NEWS AND VIEWS:

VIEWS: “PEACE PENTAGON.” THREE CHEERS FOR LAURA GEORGE

Of course the US military just follows the Congress and the White House rules. Since 9/11/2001 attacks, the military enthusiastically implemented the so-called “war on terrorism” that was declared, with support from the Congress, by former President George W. Bush.

Few years after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, I have come to believe that the so-called “war on terrorism” is but a subtle and indirect war on Muslims (if not on Islam). Therefore, I have come to hold the Pentagon responsible for the killing of about 258,000 Muslims, according to a recent Brown University’s report.

I would like to add the following:

First, although the report didn’t specify religion, I would want to have it clearly and repeatedly specified. I believe about a thousand Christians were killed (mostly in Iraq), also a few Jews (like journalist Daniel Pearl who was beheaded in Pakistan).

Second, although the report didn’t say the US military was responsible for the killing of all the 258,000, I would want to believe it was. Most of the Muslim-on-Muslim killing wouldn’t have happen if the US didn’t intervene militarily (or didn’t diplomatically pressure the Muslims not to fight each other).

Because I will forever hold the Pentagon responsible, I was interested in the “Peace Pentagon” project by activist Laura George.

(Read below).

Laura George project is different from my “Silent Jihad at the White House,” but, it shows me:

First, that people can stand for what is just in a variety of ways.

Second, that I am not alone, shouldn’t despair and should continue my White House vigil, “UNTIL I DIE1″

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NEWS: INTERFATIH RETREAT TESTS FOUNDER, COMMUNITY: “THE WASHINGTON POST”

(Excerpts): INDEPENDENCE, Va. — In a clearing on a hill along a curve of the New River where apple trees bloom, Laura George wants to build a place for people of all faiths to gather in spiritual harmony… a “Peace Pentagon” spiritual education center, public library and 10 cabins for guests…

Just one problem: Most people around here don’t seem to want any part of it…

It’s clearly a violation of the First Amendment, said John W. Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute, a Virginia-based civil liberties group that is helping George. “There’s just a lot of hate out there. The fear that someone like this coming into the county with 10 cabins on the water is going to do something dramatic to the community . . . this is part of the religious wars we’re seeing, no doubt about that,” he said…

Grayson County has about 150 churches, about one for every 100 people… There are no synagogues, no mosques. One Muslim family worships secretly in its basement.

George was a lawyer in Leesburg (VA) when the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks occurred. They shook her up. “I saw what was coming — what is here now — is what we call a great cusp . . . a period of turmoil which precedes a major paradigm shift,” she said at home. Sept. 11 “is a symptom of a larger conflict going on spiritually around the globe,” she added…

Eddie Roland, pastor of Brush Creek Baptist Church, stood up at the meeting with his Bible in hand and said the proposed center “stands against the word of God. I believe it’s contradictory to it. I believe it’s diametrically opposed to what this book right here stands for”…

The supervisors voted against the center, including one who had previously approved it in his role on the county planning commission…

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NEWS AND VIEWS:

SUPPORT TALIBAN CAUSE: TALIBAN’S VIDEOS:

About half a century ago, as a young journalist with “Alsahafa” Arabic daily newspaper in Sudan, I, almost daily and for many years, covered the Vietnam War, and especially the US military intervention in South Vietnam, its bombardment of North Vietnam and its war against the Viet Cong rebels (who, at the end, won, expelled the US and united North and South Vietnam).

I wasn’t a Communist, a socialist, a progressive or a leftist – and never was – but I was strongly supporting the Viet Cong. The US was the aggressor and its excuse of the “domino theory” has been proven wrong.

Another proof: Last week, the US and Vietnam navies conducted a joint exercise, an indirect message to China. (During the Vietnam War, China was the main supporter and supplier of the Vietnamese Communists).

Now, I am

not an Islamist, a Jihadist, a Sharia-supporter, a West-hater or a Caliphate-believer – and never was – but I strongly support Taliban cause. The US is the aggressor and its excuse of “draining the swamps” (words of former President George W. Bush) has been proven wrong. The so-called “war of terrorism” has no specific fronts, enemies, goals and definition of “victory.”

Another proof: after 10 years of fighting Taliban, the US decided to negotiate with them.

Déjà vu.

