A Marine’s Poem leads to US Representative David Obey’s anti-liberal tirade
Survivor’s GuiltI stare at this paper and don’t know what to say
I don’t feel right saying “happy memorial day”
I don’t find anything happy in the price you’ve paid
We’re both just pawns when this game called
war gets played
My body came home but my spirit just stayed
That hot Iraqi day when you were slayed
Watching my back so I could sleep unafraid I
heard the explosion from where I laid
And instantly I watched the skies go grey
I watched my life just float away
How could things go this way
You were my brother in arms and you took my place
But not like the way that car bomb took your face
And blew off your limbs
When I think about it my head starts to spin
I get noxious when I think of your family
I want to tell them I truly am sorry
I’m sorry your son died protecting me
This isn’t the way things were meant to be
You see that day your son took my duty
Your brother sacrificed four 4 hours of sleep
So he could go guard a gate for me
Your fiancée took my fate from me
I’m sorry your father took my place for me
I’m sorry I can spend memorial day with my family
Today should have been a memorial for me
At least then the survivor could have lived guilt-
free–Cpl. Cloy Richards
When Tina Richards, the mother of Corporal Cloy Richards, who is returning to Iraq for a third tour, encountered Representative David Obey (D-WI), Chair of the House Appropriations Committee, Richards mentioned her son was a Marine who was returning to Iraq and that she had just been to Obey’s office to drop off her son’s poem, “Survivor’s Guilt”.
Obey became infuriated and went into a tirade against, “idiot liberals” who call for an immediate cutoff of war funding:
It doesn’t. The President wants to continue the war. We’re trying to use the supplemental to end the war, but you can’t end the war by going against the supplemental. It’s time these idiot liberals understand that. There’s a big difference between funding the troops and ending the war. I’m not gonna deny body armor. I’m not gonna deny funding for veterans hospitals, defense hospitals, so you can help people with medical problems, that’s what you’re gonna do if you’re going against that bill.
When Tina Richards and the other members of the Occupation Project, an anti-war group, suggested that all that was necessary was not to pass any more war appropriations, Obey seemed to become unhinged, accusing one man of “smoking something illegal” and pointing to his empty inner coat pocket and almost-shouting, “do you see a magic wand?”
Obey’s office has been one of several around the country where anti-war sit-in’s and other forms of non-violent protest have been taking place.
Obey’s Tirade youtube link from Grassroots America
See also: Congressman’s video blunder shows Democrats split on war Washington Times
Tina Richards, A Mother of a US Soldier Crosses Paths With Rep. David Obey Al-Jazeerah
Protests target state’s lawmakers: Activists urge Obey, Kohl to vote against funding for war Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Copyright © 2007 Henry Edward Hardy
Human Rights Watch: Ghost Prisoner: Two Years in Secret CIA Detention
Human Rights Watch has compiled a comprehensive report about the case of one of the “disappeared”, Marwan Jabour. Most of the docile and pathetic British and US press have ‘reported’ on this publication without managing to link to it or even so much as mention the name of the report!
Here’s a bit from the Summary:
When Marwan Jabour opened his eyes, after a blindfold, a mask, and other coverings were taken off him, he saw soldiers and, on the wall behind them, framed photographs of King Hussein and King Abdullah of Jordan. He was tired and disoriented from his four-hour plane flight and subsequent car trip, but when a guard confirmed that he was being held in Jordan, he felt indescribable relief. In his more than two years of secret detention, nearly all of it in US custody, this was the first time that someone had told him where he was. The date was July 31, 2006.
A few weeks later, in another first, the Jordanians allowed several of Jabour’s family members to visit him. “My father cried the whole time,” Jabour later remembered.
Marwan Jabour was arrested by Pakistani authorities in Lahore, Pakistan, on May 9, 2004. He was detained there briefly, then moved to the capital, Islamabad, where he was held for more than a month in a secret detention facility operated by both Pakistanis and Americans, and finally flown to a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) prison in what he believes was Afghanistan. During his ordeal, he later told Human Rights Watch, he was tortured, beaten, forced to stay awake for days, and kept naked and chained to a wall for more than a month. Like an unknown number of Arab men arrested in Pakistan since 2001, he was “disappeared” into US custody: held in unacknowledged detention outside of the protection of the law, without court supervision, and without any contact with his family, legal counsel, or the International Committee of the Red Cross.
