Ryan Ruminates

It has been a while since I have written a blog and I’m not sure my brain is working properly to come up with anything decent today, but I figure I might as well try. Something that I have been thinking about lately is what is going to happen when oil starts dwindling; when it gets so expensive that the average non millionaire cannot afford to have a car or heat their home, and the prices of simple things like eggs and bread get so high that they become luxuries. Most of us don’t think about this, but just try to think about the last time you ate or drank anything that wasn’t totally reliant on someone else. Some mega-farm somewhere grows food, it is then packaged in a factory, put on a truck, and delivered to your local super market where you buy it and cook it. (This is also true when it comes to clothing and clean water, but that’s for another blog). What if there was an oil shortage or the truckers went on strike. The average place (and that’s to say nothing of a metropolis like NYC or dry areas like the southwest) would be able to have food for three days, should it not be able to be delivered. Then what? If tomorrow you went to the grocery store or a favorite restaurant and they either didn’t have anything left or were selling a dozen eggs for $50, what would you do?

Although I am not a huge fan of the NY Times or Paul Krugman, he wrote something interesting the other day about the lack of food. It seems that more and more people in developing countries are finally starting to get money and therefore have the ability to eat like Westerners; which means more things like steak and burgers. It takes 700 calories worth of animal feed to produce 100 calories worth of beef for us to eat. There are also droughts in giant food producing countries like Australia and a lot of fields are being used for corn to produce ethanol. Also, since we have gotten almost completely away from the mom and pop farms where the work is done almost entirely by hand or hand operated tools (unless you happen to be Amish, in which case you’re probably not reading this) there is a lot of oil used simply to plant crops. We are producing less food, to produce that food is become more and more expensive and to deliver that food is becoming more and more expensive. While all this is happening, most people’s salaries have either remained stagnant or not kept up at all with inflation.

I have no idea what the solution will be, I do not know nearly enough about this. However, there are people who do, there is plenty of information out there about all of this and I plan on finding out for myself. I plan on working on a farm this summer just in case. I plan on – if I can ever manage to save any money – buying a little bit of land (each person only needs a half an acre) and trying to figure out how to support myself. I suggest that – along with cutting back on meat and buying locally grown food in season – we all take steps towards this end. Maybe I’m crazy, maybe this will never happen, maybe everything will end up being fine, but I’m not taking the risk.

Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent? Peace and civil rights don’t mix, they say. Aren’t you hurting the cause of your people, they ask. And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live.In the light of such tragic misunderstanding, I deem it of signal importance to try to state clearly why I believe that the path from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, the church in Montgomery, Alabama, where I began my pastorage, leads clearly to this sanctuary tonight.

I come to this platform to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation. This speech is not addressed to Hanoi or to the National Liberation Front. It is not addressed to China or to Russia.

Nor is it an attempt to overlook the ambiguity of the total situation and the need for a collective solution to the tragedy of Vietnam. Neither is it an attempt to make North Vietnam or the National Liberation Front paragons of virtue, nor to overlook the role they can play in a successful resolution of the problem. While they both may have justifiable reasons to be suspicious of the good faith of the United States, life and history give eloquent testimony to the fact that conflicts are never resolved without trustful give and take on both sides.

Tonight, however, I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the NLF, but rather to my fellow Americans who, with me, bear the greatest responsibility in ending a conflict that has exacted a heavy price on both continents.

Since I am a preacher by trade, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor - both black and white - through the Poverty Program. Then came the build-up in Vietnam, and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political play thing of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic, destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.

Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the young black men who had been crippled by our society and sending them 8000 miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in Southwest Georgia and East Harlem. So we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. So we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would never live on the same block in Detroit. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.

My third reason grows out of my experience in the ghettos of the North over the last three years - especially the last three summers. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through non-violent action. But, they asked, what about Vietnam? They asked if our own nation wasn’t using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today, my own government.

