Take Action: Tell the President, “Escalate the Talk, Not the War, in Syria.”

Despite calls to the contrary from unsuccessful presidential candidate John McCain and other “when your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail” know-nothing war-mongers, who apparently thought the disastrous Iraq and Afghanistan wars were just ducky, the Obama Administration has so far held off on a military escalation in Syria.

Of course, we are very concerned about the horrific humanitarian crisis there, the allegations of chemical weapons use (by the Assad government? the rebels? both? we just don’t know), Israel’s illegal bombing of alleged Syrian weapons sites (perhaps also meant as a warning to Iran?), and possible covert action or arming of rebel factions by the U.S. or its allies.

However, to date, the Obama Administration has wisely not proceeded with establishing a “no fly zone” or other direct U.S. military escalation, and there is at least hope for an international/regional peace conference led by the U.S. and Syria’s main ally, Russia. Such a conference should include other key countries in the region, including Iran (France opposes Iran’s inclusion).

Such a conference should address a wide array of concerns – an immediate cease fire, an agreement to stop arming all sides in the conflict, access for United Nations inspectors to investigate conflicting claims of chemical weapons use, accountability for Israel’s illegal bombing, a possible Syrian national unity government, establishment of a weapons of mass destruction-free zone in the region and other national, regional and international concerns.

Our goal here is not, however, to present some sort of ten point peace plan, but to push back on reckless calls for war or military escalation.
Tell the president, “we need to escalate the talk, not the war.” Please sign our petition, and feel free to add your own thoughts, and to forward it to your friends and family.

Humbly for Peace,

 

Kevin Martin
Executive Director
Peace Action

Tax Day and The Pentagon. Op-Ed on Common Dreams

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/04/14-1

Published on Sunday, April 14, 2013 by Common Dreams

Tax Day and the Pentagon

by Kevin Martin

This month, as budget and policy issues in Washington muddle along inconclusively as usual, grassroots peace activists are busy organizing, educating, protesting and lobbying.

Last weekend, Historians Against the War hosted an ambitious, illuminating conference at Towson University north of Baltimore on “The New Faces of War” with speakers and participants examining rapidly-changing foreign and domestic policies.

Anti-Nuclear activists will converge on Washington next week for the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability’s D.C. Days, for strategizing, training and lobbying on nuclear weapons, power, waste and cleanup issues.

Around the country, peace and social justice organizers will convene local actions on Tax Day, April 15, to educate taxpayers on the country’s skewed budget priorities that favor the Pentagon over human and environmental needs. This year, April 15 is also the Global Day of Action on Military Spending, with activities around the world and in over 30 U.S. states drawing attention to the world’s addiction to militarism and exorbitant “defense” budgets. If you can’t organize or attend a Tax Day event, you can still join our Thunderclap “It’s Our Tax Day, Not Theirs” online social media action.

The prestigious, independent Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) will release its annual report on world military expenditures on Monday, which will show the United States continues to spend over 40% of the world’s $1.7 trillion annually allocated to weapons and war. Randy Schutt of Cleveland Peace Action put together an impressive article titled Our Tax Dollars are off the War – 2013 edition on Daily Kos with charts, graphs and citations comparing U.S. military spending to the rest of the world, and to domestic spending, which serves as a nice complement to the upcoming SIPRI report.

Lastly, an impressive national coalition has come together to organize days of action throughout the month to stop U.S. drone warfare.

All these actions focus on crucial issues, and they come at a time when there is hope not just to impact those specific policies, but when a confluence of events give us an opportunity not seen in at least a decade to fundamentally question the mission and role of the U.S. military in both domestic and foreign policy.

In short, it’s time for the Pentagon to stop weaving all over the road, to get back in its lane, and to stay there.

On domestic policy, the most obvious issue is the metastasis of the Pentagon budget, which has doubled since 9/11. The total “national security budget,” which includes not just the Pentagon but also intelligence agencies, Department of Homeland Security and nuclear weapons spending under the Department of Energy is over $1 trillion per year. Globally, the U.S. accounts for about 43% of total military spending, and more than the next 13 countries (most of which are U.S. allies) combined. The opportunity cost of this Pentagon pig-out is investment in the things we really need to make our country more secure – improved education, health care, jobs, rebuilding our infrastructure and addressing climate change.

