Editorial -- NATO Calls for Perpetual Warfare in Ukraine

On Friday, emboldened by Ukraine’s successful counteroffensive that gained them 1,000 to 2,000 square miles of territory that had been captured by the Russians, the NATO Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, called for perpetual warfare there Friday. Speaking to BBC Radio, his exact words were, “This is not the beginning of the end of the war, we have to be prepared for the long haul.” He called for flooding Ukraine with more military aid for the foreseeable future.

The problem is that nowhere does Mr. Stoltenberg offer any kind of attempt or plan to bring about an end to the conflict. The Christian Just War Theory allows for self-defense, or even sending military aid in self-defense. But if the object is perpetual warfare, then it doesn’t matter if the other side is in the wrong.

Either side could stop this war today if they wanted to. Russia could proclaim that the objectives of its “Special Military Operation” have been accomplished and that it will go home. The US and NATO could say that although Russia’s “Special Military Operation” violates every tenet of International Law, Ukraine does not meet their standards for ascension (they are one of the most corrupt nations in Europe) and their human rights record is more similar to Hungary of the Philippines. 

But neither side will budge. The US and NATO need Russia as a boogeyman to justify NATO’s existence, justify continuing to feed the gravy train known as the Military Industrial Complex, and take everyone’s focus off the fact that manmade climate change is a threat to us all. Russia needs the threat of US and NATO aggression to keep its citizens in line. 

Meanwhile, inflation continues to go through the roof, mortgage rates are now at a 14 year high, unemployment is starting to creep up, and there is the underlying fear that this could, at some point, turn into a nuclear conflict. But the US cares more about carrying out Joe Biden’s personal vendetta against Putin than they do about ending the war against Rural America. The latest step was revealed Thursday by the Financial Times, which reported that the US and EU are claiming veto power over the ability of Turkish banks to do business with Russia. While Turkey is a NATO member, they have close relations with both Russia and Ukraine and have refused to participate in the gravy train that puts all of us at risk. When the right-wing autocratic leader of Turkey shows more sanity on this issue than Joe Biden does, the President needs to think long and hard about his assumptions about the conflict.

Editorial -- Joe Biden Said the Quiet Part Out Loud

On Thursday, at the recent NATO summit in Madrid, Joe Biden said the quiet part out loud. When asked how long Americans should expect to pay high gas prices, he himself said that it would be for as long as it takes so that Russia cannot “defeat Ukraine,” whatever that means.

In other words, he thinks we all have to make sacrifices, including high gas prices, so that we can stick it to the Russians. Not only that, he is planning even more unhinged schemes that would drive up gas prices even higher.

One idea he is planning is placing a price cap on Russian oil, which Russia could easily work around by selling it to countries which don’t sanction them, who would then mark it up. Oilprice.com, a website which focuses on the high gas prices, predicts that oil prices could go up to as high as $200 a barrel, which would likely translate to $8 per gallon on gas. 

Not only that, far from curtailing Russia’s oil production, Joe Biden’s attempts to “stick it to the Russians” have had the exact opposite effect. In June, Russia’s crude production went up 5% to 10.7 barrels per day. Russia says it will raise its production again in July. 

Goldman Sachs predicts that even if Joe Biden doesn’t follow through with his price cap scheme, Oil could go up to $140 per barrel.

Editorial -- Daily Kos a Cesspool of Neocon Activity

It used to be that Daily Kos was a haven for people like myself who were fed up with the war in Iraq. Howard Dean successfully tapped into the sentiment, and Daily Kos seemed like the perfect continuation. Wars were considered to be something to be relegated to the dustbin of history, something to be fought only in self-defense.

Riding the wave of this antiwar momentum, Daily Kos and other sites like it helped contribute to the victory of Barack Obama in 2008. Under him, we were going to have a new era. Nuclear weapons were to be abolished. While he was not a pacifist, he was not going to take us into “dumb wars” anymore. His call for hope and change was so strong, he won a Nobel Peace Prize right off the bat.

But then something funny started to happen. First of all, he escalated the war in Afghanistan, a move which turned that conflict into our longest war in history. That was a topic of epic debate at Daily Kos. Some people charged that Kos and Barack Obama had totally sold out, while some were saying that we had to get behind the President. The unwritten fear was that if the war got too much out of hand, it would spread to Pakistan and we would have a nuclear armed Taliban on our hands.

