Subject: ON THE WHORES OF WAR AND THEIR 'RESPECTABLE CLIENTS'.
29 March 2011
Grenoble, France
Dear Colleagues and Friends of CEIMSA,
In the parlance of the 1960s in Madison, Wisconsin we used to speak of Liberalism as "capitalism with the gloves on" and Fascism as "bear-knuckle capitalism". We were out to change the world, and we reminded one another: "scratch a liberal and you discover a fascist". We were totally unprepared for the counter-revolution that arrived with Ronald Reagan in 1980. The trajectory of our development had been anti-war feelings ... anti-imperialist beliefs... anti-capitalist actions in everyday life. This evolution of thinking implied a change of tactics: from moral disgust at the carnage of war, to the horror of recognizing ourselves as being part of a system of imperialist conquest, to empathy for those who resisted degradation and exploitation by any means available.
Today it is general knowledge that the intellectual left in the US was largely bought off with grants, and promotions, and an assortment of other privileges, while less pleasant sanctions awaited in the wings for those who could not be so easily influenced; it is also generally understood today how revolutionary groups, like the Black Panthers, were harassed, intimidated and sometimes murdered by police, while top bankers calculated how to turn socialists into capitalists by lending sums of money for small business ventures, which they understood would fail at a rate of 9 to 1. These investments of millions of dollars would overwhelmingly result in bankruptcy; but they were never intended to produce quick profits for investors in the 1970s and 80s. They were designed simply as a necessary purchase of time in order to prop up the faltering and immensely unpopular capitalist system so that the many more billions of investment dollars would not be lost by socialist expropriations from private to public ownership. This was perceived by the owners of capital in the US toward the end of the 1970s as a real danger, and from this perception evolved a sophisticated strategy for counter-revolution, which had its roots in the Republican Party.
As the US population was manipulated more and more to pursue private individual interests through individual competition, the popular strategies of the 1960s, such as changing the structure of the political economy, became a forgotten cause. It was a textbook lesson on how a change of context alters the meaning of activities within. We were heading for the gate, toward human liberation, but when the box rotated we found ourselves up against the wall, far from any exit. As competitive action for individual benefits became the supreme model for rational behavior, cooperation appeared as senseless and grew increasingly rare; it became practically a lost skill in the new hyper-competitive environment fueled by artificially imposed scarcities. The results were social and environmental deterioration and economic chaos, creating additional scarcities which served to fuel competition even more, to the point that even the very rich suffered increasing insecurities; they often became more brutal in managing their private wealth. The disgust with war, the anguish of discovering that one was part of an imperialist system of cynical military and financial domination dissolved when confronted with the desperate concern for our immediate survival: "Every man for himself!" and our capacity for empathy diminished toward the vanishing point; we learned to gladly echo the strong opinions amplified by our masters. In this state of severely reduced social consciousness, we grew to feel that our rulers expressed our own views.
The 5 items below offer CEIMSA readers a way out of this spiral toward self-destruction. The self-deception which is necessary to recruit people to collaborate in the destruction of their environment, their society and ultimately themselves, is engineered by information flows from the top down. This vertical flow of communication --speaking truth to power, and being subjected to mind-numbing propaganda from corporate power outlets-- is a sine qua non condition of the power elite. Without this use of information which is designed to organize our energies away from fulfilling our real needs in our everyday lives, the owners of capital would be out of luck. A coordinated wave of collective recognition would simply put this small group out of business, first their employees would become disloyal, then their guards would turn against them. This turn of events is unthinkable, however, without an accompanying change of context: as context changes and our relationships take on a new meanings. Loyalty, duty, solidarity in a new context will produce new results. These articles below offer information --speaking truth to the powerless-- that might actually contribute to important changes in social context.
Item A., sent by University of Pennsylvania Professor Edward Herman, is an article by investigative reporter Diana Johnstone on oil-rich Libya.
Item B., sent to us by NYU Professor Mark Crispin Miller, is an archives of articles on the US/NATO attack on Libya from News From Underground.
