hadn’t shown up.
What’ll happen when the extra 600 soldiers from 1st Armored Division arrived? Life was hard enough without extra guys making it worse.
(I created this piece with accompanying story to share the reality of war - holding that too many stories are not being told. The details in this story come from a young man deployed to combat after being told by his recruiter that he'd "never be sent to Iraq, no way, dude!")
See other pieces in the Family of War Series:
Daniel, Deployed! - Band of Buddies Series
Ryan, Recruited! - Band of Buddies Series
Bob, Burned in Combat
Luis, Corporate Warrior
Jerry and Candy, family of war
Governor Goldie Myron
Friday, November 6, 2009
Response from H Rep. Pete Stark on HR 867 - and the two-state non-solution
I wrote my representative, Pete Stark, and urged him to vote against HR 867. He responded,
Thank you for writing in opposition to H. Res. 867. I voted against the resolution, but it passed the House 344-36.
The Goldstone Report was commissioned by the United Nations in order to investigate alleged human rights violations occurring in Israel, specifically the Gaza strip. The goal of this commission was well-intentioned and their report shed some light on the severity of the ongoing conflict in Israel. I believe that both Palestine and Israel have committed wrongdoings against one another, and ultimately their people are the ones that suffer the consequences. Condemning the report because you do not like the outcome is completely unjustifiable and will not help rectify the current issues facing Israel and Palestine. Sustainable peace will only be reached with security for Israel and dignity for the Palestinian people. A two-state solution will be built on a foundation of good faith and honest commitment to peace.
Sincerely,
Pete Stark, Member of Congress
Good on Pete Stark. However, a two-state situation already exists and it untenable. This whole discussion about a two-state "solution" maintains the status-quo while settlements continue to be built in areas that would fall to Palestinians IF there were a two-state solution. It is a sham and a place holder while the "real" work goes on... usurping all Palestinian land for Eretz Israel.
Thank you for writing in opposition to H. Res. 867. I voted against the resolution, but it passed the House 344-36.
The Goldstone Report was commissioned by the United Nations in order to investigate alleged human rights violations occurring in Israel, specifically the Gaza strip. The goal of this commission was well-intentioned and their report shed some light on the severity of the ongoing conflict in Israel. I believe that both Palestine and Israel have committed wrongdoings against one another, and ultimately their people are the ones that suffer the consequences. Condemning the report because you do not like the outcome is completely unjustifiable and will not help rectify the current issues facing Israel and Palestine. Sustainable peace will only be reached with security for Israel and dignity for the Palestinian people. A two-state solution will be built on a foundation of good faith and honest commitment to peace.
Sincerely,
Pete Stark, Member of Congress
Good on Pete Stark. However, a two-state situation already exists and it untenable. This whole discussion about a two-state "solution" maintains the status-quo while settlements continue to be built in areas that would fall to Palestinians IF there were a two-state solution. It is a sham and a place holder while the "real" work goes on... usurping all Palestinian land for Eretz Israel.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
No surprise on the House's support of Ros-Lehtinen/Berman resolution
(I'm finding it hard to place this article with progressive online publishers ... Is it the content d'you think?.)
Oy vey! So, what's new? Ros-Lehtinen/Berman resolution 867 passed: 344-36.
That it did so with such a wide margin is a bit surprising...certainly craven...and shameful. After all, this nonbinding resolution merely urged Obama and Clinton to oppose unequivocally any endorsement of the Goldstone report. If ever there's a time to placate the progressive population – and lose very little in doing so – a nonbinding resolution is it!
Given Congress, the Pentagon, and mainstream America's ongoing and uncritical support for Israel and its policies, what is new is Anti-Defamation League's Abe Foxman was threatened enough by the possibility of the House not backing H.R. 867 that he called on Judge Goldstone to repudiate his report.
Said Abe to the Judge: “I have had great respect for you over the years. Your work at the head of the South Africa Reconciliation Commission and in helping to find a just solution to the Bosnian conflict deserves the highest commendation....I know you to be a proud Jew who serves on the Board of Trustees of Hebrew University and who has a daughter living in Israel...[and] the Human Rights Council has repeatedly demonstrated its bias against Israel...”
When has the House, or the Senate, ever let Foxman and his friends down? This is the same Foxman who denies the Armenian genocide, who believes that issue should be resolved between Turks and Armenians, and who works behind the scenes to defeat a fair hearing about that genocide in Congress.
Ironically, at a San Francisco Jewish Community Center for a recent book event, Foxman said, “No one can dictate to you to use the word that you want us to use. We will use the words that we feel comfortable with.”
Accordingly, Foxman feels comfortable making thoughtful Jews feel uncomfortable with words such as anti-Semite, self-hating Jew, Israel-threatening Jew, Israel-bashing Jew, and so on.
Author and medical doctor Alice Rothchild grew up as a good American Jewish girl and came of age to the dominant narrative of Israel as heroic, courageous, standing bravely against all odds.... Since then, believing what her eyes show her, she's changed her views about the situation. This effort to grow, learn, and change one's mind based on new information is essential to adulthood. But it landed Rothchild on the Jewish S.H.I.T List, an alphabetized roll-call of more than seven thousand so-called Self-Hating and/or Israel-Threatening Jews.
In a recent radio interview I asked her about the moral underpinnings of her work.
She said, “One big moral dilemma for me is how the American Jewish community blindly supports everything the Israeli government does. My question is, what is the role of US Jews and the United States in this conflict? While it is difficult to paint American Jewry with one broad brush stroke, for the most part mainstream American Jewry walks in line with Israeli policy no matter what it does. It is very intolerant of any critical dissent. That is bad for us...and it is bad for Israel.”
