"It is sweet and right to die for your country"

The upcoming anniversary of 9/11 looks like it will entail an explosion of patriotism and jingoism, the likes we have endured all too often in the United States. As the country spreads its militaristic aims ever wider, let's look back to what one famous English soldier wrote (quoted, with notes, from warpoetry.co.uk).

DULCE ET DECORUM EST(1)

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares(2) we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest(3) began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots(4)
Of tired, outstripped(5) Five-Nines(6) that dropped behind.
Gas!(7) Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets(8) just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime(9) . . .
Dim, through the misty panes(10) and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering,(11) choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud(12)
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest(13)
To children ardent(14) for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.(15)

Wilfred Owen
8 October 1917 - March, 1918

Notes on Dulce et Decorum Est

1. DULCE ET DECORUM EST - the first words of a Latin saying (taken from an ode by Horace). The words were widely understood and often quoted at the start of the First World War. They mean "It is sweet and right." The full saying ends the poem: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori - it is sweet and right to die for your country. In other words, it is a wonderful and great honour to fight and die for your country.

2. Flares - rockets which were sent up to burn with a brilliant glare to light up men and other targets in the area between the front lines (See illustration, page 118 of Out in the Dark.)

3. Distant rest - a camp away from the front line where exhausted soldiers might rest for a few days, or longer

4. Hoots - the noise made by the shells rushing through the air

5. Outstripped - outpaced, the soldiers have struggled beyond the reach of these shells which are now falling behind them as they struggle away from the scene of battle

6. Five-Nines - 5.9 calibre explosive shells

7. Gas! - poison gas. From the symptoms it would appear to be chlorine or phosgene gas. The filling of the lungs with fluid had the same effects as when a person drowned

8. Helmets - the early name for gas masks

9. Lime - a white chalky substance which can burn live tissue

10. Panes - the glass in the eyepieces of the gas masks

11. Guttering - Owen probably meant flickering out like a candle or gurgling like water draining down a gutter, referring to the sounds in the throat of the choking man, or it might be a sound partly like stuttering and partly like gurgling

12. Cud - normally the regurgitated grass that cows chew usually green and bubbling. Here a similar looking material was issuing from the soldier's mouth

13. High zest - idealistic enthusiasm, keenly believing in the rightness of the idea

14. ardent - keen

15. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori - see note 1 above.

To see the source of Wilfred Owen's ideas about muddy conditions see his letter in Wilfred Owen's First Encounter with the Reality of War.

House Members: Vote No on Afghan War Supplemental

I'm reproducing here a mailing by WarIsACrime.org (formerly AfterDowningStreet) describing some of the shenanigans surrounding the war funding bill, which is probably going to be voted on tonight. It's also posted by David Swanson at The Seminal, "Tonight They Try to Escalate the War."

Tonight the House of Representatives will try to vote over $30 Billion to escalate the war in Afganistan. Here's how it's expected to go down (thanks to Peace Action for some of this):

First they'll vote on unemployment insurance as a stand-alone bill.

Then, following some unrelated votes, they'll debate and vote on the Rule for the Supplemental. Rules are procedural votes that caucuses of congress members serious about blocking something can vote against. Progressives don't tend to be serious, but there's a first time for everything, and we should ask them to vote No on the Rule. A small group of Blue Dogs and Progressives is urging this.

Then they'll debate and vote on amendments to the supplemental. These are expected to include two good amendments to the war spending, which risk however providing members who vote Yes on the money the excuse that they also voted Yes on good amendments.

Presumably the amendments will also include an amendment for spending on useful things like disaster relief and schools. Perhaps the war escalation spending will also be voted on as an amendment -- it's not clear.

Then the "last votes" will come in the evening. Presumably these will include a vote on the complete package of the Supplemental.

Regardless of exactly how it goes, our demand is simple: VOTE NO!

Vote No on the Rule! Vote No on the war escalation funding if offered separately! Vote No on a bill that includes the war escalation funding!

We've already identified more than enough Democratic No votes to stop this train if the Republicans vote No for their own crazy reasons (and some Republicans oppose the war).

Call your Representative through the Capitol Hill switchboard: (202) 224-3121 and Email 21 key members with one click.

Now's the time to get them on record opposing any more funding for these wars ever.