While not necessarily the fault of the Pentagon, a creeping militarization of social policy, as seen in policing, prisons, the “war on drugs” and immigration, among other areas, is cause for grave concern and corrective action.

Constitutionally, the arrogation of power by the Obama Administration to assassinate anyone, anywhere on the planet, anytime it wants to by drones or other weapons with little or no congressional or judicial oversight can hardly be what the president ran on as “change you can believe in.”

(The president’s home state senator and former colleague, Assistant Majority Leader Dick Durbin, plans a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee hearing later this month to address this issue, including the Administration’s assertion of the Authorization of the Use of Military Force after 9/11 as the legal justification for drone strikes in countries with which we are not at war.)

Militarization of U.S. foreign policy has been a bipartisan project since at least the end of World War II. And perhaps that’s not surprising for a country founded on and consolidated by the extreme violence of the genocide of the First Americans and imposition of slavery on Africans brought here in chains.

Quick, name the last real diplomatic success by the United States. Anything really significant since Carter’s Camp David peace accords between Egypt and Israel? That was in 1978 (and of course Palestine is still waiting for justice while Israel gets over $3 billion in U.S. military aid annually).

Look at U.S. foreign policy under our current Nobel Peace Prize laureate president. It’s less obviously and ham-handedly belligerent than Bush’s, okay. But in addition to ongoing drone strikes in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and other countries, he says “all options are on the table” with regard to Iran’s nuclear program, when even military leaders themselves say there is no military solution, only a diplomatic one. The U.S. and South Korea evidently think putting out the fire with gasoline is the right approach to North Korea’s nuclear test and recent threats, evidenced by ongoing war games, simulated nuclear attacks on the North using B-2 and B-52 bombers, and rushing F-22 fighter jets to South Korea to beef up the already robust U.S. military presence in the region as part of the “Asia-Pacific Pivot” aimed at isolating our main banker, China. And last but not least, despite voting for the Arms Trade Treaty at the United Nations this week, the U.S. remains the world’s number one exporter of conventional weapons.

Certainly the tens of millions of dollars annually spent on lobbying and campaign contributions by the largest war profiteers — Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Raytheon and others — have a toxic effect on our national priorities. It’s doubly galling, in that their profits come almost entirely from military contracts paid for by our tax dollars, which they then use to impact legislation and elections to benefit their interests, to the detriment of those of the taxpaying public.

It is not necessary to pinpoint cause and effect on this state of affairs, where Pentagon interests and macho militarist approaches seemingly run roughshod over everything else, to declare that it is wrong, and needs to be changed. And there is no blame, only respect, for those serving in the military, who need the very best care we can provide as they return home from our misguided wars and far-flung military bases abroad (over 800 of them!).

So what is the mission of the U.S. military supposed to be? According to United States law, it is “Preserving the peace and security and providing for the defense of the United States, the Commonwealths and possessions and any areas occupied by the United States; Supporting the national policies; Implementing the national objectives; Overcoming any nations responsible for aggressive acts that imperil the peace and security of the United States.”

I see nothing there about “full-spectrum dominance” of the rest of the world, as the Pentagon’s joint Vision 20/20 doctrine released in 2000 advocates, and which has seemingly become the military’s de facto mission.

Regardless of what anyone in the military says its mission is, they work for us, the taxpayers that provide their salaries and buy their weapons. So we can overrule them and force the Pentagon to reduce its role and get back in its lane.

It shouldn’t be hard to see how we can get the Pentagon back in its lane, and let more peaceful, just and sustainable priorities prevail in our domestic and foreign policies. Slash the Pentagon budget by at least 25%, and invest those savings in human and environmental needs in order to jump start our economy. Let diplomacy take precedence in foreign policy over military threats and false solutions. I suspect many people, even in the military hierarchy, might welcome such a reduced role in U.S. policy, and in the world. It must be tiring driving all over the road. Staying in one’s own lane can have its advantages.