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NEWS: TALIBAN VIDEOS: “WASHINGTON POST”:

Kabul — On a street of pulsing electronic shops, young men with spiked hair and tight jeans browse through DVD stalls and huddle over sidewalk computer stands, downloading the latest hot song or video clip and passing them instantly via bluetooth technology from cellphone to cellphone…

Often the content is sexually alluring and semi-forbidden in Afghan society… But in recent months, another craze has gripped the capital circuit…

The images are of real war and shocking violence: U.S. military vehicles exploding; Western troops tossed high in the air; terrified foreigners being dragged and mutilated. The soundtracks are a mix of gunfire and chants in male voices praising fallen heroes and calling for sacrifice in the name of Islam.

“O Talib, come to my dreams,” begins one. “The brave infidel slayers are everywhere. We will burn their tanks and set them on fire. The brave infidel slayers are turned to ashes, but they still live. . . . O Talib, come to my grave. The infidel dragons have killed me; follow my footsteps when I am gone.”

On the surface, most urban and educated young Afghans seem to have little in common with the rural Taliban fighters — and zero desire to fight. Yet they might also be ambivalent about whom to root for in a war that pits increasingly unpopular NATO forces against homegrown fellow Muslims…

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NEWS AND VIEWS:

VIEWS: MUSLIMS KILLED AT GUANTANAMO

I remember covering the 2006 Pentagon statement that three prisoners at Guantanamo committed suicide.

I remember there were side reports that they were actually tortured to death while being questioned. But, I didn’t pay much attention to the killing story, most probably because mainstream media didn’t.

Now, I learned that the American Society of Magazine Editors’ National Magazine Award for Reporting went last year to Scott Horton, a New York human rights lawyer who had written a long investigative report in “Harper’s” magazine confirming that the three men were, yes, tortured to death. (Read below).

Three cheers for Mr. Horton.

Three cheers for “Harper’s.”

Three cheers for the ASME.

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NEWS: “HARPER’S”: MURDERS AT GUANTANAMU:

… Late on the evening of June 9, 2006, three prisoners at Guantánamo died suddenly and violently. Salah Ahmed Al-Salami, from Yemen, was thirty-seven. Mani Shaman Al-Utaybi, from Saudi Arabia, was thirty. Yasser Talal Al-Zahrani, also from Saudi Arabia, was twenty-two, and had been imprisoned at Guantánamo since he was captured at the age of seventeen.

None of the men had been charged with a crime, though all three had been engaged in hunger strikes to protest the conditions of their imprisonment. They were being held in a cell block, known as Alpha Block, reserved for particularly troublesome or high-value prisoners…

As news of the deaths emerged the following day, the camp quickly went into lockdown. The authorities ordered nearly all the reporters at Guantánamo to leave and those en route to turn back.

The commander at Guantánamo, Rear Admiral Harry Harris, then declared the deaths “suicides.” In an unusual move, he also used the announcement to attack the dead men. “I believe this was not an act of desperation,” he said, “but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us.”

Reporters accepted the official account, and even lawyers for the prisoners appeared to believe that they had killed themselves.

Only the prisoners’ families in Saudi Arabia and Yemen rejected the notion…

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NEWS AND VIEWS:

VIEWS: GENERAL KELLY, HIS SON AND MUSLIMS KILLING

Since few years after 9/11, the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, I have come to believe that former President Bush’ Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) has been but an indirect and subtle war on Muslims.

That was a major reason I started my “Silence Jihad at the White House” in 2008, during the last year of Bush in the White House, raising a huge sign that asks, on one side “WHAT IS TERRORISM?” and on the other side “WHAT IS ISALM?”

In fine prints on the two sides of the sign: “31 YEARS IN WASHINGTON. DON’T TRUST POLITICIANS. APPLEAL TO THE PEOPLE’S CONSCIOUS. WILL BE HERE UNTIL I DIE!”

The dictionary says “conscious” is “part of the mind of psychic material about awareness of existence, of surroundings and of a sense of wrongdoing.”

General John F. Kelly, senior assistant to Secretary of Defense, criticized, after his son was killed in the war in Afghanistan, the lack of support for the war among the Americans. He argued that only “one percent of Americans are touched by this war.”

I believe this is an emotional approach.

During my White House vigil, I do not appeal to the “hearts” of the Americans, but to their “conscious.” I believe it is a matter of right or wrong. And that, sooner or later, actually many years after I will die, the Americans, after rational thinking, will mostly agree with me.