Check where things stand and report on your progress at http://defundwar.org

Will Obama's Afghan War Spark Its Own Antiwar Movement?

According to multiple accounts, as the White House leaks the news, building up to his speech at West Point on Tuesday, President Barack Obama, channeling a dead president, Lyndon Baines Johnson, and mimicking a live one, George W. Bush, will be calling for an escalation in the Afghanistan War. The administration is said to be considering sending 30-35,000 troops to join the 68,000 U.S. troops already deployed there.

Famously, Obama's head general in Afghanistan, former Special Forces General McChrystal -- a man implicated in torture and war crimes -- had called for 40,000 new troops to fulfill his counterinsurgency plans. It appears that some NATO countries -- primarily Britain, Slovakia, Turkey, Georgia, South Korea and tiny Montenegro -- are positioned to make up the shortfall in troops by adding another four to six thousand, up from the approximately 36,000 non-U.S. troops in the NATO force.

But, according to a posting by fflammeau at Firedoglake, top NATO member Germany is balking:

Days before President Obama escalates the American presence in Afghanistan, Germany’s military chief of staff (General Wolfgang Schneiderhan) and his top aide (Peter Wichert) have resigned over accusations that the German military suppressed evidence of the death of dozens of civilians in an airstrike that killed 142 people. General Schneiderhan’s resignation not only is shaking the Merkel government in Germany, it has raised resistance in Germany (and perhaps other Nato countries) to their involvement in Afghanistan just as Obama seeks more troops from them. In late breaking news... reported by the authoritative Deutsche Welle, top politicians in Germany are now calling for a rethink of their role in Afghanistan and a quick exit strategy. In short, the Germans appear reluctant to play "the poodle role" to Obama.

The U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan have never been about getting Saddam Hussein, or stopping the Taliban, or helping women achieve literacy. They have been about projecting U.S. dominance in that portion of the world, and was made possible by the collapse of Soviet power in the early 1990s.

Since then, China and the European allies (except Britain) have not been especially happy about the expansion of the U.S. in the newly "unipolar" world, but put up with it for the time being. But the writing is on the proverbial wall: sooner or later, Germany, and possibly France and Italy, will tire of U.S. "leadership", and feel they are not getting their piece of the world pie. This re-eruption of European imperialist ambition will mark a new and dangerous chapter in modern foreign affairs. The "terrorist" enemy of today, who themselves replaced the old specter of a soulless Red Army galumphing over Western Europe, will in the future become fear of a new Chinese Red Army, or a reincarnated Wehrmacht, all intent on destroying "our way of life."

Fox News Chides the Left

Meanwhile, Fox News, which like the broken clock gets it right about two times a day, has published an article salivating over both the inevitable pushback against Obama on the Afghan War issue from the Democratic Party's left wing, and also the likely tepid antiwar response from this same group. Quoting Paul Kawika Martin, political director for Peace Action, Fox writer Stephen Clark writes:

The White House has said that the U.S. won't be in Afghanistan for another eight or nine years. But that won't satisfy liberals, Martin said.

Even though Obama's announcement is sure to reawaken the anti-war movement, Martin said, the protests won't be as intense as they were in the Bush era because the movement has been weakened by the economic recession -- some organizations have shed up to 40 percent of staff in the past year, he said -- and is distracted by the national health care debate. He also said many members of the movement voted for Obama and trust him more than the Bush administration.

"So you don't have that same type of anger," he said.

I don't know Martin or his group, so I don't know how reliable they are as a voice of the left, but I do know that the Democratic Party left has fallen down on the torture issue, once Obama indicated that it was time to "look forward" and not "backwards". A small coterie of liberal bloggers, and the nation's top civil liberties groups, opposed this capitulation and still fight bravely on (see the ACLU's latest batch of FOIA docs on the destroyed CIA torture tapes, and some analysis by Marcy Wheeler here and here), but after some desultory hearings about having hearings by Senator Leahy last March, Congress turned to other issues, turning their backs aggressively on those who have been tortured.

While the left hasn't fielded a large-scale antiwar demonstration in years -- really since the beginning of the current Irag war -- there have been some protests. Antiwar and peace groups have not disappeared, and some very intelligent writing in opposition to the escalation of the war in Afghanistan has been published of late (see the latest from David Dayen, which notes the opposition to the war from Democrat Bill Hedrick, or Derrick Crowe, or Glenn Greenwald, not to mention the incomparable Chris Floyd).

