Frank Pauc: Who cares about Afghanistan?

To date the war in Afghanistan has gone on for over eight years, at a cost of over one thousand American lives and about $280 billion ( give or take a couple billion ). The Taliban is in control of large portions of the country, and after all this time, we really aren't any closer to winning this war than we were back in 2001. The Afghan economy is dependent on opium production. There is nothing resembling a functioning central government in the country. It's a mess.

President Obama seems to have decided on a counter insurgency strategy to win this war. The strategy by its very nature requires years, probably decades of nation-building. This strategy might possibly work if it was being executed by some other nation besides the U.S. It won't work for us because, quite honestly, we don't have the patience for it. We are citizens of the United States of ADD, and collectively we have the attention span of a three-year-old. We pride ourselves on being able to accomplish the impossible, but we have to have results right now. We have enormous energy and ambition, but we do not, and perhaps cannot, take the long term view of things. The British were a patient people; they built up democratic institutions in their colonies during periods of time that lasted generations. They were extraordinarily successful, but even they gave up on Afghanistan.

I said that the current counter insurgency strategy could possibly work. I would like to emphasize the word " possibly ". A lot of factors would have to come together to make it a success. At this time, things are at a stalemate, and likely to remain that way. The most likely prospect in Afghanistan is more of the same thing; the U.S. pouring soldiers and money into the country and pursuing a goal that is probably a mirage.

If the war in Afghanistan is such a waste, why isn't there more of an uproar in our country? Polls show that Americans disapprove of the war, so why do we keep going on and on with this? It seems to me that we may say that we are opposed to the war, but in fact we just don't care.

There are several reasons for this apathy. First of all, the war is far, far away. Second, the war is being fought mostly by strangers. Only a microscopic percentage of American ever put on a military uniform; many people do not personally know somebody that has been in Afghanistan or that will be going there. The death toll has thus far been extremely low, so most people have not had to worry about having a loved one get killed in action. The war almost seems unreal to most of the population. We are like the citizens of the Roman republic, who sat safe at home while their legions defended against the barbarians. We know very little about the this place where our soldiers fight, and we really don't care to learn much more about it.

I have spoken to a number of people that oppose the war, but they make no effort to help bring about its end. Why? I don't believe that most people are lazy or uncaring. I think that most people are overwhelmed by events. Especially since the economic meltdown of 2008, many Americans have put the war out of their minds. This is understandable. If a person has lost their job or home, a war taking place on the other side of the world isn't that important. We are preoccupied with many things very close to home. A large number of people simply do not have the time or energy to focus on this travesty.

If people do not speak out against the war, it will not end. This is self-evident. So, what to do? To be honest, I don't know. I do know that somehow we have to convince other Americans that the war in Afghanistan is a big deal to them. They have to see that the war makes an impact on their lives. That is the challenge. The irony is that, if you are reading this letter, you probably don't need to do so. You are probably already actively opposing the war. The people that might need to read this, most likely will never see it.

For my wife and I, we need no further motivation to oppose this endless war. We have a son in the Army and he will most likely deploy to Afghanistan in the spring. For us it already up close and personal. My hope is that other people will do something to end this war before it affects their lives as deeply as it is affecting ours.

Frank Pauc is a member of Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice.

Steve Burns: 55 mph = 15% less gas used = no offshore drilling needed

Photo: Charlie Reidel, Associated Press

For all the talk about the Gusher in the Gulf, one fact has received remarkably little attention: the relatively small part of our oil consumption that's met by offshore drilling. The U.S. consumes about 5.2 billion barrels of oil a year (about two-thirds imported) with about 530 million barrels produced through U.S. offshore drilling - in the Gulf of Mexico, off the West Coast, and in Alaska. In other words, only about 10% of the oil we consume each year comes from wells drilled off the U.S. coast. Or, to put it another way: We could shut down every U.S. offshore well -- if we could, in fact, shut them down -- and not feel the loss if we would just cut our oil consumption by 10%.

10% isn't so much to ask, is it? I had this thought in mind while planning a trip from from Madison, Wisconsin to visit my mom in Urbana, Illinois, a drive along 270 miles of some of the least-scenic highway in the United States (On your left: corn, beans, beans, corn. On your right: beans, corn, corn, beans.) I'd complained as loudly as anyone about BP's criminal negligence, I'd seen the pictures of oil-coated sea birds, but was I willing to change my own oil-consumption habits in response?

A little research confirmed that if I simply cut my highway-driving speed from my usual 70-75 mph (I really hope no one from the Illinois Highway Patrol is reading this) to a Jimmy-Carteresque 55 mph, I could reduce my fuel consumption by 15% or more, enough to eliminate my share of the dirty and dangerous 10% we get offshore.

Before my trip, in an attempt to communicate a message (and also to keep myself honest) I taped a single four-foot-long sign over my trusty "Wisconsin Green Party" and "Bring Our Troops Home" bumper stickers. In large black letters on a bright construction-zone-orange background, it said:

55 mph = 15% less gas used = no offshore drilling needed

I then pointed my 21 year old Honda Accord southward, and committed myself to six hours of life in the slow lane. I have no dramatic experiences to report, no one tried to run me off the road or even sent a rude gesture my way. Hundreds and hundreds of cars and trucks passed me (a pointer for those who want to communicate by car bumper: more people see your message if you go much slower than the prevailing traffic.) On the other hand, no one pulled in behind me and decided to join in my 55 mph crusade, except for a couple of stretches when we were all slowed to 55 for road construction (Thanks for the helping hand, Illinois Department of Transportation!) and one long convoy of camo-painted Humvees, likely from the Illinois National Guard, who followed me down I-74, speed-limited under some obscure military regulation (Or could it be that soldiers who've fought in our oil wars know better than most the true cost of a gallon of fuel?)

Here are the numbers: 270 miles on 6.9 gallons of gas, or 39 miles per gallon. That's 22% better than the 32 mpg I usually get on my Madison-Urbana route.

Of course, the oil-consumption story is a bit more complicated than an equation on a big orange bumper sticker. About two-thirds of U.S. oil consumption is used for transportation, so we'd really need to cut all transportation use by 15% to get a 10% overall cut in consumption. And what percentage of transportation use is personal automobile transportation, as opposed to shipping, public transportation, and air travel? A good estimate can be gotten by noting that about three-fifths of transportation fuel sold is gasoline (as opposed to diesel or aviation fuel). Neglecting the relatively small number of diesel cars, let's take 60% as the share of oil consumption from personal cars, SUV's, etc. This class of drivers would actually need to reduce their fuel consumption by 25% to eliminate the need for those 530 billion barrels per year of offshore oil.

