Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
August 22, 2021
Hello All – After 20 years of war in Afghanistan, is peace possible? Our organization, Concerned Families of Westchester, was formed the day after 9/11/2001. We were concerned about terrorism and afraid that President Bush & Co. would go to war. We were right on both counts. Now, 20 years later, can we look forward to peace?
We believe that real peace is not just the absence of fighting, but the creation of justice and equity and a decent standard of living. Real peace is not on the horizon for Afghanistan, and a path to "Peaceful Tomorrows" [MLK] will be a hard fight in the USA. In one sense, the war is far from over, and those wishing for the Best Possible Outcome have our work cut out for us, not least in fighting to frame the US/Afghanistan episode in a way that works for peace, not more war, whether in Afghanistan or elsewhere.
In our CFOW discussions over the past week, we have tried to digest the news and form a set of questions to guide us in moving forward, in navigating the tsunami of media slush and Talking Experts that make it so hard to distinguish the reality Signals from the media Noise. Here is a short list of some conclusions; needless to say, this is a Work in Progress.
Let Them In! – To the vast amount of media coverage about people desperate to leave Afghanistan, we want to speak up for an inclusive, rather than a restrictive, approach to immigrant rules. Biden has signaled that all Americans will be evacuated, and that Afghanis who worked with the American occupation are eligible/may be evacuated. Other Afghanis – NGO workers, etc. – have no promises. We should resist bureaucratic distinctions between "deserving" and "not deserving" refugees. Welcome them all.
Give Peace a Chance! – The United States should accept the fact that the Taliban will control the new state, and not engage in further military or other actions pointing to "regime change. In the short run, the US-Taliban ceasefire involves safety for the US evacuation in Kabul in exchange for no military or negative diplomatic moves against the Taliban. But once the US evacuation is completed, a host of questions arise along a spectrum of working with a Taliban-led government or working for regime change. Will the international food and financial assistance that has kept Afghanistan afloat be continued, or will "sanctions" with a view to destabilization be pursued? Will the US give military support to the armed resistance to the Taliban which is already breaking out? Will the Taliban state be given a seat at the United Nations? Will the US re-open its Embassy in Kabul? And so on – much of the fate of the Afghanistan people rests on the dominance of a climate for peace or a climate for war within the US political and military elite.
Investigate Who Was Responsible for This Disaster – There is a US/media consensus that the Afghanistan war was a disaster, but there is an important debate about when the disaster began, and if accountability is sought, where should the inquiry begin. Republicans and (so far) the corporate media focus on the chaotic evacuation of US troops and Afghan civilians as the theater of disaster. Many peace advocates argue that the disaster began right after 9/11; and still others argue that the US disaster began much earlier, with Carter/Brzezinsky strategy to create and arm an Islamic insurgency to fight the Soviets in the 1980s. Clearly, the more thorough and deeply historical the inquiry, the more likely some lessons will be learned. Conversely, an inquiry focused solely on evacuation chaos will offer little that might temper US imperial war making.
The next stages of the US war in Afghanistan, the next chapter in the martyrdom of the Afghanistan people, hinge on many contingencies. The least we can do is pay careful attention and speak out against further violence and suffering.