Kevin Martin is Executive Director of Peace Action, the country’s largest peace and disarmament organization with 100,000 members and over 70,000 on-line supporters.

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Pres Obama: A Bad Idea!

President Obama released his budget on Wednesday. Poverty is at its highest level in fifty years. The wealthiest 2% and corporations are still not paying their fair share of taxes. Military corporations, like Lockheed Martin¹ are even finding ways to dodge state taxes as they make maximum profits with our federal tax dollars.

As “sequestration” or across the board cuts of $85 billion mandated by Congress begin, the President’s budget adds another layer of crisis.

The President’s budget proposes cuts for seniors, veterans and people with disabilities through the use of a discredited method of calculating annual cost of living increases, called  “chained” CPI that in fact, bites into the benefits. All in hopes of striking a deal with those in Congress who are bent on gutting social safety net to protect the rich and corporate profits.

Tell Congress: Cutting Social Security is a bad idea, it’s the Pentagon’s turn.

No one, least of all senior citizens, the disabled or veterans should foot the bill for the budget crisis or the Pentagon. As Social Security benefits and community services are cut, where is the substantial, game changing cut to the biggest gobbler of annual discretionary spending: the Pentagon?

By the way, Social Security adds absolutely nothing to the budget deficit! The Pentagon does!

The President’s budget is expected to include 2 rounds of domestic base closings, reduce the cost of living increase in military salaries and raise healthcare fees.

Sorry Mr. President, but those aren’t game changers

Again, the burden is being put on those who can least afford, the enlisted service people. Why not the mega profitable military corporations, which produce arms, we do not need?

Project on Government Oversight says,  “In other words, the Pentagon has, on average, been spending nearly $1 billion a day on contractors. Even if we just looked at what the Pentagon spends on service contracts, that alone is more than what it spends on troops and civilian employees combined.”²

Tell Congress and the President: No Cuts to Social Security, disability or veterans benefits, its the Pentagon’s turn.

While the CEOs of military corporation live the high life on our tax dollars³, our communities are faced with no choice, but to organize a push back.

Call the Congress: We will fight to stop any bill in Congress that includes cuts to these benefits.

On Tax Day, April 15, join Peace Action and our allies in over 28 states, and around the world and take action to move the money from the Pentagon to fund jobs and human services on the Global Day of Action on Military Spending. Click here to see if there’s an event near you.  You can also use the materials we compiled to write letters to the editor or create leaflets for events in your community.

Join the Thunderclap. Spread the April 15 message across Facebook and Twitter.

Power to the Peaceful,

Judith Le Blanc

Peace Action Field Director Peace Action

1 Baltimore Sun Op-ed by Lawrence Wittnerhttp://bsun.md/156S8wq

2 Project on Government Oversight, “The 360 Billion Gorilla in the Sequestration Debate” http://bit.ly/XztVAY

3 Project on Government Oversight, Groups Urge Congress to Lower the Cap on Maximum Allowable Compensation Paid to All Pentagon Contractor Employees http://bit.ly/10HPj3z

On the 10th Anniversary of the Disastrous War on Iraq, We Must Learn from and Not Repeat Our Mistakes

At a recent meeting in Washington to discuss overall peace movement strategy moving forward (more on that soon!), our colleague and friend Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies agreed to write a brief statement on the tenth anniversary of the U.S. war of aggression on Iraq. We signed on as did a number of esteemed colleagues, and The Nation published it a few hours ago. I urge you to read and circulate the whole piece, it’s not long. It begins thusly:

“It didn’t take long for the world to recognize that the US invasion and occupation of Iraq constituted a dumb war, as then Senator Barack Obama put it. But “dumb” wasn’t the half of it.

The US war against Iraq was illegal and illegitimate. It violated the UN Charter, the Geneva Conventions and a whole host of international laws and treaties. It violated US laws and our Constitution with impunity. And it was all based on lies: about nonexistent links between Iraq and Al Qaeda, about never-were ties between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, about Iraq’s invisible weapons of mass destruction and about Baghdad’s supposed nuclear program, with derivative lies about uranium yellowcake from Niger and aluminum rods from China. There were lies about US troops being welcomed in the streets with sweets and flowers, and lies about thousands of jubilant Iraqis spontaneously tearing down the statue of a hated dictator.