For those who ask the question, “Aren’t you a Civil Rights leader?” and thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace, I have this further answer. In 1957 when a group of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, we chose as our motto: “To save the soul of America.” We were convinced that we could not limit our vision to certain rights for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction that America would never be free or saved from itself unless the descendants of its slaves were loosed from the shackles they still wear.

Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America’s soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read “Vietnam.” It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over.

As if the weight of such a commitment to the life and health of America were not enough, another burden of responsibility was placed upon me in 1964; and I cannot forget that the Nobel Prize for Peace was also a commission, a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for the “brotherhood of man.” This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances, but even if it were not present I would yet have to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. To me the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I am speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant or all men, for communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and white, for revolutionary and conservative? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the One who loved His enemies so fully that He died for hem? What then can I say to the Viet Cong or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister of this One? Can I threaten them with death, or must I not share with hem my life?

And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam, my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak now not of the soldiers of each side, not of the junta in Saigon, but simply of the people who have been living under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades. I think of them, too, because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution there until some attempt is made to know them and their broken cries.

They must see Americans as strange liberators. The Vietnamese proclaimed their own independence in 1945 after a combined French and Japanese occupation and before the communist revolution in China. Even though they quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them. Instead, we decided to support France in its re-conquest of her former colony.

Our government felt then that the Vietnamese people were not “ready” for independence, and we again fell victim to the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long. With that tragic decision, we rejected a revolutionary government seeking self-determination, and a government that had been established not by China (for whom the Vietnamese have no great love) but by clearly indigenous forces that included some communists. For the peasants, this new government meant real land reform, one of the most important needs in their lives.

For nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam the right of independence. For nine years we vigorously supported the French in their abortive effort to re-colonize Vietnam.

Before the end of the war we were meeting 80 per cent of the French war costs. Even before the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, they began to despair of their reckless action, but we did not. We encouraged them with our huge financial and military supplies to continue the war even after they had lost the will to do so.

After the French were defeated it looked as if independence and land reform would come again through the Geneva agreements. But instead there came the United States, determined that Ho should not unify the temporarily divided nation, and the peasants watched again as we supported one of the most vicious modern dictators, our chosen man, Premier Diem. The peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly routed out all opposition, supported their extortionist landlords and refused even to discuss reunification with the North. The peasants watched as all this was presided over by U.S. influence and then by increasing numbers of U.S. troops who came to help quell the insurgency that Diem’s methods had aroused. When Diem was overthrown they may have been happy, but the long line of military dictatorships seemed to offer no real change, especially in terms of their need for land and peace.

The only change came from America as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept and without popular support. All the while, the people read our leaflets and received regular promises of peace and democracy, and land reform. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us, not their fellow Vietnamese, the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move or be destroyed by our bombs. So they go.

They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers destroy their precious trees. They wander into the hospitals, with at least 20 casualties from American firepower for each Viet Cong-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million of them, mostly children.

What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the landlords and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land reform? What do they think as we test out our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe? Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building?

Now there is little left to build on, save bitterness. Soon the only solid physical foundations remaining will be found at our military bases and in the concrete of the concentration camps we call “fortified hamlets.” The peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new Vietnam on such grounds as these. Could we blame them for such thoughts’? We must speak for them and raise the questions they cannot raise. These too are our brothers.

Perhaps the more difficult but no less necessary task is to speak for those who have been designated as our enemies. What of the NLF, that strangely anonymous group we call VC or communists? What must they think of us in America when they realize that we permitted the repression and cruelty of Diem which helped to bring them into being as a resistance group in the South? How can they believe in our integrity when now we speak of “aggression from the North” as if there were nothing more essential to the war? How can they trust us when now we charge them with violence after the murderous reign of Diem, and charge them with violence while we pour new weapons of death into their land?