She continues, “I believe that if we American Jews see our brothers and sisters in Israel doing things that we find morally indefensible, we have to say something. If we don't, it is bad for them...and it is bad for us. Let's face it, it doesn't get any better than having a Zionist, Jewish South African human rights lawyer like Goldstone reporting these facts. For the Jewish community to come down so heavily on his report makes me want to cry. For, if we don't face up to what is in this report, we as Jews and as Israelis are going to lose any moral credibility in the world.”
Rothchild makes a compelling analogy. “Just as we in the United States are made stronger by facing up to our history of slavery, the civil rights struggle – all the things that we are ashamed of in our history – Jews and Israelis need to do too.”
Rothchild concludes, “The US government sends Israel billions of dollars of aid every year...and for what? There is a huge intermix of the two military establishments. They try out our weapons, they do all our dirty work... Once you start researching this stuff it is very disturbing. It is a dangerous relationship and it raises difficult moral questions for all of us.”
Apparently, it raises no moral question for 344 members of the US House. Or Abe Foxman.
I imagine the day when that S.H.I.T. list becomes a roll call that honors the people whose courage and steadfast morality helped turn the tide in Israel/Palestine.
Meanwhile, Let's see what Obama and Clinton do. I'm afraid there will be no surprise there either. Oy vey!
(BTW, I grew up in apartheid South Africa, lived in Israel from 1975-1977 and learned to speak Hebrew while I was there (well, enough to get by).
Oy vey! So, what's new? Ros-Lehtinen/Berman resolution 867 passed: 344-36.
That it did so with such a wide margin is a bit surprising...certainly craven...and shameful. After all, this nonbinding resolution merely urged Obama and Clinton to oppose unequivocally any endorsement of the Goldstone report. If ever there's a time to placate the progressive population – and lose very little in doing so – a nonbinding resolution is it!
Given Congress, the Pentagon, and mainstream America's ongoing and uncritical support for Israel and its policies, what is new is Anti-Defamation League's Abe Foxman was threatened enough by the possibility of the House not backing H.R. 867 that he called on Judge Goldstone to repudiate his report.
Said Abe to the Judge: “I have had great respect for you over the years. Your work at the head of the South Africa Reconciliation Commission and in helping to find a just solution to the Bosnian conflict deserves the highest commendation....I know you to be a proud Jew who serves on the Board of Trustees of Hebrew University and who has a daughter living in Israel...[and] the Human Rights Council has repeatedly demonstrated its bias against Israel...”
When has the House, or the Senate, ever let Foxman and his friends down? This is the same Foxman who denies the Armenian genocide, who believes that issue should be resolved between Turks and Armenians, and who works behind the scenes to defeat a fair hearing about that genocide in Congress.
Ironically, at a San Francisco Jewish Community Center for a recent book event, Foxman said, “No one can dictate to you to use the word that you want us to use. We will use the words that we feel comfortable with.”
Accordingly, Foxman feels comfortable making thoughtful Jews feel uncomfortable with words such as anti-Semite, self-hating Jew, Israel-threatening Jew, Israel-bashing Jew, and so on.
Author and medical doctor Alice Rothchild grew up as a good American Jewish girl and came of age to the dominant narrative of Israel as heroic, courageous, standing bravely against all odds.... Since then, believing what her eyes show her, she's changed her views about the situation. This effort to grow, learn, and change one's mind based on new information is essential to adulthood. But it landed Rothchild on the Jewish S.H.I.T List, an alphabetized roll-call of more than seven thousand so-called Self-Hating and/or Israel-Threatening Jews.
In a recent radio interview I asked her about the moral underpinnings of her work.
She said, “One big moral dilemma for me is how the American Jewish community blindly supports everything the Israeli government does. My question is, what is the role of US Jews and the United States in this conflict? While it is difficult to paint American Jewry with one broad brush stroke, for the most part mainstream American Jewry walks in line with Israeli policy no matter what it does. It is very intolerant of any critical dissent. That is bad for us...and it is bad for Israel.”
She continues, “I believe that if we American Jews see our brothers and sisters in Israel doing things that we find morally indefensible, we have to say something. If we don't, it is bad for them...and it is bad for us. Let's face it, it doesn't get any better than having a Zionist, Jewish South African human rights lawyer like Goldstone reporting these facts. For the Jewish community to come down so heavily on his report makes me want to cry. For, if we don't face up to what is in this report, we as Jews and as Israelis are going to lose any moral credibility in the world.”
Rothchild makes a compelling analogy. “Just as we in the United States are made stronger by facing up to our history of slavery, the civil rights struggle – all the things that we are ashamed of in our history – Jews and Israelis need to do too.”
Rothchild concludes, “The US government sends Israel billions of dollars of aid every year...and for what? There is a huge intermix of the two military establishments. They try out our weapons, they do all our dirty work... Once you start researching this stuff it is very disturbing. It is a dangerous relationship and it raises difficult moral questions for all of us.”
Apparently, it raises no moral question for 344 members of the US House. Or Abe Foxman.
I imagine the day when that S.H.I.T. list becomes a roll call that honors the people whose courage and steadfast morality helped turn the tide in Israel/Palestine.
Meanwhile, Let's see what Obama and Clinton do. I'm afraid there will be no surprise there either. Oy vey!
(BTW, I grew up in apartheid South Africa, lived in Israel from 1975-1977 and learned to speak Hebrew while I was there (well, enough to get by).
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Economic Conscription: Of Veterans and Volunteers
This article was published in CounterPunch today (Nov 4, 09).
Economic Conscription
Of Veterans and Volunteers
By SUSAN GALLEYMOREVeteran's Day 2009 coming up November 11 and the United States economy founders on rocky shoals after decades of deregulation. It's messy out there...and, by most accounts, the unemployed flotsam and jetsam will only increase.
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