America polarized by money, uncivil relations says ex-U.S. President Jimmy Carter

Words of warning from the wise to fellow Americans

Editing by Carolyn Bennett

Excerpts from a Charles Green interview with former President James Earl Carter Jr., appended biographical briefs on the former President and former First Lady Eleanor Rosalynn Carter

MONEY IN POLITICS

Jimmy Carter: “I don't think anybody now can hope to be the nominee of the Democratic or Republican Party if they cannot raise a quarter of a billion dollars.

 

“This massive infusion of money automatically polarizes our country.

“When hundreds of thousands of dollars are spent tearing down the reputation of an opponent in order to get elected, animosity and negativism carries on into Washington.

 

“There was harmony among [members of Congress and the White House] when I was there, and I got just as much support from Republicans as I did from Democrats. I can’t imagine myself as a successful candidate today.”

RESPECT, CIVILITY IN GOVERNMENT

Jimmy Carter: “George H.W. Bush… was the only one …, along with his secretary of state, James Baker, who treated ex-presidents with respect.… And I’m not derogating the others when I say that.

  

“Somebody who has been out of office for 35 years is much less helpful to an incumbent president than either Gerald Ford or Richard Nixon was to me, because they had only been out of office just a few months or years.”

RACE RELATIONS

Jimmy Carter: “The recent publicity about mistreatment of black people in the judicial and police realm has been a reminder that the dreams of the civil rights movement have not been realized.

“Many Americans still have racist tendencies or feelings of superiority to people of color.”

PERSONAL CHARACTER, ATTITUDE

Jimmy Carter: “I haven’t been very belligerent in my life, maybe because of that ancestral background [his great-great, great-, and grandfathers having lost their lives in acts of violence].

“I’ve been primarily devoted to peacekeeping. I’ve stayed in a peaceful mood.”

 

PARTNER

The marriage of former First Lady Rosalynn Carter and former president Jimmy Carter is 69 years. Jimmy Carter describes their relationship and work as “fully collaborative.”

  

Sources and Notes

Conversation with the United States’ thirty-ninth president, Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter), humanitarian and peanut farmer, AARP Bulletin, interview and article by Charles Green, freelance writer and former editor of National Journal, June 2015, http://www.aarp.org/politics-society/history/info-2015/jimmy-carter-reflections-at-90.html

 

Rosalynn Carter née Eleanor Rosalynn Smith: First Lady of United States of America (1977–81), wife of Jimmy (James Earl) Carter, 39th president of the United States and mental health advocate; one of the most politically astute and active of all American first ladies.

Foreign Relations

First Lady Rosalynn Carter “participated in political affairs to an extent unmatched by any of her predecessors. … She attended cabinet meetings when the subject under discussion interested her and attracted attention for taking whatever seat was vacant, even if it happened to be the one normally occupied by Vice President Walter Mondale. 

• June 1977 she visited seven nations in the Caribbean and Latin America and met with their leaders to discuss substantive matters related to defense and trade.”
• She routinely traveled “to various parts of the world for ceremonial occasions and on humanitarian missions such as a 1979 trip to a refugee camp in Cambodia.”

Domestic Affairs

• Rosalynn Carter “served as honorary chair of the President’s Commission on Mental Health and took an active role in the commission's work, which resulted in the submission of the Mental Health Systems Bill to Congress in May 1979. During debate on the bill, which passed in 1980, she testified before a Senate subcommittee, the first presidential wife to make such an appearance since Eleanor Roosevelt in 1945.”
• 
  
• The President “sometimes pointed out that his wife’s first name was Eleanor and that she had been as valuable a working partner to him as had Eleanor Roosevelt to her husband. 
• 
  
• Compared with other first ladies, Rosalynn Carter’s “popularity was consistently high.”

Eleanor Rosalynn Carter: birth and birthplace August 18, 1927, Plains, Georgia 

Carter, Rosalynn.  (2013). Encyclopedia Britannica. Encyclopedia Britannica Deluxe Edition.  Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica.