Item C., from political activist Tom Hayden, is A Petition Against Quagmire in Libya.
Item D. is an article first published in the New Yorker by investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, on the 'Kill Team' photographs from Afghanistan.
Item E. is a series of 3 articles by Patrick Martin, William Blum, and Peter Dale Scott, from Information Clearing House on imperialist tactics used to contain the Muslim uprisings and channel them toward objectives compatible with the usual corporate interests.
And finally, we present the March 23 broadcast of The Doha Debate on "The Future of the Arab Revolutions"
from The Real News Network :
Resolve: This house believes that Arab revolutions will just produce different dictators.
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=6471
Francis McCollum Feeley
Professor of American Studies
Université de Grenoble 3
Director of Research
Université de Paris 10-Nanterre
http://www.ceimsa.org/
P.S. We remind readers that they are invited to our May 19 International Conference on the University of Paris campus at Nanterre. Resistation at the door with no fees required: please see Program = http://dimension.ucsd.edu/CEIMSA-IN-EXILE/newsletter/newsletter45.html
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A.
from Edward Herman :
Date: 23. March 2011
Subject: Real and false reasons for war against Libya.
Francis,
Very good article by Diana Johnstone.
ed herman
Why are we making war against Libya?
Real and False Reasons
by Diana Johnstone
Reason Number One: Regime change.
This was announced as the real objective the moment French president Nicolas Sarkozy took the extraordinary step of recognizing the rebels in Benghazi as "the only legitimate representative of the Libyan people". This recognition was an extraordinary violation of all diplomatic practice and principles. It meant non-recognition of the existing Libyan government and its institutions, which, contrary to the magical notions surrounding the word "dictator", cannot be reduced to the personality of one strongman. A major European nation, France, swept aside all those institutions to proclaim that an obscure group of rebels in a traditionally rebellious part of Libya constituted the North African nation’s legitimate government.
Since factually this was clearly not true, it could only be the proclamation of an objective to be reached by war. The French announcement was equivalent to a declaration of war against Libya, a war to defeat Kadhafi and put the mysterious rebels in power in his place.
False Pretext Number One: "to protect civilians".
The falsity of this pretext is obvious, first of all, because the UN Resolution authorizing military action "to protect civilians" was drawn up by France – whose objective was clearly regime change – and its Western allies. Had the real concern of the UN Security Council been to "protect innocent lives", it would have, could have, should have sent a strong neutral observer mission to find out what was really happening in Libya. There was no proof of rebel claims that the Kadhafi regime was slaughtering civilians. Had there been visible proof of such atrocities, we can be sure that they would have been shown regularly on prime time television. We have seen no such proof. A UN fact-finding mission could have very rapidly set the record straight, and the Security Council could then have acted on the basis of factual information rather than of claims by rebels seeking international aid for their cause. Instead, the Security Council, now little more than an instrument of Western powers, rushed ahead with sanctions, referral of alleged present or expected "crimes against humanity" to the International Criminal Court, and finally an authorization of a "no-fly zone" which Western powers were certain to interpret as a license to wage all-out war against Libya.
Once the United States and its leading NATO allies are authorized to "protect civilians", they do so with the instruments they have: air strikes; bombing and cruise missiles. Air strikes, bombing and cruise missiles are not designed to "protect civilians" but rather to destroy military targets, which inevitably leads to killing civilians. Aside from such "collateral damage", what right do we have to kill Libyan military personnel manning airports and other Libyan defense facilities? What have they done to us?
Reason Number Two: Because it’s easy.
With NATO forces bogged down in Afghanistan, certain alliance leaders (but not all of them) could think it would be a neat idea to grab a quick and easy victory in a nice little "humanitarian war". This, they can hope, could revive enthusiasm for military operations and increase the flagging popularity of politicians able to strut around as champions of "democracy" and destroyers of "dictators". Libya looks like an easy target. There you have a huge country, mostly desert, with only about six million inhabitants. The country’s defense installations are all located along the Mediterranean coast, within easy reach of NATO country fighter jets and US cruise missiles. Libyan armed forces are small, weak and untested. It looks like a pushover, not quite as easy as Grenada but no harder than Serbia. Sarkozy and company can hope to strut their victory strut in short order.