And then there was the lie that the US could send hundreds of thousands of soldiers and billions of dollars worth of weapons across the world to wage war on the cheap. We didn’t have to raise taxes to pay the almost one trillion dollars the Iraq war has cost so far, we could go shopping instead.

But behind these myths the costs were huge—human, economic and more. More than a million US troops were deployed to Iraq; 4,483 were killed; 33,183 were wounded and more than 200,000 came home with PTSD. The number of Iraqi civilians killed is still unknown; at least 121,754 are known to have been killed directly during the US war, but hundreds of thousands more died from crippling sanctions, diseases caused by dirty water when the US destroyed the water treatment system and the inability to get medical help because of exploding violence.”

Also writing on this anniversary for Time magazine, former Sane/Freeze Executive Director and Peace Action Education Fund board member David Cortright, now with the University of Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for Peace, warns against the possibility of another disastrous military attack, this time on Iran, as many misguided warmongers currently advocate. Unfortunately, 63 U.S. senators already are co-sponsors of a resolution pledging U.S. support for Israel should it attack Iran. Senator Chuck Schumer of New York has gone so far as to send letters to constituents with the erroneous information that Iran has a nuclear weapons capability. Apparently he thinks he knows something the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is carrying out ongoing inspections in Iran, and the U.S. intelligence community, which not only says Iran lacks such capacity but also has not made a decision to pursue nuclear weapons capability, don’t know.

The facts are this – Iran has no nuclear weapons, while Israel has at least a few hundred.

Negotiations with Iran are currently somewhat promising, so President Obama would do well to ignore this unsolicited “advice” from the Senate.

Lastly, David’s colleague at Notre Dame, Mary Ellen O’Connell, succinctly outlines the case that an Israeli attack on Iran over concerns about its nuclear program would be illegal, published on the Syracuse University Law School’s website. 

On this sad anniversary we must acknowledge the huge debt we owe the people of Iraq, while foreswearing making the same mistake again.

Action Alert: Your Chance to Respond to the State of the Union

Tuesday night, President Obama delivered his first State of the Union
speech of his second term. While it was a mixed bag for progressives on various domestic and foreign policy issues, there was a bit (but not much) on cutting Pentagon spending.

Of course, you already know Peace Action and Peace Action Education Fund, at the national and local levels, are helping lead a growing movement to demand not just more peaceful foreign policies, but also Moving the Money from war and weapons to investments in our communities’ needs. Peace Action affiliates and chapters are having terrific success building coalitions, passing referenda and resolutions calling for cutting Pentagon spending, lobbying Congress, and getting our message out in the media.

On this last, crucial task, we need your help. Please use our model to send a letter to the editor of your local newspaper on the issue of Pentagon spending. The time is ripe, as Congress is
currently wrestling with severe budget challenges. Members of Congress, and the public, need to hear our voices, and letters to the editor are one of the best ways for us to be heard. This is a coordinated campaign involving individual supporters like you and our chapter and affiliate leaders, so your efforts and support are part of a rising tide of peace and justice mongers!

Please click here to get started, it will only take a few minutes to use (and feel free to edit and customize) our letter template.

For Peace and Moving the Money!

Kevin Martin
Executive Director
Peace Action

A bit more on military and foreign policy in the State of the Union

Just a few points to add to Brother Matt Rothschild’s comprehensive commentary on the speech:

It took the president almost 45 minutes to mention foreign policy. Understandably, he still wants to focus on the economy, but this seemed extreme, especially since there is no good reason to “silo” domestic and foreign policy when there are great opportunities to connect the dots. For instance, the president’s mention of rebuilding our infrastructure, and specifically repairing 70,000 bridges in this country – great! Why not connect that with the need to drastically cut Pentagon spending in order to reinvest in community needs, stimulate the economy and create jobs? Why not bring the troops home from Afghanistan sooner, some of them can surely help rebuild bridges? The answer of course is the president is far too timid and afraid to take on the military-industrial complex (or by this point he is just “one of them”).