It is interesting that although General Kelly argument was emotional, his son’s, in his writings from Afghanistan just before his death, seemed rational. He once wrote: “Things have not been going so well. I am having a lot of trouble dealing with this [expletive]…”

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NEWS: ONE PERCENT OF AMERICANS ARE TOUCHED BY THIS WAR: “WASHINGTON POST” (March 2, 2011):

“… Four days earlier, 2nd Lt. Robert M. Kelly , 29, had stepped on a land mine while leading a platoon of Marines in southern Afghanistan. He was killed instantly… His father Lt. Gen. John F. Kelly is the most senior U.S. military officer to lose a son or daughter in Iraq or Afghanistan…

President Obama devoted only six sentences to the war in Afghanistan in his State of the Union address in January.

“We are only one of 5,500 American families who have suffered the loss of a child in this war,” Lt. Gen. Kelly said in an e-mail…

Robert was a private first class fighting house to house in the battle for Fallujah in Iraq, the largest and bloodiest urban battle for U.S. troops since Vietnam … (Later) Robert wrote to his best friend from high school. “Things have not been going so well. I am having a lot of trouble dealing with this [expletive]. It is hard to explain right now. . . . I just want to go home and see my family and friends. I really want to sit down with my dad and talk.”

After transferred to Afghanistan, Robert told his father that he was especially bothered by an incident in which his platoon was taking fire from insurgents in an underground bunker… Robert’s unit used explosives to blow them out of the bunker. “He mentioned that it must have been a horrible way to die,” his father recalled. “It wasn’t as clean as he thought it would be. He felt bad about the whole thing, and I told him that was human.”

Last fall, in Afghanistan, Robert’s 1,000-man battalion took part in some of the most intense fighting of the 10-year-old war, killing dozens of Taliban fighters and slowly pushing them back. Robert’s father followed his son’s battalion over the Pentagon’s classified Internet…

“We are in a life-and-death struggle, but not our whole country, One percent of Americans are touched by this war,” the father said…”

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NEWS AND VIEWS

GENERAL PETRAUES WAR ON MUSLIMS CONTINUES

NEWS: PETRAUES COMMENTS ON COALITION ATTACK “WASHINGTON POST” (FEB 21, 2011)

“To the shock of President Hamid Karzai’s aides, Gen. David H. Petraeus suggested at the presidential palace that Afghans caught up in a coalition attack in northeastern Afghanistan might have burned their own children to exaggerate claims of civilian casualties, according to two participants at the meeting.

The exact language Petraeus used in the closed-door session is not known, and neither is the precise message he meant to convey. But his remarks about the deadly U.S. military operation in Konar province were deemed deeply offensive by some in the room. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private discussions.

They said Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, dismissed allegations by Karzai’s office and the provincial governor that civilians were killed and said residents had invented stories, or even injured their children, to pin the blame on U.S. forces and force an end to the operation…”

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VIEWS: BILL LITTLE (LETTERS TO EDITOR, “WASHINGTON POST” (FEB 21, 2001)

“Regarding the Feb. 18 Washington Forum commentary “Want to cut the deficit? End the war,” by Reps. James P. McGovern (D-Mass.) and Walter B. Jones (R-N.C.):

Two quotes in this piece – “there is no excuse for our collective indifference” and “the human and financial costs of the war are unacceptable and unsustainable” – hit the nail on the head. And they asked: “Where is the liberal outrage?”

Really good question. Perhaps the answer is few of us have skin in the game. No draft, no outrage. Who cares? Only the parents, wives, husbands and children of the volunteers.

We don’t have a citizen army. We have an all-volunteer force that’s ripping apart at the seams. Our military-industrial complex, along with a broken Congress and an apathetic public, is bringing the greatest country in history to its knees.

Outrage? Pfft. How about those Caps?