Carter, Jimmy (James Earl Carter, Jr.): 

In a period of serious domestic and international problems, Jimmy Carter served as the 39th president of the United States (1977–81). A one-term president, he had been perceived as unable “to deal successfully with those problems”. After leaving office Mr. Carter broadened his credentials, embarking “on a career of diplomacy and advocacy,” meriting high praise for his peace efforts.

While in office critics had charged that Mr. Carter’s vision of the world was naïve in the area of foreign affairs but he has received “accolades for championing international human rights.”

Foreign affairs accomplishments as president major achievements: 

• In 1977, he obtained two treaties between the United States and Panama that gave the latter control over the Panama Canal at the end of 1999 and guaranteed the neutrality of that waterway thereafter. 

• In 1978, he brought together Egyptian President Anwar el-Sādāt and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin at the presidential retreat in Camp David, Maryland, and secured their agreement to the Camp David Accords, which ended the state of war that had existed between the two countries since Israel’s establishment in 1948. 

• On January 1, 1979, Carter established full diplomatic relations between the United States and China and simultaneously broke official ties with Taiwan. 

• Also in 1979 in Vienna, U.S. President Carter and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev signed a new bilateral strategic arms limitation treaty (SALT II) [which Carter removed from consideration by the Senate in January 1980 after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan] intended to establish parity in strategic nuclear weapons delivery systems between the two superpowers on terms that could be adequately verified. 

Diplomat without portfolio post presidency

The former president Carter “served as a kind of diplomat without portfolio” in conflicts in many countries among them “Nicaragua (where he successfully promoted the return of the Miskito Indians to their homeland), Panama (where he observed and reported illegal voting procedures), and Ethiopia (where he attempted to mediate a settlement with the Eritrean People’s Liberation Force).”

• In 1994, he was active in “negotiating with North Korea to end nuclear weapons development there and with Haiti to bring about a peaceful transfer of power and with Bosnian Serbs and Muslims to broker a short-lived cease-fire.” 

• Also in his post-presidency years, Jimmy Carter “became a prolific author, writing on a variety of topics. Two books on the Middle East were Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid (2006) and We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land: A Plan That Will Work (2009). His interview with Syria’s Forward Magazine, published in January 2009, marked the first time that a former or current U.S. president had been interviewed by a Syrian media outlet. Carter also authored The Hornet’s Nest: A Novel of the Revolutionary War (2003) and a collection of poetry. His presidency is chronicled in White House Diary (2010), “which contains edited entries from a journal Carter kept during his years in the White House.” 

James Earl Carter Jr., birth and birthplace: October 1, 1924, Plains, Georgia 

Carter, Jimmy.  (2013). Encyclopedia Britannica. Encyclopedia Britannica Deluxe Edition.  Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica.

George Herbert Walker Bush (b. June 12, 1924, Milton, Massachusetts) was the 41st

president of the United States (1989–93). As president, Bush assembled a multinational force to compel the withdrawal of Iraq from Kuwait in the Persian Gulf War.  This American politician and businessman had also been U.S. vice president (1981–89).

Bush, George (2013). Encyclopedia Britannica. Encyclopedia Britannica Deluxe Edition.  Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica.

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A lifelong American writer and writer/activist (former academic and staffer with the U.S. government in Washington), Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett is credentialed in education and print journalism and public affairs (PhD, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan; MA, The American University, Washington, DC). Her work concerns itself with news and current affairs, historical contexts, and ideas particularly related to acts and consequences of U.S. foreign relations, geopolitics, human rights, war and peace, and violence and nonviolence. Dr. Bennett is an internationalist and nonpartisan progressive personally concerned with society and the common good. An educator at heart, her career began with the U.S. Peace Corps, teaching in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Since then, she has authored several books and numerous current-affairs articles; her latest book: UNCONSCIONABLE: How The World Sees Us: World News, Alternative Views, Commentary on U.S. Foreign Relations; most thoughts, articles, edited work are posted at Bennett’s Study: http://todaysinsightnews.blogspot.com/ and on her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/carolynladelle.bennett. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/08UNCONSCIONABLE/prweb12131656.htm http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/SKU-000757788/UNCONSCIONABLE.aspx Her books are also available at independent bookstores in New York State: Lift Bridge in Brockport; Sundance in Geneseo; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center in Buffalo; Burlingham Books in Perry; The Bookworm in East Aurora

