How much contaminated meat can you buy for the price of one soldier?

Today's New York Times reports on E. Coli and Salmonella bacteria found in hamburger meat treated with ammonia (yes, ammonia) that is used by all the fast food chains and is distributed to school lunch programs all over the country.

Beef Products, the company doing the treatment, claims that the ammonia treatment kills Salmonella and E. Coli bacteria, a claim that the Department of Agriculture has accepted, to the point of exempting Beef Products ammoniated hamburger from the the standard testing required of all hamburger.

But it turns out (imagine this) that the company's claims of increased food safety were false:

[G]overnment and industry records obtained by The New York Times show that in testing for the school lunch program, E. coli and salmonella pathogens have been found dozens of times in Beef Products meat, challenging claims by the company and the U.S.D.A. about the effectiveness of the [ammonia] treatment. Since 2005, E. coli has been found 3 times and salmonella 48 times, including back-to-back incidents in August in which two 27,000-pound batches were found to be contaminated. The meat was caught before reaching lunch-rooms trays.

In fact, testing done for the school lunch program found that the ammoniated hamburger was less safe than untreated meat:

in some years Beef Products testing results were worse than many of the program’s two dozen other suppliers, which use traditional meat processing methods. From 2005 to 2009, Beef Products had a rate of 36 positive results for salmonella per 1,000 tests, compared to a rate of nine positive results per 1,000 tests for the other suppliers, according to statistics from the program.

But here's the part that really caught my attention:

Despite some misgivings, school lunch officials say they use Beef Products because its price is substantially lower than ordinary meat trimmings, saving about $1 million a year.

$1 million a year, just coincidentally, is also the cost of sending one soldier to Afghanistan for one year, according to an estimate by the Congressional Research service.

So there, placed placed on a bun and served up on a tray at a school cafeteria near you, is the perfect illustration of the priorities of our government: Yes, we could feed our children hamburger meat that wasn't treated with ammonia and infected with Salmonella, but that would be too expensive. We've got more important things to spend the money on, you know.

Steve Burns is Program Director of Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice

Getting tough on crime: Go to jail, lose your reading privileges

Time was when politicians who wanted to show their anti-crime bona fides would rail about how prisoners were watching color television -- or any television at all.

In Wisconsin these days they don't even want prisoners to read books.

At the state level, the Dept. of Corrections has made it as difficult as possible for a well-intentioned Wisconsin Books to Prisoners project to function, banning any used books. Since the project relies largely on donations of used books, that has crippled its ability to fulfill the many requests it gets from Wisconsin prisoners. It sends books to prisoners in other states, almost all of which allow that. That struggle continues.

Now, Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke closed the county jail library on Nov. 1 and will do the same at the House of Corrections on Dec. 31. Clarke offered no reason and caught the Benedict Center and librarians who operate the program by surprise. Kit McNally of the Benedict Center, a WNPJ member group, explains:

The Benedict Center created the jail library in 1992 when the jail opened, after pushing a book cart through the old jail in the Safety Building for years. The Center then worked with administrators at the House of Correction to create a bright and spacious library at the House in former administrative office space.

Ellen Pellegrin established and ran the jail library for the Benedict Center until her retirement seven years ago when Eric Beaumont joined the Benedict Center staff to manage the library. At the South facility Sue Harrington started the library for the Benedict Center, ultimately contracting on her own to manage the library and oversee inmate workers delighted to be working in the library and helping residents of every dorm select books biweekly.

The former library spaces at both facilities have been emptied of purchased and donated collections exceeding 18,000 titles, with books shifted to locked rooms on jail housing pods and new shelving in the dorms at the south facility. Inmates will have to make do with whatever their housing collection holds and access will depend on the corrections officer’s will at the jail.

Although there is no more library at the jail, Benedict Center volunteer Elizabeth Vogt continues to keep inmates reading through the Jail Book Club (JBC), which she initiated in 2008.

