Memo to Obama, McCain

Howard Zinn of the excellent Z. Communication * web site has sent the memo below to the two US presidential candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain. It is worth reading as many on the left having been caught up in the original enthusiasm for Barack Obama, failed to notice that the candidates talk of a need for a new type of politics was nothing more than campaign hype, which was perhaps understandable, as many activists are desperate to see a progressive figure in the White House.

Never the less Obama’s current tour of the Middle-East and Europe should have brought these people down to earth with a hefty bump, as it is almost unknown for a presidential candidate to waste precious time overseas during an election campaign, not least because none of the presidents, prime ministers and various satraps he will meet have a vote come November.

The reason Obama has been forced to make this tour is because it was not only naive progressives who believed his campaign hype about ‘hope and a time for a change,’ many of the governments in the regions he is visiting also brought into it. Not least the Israelis, Saudis and the US puppet governments in Iraq and Afghanistan; and the last thing Obama needs is for the Israeli government to turn the Jewish lobby in the USA en masse against him, or for millions of Petro dollars to pour into his opponent John McCain’s coffers.

Hence he has been touring these countries calming nerves and explaining the niceties of the US presidential campaign, i e a presidential candidate will say almost anything if they believe it will help them get elected. Hence on his overseas tour he has been telling the Israelis that he agrees with G.W.Bush’s decision to green light a military attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities before he leaves office. He has confirmed to the Iraqi puppet government that US troops will continue to be based there indefinitely; and in Afghanistan confirmed that US troop numbers will be stepped up so that President Hamid Karzai’s writ will run at least to the outer city limits of Kabul, OK I jest slightly with the latter but you get my drift.

M.H.

* http://www.zcommunications.org/

Memo to Obama, McCain: No one wins in a war
By Howard Zinn

BARACK OBAMA and John McCain continue to argue about war. McCain says to keep the troops in Iraq until we "win" and supports sending more troops to Afghanistan. Obama says to withdraw some (not all) troops from Iraq and send them to fight and "win" in Afghanistan.

For someone like myself, who fought in World War II, and since then has protested against war, I must ask: Have our political leaders gone mad? Have they learned nothing from recent history? Have they not learned that no one "wins" in a war, but that hundreds of thousands of humans die, most of them civilians, many of them children?

Did we "win" by going to war in Korea? The result was a stalemate, leaving things as they were before with a dictatorship in South Korea and a dictatorship in North Korea. Still, more than 2 million people - mostly civilians - died, the United States dropped napalm on children, and 50,000 American soldiers lost their lives.

Did we "win" in Vietnam? We were forced to withdraw, but only after 2 million Vietnamese died, again mostly civilians, again leaving children burned or armless or legless, and 58,000 American soldiers dead.

Did we win in the first Gulf War? Not really. Yes, we pushed Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait, with only a few hundred US casualties, but perhaps 100,000 Iraqis died. And the consequences were deadly for the United States: Saddam was still in power, which led the United States to enforce economic sanctions. That move led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, according to UN officials, and set the stage for another war.

In Afghanistan, the United States declared "victory" over the Taliban. Now the Taliban is back, and attacks are increasing. The recent US military death count in Afghanistan exceeds that in Iraq. What makes Obama think that sending more troops to Afghanistan will produce "victory"? And if it did, in an immediate military sense, how long would that last, and at what cost to human life on both sides?

The resurgence of fighting in Afghanistan is a good moment to reflect on the beginning of US involvement there. There should be sobering thoughts to those who say that attacking Iraq was wrong, but attacking Afghanistan was right.

Go back to Sept. 11, 2001. Hijackers direct jets into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing close to 3,000 A terrorist act, inexcusable by any moral code. The nation is aroused. President Bush orders the invasion and bombing of Afghanistan, and the American public is swept into approval by a wave of fear and anger. Bush announces a "war on terror."

Except for terrorists, we are all against terror. So a war on terror sounded right. But there was a problem, which most Americans did not consider in the heat of the moment: President Bush, despite his confident bravado, had no idea how to make war against terror.

Yes, Al Qaeda - a relatively small but ruthless group of fanatics - was apparently responsible for the attacks. And, yes, there was evidence that Osama bin Laden and others were based in Afghanistan. But the United States did not know exactly where they were, so it invaded and bombed the whole country. That made many people feel righteous. "We had to do something," you heard people say.

Yes, we had to do something. But not thoughtlessly, not recklessly. Would we approve of a police chief, knowing there was a vicious criminal somewhere in a neighborhood, ordering that the entire neighborhood be bombed? There was soon a civilian death toll in Afghanistan of more than 3,000 - exceeding the number of deaths in the Sept. 11 attacks. Hundreds of Afghans were driven from their homes and turned into wandering refugees.

Two months after the invasion of Afghanistan, a Boston Globe story described a 10-year-old in a hospital bed: "He lost his eyes and hands to the bomb that hit his house after Sunday dinner." The doctor attending him said: "The United States must be thinking he is Osama. If he is not Osama, then why would they do this?"

We should be asking the presidential candidates: Is our war in Afghanistan ending terrorism, or provoking it? And is not war itself terrorism?

Howard Zinn is author of "A Power Governments Cannot Suppress" published by City Lights Books.