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Misguided policies have given rise to terrorists; negotiation essential: Fallon

Col. David Hackworth    

former 

military journalist

US Army soldier

(deceased)

Amidst rising extremist attacks in the news, Sophie&Co talks with veteran U.S. intelligence official

Excerpting from transcript, editing, end comment  by Carolyn Bennett

M

ark Fallon is Senior Vice President for Learning and Knowledge Development at The Soufan Group, a New York City enterprise that, according to its website, “provides strategic security intelligence services to governments and multinational organizations, training programs, security services, and research insights … knowledge and skills to prepare for, manage and respond to constantly evolving security needs; … applies decades of operational experience, supported by academic research, to all of [its] training programs and consulting engagements.… The Soufan Group’s representatives regularly appear as featured speakers at security, business, diplomatic, and social events.”

The her February 9, 2015 interview, Sophie Shevarnadze looks at the “Terror … trend of 21st century,” tied to the US “War on Terror”, its flourishing month by month as more and more people “from all strata of society” and from various countries join the ranks of “extremists.” These are some of the questions she ponders with Mark Fallon.

What moves them to war?

How can terror be fought?

Who’s to blame for a world in which we have to live under everyday threat of terrorist attack?

Should we talk with those labeled “terrorist”?

Origin in prior crimes, human rights abuse

The government in power created “misguided policies” and for decades to come, Mark Fallon said, we will pay “an incredible price.” Among the misguided policies he cited are “Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib” as “major recruiting assets for terrorists groups.” Programs such as the “CIA’s RDI program” and “EIT, which gravitated from the CIA to Guantanamo Bay”; individuals such as “the general in charge of Guantanamo Bay who was sent into Iraq and is credited with ‘Gitmo-izing’ Iraq and contributing to what happened at Abu Ghraib.” 

RDI: “rendition, detention and interrogation program” employed by US Central Intelligence Agency

Notorious
US Guantanamo Bay prison

EIT: enhanced interrogation techniques, “the U.S. government’s program of systematic torture of detainees by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and various components of the U.S. Armed Forces at black sites around the world, including Bagram, (Bagram Airfield, the largest U.S. military base in Afghanistan, located next to the ancient city of Bagram), Guantanamo Bay (Cuba), and Abu Ghraib (a city in the Al Anbar Governorate of Iraq just west of Baghdad’s city center, northwest of Baghdad International Airport) authorized by officials of the George W. Bush administration.”

Torture methods [criminal acts, human rights abuses] included “prolonged stress positions, hooding, subjection to deafening noise, sleep deprivation to the point of hallucination, deprivation of food and drink; waterboarding, walling, nakedness, subjection to extreme cold, confinement in small coffin-like boxes, and repeated slapping or beating; also cases of forced rectal feeding and threats to harm family members” [Wikipedia]

Notorious
US Bagram Airbase
Afghanistan

F

allon continued

“From my perspective, my professional opinion is that RDI program was a significant threat to our national security because it actually enabled Al-Qaeda and other groups to recruit terrorists to fight against us and to raise funding to use against us.

“It was clearly, clearly, a terrible mistake [MISTAKE!?]; and it’s a price we’re going to continue to pay.”

Identity
Once US allied
during Cold War

Origin in Human beings disaffected, needing identity

Fallon said his investigations on the “terrorist” issue had taken him around the world, into Northern Ireland, France, Southeast Asia, some Scandinavian countries; he had participated in studies on the issue and had “talked to a number of violent extremists and other combatants”; and on the basis of this investigation, he concluded that “They all seem to want to belong to something,”

He said. “If you look at the backgrounds—if you look at that generally, across the spectrum—they are from disaffected groups, populations.… They all seem to want to belong to something.”