No, that's not going to come from just slowing to 55, but you already knew that, didn't you? Lots of things need to happen if we're going to break our national oil addiction and limit the damage from catastrophic climate change (reducing the average 1500 miles that the average meal travels from farm to plate, for example.) Right now, I'm imagining a solution in which "slow food" meets "slow cars." The Farmer's Market, Community Supported Agriculture, a garden, and something new, for me: I'm keeping my big orange bumper sticker and joining the "drive 55" movement.

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

Steve Burns: No more "brilliant" Generals, please

If you're familiar with General Stanley McChrystal's involvement in covering up the circumstances of Pat Tillman's death or the increase in the number of Afghan civilians killed by U.S. forces under his watch, you might have reacted as I did to the news of his forced resignation: "Like convicting Al Capone of tax evasion," I thought.

McChrystal, of course, was forced to resign after the publication of a report quoting him and members of his staff making comments that were disrespectful of civilian members of the Obama administration. Our corporate media, with characteristic shallowness, has chosen to focus on the most gossipy aspects of Rolling Stone reporter Michael Hastings' picture of McChrystal and his inner circle, but Hastings goes much farther than gossip, providing a devastating critique of McChrystal's "Counter-Insurgency" doctrine, (or COIN, as insiders like to call it.) McChrystal is (or was) the primary proponent of COIN, a doctrine that emphasizes the role that civilian deaths play in generating support for an insurgency. McChrystal describes this as "insurgent math - for every innocent person you kill, you create 10 new enemies."

The idea that an occupying army generates its own resistance is one that finds broad support among the peace movement, which draws the logical conclusion that more soldiers = more killing = more resistance, and so the proper number of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan is zero. General McCrystal, looking at the same equation, came up with 40,000 more troops for Afghanistan, a number later reduced by President Obama to 30,000.

And that's the fascinating thing about General Stanley McChrystal: An obviously intelligent man (Hastings preferred adjective is "brilliant") who can assess a situation, be perfectly aware of all of the side effects, drawbacks and pitfalls of what he his doing, and still drive the car over the cliff.

Consider just one of McCrystal's attempts to rewrite the equation to "more troops = less killing = less resistance." Hastings reports that soldiers in Afghanistan have been issued laminated cards with McChrystal's "rules of engagement", intended to limit civilian casualties. Pfc. Jared Pautsch shares this bit: "Patrol only in areas that you are reasonably certain that you will not have to defend yourselves with lethal force," and then asks: "Does that make any fucking sense?"

No, Private Pautsch, it doesn't. But let's give credit where it's due: The General's laminated cards are just an example of a brilliant man trying to reconcile two irreconcilable facts, to create an occupying army that is simultaneously There (because we need more troops to fight the insurgency) and Not There (because more troops increases the insurgency.) And if that still doesn't make any sense to you, then you're just not as "brilliant" as General Stanley McChrystal.

This belief that clever men can make 2 + 2 = 5 is shared by the man who just fired General McChrystal. It was President Obama who gave a fine speech in Cairo explaining how American arrogance and military adventurism has succeeded in alienating the Muslim world, and then followed up with an acceleration of American arrogance and military adventurism, tripling the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan and ramping up U.S. drone strikes on Pakistan.

This isn't the blithe ignorance of President Bush, who would send our troops into harms way with casual assurances that they will be greeted as liberators. No, in President Obama and General McChrystal, we have men who can describe in precise detail just how much hatred we will be generating if we send in the troops - and then send in the troops anyway. It turns out there's really not much difference - no difference that matters, anyway - between the two approaches, either to the troops or to the people whose country they are occupying.

In his Rolling Stone report, Hastings captures this quality, shared by Obama and McChrystal, when he describes the West Point speech in which Obama announced his plans to escalate the war in Afghanistan:

On December 1st, in a speech at West Point, the president laid out all the reasons why fighting the war in Afghanistan is a bad idea: It's expensive; we're in an economic crisis; a decade-long commitment would sap American power; Al Qaeda has shifted its base of operations to Pakistan. Then, without ever using the words "victory" or "win," Obama announced that he would send an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan, almost as many as McChrystal had requested.

In short: Here are the many reasons why escalating the war in Afghanistan is a bad idea; and now I will escalate the war in Afghanistan.

I've had enough of brilliant Generals (and brilliant Presidents, for that matter.) It turns out there's one thing worse than a leader that leads you steadily into disaster, and that's a leader who leads you steadily into disaster while describing, in abundant detail, just how disastrous things are going to be.

Speaking for myself, all I want in a commanding General is a guy just dim-witted enough to think the way out of Afghanistan might be under that red, blinking sign marked "Exit."

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

Lou Recine: Security for Americans: what does Israel have to do with it?

The U.S. says (or has said) it is fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq and Pakistan, Yemen, etc., to prevent the growth and influence of al Qaeda and similar groups. But I do not believe that military operations in those countries make Americans safer. My reading and research has led me to believe that the un-resolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict makes Americans less safe. Why do I believe this?

In a March 16, 2010 statement of General Petraeus to the Senate Armed Services Committee on "The Posture of U.S. Central Command" the General listed the "enduring hostilities between Israel and some of its neighbors" amongst the "root causes of instability" and "obstacles to security" in CENTCOM's Area of Responsibility, citing "Israeli-Palestinian" tensions. The General stated that "the conflict foments anti-American sentiment due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel."

In the same statement, General Petraeus said that the unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict has provoked "Arab anger" and that "al Qaeda and other militant groups exploit that anger to mobilize support."

When I looked at a 12/4/09 Congressional Research Service report, "U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel" it certainly does seem to me that the U.S. has consistently shown unwarranted favor and generosity to Israel; particularly if I ask: what does America gain strategically or otherwise from showing such favor? The report's summary states:

"Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign assistance since World War II....Since 1985, the United States has provided nearly $3 billion in grants annually to Israel. Almost all U.S. bilateral aid to Israel is in the form of military assistance....Strong congressional support for Israel has resulted in Israel’s receiving benefits not available to other countries. For example, Israel can use some U.S. military assistance both for research and development in the United States and for military purchases from Israeli manufacturers. In addition, all U.S. foreign assistance earmarked for Israel is delivered in the first 30 days of the fiscal year. Most other recipients normally receive aid in installments."