But the old antiwar movement of the 1960s and 1970s was spearheaded by a generation of leftists who are no longer on the scene: Stalinists and Maoists, Trotskyists and social-democrats, pacifists and anarchists. If there are some remnants (World Can't Wait gets a hefty amount of organizational drudge work -- and enthusiasm -- from the rank and file of Bob Avakian's old Revolutionary Communist Party), the left as a whole is anemic, and if one is looking for antiwar fervor from Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid's Congressional Democrats, they will be strain their necks from searching. The most "radical" proposition coming from those ranks is a threat to raise a surtax to pay for Obama's war campaign.

Fox News forgot one important point. The escalation of the Afghanistan War will not work, not even by the standards of the U.S. military. But the current crop of military leaders, and their civilian hangers-one, are drunk on their vision of a unipolar world, led by the progeny of West Point, Annapolis, and Colorado Springs, and feeling almost omnipotent, having gotten away with waging a totally illegal war, and spread torture across dozens of countries, all while the populace back home indicated a persistent proclivity for indifference (or fearful complacency, which amounts to the same thing in the end).

Whether Obama is the tool of the hawks, or playing along for time, or even really believes the Global War on Terror inanity (and yes, right-wingers, I know there are dangerous terrorists; they just aren't enough of a danger to anywhere come near changing political and military reality to the degree it has changed, e.g. Patriot Act, torture, invading and destroying other countries), whatever Obama's own intentions are almost doesn't matter.

Days before President Obama escalates the American presence in Afghanistan, Germany’s military chief of staff (General Wolfgang Schneiderhan) and his top aide (Peter Wichert) have resigned over accusations that the German military suppressed evidence of the death of dozens of civilians in an airstrike that killed 142 people. General Schneiderhan’s resignation not only is shaking the Merkel government in Germany, it has raised resistance in Germany (and perhaps other Nato countries) to their involvement in Afghanistan just as Obama seeks more troops from them. In late breaking news... reported by the authoritative Deutsche Welle, top politicians in Germany are now calling for a rethink of their role in Afghanistan and a quick exit strategy. In short, the Germans appear reluctant to play "the poodle role" to Obama.

The U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan have never been about getting Saddam Hussein, or stopping the Taliban, or helping women achieve literacy. They have been about projecting U.S. dominance in that portion of the world, and was made possible by the collapse of Soviet power in the early 1990s.

Since then, China and the European allies (except Britain) have not been especially happy about the expansion of the U.S. in the newly "unipolar" world, but put up with it for the time being. But the writing is on the proverbial wall: sooner or later, Germany, and possibly France and Italy, will tire of U.S. "leadership", and feel they are not getting their piece of the world pie. This re-eruption of European imperialist ambition will mark a new and dangerous chapter in modern foreign affairs. The "terrorist" enemy of today, who themselves replaced the old specter of a soulless Red Army galumphing over Western Europe, will in the future become fear of a new Chinese Red Army, or a reincarnated Wehrmacht, all intent on destroying "our way of life."

Fox News Chides the Left

Meanwhile, Fox News, which like the broken clock gets it right about two times a day, has published an article salivating over both the inevitable pushback against Obama on the Afghan War issue from the Democratic Party's left wing, and also the likely tepid antiwar response from this same group. Quoting Paul Kawika Martin, political director for Peace Action, Fox writer Stephen Clark writes:

The White House has said that the U.S. won't be in Afghanistan for another eight or nine years. But that won't satisfy liberals, Martin said.

Even though Obama's announcement is sure to reawaken the anti-war movement, Martin said, the protests won't be as intense as they were in the Bush era because the movement has been weakened by the economic recession -- some organizations have shed up to 40 percent of staff in the past year, he said -- and is distracted by the national health care debate. He also said many members of the movement voted for Obama and trust him more than the Bush administration.

"So you don't have that same type of anger," he said.

