posted April 01, 2003 11:50 AM              

quote:

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The original goal, if I remember correctly, was to find and punish those responsible for the Sept. 11th attacks. Then all of a sudden it was all about toppling those evil Taliban ... (rest assured, now there's a better government in Afghanistan.
The new Afghan government has decided it will still stone adulterers to death, but now they'll use smaller rocks...)


Then, the War on Terror became about Iran and North Korea, about 'weapons of mass destruction.'

The message seems clear: Bush wants unconditional global approval for the right to wage war against whoever America decides is the enemy on any given day.
Either that or his speech writer is severely geographically challenged.

Needless to say, the three nations in question weren't very pleased with W's speech.

The Iranian spokesman called it "hegemony" and "unilateralism."

The Iraqi government called it "stupid."

The North Koreans, as broke and backward as they are, are probably just now reading about it on a beat-up teletype machine they got from the Russians back in the ‘70s.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of Saddam Hussein, or whichever Kim happens to be ruling Pyongyang this week and starving his populace to death. But before they start labeling these three countries - two of which fought one the nastiest wars of the 20th Century against each other - an 'axis of evil,’ maybe we should throw a couple of facts around:

North Korea, U.S.'s closest arms sales competitor from the 'axis of evil,' was responsible for a whopping 0.4% of the arms trade.

Where to begin ? How about the arms trade ? The CIA berated North Korea for its role in the arms trade.
In 2000, the U.S. was responsible for over 50% of the global arms trade. That year, the U.S. sold $12 billion in arms to the developing world. The vast majority of those arms went to non-democracies like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Indonesia. Of those non-democracies, more than half were on the U.N list of top human rights abusers .

So when an Angolan baby or an East Timorese housewife got blown apart in 2000, the chances were pretty good that the hardware that did it was made in USA.

North Korea, U.S.'s closest arms sales competitor from the 'axis of evil,' was responsible for a whopping 0.4% of the arms trade to the developing world, or 120 times less than U.S.. Iran and Iraq weren't even on the charts.

Sure you say, but Iraq and Iran and North Korea are developing weapons of mass destruction.
Weapons of mass destruction!
Well, I for one am no proponent of madmen having scary weapons, mass or otherwise. But let's be honest about who's got 'em, shall we?
Last I heard, the count was 10,500 (us) to zero (them, combined). Last I heard, U.S. can blow up the world a zillion times over. They can't do it even once.

Before we get all self-righteous about who should and shouldn’t have nuclear weapons, maybe we should just ask the inhabitants of Rongelap Atoll about how America handles its plutonium.

Never heard of Rongelap Atoll?

It’s where America's own Atomic Energy Commission decided to do a little experiment in the early '50s. They cleared a bunch of native villages, detonated a nuclear bomb, and then told the native inhabitants it was safe to move back, just so they could study the effects of radiation on them.

An AEC representative later testified:
"While the natives' way of life is drastically different than ours, they nonetheless made a better test group than the mice."

(The effects, by the way, were predictable. Cancer, birth defects, and death. Their descendants are still dealing with it today.)

America scorched the earth from Bikini Atoll to the Nevada Desert to Hiroshima and Nagasaki with weapons of mass destruction. Is it U.S. place to go around preaching to anyone about the evils of nuclear weapons? I don't think so... I'll reserve that right for the UN. Or the EU. Or some other institution whose acronym doesn't spell USA.

But what about biological weapons, you ask ? Well, here's an interesting fact ...
Of the 10 biological materials suspected in Iraqi warfare research, 9 were supplied by U.S. firms.

And another:
Throughout the 1980s, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control shipped 14 different biological materials with military potential to Iraq. Fourteen.

Oh yes, the '80s ... back when feathered hair and glam rock and Saddam was U.S.'s best friend. Or is that now ? I can't remember ... U.S.'s enemies change almost as fast as U.S.'s fashion statements these days.
In '88, Saddam gassed about 5,000 Kurds on the northern border of Iraq. Men, women, and children. U.S. didn't make any noise or rattle any sabers at the time. U.S. didn't brand him a member of the 'axis of evil.' Nope, actually, U.S. increased weapons sales to Iraq AFTER the attack.

In fact, if you want to get historical about it maybe we should look at exactly how Iran and Iraq got in the position they're currently in. Like, for instance, the fact that U.S. armed both of them to the teeth. That in the '80s U.S. were so happy to see them killing each other that we sold weapons to both sides.

Then, for the first time since the Iran-Iraq war, the two nations opened diplomatic relations and began talking to each other again. And that is Bush's worst nightmare - two oil rich gulf nations, who have issues with the U.S., actually getting along ?

I don't know, maybe I'm off base. Maybe some people've always harbored a secret disdain for kimchee and the films of Abbas Kiarostami and now their day of vindication has finally arrived.

Cambodia is now free to level the Upper East Side.

The pinnacle of the speech, the height of inflated American chutzpah, was undoubtedly when Bush gave a 'stern warning' to nations around the world that if they don't fight their own wars on terror then 'we will do it for them.'

It must be a great feeling to be the prime minister of a struggling Third World nation and know that if you don't turn your attention (and resources) towards combating people who America - for whatever reason - finds reprehensible, then the U.S. is going to come in and strafe your hillsides with rocket fire.

On the other hand, maybe Pres. Bush is right.
Maybe U.S. should have the right to go and bomb any nation - or inhabitants thereof - that they find unsavory. Maybe they should be able to unload multiple tons of military hardware whenever the mood takes us. For that matter why don't they extend that privilege to all other nations as well ?

Everyone is free to solve grievances through the detonation of explosives!