Rather than wage wars of aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan, one thing that the United States CAN do to promote both its own security as well as justice in the Middle East is assert itself as an impartial broker of peace between Israel and Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, by exerting appropriate diplomatic and economic pressure on Israel. We need to tell our legislators that we want all military and other types of aid to Israel to be tied to progress in the peace process, period. It seems to me that this would truly serve America's national security interests, and help bring a lasting, just peace in Israel/Palestine.

Israel has a right to exist in security and I believe Palestinians also have a right to exist in security in their own sovereign state. I know that there is blame on the part of both Israel and Palestine for the current lack of peace. But it is Israel that wields the military and political power in Gaza and the West Bank. A recent example of this is the Gaza aid flotilla incident. And, U.S. aid is indispensable to Israel wielding the amount of power that it does.

Please contact your federal legislators and ask them to do all they can to bring all our troops home from Afghanistan and Iraq and to also to promote U.S. initiatives that appropriately apply economic and diplomatic pressure on Israel to help move the Israeli-Palestinian peace process forward, resulting in a just and peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Lou Recine is a WNPJ member in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

Unrest in Pakistan:: Moving beyond US national interest

By Josh Brollier and Kathy Kelly




Clerks association protests at Parliament.

“The military is the muscle that protects the ruling elite from the wrath of the people,” says Pakistani political analyst Dr. Mubashir Hassan. “Right now, people are out on the street; blocking roads, attacking railway stations, etc. If you read the papers, it seems as though a general uprising has started all over Pakistan.”

Dr. Hassan says that sporadic outbursts of anger in Pakistan won’t coalesce into a people’s revolution anytime soon. The demonstrators are too disorganized. But, the sheer volume of daily protests shows that many sectors of Pakistani society have pressing needs and priorities that do not include enlistment as foot soldiers in a proxy force for the United States’ War on Terror.

Dr. Hassan, a co-founder of the People’s Party of Pakistan, is a respected scholar and statesman. Last year, when we met with him, he had just returned from a visit, in the U.S., with Professors Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, his contemporaries in seeking to build just and fair social structures. Last month, in Lahore, he spoke with us about U.S. interference in the region and changing dynamics in Pakistan.

A snapshot of unrest in Pakistan offers a framework for outsiders to understand why it is unfair to insist that Pakistan “do more” to fulfill the United States’ vision for fighting extremism. It may also suggest why strong anti-American sentiments prevail, in Pakistan, among the peasantry, the middle class, religious and secular groups, and the highly educated and privileged classes.

Throughout the past several months, demonstrators burned tires nearly every day in the streets of Karachi, Rawalpindi, Lahore and other population centers as they voiced their opposition to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and it’s insistence on the implementation of a Value Added Tax (VAT) along with a proposed 11.3 billion dollar bailout package. In a special meeting convened by the Farmers Association of Pakistan, (FAP), participants said that the VAT would “totally kill the farmers and cause irreparable damage to the agriculture sector by making inputs more expensive. This would, in turn, increase the prices of agriculture produce, adding to the miseries of both the farmer and consumer, who are already facing extreme economic depression.”

Ashraf Javed, writing for The Nation, reported that economic experts estimated that the IMF and the Pakistani government’s original plan for the VAT would increase the prices of over 122 major categories of items, including food, by at least 15 percent.

These proposed policies led to protests by the All Pakistan Organization of Small Traders and Cottage Industries, the Pakistan Muslim League, Jamaat-e-Islami, textile workers, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, and even spawned a nationwide mobile phone boycott. Because of the immense pressure put on the government to reject the VAT, Pakistan decided to postpone implementation of the tax from July to October. The government, under the leadership of the People’s Party of Pakistan, has also come up with plans to incorporate many of the IMF’s demands for the VAT into the General Sales Tax (GST), which already sits at about 16 percent. In response, the IMF has threatened to freeze future disbursements coming to Pakistan if the VAT is not implemented by July 1st along with a “power tariff,” or 6 percent increase in electricity rates.

As the IMF and World Bank are insisting on a 6 percent hike in electricity rates, there has been nationwide upheaval over increased “load shedding,” the term for scheduled power outages in Pakistan, which sometimes last for 10-12 hours per day. Protests against the power cuts, often quite militant, have consistently erupted in major cities like Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad. Demonstrators in other provinces and cities including Hyderabad, Multan, Quetta, Bahawalnagar, Sukkur, Badin, Mirpur Khas, Larkana, Thatta and Ghotki, Dera Ismail Khan, Hangu, Kurk, Swat and Muzaffarabad have also registered their outrage. Textile mills, manufacturers, the agricultural sector and traders are among the hardest hit by load shedding which limits the hours of operation, disrupting production and interfering with worker schedules. Protesters have created roadblocks, burned tires, gone on strike and organized massive sit-ins.

In Punjab, Pakistan’s most densely populated province, the Tenants Association of Punjab, (AMP), demands “Ownership or Death.” Involving 1 million landless tenants, based in villages stretching over 15 districts, AMP is one of Pakistan’s largest political movements. For ten years, the AMP has struggled to secure ownership rights for poor families that have tilled their land for over four generations.

The military is one of the largest landholders in Pakistan, and military agencies such as the

Remount Veterinary and Farms Corps (RVFC), Military Seed Corporation, Livestock Agricultural Department and Dairy Farm, and the Seed Research Farm have been claiming ownership and collecting revenue from tenants. The Punjab Board of Revenue has ruled that these military companies have no legal claim to the land or its revenue, but tenants have faced campaigns of intimidation, coercion, cruelty and murder by armed police and paramilitary forces.

Led by peasant women organizers, AMP scored a major victory in March, 2010, after staging a long march and sit-in. Thirty-thousand tenants, women and children shut down the Multan-Lahore expressway for over ten hours and succeeded in securing ownership rights from the Government of Punjab. The government agreed that transfer of land ownership was to start with immediate effect and that a committee for monitoring of the process for transfer of land to tenants would include representatives of the Women’s Peasant Society and AMP.