Bill Little, Fairfax Station”

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NEWS AND VIEWS:

“EPIDEMIC OF MENTAL ILLNESS IN IRAQ”

VIEWS: (From “Washington Post” Website:

paulinlodi wrote:

Ever since BP (formerly the British-Persian Oil Company) discovered oil in Mesopotamian 100 years ago, the Anglo-US policy has been to colonize the region, traumatize the people, and steal their oil. There will be blowback (it’s in the Gulf now). But on the mental illness front, there will be more than a million — actually there already are — mentally ill US troops who fought in the Gulf and are totally traumatized, not just from traumatic brain injury, PTSD, physical injuries, etc., but knowing they were the evil ones in an unjust, immoral, illegal and intrinsically stupid war. If people in this country had half a brain, they would be demanding an end to war, an end to “defense” spending, an end to interference in the Middle East, and war crimes trials for everyone in the Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama administrations who acted in our war of aggression against the people of Iraq for the past 30 years.

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lenn wrote:

There is also an epidemic case of mental health in Washington.

bdunn1 wrote:

Mission Accomplished, the U.S. has prevailed in the battle for Iraq. Come on Big Pharmacy, step it up now.

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with a marked sedative effect …

For Shaker and for scores of other Iraqis, every street is a reminder of what was, what is and what could be again: Reminders of people gingerly stepping over the bodies thrown in the streets in tit-for-tat killings between sects during the sectarian war. Reminders of the U.S. military raids, Iraqi military raids, militia interrogations, assassinations and insurgent bombings …

Last year, Iraq’s health ministry began to incorporate psychiatric treatment into primary-care hospitals to keep up with the trauma people have suffered, said Naama Humaidi, the general secretary of the psychiatric association. “The violence, aggression and turmoil in Iraq are directly connected to the increase in mental problems,” he said. “There is an exceptional, threatening situation that cannot be understood by any other society. It made a thumbprint on each person in our country.”

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Yesterday, I saw “Green Zone” movie, which was said to be inspired by the non-fiction 2006 book “Imperial Life in the Emerald City” by “The Washington Post” respected journalist Rajiv Chandrasekaran, which documented life in the Green Zone, Baghdad. The film stars Matt Damon, Amy Ryan, Greg Kinnear, and Brendan Gleeson.
I would start by saying: This is my revenge, Rajiv.
When the book came out, I wrote in a review that it was a detailed description of the events of the first two years of the invasion of Iraq, but that the book was “without a soul.”
I had argued against the invasion long before it took place. Actually, I had argued against the 1990 US military intervention to liberate Kuwait, the US-driven United Nations’ severe sanctions of Iraq and the US occasional bombardment of Iraq. Long before its military attacks, and for more than half-a-century, The US, serving the interests of Israel, has been unfair to the Arabs and Muslims. Because of the military attacks, my sadness became anger.
I didn’t expect the book to condemn the invasion, but the neutrality of the book frustrated me as I was reading it. Even the title. Compare it to these two that were published around the same time: “Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq” by Thomas Ricks and “Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq”
by Larry Diamond.
My feelings about the Chandrasekaran’s book were not different from this “The New York Times” review: “If there is one thing missing from this account it is the author himself. Reading a 300-page book is a bit like driving across country with a stranger you’ve met through a message board.”
I understand why. He is adhering to the professional code of journalism: reporting facts with scrupulous neutrality and objectivity. But, could it be because of his background? His father, Kumar, was a chemical engineer and his mother, Uma, specialized in economics. Both had come to the U.S. from India to study at the University of California at Berkeley.
Still, the book sometimes was not all neutral. Like in this passage about the Americans inside the Green Zone: “They would show up, come up with some policies, promulgate it among the Iraqis and sort of vaporize …They just felt like they weren’t making much headway. Waves of depression went through the Green Zone. Visits to the Combat Stress Clinic, the shrinks in the Emerald City, increased.”
But the movie, “Green Zone,” had a straight-forward message: Army officer Roy Miller (Matt Damon) was sent to Baghdad to find Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), and he found the most elusive weapon was the truth.
The movie was an example of political seriousness, an audacious way to critique a war it, and I, consider unjustified.
While watching the movie, I tried to count the times I either laughed or cried. Some scenes were so stupid that they were funny, like the Americans pre-occupation with finding Mohamed Alrawi, an Iraqi leader who was expected to know where the WMD were hidden. Some scenes caused my tears to run down, like the screaming of Iraqi women as the heavily-armed American soldiers rushed into their living rooms, screaming and killing their husbands and brothers.
Ann Hornaday, movie critique of “The Washington Post,” wrote that the heavy military actions in the movie were “underscored by an obstinate of outrage at American hubris, political cynicism and the complicity of the credulous media.”
I couldn’t have agreed more.
As much as I am angry at the continuous injustice inflicted on Muslims and Arabs by the US, I am indebted to the US political system where various opinions, ones I support and ones I don’t support, find their places in this free market of ideas.
If not the book, the movie will, hopefully forever, be a witness to this injustice.

