Reposted from the Los Angeles Times.

America’s Day of Infamy

Arthur Schlesinger Jr.

We are at war again — not because of enemy attack, as in World War II, nor because of incremental drift, as in the Vietnam War — but because of the deliberate and premeditated choice of our own government.

Now that we are embarked on this misadventure, let us hope that our intervention will be swift and decisive, and that victory will come with minimal American, British and civilian Iraqi casualties.

But let us continue to ask why our government chose to impose this war. The choice reflects a fatal turn in U.S. foreign policy, in which the strategic doctrine of containment and deterrence that led us to peaceful victory during the Cold War has been replaced by the Bush Doctrine of preventive war. The president has adopted a policy of “anticipatory self-defense” that is alarmingly similar to the policy that imperial Japan employed at Pearl Harbor on a date which, as an earlier American president said it would, lives in infamy.

Franklin D. Roosevelt was right, but today it is we Americans who live in infamy. The global wave of sympathy that engulfed the United States after 9/11 has given way to a global wave of hatred of American arrogance and militarism. Public opinion polls in friendly countries regard George W. Bush as a greater threat to peace than Saddam Hussein. Demonstrations around the planet, instead of denouncing the vicious rule of the Iraqi president, assail the United States on a daily basis.

The Bush Doctrine converts us into the world’s judge, jury and executioner — a self-appointed status that, however benign our motives, is bound to corrupt our leadership. As John Quincy Adams warned on July 4, 1821, the fundamental maxims of our policy “would insensibly change from liberty to force … [America] might become the dictatress of the world. She would no longer be the ruler of her own spirit.” Already the collateral damage to our civil liberties and constitutional rights, carried out by the religious fanatic who is our attorney general, is considerable — and more is still to come.

What drove the rush to war? Hussein has a significantly smaller military force than he had in 1990, and he has grown weaker as more weapons have been exposed and destroyed under the United Nations’ inspection regime. The cause of our rush to war was so trivial as to seem idiotic. It was the weather. American troops, our masters tell us, will lose their edge in the Persian Gulf’s midday sun; so we had to go to war before summer. This is a reason to rush to war? We have, after all, a professional army — and a professional army ought not to lose its edge so quickly and easily.

There is a base suspicion that we are going to war against Iraq because that is the only war we can win. We can’t win the war against Al Qaeda because Al Qaeda strikes from the shadows and disappears into them. We can’t win a war against North Korea because it has nuclear weapons. Indeed, the danger from North Korea is far more clear, present and compelling than the danger from Iraq, and our different treatment of the two countries is a potent incentive for other rogue states to develop their own nuclear arsenals.

How have we gotten into this tragic fix without searching debate? No war has been more extensively previewed than this one. Despite pro forma disclaimers, President Bush’s determination to go to war has been apparent from the start. Why then this absence of dialogue? Why the collapse of the Democratic Party? Why let the opposition movement fall into the hands of infantile leftists?

I think the media are greatly to blame. There have been congressional efforts to jump-start a debate. Democratic Sens. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia have delivered strong and thoughtful speeches opposing the rush to war. They have been largely ignored by the media. Some philanthropist had to pay the New York Times to print the text of Byrd’s powerful Feb. 12 speech in a full-page advertisement — a speech ignored by the media when delivered. The media have played up mass demonstrations at the expense of the reasoned case against the war.

According to polls, a near majority of ill-informed Americans believes Hussein had something to do with the attacks on New York and the Pentagon and resulting massacre of nearly 3,000 innocent people. Hussein is a great villain, but he had nothing to do with 9/11. Many, perhaps most, Americans believe a war against Iraq will be a blow against international terrorism. But evidence from the region indicates very plainly that it will make recruitment much easier for Al Qaeda and other murderous gangs.

What should we have done? What if opposition to war had received a fair break from the media? There are two strong arguments for the war — that Hussein might down the road acquire nuclear weapons, and that the people of Iraq deserve liberation from his monstrous tyranny.

Unlike biological and chemical weapons, nuclear arms — and their production facilities — are hard to conceal. Inspection, surveillance, tapping telephone calls and espionage could check any nuclear initiative on Hussein’s part. He is containable, and he is not immortal.

The more powerful argument is humanitarian intervention. This comes with ill grace from an administration that includes people who showed no objections to Hussein’s human rights atrocities when he was at war with Iran. But do we have a moral obligation to fight despicable tyrants everywhere?