Some interesting/useful reading about Afghanistan and the US War
Afghanistan: The End of the Occupation
ByAugust 20, 2021]
---- A lot of nonsense about Afghanistan is being written in Britain and the United States. Most of this nonsense hides a number of important truths. First, the Taliban have defeated the United States. Second, the Taliban have won because they have more popular support. Third, this is not because most Afghans love the Taliban. It is because the American occupation has been unbearably cruel and corrupt. Fourth, the War on Terror has also been politically defeated in the United States. The majority of Americans are now in favor of withdrawal from Afghanistan and against any more foreign wars. Fifth, this is a turning point in world history. The greatest military power in the world has been defeated by the people of a small, desperately poor country. This will weaken the power of the American empire all over the world. Sixth, the rhetoric of saving Afghan women has been widely used to justify the occupation, and many feminists in Afghanistan have chosen the side of the occupation. The result is a tragedy for feminism. [Read More]
(Video) Today's Crisis in Kabul Is Direct Result of Decades of U.S. War & Destabilization
From Democracy Now! [August 20, 2021]
---- As thousands of Afghans try to flee Afghanistan after the Taliban seized control, we look at the roots of the longest U.S. war in history and spend the hour with Pulitzer Prize-winning national security reporter Spencer Ackerman. "This is not the alternative to fighting in Afghanistan; this is the result of fighting in Afghanistan," says Ackerman, whose new book, "Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump," is based in part on his reporting from Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantánamo. [See the Program]
The International Response to the Taliban's Ascent Will Shape Afghans' Fate
By Murtaza Hussain, The Intercept [August 21, 2021]
---- Foreign interlocutors who have spoken with Taliban leaders say that there is an opportunity to use the group's sincere desire for international legitimacy, as well as their need for economic support, as a means to continue to exert influence on Afghanistan's future. … So far this week, the U.S. government has moved to freeze billions of dollars held by the Afghan government in foreign accounts, while the United Kingdom has indicated that economic sanctions against Afghanistan are on the table…. Nonetheless, international organizations have warned that an abrupt cessation of foreign aid, let alone imposing international sanctions, would lead to a humanitarian catastrophe in Afghanistan, potentially breeding more radicalism and a massive refugee exodus. Organizations like UNICEF that have had a long-standing presence in Afghanistan have indicated their desire to continue programs in the country, including girls' education, while welcoming statements from Taliban officials indicating that their operations would not be disrupted. https://theintercept.com/2021/08/21/afghanistan-taliban-international-aid/
More reading about Afghanistan – The alternative or dissenting media has performed an outstanding service in providing perspectives and voices from outside the mainstream or media consensus. This perspective is vital if we are to construct – and fight for – an interpretation of the disasters of the Afghanistan war that works to prevent war in the future. Here is a sampling from the past week:
Not Everyone Wanted War in Afghanistan. We Should Listen to Those Critics Now.
By Foreign Policy in FocusAugust 20, 2021]
Afghan Women and Girls Are Caught in the Cross Fire
By Katha Pollitt, The Nation [August 20, 2021]
(Video) "The Afghanistan Papers": Docs Show How Bush, Obama, Trump Lied About Brutality & Corruption of War
Cable News Military Experts Are on the Defense Industry Dole
By Ryan Grim, et al., The Intercept [August 19, 2021]
Veterans for Peace Statement on U.S. Withdrawal from Afghanistan
[August 17, 2021] [Link]
News Notes
One year ago the Centers for Disease Control promulgated a ban on evictions, citing the dangers of the Covid pandemic. The ban was to expire on July 31, 2021, putting millions of households who owed thousands of dollars in back rent at risk of eviction and homelessness. Neither the Biden administration nor Congress lifted a finger to extend the moratorium, and it was left to Rep. Cori Bush and progressive House Democrats (including our Reps. Jamaal Bowman and Mondaire Jones) to protest the impending disaster by a "sleep-in" on the Capitol steps. As a result, Biden and the CDC issued a more restrictive moratorium that nevertheless covered 90 percent of the country. For details on how this protest succeeded, read Aida Chavez's article in The Nation, "How the Eviction Moratorium Got Through."
Last week a report by legal scholars and others documented the response of the federal government to the Black Lives Matter protests that followed the police murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. The report found that, rather than leaving prosecution of those arrested to state or local authorities, in 326 cases the federal government intervene to make the charges, and thus the usually harsher penalties apply to these cases. The report also noted that, in the wake of the BLM protests, Republicans in 34 state legislatures have introduced 81 bills to stifle dissent and criminalize demonstrations. For more, and links to the report, go here.
Also last week, 53 House Democrats sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken asking for a full reopening of border crossings so that humanitarian aid can enter Gaza. Rep. Jamaal Bowman was among the signers of this letter, though Rep. Mondaire Jones was not. For an illuminating analysis of the current state of border-crossing politics from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, go here.
