Anti-war, or just anti this war?....

[e_dog]

We went in to Afgan. too hastily. the Taliban might've agree to assist arresting BinLaden if we continued negotiating. But No. Big man Bush say unconditional cooperation. Big bully America must have its way. even if it means we're five years later and no BinLaden! If ya negotiate, the terrorists will have won ....

Diplomacy is fur pussies.


No doubt the U.S. committed some atrocities in WWII. Especially the atom bomb drops -- among the greatest offences of the century, for which Harry Truman should have been tried alongside the Japanese leaders at Tokyo. War crimes can be committed even in a just war. They usually are committed in any war, just or not. European theatre is clear cut, the Nazis and fascists had to be stopped. Pacific theatre was sort of one imperialist fighting against others so its more ambiguous in justice. I.e Japan was clearly in the wrong, but the U.S. and British are no saints either, of course.

Unjust War Theory is more likeit.

[jimboloco]

In WW2, as you may know, my pops was a co-pilot on bombers, B-24's. He was just a high school grad who scored well on the tests and they taught him to fly. He died in 1948; 24 years later, I was getting out of the Farce myself, was seeing a Quaker woman who was helping me to write my conscientious objector discharge application. She invited me over for supper. I walked in and saw a photo of my pops WW2 bomber crew, which was one of the photos I had grown up with and I met his AC, Robin, a birthright Quaker. It was an epiphany. He's still my friend, and a few years ago he told me that one day they were unable to hit their target, so they dropped all their bombs on a German village.

You know the intensity, the manifest hatred, and the national pride, were more important to the average Yank than anything else, it was always about territory, and remember, the holocaust was not even widely known until the war's end, in Europe, and the Pacific War was also about territory and national pride, and had the advantage of the racist sentiment unleashed.

During Vietnam War times, Robin counselled AWOL soldiers and even gave them sanctuary, and helped them to return to the military if they wanted to and assured that they were treated fairly. His wife counselled in-service C.O.'s and did draft counselling at the local U. Robin has been against every war since, possible excepting the Balkans and Afghanistan.

Could another course of actiion have been pursued? Well for starters,
the Taliban were the sinners, giving open sanction to the Al-Quaida.
However, we could have followed thru on our offer of peace for the Taliban,in exchange for Al-Quaida. and simply pursued the Al-Quaida as an international effort, emaciating their training camps in Afghanistan and solidifying the international community in defense against Al-Quaida. But if Taliban had been left in power, they would have continued to evoke a support for the same. It was Al-Quaida's ideological home land and a massive effort to uproot Al-Quaida needed a sea change for their locale.
So it was difficult to differentiate between Al_Q and the Talibumbs.
But the possibility still exists that we could have just pursued Al-Q and left out the nation-state biz.

In so many cases this would apply, I guess, but the level of ideological intensity professed by Al-Quaida is beyond repair and instead demands controlling manuvers, but the tactic of control needs more than military-police intervention. We have to look at the policies; our elitist leaders have manufactured an ideological response against us. And so we also need a sea change at home, and that would indeed make a difference in the intensity and level of animosity felt against us. But some of that animosity is also a cultural animosity and even at our progressive best, we would still be resented by some, and therefore the need for security,
which nobody can denyyyyyyy.

[stilltrucking]

I am not birth right quaker, It was a grueling process to become a Friend I had to write a letter to the clerk of the meeting requesting to join the quakers. Those gentle kind people have not heard from me in over twenty years (The Nashville Tennessee Friends Meeting) I am probably not a quaker anymore, but I still feel like one.

So in that spirit of Friendship I say to you

I think you are making too much sense jim. Does that make any sense to you?

inFriendship
jack tilles

[stilltrucking]

Here is a post I deleted from this thread cause I thought I was making too much sense. As for the the holocaust jim, no it was widely known. Maybe not in the Saturday Evening Post but plenty of people knew what was happening
RE:
http://www.studioeight.tv/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=8494

Deleted post begins here


I am speaking only for myself. Sorry mark, I wish I had made that more clear. I have no desire to debate the subject.

