About Not Fighting in The Good War
Posted by
soulscompanion
Posted on: 05/23/09
About Not Fighting in The Good War
When a documentary called "The Good War and Those Who Refused to Fight It" came out several years ago, I wrote an article for History News Network about the conscientious objectors of WWII.

My Uncle Harvey, now 91 years old and my last living uncle, was a CO, and he's taught me a lot about the heroism and courage he and his fellows objectors showed and the abuse they endured.
"Like combat soldiers, many conscientious objectors were willing to sacrifice themselves for their country. However, they were simply unwilling to kill for it," the PBS site dedicated to the documentary says. These were men who refused to kill other young men like themselves because, as my uncle said, "They had never done anything against me. I had no reason to kill them." Harvey was deeply religious and a philosopher who refused to compromise his beliefs, and chose conscientious objection instead. It wasn't an easy way to go. There were 37,000 COs in WWII, and some served their entire service in prison.
"World War II legal conscientious objectors had two choices: alternative work in the Civilian Public Service camps or non-combatant service in the Armed Forces. The CPS camps became incubators for many of the techniques of non-violent resistance used later in the civil rights and peace movements. Unsatisfied with the menial work assignments, the lack of financial support and the poor treatment they received in CPS camps, many men left the camps in protest and joined their comrades behind bars."
He married my aunt and shortly thereafter was sent off to a Civilian Public Service camp, by himself, to work in the forests at hard labor. "In CPS they would be required to work nine-hour days, six days a week at hard labor, and were expected to pay the government $35 a month for their room and board." Some COs spent the entire war in the camp, and some weren't released until 1947, two years after the war ended.

When he was sent to work in a mental hospital in New Jersey, Aunt Loraine joined him and worked in the hospital also, giving birth to their only child there.
Back then, in the '40s, mental hospitals truly were the Dickensian snake pits that have been depicted in old black and white movies. The patients were often psychotic and often abused, with the cause and effect lost in the tangle; my uncle was one of a group of hospital aides who rebelled against the onerous practices that were used against patients, and they were able to get them changed into more therapeutic and caring procedures. This was actually the beginning of modern mental health practices.
Other COs were smoke jumpers, doing dangerous service by jumping into raging forest fires and putting them out before they could spread to farms and cities.
Still others were forced into medical experiments that were unethical, and that maimed them for life or killed them.

This is a photo of a CO before he was forced to participate in a starvation experiment.

This is the same CO after the starvation experiment.
When Harvey came home on his infrequent furloughs, and after the war, he and other COs, as well as their wives and families, were spit on, refused service at stores and restaurants, yelled at on the street and generally treated like traitors, often by people who knew them and with whom they had grown up. They were refused jobs and ostracized in every way possible.

It was an excruciating time for all Americans, those days after Pearl Harbor, and for everyone on the globe after the rise of Hitler. Different heroes worked out its implications in different ways.
This Memorial Day, be sure to give some thought to the unsung heroes who also served without the glory or the parades, and who sought to do their best to make this country great.
As the creators of the Peace Movement, they should be honored as our nation's soul.
Behold the Woman
Behold the Woman
Whatever you give a woman, she will make greater. 
If you give her sperm, she'll give you a baby.
If you give her a house, she'll give you a home.
If you give her groceries, she'll give you a meal.
If you give her a smile, she'll give you her heart.
She multiplies and enlarges what is given to her.
So, if you give her any crap, be ready to receive a ton of shit.
~Author unknown, but probably a woman
Doing Good and Doing It Right: "Do No Harm" Not Good Enough
Posted by
soulscompanion
Posted on: 04/30/09
Doing Good and Doing It Right: "Do No Harm" Not Good Enough
Since the turn of the 20th century, physicians have commonly used the adage, “First, do no harm”, as their ethical touchstone. Its original primary power was to stop doctors from experimenting with risky procedures on vulnerable patients; sometimes, it would seem, doing nothing is better for a person than treating them at all, as in “The treatment was worse than the cure.” Just because you have a hammer, everything isn’t a nail.

Primum non nocere has migrated into other professions such that you may hear it used in mental health, universities, nonprofit businesses, clean energy, animal research and even some for-profit corporations. It has nestled so deeply into our collective unconscious that we don’t question its goodness and universal utility; for those whom it stops from wreaking havoc on others, it has been a good and trusted servant. But is that enough, in our current situation?
Is “doing no harm” a strong enough societal vessel to get us where we choose to go now, or do we need something more affirming, directional and robust? Don’t we need to be assertively “doing lots of good” to counter the massive problems we have created in the past several centuries?
In this era of massive governmental and business corruption frequently justified by someone’s delusion of “the greater good” (e.g., invading Iraq, or police brutality), or by a common projection of “everyone’s doing it, and it doesn’t hurt anyone” (e.g., huge corporate bonuses, some given to the very perpetrators of our current economic debacle, or the serfdom of women caught in the sex trade, where there are supposedly no victims), real pain and suffering abound for innocent people caught in the crossfire.