Reading, discussing and writing about literature create the basis for shared ideas and multiple perspectives. Covering authors as diverse as Nelson Mandela, George Orwell, and Khaled Hosseini, the ever-evolving groups delve into historical works, fiction, and satire.

"Discussions at the JBC, frankly, easily rival those in my ladies' book club on the outside," Vogt says. "We debate the conflicts of individual and collective interests, the overwhelming nature of many challenges in life, and how similar human issues are around the world. We talk about the strange and dramatic turns that the paths of life can take -- leading to delight as well as disaster. These JBC discussions can be profound or profane, sometimes humorous--but are always interesting!"

Vogt is considering creating a network, via newsletter or Internet, to keep the conversation going after inmates leave the jail. Additional volunteers are now leading groups as the JBC stretches to reach Vogt’s goal of a club on every housing pod. Benedict Center volunteer Janet Martin offers non-threatening one to one small group discussion in another version of the JBC.

For more information or to volunteer for the Jail Book Club, contact Mary Pat Utech at 414-347-1774 x 205 or mputech@benedictcenter.org.

Does any of this seem a little counter-productive while we continue to talk about finding ways to get offenders back on the right track, back into society, and back to leading productive lives?

Of course, a little learning can be a dangerous thing.

After visiting his son, editor wants 'victory' in Afghanistan

I've refrained from writing anything for several days while reading the series of articles by George Stanley, Journal Sentinel managing editor, about his visit to Afghanistan, where his son serves in the Army.

It has been clear that Stanley decided long ago that the war in Afghanistan is a just war, and that the US is justified in sending its troops and spilling blood there for the past eight years. Many of us would differ and question the underlying premise that the Taliban were responsible for the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center, but he is entitled to his opinion. He also seems convinced that our troops being in Afghanistan is the reason we haven't had another terrorist attack in the US -- another dubious and debatable assumption.

Stanley is understandably proud of his son and his decision to serve. As someone who served myself in an unwinnable war long ago, I respect both those who are serving and who have served. I don't think that troops fighting in a combat zone are the best people to decide our foreign policy, however, no matter how gung-ho they might be.

When someone's family is directly involved, as Stanley's is, I am more hesitant to speak up. But today's final installment of the series, played on page one of the news section Stanley oversees, should not pass without comment.

First of all, by no stretch of imagination is his piece "news." It is a full-throated, flag-waving call for victory in Afghanistan, whatever "winning" there would be.

Our troops, Stanley says, are fierce and determined:

And finally, for the first time since this war started more than eight years ago, they have commanders who feel an urgency to finish this thing.

Yet, a few paragraphs later, Stanley seems to say there is no finish in sight, even on the distant horizon:

Gen. Jack Stultz, three-star commander of the Army Reserve, came to Afghanistan while I was here and told reservists they should plan on being deployed to war for one year of every four or five, with no end yet in sight.

Our reservists and National Guard members, of course, are spending much less time than that at home and much more in combat zones, despite findings that it takes three years for a returning service member to return to something approaching "normal." Many, of course, never do, and are permanently scarred, physically, emotionally or psychologically.

The Taliban, Stanley says, cannot win in Afghanistan -- "unless we lose our resolve."

American troops are committed, he says:

Most important, they have stiffened the resolve of our fighting men and women, who made it abundantly clear to me that they will do anything in their power to ensure that their fallen comrades did not die in vain.

Even if that means coming back for more war when this deployment is through.

So, as long as our nation is willing to continue sending its troops and its treasure to Afghanistan, the Taliban can't win. Can we "win?" What would that mean?

When Stanley drags out the ultimate cliche to justify more war -- that our troops shall not have "died in vain" -- what does that mean?

Does that mean that the only way we can justify the deaths or those who have already lost their lives -- or been maimed, brain-damaged, or otherwise had their lives destroyed -- is to send more troops to lose their lives? Then how do we make certain the second wave didn't "die in vain" -- send more? That's how we ended up with 58,000 American lives lost in Vietnam. And for what?