Then came Libya, in which the US turned one of Africa’s biggest economies into  a failed state and one of the world’s biggest open air slave markets. Gaddafi was a bad person, but this was a case of the ends failing to justify the means. 

Barack Obama’s coalition held together in 2012, in part because Mitt Romney was spoiling for a fight with Russia, and the Democrats were able to portray him as an unhinged warmonger. But Obama continued to start the very sort of dumb wars that he once said he was against. He armed Syrian rebels in an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow Assad. He even sent US troops there, which could have triggered a conflict with Russia. He aided and abetted a coup against Ukraine’s government, which led to the mess that country is in today. He aided and abetted Saudi Arabia’s war of choice against Yemen. Instead of two wars, he got us into nine by the time he left office. So much for hope and change.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton turned out to be even more of a warmonger than George Bush was. She planned to create a no-fly zone in Syria, which could have started World War III. That was one of the most common reasons we heard from people why they were not voting for her. She was one of the chief architects of the war in Libya; her remark, “We came, we saw, he died,” was one of the most chilling and disturbing remarks made, more so than most of Donald Trump’s mean tweets. The only exceptions we can thing of would be his threats to nuke Iran and North Korea. While she did nothing illegal regarding Benghazi, it was inexplicable and inexcusable; there is no excuse ever to be taken by surprise.

Meanwhile, Daily Kos changed right with the Democratic Party. Now, they are no longer an independent voice for the left seeking to hold both parties accountable, which is necessary in a healthy democracy. Instead, they are now little more than a Neocon war site. In their view, it’s OK to start wars as long as a Democrat starts them. It is when the other party is in power when they suddenly break out the Peace and Love slogans from the 1960’s.

They do little more now than threat the war in Ukraine as a game. They cheer on every blow from their “team” as though it were a sports contest rather than a matter of life and death that could spiral out of control at any time. 

People who disagree with them are branded as Russians, Russian assets, traitors, monkeys, primates, yellow, surrender monkeys who make one’s skin crawl, and other such epithets. This is the exact same behavior that we saw from Red State (the GOP equivalent of Kos) during the Iraq War, when George Bush was in power. 

Case in point. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right voice in Congress, recently tweeted, “The American people do not want war with Russia, but NATO & our own foolish leaders are dragging us into one.

A war that no one will win.

Escalation over Ukraine, a non-member nation, risking nuclear war is a power play endangering the entire world.

We should pull out of NATO.”

We disagree about the pulling out of NATO part, but agree with everything else she said. When you find yourself to the right of people like Rep. Greene, you need to think long and hard about your positions. The Neocons at Daily Kos have clearly positioned themselves to the right of her and now regard her as a traitor and a Russian asset. 

Even if there wasn’t a danger of nuclear war, there is still the matter of gas prices and food prices being too high, stock prices off to one of their worst starts ever, and rampant inflation. This is being fueled, in part, by the government printing more and more money and feeding the beast that is the Military Industrial Complex. 

Editorial: "Stay the Course!"

On Tuesday, May 31st, Joe Biden took to the New York Times opinion pages to defend our country’s escalation of the conflict between Ukraine and Russia. Most notable is what he didn’t talk about – the continued squeezing of Rural America and the continued rise of gas prices and a lot of other goods. Also on May 31st, gas prices in Worth County went up to $4.29, a new all-time high. 

His defense seems awfully familiar – it is very much like George Bush’s “Stay the Course” mantra in Iraq that not only failed to achieve any meaningful gains, but that laid the groundwork for future terrorist organizations such as ISIS. Joe Biden does not speak for the “free world.” He can speak for himself. 

The President talks about providing Ukraine with rocket systems that he says will allow them to strike key targets on the battlefield. This is what the US and their allies have been saying all along. Even if these efforts are ultimately successful, like they were following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, what is to stop these weapons systems from being used against us? As late as 1993, Osama Bin Laden was portrayed as a freedom fighter by the New York Times.

Meanwhile, what about the millions of people here in the US who are hurting from pain at the pump? Joe Biden did not offer one thing in his NYT piece offering relief. Yes, we realize that the US does not directly control the price of oil markets and the price of gas. But the more that the US ramps up war hysteria against Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, or anyone else that the Very Important People in Washington say we are supposed to hate, oil prices go through the roof, followed by gas prices. 