CFOW Nuts & Bolts
Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester. We meet for a protest/rally each Saturday in Hastings, at 12 noon at the VFW Plaza (Warburton and Spring St.) A "Black Lives Matter/Say Their Names" vigil takes place every Monday from 6 to 6:30 pm in Yonkers at the intersection of Warburton Ave. and Odell. If you would like to join one of our Zoom meetings, each Tuesday and Thursday at noon, please send a return email. Our newsletter is archived at https://cfow.blogspot.com/; and news of interest and coming events is posted on our CFOW Facebook page. If you would like to support our work by making a contribution, please send your check to CFOW, PO Box 364, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706. Thanks!
Rewards!
The Rewards in last week's Newsletter focused on the highlight of my Excellent Vacation in Vermont, which was a visit to the home of the fabulous Bread and Puppet Theater. The B&P was founded in the 1960s in NYC, and I remembered their eye-catching puppets and masked performers from NYC antiwar marches. But I was unaware of the B&P's evolution after it moved to northern Vermont, and so was astonished and deeply appreciative for what I saw and learned on my vacation visit. The articles and videos about the B&P linked in last week's Newsletter elicited two more videos of great interest, which are shared here. The filmmaker Deedee Halleck and Tamar Schuman, the daughter of B&P founders, put together an outstanding compilation of clips from B&P's half-century of creativity, "Ah! The Hopeful Pageantry of Bread and Puppet," which you can see here; and in 2006 NPR broadcast a half-hour interview with B&P founder Peter Schumann, which you can see here. Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CFOW Weekly Reader
The Climate Crisis
We Have to Choose the Future of the Planet
By Mark Hertsgaard, The Nation [August 21, 2021]
---- The UN climate summit in November (COP 26) will be one of the most important diplomatic gatherings in history; world leaders will literally decide the future of life on earth. The Paris Agreement, signed at the last major summit in 2015, obliges the world's governments to limit global warming to "well below" 2 degrees Celsius (3.6˚ Fahrenheit) and preferably to 1.5˚C (2.7˚F). The IPCC report, which UN Secretary General António Guterres labeled a "code red" warning that must "sound a death knell for fossil fuels," makes it irrefutably clear that more than 1.5˚C risks absolute, perhaps irreversible, catastrophe for people and natural systems worldwide. … In the weeks remaining until COP 26, people power could change politicians' calculations. Now is the time for politicians of all parties to hear, loud and clear: Either you do what's necessary to preserve life on this planet, or we the people will make sure that the next election is your last. [Read More]
On the IPCC's latest climate report
By Brian Tokar, ZNet [August 20, 2021]
---- The report affirms much of what we already knew about the state of the global climate, but does so with considerably more clarity and precision than earlier reports. It removes several elements of uncertainty from the climate picture, including some that have wrongly served to reassure powerful interests and the wider public that things may not be as bad as we thought. The IPCC's latest conclusions reinforce and significantly strengthen all the most urgent warnings that have emerged from the past 30 to 40 years of climate science. It deserves to be understood much more fully than most media outlets have let on, both for what it says, and also what it doesn't say about the future of the climate and its prospects for the integrity of all life on earth. [Read More]
Read more about the Climate Crisis – "The U.N.'s Terrifying Climate Report," by Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker [August 15, 2021] [Link]; "This Is the World Being Left to Us by Adults," by Greta Thunberg, Adriana Calderón, Farzana Faruk Jhumu and [Link]; and "Nearly Half the World's Children at 'Extremely High Risk' for Facing Effects of Climate Crisis, Report Finds" by Julia Conley, Common Dreams [August 20, 2021] [Link].