Stanley concludes that we are fighting a foe in Afghanistan that is virtually an army of devils who attacked us on Sept.11, 2001:

On that bright, sunny morning the bodies, hopes and dreams of 2,976 innocent men, women and children were burned alive by a backward band of bullies fueled by hatred. They hate Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Baha'i, agnostics, atheists, Shia Muslims and other Sunni Muslims who don't share in their bitter worship of punishment, cruelty and murder.

They hate women who yearn to learn or uncover their mouths to express an independent thought.

They hate Americans, Europeans, democracy, reason, science, tolerance, liberty, mercy and the rule of law outside the Qur'an as they twist it.

They hate Nick, Ryan, Max, Katie, Bill, Naomi, Jamison, Brian, Gibran, Alfred, Casey and all the fine men and women I've met here who want to bring the rule of law to people of goodwill in Afghanistan.

Who are these sick, twisted people who hate us so much, and who attacked the United States? Are they even in Afghanistan? Intelligence agencies say perhaps 100 operatives of Al Qaeda are in the country. Others are across the border in Pakistan or elsewhere.

Why do they fight us?

Steve Burns, program director of the Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice, asks the question:

How would we respond if we were subjected to the presence of tens of thousands of foreign troops, occupying our country, killing our countrymen and imprisoning our family members without trial? He writes, with some pride, of his son's decision to enlist after 9/11 and to volunteer for the most dangerous duty in Iraq, but how does Mr. Stanley think his son would have responded to the humiliating experience of living under a foreign military occupation? Can he imagine that there might be Afghan fathers who look at their own son's decision to fight a vastly better-armed occupying army, against enormous odds, with similar pride?

Note that the presence of our troops has resulted in the deaths of many times the 2,976 civilians who died on 9/11. In iraq and Afghanistan, the total is in the hundreds of thousands; the US doesn't care enough to even keep accurate count. Millions have been displaced and become refugees.

Stanley ends with a heartful peaen to the troops, including this:

Our citizens will demand that problems get fixed, that our leaders learn, that our troops get the support they deserve.

They deserve a just end for their sacrifices.

What would "a just end for their sacrifices" be? When we begin to mix admiration for our troops as people with what sounds like to need to pursue and "win" what may well be an endless unwinnable war, it is time to take a step back from the emotion and pride in meeting Nick, Ryan, Max. Katie and the rest and ask the hard questions. That's where Stanley's trip and subsequent series of articles fall far short.

Vietnam Veterans Against the War has a slogan that I would recommend to Stanley and others who mistake our well-intentioned troops for a well-formulated foreign policy: "Honor the warrior, not the war."

Earlier Stanley articles: Part 1: Gone, our peaceful world. Part 2: Defining Victory. Part 3: An urgent message for Afghanistan.

Steve Burns: Searching for - and finding - antiwar Republicans

Combing through the smoldering wreckage of Wednesday's 395 to 34 House vote for war funding - which provided about $100 billion more for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - a few glimmers of hope emerge, in the form of antiwar Republicans who have not yet received the attention - and thanks - they deserve from the peace movement.

Republicans supplied 12 of the 34 "no" votes on the war funding bill, and most of the twelve were in the mold of Wyoming's Cynthia Lummis, who had this to say about her "no" vote:

“The terrorists being held at Guantanamo Bay are there for a reason. They are enemy combatants apprehended on the battlefield while fighting American soldiers. It defies logic that Democrats are using the same bill to fund our troops to bring the very terrorists they are fighting onto sacred American soil."

Not a vote for peace there, I think.

Among the genuinely antiwar Republican voices was Ron Paul of Texas, of course, long a principled voice of small-government conservatism who is willing to apply his small-government principles to our big-government empire. But there were also some new faces (or at least new to me), like Tennessee Representative John Duncan (above, left), whose 1-minute speech on the floor of the House of Representatives, "War is Not Conservative", would make the perfect holiday gift for that Republican brother-in-law on your list. Here's a quote:

"There is nothing conservative about the war in Afghanistan...Conservatives who oppose big government and huge deficit spending at home should not support it just because it's being done by our biggest bureaucracy, the Defense Department. We have now spent a trillion and half dollars we did not have, that we had to borrow, in Iraq and Afghanistan. Eight years is long enough, in fact it's too long, let's bring our troops home and start putting Americans first, once again."