How do they judge us when our officials know that their membership is less than 25 per cent communist and yet insist on giving them the blanket name? What must they be thinking when they know that we are aware of their control of major sections of Vietnam and yet we appear ready to allow national elections in which this highly organized political parallel government will have no part? They ask how we can speak of free elections when the Saigon press is censored and controlled by the military junta. And they are surely right to wonder what kind of new government we plan to help form without them, the only party in real touch with the peasants. They question our political goals and they deny the reality of a peace settlement from which they will be excluded. Their questions are frighteningly relevant.

Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and non-violence, when it helps us to see the enemy’s point of view, to hear his questions, to know of his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.

So, too, with Hanoi. In the North, where our bombs now pummel the land, and our mines endanger the waterways, we are met by a deep but understandable mistrust. In Hanoi are the men who led the nation to independence against the Japanese and the French, the men who sought membership in the French commonwealth and were betrayed by the weakness of Paris and the willfulness of the colonial armies. It was they who led a second struggle against French domination at tremendous costs, and then were persuaded at Geneva to give up, as a temporary measure, the land they controlled between the 13th and 17th parallels. After 1954 they watched us conspire with Diem to prevent elections which would have surely brought Ho Chi Minh to power over a united Vietnam, and they realized they had been betrayed again.

When we ask why they do not leap to negotiate, these things must be remembered. Also, it must be clear that the leaders of Hanoi considered the presence of American troops in support of the Diem regime to have been the initial military breach of the Geneva Agreements concerning foreign troops, and they remind us that they did not begin to send in any large number of supplies or men until American forces had moved into the tens of thousands.

Hanoi remembers how our leaders refused to tell us the truth about the earlier North Vietnamese overtures for peace, how the President claimed that none existed when they had clearly been made. Ho Chi Minh has watched as America has spoken of peace and built up its forces, and now he has surely heard the increasing international rumors of American plans for an invasion of the North. Perhaps only his sense of humor and irony can save him when he hears the most powerful nation of the world speaking of aggression as it drops thousands of bombs on a poor, weak nation more than 8000 miles from its shores.

At this point, I should make it clear that while I have tried here to give a voice to the voiceless of Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called enemy, I am as deeply concerned about our own troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for our troops must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy and the secure while we create a hell for the poor.

Somehow this madness must cease. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam and the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop must be ours.

This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently, one of them wrote these words: “Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the hearts of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism.”

If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. It’ will become clear that our minimal expectation is to occupy it as an American colony, and men will not refrain from thinking that our maximum hope is to goad China into a war so that we may bomb her nuclear installations.

The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of her people.

In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing the war to a halt. I would like to suggest five concrete things that our government should do immediately to begin the long and difficult process of extricating ourselves from this nightmare:
1. End all bombing in North and South Vietnam.

2. Declare a unilateral cease-fire in the hope that such action will create the atmosphere for negotiation.

3. Take immediate steps to prevent other battlegrounds in Southeast Asia by curtailing our military build-up in Thailand and our interference in Laos.

4. Realistically accept the fact that the National Liberation Front has substantial support in South Vietnam and must thereby play a role in any meaningful negotiations and in any future Vietnam government.

5. Set a date on which we will remove all foreign troops from Vietnam in accordance with the 1954 Geneva Agreement.

Part of our ongoing commitment might well express itself in an offer to grant asylum to any Vietnamese who fears for his life under a new regime which included the NLF. Then we must make what reparations we can for the damage we have done. We must provide the medical aid that is badly needed, in this country if necessary.

Meanwhile, we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task while we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment. We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative means of protest possible.

As we counsel young men concerning military service we must clarify for them our nation’s role in Vietnam and challenge them with the alternative of conscientious objection. I am pleased to say that this is the path now being chosen by more than 70 students at my own Alma Mater, Morehouse College, and I recommend it to all who find the American course in Vietnam a dishonorable and unjust one. Moreover, I would encourage all ministers of draft age to give up their ministerial exemptions and seek status as conscientious objectors. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.