While in Islamabad, we spent time with two groups of workers involved in long demonstrations for economic rights. The first was a group of nine men who, for the past month, had been occupying a tent outside the city’s Press Center. They represent 491 former employees of the Federal Bureau of Statistics, all of whom were suddenly fired from their jobs before their contracts were finished. They suspect that their jobs are now being filled with new employees hired on the basis of patronage and not merit. The nine we met with were all college educated and probably considered middle class before they lost their jobs. However, many of them were the sole providers for households ranging from 8-10 in number. The group aims to remain in the streets, in protest, until their jobs are reinstated.

The second group of workers we interviewed was from the All Pakistan Clerks Association. The clerks were in their third month of public protest. They had moved, the previous day, to an encampment in front of the parliament where they demanded that Members of Parliament devise a budget that would give the clerks a pay raise proportionate to inflation and commensurate with salaries of the police, army and the judiciary. They explained to us that the army, police and judiciary have received consistent pay raises and healthcare benefits; meanwhile, civil society has been abandoned. One man said, “Our pay only covers utilities. We have no remaining money for health care or education. How can we care for our children?” Solidarity demonstrations with the All Clerks Association occurred across the country and picked up in number and intensity after June 3rd when the police baton charged the clerks and members of United Teachers Association in front of the parliament. The clerks intended to remain in protest until the announcement of the 2010-2011 budget on June 15th.

With the announcement by Pakistan's Finance Minister, Abdul Hafeez Shaikh, that the country's defense spending will be raised to more than 5 billion beginning July 1st, a 17 percent increase from last year, it’s unlikely that the clerks will receive the raises and benefits they’ve sought.

Since Pakistan’s inception, the military has been a dominant force in running both internal politics and foreign policy. In The State of Martial Rule: The Origins of Pakistan’s Political Economy of Defense, Ayesha Jalal notes that the Pakistani government has faced a menacing set of challenges on the domestic, regional and international fronts that have tipped the balance in favor of the military and civil bureaucracies which were not elected democratically.

Additionally, as detailed in a recent report by Amnesty International, residents in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) “continue to be governed by a colonial-era law, the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR) of 1901, which denies basic constitutional rights and protections for the residents of FATA, including their rights to political representation, judicial appeal, and freedom from collective punishment.”

Pakistan faced a considerable increase in external pressure from the United States after the Iranian revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Pakistan’s greater significance in Western security calculations bolstered Pakistan’s strategic defenses, leading to bloated defense budgets that the country didn’t have the resources and capacity to meet. Pressure to increase military spending and expand military powers “intensified Pakistan’s internal socio-economic and political dilemmas,” Ayesha Jalal writes. “The negative impact of economic policies geared to sustain the needs of defense and requirements of international allies contributed to a wide array of social disaffections.” The pattern has really remained largely the same ever since.

During the Bush-Mush years, (President George W. Bush and General Pervez Musharraf headed the U.S. and Pakistan, respectively), the U.S. gave Pakistan 11.9 billion dollars in assistance, 8 billion of which went directly to the military. Now, the Obama Administration is insisting on more military offensives in the northwest parts of the country while Pakistan wrestles with the aftermath of a 2009 military offensive that displaced 3.5 million people, hundreds of thousands of whom still live as refugees. Following the 2009 military operations in Swat and neighboring provinces, the Pakistani armed forces began attacks against alleged militant strongholds in North and South Waziristan, creating new waves of displacement as people were forced to abandon their homes. Continued military operations will require funding, which then diverts needed resources that might otherwise be used to assist remaining refugees, alleviate poverty and reduce wealth disparities.

The military operations are taking place in an almost total media vacuum, in an area which Amnesty International has called a “human rights free zone.” Amnesty has documented that over 1,300 civilians were killed in last year’s fighting in northwest Pakistan and that the Pakistani government has indefinitely detained some 2,500 people without bringing any charges against them. Thirteen hundred people killed? That’s nearly as many lives as were lost during the 2008- 2009 Israeli massacre in Gaza, and where is the outcry? 2,500 people detained and likely tortured? Guantanamo has a long way to go to catch up to those statistics. “It's the opposite of enforcing the rule of the law,” says Saman Zia Zarifi, the director of Amnesty Asia-Pacific. “This is moving towards chaos."

The U.S. has insisted that Pakistan undertake military offensives that attack their own people. Meanwhile, U.S. drone strikes kill and maim many hundreds of Pakistanis. Exactly how many? It’s difficult to say. “Killing or violating even one person is wrong,” Dr. Hassan advised us. “The use of weapons against non-combatants is wrong.” These wrongs fuel distrust and hatred of the United States across Pakistan.

Pakistanis also suffer as a result of U.S. and NATO supply convoys that travel through Pakistan en route to Afghanistan. Just outside Islamabad, on June 8, 2010, militants attacked 50 NATO supply trucks headed for Afghanistan. Seven people were killed and 20 trucks were set ablaze. Just as there is no accountability when the CIA destroys a family home from a drone strike, it is doubtful that the United States offers any compensation to those who are injured or have lost family members as a result of an attack on a supply convoy. In fact, we met a young Afghan man who was hired by NATO as a convoy driver three years ago and who, earlier this year, while driving with a NATO convoy, drove over an Improvised Explosive Device (IED). The explosion shattered his leg. He received no compensation whatsoever from NATO forces.

Pakistanis also face increased militant and terrorist attacks in their cities as a result of U.S. policy. Continued U.S. interference serves as a recruitment tool for extremists. Militant and religious organizations train others to attack population centers and marginalized minority groups within Pakistani society. Recently, a Taliban group attacked two Ahmadi mosques in Lahore, killing over 80 people. Obviously, this kind of behavior cannot be attributed solely to the United States, but the U.S. government has to face its history of fostering and arming radical Islamic movements in South Asia when it suited U.S. geo-strategic interest. And after increased U.S. operations in the country since 2004, U.S. policy seems to be intensifying rather than decreasing militancy. Since the Pakistani government’s military offensives in the spring of 2009, launched under great pressure from the United States, hundreds of Pakistani civilians have been killed by retaliatory terror attacks.

