Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
July 11, 2021
Hello All – For those readers old enough to remember April 1975 and the rapid-fire collapse of the Vietnamese army and the liberation of Saigon, the events in Afghanistan last week may seem eerily familiar. With the Americans leaving as fast as possible, there are few military personnel in Afghanistan who want to be the last to die for the defense of the current clique of corrupt politicians claiming to run the country. In the face of the collapse of the Afghan government and the imminent arrival of the Taliban to downtown Kabul, what is – and what should be – the policy of the US government?
As the several articles linked immediately below quickly inform us, US policymakers are divided among themselves and uncertain what to do. In the case of Vietnam, our government's policy at the end of the war was to hope for a "decent interval" between the departure of US troops and the fall of the government of South Vietnam. And as North Vietnamese troops swept south in April 1975, the US Congress and people were adamant in their opposition to renewed US military intervention. Today, how will the Pentagon and Biden respond to Kabul's imminent collapse, and how will Congress, the mainstream media, and The People respond to calls for more bombing to "save Afghanistan"?
In recent weeks, both President Biden and Pentagon officials have stated that, while troops and planes may be leaving the territory of Afghanistan, the USA will deploy its capacity for "over the horizon" military strikes against the Taliban if needed. Indeed, the US "withdrawal" from Afghanistan is simply moving troops and planes to nearby "allied" countries. Incredibly, the Pentagon is acting as though drone assassinations, bombings, and missiles can sustain Kabul against collapse. This is fantasy. Any renewed military activity will be purely for domestic consumption, to "demonstrate" to pro-war people that the USA will go down fighting before accepting peace. This kind of public-relations killing is beyond immoral. The work of antiwar people will be to make the Wind blow in the direction of peace, so that "pragmatists" with their finger perpetually in the air will (however reluctantly) accept the end of the war.
Some useful reading on this mess
Biden Acknowledges 'Over the Horizon' Air Attacks Planned Against Taliban
Bombing Afghanistan After the Troops are Gone
Biden Defends Ending a War He's Not Fully Ending
July 10, 2021] [Read the Article]
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 5:30 to 6 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!
This week's Rewards for stalwart readers are from a mix of what I enjoyed listening to while putting this Newsletter together. ( A whimsical Rorschach illustration of what passes through a writer's brain.) So I hope you enjoy Hudson Valley Sally's cover of Phil Ochs' "Power and the Glory"; "The Diggers' Song," from the UK anarchist group Chumbawamba; and "I Still Believe," by Frank Turner. Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
The CFOW Weekly Reader
Haiti Is in Peril, and There Are No Simple Options
On Monday, the day before the assassination of Haiti's president Moise, the Nation magazine published her article "Haiti Has Been Abandoned—by the Media, the US, and the World" [Link], which is highly recommended for understanding some of the background of Haiti's crisis.]
---- For years, the United States has adopted a wary tolerance of Haiti, batting aside the horror of kidnappings, murders and gang warfare. The more convenient strategy generally seemed to be backing whichever government was in power and supplying endless amounts of foreign aid.
Donald Trump supported President Jovenel Moïse mainly because Mr. Moïse supported a campaign to oust President Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. And in February, the Biden administration accepted Mr. Moïse's tenuous argument that he still had another year to serve despite opposition calls for his departure and large street protests… There had appeared to be a tacit understanding during Mr. Moïse's rule: Haiti is turbulent and difficult, a bomb waiting to explode in the hands of anyone who attempts to defuse it. … But the assassination of Mr. Moïse on Wednesday will now force a reluctant administration to focus more carefully on the next steps it wants to take concerning Haiti. There are no simple options. [Read More]
War and Peace
Why Daniel Hale Deserves Gratitude, Not Prison [Drone Whistleblower]
By Kathy Kelly, The Progressive [July 6, 2021]
---- "Pardon Daniel Hale." These words hung in the air on a recent Saturday evening, projected onto several buildings in Washington, D.C., above the face of a courageous whistleblower facing ten years in prison. The artists aimed to inform the U.S. public about Daniel E. Hale, a former Air Force analyst who blew the whistle on the consequences of drone warfare. Hale will appear for sentencing before Judge Liam O'Grady on July 27. … The U.S. Air Force had assigned Hale to work for the National Security Agency. At one point, he also served in Afghanistan at the Bagram Air Force Base. "In this role as a signals analyst, Hale was involved in the identifying of targets for the U.S. drone program," says Chip Gibbons, policy director for Defending Rights and Dissent, in a lengthy article in Jacobin about Hale's case. "Hale would tell the filmmakers of the 2016 documentary National Bird that he was disturbed by 'the uncertainty if anyone I was involved in kill[ing] or captur[ing] was a civilian or not. There's no way of knowing.' " Hale, thirty-three, believed the public wasn't getting crucial information about the nature and extent of U.S. drone assassinations of civilians. Lacking that evidence, people in the United States couldn't make informed decisions. Moved by his conscience, he opted to become a truth-teller. The U.S. government is treating him as a threat, a thief who stole documents, and an enemy. If ordinary people knew more about him, they might regard him as a hero. [Read More]