Hussein is unquestionably a monster. But does that mean we should forcibly remove him from power? “Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled,” Adams said in the same July 4 speech, “there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.” We are now going abroad to destroy a monster. The aftermath — how America conducts itself in Iraq and the world — will provide the crucial test as to whether the war can be justified.

America as the world’s self-appointed judge, jury and executioner? “We must face the fact,” President John F. Kennedy once said, “that the United States is neither omnipotent nor omniscient — that we are only 6% of the world’s population — that we cannot impose our will upon the other 94% of mankind — that we cannot right every wrong or reverse each adversity — and that therefore there cannot be an American solution to every world problem.”

Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

Arthur Schlesinger Jr. is a historian and the author, most recently, of “A Life in the 20th Century: Innocent Beginnings.” He served as special assistant to President John F. Kennedy.

Thanks for the link to Common Dreams.

This morning Mr. Stefan Mittman, a reader from Greece, forwarded me a copy of the American Declaration of Independence without comment. Perhaps this document written 227 years ago deserves a another look. Especially pertinent in this time of war are the list of grievances. 

A Declaration of Independence

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

The 56 signatures on the Declaration were: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton, William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn, Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr.,  Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton, John Hancock, Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll, George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton, Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross, Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean, William Floyd, Philip LivingstonFrancis Lewis, Lewis Morris, Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark, Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry, Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery, Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott and Matthew Thornton

The following article was written by a research associate of the World Policy Institute on December 17, 2001. It  is reposted here from Reaching Critical Will.

A Good Time to be in the War Business!

Frida Berrigan

Companies like General Electric and IBM, which cashed in on the tragedy of September 11th through tax breaks in the Economic Stimulus Bill, have drawn the ire of fiscal conservatives and progressive corporate watchdogs alike. But scant attention has been paid to the biggest war profiteers, the weapons manufacturers and the Pentagon.

Congress is debating a Bush administration defense budget of $343.2 billion, an increase of $32.6 billion over last year. This increase would mean that military spending would account for more than half of all discretionary spending (money that Congress must allocate each year).

This is good news to the weapons industry and while pink slips and hiring freezes are spreading like an epidemic from sector to sector, the top weapons manufacturers are awaiting new orders, holding job fairs, planning Initial Public Offerings, raising new capital and gaining new attention on the stock market.

As Loren Thompson, a defense analyst with the Lexington Institute, remarked “the whole mind set of military spending changed on Sept. 11. The most fundamental thing about defense spending is that threats drive defense spending. It´s now going to be easier to fund almost anything” (1).

So, what better time to be Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman or even the beleaguered Boeing? The war in Afghanistan is an unequivocal success- despite friendly fire incidents, bombing accidents, mounting civilian casualties and the recent crash of a $280 million B-1 bomber- and the Bush administration is already listing new countries targeted for military action, with Somalia, Yemen and Iraq topping the list. It is a good time to be in the war business.

“For a long timeÖ[the defense industry] just didn´t seem like a sexy area that has a lot of legs to it,” said a partner at one options trading firm. Well look again, because these former “wallflowers” are ready to go (2). Responding to investor interest, stock exchanges are thinking about creating a new Defense Index. The American Stock Exchange has its 15- stock index up and running, Philadelphia and Chicago are not far behind (3).

That is music to the ears of weapons manufacturers. And they have not wasted any time capitalizing on Congress´ new generosity. As a lobbyist for a major defense contractor boasted, “There are 150 programs on Capitol Hill that we are actively working” (4).

Congress is still working out the wrinkles of their versions of the military budgets, but weapons manufacturers and their supporters are confident that it will be big. “With the [Bush] administration, we´ll see a rebuilding of the military to bring it back to where it was eight years ago,” said defense analyst Paul Nisbet. “We´ll see a considerable appreciation in defense stocks, as we saw in the Reagan years” (5).



 

This Los Angeles-based company manufacturers planes and bombers dropping munitions on Afghanistan, including the B-2 bomber, the F-14 fighter. The company also makes the much-praised unmanned Global Hawk. The $10 million per copy Global Hawk has been deployed to Afghanistan despite the fact that it had not completed its testing requirements.

The company boasts that it has the capability to “meet current and emerging national defense needs, including anti-terrorism and homeland security” (6). And analysts like Loren Thompson agree, “the most immediate hardware demand that this crisis will generate is for intelligence gathering and command and control. Those are Northrop´s strengths.”