(From GQ):

On April 10, 2003, the day after the fall of Baghdad , Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld prepared a top-secret briefing for President Bush, known as the Worldwide Intelligence Update.
The briefing’s cover sheet generally featured triumphant, color images from the previous days’ war efforts.
On this particular morning, it showed the statue of Saddam Hussein being pulled down in Firdos Square , a grateful Iraqi child kissing an American soldier, and jubilant crowds thronging the streets of newly liberated Baghdad .
Above these images, and just below the headline SECRETARY OF DEFENSE, was a quote from the Bible, from the book of Psalms: “Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him…To deliver their soul from death.”
This mixing of Crusades-like messaging with war imagery, which until now has not been revealed, had become routine:
March 31: A U.S. tank roared through the desert beneath a quote from Ephesians: “Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.”
April 7: Saddam Hussein struck a dictatorial pose, under this passage from the First Epistle of Peter: “It is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish men.”
These cover sheets were the brainchild of Major General Glen Shaffer, a director for intelligence serving both the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the secretary of defense. Shaffer, a Christian, deemed the biblical passages more suitable. When colleagues complained to Shaffer that including a religious message with an intelligence briefing seemed inappropriate, Shaffer politely informed them that the practice would continue, because “my seniors”—JCS chairman Richard Myers, Rumsfeld, and the commander in chief himself—appreciated the cover pages.
But one government official was disturbed enough by these biblically seasoned sheets to hold on to copies, which “GQ” obtained recently while debriefing the past eight years with those who lived them inside the West Wing and the Pentagon.

Authorities plan to install about automated license plate readers on police vehicles and alongside roads in the Washington area to thwart potential terrorist attacks, dramatically expanding the use of a high-tech tool previously aimed at parking scofflaws and car thieves.

Top homeland security officials from Maryland , Virginia and the District agreed last week to spend $4.5 million on the new system, officials said. The funds will come from a $59.8 million federal homeland security grant for the D.C. area announced last month. That grant also will be used to outfit police with radiation detectors, improve hazmat and bomb squads and provide equipment to hospitals, officials decided.

The new project is much broader, installing cameras on about 160 police vehicles and at 40 fixed sites, such as airports or highway entrances, officials say. It appears to be one of the most extensive license reading systems in the nation, according to privacy experts.

What is next?

Hundred of cameras along streets all over.

Mark my word, in the name of fighting terrorism.

The Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security are working on a proposal to establish a new domestic spying system, as if there are not enough. This one would make it easier for state and local police to collect intelligence about Americans share the sensitive data with federal agencies and retain it for at least 10 years.

The proposed changes would apply to any of the nation’s 18,000 state and local police agencies that receive roughly $1.6 billion each year in federal grants.

Quietly unveiled before it was published, the proposal is part of a flurry of domestic intelligence changes issued and planned by the Bush administration in its waning months. They include a recent executive order that guides the reorganization of federal spy agencies and a pending Justice Department overhaul of FBI procedures for gathering intelligence and investigating terrorism cases within U.S. borders.

Now, two points:

First, whenever I read “terrorism” in a government’s plan or in a politician’s statement, I have come to believe it is the Muslims they are talking about.

Second, I wonder about the whole logic of having this Department of Homeland Scare (DHS): every year it sends out billions of dollars – free — to state and local police as part of its war on terrorism (Read: Muslims).

Who are these people kidding?

Now, the local police are going to spy on Muslims.

The local police that are supposed to be friendly; tell you directions; show you their cars and facilities at annual fairs; smile even if you are scared of them; courteous, even when they ticket you; glad to see them in the neighborhood to catch speeders; and glad to see them on the highways.

Last time I passed by Dar Alhijra Islamic Center on Route 7, in Fairfax County, in Northern Virginia, it was Friday, and a couple of police cars and motorcycles were there, working on traffic and helping Muslims to cross the highway from parking lots that belong to churches (they allowed them to do that for Friday Joma’a’ prayers) to the mosque on the other side.

Now, the local police will be spying on Muslims