Too many are hungry, ill, and homeless with no job prospects or medical care on the horizon for the negatively-framed “do no harm” to be nearly potent enough for our screwed-up world. Too many are confused and emotionally adrift in a society where media continually trumpet, “Be sure to get yours – then get out!”
We must change our consciousness into an active and positive “do good as much as you possibly can”, in order to bring our world out of the literal and figurative smog. Merely not hurting anyone never really was good enough – now we can see the truth of this everywhere we look across our depleted landscape, where whole species are going extinct by default and where water is being bought and sold to the highest bidder as part of the traditional capitalist system. “Do no harm” won’t stop these freight trains.
Our greatest resource for changing this mindset and creatively and truly nourishing our world resides within ourselves. This is meant in a literal and powerfully creative sense.
We know from the work of UO emeritus physics professor Amit Goswami that there is a universal level within each of us that is creative in unlimited proportions, that allows us to see and work in the world with new eyes and possibilities. It’s a level that unites us all in the strength of caring about our world.
That level obviously is not the level of our everyday world, in which we’re rushing, worrying, picking up kids, and looking for work. Rather, the universal level of creative possibilities is the one where we’re quiet, breathing deeply, and reflecting inward to our hearts, into the space between thoughts.
The Institute of Heartmath provides research that showcases the primacy of the heart in this journey of healing the world and doing good, and that doing good is actually good and pleasurable for you. Heartmath says, “Sincere caring can have a profound and immediate impact on an individual’s physical state.” This impact encompasses “greater energy, better immune system function and improved cognitive ability, including more clarity and effective decision-making,” as well as slower aging, to name a few of its components. Doing good is really good for you.
We have some deep work to do to change our passive societal stance toward corruption, violence, discrimination, poverty and all the other ills, into an active searching for and embracing of solutions that build community and make us all strong. When we use the “doing good” muscles together, we become stronger and wiser together. And as we grow together, doing harm drops more and more from even being considered as a viable action.
Love may not quite be all we need, but we certainly, actively, need it now. Loving our neighbor, more than just “doing no harm”, is great medicine.
Stuffaholism - Cured At Last
Posted by
soulscompanion
Posted on: 05/09/09
Stuffaholism - Cured At Last
It's a red letter day here in the Soulscompanion household, one that all women yearn for and will hate me for - the SO is organizing, recycling and throwing out his long-accumulated junk (we're talking decades here) ALL OVER THE HOUSE, while I have the computer, and a beer, all to myself. Ahhhhhhhhhh! It's absolutely scintillating.

Don't hate me too much - this has come at the great price of some of my best nagging, threats and dramatic meltdowns ("I can't take this any more! I CAN'T TAKE THIS ..... ANY......MORE!!!!!!! [pounding on counter, tears and snot flowing like...tears and snot] I'm finding my own apartment if you don't do something about this within a month!") Whew. There were some cuss words in there too, and he deserved them, but I won't say them here, with a tip of the chapeau to Wearmanyhats.
I am no prissy fuss budget - I've been known to make my messes - but, as with most women, I CLEAN THEM UP - EVENTUALLY. I have my own mild case of OCD (CDO if spelled in proper alphabetic order), and at some point, it all becomes too much and I do something about it. And I do it right. I make it right. You all know that, when you write, you have to have some sense of beauty, peace, and order around you to be able create anything readable.
Not the SO. He can go on piling things on forever, until the piles are works of art that no one can disturb, on pain of pulling back a bloody stump. He was even devolving into 3rd grade behavior like leaving dirty dishes all over the house, and politely piling them on the counter for me to do something with. I don't think so. It may be Mother's Day tomorrow, but I ain't your mother. And I don't think your mother let you get away with this sort of behavior. If she did, shame on her.
The SO is a bona fide master-level, black belt stuffaholic. He can't throw anything away unless you pry it from his bloody, clenched hands.
He couldn't go to the store without bringing home 50 of something we only needed 5 of, because he is also a black belt power shopper who knows all the angles of squeezing a penny until it screams, and of course sometimes this entails buying in bulk. That was the excuse he often used. He would also bring home "finds" that he picked up along the road, that he would swear he had a surefire use for.
Not any more.
Now, either I go shopping with him, dogging him every step of the way - I have threatened to get one of those kiddie leashes in XL and apply it to him - or I send him off with dire warnings about what awaits him at home if he comes back with too much, or in some cases, with ANYTHING. You don't want to hear - a woman's gotta do what a woman's gotta do. And yes, some of it had to do with body parts. (Have you heard that Lorena Bobbit is back in the news again? ;-) )
Stuffaholism, in my opinion, often has to do with an attempt to heal childhood woundings, those of not getting enough of something that was really needed or wanted, usually primal. I think it also has to do with building a fortress of stuff around yourself that protects you from the outside world and protects you from getting hurt from not getting filled up all over again.