On Afghanistan, the “No drama Obama, I got this, we’re ending two wars” act is wearing thin. The president seems to want kudos for announcing that 34,000 troops will come home from Afghanistan in a year (meaning about that many would remain until the end of 2014, and then the Pentagon wants 8,000 or more to stay after the “end of the war.”).

Sorry, but I think it’s incumbent on the president to make the case why U.S. troops should continue to fight, kill and die in this pointless war for almost another two years. Polls show a solid majority of the public want all the troops, not half of them, home in a year. The president needs to listen to the public, not the generals and their talk of “fighting seasons” and foot-dragging on troop withdrawal.

The president’s quick “you can trust me” justification on drones, kill lists and targeted assassinations was abominable. This issue is moving rapidly at the grassroots, in the media and even in Congress, and the administration surely knows it is on very shaky moral and legal ground.

There was nothing new on any olive branch or changed policy on Iran in advance of the next round of negotiations later this month. Maybe that’s okay, the negotiating stance will be more important than anything he could have announced in the speech.

On nuclear disarmament, the administration evidently decided to back off earlier plans to specify a modest proposal to cut deployed strategic nuclear weapons by about one-third, to 1,000 – 1,100 warheads, instead only mentioning pursuing further reductions with Russia. This was likely a political choice not to raise Republican hackles, but once again shows timidity. Going deeper with nuclear weapons reductions, initiating negotiations on a Nuclear Weapons Convention to eliminate nukes worldwide, scrapping plans to “modernize” the entire nuclear weapons production complex and arsenal (with a projected price tag of over $200 billion over the next decade) – all of these should be on the table and need U.S. leadership, and would be wildly popular in the U.S. and around the world.

Lastly, I couldn’t help but think that when the president said, “we’ll maintain the best military the world has ever known,” the world must have said, “uh oh!”

 

Good, Concise Analysis of President Obama’s State of the Union Speech by The Progressive’s Matthew Rothschild

Mixed Messages in Obama’s State of the Union

http://www.progressive.org/mixed-messages-in-obama-state-of-the-union

By Matthew Rothschild, February 13, 2013

President Obama’s State of the Union Address provided some solace to progressives on some issues, but left a lot to be desired on others.

He was right to point out that we can’t keep “drifting from one manufactured crisis to the next”—a good, clean shot at Republican obstructionism on the fiscal cliff and sequestration.

But for the longest time in the first part of his speech, he focused on deficit reduction, which is an exaggerated problem. He said that “economists” say we need $2 trillion more in deficit reduction “to stabilize our finances.” Which economists was he talking about? Not Nobel Prize-winners Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman, who have urged him not to focus so much on deficit reduction but rather on job creation.

And in his discussion of deficit reduction, Obama hinted that most people are going to suffer. “We can’t ask senior citizens and working families to shoulder the entire burden of deficit reduction while asking nothing more from the wealthiest and most powerful,” he said. That doesn’t sound like he’s making a good bargain to me. Instead, it sounds like he’s going to ask “senior citizens and working families” to shoulder a big part of the deficit burden, which they can’t afford to do.

His endorsement of universal pre-kindergarten was a positive step. But he acted like that would even the playing field by itself, saying, “Let’s . . . make sure none of our children start the race of life already behind.” Actually, children in poverty are already behind, so how about tackling poverty in America? But Obama didn’t talk about eliminating poverty in the American context, only in the global context.

And as for high schools, he boasted about Race to the Top, which has been a nightmare, and said he now wanted to “redesign America’s high schools” so they can give students “the skills today’s employers are looking for.” What about giving students the skills to be engaged learners or thoughtful citizens?

On the positive side, he did come out for raising the minimum wage to $9 an hour. But why $9 an hour instead of the $10 an hour that Ralph Nader has been calling for?

He did give some welcome shout outs to LGBTS and women and the cause of equality for all.

He did come out strongly for a fairer tax code, for gun control, and for protecting voting rights.