False Pretext Number Two: Arabs asked for this war.
On March 12, the Arab League meeting in Cairo announced that it backed a no-fly zone in Libya. This provided cover for the French-led semi-NATO operation. "We are responding to the demands of the Arab world", they could claim. But which Arab world? On the one hand, Sarkozy brazenly presented his crusade against Kadhafi as a continuation of the democratic uprisings in the Arab world against their autocratic leaders, while at the same time pretending to respond to the demand of… the most autocratic of those leaders, namely the Gulf State princes, themselves busily suppressing their own democratic uprisings. (It is not known exactly how the Arab League reached that decision, but Syria and Algeria voiced strong objections.)
The Western public was expected not to realize that those Arab leaders have their own reasons for hating Kadhafi, which have nothing to do with the reasons for hating him voiced in the West. Kadhafi has openly told them off to their faces, pointing to their betrayal of Palestine, their treachery, their hypocrisy. Last year, incidentally, former British MP George Galloway recounted how, in contrast to the Egyptian government’s obstruction of aid to Gaza, his aid caravan had had its humanitarian cargo doubled during a stopover in Libya. Kadhafi long ago turned his back on the Arab world, considering its leaders hopeless, and turned to Africa.
While the Arab League’s self-serving stance against Kadhafi was hailed in the West, little attention was paid to the African Union’s unanimous opposition to war against the Libyan leader. Kadhafi has invested huge amounts of oil revenues in sub-Saharan Africa, building infrastructure and investing in development. The Western powers that overthrow him will continue to buy Libyan oil as before. The major difference could be that the new rulers, put in place by Europe, will follow the example of the Arab League sheikhs and shift their oil revenues from Africa to the London stock exchange and Western arms merchants.
Real Reason Number Three: Because Sarkozy followed BHL’s advice.
On March 4, the French literary dandy Bernard-Henri Lévy held a private meeting in Benghazi with Moustapha Abdeljalil, a former justice minister who has turned coats to become leader of the rebel "National Transition Council". That very evening, BHL called Sarkozy on his portable telephone and got his agreement to receive the NTC leaders. The meeting took place on March 10 in the Elysée palace in Paris. As reported in Le Figaro by veteran international reporter Renaud Girard, Sarkozy thereupon announced to the delighted Libyans the plan that he had concocted with BHL: recognition of the NTC as sole legitimate representative of Libya, the naming of a French ambassador to Benghazi, precision strikes on Libyan military airports, with the blessings of the Arab League (which he had already obtained). The French foreign minister, Alain Juppé, was startled to learn of this dramatic turn in French diplomacy after the media.
Kadhafi explained at length after the uprising began that he could not be called upon to resign, because he held no official office. He was, he insisted, only a "guide", to whom the Libyan people could turn for advice on controversial questions.
It turns out the French also have an unofficial spiritual guide: Bernard-Henri Lévy. While Kadhafi wears colorful costumes and dwells in a tent, BHL wears impeccable white shirts open down his manly chest and hangs out in the Saint Germain des Près section of Paris. Neither was elected. Both exercise their power in mysterious ways.
In the Anglo-American world, Bernard-Henri Lévy is regarded as a comic figure, much like Kadhafi. His "philosophy" has about as many followers as the Little Green Book of the Libyan guide. But BHL also has money, lots of it, and is the friend of lots more. He exercises enormous influence in the world of French media, inviting journalists, writers, show business figures to his vacation paradise in Marrakech, serving on the board of directors of the two major "center-left" daily newspaper, Libération and Le Monde. He writes regularly in whatever mainstream publication he wants, appears on whatever television channel he chooses. By ordinary people in France, he is widely detested. But they cannot hope for a UN Security Council resolution to get rid of him.