There is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in Vietnam. I say we must enter that struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing. The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality we will find ourselves organizing clergy, and laymen-concerned committees for the next generation. We will be marching and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy.

In 1957 a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which now has justified the presence of U.S. military “advisors” in Venezuela. The need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counterrevolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Colombia and why American napalm and green beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru. With such activity in mind, the words of John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment.

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. When machines and computers, profit and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look easily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: This is not just.” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: ” This is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from re-ordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.

This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. War is not the answer. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and through their misguided passions urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations. These are the days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. We must not call everyone a communist or an appeaser who advocates the seating of Red China in the United Nations and who recognizes that hate and hysteria are not the final answers to the problem of these turbulent days. We must not engage in a negative anti-communism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take: offensive action in behalf of justice. We must with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity and injustice which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops.

These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wombs of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. “The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light.” We in the West must support these revolutions. It is a sad fact that, because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to ad just to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has the revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism.

We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

Now let us begin. Now let us re-dedicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.

I don’t have much time this morning, so I’ll just comment briefly on an article I read on IPS. There was an Arab summit in Syria in which the topic of discussion was Iraq. Seeing as how the occupation of Iraq by the US and its cronies directly affects all of the “Middle East”, one would think that every Arab leader would have attended. Remember that Saddam Hussein was once an ally of the US, so even a leader who feels like he’s in the good graces of the White House should be just as – if not more – worried about what’s going on in the wasteland that used to be a country. Unfortunately, a day before the meeting was to take place Washington DC (AKA, someone delivering a message from our esteemed leader) warned its allies (Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt) that attending the event would not be a good idea; instead of standing with their neighbors and brothers and sisters, the leaders of these countries stayed home. This has been going on since the beginning of time; a great way to rule a people is to divide and conquer. The Middle East is divided, Iraq itself is divided, after India gained its independence it became divided into two countries, oppressed Palestine is divided and constantly in civil war; even at home, the poor are divided between the “two” major US parties. This is something that should be apparent to anyone with even one eye open, but obviously by the looks of things it is not. My mind right now is on Iraq, so that is what I’ll focus on; the people of Iraq have been killed, wounded, and, displaced by the US (and that’s not counting the British rule of the country for a few decades) for many years now. There was the first Gulf War, then came many years of sanctions, and finally the current occupation. While some of the Iraqis are fighting against the colonists, many of them (including some who are indeed fighting the USers) are fighting each other. They see more of a difference and more of a reason to kill someone from their own country, their own block even, than the people with the big guns who are bossing them around and destroying their country. I hope, at the very least, we see this and can end it in the United States. I hope we can see that the person sharing the $6 an hour job with you, who happens to be a Republican, has more in common with you than Barrack Obama or Hillary Clinton ever will.