It is a conviction for me. If I have any religion it is Friendship, as in the Religious Society of Friends' AKA Quakers. I am not anti war I am just a pacifist.

You can slice and dice history any way you want. You can pull one war out of its historical context and say it was a just war.

I take the quantum mechanical view.
I believe all wars in twentieth century were interconnected. World war two was a just war we all agree, yet it was a direct consequence of world war one, which was just as unjust as our war against Iraq, based on lies and deceit.

So on and so forth back through the whole bloody history of the 20th century.

That is my story and I am sticking to it.

The hell with it: This has nothing to do with me; I am too old for this debate. It is the young who should be thinking about it.

This bit below about women is really embarassing, it is probably why I deleted the post. But you know how twisted I am about women.
Our weapons have out grown our nervous system.
We are all Cro-Magnon killers and it has been all down hill since the Neolithic revolution. Women started this shit when they invented agriculture, then came the surpluses, then permanent settlements, then the temples, the priests, princes, the city state, nation state and standing armies.

I say women got us into this fine mess let them get us out of it.

The whore of Babylon, nee miss america, needs to get up off her ass and put a stop to the madness.

Where is Margaret Fell and
Jeannette Rankin
when we need them

Quote:
Jeanette Rankin
Jeanette Rankin (1880-1973) was born near Missoula, Montana, attended the public schools there, and graduated from the University of Montana at Missoula. At age 37, Ms. Rankin won election to the US House of Representatives from Montana. She was the first woman elected to the US Congress in 1917 -- three years before women were guaranteed the Constitutional right to vote.

President Wilson called for a war resolution on the evening Congress convened in April 1917. A strong advocate of women's rights, she was lobbied by rival women's political groups tried to persuade Rankin that her vote would speak for all women. Carrie Chapman Catt of the National American Woman Suffrage Association feared a vote against war would brand suffragists as unpatriotic while Alice Paul of the Woman's Party thought women in politics should speak for peace. Rankin, who had not previously identified herself as a pacifist, announced that she could not vote for war and in joining the fifty-six other Members who voted against the war resolution embarked on the cause that would be at the center of her life until her death more than a half century later. Her vote cost her reelection.

For twenty years following her retirement from Congress in 1919 Rankin was actively involved in a variety of pacifist organizations such as the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. She served also as field representative for the National Council for the Prevention of War.

She was elected to the House of Representatives again in 1940 on a peace platform and was the only member of Congress to vote "no" to the U.S. entering the second World War. To vote "no" to war after the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor took great strength of conviction. After placing her vote, Rankin had to seek safety in a nearby phone booth from angry crowds until police could escort her home.

In the years following the war, Rankin made various trips to India to study the pacifism of Gandhi and others. She briefly reentered public life in the late 1960s when a coalition of women organized themselves as the Jeannette Rankin Brigade and marched on Washington in protest of the war in Vietnam.

><><><><><><>><>><><><><><>
On an unrelated note, if I make one more post today, somebody please shoot me.

[Arcadia]

"I say women got us into this fine mess let them get us out of it."
are you talking seriously, s/t??!
or are you simply thinking in the line your mother/ Eva/ Maria/Wonderwoman?

[stilltrucking]

"I say women got us into this fine mess let them get us out of it."
are you talking seriously, s/t??!

That is why I put this line in there.

This bit below about women is really embarassing, it is probably why I deleted the post. But you know how twisted I am about women.

Wonder woman AKA The Honorable Barbara Mikulski



Jim I am glad you posted that snip about your dad. Miraculous, as if your dad was still there for you.

On a personal note:

It has taken me a lifetime to find my father again, to have compassion for him.

[Arcadia]

s/t:

"sorry to confuse you. I am pretty stupid about women."
To tell the truth... I didn't intent to read little red letras in english!
You didn't confuse me. And I knew you were not talking seriously. Maybe I only missed to talk with you.

and just in case (not sarcasm here...!) I don't want to be the cause of your confusion in your next life/s: I'm not a buddhist nun.

