On September 4th AmericaStandsWatch.org. Stand Watch. Protect Democracy. Expect the War to End Now.

Immediately after the 9/11 attacks of 2001, President Bush sat down to play poker with the biggest stack of chips at the table, the odds-on favorite to win one of the highest-stakes games ever played. This huge initial chip advantage was built from a unified and supportive citizenry at home, a mainstream media that rarely questioned his judgment or intentions, an international community prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt, and a military machine bigger than the next couple dozen countries combined. But since those early heady days, Bush and his close advisers and neocon allies have made one horrendous decision after another. The great tragedy, of course, is that the president has not been playing with his own chips. Rather, in this game his poor play has cost the lives of our courageous soldiers and many Iraqi civilians, our country's stature in the world, and our national resources much needed for other purposes, domestic and international.

According to dictionary.com, the word moratorium means "a suspension of activity." Examples include the moratorium on nuclear testing and the 1969 moratorium staged in protest of the Vietnam war. It is time for a new moratorium, this one, hopefully, can bring an end to the war in Iraq.

This article was originally posted by me on MicahsCall.org.

Back in the days when the Presidio of Monterey's roads were open to civilian vehicles, providing a shortcut between Monterey and Pacific Grove, I used to enjoy watching what would happen outside at 4:30pm. For the uninformed civilian merrily driving along, having cars in front of her suddenly stop and troops get out of their cars, stand at attention and salute, must have seemed so bizarre. Some motorists would honk their horns, some would yell, most would just sit and wait, steaming at the interruption of their day.

Most leaders and the press view violence against women and children as just "a women's issue" or "a children's issue" - in their minds, a secondary issue. But it's not only that millions of women and children are victims of violence in their homes every year; the fact is that intimate violence provides a basic model for using force to impose one's will on others.

When children either experience or observe violence against their mothers in their homes, they learn that it's ok, even "moral," to use violence to impose one's will on others. This is why throughout history, the most violently despotic and warlike societies have been those where violence, or the threat of violence, is used to maintain domination of parent over child and man over woman.

Appeasing The Gods Of The Shareholders

There was a time when, as a matter of policy, America went to war only as a response to an attack by an aggressor. In 1962 John Kennedy had every reason to make war with Cuba and Russia when Kruschev talked Fidel into parking several dozen  Soviet nuclear missiles ten minutes from Washington and 90 miles from spring break.

Most of the Joint Chiefs, especially Curtis Lemay,(General Bat Guano?) along with a sizable faction of Kennedy's closest advisers urged the President to invade. Lemay wanted to send his B52s, (presumably not to drop leaflets) while others preferred a massive land invasion, perhaps to restore the Cosa Nostra to control of Cuban Casinos, the way God intended.

There is an apocryphal story told that Marine Commandant David Shoup (under whom I served at the time) presented the assemblage of top level civilian and military advisers with an easel containing a map of Cuba, over which he had placed an acetate overlay of a tiny Pacific atoll named Tarawa. Tarawa, which the Marines had invaded early in WW2 was shown graphically as a small speck against the background of Castro's Caribbean worker's paradise.

He then proceeded to inform the gathering that the insignificant speck had not been at all pacific, having cost the lives of over 1000 Marines and the wounding of 2200 others, creating a great storm of protest at home over what was seen as a needless squandering of lives to gain a tiny piece of real estate. Tarawa, he is reported to have explained, was defended by 4500 Japanese while Castro would field 150,000, and perhaps as many more.

The zeal for a land invasion was somewhat diminished by General Shoup's presentation. Cooler heads prevailed, the young president proceeded to threaten Kruschev with massive nuclear retaliation, Niki packed up his nukes and went home, diplomacy or a good bluff, worked, the republic was saved, 250,000 young troops did not have to wade ashore and spill their guts on Fidel's beautiful but hostile beaches and I pull shore leave in San Juan and discovered how to drink Cuba Libras past the point of absurdity.

Those were still the good old days in the world of war making, when Presidents, Congress, large segments of the press and a sizable portion of the body politic banded together with the men and women who were to be slaughtered, made whatever sacrifices necessary to get through the horrible, bloody task and achieve victory.

Businesses as well, were asked to make sacrifices, to retool from the making the products of peacetime, the creation of tractors or Packards or hula hoops to building tanks, rifles and ships, and asked to bid competitively for the right to participate in the glorious business of waging war.

It worked well, victories were had, foes were vanquished, medals were awarded to the mothers of the dead, the prosthetics business flourished and everyone was happy.

Then came Vietnam.

An exciting international movement is underway to ban cluster bombs - and it's about time. Cluster bombs, like landmines, overwhelmingly kill and maim civilians, and they do it for years after conflict has ended. Handicap International reports that 98 percent of all casualties from cluster bombs are non-combatants.

These weapons drop hundreds or thousands of small "bomblets" over a large area. Many do not detonate on impact and in effect create a minefield, lying near towns, playgrounds, and farms. Many children are blown up when they mistake the metal object for a toy. (Way to take action after the jump.)