War & Peace
America's Global Imperialist Footprint [Military Bases]
By Patterson Deppen, The Nation [August 20, 2021]
---- Having closed down hundreds of military bases and combat outposts in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Pentagon will now shift to an "advise-and-assist" role in Iraq. Meanwhile, its top leadership is now busy "pivoting" to Asia in pursuit of new geostrategic objectives primarily centered around "containing" China. As a result, in the Greater Middle East and significant parts of Africa, the United States will be trying to keep a far lower profile, while remaining militarily engaged through training programs and private contractors. … Despite a modest overall decline in such bases, rest assured that the hundreds that remain will play a vital role in the continuation of some version of Washington's forever wars and could also help facilitate a new Cold War, with China. According to my current count, our country still has more than 750 significant military bases implanted around the globe. And here's the simple reality: Unless they are, in the end, dismantled, America's imperial role on this planet won't end either, spelling disaster for this country in the years to come. [Read More]
Civil Liberties
"They Believed Anything but the Truth" — 14 Years in Guantánamo
By Cora Currier, The Intercept [
---- Twenty years after the CIA and U.S. military began transporting men and boys to the island detention camp — picked up in Afghanistan and around the world — 39 remain there. Most of them have never been charged with a crime. Of the roughly 780 people who were held at Guantánamo, a handful have written memoirs, creating a body of work that testifies to the inanity of the war on terror, the horrors of incarceration, and the resistance and resilience of the people detained. To those books we now can add Adayfi's chronicle of the 14 years he spent there beginning at the age of 18, which comes out on Tuesday. .. Adayfi relates how he grew up in Guantánamo among the general population, a witness to each era of Guantánamo's evolution. … The story of Guantánamo is the story of unreliable narration. The government's version of events is suspect, filtered through doublespeak diktats and an absurd classification regime that maintains that detainees' own memories of their torture are classified. Lawyers cannot speak freely even to their clients about the intelligence against them because they also must maintain security clearance. Meanwhile, those who have been held at Guantánamo must contend with the volume of conflicting information about them that circulates in once-classified threat assessments, many of which were derived from torture. [Read More]
Israel/Palestine
Life under the drones [Gaza]
ByAugust 17, 2021]
---- Israel never misses a chance to ruin Gaza's mornings. After the 11-day war stopped, drones kept hovering in our sky. Then, they disappeared for a while. Or to be more accurate, they rose higher in the sky so their truly awful buzzing couldn't be heard. However, this morning I woke up to the horrible buzzing. I knew it was the drone but it was too loud to sleep. I hid my head under the pillow. Useless. Why should I start my morning like this? My ears try to avoid hearing it, but my head is trying to process it. Minutes later, I gave up and opened half an eye. My mother was sitting in the corner of my bed, "The buzzing drills into my head," she said. What are they up to? Is this a sign of another war? "God forbid," my mother said abruptly. She was able to hear my thoughts and responded as if I uttered them. In Gaza, when it comes to war, we all share the same thoughts and fears. … Because of the drone buzzing, Israel brought these horrible memories into my head this morning. While I am writing this, the drones are still hovering. Everyday. [Read More]
Our History
When Oklahoma Was the Heartland of American Socialism [The "Green Corn Rebellion"]
By Meagan Day, Jacobin Magazine [August 2021]
---- In the winter of 1915, the socialist journalist and publisher John Kenneth Turner traveled through southern Oklahoma to report on the conditions of poor tenant farmers. "On this little journey," he wrote in a dispatch to the socialist weekly Appeal to Reason, "I did not find anybody enjoying the benefits of modern civilization in any degree." Conditions for Oklahoma tenant farmers further deteriorated over the coming years, as World War I precipitated a collapse in cotton prices. When impoverished tenants learned they would be conscripted to fight in that same war, they reached a breaking point. In the summer of 1917, hundreds of Oklahoma tenant farmers gathered on the property of John "Old Man" Spears in what had not long ago been Indian Territory. Armed with rifles and squirrel guns, they assembled beneath the red flag of socialism. … The rebels didn't make it far. Their insurgency, known as the Green Corn Rebellion, was quickly defeated, and the aftermath was brutal. Hundreds were arrested and imprisoned, and left-wing radicals of all stripes were persecuted and hounded out of public life. These events led to the discrediting of the Socialist Party of Oklahoma, which at the time boasted more members than any state-level socialist party in the nation. But the story of the Green Corn Rebellion isn't just a tragic tale of foolhardy agitators who doomed their comrades through ill-conceived action. Placed in social and economic context, it's the story of a regional socialist movement so uniquely adapted to its specific environment that it had become synonymous with the cultural life of the region's laboring class, suffusing everything it did.. [Read More]