Cambodia is free to level the Upper East Side to avenge Henry Kissinger’s secret carpet bombings.

Britain can fire away at Boston to get at the source of all that IRA funding.

Haiti can strafe Florida in hopes that they hit one of the murderous CIA-sponsored Ton Ton Macoutes the U.S. refuses to hand over to their courts for trial.

Central America - lord knows their list of grievances is long enough - is free to blow Washington to bits, anytime it wants.

Bombs away!

Except unfortunately U.S.'ve tried that model already ... for much of the last several hundred years. And after the catastrophe of World War II was over, the fanfare was that U.S. was going to try a new way to solve disputes. A multilateral forum, in which no one nation would dominate or be dominated. That was the idea behind the first so-called New World Order.

If America really wants to prove itself in the eyes of the world, then maybe it should start adhering to the principles that it helped to forge after World War II.
Maybe U.S. should start respecting international institutions, or silly little things like the GENEVA CONVENTION.
If U.S. wants global support for actions against terrorism, then maybe they should stop blocking the U.N.'s efforts to actually come up with a definition for the word.

And if U.S. don't like the way Iran, Iraq, or North Korea happen to be behaving on a given day, then they're just going to have to learn to use appropriate, multilateral methods of resolution and deterrence, for god's sake, rather than bombing sovereign nations into oblivion.

Or we could ignore the signs and just continue to clap away.

Clap, clap, clap.

---

Jakie

posted April 01, 2003 03:28 PM              

Published on Tuesday, April 1, 2003 by the New York Times

Conscientious Objector Numbers Are Small but Growing

by Laurie Goodstein

When Stephen E. Funk enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserves last fall, going to war was the last thing on his mind. He was 19 and, as he put it, adrift after a year at college when a recruiter sold him on the Marines by talking up the leadership skills, camaraderie and confidence he would learn in the armed forces.

But while in boot camp at Camp Pendleton in San Diego, Mr. Funk said, he began to feel like "a hypocrite" when he was ordered to shout out "Kill!" as the recruits drilled.

And when his unit was mobilized for Iraq in February, he said, he wanted no part of it. "I don't think the president's pursuit of this war is a very moral or godly thing," he says.

Mr. Funk did not report for duty and now is among a small number of military members who are seeking discharges as conscientious objectors.

With the military an all-volunteer force, the numbers are nothing like during the Vietnam War, when the nation relied on a draft.

Still, with recruiting campaigns advertising the promise of job skills, tuition benefits and discipline, some members of the military now say there was little frank talk about the realities of combat.

"War wasn't a part of it at all for me. I never even thought about it," said Mr. Funk, from Seattle, who plans to turn himself in for punishment today at his base in San Jose, Calif., for being absent without leave. "I thought it would be like Boy Scouts."

He is not the only one having second thoughts. Antiwar groups say that an increasing number of military personnel are calling antiwar hot lines to say they do not want to fight in Iraq for religious, moral or political reasons. The military also reports that the number of enlisted people it has discharged as conscientious objectors, while few, has risen slightly in the past six months while troops were being mobilized for the war.

The law allows members of the military to obtain conscientious objector status if they can prove that during their training or service they developed a deeply held objection to all wars. If their objector application is accepted — a lengthy process that requires interviews, essays and letters from character witnesses — they can either be reassigned to noncombatant duties or discharged.

Although the military is now operating under wartime orders under which no discharges are permitted, it has been surprisingly willing to release those claiming conscientious objector status, according to the objectors and their lawyers.

The Army reports that it granted 5 conscientious objector discharges this January, compared with 17 in all of 2002 and 9 in 2001. In February, the Army received six new applications for conscientious objector status, all still under review.

The Marine Corps says it discharged two members on conscientious objection grounds in January and February this year, compared with two in all of 2002. The Air Force received seven such applications in the past six months, approving four and rejecting one. Two are still under review. The Navy granted approximately 10 conscientious objector discharges in 2001 and in 2002. So far this year it has approved three and is considering three more.

Michael D. Sudbury, a former Army reservist in Sandy, Utah, was discharged the day before his unit was deployed — the same day he held a news conference to publicize his intention to apply for a conscientious objector discharge.

"Forcing our way on these people in Iraq is not going to make the world better," Mr. Sudbury says he told his superiors.

While the numbers of people who have received conscientious objector status are small, representatives of peace groups, churches and military support networks say that starting last fall they began experiencing an increase in calls from members of the military voicing moral concerns about the war.

Bill Galvin, counseling coordinator at the Center on Conscience and War, in Washington, said that before last year, he might receive one or two such calls a month. Starting in January, Mr. Galvin said, he began receiving one or two a day.

"A lot of the people who are calling now actually figured out some time ago, even in basic training, that they had problems with being part of violence or warfare," he said. "But they felt they made a commitment, and didn't expect they were really going to go to war." He added, "Suddenly they get orders to go to war, and that compromise they should probably have never made is catching up with them."

Mr. Funk, the Marine reservist, says he shared his misgivings with several military chaplains. He asked them what his Catholic faith had to say about war. He says the chaplains told him he would soon adjust.

After basic training ended last November, he learned about conscientious objection from the Internet and from relatives who he said had always insisted that such a gentle young man should never have enlisted in the Marine reserves.

He says he was in the process of writing his application in February when his reserve company received orders to deploy. He did not report.

His lawyer, Stephen Collier, a member of the National Lawyer's Guild Military Law Task Force in San Francisco, said he expected that Mr. Funk would serve 30 days of punishment, performing some kind of desk duty, before the Marine Corps would process his application.

Mr. Collier said of his client: "He's someone that the recruiter made a mistake on. He's not really fit for Marine Corps life."