There are many causes I would die for. There is not a single cause I would kill for . . .

I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent . . .

Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary. -- Mohandas Ghandi

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. -- Dwight Eisenhower

War does not end strife - it sows it. War does not end hatred - it feeds it. For those who argue war is a necessary evil, I say you are half right. War is
evil (where strife, there every evil work: Bible, James 3:16). But it is not necessary. War cannot be a necessary evil, because non-violence is a necessary good. The two cannot co-exist. -- Congressman John Lewis

Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship. -- Hermann Göring

A pre-emptive war in 'defense' of freedom would surely destroy freedom, because one simply cannot engage in barbarous action without becoming a barbarian, because one cannot defend human values by calculated and unprovoked violence without doing mortal damage to the values one is trying to defend. -- J. William Fulbright.

My life-partner is often the spark that causes the flame of writing to happen. Yesterday, after hearing about President Bush's recent interviews, he quipped "How come every time someone asks Bush if he made mistakes, Bush starts by talking about how wonderful the military is?"

"It's kind of like some mayoral candidate confronted by a gunman grabbing the nearest baby and shielding himself, and saying 'You wouldn't shoot this innocent baby, would you?'"

No one is asking Bush if the troops on the ground made mistakes - they're asking if HE made mistakes.

OK - I'm now officially at the end of my rope. Tony Snow, during a White House press briefing, when asked about Congress pulling the plug on funding for the president's "surge" said the following:

"The President has the ability to exercise his own authority if he thinks Congress has voted the wrong way."

Say WHAT???????????

Nothing seems more indicative to me concerning the particular doom of our species then mankind's predilection to war.

How our species can have so much knowledge, yet fail to embrace the simplest concept, "Do not kill what you cannot eat" is beyond me. It goes far beyond the blind parables of religious dogma, transcending, at least in my mind, into the realm of spiritual fitness.

It is an incredible evil and the greatest flaw of mankind, that we have not been able to progress past the simplest of ideas, said idea being thus; orchestrating and enacting the ritualistic practice of any kind of mass murder, is simply the act of ignorant and savage genetic instincts that originate from the remnant reptilian brain lying forgotten in our cerbral cortex. Until we learn to stop that instinct from repeating itself in our future history, down through the generations of mankind,we will inevitably continue down the path of our own unavoidable extinction.

I have an idea of a way to get out of Iraq in about a year. I've outlined it here and really want to know what other people think. So - check it out!The basic idea is this. Get about 400,000 Iraqis to sign up for a new national security force. Sunni, Shia, Kurd, whatever.

Take all 400,000 out of the country to places like Quatar, Egypt, England, Germany, Japan, the United States, anywhere that a massive military training can be set up. Train the Iraqis for up to six months, making sure that they work together regardless of ethnicity or religion, just like we try to do in our own US military training.

I listened to President Bush's recent press conference on Iraq and was stunned, once again, to hear him say that something surprised him which should not have. He said "We did not expect the Iraqi army, including the Republican Guard, to melt away in the way that it did."

For over a decade prior to invading Iraq, millions of leaflets were dropped by the United States across Iraq, urging the Iraqi military and police to shed their uniforms and go home once the invasion started. By doing so, and not fighting against coalition forces, these folks were told they would be welcomed later as part of the team building a new Iraq.

News of the White House's "Change of Course" and a new strategic plan for Iraq should probably not have ended up in the New York Times. After all, while it is a great newspaper, it lacks the best venue for the actual news coming from team Bush. The New York Times carries no comic strips - and most importantly, lacks the strip most appropriate for this particular news.... Dilbert!

For the millions who work in corporations where Dilbert's pointy-haired manager graces every cubicle wall, the Bush administration's corporate-clone plans for Iraq would surely fit right in.

Having worked in corporate America for many years, I can relate. The idiots in one department create a perfectly awful product and the marketing folks create glitzy brochures and plans to sell that perfectly awful product. The salespeople hit the streets trying to sell the perfectly awful product and the customers want nothing to do with it. Corporate leaders discover that their new product isn't selling and ask why. Sales tells them the product is garbage, and without major renovations, they can't sell it.

What does the CEO do?

Now that North Korea has confirmed nukes, the U.S. and South Korea have finally decided to create a plan on how to deal with the situation.

According to the report, the United States is considering a plan against North Korea to neutralize Pyongyang's nuclear capability with overwhelming use of the U.S. Air Force.

Under the envisaged plan, U.S. combat aircraft and bombers... would conduct "surgical strikes'' on major weapons of mass destruction (WMD) facilities, training sites, and intelligence and communication facilities in the North instead of ground forces advancing into the North, the report said.

Currently, the Operations Plan -- OPLAN 5027, the joint U.S. contingency plan with South Korea, accounts for a conflict involving conventional weapons:

 Analyzing the real reason behind Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's just completed MidEast trip, the BBC News asks, Why did Condoleezza Rice come to Israel and the West Bank earlier this week?

And concludes:

. . .military action against Iran is now being very seriously considered in Washington.

[This article originally appeared in it's essential form as a diary at DailyKos .]