Talking to these individuals, he found, “there are triggers that might set them off but it is generally, … with them that sense of identity that drives them to group, and gets them to engage in the activities that that group wants them to do. …” Recruiters capitalize on their being from disaffected groups and needing a sense of identity “by giving them a source of identity.”

This need vulnerable to exploitation cuts across socio economic or class level and educational achievement, he said. “…Some people might be highly educated, some might be uneducated, but generally, across the board, it is that sense of identity that drives them.”

Seeming to bring the issue home to a shared humanity, Fallon says “We are all individuals …. We are all human beings; and as despicable as their actions might be…, they are human beings and the best way to approach them is through understanding. Then capitalize on their nature, once you understand where they are coming from.”

Negotiate with “terrorists”?

 

Round table illus. of equals
not terrorists 

Mark Fallon said, “I think they have to enter into some type of dialog. … I think there is room to have communications with ISIS.”

Elaborating further, he said that to say “we don’t negotiate with terrorists” might be, for example, in a context of hostage exchange but “we certainly have developed assets within terrorist organizations: we are listening to terrorists; we are creating counter-narratives to what they’re saying. So, it is important that we hear what message they are trying to send, and really determine the underlying messages that they are trying to communicate.”

As to communicating particularly with ISIS, he explained, “It depends on your definition of ‘negotiate with them’  Certainly, there was some type of dialog at some point because there were discussions about the pilot (the latest widely publicized incident) being released, although it seemed to be a ploy and a subterfuge on the part of ISIS.” 

T

he upshot is, Fallon says, “…You cannot expect to be totally devoid of any type of communications. There will be contact. There will be communications …in any type of conflict.”

US seat of
misguided
governance

US seat of misguidedgovernance

Any sane person can see what government officials refuse to see: That they must communicate. They must talk. They must negotiate—unless, of course, their intentions are anything but solving problems and resolving conflict.

Unless they want to perpetuate the terror their policies and practices create. Unless they want endless conflict, endless war that fills the personal coffers of corrupt leaders with military industrial complex kickbacks made possible by fear-driven public funding.

Sources and notes

Pegged to killings and executions in Middle East (Jordan), Sophie Shevarnadze speaks with Mark Fallon, veteran U.S. intelligence official, interrogation expert: “CIA torture based on ‘voodoo science’ of advocates - US intelligence expert”

February 9, 2015, http://rt.com/shows/sophieco/230475-cia-torture-terror-war/

Dissenter (2013): “A Comprehensive Look at the CIA’s Rendition, Detention & Torture Program” by Kevin Gosztola Tuesday February 5, 2013: “A major report on the CIA’s rendition, detention and interrogation (RDI) program was released today by the Open Society Justice Initiative. It is one of the most comprehensive examinations of the program to date.”

http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2013/02/05/a-comprehensive-look-at-the-cias-rendition-detention-torture-program/

The Soufan Group, http://soufangroup.com/

A prominent military journalist and highly decorated United States Army soldier, Colonel David Haskell Hackworth (November 11, 1930 – May 4, 2005).

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A lifelong American writer and writer/activist (former academic and staffer with the U.S. government in Washington), Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett is credentialed in education and print journalism and public affairs (PhD, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan; MA, The American University, Washington, DC). Her work concerns itself with news and current affairs, historical contexts, and ideas particularly related to acts and consequences of U.S. foreign relations, geopolitics, human rights, war and peace, and violence and nonviolence. Dr. Bennett is an internationalist and nonpartisan progressive personally concerned with society and the common good. An educator at heart, her career began with the U.S. Peace Corps, teaching in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Since then, she has authored several books and numerous current-affairs articles; her latest book: UNCONSCIONABLE: How The World Sees Us: World News, Alternative Views, Commentary on U.S. Foreign Relations; most thoughts, articles, edited work are posted at Bennett’s Study: http://todaysinsightnews.blogspot.com/ and on her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/carolynladelle.bennett. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/08UNCONSCIONABLE/prweb12131656.htm http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/SKU-000757788/UNCONSCIONABLE.aspx Her books are also available at independent bookstores in New York State: Lift Bridge in Brockport; Sundance in Geneseo; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center in Buffalo; Burlingham Books in Perry; The Bookworm in East Aurora

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“Break the silence of night”: Martin Luther King Jr.