And he spoke forcefully for action on global warming, though he favored a “market-based solution.”

He proposed to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure, which was welcome.

And he said he wanted to fix the housing market by allowing “every responsible homeowner in America” to refinance at today’s rates. The problem is, he seems to be calling anyone who ever missed a payment an irresponsible homeowner, when they may have been unable to pay because they got sick or got laid off. Is he not going to help them at all?

He talked about comprehensive immigration reform and a pathway to citizenship, as he did in his Inaugural address. Fortunately, he added the need to “cut waiting periods,” which can be 20 years or longer right now. Some people will die on that path to citizenship.

On foreign and military policy, he was the most disappointing. He threatened Iran again, saying, “Now is the time for a diplomatic solution,” and warning: “We will do what is necessary to prevent them from getting a nuclear weapon.”

He was blatantly one-sided on the Israel-Palestinian issue, saying, “We will stand steadfast with Israel in pursuit of security and a lasting peace.” He didn’t even bother to mention the Palestinians at all.

And appallingly, he defended his drone warfare and assassination policy. “Where necessary, through a range of capabilities, we will continue to take direct action against those terrorists who pose the gravest threat to Americans,” he said. And in the very next sentence, he had the chutzpah to add: “As we do, we must enlist our values in the fight.”

He said his Administration “has worked tirelessly to forge a durable legal and policy framework to guide our counterterrorism operations.” But is it “legal” just because he and his Justice Department say it is?

He also said, in a bald-faced lie, that “throughout, we have kept Congress fully informed of our efforts.” Try running that past Sen. Ron Wyden, who for months has been trying to get his questions answered on the Administration’s assassination doctrine.

He also sang from the hymnal of American exceptionalism. “America must remain a beacon to all who seek freedom during this period of historic change,” he said. “In the Middle East, we will stand with citizens as they demand their universal rights.” Tell that to the people of Bahrain.

This was neither Obama’s most eloquent defense of an affirmative role for government, nor was it close to his most honest discussion of U.S. foreign policy.

Instead, it was lukewarm liberalism at home coupled with Bush-league justifications for lawlessness and hypocrisy abroad.

Be a Patriot, Uphold the Constitution: Save Obama From His Tortured Justifications For Drone Strikes, Kill Lists and Targeted Assassinations

–Kevin Martin, Executive Director

My cousin David has a cool used record and bookstore in downtown Lancaster, PA (my hometown) called BohoZone, check it out if you visit Lancaster. Bought my son Max a paperback copy of Fahrenheit 451 for Xmas, which he of course forgot and left in the car. So I read it, for the first time since high school (and will now give it back to Max for him to read). Really dug it, forgot that Ray Bradbury knew how to write for popular audiences. Want to see the movie again too (directed by one of the all-time greats, Francois Truffaut, starring Oskar Werner and the inimitable Julie Christie). Gotta admit I dig the future dystopia genre, especially the ones where there is some hope or at least fightback by the people (I also like the “we’re screwed and destined to succumb to the fascist police state and there’s no hope” ones too as I hope they’ll serve as a cautionary tale and wake people up.)

I especially like the one where the supposedly liberal or even “socialist” president decides who he can kill with impunity, using robots to deliver bombs, even if he doesn’t even know the person’s name, in countries with whom we are not at war, with no congressional or judicial oversight, justified by lawyers accountable only to him, with hundreds (at least) of civilians being killed.

Oh wait that’s not some future dystopia, that’s called the Obama Administration.

While many peace activists and human rights researchers have been protesting and educating and agitating about drone strikes and the president’s “kill list” for quite some time, this week seems to have brought something of a breakthrough, at least in media coverage and perhaps in Congressional scrutiny of these morally and legally dubious (and that’s being kind, many folks would just say “illegal”) practices by our Nobel Peace Laureate president. CIA Director-designate John Brennan took much of the heat on this in the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing Wednesday (with some justification, as he has been the president’s counterterrorism chief and was in the CIA under Bush/Cheney), but the president is the one accountable for these policies, and the one who could, and should, end them.