In addition to its planes and bombers, the company´s Maryland based Electronic Systems division makes high tech systems like the Airborne Warning and Control Systems (AWACS), a control center and a huge radar disc mounted atop a Boeing 707, which serves “as the airborne nerve center for a military air campaign.” Northrop Grumman is also responsible for ALQ-15 jamming device, used to protect jets from enemy radar-guided missiles. As David Steigman, senior defense analyst for the Teal Group, boasts, “Northrop Grumman´s role is supplying the command control communications and the intelligence surveillance systems to find the bad guys and bop them in the head” (7).

When Wall Street opened again on September 17, 2001, Northrop Grumman was ready to bob those bad guys and its stock had risen 16% to $94 a share in anticipation of the coming war. Two days after bombing in Afghanistan began; Northrop Grumman´s stock had reached a three-year high of $107.60 a share on the New York Stock Exchange (8). The future looks bright and the company has job openings from more than 1,000 employees (9). According to a recent article in the financial magazine Barrons, Northrop Grumman is now seeking $2 billion in loans and equity investment to expand business opportunities and acquisitions (10).

It doesn´t hurt that Northrop Grumman has friends in high places, like Secretary of the Air Force James Roche, former Northrop Grumman Electronics Systems chief. Since September 11th, Roche has emphasized the need for more spending on intelligence systems, specifically mentioning Northrop Grumman´s AWACS plane (11). Not content to rest on its laurels, the company is lobbying Congress for a $300 million to upgrade the $1.3 billion B-2 Stealth Bomber, which has successfully completed bombings run in Afghanistan (12).

The Lexington, MA based company is best known for its Tomahawk missile. About 100 of these million dollar land-attack cruise missiles have been lobbed at Afghanistan from U.S. Navy ships since October 7th, fifty in the opening salvo alone (13).

Orders for Tomahawk missiles are already coming in from allies like Britain, which signed a contract for 48 Tomahawk missiles in a $87 million deal. And Raytheon is confident that significant Pentagon orders will follow. As David Polk, Raytheon spokesman, proudly said, “we are prepared to meet the urgent needs of our customers.” (14)

Raytheon also makes the “bunker buster” GBU- 28, a 5,000-pound bomb and missiles like the TOW, Maverick and Javelin, all being used in Operation Enduring Freedom. In addition to missiles, Raytheon also builds sensors and radars used on unmanned and manned reconnaissance airplanes used extensively in Afghanistan. This diversity is part of what makes Raytheon the biggest stock percentage gainer since the war began; on September 10th the company´s stock stood at $26.85, now it is holding at about $32.80 (15). Raytheon is looking to hire 1,400 new college graduates this year (16).

The company has been raising money recently. In mid-October, the company doubled its equity sales program with a major offering. The company raised about $1 billion by selling 29 million shares (17). Raytheon says the money will be used to reduce debt and for general corporate purposes (18).

In the never ending quest for more contracts, Raytheon has been pushing its agenda on Capitol Hill; $677 million to work on the next generation of Patriot cruise missiles and an undisclosed amount to upgrade Tomahawk cruise missiles (19).

 

Lockheed Martin is the world´s largest weapons contractor, a major player in the areas of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile defense. The company was recently awarded the world´s largest weapons contract ever, a $200 billion deal to build the Joint Strike Fighter, a “next-generation” combat jet that eventually will replace aircraft used by the Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps.

Lockheed Martin did not win the contract on force of personality alone, or fighter plane design. During the calendar year 2000, Lockheed Martin spent more than $9.8 million lobbying members of Congress and the Clinton administration, more than double the $4.2 million the company spent during 1999. Among the company´s newest lobbyists: Haley Barbour, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee. During the 1999-2000 election cycle, Lockheed Martin contributed just over $2.7 million in soft money, PAC and individual contributions to federal candidates and parties. More than two-thirds of that money went to Republicans (20). Lockheed Martin spends more on lobbying Congress than any of its competitors, spending a whopping $9.7 million last year. Only General Electric and Philip Morris reported more lobbying expenses last year (21).

Since September 11th, the weapons giant has been steaming along. Stock prices rose almost $10, from $39.39 on September 10th to a high of $48.11 on November 12th , the stock is now steady above $46 (22). Lockheed Martin makes the ubiquitous F-16 fighter plane, the Hellfire missile, “bunker buster” munitions and the massive C-130 transport plane. The F-16 plant in Ft. Worth, Texas expects to hire as many as 1,200 factory workers to increase production. They have more than 200 orders to fill from foreign governments for 1999-2000 (23).