I don't know Martin or his group, so I don't know how reliable they are as a voice of the left, but I do know that the Democratic Party left has fallen down on the torture issue, once Obama indicated that it was time to "look forward" and not "backwards". A small coterie of liberal bloggers, and the nation's top civil liberties groups, opposed this capitulation and still fight bravely on (see the ACLU's latest batch of FOIA docs on the destroyed CIA torture tapes, and some analysis by Marcy Wheeler here and here), but after some desultory hearings about having hearings by Senator Leahy last March, Congress turned to other issues, turning their backs aggressively on those who have been tortured.

While the left hasn't fielded a large-scale antiwar demonstration in years -- really since the beginning of the current Irag war -- there have been some protests. Antiwar and peace groups have not disappeared, and some very intelligent writing in opposition to the escalation of the war in Afghanistan has been published of late (see the latest from David Dayen, which notes the opposition to the war from Democrat Bill Hedrick, or Derrick Crowe, or Glenn Greenwald, not to mention the incomparable Chris Floyd).

But the old antiwar movement of the 1960s and 1970s was spearheaded by a generation of leftists who are no longer on the scene: Stalinists and Maoists, Trotskyists and social-democrats, pacifists and anarchists. If there are some remnants (World Can't Wait gets a hefty amount of organizational drudge work -- and enthusiasm -- from the rank and file of Bob Avakian's old Revolutionary Communist Party), the left as a whole is anemic, and if one is looking for antiwar fervor from Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid's Congressional Democrats, they will be strain their necks from searching. The most "radical" proposition coming from those ranks is a threat to raise a surtax to pay for Obama's war campaign.

Fox News forgot one important point. The escalation of the Afghanistan War will not work, not even by the standards of the U.S. military. But the current crop of military leaders, and their civilian hangers-one, are drunk on their vision of a unipolar world, led by the progeny of West Point, Annapolis, and Colorado Springs, and feeling almost omnipotent, having gotten away with waging a totally illegal war, and spread torture across dozens of countries, all while the populace back home indicated a persistent proclivity for indifference (or fearful complacency, which amounts to the same thing in the end).

Whether Obama is the tool of the hawks, or playing along for time, or even really believes the Global War on Terror inanity (and yes, right-wingers, I know there are dangerous terrorists; they just aren't enough of a danger to anywhere come near changing political and military reality to the degree it has changed, e.g. Patriot Act, torture, invading and destroying other countries), whatever Obama's own intentions are almost doesn't matter.

The real direction of American politics and society is being decided in this next period. Will it follow the road of Cheney and Bush, albeit with a supposedly kinder face, or will the forces who believe in social justice, world peace, promotion of economic equality, and a fight against the forces of exploitation, torture, and war profiteering, wake up, fight, and realize that failure to act is a profound evil in and of itself? It makes other evil possible.

Sign Petition to End the Wars in Iraq & Afghanistan

Tom Hayden's gotten an impressive response to a petition calling for the U.S. to pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan. The petition may not be as strong in its language and not quite as militant as I might like (calling, for instance, vaguely for timelines for "near-term" withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan). But I imagine most will find it quite militant enough. And given the political atmosphere of the times, it's a blockbuster of a petition, aimed at the Gates-led DoD, Gen. McChrystal and their allies. I support signing it.

We, the undersigned peace and justice leaders, believe that the American military interventions in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq are deepening quagmires that threaten a Long War without end.

At the current rate of American deaths in Afghanistan, over 1,000 additional American soldiers will be killed in the next two years of “hard fighting” predicted by the Pentagon as the next phase of a ten year occupation. Another $130 billion for Afghanistan and Iraq now is being rushed through a sleeping Congress. An escalation of even more troops is pending.

Now is the time for an exit strategy to end these wars. The government of warlords, drug lords, and landlords we prop up in Kabul is losing more legitimacy by the day. A majority of Americans – including 70 percent from the majority party – now consider Afghanistan a mistake. Leading national security experts even deny that it’s a necessary war.

If we do not decide to disengage at once, our dreams of domestic reform will be squandered by years of war budgets. Our dreams of clean energy will be buried in wars over oil and pipelines. The global good will extended to our new President will be jeopardized.

We understand how difficult it is to reverse a mistaken course. But that is the leadership we need, not one that continually escalates in order not to lose. We have been there.

- Our government should adopt an exit strategy from Afghanistan based on all-party talks, regional diplomacy, unconditional humanitarian aid, and timelines for the near-term withdrawal of American and NATO combat troops.