I sometimes get angry while watching Mr. Obama because he seems genuine; he rarely looks down at his notes (if he has any), seems to talk from his heart, and doesn’t look like he is trying to figure out what he’s supposed to say. I get angry because I know he’s still part of the empire and although the economy might grow a tiny bit and we may keep less troops in Iraq and talk less shit to Iran, things will still generally be the same. Luckily, the hegemonist in him comes out every once in a while. In a speech given on Friday, Obama said that his foreign policy decisions will be more like former presidents JF Kennedy, George HW Bush, and even a little like Ronald Reagan. It’s fine that he’s distancing himself from the likes of the people who run our country now, but saying he will do the same things as three other war criminals is not exactly comforting to someone like me, someone who thinks there should be no empire. Kennedy is the man who was behind the Bay of Pigs invasion; a horribly failed attack (one of many) directed at Fidel Castro. Not because Castro was threatening the United States, not because Castro had actually attempted war on the United States, but simply because Cuba is a seemingly weak country, located very close to the United States and refuses to bow down and kiss our feet. As far as Ronald Reagan goes; when a Democrat says he wants to be more like the man conservatives worship, it may be time to be worried. Forget about all the domestic issues Reagan was inhuman about, forget about the fact that he put a rose on the grave of a former SS soldier, lets look at some of his foreign policies. Reagan paid money to the Iranians to not release the US hostages (during the US embassy in Iran crisis) until right around election time; he shipped massive amounts of weapons to our enemies in Iran and extremists in Nicaragua; he invaded Lebanon and Grenada for no apparent reason. The list goes on, but what has been listed should be enough for a “liberal” Democrat to not want to be like Mr. Reagan. Finally we have the esteemed father of our wonderful current president, George HW Bush. This is the man who armed and funded Saddam Hussein; remember him? He’s the guy who had weapons of mass destruction and ties to 9/11; he’s the reason why we are in a war that is causing the rest of the world to hate us and our own country to fall apart at the seams. The lists on the war crimes committed by all three of these men is long and disgusting; do some research and you’ll see who these people really are. I don’t know whether Obama is saying all of this in order to get the votes of centrists and right leaning people in Pennsylvania or if he really believes them and intends to follow in the footsteps of the three evil former presidents, but neither reason is going to get me to cast a vote for this man. I’m starting to think that fighting to end the empire, to end the endless wars and puppets we support all over the world, to end the massive inequality within our own country, is pointless. Nothing we say or do is going to get someone outside of the three nutbags running for president elected. All we can do now is build alternative structures and make sure that we can survive when we look down and see the bottom rushing up at us.

My intention this past week was to take a nice vacation to New Mexico (one of the four states the wife and I have never been), to shut off the political section of my brain, and to just enjoy the pleasure of being alive and living in a beautiful area of the world. The drive from Boulder to Moriarty was nice; the town was a little run down, but the views and the people made us both feel happy. The next morning we decided to wake up and head to Santa Fe because everyone told us what a great place it was to visit. Things started out pretty well; we got a great room for really cheap, we walked around looking at all the pretty crafts, ate some good food, and found a cool bar to hang out in. After a couple 1pm beers however, my attitude started to change. I looked at the Native Americans and (New?) Mexicans dressed shabbily, driving shitty cars (if they were driving at all), and looking out of place in their home. Then I saw the white tourists driving Lexus’s, Beamers, and Benz’s, wearing outfits that cost more than most of the native’s rents, and spending ridiculous amounts of money on things that most people would find unnecessary. It started to dawn on me that this was occupied territory; the land I was standing on used to be full of Native Americans and then (after they were slaughtered and raped by the Spanish) Mexicans who lived off the land. Now, they are being exploited; and people come from all over to enjoy the old historical buildings, native looking people, and buy all their ‘authentic’ crafts (mostly made by white people). Once in a while I would see a young Mexican or Native American boy driving a giant pick-up truck with $5,000 rims and a system that would make the entire block shake and it would make me even more depressed. After twenty minutes of watching this, I had to go back into the bar and drink away my sorrows. Luckily, we ran into a cool Peruvian/Incan man named Lorenzo who explained that he wasn’t angry about what was happening; all he can do is what he can do and he can’t control what the occupiers do. After that, we ended up spending a couple days in the pretty much untouched by white people, Las Vegas, New Mexico. We met a couple people (who were very poor, but happier than any of the Benz drivers that I saw a day earlier), spent a bunch of time with them, and left feeling in high spirits about the whole experience. Then I got home and decided it was time to jump back into real life; so I read all the papers this morning. The US is still doing everything in it’s power to control the Iraqi people, while building a bunch of permanent bases in the country, in order to eventually control the whole area. In Pakistan, an area that has been pretty much controlled by the US for the past 8 years, the new government is voicing its rebellion to US control. This – as evidenced by a recent visit by members of our government – is not acceptable to the hegemonic goals of our country. I turned the page to Israel/Palestine to see that Israel – on land that is not theirs – is banning Palestinians from certain roads; basically committing apartheid. That was the last article I read, although I know that if I want to I can spend the rest of the day reading articles and essays about all the lands that are currently occupied throughout the world. It’s a dog eat dog world where whoever has the bigger weapons and the more ruthless leaders, takes over land from the weak. It’s not even the taking over of the land that makes me want to scream; it’s the killing of the natives, it’s the brainwashing of whoever survives to become more like the occupier. Due to the massive amounts of marijuana and beer that have entered my system in the past six days, I cannot further develop these thoughts. However, I will be returning back to normal over the next few days and hope to write more about this.