Brevity prevents a full listing of all the problematic aspects of drone strikes (our colleague and former Peace Action staffer and board member Duane Shank of Sojourners had a nice rundown on his Drone Watch blog post the other day, with links to many articles), but the civilian death toll and paper-thin legal “justification” for drone strikes being authorized by the Congressional resolution right after 9/11 are enough to call this whole shebang to a halt. (Certainly Constitutional Law Professor Barack Obama would have understood this.)

Those two concerns are the main reasons cited for the announcement late last month that the UN will open an investigation into drone strikes and targeted killings. Unites States’ UN Ambassador Susan Rice said the administration “has not ruled out full cooperation” with the investigation, as if we can pick and choose, as a UN member state. when to cooperate.

Momentum against drones (and I haven’t even gone into the frightening spectre of the proliferation of domestic surveillance drones just on the horizon that even Bradbury couldn’t have imagined) is building fast. Nationally coordinated grassroots actions on drones are planned for April. I had a suggestion the other day that we ought to start a call-in campaign to the White House every Tuesday. Why? That is supposedly the day the president looks at the kill list and approves targets for murder.

I know many liberals and progressives are loathe to criticize the president, and/or feel it’s their job to protect him from the right-wing. But it’s our Constitution that needs protecting, from this or any president who would declare himself judge, jury and executioner. Do him a favor and demand he end this madness.

Action Alert – Tell the President to Leave No Troops Behind in Afghanistan!

Earlier this month Peace Action and Peace Action Education Fund launched a call-in campaign to the White House comment line, calling on the President to choose the zero troops option once the U.S. ends military operations in Afghanistan.

We timed it just right, in conjunction with a visit to Washington from Afghanistan’s President Karzai.

Apparently we made our point.  In his meeting with President Obama, Karzai went out of his way to reject the very notion that the U.S. would even consider the “zero troops”option.  Our message was received.

Peace Action members renew our demand for a safe and complete pullout at the earliest possible date, but, in the interim, we are encouraged that the 10,000 to 20,000 troops the Pentagon was hoping for appears to have fallen from favor.

Let’s remind the President that U.S. military operations in Afghanistan are more likely to destabilize the government than achieve a political outcome favorable to the real interests of the American people.

After you write President Obama you can help a great deal more by getting your friends involved.  You can click here or watch for the ‘Tell a Friend’ page to appear after you send the President your personalized message.

Let’s keep up the pressure and demand an end to this terrible war.

Thank you for keeping up this important work.

Humbly for Peace,

Kevin Martin
Executive Director
Peace Action

P.S.Thank you for your actions to end this war.  We have turned public opinion around over the last few years and it’s time to be heard again.  Tell your friends to join in and write President Obama. Tell him its time to end this war and bring all our troops home.

On Inauguration/MLK Holiday, thoughts on our society’s “Triple Evils”

Lead article today on Foreign Policy in Focus. Would love your comments regarding our nation’s progress on Dr. King’s triple evils of racism, extreme materialism and militarism.

–Kevin

What Would King Say of the Obama Era?

By Kevin Martin, January 21, 2013

The coincidence that the presidential inauguration should fall on Martin Luther King Day provides much food for thought. Certainly, Barack Obama’s decision to use King’s Bible for his swearing-in ceremony invites progressives to make an unflattering comparison between the two—Norman Solomon did it quite well with his piece “King: I Have a Dream. Obama: I Have a Drone.”

But beyond simply castigating the years behind us or prognosticating about the years to come, there is a broader, riper opportunity in this coincidence. Let’s challenge our society to look at how well we are addressing what King called the “giant triplets,” or the “triple evils,” of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism, which he enunciated most notably in his April 4, 1967 “Beyond Vietnam” speech, exactly one year before his murder. “When machines and computers, profit motives, and property rights are considered more important than people,” he thundered, “the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”

Were King alive today, he would be astonished to see how much more exploitative our capitalist system has become. Witness the demise of American labor unions, the offshoring of middle-class jobs to low-wage countries to maximize corporate profits, the worst income inequality since the rober baron heyday of the 1920s, and our ongoing addiction to planet-destroying, unsustainable, and finite energy sources. Not coincidentally, the corporate takeover of our government—accelerated by the Supreme Court’s disastrous “Citizens United” ruling—would likely outrage King, as it ought to all Americans.