Another interesting case is Republican "no" voter Jason Chaffetz of Utah. While Chaffetz does not have a statement on his website regarding his vote against the war-funding bill, he does have a statement directed at the President with his recommendations for Afghanistan, which ends with this:

Mr. President, it is time to bring our troops home. If our mission in Afghanistan is simply to protect the populace and build the nation, then I believe the time has come to bring our troops home.

Chaffetz is no peacenik. His advice to the President also includes:

Mr. President, go big or go home. Our Soldiers, Airmen, Sailors and Marines are trained to fight and WIN wars. They are the best trained and equipped fighting force in the world. But we’ve tied their hands. The American people want us to give our troops everything they need to win so they can come home. In short, give them everything they need or bring the troops home.

Given that our drone strikes on Pakistan have an estimated 98% civilian casualty rate (that's 50 civilians killed for every suspected terrorist killed), it's hard to imagine what the U.S. military could do with its hands untied. Nevertheless, on the basis of his statement, let's give Rep. Chaffetz' credit for half a vote against the Afghanistan war on the grounds that it's too humanitarian.

And let's also give some thanks to Arizona Republican Jeff Flake, another "no" voter. Flake's vote was most likely motivated by the inclusion of hundreds of earmarks inserted into the bill at the behest of the politically well-connected lobbying firm PMA group, which is now under investigation by the FBI for violations of campaign finance laws: “It defies logic that the House would move ahead with no-bid contracts to former clients of the PMA Group at the same time the Ethics Committee is investigating the PMA scandal,” said Flake. Good for you, Congressman. It's nice to see the corruption of the military-industrial complex getting some attention from your side of the aisle.

And finally, let's not forget "no" voter Tim Johnson, from the bedrock-Republican 15th district in central Illinois. After President Obama spoke at West Point, announcing his decision to escalate the war in Afghanistan, Johnson said that the President's choice was “exactly the reverse” of what the U.S. government should be doing, saying we need a "responsible troop withdrawal" from that country. Johnson is also a co-sponsor of Rep. James McGovern's "Afghanistan exit strategy" bill, and Johnson was one of 57 legislators who wrote the President in September urging him to reject a troop increase. But, unlike too many of his colleagues who merely claim to be antiwar, Johnson was willing to go beyond stern letters and scolding press releases and actually vote against the funding that allows the war to continue. That's a model that many Democrats could learn from.

Steve Burns is Program Director of Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice.

Who's Safeguarding the Guard? PA Governor says Guard "wasted" by repeated tours

This is from a devastating article by retired Air Force Lt. Col. William Astore about the wearing-down and hollowing-out of the US military:

Governor Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania noted last month on Meet the Press that "our troops are tired and worn out. [With respect to the] Pennsylvania National Guard, most of our guardsmen have been to either Iraq [or] Afghanistan, over 85 percent, and many of them have gone three or four times and they're wasted."

What does "wasted" mean? It means this:

Suicides have hit record highs in the Army. Cases of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and depression, having reached an alarming 300,000 in 2008, according to Invisible Wounds of War, a RAND study, continue to escalate, constituting a mental health crisis for the Army. Traumatic brain injuries from IEDs and other explosive shocks in our war zones, difficult to diagnose and even more difficult to treat, may already exceed 300,000, another health crisis exacerbated by a lack of treatment available to veterans. Divorce rates among active duty troops continue to climb. An epidemic of domestic violence and crime has been linked to returning veterans and to the difficulty of readjusting to "normal" life after months, or years, in combat zones.

Who's standing up for these war-weary soldiers? Not the President, who's sending another 30,000 off to Afghanistan. Not the Congress, which just voted another $636 billion to keep the wars going.

Who's standing up for the people who are taken from our communities to be fed into the war machine, again and again and again, until they are finally used up?