As the largest military contractor, Lockheed Martin has a lot of jobs in the pipeline. The company wants to go highest tech with its “combat Internet system,” a rugged handheld computer, that will put a “dot-com face on the modern battlefield” (24).The company is hiring in Silicon Valley, looking to replace “Rosie the Riveter” with “Suzie the Software Programmer.” A recent Lockheed Martin job fair attracted 1,300 applicants for 290 new positions in the company´s missile defense division (25). Even while Lockheed Martin celebrates its JSF successful, it is trying to shore up support for an additional $3.9 billion for development the F-22 Raptor (26).

 

The Chicago-based Boeing Company, manufacturer of commercial and military aircraft, has not had an easy time since September 11th. While other weapons manufacturers are picking up new orders for weapons, Boeing announced the lay off of 39,000 workers in its commercial aircraft division.

On the military side, despite losing of the coveted Joint Strike Fighter contract, Boeing has a lot to be grateful for. Boeing´s JDAM (joint direct attack munitions) is the most widely used smart bomb in the war. The JDAM kit fits over a “dumb” missile and coverts it into a satellite-guided weapon using movable fins and a satellite positioning system. According to Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke, of the 12,000 bombs the U.S. has dropped on Afghanistan, 7,200 (about 60%) were precision-guided. Of these, 4,600 were Boeing´s Joint Direct Attack Munitions. The rest were laser-guided bombs or satellite-guided Raytheon Co. Tomahawk cruise missiles (27). But there was a downside, the precision JDAMs have repeatedly missed their targets; crashing into a residential neighborhood near the Kabul airport on October 12th and killing at least 10 civilians, falling off target and killing three American soldiers on December 5th, and wounding five Special Forces soldiers a week earlier. The Pentagon maintains there is no problem with the weapon, and insists it will continue to use it.

Since the United States began bombing Afghanistan, Boeing has received two separate orders for more than 1,074 JDAMs, to be delivered by December 2001 and March 2002. Boeing spokesman Robert Algarotti said the company expects to receive an additional contract soon. “We don´t have anything officially from the government yet, but we are expecting a new order to come in and we´ll be producing them faster than we have before” (28). As David Baker, retired Air Force General now with Schwab Washington research, said approvingly, “Boeing has taken a thrashing, but their military sector is pounding away like a Ferrari on all cylinders” (29).

JDAMs and Ferraris notwithstanding, the Pentagon´s award of the Joint Strike Fighter contract to rival Lockheed Martin was a major setback for Boeing. Panicked about commercial losses and military snubs, Boeing has dispatched an army of lobbyists to Washington and their wish list is a mile long and more expensive. Boeing is looking for Congress´ help in the form of approval for:

– Air Force purchase of 60 Boeing C-17 cargo aircraft under a special “commercial” provision that removes financial oversight; 

– Air Force leasing of 100 Boeing 767 planes to be converted into surveillance planes and mobile command centers for the military;

– Protection from billions in potential liability claims stemming from the 9-
11 attacks;

– Measures to encourage Lockheed Martin to share its Joint Strike Fighter contract.

These proposals make sense if the goal is saving Boeing, but they make neither military nor financial sense.

The C-17 Globemaster is Boeing´s jumbo military transport plane, which performed high altitude food drops in Afghanistan. As recently as March 2001, Boeing tried unsuccessfully to make the plane available to commercial buyers. This time around it seems the company is capitalizing on widespread sympathy for its commercial losses, but the proposal is still a bad ideal. Selling the military planes as though they were commercial would allow the Air Force to bypass important pricing oversight. In addition, the $232 million per copy C-17s aren´t all they promised to be. A General Accounting Office report found that Boeing´s failure to rigorously test the C-17 before production resulted in increased costs of more than $2 billion to the program (30).

The plan to lease 100 converted Boeing 767 air-refueling aircraft for a period of 10 years is a big rip-off for taxpayers too. The Office of Management and Budget estimates that the lease plan would cost $22 billion, while purchasing the aircraft outright would cost just over $15 billion–that is a difference of $7 billion that Boeing can pocket. The aircraft is even less of a bargain when the $600 million cost of modifying existing hangers to house the plane is taken into account (31).