The secret prison program under which Jabour was held was established in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, when US President George W. Bush signed a classified directive authorizing the CIA to hold and interrogate suspected terrorists. Because the entire program was run outside of US territory, it required the support and assistance of other governments, both in handing over detainees and in allowing the prisons to operate.
–from the Summary of Ghost Prisoner: Two Years in Secret CIA Detention
See also: BBC Report: ‘Sleaze alleged in CIA’
European Union: Report on the alleged use of European countries by the CIA for the transportation and illegal detention of prisoners
Copyright © 2007 Henry Edward Hardy
The Guardian: US commanders admit: we face a Vietnam-style collapse
An interesting article in the Guardian says that General Petraeus and his staff have concluded that the US faces a collapse of political and public support for the war in Iraq within the next six months. In addition, due to low morale, poor readiness and the high morale and level of experience of the resistance groups, the US faces a military collapse similar to the French collapse in Viet Nam in March-May 1954 or the collapse of US forces in Korea in October-December 1950.
US commanders admit: we face a Vietnam-style collapse
Elite officers in Iraq fear low morale, lack of troops and loss of political will
Simon Tisdall
Thursday March 1, 2007
The GuardianAn elite team of officers advising the US commander, General David Petraeus, in Baghdad has concluded that they have six months to win the war in Iraq – or face a Vietnam-style collapse in political and public support that could force the military into a hasty retreat.The officers – combat veterans who are experts in counter-insurgency – are charged with implementing the “new way forward” strategy announced by George Bush on January 10. The plan includes a controversial “surge” of 21,500 additional American troops to establish security in the Iraqi capital and Anbar province.
But the team, known as the “Baghdad brains trust” and ensconced in the heavily fortified Green Zone, is struggling to overcome a range of entrenched problems in what has become a race against time, according to a former senior administration official familiar with their deliberations…
US commanders admit: we face a Vietnam-style collapse The Guardian
Battle of Chosin Reservoir (wikipedia)
Battle of Dien Bien Phu (wikipedia)
Copyright © 2007 Henry Edward Hardy
Snips of Ike: Eugene Jarecki’s Why We Fight
Snips of Ike:
Why We Fight
by Henry Edward Hardy
Eugene Jarecki’s Why We Fight takes as its framework snippets from President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s famous televised farewell to the nation in 1961, often called the “military-industrial complex” speech. Jarecki is best known for The Trials of Henry Kissinger.
One may or may not be sympathetic to the premise of the film, that the United States has become an American Empire, and as such, is behaving badly in the world. Why We Fight makes clever use of icons of the Republican Party such as John McCain and Eisenhower and neoconservatives such as William Kristol and Richard Pearle to make its points.
Why We Fight is also the title of a series of films made for the U.S. government by Frank Capra during World War II. They were commissioned in response to the Nazi use of mass media in films like Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will. Since then the title has been (mis-)appropriated a number of times, such as the book by former “Drug Czar” William J. Bennett subtitled “Moral Clarity and the War on Terrorism”, and the name of a popular Danish rock band.
Jarecki’s Why We Fight has not been widely seen in the U.S. It was shown on the BBC in March 2005 and won the American Documentary Grand Prize at Sundance in 2005. The film would be stronger if it were better-organized and had a less transparent point to make. For those unfamiliar with some of Eisenhower’s later and more progressive thinking, this film is an interesting introduction.
A version of this article appeared previously in Current Magazine and on Electric Current
Copyright © 2006-2007 Henry Edward Hardy
Letter to the youth of America
Next year, some of you will die. Horribly. In the war.
Not all of you. But the draft will start again, and your generation will be drenched in blood.
You will become victims, and victimizers.
You will kill, rape, pillage.
You will laugh, cry, and die calling for your mother.
Your friends will be taken away, and never return. Or their body will come back, but they won’t. Someone else will be there in their place, looking through the prison of their eyes at a world which no longer makes sense.
I went to a pancake breakfast this morning honoring the senior member of the US House of Representatives, John Dingell. The event was a fundraiser for the University of Michigan College Democrats at a local brewpub in Ann Arbor, MI. There were easily more than a hundred people there, including the mayor, state legislators, council members and a former congressman.
John Dingell is a great politician. He looks right at you (unless he wants you to vanish) and he is a very good listener. He remembers names and faces and events with great precision. His father sat in Congress before him, and he’s been there more than 50 years now.