US Lethal Drone Wars

King’s 1967 concerns about the US in Vietnam were disregarded and belligerence recklessly ingrained continues to escalate and expand against peoples of Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe

This January day on which American activist Martin Luther King, Jr., is supposedly commemorated is nothing more than another demonstration of capitalism, commerce’s never taking a holiday. It moves into a final full-blast of winter wastefulness, corralling careless consumers into its clutches.. It moves into a final full-blast of winter wastefulness, corralling careless consumers into its clutches. All the while peoples in foreign lands, one of which King spoke passionately and eloquently—suffer unspeakable wounds caused by endless US bombs, threat and intimidation, sanctions and occupation.

Martin Luther King’s words as well as those of other activists and thinkers are salient today but I am under no illusions that my fellow-Americans give a tinker’s damn about substance, about the active nature of and commitment to love, care and nonviolence – in relations of any kind, let alone US foreign relations.

Nevertheless, I remember, as I have not the luxury of forgetfulness; and these thoughts are worth remembering. There comes a “time,” King said, “when silence is betrayal; and that time has come for us… ”

King was speaking of the US war on Vietnam; but in today’s context, THINK: US wars on peoples of Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, South and North Korea, Japan, Egypt, Libya, Somalia, Congo, Nigeria, Sudan, Ukraine, Philippines, Central America, and others. 

From Martin Luther King’s 1967 speech “Beyond Vietnam—A Time to Break Silence”

Excerpt, editing, comment by Carolyn Bennett

Speaking beyond silence, betrayal

The truth of these words is beyond doubt, but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. …

US theaters of
endless wars

[People] do not easily assume the task of opposing their government’s policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one’s own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when issues at hand seem as perplexed as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty.

However, we must move on.

[Though] some of us have already begun to break the silence of the night [and have] found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, we must speak. With all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, we must nevertheless speak. We must speak.

Think: Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, South and North Korea, Japan, Egypt, Libya, Somalia, Congo, Nigeria, Sudan, Ukraine, Philippines, Central America

Speaking to Americans

[Though the whole situation is ambiguous and presumed “enemies” must be part of a collective solution to the tragedy], this speech is not addressed to Hanoi or to the National Liberation Front, to China or to Russia – “I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the National Liberation Front, but rather to my fellow Americans.…

“…I have walked among [America’s] desperate, rejected, and angry young men [and] I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles will not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they ask—and rightly so— what about Vietnam?

…‘Is not our own nation using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wants’?

“Their questions hit home and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world—my own government.

“For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence—I cannot be silent.

“W

e are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation and for those it calls ‘enemy’; no document from human hands can make these humans any less our [equals, our fellow human beings].

“…I speak now not of the soldiers of each side, not of the ideologies…, not of the junta …; but simply of the people who have been living under the curse of war for … decades now. I think of them, too, because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution there until some attempt is made to know them and hear their broken cries.”

 

Think: Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, South and North Korea, Japan, Egypt, Libya, Somalia, Congo, Nigeria, Sudan, Ukraine, Philippines, Central America

Speaking for the sufferers

The homeless suffering want, failed infrastructure, clean water, disease, insecurity

As our troop deployments increase and leaflets rain down together with promises of peace and democracy and land reform, the people languish under our [US] bombs and they come to consider us—not [those we call enemy]—as the real enemy.

Knowing they must move or be destroyed by our bombs, [the suffering people] move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers and into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met.

Most sufferers are women and children and the aged, witnessing endless desecration. They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. … They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers. They wander into hospitals where scores of casualties caused by US firepower far exceeds ‘enemy’-caused injuries. Millions have died, mostly children.