___________________
Diana Johnstone is author of Fools Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions.
She can be reached at diana.josto@yahoo.fr
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B.
from Mark Crispin Miller :
Date: 26 March 2011
Subject: Lots of solid stuff to read, and watch, re: US/NATO war on Libya.
http://markcrispinmiller.com
Some Good/Useful Reading
March 24, 2011
There have been many good/thoughtful essays published in the last few days on the war in/against Libya. The purpose of this mailing is to link many of them in one place. My apologies to authors and readers for good essays that I've overlooked. I've grouped the articles into a rough categories. Obviously not an exact science.
To get warmed up, here is a link to Jon Stewart "Daily Show" in which the rhetoric of nonintervention war is examined."
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-march-21-2011/odyssey-dawn---unconstitutional-war.
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
Concerned Families of Westchester (NY)
TO INTERVENE OR NOT TO INTERVENE?
Of Principle and Peril
Editorial, Middle East Research [March 22, 2011]
---- Reasonable, principled people can disagree about whether, in an ideal world, Western military intervention in Libya's internal war would be a moral imperative. With Saddam Hussein dead and gone, there is arguably no more capricious and overbearing dictator in the Arab world than Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi. The uprising of the Libyan people against him, beginning on February 17, was courageous beyond measure. It seems certain that, absent outside help, the subsequent armed insurrection would have been doomed to sputter amidst the colonel's bloody reprisals. Š So why, in UNSC 1973, did the US push for and attain an authorization of force that not only includes a no-fly zone but also goes beyond it? http://merip.org/mero/mero032211
(Video) Phyllis Bennis: No-Fly Zone Enacted as U.S. and Allied Forces Launch Air Strikes on Libya
From Democracy Now! [March 21, 2011] - 15 minutes
---- U.S. and allied forces have launched a second wave of air strikes on Libya to enforce a no-fly zone. Targets have included Libya's air defenses, forces loyal to Col. Muammar Gaddafi, and Gaddafi's fortified compound. For analysis, we speak to Phyllis Bennis with the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies. http://www.democracynow.org/2011/3/21/no_fly_zone_enacted_as_us
(Video) Gilbert Achcar on the Western intervention in Libya
From Real News [March 21, 2011]
http://warincontext.org/2011/03/21/gilbert-achcar-on-the-western-intervention-in-libya/
For or against the war in Libya? Neither
By Paul Woodward, War In Context [March 22, 2011]
---- If I am asked, do you support the war? Or, do you support the intervention? Or, are you an interventionist? My response is: none of the above. They are all misleading questions. By the week beginning March 13, the collapse of the Libyan revolution and the beginning of a major and very bloody assault on Benghazi were imminent. ŠPretty much the only way one could avoid coming to the conclusion that Benghazi and its population of close to a million was in a position of immense danger would have been by avoiding reading the news. The uprising had not been fully crushed, but it was in the process of rapid collapse. http://warincontext.org/2011/03/22/for-or-against-the-war-in-libya-neither/
(Video) Debating Intervention: Is U.S.-Led Military Action the Best Solution to Libya Crisis?
From Democracy Now! [March 23, 2011] - 30 minutes
---- Forces loyal to Libyan leader Col. Muammar Gaddafi continue to advance on rebel-held towns amidst ongoing U.S.-led air strikes. Gaddafi's deadly crackdown on the Libyan uprising has sparked debate on longstanding questions around international intervention. We're joined by Libyan poet, scholar and University of Michigan professor Khaled Mattawa, who supports U.S.-led intervention, and UCLA law professor Asli Bali, who says the U.S.-led coalition has ignored viable alternatives to military attacks. http://www.democracynow.org/2011/3/23/debating_intervention_is_us_led_military
See also: Jeff Sparrow, "How the War on Libya was Sold," Counterpunch [March23, 2011]
http://counterpunch.org/sparrow03232011.html; and Sam Husseini, "US Mideast Policy is Far Beyond Double Standards," Counterpunch [March 24, 2011]
http://counterpunch.org/husseini03242011.html
EXPECTED/POSSIBLE OUTCOMES
Very Elementary Thoughts on Thinking About Now
By Michael Albert, ZNet [March 22, 2011]
[FB - As I was about to click "send," an expanded version of blog essay appeared in my email in-box. The expanded version is updated and should be on Mike's blog soon.]