With 60 million people living in poverty and many more living just above the poverty line, the people of Pakistan have priorities that do not include acting as a proxy to fight U.S. wars against purported terrorists. For many people, including those like Muhammad Akbar, a desperate rickshaw driver who committed suicide on Wednesday due to prolonged financial hardships, these priorities may be simply to put food on the table and to provide for their families. For others, including women’s and minority groups, fighting for their own political and human rights takes precedence.

People in the United States wishing to show solidarity with Pakistanis struggling to make ends meet should try to dialogue with Pakistani led grassroots movements. These indigenous efforts hold the keys to reducing poverty, ending discrimination and countering extremism in the region. We should also simplify our lifestyles and consumption patterns to require less of a share in the world’s resources, so that corrupt institutions like the U.S. government and the IMF do not have a pretext or a supposed mandate to continue interfering in the lives of others in order to serve the so-called U.S. “national interest.”

We would do well to heed Dr. Mubashir Hassan’s words. “Please leave us to our fate and to our devices,” he requested. “We’ll mess up, but we’ll get there.” He added that in spite of anxieties that his country is unraveling, there is still something hopeful. It’s this: perhaps people will be shown the result of violence and be prepared to believe that war doesn’t solve anything.

(Joshua Brollier (Joshua@vcnv.org) and Kathy Kelly (Kathy@vcnv.org) are co-coordinators of Voices for Creative Nonviolence. http://www.vcnv.org/ )

Steve Burns: A Guantánamo detainee in your town? Two Massachusetts towns say "yes"

Four former Guantánamo prisoners, now relocated to Bermuda

Since the opening of the U.S. military prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, a well-orchestrated propaganda campaign has stoked our fears of those held in the prison, who have been routinely referred to as the "Worst of the worst." After President Obama announced a plan to transfer Guantánamo prisoners to a prison within the U.S., the fear-mongering kicked into high gear and Congress capitulated, blocking funds for the transfer, based on the irrational belief that no prison could be secure enough to protect us from Guantánamo's super-terrorists.

But some towns are now shaking off the fear and fighting back against the fear-mongers with an unusual tactic: Town-hall resolutions that invite the Federal government to relocate a released Guantánamo detainee in their town.

The campaign, organized by No More Guantánamos, has been helped by recent findings that the vast majority of those held in the prison are in fact innocent victims who had nothing to do with terrorism.

Just two weeks ago, a Federal judge, after finding that "there is no persuasive evidence to justify his detention," ordered the release of Mohammed Hassen, a 27-year old Yemeni imprisoned by the U.S. without charges for 8 years. Hassen was the 36th detainee ordered released when a habeas corpus hearing found no evidence of ties to terrorism. As blogger Glenn Greenwald notes, 72% of the Guantánamo detainees offered a chance to challenge their imprisonment have been found innocent.

No More Guantánamos aims to tell the stories of Guantánamo's prisoners in order to "Transform prisoners’ images in the U.S. from faceless, nameless 'terrorists' to human beings who deserve human rights and a presumption of innocence until proven guilty." In two towns in Massachusetts, Leverett and Amherst, these public education campaigns have been so successful that resolutions calling for local resettlement of released Guantánamo prisoners have won passage in town-hall meetings. The Leverett resolution, noting that "many detainees at Guantánamo have been cleared by our government of wrongdoing and have been determined to pose no threat to the United States" and "many of these detainees cannot be repatriated because they are either stateless or fear the harm awaiting them if returned to their home country" urges Congress to "repeal the ban on releasing cleared detainees into the United States" and "Welcomes such cleared detainees into our community as soon as the ban is lifted."

Who are the detainees that the people of Leverett and Amherst hope to welcome into their communities? Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, a former top aide to Colin Powell, President Bush's Secretary of State, recently answered this question in a written statement in support of a lawsuit filed by one Guantánamo detainee. Wilkerson says that the majority of detainees — children as young as 12 and men as old as 93 — never saw a US soldier when they were captured. He said that many were turned over by Afghans and Pakistanis for up to $5,000. Little or no evidence was produced as to why they had been taken.

No More Guantánamos (NMG) encourages activists to start with a local "kickoff meeting" to discuss the plight of Guantánamo's many innocent detainees and to introduce the idea of resettlement. After that initial step, NMG assists local groups in identifying a prisoner, finding information, telling his story, and even writing to the prisoner about their efforts. After sufficient public-education work, local activists may choose to move on to a town-hall or city-council resolution requesting resettlement of a freed Guantánamo prisoner.

What could life be like for a Guantánamo detainee newly resettled in your town? The experience of Uyghur detainees resettled to Palau and Bermuda offers one example. The Uyghurs, a persecuted ethnic and religious minority in their home country of China, came to Afghanistan in search of work, and were rounded up and sold to U.S. military officials by Afghan warlords working with the U.S. After eight years of imprisonment, the U.S. government admitted that the Uyghurs had no ties to terrorism and were no threat to the United States, but repatriation to their home country of China was not possible, given the risk of persecution by Chinese authorities. The Obama administration eventually worked out arrangements with Palau, a tiny island republic in the south Pacific, and Bermuda to relocate some of the Uyghur prisoners. Khalil Mamut, one of four Uyghur prisoners relocated to Bermuda, says, of his first year in his new home, “It has been a wonderful year. A year ago we were in Guantánamo Bay but this year, praise be to God, we are here. We have a lot of friends — some Muslims, some Christians — and they treat us as if we are Bermudian.”

Get started on your own No More Guantánamos campaign here...

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

Steve Burns: Majority of Afghan Peace Jirga delegates call for withdrawal of foreign forces

A majority of the delegates attending an Afghan "Peace Jirga" arranged by Afghan President Hamid Karzai (left) have called for an immediate cease-fire by U.S. and other international forces, and an even larger majority demanded a timetable for withdrawal of foreign forces. The calls came despite the best efforts of the Karzai administration to stage-manage the process to produce support for a U.S.-approved "reconciliation" plan while heading off any peace initiatives that might limit the actions of U.S./NATO forces.

From the beginning, skepticism was high about the Jirga process because the Karzai government had handpicked the 1600 Jirga delegates. Elders in several provinces objected to the process for selecting representatives, saying people who were invited initially were rejected by the government in favor of others seen as more loyal.