 

Think: Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, South and North Korea, Japan, Egypt, Libya, Somalia, Congo, Nigeria, Sudan, Ukraine, Philippines, Central America

Unspeakable suffering, unhealed wounds 

We have destroyed their most cherished institutions, the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops.

We have cooperated in crushing the nation’s only noncommunist revolutionary political force, the unified Buddhist Church. We have supported the enemies of the peasants … We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men. Now, there is little to build on, except bitterness; and soon the only solid physical foundations remaining will be [US] military bases and … the concentration camps we call ‘fortified hamlets.’ Can we blame the peasants’ wondering if we (the United States) plan to build our new Vietnam on these foundations?

They are our [fellow human beings] and we must speak for them and raise the questions they cannot raise.

Think: Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, South and North Korea, Japan, Egypt, Libya, Somalia, Congo, Nigeria, Sudan, Ukraine, Philippines, Central America

Restorative value: seeing through their eyes

What must they think of the United States of America when they realize that we have permitted repression and cruelty [against them]…? What do they think of our condoning the violence that led to their own taking up of arms? How can they believe in our integrity when now we speak of ‘aggression’ [from ‘them’] as if there were nothing more essential to the war? How can they trust us when now we charge them with violence after a murderous reign… and charge them with violence while we pour every new weapon of death into their land?

Surely, we must understand their feelings, even if we do not condone their actions. Surely, we must see that [those] we supported pressed them to their violence. Surely, we must see that our own computerized plans of destruction simply dwarf their greatest acts.… They question our political goals and deny the reality of a peace settlement from which they [are] excluded.

Their questions are frighteningly relevant. Is our nation again planning to build on political myth and then shore it up upon the power of new violence?

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Think: Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, South and North Korea, Japan, Egypt, Libya, Somalia, Congo, Nigeria, Sudan, Ukraine, Philippines, Central America

  

Love, nonviolence: neither romantic essence nor state of being; but active and continuous

T

he “true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence,” King said, “[is] when it helps us to see the ‘enemy’s’ point of view, to hear [those] questions, to know [others’] assessment of ourselves. 

“From [those other views] we may see the basic weaknesses of our own [position]. And if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of [those] whom we call the opposition.”

And if we Americans year after year paid serious attention to the wisdom, the common sense, the common humanity in the words of King and other activists, and indeed in the words of those who suffer our rising ruthlessness around the world; if we translated substantive meaning into personal action, the world would progress into a better place for all peoples.  It is a thought worth pondering instead of shopping.

Sources and notes

“Beyond Vietnam -- A Time to Break Silence” by Martin Luther King Jr., delivered April 4, 1967, at a meeting of Clergy and Concerned Laity, Riverside Church, New York City [alt title “Time to Break Silence (Declaration Against the Vietnam War)”], American Rhetoric, http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm

[AUTHENTICITY CERTIFIED Text version transcribed directly from audio]

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A lifelong American writer and writer/activist (former academic and staffer with the U.S. government in Washington), Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett is credentialed in education and print journalism and public affairs (PhD, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan; MA, The American University, Washington, DC). Her work concerns itself with news and current affairs, historical contexts, and ideas particularly related to acts and consequences of U.S. foreign relations, geopolitics, human rights, war and peace, and violence and nonviolence. Dr. Bennett is an internationalist and nonpartisan progressive personally concerned with society and the common good. An educator at heart, her career began with the U.S. Peace Corps, teaching in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Since then, she has authored several books and numerous current-affairs articles; her latest book: UNCONSCIONABLE: How The World Sees Us: World News, Alternative Views, Commentary on U.S. Foreign Relations; most thoughts, articles, edited work are posted at Bennett’s Study: http://todaysinsightnews.blogspot.com/ and on her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/carolynladelle.bennett. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/08UNCONSCIONABLE/prweb12131656.htm http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/SKU-000757788/UNCONSCIONABLE.aspx Her books are also available at independent bookstores in New York State: Lift Bridge in Brockport; Sundance in Geneseo; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center in Buffalo; Burlingham Books in Perry; The Bookworm in East Aurora
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50 million declare no more human fodder in crossfire of armed groups, armed governments: Dr Hakim

As US re-reneges, ramps up atrocities against Afghans

Editing by Carolyn Bennett

Lies, compounded terror

Common Dreams and other sources reporting from the weekend show US government's terrorizing of Afghans sees no end in sight.