Here, once again, is evidence of the urgent need for resistance, at the state level, to the misuse and over-use of our National Guard troops. The people who enlist in the Guard make a solemn commitment to serve the people of our state - what commitment do we owe them in return? Can we - at the very least - commit that they will never again be used in an illegal war?

Wisconsin's "Bring the Guard Home - It's the law!" campaign is working to enact legal protections that would safeguard the people who guard us, by requiring the Governor to review any Federal call-up for our state's Guard troops, and to refuse any deployment determined to be unlawful. The bill that would enact these legal safeguards, AB 203, is scheduled for a hearing before the State Assembly's Veterans and Military Affairs Committee on February 9. Organizers are in the process of lining up a roster of veterans and people who work with veterans to testify about the toll that repeated deployments have taken on Guard members and their families.

Nominate a speaker:
The "Bring the Guard Home - It's the Law!" campaign is seeking nominations for speakers for the Feb. 9 Veterans Affairs hearing on Assembly Bill 203.
Some key voices that we seek to include:
-- Members of the Guard and their families
-- Social-service workers who have worked with Guard members and Guard families, to speak about the stresses caused by repeated deployments.
-- Employers who have had to deal with the disruption of losing key employees to Guard deployments.

Stand up for Wisconsin's Guard on Feb. 9:
Please join us in Madison to fill the hearing room and remind the members of the Assembly's Veterans and Military Affairs Committee that we have not forgotten the sacrifices that our Guard troops are making.

Please contact WNPJ Program Director Steve Burns, 608-250-9240, outreach@wnpj.org if you plan to attend the hearing or want to nominate a person to testify at the hearing. Transportation and lodging willl be arranged for those requesting assistance.

Steve Burns: Climate bill: Is this the wrong year?

The debate forming around legislation to deal with the threat of global climate change seems simple enough: environmentalists want climate-protecting legislation and corporations, especially Big Oil and Big Coal, are opposed to it. But a recent New York Times article explains that major polluters have good reasons to push for quick enactment of climate legislation this year, raising serious questions about the type of legislation we may get, and even whether it's a smart strategy for the environmental movement to work for a climate bill now. The article reports:

Many businesses concluded years ago that... limits [on greenhouse-gas emissions] were inevitable, and they have been calling on Congress to define the exact rules they will need to follow.

Businesses, it seems, want action now to lock in climate regulations and forestall more draconian limits on emissions that might come later, as public pressure builds to take action to protect the world's climate.

One of the big supporters of climate legislation is James E. Rogers, the chief executive of Duke Energy, a power company described in the Times report as "a major emitter of carbon dioxide."

[Rogers] says that clear rules are needed to ensure that companies relying on coal-fired power plants can finance their transition to lower-carbon fuels, like natural gas or nuclear power... “A well-designed cap will provide a smooth transition to clean electricity."

Why should this concern us? Shouldn't we celebrate the fact that even Duke Energy, a coal-heavy power company, is now conceding the need for climate action? Perhaps, but we should also ask this question: Which problem is Congress actually solving with this legislation? Will we end up with legislation that does more to address corporate needs for a "predictable regulatory environment" than it does the planet's needs for real reductions in global emissions?

Consider, for example, the centerpiece of both the House and Senate climate bills: a "cap and trade" system which requires large emitters of greenhouse gases to secure a government permit for those emissions, while allowing those who are able to reduce their emissions below their permitted amount to sell the "surplus" on a carbon-trading market. Over time, the permitted amounts would be reduced, and the market (at least in theory) would reallocate these lower levels in the most "efficient" manner possible, limiting emissions without stifling the economy.

The effectiveness of any "cap and trade" system in actually reducing emissions depends on two factors: 1) The stringency of the emissions caps (Europe's first try at cap and trade set limits that were much too lenient, allowing polluters to reap huge profits while making few reductions in emissions) and 2) whether the permits are sold to generate income to fund clean energy initiatives or simply given to polluters. The current House legislation includes emissions caps that would require only a 4% reduction below 1990 levels by 2020 (.pdf), as compared to the European Union commitment of 20% below 1990 levels by 2020, and proposes to give 85% of the permits to large greenhouse-gas-emitters, free of charge, based on their current emissions levels, perversely rewarding those industries that have cut their emissions the least.