Nevertheless, U.S. and other foreign officials were nervous about the possibility of the Jirga process spinning out of control. The New York Times warned that "the jirga by its very traditions is a forum for free speech that can take on a will of its own," and reported:

Government officials and Western donors were concerned that delegates could even demand a withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan. Officials were already trying to fend off that possibility by declaring such a notion against the interests of peace. Farooq Wardak, the event’s organizer, made it clear that he expected the issue to be excluded from discussion.

At the same time, opposition members of Parliament scoffed at the possibility that the Jirga could produce a meaningful result:

“It’s dangerous to raise people’s expectations with this fake and artificial exercise; it’s a workshop, not a jirga,” said a leading member of Parliament, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of alienating Karzai officials.

“This is a mistake; all the warlords were there in the front row,” said Mir Joyenda, an independent member of Parliament from Kabul. “There is no change that will come to Afghanistan,” he said, reflecting widespread disgust with the continued prominent role of former warlords in the government.

When the Jirga finally got underway, the 1600 delegates were divided into 28 committees, which all considered the same set of questions. And that's when the unexpected happened:

Over half of the committees called for an immediate ceasefire to pave the way for negotiations with the Taliban and Hezb-e-Islami, the other major Afghan group making up the armed insurgency.

The foreign forces took a pummeling from the various committee heads, almost all of whom called for a timetable for withdrawal and strict regulation of military activities. Night raids, house searches, bombardment of civilian areas, and offensive operations were cited as phenomena contributing to the alienation of the population and the growth of the insurgency.

In the end, Karzai was able to have these demands removed from the Jirga's final report, which limited itself to a general call for an end to bloodshed and called for greater efforts to combat corruption. The only recommendation inconvenient to U.S./NATO forces that was left in the final document was a demand that international forces stop their bombing of civilians.

With troublesome outbreaks of democracy successfully quelled, the Karzai administration is now preparing to move ahead with a U.S.-approved "reconciliation plan" that "will encourage Taliban fighters and leaders, previously siding with armed opposition and extremist groups, to renounce violence and join a constructive process of reintegration." The plan carries no requirement that U.S./NATO forces renounce violence.

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

The World Cup of economic and military warfare

By Kathy Kelly and Joshua Brollier

June 2, 2010

Photo by Joshua Brollier: Hillside near Kabul.

Islamabad-- “Our situation is like a football match. The superpower countries are the players, and we are just the ball to be kicked around.” This sentiment, expressed by a young man from North Waziristan, has been echoed throughout many of our conversations with ordinary people here in Pakistan and in Afghanistan. Most are baffled that the United States, with the largest and most modern military in the world, can’t put a stop to a few thousand militants hiding out in the border regions between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Just about everyone we have spoken with, Pashtuns included, has little to no sympathy for the Taliban or their tactics. Many people have lost limbs, homes and loved ones to the brutal assaults of suicide bombers or the indiscriminate violence of IEDs. Yet, people expressed frustrated confusion over uncertainties regarding U.S. government goals in relation to the Taliban. Some believe that the United States might be working with the ISI (Pakistani Intelligence Services) or at least not working against them, to enable continued Taliban resistance. If there is no resistance, according to this view, a military presence in the region cannot be justified. Nor can a so-called humanitarian presence further flood the Pakistani and Afghan economies with millions of dollars in aid that most often lines the pockets of the politicians, elite bureaucrats, and United States corporations involved in construction and security.

The fact that very little aid money has reached the impoverished and war weary people who need it most has been confirmed to us by members of the Afghan and Pakistani governments, human rights organizations, Non-Governmental Organizations and several very unfortunate families forced to live as refugees. As Hyder Akbar, a Pashtun working on NGO assessments in Afghanistan, said to us, “If you are pouring 100 million dollars into a tiny and impoverished province like Kunar and seeing no results, you’re obviously doing something wrong.” With a population of less than 500,000, you could easily give each Kunar resident over a million dollars. But, several seasoned analysts agree that money alone can’t solve problems faced by impoverished people in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Both Dr. Mubashir Hassan, former finance minister of the Peoples Party of Pakistan, and Nur Agha Akbari, from the Ministry of Agriculture in Afghanistan, strongly believe that efforts to bring people out of poverty in South Asia must be initiated, at district and village levels, through consultation with grass roots, indigenous community groups. Mr. Akbari stressed that there is still an opportunity for the United States government and people to play a positive role in Afghanistan, but that role will not be possible until the United States stops giving orders and starts listening to community groups living in Afghanistan.

(Bike shop near Charikar, Afghanistan.)

It’s also time that the United States drop the facade of humanitarianism that guides our national discourse concerning Afghanistan and Pakistan. For too long, most people in the United States couldn’t find Pakistani areas such as North Waziristan or Orakzai on the map. They had no idea where Helmand or Kandahar were located. Now, with our newspapers less preoccupied by Iraq, we learn to be worried for Afghan and Pakistani women if there is a Taliban take-over in the area. This isn’t to say that the United States should not care about the rights of women in both countries or the implications of a spread in extremist ideology. But, military intervention is not curbing the growth of Islamic militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and U.S. “strategic interests” in the area certainly guide most U.S. policy makers more than altruistic concern for women. For instance, the United States government seldom mentions the rights of women who are forced to live, as a result of U.S. policy, in refugee camps just outside of the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan. Women and children almost always have less physical and food security in refugee camps, and they are easier targets for sexual violence.

One doesn’t have to spend much time in South Asia to find many people who feel that tactics like the U.S. offensive in Kandahar, torture and indefinite detention at Bagram, and the drone strikes in Pakistan are fanning the flames of resistance and increasing the ranks of violent groups that manipulate Islam for their own purposes.

Muslims in both Pakistan and Afghanistan have asked that we tell people in the United States that Islam is a religion of peace. “A man who uses violence has no religion,” says Abbas, a young man from Islamabad.

Students, professors, and human rights advocates in both countries affirmed that relationships, independent of military force, could be built between the people of the U.S. and South Asia. Those who’ve told us that military force is necessary to confront extremism have invariably added that the timing and control of military action should be in the hands of those who live in the region and know the society.

The United States bears a huge responsibility to make reparations to people of Afghanistan and Pakistan after pursuing nearly 10 years of destructive warfare that has destabilized both countries. There is a looming fear that, in Afghanistan, the United States is going to abandon the country and its people, returning Afghanistan to a Taliban or pre-Taliban era. But the withdrawal of troops does not require the U.S. to abandon Afghanistan. There are models for securing development efforts, in conflict zones, that do not require hundreds of thousands of troops, networks of military bases, and the overwhelming force of aerial surveillance and bombing.