The Climate Crisis
(Video) Exxon Exposed: Greenpeace Tricks Top Lobbyists into Naming Senators They Use to Block Climate Action
From Democracy Now! [July 6, 2021]
---- Democratic Congressmember Ro Khanna, the chair of the House Oversight Subcommittee on the Environment, has announced plans to ask the CEOs of Exxon and other fossil fuel companies to testify before the committee about their role in blocking congressional action to address the climate emergency. Khanna made the request after Greenpeace UK released a video of two lobbyists discussing Exxon's secretive efforts to fight climate initiatives in Washington, revealing how the oil giant supported a carbon tax to appear proactive about climate change while privately acknowledging that such a tax has no chance of being passed. We feature the complete video and speak to one of the activists involved with it. "The reality is that almost nothing has changed in the Exxon playbook," says Charlie Kronick, senior climate adviser at Greenpeace UK. "This has been going on for decades." [See the Program]
Civil Liberties
A Remarkable Silence: Media Blackout After Key Witness Against Assange Admits Lying
---- A major witness in the US case against Julian Assange has just admitted fabricating key accusations in the indictment against the Wikileaks founder. These dramatic revelations emerged in an extensive article published on 26 June in Stundin, an Icelandic newspaper. The paper interviewed the witness, Sigurdur Ingi Thordarson, a former WikiLeaks volunteer, who admitted that he had made false allegations against Assange after being recruited by US authorities. … Last summer, US officials had presented an updated version of their indictment against Assange to Magistrate Court Judge Vanessa Baraitser at the Old Bailey in London. Key to this update was the assertion that Assange had instructed Thordarson to commit computer intrusions or hacking in Iceland. [Read More] Also useful is an article by former UK Ambassador Craig Murray, who has been involved in Assange's defense since the beginning: "FBI Fabrication Against Assange Falls Apart," antiwar.com [July 2, 2021].
The State of the Union
India Walton Is a Sign of What the Socialist Movement Could Become
By Gabriel Winant, Jacobin Magazine [July 2021]
---- India Walton's victory in Buffalo is an enormous advance. With a clear political strategy, the socialist movement could become less dominated by professionals and more driven by the working-class base it requires. How should we think about India Walton's victory in Buffalo's Democratic mayoral primary? … Over the last half decade of its emergence, the new socialist electoral politics has faced a genuinely existential challenge about its social basis: it has been a politics of mainly white and mainly middle-class activists, a reality that is ultimately incompatible with socialist analysis and vision. Insurgent candidates on the Left have succeeded where this group is numerous enough as an electorate, as a volunteer base, or both. … This brings us back to Buffalo. Walton, a nurse by training, became politically active as an adult while part of Buffalo's enormous workforce in "educational services, and health care and social assistance." In 2019, 33 percent of employed people in Buffalo fell into that "eds and meds" category — more than triple the size of the next group. … As care workers have become responsible for keeping the population alive and holding society together through the agony of economic abandonment, they have come to personify our mutual interdependency. As Walton put it, describing how she made it as a young and poor single mother, "We're never alone, we're not built to be islands." [Read More]
Israel/Palestine
Michael Ratner's inspiring activist life culminated with dramatic change on Israel
By
[FB – This is a review of Moving the Bar: My Life as a Radical Lawyer, by Michael Ratner. For many years Ratner, who died in 2016 at 72, was a human rights lawyer, serving as the Executive Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights. In his review, author Philip Weiss singles out Ratner's changing view/understanding of the Israel/Palestine conflict, perhaps a path similar to that many others have gone down.]
---- How do American Jews shift their outlook on Israel? How do leftleaning Americans who have a special corner of their heart devoted to Israel give up that attachment in the face of unending human rights violations? That is one drama of the very full life of Michael Ratner, the legendary human rights lawyer who died in 2016 at 72. Ratner's posthumous memoir was published in May, and it offers an intimate narrative of his own transformation on the Palestine question. Not many people are capable of Ratner's clear reasoning; but his difficult emotional path– from unbound love of Israel to the reluctant understanding in his 60s that Israel was an apartheid state from its early history of ethnic cleansings and he ought to pursue Israeli crimes in the memory of his own relatives who had died in the Holocaust– is one that other Americans, particularly Jews, should endeavor to walk. [Read More]
Our History
Why Did We Invade Iraq?
By Fred Kaplan, New York Review of Books [July 22, 2021 issue]
[FB – This is a review of How to Start a War: How the Bush Administration Took America into Iraq, by Robert Draper. I believe it is the most complete account to date.]]
---- Nearly two decades have passed since President George W. Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq in 2003, arguably the greatest strategic blunder in American history. It led to the deaths of more than 4,400 US military personnel and (according to the research group Iraq Body Count) up to 208,000 Iraqi civilians, to say nothing of the destabilization of the Middle East and the deadly convulsions that followed—sectarian violence, the emergence of ISIS, and a refugee crisis larger than any since World War II, among other calamities. And yet we still don't understand just why the US went to war. [Read More]