And that's the danger with legislation that is primarily the result of deal-making between political and economic elites rather than the result of a genuine grassroots movement. Yes, millions of Americans have mobilized to call attention to the problem of climate change, many of those people have changed their personal consumption habits to limit their climate impact, and environmental groups have generated thousands of calls and emails to Congress and the White House to demand climate action now. But it would be a mistake to think that the American public is as yet fully engaged in the climate issue. The public is facing many issues of more immediate and personal concern, such as a real unemployment/underemployment rate approaching 20%, a home foreclosure crisis, and tens of millions of people lacking access to health care. This is why corporate polluters may see now as such an opportune moment to push through a climate bill that grants them, at no cost, the right to pollute while preempting stronger action later (Remember, that 17% cut in emissions you get today is also an 83% guarantee of future emissions.)

As much as we'd like to believe otherwise, the truth is that the public is a long way from demanding strong action on climate change. A December 3 CNN poll (.pdf) found, for example, that 45% of those polled believed the earth was warming and that this was "mostly" caused by human activities, while 23% agreed that the earth was warming but thought it was primarily due to natural effects, and another 31% believed that climate change was an "unproven theory." This prompts the question: If 59% support of a "public option" for health care doesn't get us the public option, and 62% opposition to the war in Iraq doesn't end the war in Iraq, why should 45% support for at least the scientific theory of climate change get us legislation to prevent climate change? Could it be that climate legislation is moving through Congress mainly at the behest of corporate interests?

A smarter course for the environmental movement would be to oppose any climate bill this year that enacts limits on greenhouse gas emissions (or demand deep cuts and refuse to accept less, which would have the same effect) and instead promote those measures which, if enacted now, would not foreclose stronger action later. Legislation to promote "green jobs", for example, enjoys strong public support and could be enacted now, buying time for the environmental movement to build public support for stronger caps on emissions. It's a risky strategy, to be sure, but the polluters are supporting climate legislation today because they're sure they'll get a worse deal in the future. We should consider the possibility that they're right about that, and be willing to call their bluff.

Steve Burns: Obama vs. Reality: How did his Nobel speech stack up?

After posting a report on our website about the 40 national peace groups that have signed on to a letter to the Nobel committee questioning President Obama's Peace Prize, I got a call from a Wisconsin Public Radio producer: Would I come on the air and discuss the prize and address Obama's arguments that Afghanistan is a "just war"? (audio here...)

Naturally, I said yes, and took a transcript of the speech with me as I boarded a Madison Metro bus for the five mile trip home. An hour and a half later, when I finally stepped off that bus, I'd say I was reasonably familiar with what Obama had said in accepting his Nobel. My snowbound, traffic-jammed bus trip may have given me more time with the President's thoughts than the President himself had on his flight to Oslo.

President Obama is a great speechifier, no doubt. But if we're not going to allow ourselves to be bowled over by rhetoric, we have to measure his speech by the only standard that really matters: How do his words stand up against reality?

Below is a reality check on the President's Nobel acceptance speech, drawn from my dog-eared bus copy in no particular order:

President Obama:

All nations -- strong and weak alike -- must adhere to standards that govern the use of force. Even as we make difficult decisions about going to war, we must also think clearly about how we fight it. Where force is necessary, we have a moral and strategic interest in binding ourselves to certain rules of conduct.

Reality:
Two weeks ago, an international meeting of the representatives of more than a hundred nations took place in Cartagena, Colombia, to discuss an international treaty to ban land mines - weapons that continue to maim and kill children and other innocents long after a conflict has ended. Although 158 nations have signed the treaty, the United States has long been a holdout, insisting that it needed to retain the landmine option for the sake of its national security. The Cartagena meeting was the first meeting of treaty signatories since Obama has become President, and hopes were high that he would reverse the position of previous administrations and agree to sign the treaty. Just days before the meeting, word came down from the U.S. State Department: No. The U.S. would not sign.