I also think I'm frickin' sick of it! I'm sick of doing what I could to create order, peace and some sense of sanity in little pockets and corners of the house - the ones that I could manage to control.
Oh trust me, we've gone the compassion route, the understanding route, the counseling route, the give-it-time route, the I'll-help-you route.
Now we're on the kick-butt highway, and the cruising is super-fine. I'm liking my view. I'm liking that I have a view at last. I can find my fireplace now, and I can walk somewhere without tripping over boxes and other crap. Nice. So this is my house!!!
We bought this house partly so that I could have my private practice and give workshops here - there is wonderful space on the first floor for just those activities. Now I have hope that that will finally happen, and that I will be inspired and able to decorate to my heart's content, because I can now see the walls, the floors and the furniture - oh! there was a chair under there?
Yep, it's a beautiful day. Before you feel too sorry for the SO, which hopefully you don't, because he's deserved all the grief he's gotten, I'm taking him to a fancy restaurant tonight to celebrate his birthday..... which was a few days ago, NOT today - even I wouldn't make someone clean on their birthday.
We're also going to reinforce his magnificent work today, as he is doing a fine, fine job. And he's liking the fruits of his labor also, so much so that it just may stick.
Uh, could you bring me another beer when you come back by this way, honey? There's a dear. Cute little apron!
The Blessing of the Weeds
Posted by
soulscompanion
Posted on: 05/18/09
The Blessing of the Weeds
There is nothing better than working in the yard pulling up old dead brown stalks and leaves while inhaling all the pungent earthy scents of the new plants and the awakening soil, unless it's doing it while your honey is out there too humming along on his mowers.
I am so my father's daughter. Dad was a champeen weeder - you could see him out there all summer, late into the gloaming, with his butt up in the air and his spade ripping out the dandelions and chickweed. He was methodical, meditative with his weeding, taking his time to do it right, and also to be alone with his thoughts, I suspect. He was a farmer at heart, so this was also his only time to be one with nature before he had to head back to his cubicle again. I always hated that he never got his farm, mostly because my mom vetoed that, but he got a pretty cool suburban home with a big yard in later years. And he got his garden with pumpkins, tomatoes, beans and cukes.
I always go back to my childhood yard in my head when I'm working outside - can't help it, it's automatic with the first whiff of grass and the sun hot on my back. It's a happy feeling memory for me, invigorating me and putting things in perspective.
I tend to weed faster and less carefully than my father. It's not the 1950's any more but the speeded up 21st century, and I'm anxious to see the yard look better - as usual, we've dragged our feet about getting started with the yearly cleanup, though I can blame the rains, the cold, and my partner's recent accident for that too. I'm so tired of the old brown fern leaves covering so much of the new green stuff, and I could just hear the young shoots thanking me for freeing them up and allowing more air and sunshine in. You're welcome, my darlings.
I got a LOT done in two hours of concentrated weed attack, until my back and knees yelled Uncle so loud I had to listen. It's so lovely and satisfying to look back on what I did, and to ruthlessly plan the swath I'm going to cut the next time. Ah, the next time!
Finally, it's warm enough in the Pacific Northwest to get out in the yard in the cool and quiet of the early morning - that magical time when the fairies come out, along with the deer and the cats and the turkeys, and sometimes a raccoon or three.
I find that time especially healing. I make up in my mind that this is when I'm most able to be authentically and completely myself, when all the organics in me can join directly with and breathe in all the organics in the world, and there really is no seam, no division, no conflict. Being here now. I am the world in a fluid, non-grasping, hummingbird kind of way.
I'm pleasantly tired now and ready for the week ahead, and feeling blessed to be just where I am. Thank you, sacred weeds, for connecting me with my dad, my childhood, my honey, nature, the world and my Self again. Thank you so much.
The Economics of Toilet Training: Happy Mother's Day
Posted by
soulscompanion
Posted on: 05/10/09
The Economics of Toilet Training: Happy Mother's Day
I've recently joined the Board of a new childcare center here in Eugene that's going to be revolutionary in several ways.

The center was created particularly to provide a strong helping hand to Eugene's large Hispanic community, which is often the target of discrimination and neglect, and to those in the Anglo community who choose to come into closer community and friendship with them.
Not only will we offer childcare that is dual immersion in Spanish and English, as well as business incubation with a number of services that will lead to a collectiva of thriving small businesses out of the center, as well as a center that is family- and community-oriented with lots of events, workshops and opportunities...
We're opening a Time Bank.
A "time bank" is a concept that began several decades ago and is now taking off like a shot in this diciest economy since the Great Depression.