---- Good, insightful people can have conflicting views about Libya, the Mideast, and North Africa, and the UN and U.S. role there. Rather than flinging verbal daggers at one another until irretrievable splits permanently part us, can we disagree but also hear others and realize we may not be right? Can we even find a way to pursue the logic of our views, differences and all, in a shared agenda? http://www.zcommunications.org/very-elementary-thoughts-on-thinking-about-now-by-michael-albert
Top Ten Accomplishments of the UN No-Fly Zone
By Juan Cole, Informed Comment [March 24, 2011]
http://www.juancole.com/2011/03/top-ten-accomplishments-of-the-un-no-fly-zone.html
Libya Intervention Threatens the Arab Spring
By Phyllis Bennis, Aljazeera [March 22, 2011]
---- Air and naval strikes against Libya are threatening the Arab Spring. Ironically, one of the reasons many people supported the call for a no-fly zone was the fear that if Gaddafi managed to crush the Libyan people's uprising and remain in power, it would send a devastating message to other Arab dictators: Use enough military force and you will keep your job. Instead, it turns out that just the opposite may be the result: It was after the UN passed its no-fly zone and use-of-force resolution, and just as US, British, French and other warplanes and warships launched their attacks against Libya, that other Arab regimes escalated their crack-down on their own democratic movements. http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/03/20113227357222118.html
Intervening in Libya: Why Nothing Good Will Come of This
By Vijay Prashad, Counterpunch [March 23, 2011]
---- Qaddafi is fundamentally weakened, and in time would have had to seek an exit for himself and his family. It was inevitable. The question was how long this would take, and how much suffering he would enforce as the cost of his departure. The forces of counter-revolution line up with the West. No Tunisian and Egyptian planes are on the offer. It is a telling sign that only the counter-revolutionary regimes are excited at the prospect of this battle. They know that it is precisely the best opportunity to stop the tide of the Arab Revolt of 2011. http://counterpunch.org/prashad03232011.html
The Road to Hell: Have liberal intellectuals learned nothing from Iraq?
By David Rieff, The New Republic [March 23, 2011]
---- Had the purpose of an air exclusion zone over Libya been solely to protect the people of Benghazi and of other insurgent-controlled areas in the east from being massacred by Colonel Qaddafi's advancing forces, opposing it might still have made intellectual sense, but it would not have made moral sense, which is what should count most. Qaddafi had promised a slaughter in the evening before the United Nations authorized the Western intervention, and there was no sane reason not to take him at his word. But from the beginning it has been clear that while this intervention has been couched in the language of humanitarianism and of the global good deed, invoking the so-called Responsibility to Protect (R2P), the U.N.'s new doctrine that is supposed to govern those instances when outside powers must step in militarily to prevent tyrants from killing their own people, the more important goal has been to support the insurgency, which is to say, to bring about regime change. Had it been otherwise, the bombing could have been halted once the Libyan government attack on Benghazi had been halted. http://www.tnr.com/print/article/against-the-current/85621/libya-iraq-muammar-qaddafi
Gaddafi is Likely to Fall, But What Next?