Some officials at the Congressional Budget Office and in the House and Senate budget committees oppose the leasing plan, contending it is a scam that adds to the long-term costs. “This would be a first,” said G. William Hoagland, minority staff director on the Senate Budget Committee, of Boeing´s plan. “We´ve got to maintain some discipline. This just isn´t the time to be adding in this way” (32).

But, cool heads like Mr. Hoagland´s might have a hard time prevailing, given Boeing´s political weight. The 767 plan goes before a House-Senate conference committee next week and Boeing has a lot of well-connected and important people looking out for its interests. John M. Shalikashvili, retired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is on the Boeing board. Former Deputy Secretary of Defense, Rudy de Leon heads Boeing´s Washington office. After September 11th Boeing beefed up its political connections by hiring former Senator Bennett Johnson (D-LA) and former Rep. Bill Paxon (R-NY) (33). Former Ambassador Thomas Pickering, Boeing´s senior vice president for international relations since January, uses his forty years of experience to generate business for Boeing with foreign governments and corporations.

Also on the Boeing agenda is more money for its portfolio of major contracts. Boeing is currently working on more than a dozen contracts– including the expensive F/A-18 fighter jet, the crash prone V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft, the AH-64 Apache Longbow helicopter and the Airborne Laser for the Pentagon´s Ballistic Missile Defense Organization– that account for well over $10 billion in the 2002 Pentagon budget alone (34).

The following two articles are reposted from Yellow Times.

New World Order

Erich Marquardt

In the next week, the future of international order will be determined. If the Bush administration chooses to invade Iraq after failing to secure United Nations approval, a precedent will be established encouraging states to pursue unilateralist rather than multilateralist policies. The failure of the U.N. to restrain the United States may spark a new wave of nationalism, where states no longer feel secure under the symbolic umbrella of international treaties and agreements. This will weaken global cooperation and increase the possibility for conflicts around the world.

The United States, formerly a public proponent of U.N. cooperation and multilateral arrangements, has shifted its national policy toward unilateralist action where the perceived interests of the U.S. are held sacred above all else. Withdrawing from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, rejecting the protocol to the bioweapons treaty, refusing to participate in the International Criminal Court, abandoning the Kyoto protocol and threatening preemptive warfare are all products of U.S. nationalism and unilateralism introduced by the current administration.

The upcoming decision about whether to invade Iraq will be paramount to the future of international order. If the United States invades Iraq without securing a Security Council resolution specifically approving an invasion, it will be following a nationalist, unilateralist policy rather than an internationalist, multilateral policy. Once the United States abandons multilateralism, other states will react in kind in order to secure their interests that are no longer protected by international agreements and alliances.

North Korea’s bellicose foreign policy reflects this change. Pyongyang no longer feels secure by international assurances and is now attempting to strengthen its military by producing a large nuclear arsenal capable of deterring the United States from possible aggression. Iran has also reacted to the U.S. threat to operate outside of international restraint institutions like the United Nations. Tehran expressed its desire to control every aspect of its nuclear energy program, including the reprocessing of its spent fuel — a procedure that can be used to develop nuclear weapons. If other powerful states also abandon multilateralism, global alliances will be replaced by smaller alliances, following the pattern set by the Bush administration’s “coalition of the willing.”

Larger powers such as France, Germany, Russia and China are against a U.S. invasion of Iraq because they do not want to abandon multilateralism. The reason that powerful states do not want to abandon multilateralism is because the United States stands unprecedented in its level of economic and military supremacy. Other states will have a hard time securing national interests in a world that is dominated by a colossal power that has abandoned international institutions.

However, if the United States actually does abandon multilateralism by invading Iraq without U.N. approval, powers such as France, Germany, Russia and China may also abandon multilateralism in order to secure their interests against a power unrestrained by international agreements.

This danger is already becoming evident in the European Union. The initial plan for European integration was to bond all of Europe together. However, in order to weaken the unity of the European Union’s resistance to U.S. plans in Iraq, the Bush administration divided the continent by splitting it into “Old Europe” and “New Europe.” By rallying prospective E.U. member states behind American policy, the U.S. undercut E.U. unity, causing these future E.U. states to side with Washington rather than the rest of the Union. This undermined the current member states and caused E.U. policymakers to reassess the idea of further European integration; afraid to lose control over E.U. policy to U.S. interests that are no longer synonymous with their own, a reawakened French nationalism is now attempting to preserve their control over the body.