President Obama:

In dealing with those nations that break rules and laws, I believe that we must develop alternatives to violence that are tough enough to actually change behavior -- for if we want a lasting peace, then the words of the international community must mean something. Those regimes that break the rules must be held accountable.

Reality:
Of course, we Americans are familiar with "regimes that break the rules", having lived for the past eight years under one that practiced illegal wiretaps and torture. The President's response to this rule-breaking has been to say the America must "look forward, and not back," as he uses the powers of his office to thwart investigations of past crimes.
But perhaps President Obama is at least willing to hold other criminal regimes to account? Earlier this year, after the the Israeli invasion of Gaza had ended, the U.N. Human rights commission, under the leadership of respected South African jurist Richard Goldstone, began an investigation into charges that war crimes had been committed by Hamas, in its indiscriminate targeting of Israeli civilians with rocket fire, and by the Israelis, in targeting a civilian population with attacks that resulted in the deaths of more than 1200 Palestinians. The Obama administration's response to the Goldstone report? First, pressure the Palestinian Authority to reject the report, and then, when that tactic backfired, pressure the U.N. to quash any further investigation.

President Obama:

The concept of a "just war" [has] emerged, suggesting that war is justified only when certain conditions were met: if it is waged as a last resort or in self-defense; if the force used is proportional; and if, whenever possible, civilians are spared from violence.

Reality:
A recent New York Times Op-Ed by two former military officers, one a former counterinsurgency adviser to Gen. David Petraeus, notes that drone attacks in the frontier provinces of Pakistan, which have greatly escalated under President Obama, have resulted in the deaths of 14 "terrorist leaders", and roughly 700 Pakistani civilians. In other words, 50 civilians for every "militant" killed. This is sparing civilians, whenever possible, from violence?

President Obama:

The United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms. The service and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform has promoted peace and prosperity from Germany to Korea, and enabled democracy to take hold in places like the Balkans. We have borne this burden not because we seek to impose our will. We have done so out of enlightened self-interest -- because we seek a better future for our children and grandchildren, and we believe that their lives will be better if others' children and grandchildren can live in freedom and prosperity.

Reality:
Let's set aside the claim that U.S. wars in Iraq and Vietnam, for example, were about "underwriting global security." President Obama didn't start those wars, and opposed one - probably both - of them. Instead, let's measure President Obama's words against the war that is quickly becoming known as "Obama's war" - the war in Afghanistan. By next year, we will have one hundred thousand troops in Afghanistan - more than triple the number when President Obama took office - and those troops will be serving to prop up one of the most corrupt governments in the world, a government whose President was elected through massive vote fraud. Do we support the corrupt Karzai regime so that "others' children and grandchildren can live in freedom and prosperity"? Of course not. We support President Karzai because President Karzai does exactly what we want and permits a hundred thousand foreign soldiers to roam throughout his country, killing and imprisoning its citizens. The U.S. has its own goals in Afghanistan, and when they conflict with the needs of the Afghan people, whose interest wins out every time? To ask that question is to answer it. For the U.S., Afghanistan is a place to have a war, and not much else. It's as if we went to the Afghan people after 9/11 and said: "We're planning to have a war with Al Qaeda - mind if we borrow your country?" Eight years later, we still haven't given it back.

President Obama:

Make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms.

