coleen rowley's blog

Statement of ComeHomeAmerica.US in Opposition to U.S. Intervention in Syria

coleen rowley — Fri, 12 Jul 2013 12:54:33 +0000

(Cross-posted on behalf of Come Home America Steering Committee) To sign onto our statement, go to the bottom of this Come Home America page.

We in ComeHomeAmerica (www.comehomeamerica.US) condemn our government’s war on Syria, prosecuted first with sanctions, then with covert support through “allies” like the dictatorial petro-monarchies of the Gulf and now with overt provision of arms for the anti-government forces and perhaps even a bombing campaign. We demand an immediate cessation of this bellicose policy by our government. Sanctions and military intervention in Syria are not in the interests of the American people; nor are they in the interests of the Syrian people.

We are far from alone in our opposition. Fully 70% of Americans are opposed to armed intervention in Syria – a number that has only increased over the months according to Pew polls. And yet the President and a majority in Congress favor intervention, revealing a crisis of our political institutions, which are far removed from the will of the people on this and many other issues.

We in ComeHomeAmerica are a very diverse group. We are traditional conservatives, progressive activists, libertarians of the Ron Paul type, old-fashioned Leftists, religious people appalled by war and non-religious who also harbor disgust over our numerous wars for over a century now. We are not pacifists, although there are pacifists in our ranks. But we do believe that any war must be defensive and a last resort, not a constant option to further the perceived interests of our elite. Our roots go deep in our country’s history, at least as far back as the Anti-Imperialist League, which was organized to oppose the war in the Philippines and included members as different as Mark Twain and Andrew Carnegie, the wealthiest man in America.

We protest our government’s actions not simply because of the specific conditions in Syria but based on general principles. The same principles would have kept us from launching the recent wars on Iraq and Libya and many others over the past century and longer.

Our first principle is that war inflicts enormous damage on human beings and we are repulsed by it, a revulsion that is found in most human beings. Hence the war-makers try to keep their deeds hidden or covered in fantasies of glory. Secrecy in turn leads to suborning the press, a mainstay of our democracy.

Our second principle, the easiest one, is that we do not want to pay for these wars and the belligerent imperial colossus, including the DoD, CIA, NSA and others, costing about one trillion a year, roughly the sum that is raised in personal income taxes on April 15. Some of us simply want the money back and others want it to be spent on social needs. But while we differ on that, we agree that the money must no longer go to a war complex. On that we are firmly united.

A third principle is that the sovereignty of other nations is to be respected. Sovereignty is a concept introduced into international law to protect weak nations from powerful ones. The U.S. is presently the most powerful, and hence we have a special obligation to respect that principle and the Nuremberg principle that prohibits wars of aggression, which includes “wars of choice” or “pre-emptive wars.” A corollary to that is that U.S. foreign policy is not based on “human rights.” Unfortunately, “humanitarian” rationales are too often used to justify or disguise bellicose policies made for other reasons. We reject such rationales for wars of aggression.

A fourth principle is that an Empire is incompatible with liberty and democracy. The US has now become a worldwide Empire with more than 1200 military bases and outposts overseas. Every Empire must perforce be a military one, because it seeks to dominate others, which elicits resistance, and that in turn calls forth military oppression. The result is that others who could be friends turn into enemies; this is the “blowback” with which we have become so familiar over the last decade and more. Our own American Revolution is an example of a successful revolt against an empire. Furthermore, imperial designs can too readily lead to a global conflagration such as World War One. And an Empire is doubly dangerous, because in the end it is incompatible with democracy as citizens tire of wars and hence must be monitored and their opposition countered. The recent revelations about the extent of domestic spying by the NSA should bring that home to us once again.

We welcome those who agree with one or more of these principles to make common cause with us in ComeHomeAmerica. We cannot afford to let other differences separate us and hence allow agents of war to defeat us by the tactic of divide and conquer. We must join together. In the end our very survival depends on it.

The CHA Steering Committee:

Paul Buhle(WI), Retired Prof.; author; producer of radical, progressive comic books.

