WomenPowerPeace

Could the administration REALLY be this deranged?

Seriously? As to start yet another war that would inflame the middle east, stretch our military past its capabilities, murder thousands of innocents?

Seymour Hersh seems to think so. Seems to think they're cooking it up right now. No kidding.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff, whose chairman is Admiral Mike Mullen, were “pushing back very hard” against White House pressure to undertake a military strike against Iran, the person familiar with the Finding told me. Similarly, a Pentagon consultant who is involved in the war on terror said that “at least ten senior flag and general officers, including combatant commanders”—the four-star officers who direct military operations around the world—“have weighed in on that issue.”

The most outspoken of those officers is Admiral William Fallon, who until recently was the head of U.S. Central Command, and thus in charge of American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. In March, Fallon resigned under pressure, after giving a series of interviews stating his reservations about an armed attack on Iran. For example, late last year he told the Financial Times that the “real objective” of U.S. policy was to change the Iranians’ behavior, and that “attacking them as a means to get to that spot strikes me as being not the first choice.”

Admiral Fallon acknowledged, when I spoke to him in June, that he had heard that there were people in the White House who were upset by his public statements. “Too many people believe you have to be either for or against the Iranians,” he told me. “Let’s get serious. Eighty million people live there, and everyone’s an individual. The idea that they’re only one way or another is nonsense.”

Folly of attacking Iran

Folks are sounding the drumbeat NOT to go to war on Iran. The whole concept of a "war of choice" being bizarre and self-destructive.

Stephen Kinzer, former New York Times foreign correspondent and now an award-winning author (his most recent is All the Shah's Men), will be featured on a tour of the U.S. We encourage anyone/everyone to join the move away from more war.

The tour will begin February 7th in Los Angeles and end March 6th in DC. 

All events feature Stephen Kinzer, along with other experts and pundits.

Help is needed in LA, San Fran, Seattle, Omaha, Chicago and Atlanta.

Those working on this project including Physicians for Social Responsibility, the Center for Arms Control, Peace Action and Americans for an Informed Democracy.Our role might be simply to get our folks to attend, but there may be a larger role if folks want to get more involved.

Check out this web site: www.follyofattackingiran.org

Children ask the world of Iranian mothers, too...

WAND was started by a group of women -- in truth, most of them mothers. While many of us today are not mothers, the fact is that most of us still find loads of motivation in caring for others: children, friends, relatives, animals.

We value the nurturing that is really only possible in peacetime. When it's possible to thrive, grow, share, love. War kills more than soldiers, more than civilians. It kills hope, generosity, humor.

The prospect of military action on Iran is chilling on so many counts. As we take action here, it is heartening to learn that women and mothers are taking action in Iran, as well.

From the New York Times:

“We, mothers of peace, want to express our deepest concerns over the country’s critical situation,” said the letter signed by 521 women, which was posted on www.motherspeace.blogfa.com and other major political news Web sites.

“We are worried about the prices that we and our children will have to pay during a period of such insecurity,” the letter added.

It is highly unusual for an Iranian citizens’ group to question publicly the country’s nuclear policy and acknowledge the effects of the economic sanctions imposed by the United Nations on people’s lives. The group announced its formation in November as a movement seeking peace and freedom.

Oops - a stumbling block in the middle of the road to war on Iran

It's so frustrating when your own government agency shines the light on your lie. You've been working so hard to find reasons to justify going to war, and, dammit, it worked last time!

Last time, that language about the mushroom cloud spooked people so much that Congress let you start the bombing. And all those gadgets worked so well! It was so cool. We were the big boys on the military block once again. Yeah, baby.

So you really thought that talking about World War III would do the trick this time. I mean, we know Iran is FULL of those Muslims, and they are cuh-razy. And that president, he's a nutter, huh? And they are eager to get their hands on nuclear stuff.

So when the NIE came out today, and said that Iran is NOT working on nuclear weapons? What do you say?

“I have said Iran is dangerous,” Bush said a day after the release of the National Intelligence Estimate, representing the consensus of all 16 American spy agencies, “and the N.I.E. doesn’t do anything to change my opinion about the danger Iran poses to the world — quite the contrary.”