A time bank is a system for "banking" your time in service (like volunteer work) to another time bank member; for each hour of service that you give, you receive a Time Dollar, which you can redeem for services from another Time Bank member, or at a number of businesses and organizations that have joined the Bank.
For instance, you could spend 2 hours caring for someone's elderly mother, and receive 2 Time Dollars, which you could spend for 2 hours of housecleaning, or painting, or, in the case of our new center, childcare.
We'll also be banking ROCS - Robust Complementary Community Currency System - in which the highly skilled work of an electrician, say, or a doctor could be traded at a negotiated rate for work that is less skilled, like clearing brush. One hour of a dentist's work might be traded for five hours of yard work, so that the economic rate is "complementary".
Another huge plus: Everything that's transacted within a Time Bank is tax-free according to the IRS, mostly because the economy isn't based on the value of a US dollar, but on the work itself.
Now, you're asking yourself where does the toilet training come in?
The answer is - everywhere.
Edgar Cahn, the creator of time banking, did so because of and for the Core Economy. "The Core Economy is not Wall Street or Main Street; it is the economy of family, neighborhood, kith and kin," he said.
According to Cahn, many economists have acknowledged that "40-50% of productive economic activity takes place outside of the market and is not measured by traditional indicators."
And the great majority of that work is accomplished by mothers and other caretakers, usually women, who teach us how to walk and talk, to tell the truth, and to avoid harming ourselves and others.
Futurist Alvin Toffler framed the penultimate question showing what economists overlook, and put it to CEO’s of Fortune 500 companies:
“How productive do you think your work force would be if it was not toilet trained?”
"That’s a useful if disconcerting starting point for re-assessing what we value and measure as 'productive labor,'" Cahn said.
It's well known that "women's work", especially child care, is trashed on Wall Street and doesn't do much better on Main Street. It's underpaid, or not paid at all, under-valued, and demeaned as not being work at all.
Mothers in particular know differently. When you're talking diapers, toilet training, and personal hygiene, it's literally a shitload of work. And if it's not done sensitively and with a great deal of love and skill, it can scar a little person for life.
There is even a movement to create "diaper banks", something I'm particularly passionate about, as one of the first things that cannot be afforded in a poor economy by single and poorly-paid mothers, often of color, is diapers, which become reused even when they weren't meant to be.
In Cahn's timebank economy, there are no "throw-away people" - everyone is a productive and valued member, and everyone can contribute and become a member, because everyone does work in the Core Economy.
The eldest member of a community can read to toddlers, who will be entranced. Children can tutor younger children, wash and dry dishes, rake the yard, and assist caring adults with other tasks.
And all these services can earn Time Dollars, which the recipient can turn around and "spend" on a service that is meaningful to them. We're talking with our electric company, our bus company, the city and county governments, stores and landlords to get them to participate with us in the time bank economy. Businesses need yard work, cleaning, catering and other services too, that Time Dollars could pay for.
So a rousing Happy Mother's Day to all mothers and women who have provided mothering in so many ways - you're more important than we know, or perhaps than we CAN know as things are currently structured.
Time banks are helping to change that, now and into the future.
[Imagine an upside down exclamation mark here]Si se puede!
This week saw what happens when an ugly little thing like empirical evidence collides with what might best be called faith-based health consumerism, which dictates that more is always better. The Federal Preventative Service Task Force, a non-partisan, non-political group founded during the Reagan administration was accused of encouraging healthcare rationing because it made a non-binding recommendation, based on empirical evidence, a/k/a science: women should start having mammograms later and less frequently.
Announcing this finding generated some very predictable results. Large organizations that had fought for the rights of women to obtain mammograms were very confused and expressed knee-jerk opposition. Equally, the American College of Radiology felt deeply threatened: mammograms generate a lot of revenue for their membership. And of course, political opponents to healthcare reform used this as 'proof' of rationing (something already practiced by insurance companies).
What is shocking, however, are the implications of statements made by many but concisely expressed by Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson. She said, "One life out of 1,904 to be saved, but the choice is not going to be yours. It's going to be someone else that has never met you that does not know family history... This is not the American way of looking at our health care coverage."
Senator, I beg you, think about the implications of your statement. First, we should not ignore the findings that current practice needlessly kills one woman out of 1,904. Had we known that two decades ago, current practice would already be considered unethical and probably illegal. Fortunately, we now have evidence that allows us to make better decisions for the common good.
Second, these numbers are not rounding errors. The US Census Bureau estimates that there will about 116.5 million American women over the age of 19 in 2010. Do a little math, and you realize that we're talking about 61,000 preventable deaths. That's almost 20x the number of US soldiers who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001. (Even if I'm off by a factor of two or three, the numbers are still in the tens of thousands.)
Three, we should not let these women die so that our crumbling healthcare system can spend vast sums of money on testing that will not make the great majority of women healthier. (Sure, it's easy to put a 'face' to the exception who lives because of more frequent testing, but then we should also give a 'face' to the woman who died as the result of the excess.) Advocating useless spending is hardly the talk of a fiscal conservative who would like to be governor of the great state of Texas.