Doug Fuda(MA), Activist, Boston Chapter of CHA

Bill Kauffman(NY), Author, Ain’t My America

Angela Keaton(CA), Chair, Outright Libertarians; Operations Director, Antiwar.com

Dan McCarthy(VA), editor, The American Conservative

George O’Neill (FL), Co-founder of CHA

Coleen Rowley(MN), FBI Whistleblower; a Time Person of the Year, 2002

John V. Walsh,MD(MA), Neuroscience Prof.; writer for CounterPunch, DissidentVoice

Kevin Zeese (MD), Co-founder of CHA, PopularResistance.org (October2011.org)

Please add your name below.

Additional Signers

Sam Smith, Progressive Review

David Swanson, author, War is a Lie; blog, http://warisacrime.org

David MacMichael, Former CIA analyst who resigned in protest, Founding member of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

Murray Polner, Author, We Who Said No To War

Sheldon Richman Vice President, Future of Freedom Foundation.

Jeff Taylor, Associate Prof. of Political Science, Dordt College

David Henderson, Research Fellow, Hoover Institution

Dave Wagner, Co-author, Radical Hollywood.

Announcing video contest examining torture and torture accountability: Open to amateurs and professionals.

coleen rowley — Mon, 01 Jul 2013 02:10:24 +0000

June 30, 2013, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA--The Tackling Torture Video Contest is accepting entries now. It is open to both amateur and professional filmmakers.

· Four prizes:

§ $500 jury prize for the serious category,

§ $500 jury prize for the humorous/satirical category, and

Concerns that New FBI Director Is Being Selected to Preserve "'War on Terror' Mentality"

coleen rowley — Fri, 31 May 2013 18:59:24 +0000

Today (Friday May 31) the Institute for Public Accuracy, 980 National Press Building, Washington, D.C., (202) 247-0020 http://www.accuracy.org * ipa@accuracy.org put out the following press release, based on my comments and questions for James Comey, reported to be Obama's nominee to replace Robert Mueller as head of the FBI.

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Protesting War Criminal Rice's (Hypocritical) Speech "Why Democracy Matters" to Minnesota "Law Day" Participants

coleen rowley — Thu, 23 May 2013 16:25:38 +0000

Women Against Military Madness’ “Tackling Torture at the Top” Committee will lead a demonstration outside the Minneapolis Hilton, 1001 Marquette Avenue South, beginning at 4:00 p.m. (Thursday, May 23).

A number of peace activists will be wearing orange jumpsuits, to keep reminding the world of the innocent Gitmo detainees who are on hunger strike because they are so hopeless at being held indefinitely without the right to even know of the charges against them.

It should be recalled that Guantanamo was initially created by the Bush Administration (also under the tutelage of Condi Rice) by deliberate design, to illegally serve as a location where international and US Constitutional rule of law would not interfere with the indefinite holding and abuse of US prisoners. Our efforts will hopefully bolster Obama to announce this afternoon in his scheduled “national security speech” (being reported by NY Times “Obama, in a Shift, to Limit Targets of Drone Strikes”) that he will reduce drone assassinations and apparently finally start releasing some of the Gitmo detainees.

Why would the Minnesota legal community choose to invite, of all people, Condi Rice to speak here when she has repeatedly demonstrated little or no regard for U.S. law? It should be recalled that Condi is the former official who made up “mushroom cloud” stories to help George Bush lie the U.S. into war on Iraq, killing over a million people, and who also gave the order to the CIA to torture. Conspiracy to torture is a felony under U.S. Code in both Title 18, Section 2340 and 2441. The Convention Against Torture requires the criminal prosecution of complicity in torture. So, not only is the hypocrisy breathtaking but it’s doubtful the Minnesota legal audience will get an honest answer out of her ostensibly hypocritical speech entitled: “Why Democracy Matters.” If theMinnesota “Law Day” participants actually cared about upholding the law, they would have their keynote speaker arrested for war crimes.

"Hiroshima: A Global Perspective" by Steven Leeper

coleen rowley — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 23:04:11 +0000

I just had to share the following remarkable speech (which a friend sent to me) given last November by Steven Leeper, head of the Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation (whose unique background explains his insights). How do these compelling points get spread to high school and college students?