Our conservative friends would argue that Joe Biden should return to the policies of Donald Trump and engage in more drilling and more fracking, increasing supply and reducing pain at the pump. Our more liberal friends would argue that we should do a whole of government approach to saturate the country with wind, solar, and electric vehicles, freeing us from dependence on Russian oil. However, Joe Biden is doing none of the above. His plan is to stick it to the Russians, expect us to pay the price, and then blame it on the Russians when inflation and gas prices keep going through the roof.

The President’s reassurances in his op-ed are all hollow. He reassures us that Ukraine has promised us that they will not hit Russian territory with the new batch of weapons he is sending them. But Zelensky, the President of Ukraine, ran on a platform of peace with Russia and on stopping the civil war in Ukraine. Instead, he has done nothing but escalate. And what is to prevent a future President from telling Ukraine they can?

The President reassures us that he does not seek a war between Russia and NATO. But what is to prevent a future president from doing so? Mitt Romney, who is a potential candidate for 2024, has been spoiling for a fight with Russia ever since 2012. 

Biden writes, “Unprovoked aggression, the bombing of maternity hospitals and centers of culture, and the forced displacement of millions of people make the war in Ukraine a profound moral issue.” True. But two wrongs do not make a right. Joe Biden’s escalatory policies risk turning our hostile relations into a shooting war, or even a nuclear war, which could get us all killed. 

And if might does not make right, as the President rightly says, then when can we expect Joe Biden to admit that he was wrong to support our war of choice in Iraq, the biggest foreign policy disaster in US history? This is not a matter of “apologizing” for the US. Admitting that one was wrong is a moral virtue in any competent philosophical or religious system.

Opinion: Our Demand Must Be “US Troops Out of Afghanistan Now!”

By Brian Terrell



Given the fears and uncertainties of what might befall Afghanistan
upon the withdrawal of US and NATO troops, is it responsible for
American peace activists to demand that our government bring our
troops home now? I believe that it is crucial that we do and more
urgent by the day.



The future of Afghanistan cannot be settled by the US peace movement
anymore than by the US State Department or the Department of Defense.
Our positions on the war and occupation there need to be informed by
listening to Afghans and not solely by our own convictions. I
travelled to Afghanistan in December for three weeks, participating in
a Voices for Creative Nonviolence delegation that was hosted by the
Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers. From the many Afghans and foreigners
who live and work there, we heard varied opinions on what the
withdrawal of US troops would mean on the ground.



What support that we heard for a continued US military presence there
was always tempered by deep concerns that the occupation is clearly
settling in for a long haul. We heard no unqualified support for the
US military presence- even for those closely tied to Afghanistan’s
present government and who want the troops to stay, the occupation is
at best a temporary expedient, a lesser evil only in comparison to the
fulfillment of their worst nightmares. Those who fear the aftermath of
a quick US/NATO withdrawal are also outraged by the night raids, the
airstrikes and the civilian casualties that the occupation inflicts on
their people.



The Afghans who call for a quick end to the US/NATO occupation are not
so naïve as to believe that their country’s problems will end there
and neither should we indulge in such naïveté. The end of foreign
occupation will be a necessary if painful beginning of a process to
rebuild civil society after 30 years of war. As former parliamentarian
Malalai Joya insists, “The US and NATO occupy my country under the
name of all the beautiful banners of democracy, women’s rights, human
rights. And for this long time, they shed the blood of our people
under the name of war on terror… It is better (for the US and NATO) to
leave Afghanistan, then it is easier for us to fight one enemy instead
of two.”



The most urgent demands for withdrawal seem to come from those who,
like Malalai Joya who during the years of Taliban rule carried books
hidden in her burqa while teaching in an underground school for girls,
suffered greatly under the Taliban and who might also be most
vulnerable to the upheaval that might follow that withdrawal. The
young men of the Bamiyan based Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers who
accompanied us are all survivors of the attempted ethnic cleansing of
their home district by the Taliban. Most were internal refugees during
those years and witnessed the killing of family members, yet it is
from this group that comes the incessant demand, “we want you out!”