- The aerial bombardments of Afghan and Pakistan villages, like burning down haystacks to find terrorist needles, should end.

- Military spending should be reversed in Afghanistan to focus on food, medicine, shelter, the socio-economic needs of the poor, and the dignity of women and children.

- President Obama should keep his pledge to withdraw all troops from Iraq by 2011, and prevent American interference in the forthcoming Iraqi elections.

- The President should oppose any Israeli attack on Iran, which will only inflame the regional and global conflict.

Much as we were inspired by Barack Obama’s election, we will not be taken for granted by the President and the Congressional majority. The historic victories in 2006 and 2008 were fueled by popular enthusiasm and unprecedented voter turnouts that cannot be reignited by e-mail solicitations. A growing disenchantment with a costly quagmire will threaten all the hopes of 2008. Everything is related now: we cannot afford national health care, housing, and clean energy while spending billions on quagmires across several continents.

We are prepared to create a storm of protest in Congressional districts and close Senate races. We will form alliances with all those whose hope for health, energy and economic reform are diminished by these wars. We will defend dissent in the armed forces and protect our children from the snares of military recruiters. We will reach out to strengthen a global peace movement, especially in NATO countries.

History shows that terrorist threats can come from German cities, African villages, and even homegrown American cells, not simply the caves of Pakistan.

Our security needs cannot be served by provoking the growing hatred of America caused by repeated invasions of foreign lands. We are human beings who refuse to be defined in the world as mindless military drones and Predators.

TOM HAYDEN
ARIEL DORFMAN, Author, Duke University

RABBI STEVEN B. JACOBS, Progressive Faith Foundation
REV. GEORGE REGAS, pastor emeritus, All-Saints Episcopal Church
REV. ED BACON, Pastor, All-Saints Episcopal Church
REV. PETER LAARMAN, Progressive Christians United
DR. NAZIR KHAJA, President, Islamic Information Service
REV. JOHN B. COBB, Claremont Theology School
REV. GEORGE HUNSINGER, Princeton Theology Seminary
REV. JAMES CONN, Director, New Ministries, United Methodist Church
RABBI HAIM DOV BELIAK, Hamifgash
REV. JANET EOLLERY MCKEITHEN, Westside Interfaith Coalition
STEPHEN ROHDE, president, Inter-faith Communities for Peace and Justice, Los Angeles

SENATOR JOHN BURTON, chairman, California Democratic Party
KAREN BERNAL, chair, Progressive Caucus, California Democratic Party
DANIEL ELLSBERG
SUSIE SHANNON, Executive Board Member, California Democratic Party
RAY MCGOVERN, CIA [ret.]
PAUL HAGGIS, film director
SONALI KOHATKAR, Co-director, Afghan Women's Mission
MICHAEL RATNER, President, Center for Constitutional Rights
JODIE EVANS, co-founder, CODE PINK
CODE PINK
LESLIE CAGAN, co-founder, United for Peace and Justice
RUSTI EISENBERG, United for Peace and Justice
UNITED FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE [UFPJ]
KEVIN MARTIN, PEACE ACTION, Washington
MICHAEL MCPHEARSON, Veterans for Peace
ROBERT NAIMAN, policy director, JUST FOREIGN POLICY

STAUGHTON LYND, historian
VAN GOSSE, co-founder, Historians Against the War
MARC BECKER, co-chair, Historians Against the War
MICHAEL ALBERT, Znet
BILL FLETCHER, Jr., executive director, Black Commentator, co-founder Progressives for Obama
CARL DAVIDSON, webmaster, PROGRESSIVES FOR OBAMA
RICHARD FALK, professor, Princeton University, United Nations rapporteur
LEONARD WEINGLASS, human rights attorney
MATTHEW EVANGELISTA, chair, Department of Government, Cornell University
STANLEY ARONOWITZ, graduate center, City University of New York
JOE FEAGAN, professor, Texas A&M; University

ROBERT GREENWALD, Brave New Films
GAEL MURPHY, Code Pink, Washington
TIM CARPENTER, Progressive Democrats of America [PDA]
NORMAN BIRNBAUM
DAVID FENTON
LEONARD WEINGLASS, human rights attorney