Out Framing the Conservatives

Framing options for Democrats on the Iraq/Iran war issues: (condensed and edited from Chris Currie’s letter to Senator Sheldon Whitehouse)

1. In 2002, the Bush Administration and the Republican Party began using a planned invasion and occupation of Iraq as a political tool to "rally Americans around the flag" (to benefit Republican candidates). Those who opposed war as a solution were "unpatriotic". They may be preparing to repeat this bloody trick for 2008 by using Iran.

2. Bush’s war policy has already cost more American lives than Osama Bin Laden’s entire Al Qaeda network! Overall, Bush’s decision to go to war has resulted in the death of well over a few hundred thousand innocent people and wounded and/or displaced several million more. His war has assisted Al Qaeda’s recruitment and revitalization in both Muslim and non-Muslim nations alike.

3. Bush "justified" the invasion of Iraq based on credible evidence that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. We knew he had them because Bush’s father provided Saddam’s scientists with dozens of biological weapons shipments and hundreds of tons of chemical WMD precursors. US intelligence efforts also provided Saddam with targeting information that he used to effectively mass murdering Iranian soldiers using WMD and simply ignored Saddam’s his use of WMD to mass murder Kurds, If Bush's WMD allegations turned out to be true regarding reports of Iraqi weaponized smallpox, millions of American’s could have perished if Saddam had decided to use them knowing his days were numbered…or had such a bioweapons pandemic been sparked accidentally in the fog of war. Iraqi possession of such powerful WMD was the best reason to avoid a “shock and awe” invasion.

4. Neocon don’t live by… love-your-neighbor-as-yourself principles. They live by the creed of national superiority, US exceptionalism…and might makes right. Peace loving democrats find it difficult to ‘fight’ back. Even Jesus Christ recognized the need to HARSHLY CRITICIZE some of the local religious leaders of his time. But, he NEVER advocated ‘shock and awe”.

5. When Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addressed the United Nations General Assembly, most mainstream news agencies were more interested in highlighting his ridiculous comments (no Gays in Iraq) than covering some of the valid points he made or his backing away from denying the Holocaust. Are our news agencies assisting the Bush in building momentum for military strikes against Iran? Is any agency talking about the US body count and economic consequences from entirely predictable yet unstoppable Iranian countermeasures?

5. The deadly anthrax sent through our postal system shortly after 9/11 was manufactured by our own government’s weapons labs. Is a cyber or nuclear home-grown terrorist attack possible "on US soil"? What intrusive/repressive/abusive government measures will be justified to ‘preempt/prevent’ one? Will such efforts inspire an American third-party sympathizers (like the Oklahoma City bombers). As the Book of Revelation says, those who live by the sword tend to die by the sword. The very existence of those weapons is a threat to our security.]

6. Democrats still think they won in 2006. They haven’t grasp the fact that the Republican’s simply lost. In 2004, John Kerry was correctly perceived by millions of voters (including millions of Democrats) as being a "gutless flip-flopping Bush Lite". His campaign “advisors” were more interested in protecting their temporary lead in the opinion polls than they were in offering the American people a bold and practical alternative to the Bush ‘preemptive doctrine’. Democrats were too fearful to offer the American people a global vision. An extension of the American revolution to all humanity. Republicans have since reframed their preemptive doctrine to a global police and nation building effort of ‘protecting freedom’ and ‘encouraging democracy’….something that only a federal world government with an enforceable bill of rights could accomplish (with a real but limited ability to tax people worldwide and a real global police force that could “fight terrorism” by investigating, arresting, trying, and incarcerating proven terrorist … rather than dropping bombs on “suspected terrorists” and their families). Enforceable global government regulations are the only realistic solutions to WMD proliferation, genocide, terrorism, famines, plagues, climate change, economic collapse, corporate plundering and abuse of basic human rights, etc. The Republican’s worship of war, greed, and the reversal of progress in human rights so as to benefit of the top 0.1 percent of our population is un-American, un-Christian, and non sustainable on any level.

But American’s would have to pull them selves away from the latest holliwood or congressional scandle to learn enough about the threats we face to really understand the need for global solutions.