[mnaz]

Yes. All wars are interconnected. On many levels. They comprise their own insular rules of logic and untouchable "code of honor". On many levels. There will always be a thousand reasons to go to war with some fucked up asshole or two halfway around the earth. And Jesus may be wrong about that "turn the other cheek" business. Maybe. Sometimes. On some level. But for Christ's sake, at least be slow to anger, to pick up a weapon and pursue a sanctioned killing spree, to go into insular darkness that may ruin the thing it was fighting for, over time. These things have a cumulative effect on the greater whole. The generations come and go. They don't seem to live long enough. Robert McNamara eventually confessed that the Vietnam war was a "terrible mistake", but who was listening? God, the noise these days.

[hester prynne]

Let me tell you what I think about war. Not based on facts from history, not based on any philosophy or the musings of some war hero or historian. Based merely on the common sense of my 53 year old life.

War is but a misintrepretation of concept, an extreme form of survival fear, an addiction to that feeling of overpowering something for your own gain, an aberration, borne perhaps out of the thrill when we were killing game for food. It's a territorial fear, that results in an explosion of base animal instincts. Complete with shrapnel and fallout, that gets more lethal, and more arrogant and ridiculous in time, if it is not addressed.

This very day we are watching a war "we" incited, an obvious, obsolete form of gaining power, gaining oil, gaining, "democracy?", because why? Because we must be "number one?".

"War" is an ignorant excuse for the inevitable human internal struggle that Jesus often tried to teach about, but only in it's shallowest, most base form; projected onto the surface by ignorant, fearful, dull people.

And they, in their large numbers, could very well burn me at a stake, for going against them too loudly. They will chide me and say that "This is "war" after all. What about the troops giving their lives for my struggle????"

Put war, (struggle), inside yourself. Work with it, let it ripen you to concepts beyond the surface that are more agreeable to your nature, and benefit the future. Go for a win within. Don't force everyone to join in your struggle under the guise of duty, and kill innocent bystanders who have nothing to do with your struggle.

There are peaceful resolves in abundance, there always has been.
War is about not going there.....

War is obsolete.
H

[mnaz]

Yes. Internal vs. external.... a problem with virulent religion in general, and its conscription of the peaceful into its matrix of various "holy wars".

It seems we inevitably discuss war on two levels.... "macro"(logic and justification of policy,etc.) vs. internal (moral/"spiritual" relationship to a greater whole, etc.) I even wrote bad poetry about it.... Perhaps there's a place for the "warrior class" to fight great wrongs, but I don't know if I could participate in war. I don't want to actually further, by my own hand, the plague that has become so nearly (literally) all-consuming...

Well... That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Like I said, an impossibly huge and complex discussion.....

[e_dog]

We're always at war, with others and with ourselves.

Wage war with peaceful methods to bring about peace and change.

[jimboloco]

But for Christ's sake, at least be slow to anger, to pick up a weapon and pursue a sanctioned killing spree, to go into insular darkness that may ruin the thing it was fighting for, over time. These things have a cumulative effect on the greater whole. The generations come and go. They don't seem to live long enough. Robert McNamara eventually confessed that the Vietnam war was a "terrible mistake", but who was listening? God, the noise these days.

A genuine process via the congress, with regard to the commander in chief, would be a studied readiness. Bush had his CIA witness, Tenant, standing behind him when he rattled off his sham intell, the staged event, and so the congress and the people believed him. As far as MacNamara, he believed that we made tactical errors, but never stopped believing in the initial impulse to stop the NVA and the Cong by military means, to him the war was not immoral and it was instead tactically difficult,
and furthermore, he believed that, right or wrong, young men (and women), that "when a government official tells you to do something, then you ought to go ahead and do it." It was OK to protest, but, by God, you can't refuse duty.