By Patrick Cockburn Counterpunch [March 21, 2011]
---- In the next few weeks Colonel Muammar Gaddafi is likely to lose power. The forces arrayed against him are too strong. His own political and military support is too weak. The US, Britain and France are scarcely going to permit a stalemate to develop whereby he clings on to Tripoli and parts of western Libya while the rebels hold the east of the country. It is the next stage in Libya - after the fall of Gaddafi - which has the potential to produce a disaster similar to Afghanistan and Iraq. In terms of the exercise of real authority, Gaddafi is likely to be replaced not by Libyans but by the foreign powers that assist in his overthrow. Going by what happened in Afghanistan and Iraq it will not take much for their actions to be seen across the Middle East as hypocritical and self-serving, and resisted as such. http://counterpunch.org/patrick03212011.html
See also: From Aljazeera, (Video) "Endgame in Libya," [March 22, 2011] - 25 minutes http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/rizkhan/2011/03/201132212848346309.html; and Jeremy Scahill, "The No-Fly Zone Has Always Been a Recipe for Disaster," Democracy Now! [March 22, 2011] - 3 minutes http://www.democracynow.org/2011/3/22/the_no_fly_zone_has_always
THE ACTION IN WASHINGTON
Obama on Presidential War-Making Powers
By Glenn Greenwald, Salon [March 18, 2011]
---- I will simply never understand the view that the Constitution allows the President unilaterally to commit the nation to prolonged military conflict in another country -- especially in non-emergency matters having little to do with self-defense -- but just consider what candidate Barack Obama said about this matter when -- during the campaign -- he responded in writing to a series of questions regarding executive power from Charlie Savage, then of The Boston Globe:
Q. In what circumstances, if any, would the president have constitutional authority to bomb Iran without seeking a use-of-force authorization from Congress? (Specifically, what about the strategic bombing of suspected nuclear sites -- a situation that does not involve stopping an IMMINENT threat?)
OBAMA: The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation. As Commander-in-Chief, the President does have a duty to protect and defend the United States. In instances of self-defense, the President would be within his constitutional authority to act before advising Congress or seeking its consent. http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/03/18-6
Ten Calls From Congress for a Debate About War
By John Nichols, The Nation [March 23, 2011]
http://www.thenation.com/blog/159400/ten-calls-congress-debate-about-war
US role in Libya costs hundreds of millions so far
By Donna Cassata, Associated Press March 23, 2011]---- Stretched thin by two wars, the U.S. military is spending upward of $1 billion in an international assault to destroy Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's air defenses and save rebels from likely defeat, according to analysts and a rough calculation of the military operation so far. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110323/ap_on_bi_ge/us_us_libya_costs
Instead of Bombing Dictators, Stop Selling Them Bombs
By Medea Benjamin and Charles Davis, Code Pink [March 23, 2011]
---- When all you have is bombs, everything starts to look like a target. And so after years of providing Libya's dictator with the weapons he's been using against the people, all the international community - France, Britain and the United States - has to offer the people of Libya is more bombs, this time dropped from the sky rather than delivered in a box to Muammar Gaddafi's palace. In 2009 alone, European governments -- including Britain and France -- sold Libya more than $470 million worth of weapons, including fighter jets, guns and bombs. And before it started calling for regime change, the Obama administration was working to provide the Libyan dictator another $77 million in weapons, on top of the $17 million it provided in 2009 and the $46 million the Bush administration provided in 2008. Rather than engage in cruise missile liberalism, Obama could save lives by immediately ending support for these brutal regimes. http://counterpunch.org/benjamin03232011.html
Germany Steps Away >From European Unity
By Steven Erlanger and Judy Dempsey, New York Times [March 23, 2011]
---- Driven by electoral pressures and Germany's postwar aversion to war and nuclear power, Chancellor Angela Merkel has deeply strained relations with allies in the European Union and the NATO alliance, raising new questions about Germany's ability to play a global role in foreign policy, even as its economic power and influence grow. By abstaining in the Security Council on the resolution authorizing military action to protect Libyan civilians - and by refusing on Wednesday to participate in the enforcement of an arms embargo on Libya that the United Nations authorized - Germany pointedly refused to go along with the political aims and leadership of its two most important European allies, Britain and France, as well as the United States. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/24/world/europe/24germany.html?ref=world&pagewanted=print
See also: "Germany's Libya Contribution: Merkel Cabinet Approves AWACS for Afghanistan," Der Spiegel [Germany], http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,druck-752709,00.html
RESOURCES/KEEPING UP WITH THE NEWS
Aljazeera is essential - www.aljazeera.net/english. Each day, Juan Cole's site (www.juancole.com) and Paul Woodward's site (www.warincontext.org) link/provide news and analysis. The sites from which the articles linked above are taken have several good/useful articles each day.