I do not have much time to write today, but I refer you to a long, scary article by William R Polk about Iran. According to Mr. Polk – who was a member of the Policy Planning Council responsible for Africa and the Middle East from 1961-65 and is currently a teacher of history and the founder of Middle Eastern Study Center – war with Iran is imminent. Everything is in place for Iran to be bombed; the US navy is occupying much of the waters, threats are still being made, politician war-hawks are making visits to the area, and we have over a dozen bases set up throughout Iraq, giving us easy access to the area. Iran is bigger than Iraq, and their so-called nukes are spread throughout the country – some even in urban areas – so therefore, the million or so dead in Iraq would be a paltry number compared to what we would do to their neighbors. Polk’s article obviously gives better reasons as to why war is imminent, why it will not work, and what the Iranian (and other nations in the area) response will be. What he does not mention is that we the people can stop it; all we have to do is actually give a shit. The movement to end the war in Iraq has to grow by leaps and bounds – who cares if 80% of the public is against the war if they just sit home and watch TV? – and has to start including (as it often does) demands that we do not go into Iran. Pressure has to start being dumped on top of not only our local politicians, but also especially the three candidates for Bush’s replacement. John McCain we already know has his mind set on war (in fact, I would argue that the only way he will get elected is if we are already at war with Iran come November), but we should still be able to pressure both Obama and Clinton. They have both said that all options are on the table (in fact Polk has a good quote from Obama in his article). This can not be accepted; when are we going to have a president that can put his or her ego to the side and make decisions based on common sense, not about fear of the rest of the world calling us pussies?

In 2003 the population of the United States took to the streets to let the world know that we will not support an invasion of Iraq. Then, after we were ignored and Iraq was occupied, we went back to our every day lives for the next few years (just over five to be exact). Occasionally there is a protest here or an occupying of a Representatives office there, but there is no movement, there is no awareness. Almost 4,000 US troops are dead, over one million Iraqi civilians are dead, countless families are missing loved ones, the infrastructure in Iraq is destroyed (and in the US it is crumbling), and we are doing nothing. Perhaps it is because of this that Iran is next on the list; the lunatics occupying the White House know that there might be a bit of resistance when we go in there, but eventually the people of Iran will start blending in with the people of Iraq (and Afghanistan) as a bunch of crazy, Islamic, brown people a half a world away that have to be killed in order for us to continue to have the comfortability that we have. Most people have not been to Iran; in fact most reporters are only repeating what the war mongers are saying instead of taking trips over there and interviewing the people. Ahmademinejad is being portrayed as a Hitler, when in reality he is the George Bush of Iran; the people do not like him very much (as evidenced by the elections held a couple days ago) and he doesn’t have as much power as we are led to believe. Iran is not full of crazy fundamentalists who are set on the destruction of the US and Israel; rather, the land is full of human beings just like in the US. They are more oppressed than us, but are fighting to get their rights. They have more women in higher learning institutions than either of the countries that we are helping to become free. We all need to come to the realization that these people are just like us – they breathe, they eat, they bleed, they love, and so on – we need to realize that they are working things out for themselves and are not bothering anyone. Read this article from someone who actually went over there, not just watched videos of what we are allowed (and encouraged) to see. The most important thing we can do right now is realize that a war with Iran is planned; Dick Cheney just visited the area, John McCain just visited the area, Joe Leibermann just visited the area – these are the biggest cheerleaders for more war. We cannot let this happen; if we continue to sit around and ignore this very real possibility, the blood will be on our hands.