Unfortunately Churchill was likely correct. Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing…but only after thoroughly exhausting every other possibility…at least twice…

Gen. Pace's mistakes

Gen. Pace's mistakes (Letter to the Editor in Today's Washington Times by two retired Army Captains.)

How convenient it is for the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Peter Pace, to admit on the eve of his retirement to errors of judgment made in the Iraq war ("Top general acknowledges Iraq mistakes," Web site, Saturday).

The fact that our generals perpetually professed to Congress and the American people that we had adequate American troop levels in Iraq when the opposite has always been the case constitutes a dereliction of duty that continues to go unaddressed.

While leading American soldiers on patrols and trying to train Iraqi security forces in 2003 and 2005 in Al Anbar, BaghdadandNineveh provinces, we, and many other officers operating at the tactical and operational levels, consistently conveyed to our superior officers the need for more troops. There simply was not enough manpower to support the security, humanitarian and nation-building efforts.

To this end, our generals neither served their purpose nor did what they were promoted to do take care of the soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen under their charge, fight for their units and lead by example.

How is it that no senior officer has served any jail time for the Abu Ghraib prison scandal? Why did our senior leaders think "search and destroy" was going to be any more effective in Iraq than it was in Vietnam? How is it that the officers responsible for lying about Pat Tillman's death were only given notional reprimands? Why has no American officer been held accountable for hundreds of thousands of missing weapons and equipment in Iraq? Why is it that the only general officers who have spoken up about failed war strategy are retired?

It is simply astonishing that through the incompetence and self-delusion of these men, who have disgraced the uniform, an insurgency and terrorists have grown stronger, and overall, our military posture is weakened.

Even now, Gens. David H. Petraeus and Raymond Odierno count their temporary successes with a minuscule force of 160,000 soldiers and Marines but are as silent as church mice over the need for additional forces to make the gains more permanent.

In fact, we're already talking about a reduction in forces when any general who possessed the competence of say, a captain, would be telling Congress to triple the size of the Army and Marines or cut our losses.

Time will tell how this ugly and terrible debacle will unfold, but the history of our military leaders during this era will ultimately reveal the truth and extent of their dereliction.

CAPT. JASON BLINDAUER, Army (retired), Dallas

CAPT. LUIS CARLOS MONTALVAN, Army (retired) New York City

Mitt Romney not serious about UN having power.

There is little doubt that Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad should be indicted for incitement of genocide against Israel. There is legislation pending in the Senate (House Concurrent Resolution 21) that calls for such action. But it is disingenuous for the Mitt Romney to “call on the US to reconsider its participation in the UN should the body continue to act as a toothless overseer” when it comes to Iran as the Washington Times editorial staff wrote (Tuesday, Sept 17, 2007 “Ahmadinejad at the UN”).

The UN was specifically designed and has been persistent maintained as a ‘toothless overseer” by the US government and particularly US politicians who fear any creation of a UN police force that would have any teeth for protecting human rights anywhere.

The US invasion and occupation of Iraq, not to mention Israel’s recent air strikes on Syria are “in fragrant disregard of the U.N.’s mission” but the Washington Times editorial team remains silent about the UN’s inability to do anything about these lethal violations of national sovereignty. This hypocrisy is part of the reason we have problems in the Middle East.

If Ahmadinejad is allowed to enter the UN he should be handed an indictment as Mr Romney suggested in another Washington Times news story, but something more should also be done about the existing ethnic cleansing now taking place in Iraq. A draw down of US troops after some success isn’t going to help. If anyone is serious about preventing crimes against humanity, like genocide against Israel or ethnic cleansing agaist the Shittes or Sunnis they would demand giving the UN real teeth consistent with the institution’s mission, instead of relying on the fickle US to be the world’s policeman.

The most effective force for peace, security and the protection of human rights in the world today could be an all Muslim UN peacekeeping/rapid reaction force capable of bring security to Iraq or arresting criminal Muslim politicians like Ahmadinejad. They could do so without sparking Armageddon.

But this isn’t what Romney or the Washington Times is committed to. All they just want is to continue to use the UN as a scapegoat for global problems while allowing global lawlessness to rule the day.