Mr. Abdul Rahman Hotaki, a lawyer and director of the the Afghan Organization of Human Rights & Environmental Protection (AOHREP), points out that, roughly, only 20 percent of the funds given the U.S. Army Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) ever reach the stage of investment in an actual project. Even when PRTs effectively build a road or a school, gaining the trust of a community is problematic because the lines between military and humanitarian work become blurred. Schools, roads and other projects are often sabotaged under the suspicion that the projects are built more to serve U.S. imperialistic interests than to help Afghans.

In Afghanistan, it’s helpful to evaluate the construction of schools by Community Development Councils (CDCs) which, from start to finish, included participation of people living in the locale where the school was being built. In the CDC model, communities start by putting put up some funds or guarantees in advance of the project and then provide their own security throughout the process. Ashraf Ghani, former finance minister of Afghanistan, initiated the setup of these CDCs under the National Solidarity Project, which was loosely based on a model proposed by Nur Agha Akbari and Ahmad Shah Massoud. Not a single school built by the CDCs has been attacked by Taliban or other forces. Hyder Akbar attributes this to the sense of ownership by the community which creates security for the schools. USAID and other international donors have lauded such models but then revoked funding before projects could get off the ground. Both Mr. Nura Agha Akbari and Mr. Abdul Rehman Hotaki expressed frustration about having been involved in extensive preparation for CDC modeled projects, only to see their communities let down when donors from the U.S. and Canada decided they had other priorities.

The Italian NGO, Emergency, provides another solid example of dedication to Afghanistan that both philosophically and practically surpasses the United States’ policy of continued warfare as a means to achieve security. Emergency’s goal is providing health care and medical treatment to civilian victims of war and poverty. And they do it well. Their involvement in Afghanistan first began in 1999 through construction of a Surgical Centre in Anabah, a village in the Panjshir Valley. Emergency has since developed three major hospitals and 28 first aid posts and medical centers, treating over 2.5 million people. They treat all sides in a conflict without discrimination and they charge nothing to their patients. Although they operate on a modest budget and can’t afford to pay the higher salaries offered by other NGOs, they attract and keep employees who admire Emergency’s work. Their employment rosters steadily show staffing that is half Afghan and half international. Most employees we met told us they are motivated by principle rather than profit. “Utopia? No,” says Emergency’s founder, Dr. Gino Strada, M.D., “We are convinced that the abolition of war is a political project to realize, with great urgency. For this we cannot be silent in the face of war, any war. We are guilty of proposing the abolition of war.”

Altruistic principles are evidently not driving the continued presence of the defense corporations operating in Afghanistan. As Bill Quigley, legal director of New York City’s Center for Constitutional Rights points out, executives for the three largest U.S. defense corporations, Northrup Grumman, Lockheed Martin and Boeing, have received a combined 177 million dollars in personal compensation over the past three years. With profits rolling in at this rate, there is not much incentive for weapons suppliers to encourage the Obama administration to enact a speedy withdrawal of U.S. forces and their weapons from Afghanistan.

Even the NGOs and aid organizations have something to gain from a continued war economy. Peter Marsden, author of Afghanistan: Aid, Armies and Empires, worked with British NGOs in Afghanistan from 1989 to 2005. His book describes the way in which the United States has provided money for its own NGOs instead of directing money to the Afghan government. This policy causes a flood of overpaid charity workers from all over the world, most of whom buy supplies from their own countries. Not only do they spend their money elsewhere, but these aid workers usually draw a salary as large as 150 to 300 times the average Afghan income, which sits around $200, per person, per year.

Though the United States constantly threatens and carries out drone strikes in Pakistan, the Obama Administration insists that it has goodwill towards Pakistan and that the U.S. economic and military presence in the country is intended to be mutually beneficial.

In its most recent National Security Strategy outline, the White House proposes to build cooperation with its international partners through “governance reform of the IMF and the World Bank.” The administration also says it is renewing U.S. leadership in the IMF, leveraging its engagement and investments, to “strengthen the global economy” and “lift people out of poverty.”

This rhetoric falls short of reality in Pakistan where the IMF, under U.S. leadership, is pushing through an aid package of US$ 7.27 billion for the Pakistani economy. On the surface, $7.27 billion dollars sounds quite generous, but the deal will subordinate Pakistan to U.S. military and strategic interests and comes with another string attached, the Value Added Tax (VAT). Quite contrary to “lifting people out of poverty,” the VAT amounts to an additional 15% sales tax on Pakistani products throughout every step of production. Practically, it amounts to a tax on the poor in a country that already has 60 million persons living below the poverty line and inflation reaching 40%. There have been demonstrations against the VAT and U.S. interference in Pakistan nearly every day throughout the past month that we have been in the country.

There is no simple answer or brilliant conspiracy theory that sums up exactly why the United States is at war in Afghanistan and Pakistan. War profiteering, energy resources, the Trans-Afghan pipeline, strategic geo-political positioning and even the narcotics trade may all play a part. But whatever the case, it is clear that the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan have become a football to be kicked about by the powerful players in world politics. If the United States truly wants to move away from this sort of selfish strategy and be appreciated as a genuine partner in the region, it should move towards an approach that values the lives and input of those most vulnerable in Afghan and Pakistani society.

Kathy Kelly (Kathy@vcnv.org) and Josh Brollier (Joshua@vcnv.org) are co-coordinators of Voices for Creative Nonviolence (www.vcnv.org).

David Williams: Report from LZ Lambeau

On May 21-23 Wisconsin Public Television, the Wisconsin State Dept of Veterans Affairs, the Wisconsin Historical Society and various veterans groups co-sponsored a Vietnam “Welcome Home” at the Green Bay Packer's Lambeau Field, replete with exhibits of Vietnam-era war equipment, a vast collection of Vietnam veterans' photos and stories, sales of memorabilia, expected flyovers of military aircraft, continuous live music performances, and public speeches and ceremonies. Spectacularly staged in the heart of politically-conservative “Packerland”, the three-day extravaganza was preceded and accompanied by a statewide-wide media blitz by WI Public TV and Radio which gave it an overtly super-patriotic, pro-military, and pro-war spin. As the website of one area TV Channel framed it: “The event is LZ Lambeau, where LZ stands for 'landing zone.' Organizers say the event provided an opportunity to show Vietnam veterans the gratitude that was lacking when they came home in the 1960s and '70s.” Attendance on Saturday alone was estimated at upwards of 25,000.