As the few people who read this thing I call a blog know, I go back and forth between wanting to vote for Obama and not voting at all. After watching a debate between him and Mrs. Clinton I was excited by him and – although not fooled into thinking he is the savior – thought I might throw my vote his way. This past week has made me think differently, and I will give a brief summary. On Wednesday of last week I picked up a former priest and current self-proclaimed Christian Anarchist from the airport so he could give a speech (along with a fired professor from the University of Colorado) for a few fellow students. I sat in the car with this man for an hour on the way home from the airport, had lunch with him, watched him speak, and then had dinner with him. He has been arrested over 20 times, parted ways with the Catholic church because of his refusal to assuage the leadership, spent a total of five years in jail, and has dedicated his life to living below the poverty line and nonviolently helping to change our entire structure. The next day I was interviewed for a documentary called Love Everybody and was made to talk about my dedication to a life of service, about this thing I have inside of me, forcing me to get an expensive college degree in the field of Peace Studies, knowing that I will never make my money back. It was the first time I ever really talked about it and it gave me a shot of energy that has not gone away yet. After that, I saw a spiritual man speak of revolutions within the self. On Friday I got up in front of a crowd and – for the first time in my life – delivered an impassioned speech about the hegemony of the United States; in doing the research I couldn’t help but focus on the 1,000,000 people who have been killed with our money, in our name, in only Iraq, only in the past five years. Saturday there was a rally and march which – although not at all inspiring – led to conversations with other people who found the fact that we were stopping at red lights and abiding by a permit, slightly counterproductive. Sunday was a day off, but yesterday I watched two documentaries; one which inspired me (and filled me with fear) greatly and another that again pointed out the reach and many armness of the US government. I sit here today and I realize that there is no point in voting for any of these three people who have been put before us, on varying degrees they all support the US empire; they all will continue to prop up puppet dictators throughout the world, they all will keep bases and soldiers throughout the middle east, and they will all add millions to the list of people who die at the hands of the US every single year. Many people teach me that I can only do what I can do; I can choose not to vote and instead work for the building of alternate structures within our existing government, but I cannot make others do the same. Despite this knowledge, it still frustrates me that people attend a march on the anniversary of the war or vote in an election every four years and consider their duty as USers done. They refuse to acknowledge that these are things that the government lets us do so we feel like we are participating in world affairs, so we won’t think about the fact that our weapons, paid for with our tax dollars, are being used by people trained in the US to kill innocent people who happen to get in the way of our government’s long term goals. Occasionally we will see a blurb in the newspaper about 50 people dying in a car bomb in Iraq or a bomb that was intended for a terrorist in Somalia accidentally (of course they never use that word) killing half a village, but that’s as far as it goes. There is never any outrage, never any demand that the people who orchestrate these attacks be held accountable. I have said it before and I’ll say it again; it is because we look at these people as less than human. Name ten of the million people who have died in Iraq over the last five years. Name ten of the million people who died due to US sanctions in Iraq before we invaded them. Name three monks who died in Burma last year without the US doing a thing about it. Name one person who lived in the village in Somalia that got bombed earlier this month. Most people will not be able to do this (myself included) because these people are not looked at as human. The day we wake up and put faces to explosions and then names and stories to those faces is the day that we take back our country and let the rest of the people take back theirs.