On Veterans Day, when I get my chance at the open mike, I will say that if America wants to use it's military in positive and productive ways we should do so with the support and agreement of the international community. Of course that is a quantum leap for many good 'Mericans, but it's is exactly what needs to happen, internal scrutiny, and international support and collusion.

Otherwise, the abhorrance of war can be transformed into constructive peacekeeping. I'd like to see an empowered UN force and a UN security council whose recommendations would be at least of some value.

But hey, the USofA, we de champs, man, fuck the UN. right?

[stilltrucking]

Where is the quote from jimbo,

Quote:
But for Christ's sake, at least be slow to anger, to pick up a weapon and pursue a sanctioned killing spree, to go into insular darkness that may ruin the thing it was fighting for, over time. These things have a cumulative effect on the greater whole. The generations come and go. They don't seem to live long enough. Robert McNamara eventually confessed that the Vietnam war was a "terrible mistake", but who was listening? God, the noise these days

Dalai Lama makes a lot of sense to me too, but I still expect to end up burning at a stake. At least I will be in good company.

Well today is november 12 we can forget about armistice day for another year. What's next chrismas?

On June 22, 1944, months before World War II ended, Roosevelt signed the GI Bill. With its college tuition benefit and home loan guarantees, the bill is widely viewed as the most far-reaching social welfare program in U.S. history.
"I argue that without the World War I generation, we wouldn't have what we got, that they're responsible for the GI Bill," Keene said. "It's their legacy."
But the bill wasn't for the vets of 1917-18. They didn't share in the benefits.
They just grew old.
About 800,000 of them formed a new organization, Veterans of World War I of the USA, in the mid-1950s. "We had national conventions; there were thousands of us there," said Muriel Sue Kerr, who started work as a secretary at the group's Alexandria headquarters in 1974, one of 21 paid staff members. "Oh, we'd go to Hot Springs, Arkansas; Oklahoma City; Daytona Beach, Florida. Such wonderful, wonderful times."
There were a quarter-million members in 1974. Kerr, now in her 60s, said: "I was the luckiest girl in the world. I had 750,000 grandfathers." Then her grandfathers started dying, gone by the dozens each year, then the hundreds, then the thousands.
She became executive director in the early 1980s, and some of the calls she got from the vets made her cry: "You know, the caretaker wouldn't cut the crust off their bread. Or their driver's license had been taken away. Or someone had stolen something."
The conventions stopped. The office closed in 1990, and the staff disbanded. But Kerr is still the executive director. "Until the last of them is gone," she said.
The national commander: Frank Woodruff Buckles. His only duty is to wake up each morning.

Back From Battle, a Generation Kept Fighting
Youngest of 13 Surviving WWI Veterans Pays Homage, Is Honored at Arlington
By Paul Duggan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 12, 2006; Page A01

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 01102.html

Take care of yourself jim, we need you all for the long haul.
You the only good thing that happened from that war,


You need to report for duty everymorning. THank you.

[abcrystcats]

Mnaz ... there HAVE been just wars.

Will there be just war again?

I sort of doubt it.

We live in an overcrowded world now, where everyone is just fighting for resources, increasingly.

War is not a concept I would automatically condemn or automatically approve, but the way the future looks, war looks equally bleak.

I can only dream of fighting for liberty, for instance. What liberty is there in this economically straitened world of corporations? I cannot exactly escape them and go build my life off the land, can I?

So, when we talk about a just war, I am afraid we are talking mostly about history. It happened, but it can not happen again for a very long time, if then.

At least you know that people can fight for justice and be right in doing it.

I don't know how much meaning that idea is going to have to our descendants, however.

[jimboloco]

even with the just wars
looking back
the revolutionary war did not have to be fought
neither did the civil war

both outcomes would have seen the liberation of peoples without war

the indians in oaxaca see their struggle as just

who should i kill in this world for peace?
name one person whose life i should take that would enhance the road to peace?
nobody political for starters
maybe a confused burglar
i would bash his brains with my ten pound dumbbells
who else?

the united nations should intervene in Darfur