In thanking the Vietnam veterans for ”defending their country” a careful effort was made by the sponsoring authorities to exclude any antiwar voices from this treatment of the Vietnam War and its legacy. Veterans For Peace was initially included in the sponsorship and Vietnam combat veteran Will Williams' voice was used in media promotions. As the event neared, however, Will was denied inclusion among the speakers at the event and VFP was not allowed to have a VFP table at LZ Lambeau. This silencing of any antiwar voices--along with the continued mantra of expressing a public “gratitude earlier lacking” to the Vietnam vets--conveyed an implicit but clear suggestion that those Americans who opposed the Vietnam War were to blame for ingratitude shown to the vets, and that far from being a monumental disaster brought-on by misguided U.S. policies the Vietnam War was a worthy and honorable endeavor which should be commemorated.

Nowhere was there any acknowledgement that the U.S. government, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and state and local governments have been derelict over all these years in caring for the wounded and traumatized Vietnam veterans--to the extent that postwar suicides of Vietnam veterans have been double the number of the 58,000+ killed in combat and Vietnam vets are a large part of U.S. homeless from the end of the war to the present. Nowhere was there any serious commemoration (and apology for) the more than three million Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians slaughtered during the 15-year U.S. involvement, mostly by the U.S. military.

Rehabilitating the memory and lessons of the Vietnam War from a “lost” war which should have never been fought to an honorable war which was not properly appreciated at the time is necessary for eradicating the last vestiges of the “Vietnam Syndrome” and building public acceptance for massive and prolonged U.S. military involvements in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. Under the mendacious guise of “thanking” them, the badly-used Vietnam vets are now being used by the same military-industrial establishment which perpetrated the Vietnam War to prepare for more Vietnam-style wars of intervention.

Can it be surprising that massive funding for this gala was provided by major defense contractors in Wisconsin such as Oshkosh Defense Industries and Tommy Thompson's Logistic Health Inc. of La Crosse? Oshkosh Defense Industries was rumored to have planned to display several specimens of their latest all-terrain combat vehicle. And beyond promoting today's military-industrial complex and wars there was simply lots of money (as Will Williams has repeatedly pointed-out) to be made off of the vets, their families, and friends at the event itself from the sale of T-shirts and other memorabilia, beer, brats, and rides in a Vietnam War-era helicopter at $100 per passenger.

After withdrawing from co-sponsorship of LZ Lambeau Field, Veterans For Peace Chapter 25 undertook an energetic campaign about the pro-war and pro-military message carried by the event. In the days before LZ Lambeau a press campaign organized by Buzz Davis and joined-in by other Vietnam-era and combat veterans was able to get op-ed pieces and other statements into Green Bay and other newspapers. Will Williams spoke for half an hour on the Joy Cardin show on Wisconsin Public Radio and to other media the week of the event.

As part of the “Operation Honor the Dead, Heal the Wounded, Wage Peace Not War” organized by Buzz Davis a VFP press conference was held Friday May 21 at the Green Bay Public Library with Will, Buzz, and other veterans and covered by all of the major local TV stations. The library then hosted a screening of “The Good Soldier” which drew an audience of sixty from the Green Bay area. On Friday night and on Saturday antiwar and veterans-issues workshops were held at the Green Bay Labor Temple facilitated by Buzz and attended by a diverse group of twenty people from Green Bay and Madison.

On Saturday afternoon May 22 Will Williams, Richard Chamberlin, Bob Irving, Steve Books, Caroline Greenwald, Ray Nashold, and I were at LZ Lambeau for part of the afternoon carrying VFP brochures and talking with veterans and other visitors about the event and matters of war and peace. Accompanied by me (wearing a bright green peace medallion) and a young antiwar activist named Scott from Green Bay, Will walked through the parking-lot concessions area and then through the stadium pavilion where there were more concessions and an impressive photo exhibit compiled from news stories, obituaries, letters, and interviews of numerous Vietnam vets dead and alive (including Will) for the recent three-part Wisconsin Public Television documentary. In that hour and a half it was clear that Will was widely-recognized in the crowd from his media interventions and other speaking-out. A near-constant stream of people came-up to thank him or to at least acknowledge his presence, while many people simply stared (there was only one brief incident involving overt hostility by another Vietnam vet). He also ran into old friends from veterans' affairs including another Black combat vet from his old Wolfhound Army division in South Vietnam who he had not seen since that time.

After Will and I walked out of LZ Lambeau and I went back to the Green Bay Labor Temple (with the understanding that Will and Dot were headed back to Madison) I later learned that Will had decided to return to LZ Lambeau, where he remained far into the night, walking and talking among that vast assemblage with his antiwar and peace message. The work of Will and other VFP members in publicly speaking-out about the LZ Lambeau pro-war and pro-military extravaganza and Will's presence at LZ Lambeau enabled an antiwar message to get out to huge numbers of people in Green Bay and across the region. And it is possible that the eventual non-appearance of the Oshkosh Defense industries combat terrain vehicles was due to the criticism of this by Will in the days leading up to the event.

But we have an even greater task ahead of us now that the pro-war and pro-military Establishment has put the Vietnam War back on the public agenda with the aim of re-writing history and preparing for more Vietnam-style U.S. military involvements. We must forge a public campaign to tell the truth about the Vietnam War and the antiwar movement of that time and of the new U.S. wars and the peace movement of today. Such an educational outreach campaign should involve those who served in South Vietnam, other military veterans, "veterans" of the Vietnam antiwar movement, and a new generation of peace activists, so that the tragic legacy of the Vietnam War cannot be used to promote new Vietnams.

David Williams is the director of WNPJ member group Peregrine Forum and an Associate Member of Veterans for Peace. This summary was written on assignment for the Madison Socialist Potluck Newsletter. For more details on the LZ Lambeau event and related work of the VFP contact Buzz Davis at dbuzzdavis@aol.com, Will Williams at cuchi66@centurylink.net, and Green Bay native Paul Wozniak at paul.riverhistory.wozniak@gmail.com, or David Williams at dvdwilliams51@tds.net