And finally, we should not hide behind, "American way of looking at health care coverage..." Unless you've been under a rock, you already know that we spend at twice the rate of other industrialized nations but are sicker and die younger. That's not a 'way' that deserves respect.
Senator Hutchinson, I do not believe that you want to encourage the needless deaths thousands of women. I think that you simply want to win the next election. But every time you encourage people to selectively ignore solid, empirical evidence, you do real harm to the public that you are supposed to serve.
More on War WireNo, American friends, France is not a country of "cheaters." And the affair of Thierry Henry's hand, the scandal of the France-Ireland game that we won, but should have lost, has outraged many in Paris. Today I am publishing on the website of my magazine "La Rgle du Jeu" the point of view of one of France's greatest businessmen, Marc Ladreit de Lacharriere. He is the Chairman of Fimalac; the head of the Fitch rating agency; and he is also, most of all, the director of the oldest French review, La Revue des deux Mondes. All this to say that his opinion carries a lot of weight.
Here is his text. It is entitled: "We Must Replay the Match."
In accepting a win by cheating, France is permanently compromising its reputation and its image abroad. It will not be easy to soften the severity of the comments that we are currently hearing. So much the more so because we have the reputation as "lesson givers" the world over. In the national context, how will parents, educators, and teachers be able to tell their students not to cheat when the captain and coach of the French national team do it?Marc Ladreit de Lacharriere
Translated from the French by Sara Phenix.
If Matthew Hoh could tell you one thing to help you understand the U.S.'s predicament in Afghanistan, he'd tell you:
The presence of our ground combat troops is not doing anything to defeat al-Qaida.
Think about that for a moment. We are paying roughly $1 million per troop, per year in Afghanistan. That's roughly twice the per-troop cost in Iraq. We've suffered well more than 800 deaths in Afghanistan. And yet here is the former top civilian official in Afghanistan's Zabul province, a former Marine who served in Anbar province in Iraq, telling us that the presence of our ground forces does nothing to defeat the organization that's supposedly the target of our operations in that country.
So, if we're not going about the business of defeating al-Qaida in Afghanistan, what are we doing?
We're involved in a civil war in Afghanistan. We're only taking one side in that civil war. And, our presence there is only encouraging the civil war to go on.
Hmm. This is all sounding very familiar.
I spoke to Matthew on Friday afternoon by phone. My first call to him went straight to voicemail, where I learned that apparently he'd had so many press calls about his resignation letter that his voicemail message directed inquiries on that topic to his email address. If you recall, the State Department took his letter seriously enough that it prompted job offers from Ambassadors Eikenberry and Holbrooke to get him to stay. Since then, Hoh has been the focus of a great deal of media attention, and for good reasons:
- With all the rhetoric about the "success" of the so-called "surge" in Iraq and its supposed lessons for Afghanistan, the opinion of a person with experience with both has a lot of heft;
- The fact that his feelings about the situation were strong enough to provoke a resignation and a subsequent rejection of a position in Washington gave him moral authority; and
- Hoh was the beneficiary of good timing: his resignation came at a time when the media and policymakers had been cajoled into a willingness to entertain views outside the Washington, D.C. conventional wisdom that failure to send more troops immediately would lead to disaster.
Over the course of the past year, groups opposed to deepening U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan (such as Brave New Foundation's Rethink Afghanistan project, the Get Afghanistan Right coalition and many other groups and individuals) worked relentlessly to keep a critical perspective on the war in Afghanistan in the public debate. These escalation opponents relentlessly hammered the proponents of a counterinsurgency (COIN) effort for their inconsistencies and self-contradictions, especially with regard to the COIN doctrine's need for a legitimate host-nation partner. By the time the Afghan presidential elections exploded into a showcase of abject corruption and illegitimacy, these activists had laid the groundwork that helped the American people interpret the events of late August 2009 as a serious blow to the assumptions underlying the rationale for a deep military involvement. At the same time, President Obama refused to be rushed into a second troop increase in Afghanistan by an increasingly abrasive Pentagon whisper campaign, allowing the nation to take a collective breath and widen the debate about options. These factors, combined with cratering public support for the war effort, pushed policymakers and the media into a willingness to entertain views dissenting from those presented by General Stanley McChrystal. Enter Matthew Hoh.
Matthew's letter is a four-page punch in the gut to the rhetoric of pro-counterinsurgency factions. It wrecks the idea that the U.S. will ever have a legitimate partner (referred to by the COIN field manual as a "north star") in Afghanistan or that our strategy will lead to the destruction of al-Qaida. He ends the letter with regret that assurances can no longer be given that those who died in Afghanistan gave their lives in a mission worth the cost in "futures lost, love vanished, and promised dreams unkept."