Therefore, the current debate over Iraq is merely a power struggle set on the world stage. Multilateralists such as Colin Powell would rather have the U.S. secure U.N. support, or an otherwise broad coalition before invading Iraq. Powell’s purpose for this is that he does not want the U.S. to blatantly abandon multilateralism because it may hurt U.S. interests in the long term. The so-called “hawks” of the administration associated with the Pentagon are indifferent to the U.S.’ failing to secure international support. These nationalists would like to see a U.S. unrestrained by international agreements, solely pursuing its own short-term interests even at the expense of other powerful states. As of now, the “hawks” are in control, expressed through U.S. willingness to attack Iraq with or without U.N. support.

If the U.S. continues to express its nationalism and invades Iraq without U.N. approval, nationalist sentiment could quickly spread throughout the world. If this occurs, it will increase the chance of future conflict as international institutions will be weakened and there will be a higher potency for the collision of nationalist interests between states.

 Old World Order

John Brand

For days I have hammered on the anvil of my mind seeking words to express the malevolence of our days. Freedom’s sun on the horizon is darkened by evil. Amorality blackens bright stars of justice erasing the glowing constellation of Constitutional governance. But no hammer blows sharpen the blade of the sword I seek to fashion.

Then through eyes dimmed by my failure, I saw my Excalibur. A wizard fashioned this exquisite sword. Like King Arthur of old, I approach the boulder of granite holding fast the creation of another. I tug at the sword deeply embedded in the memory of my mind. From the red-hot furnace come the words of T.S. Eliot expressing far more superbly than I ever could the concerns which I seek to articulate.

Thomas Becket, as told in Eliot’s “Murder in the Cathedral,” has just been brutally hacked to death by knights beset with unspeakable hatred. The townspeople, aware of that dastardly deed, cry out,

“Clear the air! Clean the sky! Wash the wind! Take stone from stone and wash them. The land is foul; the water is foul; our beasts and ourselves defiled with blood. A rain of blood has blinded my eyes. Where is England? Where is Kent? Where is Canterbury?

O far far far far in the past; and I wander in a land of barren boughs: if I break them, they bleed; I wander in a land of dry stones: if I touch them they bleed.”

I do not wish to be misunderstood. I am no bleeding heart. My character has been fashioned by the persecution of family and self at Hitler’s brutal hands. My idea and ideals crystallized in the fierceness of combat as a rifleman. I have been formed by the terror of the night and the arrow that flies by day. I am no novice to the evil lurking in the hearts of men.

Saddam is an incarnation of iniquity. No litany of the horrors credited to him can ever exhaust the foulness of his deeds. In a fit of maniacal desires, he invaded Kuwait. With singular determination of righteous anger, our forces decimated his troops. For all practical purposes, he has been under house arrest ever since Desert Storm. He is being watched night and day. His slightest misstep is punished by America’s eagles patrolling his land and his skies. Should he but lift his little finger in an aggressive mood, an armada of decimating weapons stands ever ready to tear the living heart from his disreputable soul.

But by what twist of perversion has 9/11 been attributed to Saddam? Not a single perpetrator of this day of infamy was an Iraqi. Our intelligence apparatus held bin Laden responsible for this deed. By what distortion of mind was our anger roused against Saddam? To execute a preemptive strike against a force of evil? North Korea has far more capabilities to spew a rain of death upon the planet. Both Pakistan and India have capabilities to bring a nuclear winter to Earth. Israel, Great Britain, and America can wipe out every man, woman, and child on the Blue Planet a hundred times over. Whose index finger poised atop Mars’ red button can we trust in a world so drenched with unspeakable horrors and revulsions?

Can we rely on our present leaders to bring democracy to the far corners of the world? Congress passed the Patriot Act. It is legislation granting dictatorial powers to the Executive Branch of the United States. It is reminiscent of powers granted to Hitler by his Reichstag. All civil liberties are suspended when the Attorney General, in his sole opinion, designates someone as a terrorist. No proof is needed. The accused does not have right to counsel or judicial review. The Attorney General can incarcerate the suspect for up to six months without notifying anyone of his action. If after six months, the Attorney General continues to suspect the accused individual, he or she may be incarcerated in six month increments until the person dies. No one has to be notified of the Attorney General’s decision.

“I wander in a land of barren boughs: if I break them, they bleed.”

The national media has paid scant attention to this Act. Most citizens when asked about the Patriot Act only shrug their shoulders and have no idea what it is all about.

“I wander in a land of dry stones: if I touch them they bleed.”