Reality:
A familiar rhetorical device, used by our previous President many times. Choose the most extreme elements, argue that you can't negotiate with them, and then claim there is no alternative to war. Leaders need followers, and Al Qaeda is no different in this respect. The U.S. occupation of two Muslim countries is a gift to Al Qaeda that keeps on giving. Furthermore, a recent RAND corporation study of hundreds of cases of terrorist and insurgent groups over the past forty years has found that military force is actually the least effective means of addressing terrorism. In only seven percent of the cases studied was military force effective in ending terrorist activity. Much more effective were traditional police methods - treating terrorism as a crime rather than an act of war, effective 40% of the time - and political reconciliation, effective 43% of the time, especially in the case of terrorist groups that had nationalist motives. There are millions of people in Afghanistan who have no interest in supporting Al Qaeda, but simply oppose the presence of a foreign army on their soil. A negotiated withdrawal from Afghanistan could cut the legs out from under support for Al Qaeda and other extremist groups, by removing their sole source of legitimacy among the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

President Obama:

There are the men and women around the world who have been jailed and beaten in the pursuit of justice; those who toil in humanitarian organizations to relieve suffering; the unrecognized millions whose quiet acts of courage and compassion inspire even the most hardened cynics. I cannot argue with those who find these men and women -- some known, some obscure to all but those they help -- to be far more deserving of this honor than I.

Reality:
Finally, I find myself in total agreement with our President. In fact, I'd like to nominate, as a far more appropriate Peace Prize recipient, Malalai Joya, a young Afghan woman first elected to the Afghan parliament in 2005 and later expelled from parliament for criticizing the corrupt Karzai regime and the U.S.-sponsored warlords who prop it up, "brothers in creed to the Taliban", Ms. Joya writes. Although she has received death threats for her tireless work for women's rights under the most difficult conditions, Ms. Joya is hopeful about the prospects for peace after a U.S. withdrawal from her country:

"It will not be easy, but if we have a little bit of peace we will be better able to fight our own internal enemies – Afghans know what to do with our destiny. We are not a backward people, and we are capable of fighting for democracy, human and women's rights in Afghanistan. In fact the only way these values will be achieved is if we struggle for them and win them ourselves."

Sounds like the beginning of a great speech to the Nobel Committee.

Steve Burns is Program Director of Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice.

Paper bemoans lack of qualified cannon fodder

As the debate rages over how to fix what's wrong with Milwaukee public schools, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has found a new cause for alarm: Our schools leave our kids so ill-prepared that they can't even make the grade as cannon fodder any more.

WNPJ board member Bill Christofferson has more.

President Obama: Count. Me. Out.

I listened to President Obama Tuesday night.

I heard: This is not another Vietnam. These are different circumstances, and there will be a different outcome.

I'd like to believe that, but I don’t.

It looks too much like Vietnam, when another liberal Democratic president got talked into a war we couldn’t win.

I heard: this is going to be the shortest surge in history. In 18 months, the troops will start coming home.

I'd like to believe that, but I don’t.

I don't think Obama's lying to us. He's lying to himself. It's wishful thinking, based on what he’s heard from the same old “experts” -- Robert Gates, David Petraeus, and more -- that George Bush was listening to a year ago.

Obama has Joe Biden, not Dick Cheney, and Biden's pressed for a different course in Afghanistan. But Bush listened to Cheney.

Congress does still have a voice in this, however irrelevant that may seem. Russ Feingold has spoken out strongly. So has Tammy Baldwin. Dave Obey says we can’t afford this war.

But my Congresswoman Gwen Moore, who's been great on Iraq, and speaks at our peace rallies, is not yet with us on Afghanistan. She is worried, understandably, about what will happen to Afghan women if the Taliban end up in control.

I worry about that, too. But I also wonder how many Afghan civilians – men, women and children – will suffer and die if we send 30,000 more troops into their country. We can’t impose our values and enforce human rights at gunpoint – and we shouldn’t even if we could. Obama, by the way, didn't even mention the women's issue in his speech.

I also heard: This should have a time of national unity, like after 9/11 when everyone was waving flags and couldn’t wait to invade someplace.

To that, all I can say to President Obama is: Count. me. Out.

We need another kind of national unity, for people to come together to say enough is enough. Let’s not wait 18 months, let’s start bringing them home next year – and not send any more.

We got movement on Iraq, even from Bush, when 70% agreed it was time to end that war. That’s what we need to do again, to build that kind of consensus on Afghanistan.

Ready to get started? I am.

--Bill Christofferson, WNPJ board member.