Although the US media’s coverage of the occupation of Iraq has been minimal and coverage of what’s really going on in Afghanistan has been almost non-existent, coverage of the rest of the “War on Terror” has been almost impossible to find. By calling this expansion of empire the War on Terror, it gives the United States Government free reign to do whatever they want, wherever they want as long as the pawns who call themselves soldiers continue to obey. As you read this, people in Somalia are dying and running – thousands have been killed and a million have been displaced – because US backed Ethiopian troops are wreaking havoc on their neighbors. US troops have actually been sent into towns to kill people who did not die from the (US made) bombs being dropped by Ethiopian forces, and US planes are dropping bombs on villages – killing dozens of innocents – in order to kill ‘dangerous’ people on the FBI’s most wanted list. I don’t know why I’m writing this and I’m sure to be just as confused as I preach about it to anyone who will listen, but here I am doing it anyway. This weekend is the fifth anniversary of the US occupying Iraq, so there should be much focus on the protest and rallies (and especially the Iraq Veterans Against the War who will be testifying in Washington DC), but that does not mean we can’t be aware of what else is being done. Most of us already know John McCain’s position on matters of this nature, but what about the two liberal Democrats? Both Hillary Clinton and Barrack Obama would like to expand out military; although they are both claiming they would remove (most) troops from Iraq, they haven’t ruled out attacking Iran, they haven’t mentioned getting troops out of Afghanistan, they haven’t said a word about ending military support to the corrupt regime in Pakistan, and it would probably be political suicide to promise to end US backed action in countries like Somalia. Sure, in my opinion Obama is the best candidate of the three, and Hillary is better than McCain, but what does that even mean. They would all like to expand our empire of racism, sexism, homophobia, war mongering, and shitting on the poor. I saw a man speak last night and I will leave you with a (paraphrased) quote from him: “Our democracy is like a game of poker, and voting for president is like putting in your ante. If all you did was sit at a table, throw in your ante, and then never pick up your cards, what chance would you have at winning?”

According to an article I just read in the always unbiased Politico, 53% of registered US voters believe that “the US will ultimately succeed in achieving its goals” in Iraq. I will ignore – for the time being – the fact that there are no statistics to back up this poll; where was it conducted, how many people were interviewed, what was the exact wording of the question, how was it conducted, and so on. Pew could have asked 100 people coming out of a Wal-Mart in Alabama for all we know. That is beside the point however; it’s fine if people think that the US will ultimately succeed in achieving its goals. The next question should have been, “what – in your opinion – are the US’s goals in Iraq?” If the US’s goals in Iraq are to kill the majority of Iraqis, build the world’s biggest base, and solidify access to an oil pipeline, and the way the US intends to go about achieving this goal is to keep troops over there until it happens (even if it takes 100 years), then I too believe that the US will ultimately succeed in achieving its goals in Iraq. Maybe this question was asked fairly, maybe it was asked of a random sample of all kinds of people, maybe it was asked via means that include every one (what I mean by that is if it was done via email, it only involves people lucky enough to have a computer, an email account, and time to sit back and fill out a survey; if it was done by telephone it includes only those who have a landline, which most people under 30 or below the poverty line do not), maybe 53% percent of US voters really believe that the US will ultimately succeed in achieving its goals of spreading Democracy throughout Iraq. The question I have (and that should have been asked by these ‘reporters’) is, why? When they called Joe Blow and asked him if he thinks that the US will ultimately succeed, what was he basing his “yes” on? Was it because he read an article that morning in the Politico telling him that the US will succeed? Was it because he watched a John Bush or George W McCain speech in which they guaranteed success over there? Was it because he just got off the phone with his smart uncle who told him that – contrary to popular belief – everything is going fine over there? What if the poll was conducted by asking people who have first hand knowledge? What if the first question was, “have you, or a loved one who you are in contact with, been to Iraq (outside of the Green Zone) recently? My final question is this: once again, if it is true that when asked a non-loaded question, 53% of the educated public believes that the US will ultimately achieve success in Iraq, does that mean it’s true? If we would have done a poll in February of 2003, a great majority of people asked – no matter what part of the country people went – would have said that Saddam Hussein possesses Weapons of Mass Destruction and played a part in the attacks of 9/11. That – as most of us (although not all) know – turned out to be greatly false. I guess the majority of people thinking something, does not make it come to fruition.