He gave a nice speech recognizing the usefulness of the flying squads of students who helped in swing districts when the Demos swept the governorship and legislative bodies. He spoke nicely about the local officials there. He said not word one about Iraq.
Then his wife Debbie spoke. More platitudes, less substance even than John.
When the mic went back to the student MC, I said loudly Tell us about your plan to stop the war, John!
People started shushing me and saying be quiet.
I said, While we have been happily stuffing our faces and congratulating ourselves, another 8 people have died in Iraq. Two were children. That’s right, your pancakes are drenched in the blood of the children of Iraq!
Some guy was grabbing me and pulling on me and I told him Let go of me or I will call the police and ask that you be charged with assault and battery. There was a minor-to-medium uproar (which is to say, no chairs or fists flying).
Dingell got kind of red in the face and looked pissed but he came back to the mic and said I’ll answer that.
Dingell said that he had met with Bush before the war and told him to his face that the war would be a disaster, that there was no planning for the post-war situation. He voted against the war authorization. He had done all he could within the Congress against the war. But there were divisions within the Democratic caucus. He said there was no simple solution to the war. He said if you have a better idea I’d like to hear it.
I said I do have a better idea. (people shouting)
He said if I had a better idea he wanted to hear it.
I said are you [the students] going to let me speak or will you carry on like a bunch of Young Republicans?
Yes, Congressman there is a simple answer, you just don’t want to acknowledge it. Don’t vote for any more war appropriations! You must not vote for a two-year appropriation for an illegal aggressive war which was authorized based on lies, lies, propaganda, and more lies. Tell us you won’t vote to pay for war any more!
He said that Bush was the worst President of his lifetime, perhaps of all time. He said I think something to the effect that his [Bush’s] people are amateurs. (very noisy at this point much chaos)
I didn’t persist and they ended the event. Several people including one councilperson and some party officials came to thank me for what I said and a few students also said they respected my right to speak out but most of them wouldn’t meet my eye. They were all mostly wearing identical blue tee shirts which said, “Democrats make better lovers” on the front and “who ever heard of a good piece of elephant” on the back. Way to go dudes and dudesses. When I was a teenager it was about peace and love. Now its about tits and ass, apparently.
You people are so square (the students I mean, not the old radicals turned politicians) if you rubbed your head you would cut yourself on the corners. We old radicals are still trying to deal with this mess of neocons left by Reagan and Nixon, why don’t you rebel and give us a hand a bit. Having everyone look and act the same, that is not democracy, that is fascism. It is also very boring.
People think Iraq is as bad as it can get, but it isn’t, not nearly. It is not even near as bad as Korea or the Second Indochina War (what people call in the US, the Viet Nam War). The US has lost 3,135 killed in Iraq so far. In Korea or Viet Nam, that figure was over 50 thousand. And most of those dead will be you, the students, who will be enslaved by the draft and forced to become war criminals and murderers.
You must demand today that John Dingell and the rest of the US Congress stop voting money for this illegal war, or else tomorrow it will be you and your friends who will be murdering and dying in a foreign land where everyone hates you, and you hate yourself as well.
Please wake up and demand an end to funding this war before it escalates still further.
If you want to support someone, don’t fund sending them somewhere to be killed!
Continued funding for this war is both stupid and evil. It must stop now.
More Action Necessary?
Kicking Ass Ann Arbor
University of Michigan College Democrats
Oh, BTW if someone has video of the event they could send me, I’d love to post it here as well as get a better transcript of what was said rather than my approximate paraphrases above.
Copyright © 2007 Henry Edward Hardy
About Scanlyze
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Scanlyze is an online magazine of essays, commentary, satire, and analysis. Were we half as clever, for inspiration we would take Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, Swift, Montaigne, or Seneca.
“The men who create power make an indispensable contribution to the Nation’s greatness, but the men who question power make a contribution just as indispensable, especially when that questioning is disinterested, for they determine whether we use power or power uses us.”
John F. Kennedy, October 26, 1963
Show your support for Scanlyze!
Click the “Make A Donation” link below to make a donation through PayPal using either your PayPal account or any major credit card.
This site is semi-archival. I actively post on @hhardy01@mastodon.social.
Paypal or credit card donation
Copyright © 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 Henry Edward Hardy.
Recent Comments
Scanlyze 