Duty to Warn

The U.S. House of Representatives has not just left town, but prior to leaving passed a rule preventing any member from using the War Powers Resolution to force Congress to return and vote on war.

Here's a video of Congressman Jim McGovern denouncing the rule (or read the transcript here)

If you watch the video, following Rep. McGovern's remarks two of his colleagues run their mouths. The first is Congressman Pete Sessions nonsensically replying to McGovern. The second is Congresswoman Virginia Foxx on an unrelated topic. If you jump ahead to 10:25 McGovern replies to Sessions. It's well worth watching.

In addition, Congressman McGovern and five other Democrats and six Republicans have asked Speaker John Boehner and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to hold a vote on war. Here's their letter: PDF.

Finally, somebody commenting on the state of Iraq thinks George W. Bush got something right. Turns out it's ISIS. In the new hour-long ISIS-produced film about how nice it is to die for ISIS -- Flames of War: Fighting Has Just Begun -- Bush is quoted: "You are with us or against us." Video shows him saying "Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists." A graphic in the upper corner of the screen reads: "Bush spoke the truth, although he's a liar."

What truth does ISIS think Bush spoke? The Manichean truth that there are two groups of people on earth with nothing in common between them and a shared dedication to annihilate each other. Of course, the notion that they have nothing in common is delusional. They have almost everything in common: their belief in violence, their monotheism, their stupidity, their desire for a U.S. war in the Middle East.

"In the face of the dark wave of the crusader force..." begins the ISIS movie.

"This crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take a while," said Bush.

Barack Obama’s central dilemma last week, when he tried to sell a new war to the American public on the eve of the thirteenth anniversary of 9/11, was to speak convincingly about the wisdom and effectiveness of U.S. foreign policy over the last decade-plus while at the same time, alas, dropping the bad news that it didn’t work.

Thus: “Thanks to our military and counterterrorism professionals, America is safer.”

Hurray! God bless drones and “mission accomplished” and a million Iraqi dead and birth defects in Fallujah. God bless torture. God bless the CIA. But guess what?

“Still we continue to face a terrorist threat. We cannot erase every trace of evil from the world, and small groups of killers have the capacity to do great harm.”

So it’s bombs away again, boys — another trace of evil has popped up in the Middle East — and I find myself at the edge of outrage, the edge of despair, groping for language to counter my own incredulity that the God of War is on the verge of another victory and Planet Earth and human evolution lose again.

War, our leaders tell us, is needed to make the world a better place.

Well, maybe not so much for the 43 million people who’ve been driven out of their homes and remain in a precarious state as internally displaced persons (24 million), refugees (12 million), and those struggling to return to their homes.

The U.N.’s figures for the end of 2013 (found here) list Syria as the origin of 9 million such exiles. The cost of escalating the war in Syria is often treated as a financial cost or — in rare cases — as a human cost in injury and death. There is also the human cost of ruining homes, neighborhoods, villages, and cities as places in which to live.

Just ask Colombia which comes in second place following years of war — a place where peace talks are underway and desperately needed with — among other catastrophes — nearly 6 million people deprived of their homes.

We live in a time fraught with bad news. From the toll of violence and poverty to the escalating march of climate change, every week brings temptations to despair. Hope may actually be more beleaguered in the wake of a president who won the office in part by branding himself with it. Many have concluded that political participation has become a futile game.

For myself, I deal with potential despair by finding ways to act. And remembering that the doors to social change are never irrevocably closed, even in unimaginably difficult situations. Think of Nelson Mandela and his compatriots being told they would rot and die on Robben Island. Denied newspapers as a way of isolating them, they’d see a guard discard a newspaper he’d used to wrap his sandwich, and one of the prisoners would retrieve it, smuggle it under their shirt, and in a tiny coded script on toilet paper (the only paper they had), would circulate a story or headline that would give their compatriots courage.

The world turned its eye to Ferguson Missouri in August after police shot an unarmed black teenager in front of witnesses. The protests that followed were met with a militarized response, including Pentagon surplus mine-resistant vehicles topped with snipers, tear-gas, assault rifles and policemen in camouflage body armor. There were conflicting claims of force being used by the protestors which proved difficult to verify. During the nine days of turmoil 24 journalists became casualties.

The list of journalists threatened, beaten, gassed, shot with wooden bullets and/or arrested was begun by Runa Sandvik of the Freedom of the Press Foundation. Additional research by the Columbus Free Press identified more affected journalists. Although many of the journalists had the support of their publications individually, no American mainstream media outlet took on the issue comprehensively or editorially beyond the support of their own employees or those arrested with them.

On September 11, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), a major beltway advocacy group, filed suit against the Department of Defense (DoD) for withholding records on security testing of electronic voting systems for use by overseas service members. EPIC has requested the security reports in July under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

The suit alleges that the DoD had no intention of disclosing the test results as it had publicly promised to do to Congress nearly 2 years previously. The United States District Court for the District of Columbia had affirmed EPIC's status as news media for the purposes of access to information and fee waivers after they won a previous suit against the DoD in 2003.

I know you mean well. I know you think you've found a bargain that nobody else noticed hidden in a back corner of the used car lot. Let me warn you: it's a clunker. Here, I'll list the defects. You can have your own mechanic check them out: