Vietnam GI Challenged War Makers

One of the most outlandish protests of the war in Vietnam, in the eyes of minders of military tradition, was a small independent newspaper, “Vietnam GI,” published by Jeff Sharlet, a feisty veteran of the early secretive stage of the conflict. With a top secret clearance and training in translating Vietnamese, Sharlet served in Army Security Agency operations in 1963-64 that monitored radio communications by both sides in what he came to see as a civil war in which the US government was propping up a corrupt, dysfunctional regime of revolving door generals and would-be dictators.

In the tradition of Ben Franklin-style colonial-era newspapers that challenged the coercive actions of the British empire, of Frederick Douglass’ “North Star” challenge of the entrenched institution of slavery, and of numerous other examples of journalism-activism in American history, Sharlet launched an antiwar newspaper for GIs, written by active duty GIs and young veterans of the controversial war in Southeast Asia.

Starting in January 1968, copies of the “underground” newspaper were widely distributed to soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines across the US and in Vietnam via informal networks of servicemen and women willing to challenge the official rationales for waging that war. Volunteer staff and contributing editors were members and supporters of the then-fledging Viet Nam Veterans Against the War. Sharlet paid for the initial printing with funds from a Woodrow Wilson Graduate Fellowship he had won for studies at the University of Chicago. Fundraisers with an array of peace movement supporters kept the monthly publication afloat.

Sometime in the spring of 1968, my brother Ted visited me in New York City and drolly told a story about how a copy of “Vietnam GI” had set off a big commotion in an Air Force special operations unit. It seems that a copy of the paper mysteriously appeared on the commanding officer’s desk in a highly secure area of a base in Hawaii. The unit did helicopter rescue missions for air crews whose planes crashed in the Pacific Ocean. It also, secretly, retrieved capsules from satellites that took photos of the Soviet Union and other places of interest to the US military.

Spying my name among the culprits on the masthead of this antiwar rag, Air Force investigators called in the FBI and targeted Ted, a paramedic in the air-sea rescue detachment. “Whose side are you on?” the commander demanded. The agitated colonel, who had lost a brother in the war, proposed that my brother join him in a raid on North Vietnam. The FBI agents flipped out a document that they said was a psychological profile of Ted’s radical brother, who resigned from West Point after serving in Vietnam. They implied that Ted was likely in his brother’s orbit.

Ted, who professed ignorance of the newspaper’s appearance in their midst, was saved by a lieutenant who noted that the airman was a highly regarded member of his crew, who had jumped out of helicopters with rescue gear to save pilots who crash-landed in the ocean.

But the damage to military decorum was done. Somebody dropped that paper on that colonel’s desk in a top secret facility. The Air Force and FBI knew that, whoever did it, antiwar dissent now reached deep into even highly trained, highly motivated special operations units.

Jeff Sharlet came out of that milieu, working in secretive communications-intercept units in Vietnam that other GIs called “the spooks.” Working with Jeff—who abruptly died way too soon at 27 of kidney cancer in June 1969—was a big step in my education that the hidden truth of what happens in wars can be revealed by participants willing to counter the official mythologies.

Jeff Sharlet’s ripples of influence on the Vietnam-era antiwar GI movement have been memorialized in numerous books, publications for GIs challenging the war in Iraq and at least two websites. “The most dramatic tribute,” noted Jeff’s brother Bob Sharlet in a widely researched wikipedia entry,” has been the award-winning documentary, Sir! No Sir! (2005), on the Vietnam GI anti-war movement screened in theaters across the country… co-dedicated to Sharlet, as the director David Zeiger put it, ‘for starting it all.’”

Another fitting tribute is Bob’s son, Jeff Sharlet, the investigative journalist and author of The Family and C Street, among other works.

For more information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Sharlet_(Vietnam_anti-war_activist)
http://jeffsharletandvietnamgi.blogspot.com/2011_02_01_archive.html
http://jeffsharlet-and-vietnamgi.com.yolasite.com/

Environmental Writing 2011

From Agent Orange’s insidious grasp out of the past of the war in Vietnam to current health concerns of many residents of Ramapo River communities, to the potential future effects of global climate change, 11 student-reporters at Ramapo College of New Jersey dug into a wide array of ecological issues in the Spring 2011 Environmental Writing class.

Here are some of many insightful passages that summarize topics students chose to research and report in magazine-style final writing projects, all of which are posted on our class website, ramapolookout.blogspot.com, along with their other writing assignments throughout the semester.

“The Earth is as a storm. Violently it crashes and trumpets along its trillion year journey. Like a wildfire burning on a California horizon, the Earth surrounds itself in tapestry of both beauty and terror. In essence our planet is a hospitable destroyer. It will deny life as easily as it fosters it. Often times life will simply die off, a casualty of the constant unseen equation of nature. Still, despite the changes our planet has seen, the existence of life has always remained firmly rooted. However, our modern age has threatened life with a new villain: pollutants.”

--From Destroying our Oceans: Impact of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch by John Clancey

“Beekeepers throughout the Garden State know there is something wrong. Some blame mites and pesticides but others are still puzzled as to what exactly is causing colony collapse disorder.

“’I had beehives that were full of bees and produced a great honey crop, and two weeks later were empty,’ says Joe Triemel, Corresponding Secretary at the Essex Co. Beekeepers.

“Why all the buzz? Bees are very critical to agricultural practices.”

--From New Jersey's Buzz on Colony Collapse Disorder by Courtney Leiva

“When being advised to follow a healthy diet, the one food that is indisputably on the top of the list is fish. Its Omega 3 fatty acids, vitamins and minerals keep our heart pumping and our blood pressure low. It is an easy food to cook, requiring little preparation and, in most cases, done in less than 30 minutes. It is almost impossible to make a bad dish with fish unless, of course, the fish itself has been contaminated.

“With the recent environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, which was formally known to produce quality fish, particularly shellfish, fish lovers now question the safety of the fish coming from the Gulf. Do we believe the government agencies that maintain the fish from the Gulf is safe or do we stop buying, adding to the sorry economic state of the Gulf fishermen’s woes, who are just recovering from Hurricane Katrina?”

--From Is Eating Fish as Healthy as It Used to Be? by Virginia DiBianca

“Climate change, or global warming as it is often referred to, has been a hot button issue in recent years. It has dominated the environmental arena, and has even played a role in the political spectrum, as Democrats and Republicans hold very different ideas about the phenomenon. There is a lot of conflicting information about this so-called global warming and the process of weeding through all of it to separate fact from fiction can seem overwhelming. The truth of the matter is, depending upon who you ask, you will likely get a very different interpretation of climate change, its causes, its effects, and what it ultimately means for you and me. ...

“Climate change, or global warming, is certainly a very complex issue with a myriad of facts, data, and evidence from a host of different organizations to take into account. But these are the bare-bone facts of the situation. There is evidence to support hundreds of thousands of years of constantly changing climate situations on our planet. But there is also hard proof that humans have, if nothing else, sped the process up a significant amount. It is really up to each citizen of the planet Earth to make their own decision about climate change and make their day-to-day choices accordingly.”

--From Climate Change: A Complex Issue with Clashing Points of View by Lindsey de Stefan

“Jeff Genser, a Suffern native, pleaded to the council about flood issues. He stated, ‘You're proposing to eliminate 100 acres of flood plain, and turn it from a pervious area to an impervious. And that is unacceptable, in my opinion.’ He went on to propose his own idea for what could be built on the flood plain next to the Ramapo River, a Vertical Farm. ‘A building could be constructed that could supply food to half of Bergen County...use all the water it comes into [from the river], over and over again, and have no pollution and environmental impact.’ The idea seemed to stir no interest by the council.

“Many individuals mentioned how the mall would impact the surrounding community. Some were frustrated over the idea of Stag Hill residents being stranded in an emergency situation, being that the only access road to their community would become a constant point of traffic and congestion. Retired resident Ron Whalberg asked the council, ‘At what point do we stop endangering future generations?’”

--From A Changed Mahwah by Graig Mihok

“It is a race against time for a fading era of American heroes who served their country and feel they were poisoned by their government. It is a race against time for the Vietnamese people suffering from health conditions and birth defects. The U.S. government is left with a choice. It can accept responsibility and dedicate itself to all who suffered from the Agent Orange spraying campaigns, or it can wait for the end of an era. It can hope for the best that history will forget. The natural environment and the lives it gracefully sustains are in serious danger.

“For Agent Orange investigator Fred Wilcox, justice is yet to be done. ‘The government can start by saying sorry,’ he said.”

--From War After the War: The Environmental Assault of Agent Orange by Dan Savino

“Consumers seem to be paying attention to what they eat more and more. It is too soon to prove whether GM seeds, crops and foods will hurt or help us, but staying informed and questioning claims for will help to insure our safety. Big corporations own the rights to a very crucial part of the food chain. Urging others to ask questions, voice opinions and challenge tests is incredibly important. Food and its nutrients are what help us survive. As consumers and as humans we have the right to take control over the products we use daily.”

--From Genetically Modified Food: What Does it Mean for You and Your Kitchen? by Lorraine Metz

“Some say it’s just a coincidence; that it would take years, if not decades, for us to see any change in prices if we started drilling. Experts say that the process of actually obtaining the oil, refining it, dispersing it, and using it takes an extreme amount of time and money, so that we wouldn’t see any relief in the near future. The Energy Information Association found that increased drilling would have a very small, if any, impact before 2030. They also found that even once the oil starts flowing, it would only bring in about 0.2 million barrels per day.

“Others argue that just by lifting a ban on drilling, it would influence the market to lower prices. This is what seemingly happened between 2008 and 2010 with President Bush’s decision. However, other economists argue that the oil industry is part of a global market and since the United States would only be contributing less than one million barrels per day, it wouldn’t do much for the prices. How would one explain what happened after Bush’s decision? The theory of supply and demand seems pretty fitting, which would directly benefit us in this situation.”

--From To Drill or Not to Drill? Offshore Oil Drilling and How it Can Affect You by Brittany Shann

“’Many residents have told me they don't trust DuPont or the NJ DEP. They think DuPont is covering up pollution and DEP is rubber stamping inadequate DuPont cleanup plans,’ says Bill Wolfe, former planner and policy analyst for the state Department of Environmental Protection and former policy director of Sierra Club's New Jersey Chapter.

“’They are frustrated by the slow pace of cleanup, angry for not being told about vapor intrusion, and disgusted by repeated failures by local and state officials to provide full information and allow them to have a meaningful role in cleanup decisions that affect their lives, their family’s health, and their property value,’ he says.”

--From DuPont: Pompton Lakes Site Still a Source of Conflict After 25-Year Clean Up by Deanna Dunsmuir

“Some fluctuations in the Earth's temperature are inevitable regardless of human activity, but centuries of rising temperatures and seas lie ahead if the release of emissions from the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation continues unabated, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The panel shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President Al Gore for alerting the world to warming's risks.

“Over the next decade, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency plans to regulate sources of greenhouse gases, imposing efficiency and emissions requirements. Until the UNFCCC starts taking action on a global scale, it seems that countering global warming and climate change is up to the people’s smaller actions and lifestyle changes. Maybe then those with the greater power will see that we are prepared for much bigger, even drastic changes.”

--From Global Warming: Small Steps Towards Conquering a Big Threat by Jessica Vasquez

“A tract of twenty-two acres of forest named after the former Governor of New Jersey, George Brinton McClellan, was purchased a few years ago by Seton Hall Prep School of West Orange, New Jersey. The school’s plan’s to clear the old growth forest rippled through the community and neighboring towns and has caused many concerns. For two years, town residents and students attended zoning board hearings to voice their opinion on the proposed clear cutting. …

“The Mallangas, both active members of the Sierra Club, also brought in Bruce Kershner. Kershner is a field ecologist who is also a national authority on old growth forests and took a survey of the 22 acres of trees. He identified the trees and expressed the historical and biological value of the forest. Board members attacked his testimony claiming that the use of the term ‘old growth forest’ can not be used if he cannot tell the exact age of the trees. They repeatedly interrupted him during his testimony to ask him for credentials and if he had a background in studying and observing old growth forests. Kershner has studied old growth forests for over 30 years all over the country, but that did not seem like a sufficient enough background for the zoning board members.”

--From Seton Hall Prep Clear Cuts Our Future by Amanda Nesheiwat

Rethinking National Security at the Pentagon

“Sustainability” is the latest buzz word in academic and environmental circles. Now it is also buzzing around the halls of the Pentagon. As the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan run out of rationalizations and public patience, two staff officers working for the Joint Chiefs of Staff have developed a new twist on selling national security to the American people.

America emerged from the Twentieth Century as the most powerful nation on earth. But we failed to recognize that dominance, like fossil fuel, is not a sustainable source of energy,” assert Marine Col. Mark Mykleby and Navy Capt. Wayne Porter in an unusual, unclassified national defense report, recently published by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, entitled  “A National Strategic Narrative.”

This unofficial report by two serving officers was soon widely broadcast by The New York Times, not to mention picked up by war critics and spread around the Internet via Facebook and buzzing bloggers.

Unlike the “Pentagon Papers” and other in-depth reports on how the US got entangled in controversial military campaigns such as in Vietnam, that continued to grind on long after the loss of public support, this report offers few specific examples of why America’s armed forces need to change the current military way of life. It simply cuts to the chase and flatly states it is time to make major changes.

“It is time for America to re-focus our national interests and principles through a long lens on the global environment of tomorrow,” wrote Mykleby and Porter in a report that deliberately echoes the historic 1947 article in Foreign Affairs by Foreign Service Officer George Kennan that formed the basis of the containment strategy that guided US policy toward the Soviet Union for decades.

“It is time to move beyond a strategy of containment to a strategy of sustainment (sustainability),” the career military officers wrote in an authoritative summary of a new wave of rethinking the military’s mission apparently coursing through the Pentagon. The New York Times duly noted that the two officers are special strategic assistants to Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

“We must recognize that security means more than defense, and sustaining security requires adaptation and evolution,” they continued.

What that means was spelled out in a preface to this report by Anne-Marie Slaughter, a Princeton professor of international affairs who recently stepped down as director of policy and planning at the US State Department.

Slaughter noted that Mykleby and Porter’s boss, Admiral Mullen, has stated “publicly that the U.S. deficit is our biggest national security threat. He and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates have also given speeches and written articles calling for ‘demilitarizing American foreign policy’ and investing more in the tools of civilian engagements – diplomacy and defense.”

And so the staff officers came up with a way of framing the tenor of these speeches into a new national security strategy. Their mission, apparently, is to stir up public discussion of these ideas outside the usual military-oriented circles.

Porter, for instance, cowrote an op-ed published in The Washington Times in March calling for creation of a National Service Academy to train “a corps of civilian experts” to work on diplomacy and sustainable development projects around the world.  “Forging these tools to deliver credible influence worldwide, as part of a comprehensive strategy to sustain the growth of America's prosperity and to enhance our security, requires an investment in education and in Americans with a proven desire to serve. Too often, we have turned to our military to provide this service,” Porter wrote.

Mykleby meanwhile took the new strategy message on the road and addressed the Kansas City Chamber of Commerce.

“Rather than focusing primarily on defense, the security we seek can only be sustained through a whole of nation approach to our domestic and foreign policies. This requires a different approach to problem solving than we have pursued previously and a hard look at the distribution of our national treasure,” the staff officers maintain. “For too long, we have underutilized sectors of our government and our citizenry writ large, focusing intensely on defense and protectionism rather than on development and diplomacy.

“We need to pursue our [new] priorities of education, security, and access to natural resources by adopting sustainability as an organizing concept for a national strategy. This will require fundamental changes in policy, law, and organization,” they state, offering a legislative proposal to Congress.

“What this calls for is a National Prosperity and Security Act, the modern day equivalent of the National Security Act of 1947,” the staff officers assert. “This National Prosperity and Security Act would: integrate policy across agencies and departments of the Federal government and provide for more effective public/private partnerships; increase the capacity of appropriate government departments and agencies; align Federal policies, taxation, research and development expenditures and regulations to coincide with the goals of sustainability; and, converge domestic and foreign policies toward a common purpose.”

In Slaughter’s translation, this brass-hat broadside is a high-ranking acknowledgement that the Pentagon budget and war-fighting mission creep around the world must dramatically shrink to help save the nation from a home-front hollowing out that is destroying American livelihoods and communities. This is a now-hear-this message the public needs to tell Congress.

“Today our security lies as much or more in our prosperity as in our military capabilities,” she wrote in the preface. “Our vocabulary, our institutions, and our assumptions must reflect that shift. ‘National security’ has become a trump card, justifying military spending even as the domestic foundations of our national strength are crumbling. … We do not want to be the sole superpower that billions of people around the world have learned to hate from fear of our military might. We seek instead to be the nation other nations listen to, rely on and emulate out of respect and admiration.”

For further information:

http://www.wilsoncenter.org/events/docs/A%20National%20Strategic%20Narrative.pdf

Counting Up the Costs of War

 

How many ways need it be said? America is going broke—and has become imperious, callous and cruel—waging wars around the world. A group of concerned citizens in New Jersey and New York set out recently to visually convey the costs of war for our nation. The result is a mind-boggling array of art work displayed at the Puffin Cultural Forum in Teaneck, NJ.

The “Looking at the Human and Economic Costs of War through the Arts” exhibition on display through April 14 includes paintings, drawings, sculpture, photographs, poetry, dioramas and posters by war veterans, military family members and other concerned taxpayers, artists, writers, teachers and students about various aspects of wars’ costs.

Among the most memorable items is a carefully crafted prosthetic leg lent by a World War II veteran, Bob Levine, who lost his lower right leg from grenade wounds in 1944 in Normandy, France. The VA-issued replacement leg is part of a multi-media display of photos, drawings, newspaper clippings, tables of statistics and a diorama conveying the destructive effects of landmines and other explosives on arms and legs of multitudes of maimed survivors of war zones around the Earth.

“The Million Dollar Soldier,” another diorama made from a US Army camouflage uniform crafted for war in Afghanistan, vividly displays another side of the costs of the conflict in that part of the world. Pinned to the fashionably designed combat jacket are oversize price tags for the cost per soldier per year of keeping an army fighting for nearly a decade halfway around the world in equivalent dollar amounts to the tax bills to local residents for running the municipality and public schools of Teaneck.

The cost in lives in the war on terrorism is represented by a display of poetry and photos conveying former New Jersey resident John Fenton’s tormented grief over the death of his son Matthew, who died in May 2006 of wounds received as a Marine in Iraq.

Costs in torment to war survivors and family members is the subject of many of the art works. Nightmares are evoked from images torn from military actions around the globe. “A few years ago if I’d seen that piece I’d have run out of here,” poet Dayl Wise said of a mixed media painting by Ruth Bauer Neustadter of a precariously standing man rendered as a jumble of parts and bones. Wise read to a standing-room-only audience a pair of haunting poems—about losing his sturdy jungle boots when he was wounded in Vietnam and, decades later, suddenly seeing dead Vietnamese farmers amid the “road kill” as he drove on a highway near his home in New York.

 "Open Wound," Combat Paper pulp painting made with military uniforms, by Eli Wright, US  Army veteran, Iraq




Other work addressing the corrosive impact of post-traumatic stress on war survivors includes a raging display of Combat Paper artwork made from shredded military uniforms by Iraq war veterans, including Robynn Murray, featured in the Oscar-nominated film, Poster Girl. Another piece along these lines is a "Costs of War" poster incorporating a poem I wrote, with calligraphy by Drew Cameron of Combat Papermakers, hand-printed on paper made from military uniforms.

To convey a fuller view of this exhibition’s arresting visual impact, I created a Shutterfly photo album of the artwork and performers who appeared at a Costs of War cultural program on March 20. My poem on this topic is below.

Costs of War

Legless,
armless,
homeless veterans,
dead civilians
in the millions— 
orphans,
widows,
shattered families—
from blasted cities,
ghostly villages
full of ghastly graves
in the ruins, ditches, fields…
pillaged farmsteads,
defoliated forests,
ravaged lanes
sowed with landmines,
roadside bombs,
booming blasts of doom
to passersby…
poisonous debris
seeding cancers,
crippling disorders,
including traumatic stress
and birth defects
for generations
in hate-filled nations…
what a toxic residue,
billions spent,
billions still due

--Jan Barry

At the Movies: A Veteran’s War

It was a long way from a machinegun mount in a military convoy in Baghdad. Robynn Murray’s getup was very elegant on Sunday at the Academy Awards in Beverly Hills, California. What made her stand out from the famous movie stars at Hollywood’s gala event was the brace of tattooed pistols perched on her chest atop a stunning black and gray dress.

Murray, a former Army sergeant, was there because “Poster Girl,” a documentary about her home front battles as a combat veteran of the war in Iraq, was a contender for the award for short documentaries. Despite its title—with an allusion to the Hollywood pinup girl photos of World War II—“Poster Girl” was one of the few films in the Academy Awards lineup that was very different from typical movie fare. The quick flickering of a few scenes from the film, before the Oscar was—dramatic pause—presented to another short documentary (“Strangers No More”), did not begin to convey how different this film is from standard Hollywood flicks about war as scary entertainment.

As the 38-minute documentary by director Sara Nesson shows, the aftermath of war is sometimes brutal for survivors. This film, a review in the Burlington (Vermont) Free Press noted, profiles “a high school cheerleader and National Merit Scholar from Buffalo who enlisted in the Army Reserve at age 19 to work in a civil affairs capacity. Along with two female colleagues, she posed for the September 2005 cover of Army Magazine — hence the title of Nesson’s film. But beginning in May 2004, the military had Murray wielding a machine gun from the turret of a Humvee that was taking sniper fire. She returned home with wounds and post-traumatic stress disorder.”

The film unflinchingly shows Murray back home in Niagara Falls, NY punching walls, kicking her car door and having a panic attack on camera, amid rambling talk about the times she wanted to commit suicide. Here’s a scene from the movie, as captured by Cythnia Fuchs in a review for PopMatters:

As Robynn recalls entering a home where a family has been shot and killed, she emphasizes the blood on the walls and mattresses. “They got shot in their sleep,” she says, then reflects on her own lack of response at the time: There was this piece of bread,” she recalls, “And there was this piece of brain on it.” Sent to assess the scene, she did just that, until she remembers walking up the stairs and seeing a bloody handprint o the wall. Here Poster Girl shifts time and place, pulling you into Robynn’s sense of lurching up the stairs: her steps are heavy, the camera pitches. The camera arrives in the attic of Robynn’s mother’s home, where Robynn is punching the wall, with boxing gloves. She slams through the surface, then reflects again: “Oh, that’s a problem,” she observes, as she sinks to the floor, beginning to sob. You hear more steps approaching. Her mother, Ann Marie Hacker, comforts her.

Going beyond the usual filmmaker fascination with lives descending into destruction, the documentary also shows her determinedly finding a path to recovery. Rebuffed by the VA, which lost her application for assistance, she found an activist path to another, better stage of life. As the Burlington Free Press noted, “Murray … discovered that her anguish could be ameliorated by making combat paper [artwork from shredded military uniforms]; penning poetry for the Warrior Writers, an initiative that provides opportunities for vets to articulate their experiences; and becoming an activist with Iraq Veterans Against the War, of which she is now a board member.”

Finding a network of assistance for healing from hidden wounds can be hit or miss. Robynn Murray stumbled across a compatible group of veterans and supporters who work together to transform tough times in their lives into artwork, poetry and other forms of creative expression. “Warrior Writers saved my daughter’s life,” her mother said to a circle of audience members at a recent showing of “Poster Girl” in New York City.

Hollywood movie-makers seldom get so close to filmed experiences that come that near to real life saved from the relentless jaws of death.

For more information:
http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20110224/ENT/110223026/Oscar-nominated-director-s-path-started-in-Burlington
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/136611-poster-girl/
http://www.warriorwriters.org/

The Latest Farewell to Fighting Wars in Asia

“Any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should 'have his head examined,' as General [Douglas] MacArthur so delicately put it.”

There’s a quote for the history books, broadcast last week at the US Military Academy at West Point by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who is retiring this year. It was as blunt a reassessment of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as MacArthur’s scathing warning to steer clear of fighting in Vietnam in the wake of the war in Korea that ended his four-star military career.

As the Christian Science Monitor’s Brad Knickerbocker reported, “Gates’s message was clear: The US military services, as well as the elected and appointed civilians who send them to war, need better ways of foreseeing and preparing for national security threats.” Future responses need to avoid the costly deployments of armies to wage protracted battles in far-flung corners of the world, the Pentagon chief added.

“And I must tell you, when it comes to predicting the nature and location of our next military engagements, since Vietnam, our record has been perfect,” Gates told the West Point cadets. “We have never once gotten it right, from the Mayaguez to Grenada, Panama, Somalia, the Balkans, Haiti, Kuwait, Iraq, and more – we had no idea a year before any of these missions that we would be so engaged.”

Expanding limited military missions, Gates emphasized, into nearly decade-long wars turned out to be the bloody mire that MacArthur warned against. “The odds of repeating another Afghanistan or Iraq – invading, pacifying, and administering a large third world country – may be low,” Gates said. To avert such a repeat scenario, the US government must do a better job that focuses on ways to “prevent festering problems from growing into full-blown crises which require costly—and controversial—large-scale American military intervention.”

Gates’ speech prompted Huffington Post blogger William Astore, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, to expand upon the implications of his scalding farewell address at West Point. “I'd like to propose a coda to the ‘Gates Doctrine’: Any current defense secretary who advises the president to prolong the current wars in Asia and the Middle East should have his head examined,” Astore wrote. “The future is now, Mr. Secretary. It's time to end our costly and futile wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It's time to support our troops by bringing them home. And for our next and future nation-building target, let's take a look around us. There's plenty of work to be done right here in the good ol' USA.”

Egypt’s Path to Peace

Not since the ancient Israelites slipped out on the Pharaoh in a famous dash through the Red Sea has a mass movement of people in that corner of the world so confounded the powers that be.

“The young Egyptian protesters who overthrew the Mubarak regime on Saturday have accomplished what two generations of violent Islamist revolutionaries could not,” Gwynne Dyer, the noted London-based columnist on international affairs, wrote the other day. “And they did not just do it nonviolently; they succeeded because they were nonviolent.”

This was not just historic, given the victory over violence unleashed against unarmed protesters, it points a path for others to follow. Dyer argues that the uprising in Cairo not only overthrew a repressive dictatorship, but also upended the myth of radical Islamism forever poised to sweep the Muslim world.

“It is a testimony to the good sense of the Arabs, and a rebuke to the ignorant rabble of Western pundits and ‘analysts’ who insisted that Arabs could not do democracy at all, or could only be given it at the point of Western guns,” Dyer concluded.

“It is equally a rebuke to bin Laden and his Islamist companions, hidden in their various caves. They were never going to sweep to power across the Arab world, let alone the broader Muslim world, and only the most impressionable and excitable observers ever thought they would.”

While many “Western pundits” on US television news programs howled over this unexpected display of democracy in a part of the world that’s been subjected for generations to Western guns, the demonstrators in Tahrir Square were gleefully dancing on the graves of colonialism, post-colonialism and American paternalistic patronage of Mubarak’s dictatorship. As the New York Times reported on Monday, the Egyptian revolution of 2011 was fueled by democratic ideas and nonviolent ideals that zipped around on the Internet under the radar of military regimes.

“ The exchange on Facebook was part of a remarkable two-year collaboration that has given birth to a new force in the Arab world — a pan-Arab youth movement dedicated to spreading democracy in a region without it. Young Egyptian and Tunisian activists brainstormed on the use of technology to evade surveillance, commiserated about torture and traded practical tips on how to stand up to rubber bullets and organize barricades,” reported David D. Kirkpatrick and David E. Sanger in the New York Times.

“They fused their secular expertise in social networks with a discipline culled from religious movements and combined the energy of soccer fans with the sophistication of surgeons. Breaking free from older veterans of the Arab political opposition, they relied on tactics of nonviolent resistance channeled from an American scholar through a Serbian youth brigade — but also on marketing tactics borrowed from Silicon Valley. …

“They were especially drawn to a Serbian youth movement called Otpor, which had helped topple the dictator Slobodan Milosevic by drawing on the ideas of an American political thinker, Gene Sharp. The hallmark of Mr. Sharp’s work is well-tailored to Mr. Mubark’s Egypt: He argues that nonviolence is a singularly effective way to undermine police states that might cite violent resistance to justify repression in the name of stability.”

After hundreds of billions of dollars in military “aid” to Mubarak’s police state, a trillion dollars spent in two wars chasing after the elusive bin Laden and his mythical Islamist appeals to violent revolutions that Dyer calls “spectacular failures,” the key to constructive change in the Middle East turns out to be far less expensive. It’s a free document called the Bill of Rights, innovative and inexpensive use of the Internet, and a set of books by an American peacemaker recycling a guy whose nonviolent tactics dismantled a large part of the British empire, named Gandhi.

For further information:
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/opinon/2011/02/137_81364.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/14/world/middleeast/14egypt-tunisia-protests.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all