As a society we are more ready to take risks to fight a war than to
risk for peace. Perversely, the inevitable risks incurred by war
making are deemed acceptable, even if regretted, but the possibility
of any risk attached to peacemaking renders peace impractical. Daniel
Berrigan grieves, “We cry peace and cry peace, and there is no peace.
There is no peace because there are no peacemakers. There are no
makers of peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as
the making of war.” These courageous Afghan young people are among the
few willing to pay the cost required for peace and we should accept
their challenge to join them.



We need the courage, too, to take an honest look at what the presence
of US troops really means to Afghanistan, lest reservations over
withdrawal have foundation in residual delusions of American
beneficence. When President Obama released his “December Review” of
the situation in Afghanistan, I read it from our guest house in Kabul
and was struck by the apparent dissonance of Obama’s assurance that
the US/NATO operations were “on track” and “achieving our goals.”
International institutions, nongovernmental organizations, the Red
Cross, UNICEF, World Food Program, even the US National Intelligence
Estimate leaked the day before the president spoke, all confirmed what
we had been hearing and seeing from the broken streets of Kabul, that
the security and human and political situation in Afghanistan was
spiraling out of control.



President Obama’s optimistic assessment of the occupation is actually
reasonable unless one accepts the superstition of America’s good
intentions in the region. If the intention is to maintain and promote
in Afghanistan a permanent environment of violence, confusion,
distrust and fear, then it can be said that the US presence there is
on track. The occupation is meeting its goals if these include the
creation of an atmosphere there so poisonous that a civil society
intent on meeting the needs of the Afghan people, rather than allowing
the nation’s wealth to be plundered by foreign corporations can never
be nurtured.



Schools built, clinics staffed, roads paved by US and NATO armies are
widely reported and might “win the hearts and minds” of Americans and
so blunt criticism of the war, but they are not convincing to Afghans.
Referring to the recent surfacing of photos depicting the murder and
abuse of civilians by US troops, Malalai Joya writes, “I must report
that Afghans do not believe this to be a story of a few rogue
soldiers. We believe that the brutal actions of these ‘kill teams’
reveal the aggression and racism which is part and parcel of the
entire military occupation. While these photos are new, the murder of
innocents is not.”



It is difficult to argue with the many Afghans who believe that the
recent surge of civilian deaths and the callousness of US responses
prove a deliberate policy of targeting their children. Leading
proponent of nonviolence in Afghanistan and independent member of
their legislature, Dr. Ramazon Bashardost, said “These killings must
be stopped or the people will rise against the foreigners and we will
stand by them.”



Along with immediate withdrawal, we need to be demanding reparations
for Afghanistan, as opposed to the “aid” that has evaporated at the
rate of billions of dollars over the past nine years. Noam Chomsky, in
a telephone interview with our delegation, explained that distinction,
saying that along with Russia and Pakistan, the US owes “apology and
reparations” to Afghanistan. “They have played a miserable role in
destroying Afghanistan and should be responsible for doing whatever
they can to help the Afghan people overcome the consequences of these
interventions and atrocities. Again I stress that doesn’t mean aid,
that means reparations. Aid sounds like something we give out of our
good nature or good will. Reparations means what we are responsible
for providing because of the extreme damage we have caused.”



Some reservations over making the demand for immediate withdrawal seem
predicated upon an absurd premise that the peace movement in the US
has the clout to actually make that happen. It is as if some believe
that the US government could be persuaded by our marches,
demonstrations, petitions and blockades and concede to our demands and
pick up and leave tomorrow. While I sincerely wish that this were
possible, I am confident that our demand will not lead to a
precipitous withdrawal and the consequences that some fear would come
in its wake.



Even though the demand “US Troops Out Now!” is not immediately
achievable we should insist on no less than this. It might seem futile
to demand the impossible, but the real futility lies in US citizens’
pleas for a responsible time-line for withdrawal. History shows that
US troops will not leave Afghanistan one year or even two years after
a president pledges that they will be brought home in one year. The
admittedly patient process of bringing the troops home will not begin
in earnest until the American people, in our words and actions,
communicate that not one more day of this bloody and hopeless war can
be tolerated. Accepting the continuation of the war for three more
years or even one more year is to accede to an indefinite continuation
of the occupation. So long as the American people can tolerate even
one more day of war, the war will continue ad finitum.



Brian Terrell is a co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence
and is at home at Strangers and Guests Catholic Worker Farm in Maloy,
Iowa.