Hoh sees our presence driving the conflict in at least two ways. On one hand, our military support for the corrupt Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan assures the Kabul cartel that we will not allow them to be overrun by insurgents. Because of that perception, the GoIRA is not willing to work out a political settlement with their opponents to form a true national government. The support we have given thus far (which is very close to the maximum possible support we can give), however, is not enough to allow the GoIRA to crush the insurgency totally. Thus, within the constraints on U.S. and Afghan national power, the only possible solution to the conflict other than strategic failure is a political solution negotiated between GoIRA and it's opponents--and that's precisely what the GoIRA won't seek as long as they can be assured of our continued military support.
[T]he only way to end this civil war is through political reconciliation, through some kind of political negotiation reaching to some kind of settlement. ...The Afghan officials who are on our side have no interest in doing that. ...They have no interest in giving up the position they have right now. And our presence there keeps them in power that way. I don't really see them having any interest in taking Afghanistan into, you know, a modern age or a progressive country, all of the things we believed we were doing there for the past 8 years.
On the other hand, the U.S. presence fuels the ever-expanding insurgency, pulling people who resent our support for a corrupt, predatory government and who intensely resent outside interference in their lives into conflict with coalition troops.
In both the east and the south, where our troops were heavily engaged in combat...on a daily basis, those are areas populated by rural Pashtuns...The bulk of those people were fighting us just because we're occupying them--not out of any ideology, not out of any real ties to the Taliban, not out of any hatred for the West. It was just because they did not want foreign troops, or, for that matter, the Afghan national army or Afghan national police, which do not represent them, in their valleys and villages.
...If you take the Korengal Valley, for example, which is well-known to the American people as "The Valley of Death," ...it's 15-20 miles long, it only has about 10,000 residents, they speak Korengali...these are people who are not interested in things outside their valley. They prefer to be left alone. Of course, putting more troops in their valley is something they're going to rebel against, especially troops from the central government, which does not represent them. ...It's really a question of these people wanting to determine their own existence and ...govern themselves. For every Korengal we're in, there's a hundred that we're not in, and if we were in [them], it would be the same issue of us having to fight them only because we're occupying them.
On the topic of that corrupt, unrepresentative government, Hoh offered a couple of anecdotal examples of the corruption that permeates every level of government in Afghanistan:
I know a USAID official who got into a plane...with the governor of his province, and the governor had about $300,000 in a duffel bag with him. ...The governor that I worked with had been removed from another province as the governor because he had been caught red-handed in a fairly extreme corruption case. Now this governor, Governor Sari, has been a friend of President Karzai for 35 years. So, after the U.S. embassy exposed this and complained about it, all Karzai did was move this governor...from one province to another province....To believe that the vast majority of Afghan officials that you're working with have any allegiance to what we're trying to do other than to enrich themselves or to make out in some manner is wrong.
I asked Hoh about the recent report on the quadrupling of the insurgency since 2006. According to at least one estimate, 10 percent of the estimated 25,000-man-strong insurgency were hardcore religious extremists, while the rest accepted training and funds from the "Taliban," but lacked ties to their ideology or broader agenda beyond throwing out the invaders.
I completely agree. The number I've seen is that there are 25,000 "Taliban" (which I believe is an incorrect term to apply to the people who are fighting us because it makes a reference to the Taliban regime of pre-September 11, 2001, and I think that misleads people and causes confusion, particularly among the American public about who we are actually fighting there.). But if you go with that 25,000 number...only a few thousand of those are actual hardcore "Taliban" with a capital "T." The majority of the rest of those groups are local fighters who are pretty independent of one another, just primarily concerned with their local areas, their valleys, their village, and who are tied to the Taliban with a capital "T" only through monetary or funding allegiances, and through a desire not to be occupied by a foreign power or by the other side in a civil war.
...But, if there are 25,000 troops now, Derrick...if we put more troops into the south, if we put 20,000 or 30,000 or 40,000 troops into the south, next year there will be 30,000, 35,000 or 40,000 enemies fighting us. As we move into more valleys and more villages...people are going to rebel against us.
So, the continued presence of massive numbers of U.S. troops removes the incentives for the GoIRA to negotiate a political settlement while providing the fuel for the growth of the insurgency. Hoh's advice to policymakers? End combat operations and sharply reduce U.S. troop levels. Doing so would pull U.S. troops out of areas where locals fight us just because we are there and would compel the GoIRA to negotiate with their opponents. Otherwise the U.S. presence will continue to fuel an unsustainable dynamic whereby the GoIRA has a near-term upper hand but cannot decisively defeat their opponents while the opponents use our presence as a recruiting tool for the resistance movement.
You're either characterized as all in our all out, and that's wrong. I don't think anyone is calling for us to completely wash our hands of Afghanistan and just walk away. When I call for withdrawal I call for stopping combat operations because it just doesn't make any sense; all it does it just prolong the conflict. I call for some kind of political reconciliation to end the fighting there. So a withdrawal would have to be somewhat gradual while negotiations were going on.