My mind races feverishly. I do not want to accept the image seeking to push itself into my consciousness. Not in bright Technicolor but in the subtle shadings of white, grays, and black I see a deep trench filled with unnumbered corpses. They seem to be no more human than cattle slain in a preemptive effort to stop Mad Cow disease from spreading. At the top of this mass grave, men and women watch the proceedings. They are Germans, creatures of Hitler’s propaganda machine, out for an afternoon of “entertainment.” Their minds have been brainwashed to believe that these dead are not truly human beings. One onlooker, a woman, is even licking an ice cream cone. When alive, the dead were Jews, political dissidents, mentally retarded, or communists. Although they had eyes, hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, and passions like ours, they were not recognized as members of the body human.

If you prick an Iraqi child, does it not bleed? If you tickle an Iraqi, does she not laugh? If you poison an Iraqi, does he not die? If you wrong an Iraqi, shall he not revenge? (After the Bard, “The Merchant of Venice.”)

Within the heart of every human lurks the potential for gross evil. Latent deeds of murder, rape, and torture are still embedded in the human brain. Expressions of falsehood and deceit color our everyday. We all must admit the presence of the dormancy of our brutal behavior.

In the name of Jesus Christ, Inquisitors stretched accused heretics over the rack. In the name of the self-same Prince of Peace, the limbs of those whose sole crime it was to voice an opinion diverging from the official party line were fettered to four horses. These were then whipped to gallop off into different directions, pulling apart the body of the accused. Hordes of other members of our species cheered at this spectacle of blood. It witnessed more to their own brutality than to the guilt of the accused.

What Armageddon-like horror will the Mother of All Bombs inflict on innocents as we stand by and loudly cheer while licking an ice cream cone?

How do we differ from the Prophet Samuel, who in God’s name hewed Agag to pieces before the Lord? How do we differ from Phinehas, who in God’s name pierced the belly of an Israelite and a Moabite woman? Just because some chronicler 3000 years ago attached God’s supposedly righteous anger to these deeds, does not make it so. It did not make it so in the long ago and it does not make it so today. Humans commit acts in the name of God they would never admit to doing in their own names. God serves as a convenient excuse for us to engage in the most brutal and inhumane deeds.

Yet another long forgotten image forces itself into my thoughts. In a German concentration camp, inmates — former professional musicians — were assembled into an orchestra. They were forced to play classical music while the murderers went about their business herding masses into the gas chambers. What perversion of our minds seeks to embellish our killing and destruction with the veneer of culture?

Our President is hell-bent on seeking the international stamp of approval on the senseless killings we are about to commit. He wants to assure himself that his command to slaughter has the cultural approval of civilized nations. He wants to hear Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” as he commands his minions to commence the slaughter.

Don’t get me wrong, for heaven’s sake. Should Saddam’s troops invade a neighboring country or should we have hard evidence that he is marshalling his forces to attack, let the full wrath of our might be unloaded on him. However, a “preemptive” strike is just an excuse to express our hatred, our unresolved profound psychological problems, and our unwillingness to see the duplicity of our actions.

One would be rather simple not to assume that Saddam has heinous weapons of destructions hidden away. But other nations, too, have stored up arsenals of death within their borders. Were we to strike down peremptorily all of them, only cockroaches might survive that holocaust.

No one less a staunch Republican than Ron Paul of Texas told the Washington Times that no member of Congress was allowed to read the first Patriot Act that was passed in the heat of 9/11 on October 27, 2001. Neither is the proposed Second Patriot Act subject to public scrutiny.

Alex Jones, Feb. 10, 2003 on www.infowars.com makes this statement: “The second Patriot Act is a mirror image of powers that Julius Caesar and Adolf Hitler gave themselves. Whereas the First Patriot Act only gutted the First, Third, Fourth and Fifth Amendments, and seriously damaged the Seventh and the Tenth, the Second Patriot Act reorganizes the entire Federal Government as well as many areas of state government under the dictatorial control of the Justice Department, the Office of Homeland Security and the FEMA NORTHCVONM military command. The Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003, also known as the Second Patriot Act, is by its very structure the definition of dictatorship.”

“Every horror had its definition, every sorrow a kind of an end: In life there is not time to grieve long. But this, this is out of life, this is out of time, an instant eternity of evil and wrong. Ö Clear the air! Clean the sky! Wash the wind! Take stone from stone, take the skin from the arm, take the muscle from the bone, and wash them. Wash the stone, wash the bone, wash the brain, wash the soul wash them, wash them!” (T.S. Eliot.)