Update on NYC Rally Against Resurgence of Japanese Militarism

coleen rowley — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 20:13:07 +0000

The following is an update (to my earlier post here):

News Release: NYC Rally on Feb 19 to Unite Groups Against Resurgence of Japanese Militarism

coleen rowley — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 20:14:53 +0000

Before you read the news release, however, about the planned upcoming rally in response, please read John "End War" Walsh's insightful background exposing "US Goading Japan into Confrontation With China: Will Japan Take the Bait?" published a few days ago at Anti-war.com, Counterpunch, Information Clearing House and several other anti-war sites. With all the imperial wars that have been launched and are being launched by the US in the Mid-east, we often forget about the US-announced "China Pivot" occuring on the other side of the world. Please help spread the information of the underlying issues as well as notice about this upcoming rally in NYC on Feb 19th, a real chance to demonstrate against the emerging militarism of Japan's Prime Minister Abe. If your peace group wants to join the rally and/or endorse their effort, plea

Human Rights/Humanitarian Law Taking Precedence: Torture is Wrong but So Is the Supreme War Crime

coleen rowley — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 16:46:13 +0000

A number of human rights issues converge on Friday January 11, 2013. In Washington DC and many other cities around the country, including the Twin Cities, people will don orange “Gitmo” jumpsuits and black hoods to protest the 11^th year anniversary-travesty of Guantanamo as well as the (bizarrely coincidental) national release of the despicable, CIA-inspired “zero conscience” film that falsely conveys the message that torture “works” and is somehow heroic.

The photo was taken a few days ago in Washington DC of a protest by Amnesty International and Witness Against Torture activists outside the opening of the "Zero Dark Thirty" film at the Newseum.

The third, far less known issue involves the resignation (effective on January 11) of Suzanne Nossel, Director of Amnesty International-USA. Her resignation after only one year as American Director would be unimportant except for how it exposes more fundamental problems involving the way human rights principles during peace time and humanitarian rules governing warfare can function to undercut the more well established jus ad bellum prohibitions, under international law, of launching wars of choice. Nossel’s statement itself gave little clue of the more fundamental problematic issues underlying her resignation (except for the fact that she only mentioned her appreciation for working to uphold “human rights” in the Soviet Union, Afghanistan, Myanmar and Syria but left out the human rights violations that the US-NATO-Israel is responsible for).

There’s no need to rehash the points we tried to make in “Amnesty’s Shilling for US Wars” (co-authored with Col Ret’d Ann Wright) and “Are Human Rights Becoming a Tool of US ‘Smart Power?” which described the way Nossel personified some of these revolving door conflicts of interest plaguing human rights and humanitarian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) based in the West. It’s simply not possible for anyone to constantly go back and forth from serving US national interests vis a vis other nation-state sovereigns in the world to the theoretically loftier role of promoting human rights around the world as head of a non-governmental organization whose credibility depends upon not being aligned with any country’s national interests.

To be sure, these conflicts of interest did not begin with Suzanne Nossel but have a long history which also reside in the NGO’s donor base according to former Amnesty-USA Board member Francis Boyle. There seems to be an even more fundamental problem, however, engulfing not only Amnesty but a great many other “human rights” NGOs and academics based in the United States and its western allies. Amnesty’s verbatim response back in June to our “Amnesty Shilling for Wars” article was telling:

Only One Good Way to Brake Before Going Over the Debt Cliff: Reduce Wasteful War Spending!

coleen rowley — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 17:14:43 +0000

As the final scene of Thelma and Louise seems to be playing out on this last day of the year, it might be a good time to recall the dramatic end of that movie.

It's true that some think the fiscal cliff is real while others say it's just a mirage. Some in the U.S. want to just "keep goin'" as Thelma urges. But most of us probably don't see much of a choice -- it seems more like we are trapped in a car with its gas pedal stuck in the full speed ahead mode and someone has disabled the brakes. For even at this 11th hour, almost no one in the Punch and Judy Show in Washington is able to home in on, much less intelligently discuss, the real problem.

Military Industrial Congressional Media Complex is "modern-day Rasputin"

coleen rowley — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 18:34:19 +0000

As Abraham Lincoln once observed, “Public sentiment is everything.’ (Unfortunately Edward Bernays and Goering quickly figured that out too.)

Now with “embedded reporters” (many “embedded” in more ways than one!) incessantly pressing their readers' natural vices (fear, hate, greed, false pride and blind loyalty) and manufacturing public sentiment, the most recent polls show a high majority of Americans have come to love all things military. Glenn Greenwald aptly calls it our new national religion with US journalists being its high priests. Most “progressives” got fooled. It's how war is being made permanent.