But wait, one might ask: what about al-Qaida? Hoh's policy prescription deals mainly with settling the civil war between the "Taliban" and the GoIRA. How does al-Qaida fit into this? Aren't they the reason we're in Afghanistan in the first place? Wouldn't our withdraw allow them to reestablish "safe havens" and allow them to keep the ones they have in Pakistan?
I don't believe al-Qaida needs or wants safe havens [like they had in 2001]. They just don't operate that way. they recruit worldwide. They are really an ideological force that exists on the Internet. They influence individuals or their operations are carried out by these small, independent, autonomous cells that really don't require much to operate other than a couple of rooms and a satellite phone or an internet connection. and if you look at the vast majority of attacks that have happened over the last decade regarding al-Qaida, they've been carried out by people not from the Afghanistan/Pakistan region, but residents of North Africa, residents of the gulf states or citizens of Europe or citizens and residents of the United States who do their preparation and their training in countries where the attacks occur. So this idea of a safe haven and their requirement for it is not borne out by any evidence of the way al-Qaida has operated for at least the last decade. After 2001, they evolved. They don't need a safe haven. It would be great for the United States if they did have safe havens because then we could bomb them. So we have to attack al-Qaida as the organization as it exists and not as we want it to exist.
The concern that our presence their encourages people to respond to their ideology is a valid one. We're currently occupying two Muslim countries, and we have to understand that lends credence to al-Qaida's argument that it is defending the Muslim world from Western invasion.
How many recruits do they [al-Qaida] get per year? A hundred? Two hundred? The Muslim population is over a billion. You're talking about such a small fraction. It's really associated with such a fringe movement that we have to attack using human intelligence and using law enforcement techniques. Army brigade combat teams do not affect al-Qaida. Having 60,00 troops in Afghanistan is not affecting al-Qaida. ...[T]he destruction of al-Qaida should be our priority...but we need to go after that organization as it exists and not with ground combat troops in Afghanistan.
Matthew said he's pleased with the state of debate following his resignation and return to the United States.
I can tell you that one of the things that pushed me to resign was this feeling that I had, and I think most people had, or a lot of people had, particularly guys I was serving with in Afghanistan, that an escalation of troops and an open-ended commitment to supporting the Karzai regime seemed almost like a done deal all throughout the summer...There was no discussion of any other type of strategy...it seemed almost like a guarantee...I got home in September and that's when I first heard there were debates on this within the administration...I'm very pleased the way the debates have been going. I'm not sure what's going that's going to happen with [the troop ]increase--I'm sure we're going to get one. The best thing though ...is that we're going to get some kind of withdrawal date, which is what we need. If we can get a withdrawal date within a year or two I'll be very happy, because that's so much better, so infinitely better, than some type of open-ended commitment or some type of 4- or 5-year plan. My thoughts are hopefully we can get some type of commitment to withdraw and stop combat operations within the next year or two.
I guess that's being a realist. I'd like to see it stop tomorrow.
Brave New Conversations recently filmed a conversation between Hoh and Daniel Ellsberg. Here's a clip:
You can find the full episode on the Brave New Conversations website. Note: Derrick Crowe is the Afghanistan blog fellow for Brave New Foundation / The Seminal. Learn how the war in Afghanistan undermines U.S. security: watch Rethink Afghanistan (Part Six), & visit http://rethinkafghanistan.com/blog.
Note: Derrick Crowe is the Afghanistan blog fellow for Brave New Foundation / The Seminal. He blogs regularly at Return Good for Evil.
More on AfghanistanFormer Republican strategist Marc Morano is having as much fun with the stolen emails from the Climate Research Unit that he did with the Swift Boat Veteran's for Truth attack he led against John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election.
Morano and his site Climate Depot has become the climate conspiracy hub since this story broke on late Thursday.
This cabal of climate deniers seems to think that 12 year-old emails between climate scientists somehow refutes the thousands of research papers produced over decades by thousands of researchers at some of the best scientific institutions in the world.
While Morano is the master of right-wing spin and is using these emails for his political agenda, the bigger question here is:
Who stole all this private data from the University in the first place?
The folder of information contains over 3,800 separate files and it is clear that someone has taken a lot of time to pull together what they thought would be the most damaging. This is not the work of a hacker, unless that hacker is extremely well-versed in climate science, and specifically the conspiracy theories of the climate denial movement.
This package of stolen data and emails would have taken hundreds of hours to compile and someone out there knows exactly how all this went down.
Terry Hurlbut at the Examiner has a time line of the stolen data going public which is a good start. I am sure one of our intrepid readers will get to the bottom of this. Tell you what. I'll race you.