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C.
from Tom Hayden :
Date: 23 March 2011
Subject: A Petition Against Quagmire in Libya.
Published by Tom Hayden, The Peace Exchange Bulletin is a reader-supported journal, critically following the Pentagon's Long War in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq, as well as the failed U.S. wars on drugs and gangs, and U.S. military responses to nationalism and poverty around the world.
A Petition Against Quagmire in Libya
At least ten thousand Americans are expected to sign the following petition against a quagmire in Libya, which is to be delivered to the White House and by local activists to their elected representatives. The campaign against a Libyan quagmire flows out of continuing grass-roots pressure against the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
The petition is being circulated by the Peace and Justice Resource Center, directed by Tom Hayden, an author and critic of the "Long War" for the past decade, and a leader of the anti-Vietnam movement of the 1960s. The PJRC is an online network affiliated with clusters in over 50 American cities as well as peace groups in NATO countries. The petition is meant to promote local discussion and serve as an organizing tool in anti-war outreach and advocacy before elected officials.
The full text of the petition follows:
The United States cannot afford a deepening quagmire in Libya. We call on President Obama to seek authorization from the U.S. Congress for his Libyan bombing campaign, including a mission statement limited to protecting Libyan civilians, a viable diplomatic strategy, an exact cost projection, and a timeline for the rapid withdrawal of all U.S. combat troops before the war becomes another quagmire.
We believe that Col. Quaddafi is an autocratic ruler who has controlled Libyan lives for far too long. But we also believe a military escalation to remove him would be seen as a violation of Libyan sovereignty and a subversion of United Nations authorization 1973. Col. Quaddafi can be contained, forced into exile, or removed by the force of his own people.
We call for a responsible White House plan to end the unaffordable trillion dollar wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Libya. The pro-democracy movements sweeping the Middle East and North Africa deserve American diplomatic, economic and political support, but cannot become the platform for another decade of military intervention.
We support the Democratic National Committee's recent resolution calling for a significant and substantial withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan beginning this July, and the transfer of funds for war to rebuilding our economy at home.
We further call for the most serious effort of our generation to speed the transition to energy conservation and renewable resources with the same urgency with which our government takes us to war.
It is time for a great re-thinking of American foreign policy, and a stronger movement for peace, jobs and environmental sanity.
Anthony Saldana for the PJRC
Support the PJRC!
___________
D.
from Reader Supported News :
Date: 22 March 2011
Subject: The Kill Team photos from Afghanistan.
http://readersupportednews.org/
The “Kill Team” Photographs
___________
E.
from Information Clearing House :
Date: 29 March 2011
Subject: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in the World Today.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/
1.The US and European intervention in Libya is aimed not at bringing “democracy” and “freedom,” but at installing in power stooges of the CIA who will rule just as brutally as Gaddafi, while allowing the imperialist powers to loot the country’s oil resources and use Libya as a base of operations.
A CIA Commander For Libyan Rebels
by Patrick Martin
2.Will the state-dominated economy be privatized? Who will wind up owning Libya's oil? Will the new regime continue to invest Libyan oil revenues in sub-Saharan African development projects? Will they allow a US military base and NATO exercises?
"Bait and Switch"
Libya and The Holy Triumvirate
by William Blum
3."It may puzzle and perhaps dismay young protesters in Benghazi, Cairo and Tunisia that their democratic hopes are being manipulated by an ultra-conservative Arab elite which has underhandedly backed a surge of militant Islamist radicals across North Africa."
Who Are The Libyan Freedom Fighters And Their Patrons?
by Peter Dale Scott