And while there certainly are some positive, glass-half-full indicators of racial harmony that we can be proud of—much higher rates of interracial marriage being a significant one, to say nothing of the reelection of America’s first black president—there are many more devastating facts that can’t be ignored. There are more black men in prison than in college, surely one of our country’s greatest shames. Wealth inequality, a more comprehensive measurement of economic health for an individual or family, is even worse for people of color than income inequality, which itself remains sky-high. Our failed policies on immigration, the war on drugs, persistent racial profiling—one could go on and on about the challenges of our deeply rooted sickness of racism.

Even President Obama’s two election victories and the visceral reaction to them are instructive. In 2012 Obama got less than 40 percent of the white vote, and in 2008 just a little more—meaning John McCain and Mitt Romney, two of the worst major party nominees in recent memory (and that’s saying something!) got a lot of votes just for being white. And the hysterical right-wing “We want our country back…” often means “…from that black guy in the White House.”

Meanwhile, most Americans remain in deep denial about the evil of militarism. By any measure, the United States is still, as King termed it in 1967, “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world,” and to further quote and appropriate King’s terrific phrase, the people of Iraq and Afghanistan must doubtless see U.S. troops as “strange liberators,” just as the Vietnamese did.

The United States is military colossus unmatched in history, spending almost as much on war and weapons as the rest of the world’s countries combined. We’re far and away the globe’s number-one arms dealer, and maintain somewhere close to 1,000 foreign military bases (even the Pentagon can’t give a precise number). For comparison’s sake, China just recently opened its first foreign base in the Indian Ocean island of Seychelles.

War has become normalized; ask anyone under the age of 20 if they can remember a time we weren’t at war.

Then there is our domestic culture of violence, which has too many manifestations to name. Our out-of-control gun violence, violence against women and LGBT persons and children, our startlingly violent movies and video games, and our incessant use of war and battle metaphors is just a start.

An extreme example of our country’s delusion about guns and violence was provided recently by Larry Ward, chairman of the “Gun Rights Appreciation Day” planned for inaugural weekend. When challenged about the irony of holding such an event on the MLK holiday weekend, Ward said he thought the event would “honor the legacy of Dr. King,” adding that if African-Americans had had guns, slavery might not have existed in this country. Brevity prevents a full deconstruction of these absurdities, but Ward evidently forgot that King was murdered with a gun.

Clearly the triple evils run deep in our society and don’t just stand alone. They are interlocking and mutually reinforcing.  U.S. military and foreign policy is manifestly racist (dating at least to the genocide of First Nations peoples), and mostly driven by corporate interests bound up in economic exploitation. Economic exploitation obviously has a strong racial component as well.

But the point of all this is not to concede defeat to King’s giant triplets—the point is to stimulate analysis, reflection, and ideas for action to address and overcome them. Racism, economic exploitation, and militarism are all human constructs, after all. We are not powerless before any of them.

For example, the Pentagon budget, while gargantuan, will soon begin to decline due to budgetary pressures and the end of the disastrous Iraq and Afghanistan wars. We can begin to rebuild by pushing for deeper cuts to Pentagon pork and putting the savings to work by investing in our communities. Moreover, creating a U.S. foreign and military policy based on widely held values of democracy, diplomacy, human rights, justice, sustainability, peace, and international cooperation—in short, a foreign policy for the global 99 percent—is not only possible; it’s the only antidote to our disease of militarism.

So as we celebrate Dr. King’s 84^th birthday, let’s rededicate ourselves to building the Beloved Community he so clearly envisioned. Dismantling the triple evils and replacing them with positive structures and policies would be a great start.

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Kevin Martin has served as Executive Director of Peace Action and Peace Action Education Fund since September 4, 2001, and has worked with the organization in various capacities since 1985. Peace Action is the country’s largest peace and disarmament organization with 90,000 members nationwide.