More on Climate ChangeThis week, Sarah Palin burst onto the national scene yet again, with Going Rogue hitting bookshelves across the country. Given the work that I've dedicated my life to - advancing women to lead, alongside men - I've been asked repeatedly on my thoughts about Palin. Sometimes, I'm reminded of the few things we share: we were both beauty queens, each have five children, one of whom who lives with a disability. Yet for those few things that we share, an infinite number divide us - and nothing more clearly illustrated this than where we found ourselves, Sarah Palin and I, on Wednesday evening, only miles apart in Michigan.
Of course, Palin was in Michigan to launch her book tour, as an alleged homage to her first public action as a 'maverick' during the 2008 campaign when she spoke against the McCain campaign's decision to abandon the Great Lakes State. Whether the book is a stepping stone to 2012 candidacy or simply another venture to solidify her celebrity on the national stage remains to be seen. But in either case, Sarah Palin's rise has served not to elevate the position of women in American culture and politics, but to stymie their advancement.
The Republican Party did a disservice to itself, to women, to the country, and to Palin when they nominated her in 2008. It was an insult to us all to proceed as though women would vote for gender alone rather than qualification and policy position. Many women were understandably glad to see motherhood - that much revered, yet unpaid and unappreciated job that still falls mainly on women - lifted up as a qualification. Yet we are wise enough to know that it's not enough to run the mothership that is our nation, particularly when the woman in question is a champion of policies that do not serve the best interest of women in this country. And it was a cynical move by a party that once boasted remarkable women leaders - who supported issues that allowed other women to rise - but has shifted to a reluctance to advance women among its own ranks. Currently, Republican women comprise a mere 4 of 100 Senators and 17 of 435 Representatives within the U.S. Congress.
On Wednesday, Palin may have launched a national tour which will, inadvertently or deliberately, incite the divisions that exist in our nation, rather than working to heal them. And the publicity she will receive may work to set women back in political leadership, rather than move them forward (this week's Newsweek cover comes to mind). Yet I was still heartened that day - because less than 200 miles away, in beleaguered but spirited Detroit, a wholly different affair was underway. One that brought together true champions of women from across Michigan to bring transformative, positive change to our institutions and government.
Add Women, Change Michigan was a celebration of the women across the Great Lakes state who advanced their own leadership in 2009 and - along with their male allies - helped other women to do the same. From Saunteel Jenkens, Councilmember-Elect of the Detroit City Council to First Gentleman of Michigan and Leadership Guru Dan Mulhern, the room was filled with people who were committed to working together to bridge divides, discover workable solutions, and foster communities throughout Michigan were people can not only survive, but thrive. They recognized women's contributions as invaluable to these efforts, and that it will take the work of many, working side-by-side, to deliver the change we need.
At the event, we premiered a very different publication than Going Rogue to the Michigan audience: The White House Project Report: Benchmarking Women's Leadership illustrates the gravity of the task at hand. From business to politics, journalism to film, women are stalled at a paltry 18 percent across the leadership spectrum. Yet Benchmarks doesn't simply paint a dreary picture; it provides pragmatic solutions from top experts to close that gap once and for all.
The most important strategy for elevating women in the halls of power: advancing a critical mass of women in leadership - not simply one woman, and certainly not a woman who does not stand for what the vast majority of women need and believe here in the U.S. There is much to learn from Sarah Palin, for women especially: her tenacity, ambition, and confidence are to be emulated. Yet the most important lesson to be culled from the Palin phenomenon is probably this: a woman who seeks to lead but does not truly represent the interests of her fellow women will not succeed. Going rogue may garner attention, but it won't get you to the top.
Mega Social Media Networking for Annie
Posted by
soulscompanion
Posted on: 05/01/09
Mega Social Media Networking for Annie
Something Annie's Grrrlls can all do right away --

*Everytime you write on a social media site, send an email to friends, write in a blog - write about Annie, our go-to girl for our effort, and put in a link to her page. This could be very powerful. We could get millions of people tuned into Annie, and to PNN, and to us! As writers, organizers, way cool people LOL. As we used to say in the '60s, "Let's get aw-gun-ized!"
*Think about joining a web site that publishers might go to, like linkedin.com - Annie needs to join pronto, then we can all hook up with her there, write about her and RECOMMEND her out the wazoo. I'm already there and I really like the site. They have writing groups where we can promote her also. Think about this! This could be big. This could get big attention. Does anyone know other good sites where publishers might go?
*Also think about the mega-level: the revolutionary nature of us doing This (collaborating from all over the world, supporting Annie, organizing our own compilation) online, in front of the whole world - the strength of vulnerability, so to speak. That's something that is potentially very newsworthy and write-worthy. It's organic, fun, positive, all women (mostly - hi mgm!), and we don't take no for an answer. We know we've got a great "product" that people will love when they tune into her writing.
More as I think about it. Gotta pay some bills today.