QUITE THE CONTRARY? So now that your own folks have said there's no nuclear weapons plan, you're more worried than before? what? So you only believe what's already in your heart, right? as we well know.

So little time left to start another war...

Poodles and power and peace

We got pretty mainstream media in our house, when I was a kid. I can see the stack in the downstairs bathroom -- the one with the poodles in beauty parlors wallpaper (poodles in the salon chairs, poodles in the pink smocks...).

Sorry -- so, on the stack, there was Reader's Digest and Time and National Geographic. And while, eventually, I grew to understand the role of capital and men in all this, at the time, I just thought, wouldn't it be weird to live in another country? one that wasn't Number One in the world? one that didn't have all this wealth and military might? wouldn't it be weird to live in a hut with a dirt floor, and not have poodles and flush toilets? or even to live in some cutesy European country, with bidets and greasy hair? to speak not English and eat not meatloaf? It just seemed so comfortable and right to be resident of this wholesome, mainstream, ruling, rich place.

When I was SIX. Shortly thereafter, it seemed like a very surreal place to be.

Also when I was a kid, we got out of Vietnam. As far as I could see, we realized how bizarre and inane and self-destructive it was to be messing around in someone else's country. One that did not actually have anything to do with us. And oh, didn't it feel like we learned a valuable lesson?

Snort. As if we didn't learn our lesson there, we had so many other opportunities. And now there's the bloody, drawn out, pointless, deadly mess in Iraq that every day screams: "You're determined to show just how mindless you can be now, aren't you?"

And what's up next: the new war on Iran!

Augh. Loads of smart people are weighing in on this one (as if they didn't before). But here's some words from Noam Chomsky in Alternet:

The debate over Iranian interference in Iraq proceeds without ridicule on the assumption that the United States owns the world...

In this case, however, even ridicule -- notably absent -- would not suffice, because the charges against Iran are part of a drumbeat of pronouncements meant to mobilize support for escalation in Iraq and for an attack on Iran, the "source of the problem." The world is aghast at the possibility. Even in neighboring Sunni states, no friends of Iran, majorities, when asked, favor a nuclear-armed Iran over any military action against that country. From what limited information we have, it appears that significant parts of the U.S. military and intelligence communities are opposed to such an attack, along with almost the entire world, even more so than when the Bush administration and Tony Blair's Britain invaded Iraq, defying enormous popular opposition worldwide.

In my own bathroom now, the walls are deep red, and the stack includes The New Yorker and Ode and Entertainment Weekly (we need our fun...). I hope my kids get a different picture of the world than I got.

In any case, I believe they're smart enough to realize that this country is not Number One. It's no number at all. It's just part of a global community of people like us.

And the vaaaast majority of us spend our lives doing the same things: peeing, bathing, caring for our families, hoping for peace.

And itchin' to color in those poodles on the walls...

Preventing "preventive" war

Don't forget to take action against war in Iran. Try the pocketbook this time.

That pic is a village in Iran. For more about the people and life in Iran, go here.

New category here. Since it looks like the administration continues to roll toward starting a brand spankin' new war. This time, let's kill people in Iran!

After all, that's what it's about. Yes, it's a very very bad thing that the Iranian government won't stop pushing toward building its own nuclear weapon. It would be so very very nice if they would stop. If we could stop them. And indeed, we should use every tool in the box to get them to stop.

But the very last tool in the very bottom of the box should be the very last thing we consider. And that should be dropping bombs on them.

Because war has become, more than ever before, about killing people. Not soldiers, just plain old people. At the same time that the U.S. has zippy high tech toys, and a professional armed force, and a bazillion dollars for the Pentagon fellas -- all that stuff falls on women and children and old folks like never before.

We all got so incensed when the terrorists drove a plane into the World Trade Towers -- and we should have! -- but then we turn and do the same. We drop bombs on towns, because we suspect their government has WMD.

Well, those crazy terrorists believed we were the bad guys, too. And they attacked us by attacking our citizens. They tried to attack the White House and Pentagon, let's remember.

For some wise words about the roots of the Iraq war, take a look at this new piece from Sayre Sheldon.

Then let's try to prevent the next one. If we keep choosing to go to war, where can it end?