President Bush made it clear last night, that America will be going to war with Iraq. Any analysis of recent government actions supports that position, especially  with 250,000+ U.S. soldiers in the middle east.

However, Mr. Bush has made no mention of the cost of the coming war, nor how our failing economy can pay for it. In August, I featured an article discussing the cost of going to war with Iraq. Estimates of the human costs are unknown, but estimates of the number of Americans soldiers that could be involved range now range from 250,000 to 350,000.

Estimates of the direct costs for the proposed new war with Iraq range from $80 billion (80 thousand million dollars) to $120 billion of which our allies may pay nothing. Then there are the indirect costs such as 1) the effect of the war on the stock market, 2) the increase in cost of oil during the war, 3) the potential cost of putting out oil well fires, if the Iraqis torch the oil fields as they did in Kuwait in 1991, 4) the medical and psychological costs of the American war casualties, 5) the financial and emotional costs to the families of the combatants, 6) the risk the war could spread–Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Etc., Etc., 7) the risk that while at war with Iraq, we might be attacked elsewhere including here in the United States, the risk that the war might go nuclear, 9) the damage to the environment, and 10) other risks we may not have thought of or even imagined, etc., etc., etc..

The administration of President George W. Bush has requested $396.1 billion (396 thousand million dollars) for the military in fiscal year 2003 ($379.3 billion for the Defense Department and $16.8 billion for the nuclear weapons functions of the Department of Energy). … In all, the administration plans to spend $2.1 TRILLION on the military over the next five years. The budget plans, if approved by Congress, would lead the nation back into deficit spending in FY’03 – for the first time in four years.

So the total costs to American, including both the direct and indirect expenses of a new war with Iraq, might exceed $1 trillion ( 1 million million dollars) plus the unquantified suffering of the American combatants their families, and the rest of us.

The U.S. Census Bureau reports there are 287,935,119 Americans as I write these words. Subtracting children, the retired and unemployed that leaves about ~130 million paying taxes. The dollar cost of a war with Iraq to these Americans could be $7, 700. Please get out your checkbooks.

Beyond War

Timothy Wilken, MD

We are Time-binders and the mark of human power is everywhere. When knowledge is incorporated into matter-energy, it becomes a tool. As Galambos explained:

ìHumans develop evermore powerful knowledge and therefore evermore powerful tools. When tools are used to harm other humans they are called weapons. Since human knowledge can grow without limit then tools themselves can be made without limit. And limitless tools can will produce limitless weapons.”

–Andrew J. Galambos 

And, limitless weapons (progress) combined with leveraged adversity (warfare) must by all definitions and understanding of science produce human extinction.

The evolution of the weapon is linked to the evolution of Time-binding. Humans create knowledge, when knowledge is embedded in matter-energy is becomes a tool. When tools are used to hurt others they become weapons. For most of our human history, our tools have been simple.

For most of our human history our weapons have been equally as simple. With the explosion of Time-binding released by Institutional Neutrality, our tools have become evermore powerful, and so have our weapons.

Infinite Weapons

In the 1983 movie WARGAMES, NORAD´s computer – Joshua makes a discovery after playing out all possible outcomes for Global Thermonuclear War. His conclusion, ìA strange game, the only winning move is not to play.”

Let us assume for the sake of this discussion that magically all nuclear weapons were suddenly nonexistent on planet Earth. Let us further assume that through some agent of sanity the very concept of nuclear weapons is so repugnant to humans as to make their re- creation unthinkable. Would we then be safe?

As my brother discovered on the battlegrounds of Viet Nam there was no safe ground. Even with the best weapons the United States could make and never an empty Ammo bag, there was no safe ground.

Would we be safe without nuclear weapons? Again, I must answer, no we would not be safe. We humans can produce weapons without limit. Weapons of infinite destructive capacity. If these weapons are produced, sooner or later, such weapons will be used and sooner or later such use will destroy humankind.

Progress + warfare = human extinction.

The solution to war does not require more powerful weapons. It requires the elimination of weapons.

Read the full article

Read Dr. Timothy Wilken: 1) Beyond Crime and Punishment, 2) Synergic Containment: Protecting Children, 3) Synergic Containment: Science & Rationale, 4) Synergic Containment: Protecting Community and 5) Synergic Disarmament

Read Lt. Col. Dave Grossman: 1) Aggression and Violence 2) Evolution of Weaponry and 3) Psychological Effects of Combat.