US President Barack Obama’s “secret decision” to increase hostilities in Afghanistan as he has done in Iraq “will keep American troops on the ground and fighting for at least another year.”

 

In his latest change that isn’t, the US president – as if laughing at fools – has given this endless ending a new name. His government calls it “‘Operation Resolute Support.’” However, Common Dreams explains, the United States will continue terrorizing Afghanistan’s people with “F-16 fighter jets, Predator and Reaper drones, and B-1 bombers.”

Endless suffering

 

In Democracy Now interviews today, Dr. Hakim, a physician associated with Afghan Peace Volunteers who have collected many stories from people suffering on the ground, said, “Security in Afghanistan has been deteriorating over the past few years in the face of the ongoing U.S.-NATO military strategy.”

Referencing existing data sources available in the United States, he said, “A global terrorism database done by the U.S. government and the University of Maryland has shown that since the beginning of the ‘war against terror’ in 2001, the number of terrorist attacks in Afghanistan and in the rest of the world, in Iraq, etc., have increased.”

 

In view of that graph showing the increase of terrorism, Hakim said, one has to view the war against terrorism as “a cancer that needs to be treated.” And as a physician, he said this is how he views the “war against terror in Afghanistan.” It is a cancer that needs to be treated, not by increasing violence; but treated as a physician would treat sickness.

 

I

n an August 13, 2014, Countercurrents article, he declared, “We are human fodder caught in the crossfire of armed groups and armed governments. The elite 1 percent of armed groups and armed governments are waging economic, environmental and military wars against the people! They, and perhaps we ourselves, too, have lost our imagination and empathy.”

An estimated 50 million human beings worldwide have become refugees.

 

“50 million,” Hakim emphasizes, have been driven from their homes, displaced, forced to migrate “for the self-interests of fighting groups and governments.” These people “have become human beings seeking refuge from fellow human beings.” He continues:

…Whether they are Iraqi Christians, Iraqi Yazidis, Iraqi Muslims, Ukrainian free thinkers, Ukrainian Orthodox Christians and Catholics, Ukrainian Muslims, Palestinian Muslims, Israeli Jews, Syrian Muslims, Syrian Christians, Guatemalan Catholics etc., they are all refugees, and share the risks and crises all refugees face.

…Palestinians, including children who [had taken] refuge in UN schools in Gaza, were nonetheless bombed and killed by the Israeli military [(IDF) in a massacre characterized by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon] as ‘a moral outrage and a criminal act.’

We wish to live differently

Whether war, violence, terror, intervention is perpetrated against Afghanistan, or any country, Hakim says, “If there are 50 million refugees – there ought to at least be 50 million of us working together to divest and boycott, to stop military mobilization and conscription, to take the guilty elite to court, to participate in non-violent direct actions and protests and to provide all kinds of humanitarian assistance.

“There ought to be at least 50 million of us

 working together to restore human dignity and freedom – including the building of small, self-governing, non-violent egalitarian communities, as practical alternatives to the status quo of a large, 1 percent-dominated, violent, unequal world.”

Our response, he said, should be:

‘No to Afghanistan in Ukraine.’

‘No to Ukraine in Afghanistan.’

‘No to wars in the world!’

“We wish to live differently. We no longer want anyone anywhere to be human fodder caught in the crossfire of armed groups and armed governments.”

Sources and notes

“After Vowing to End Combat Mission in Afghanistan, Obama Secretly Extends America’s Longest War,” Monday, November 24, 2014, http://www.democracynow.org/2014/11/24/after_vowing_to_end_combat_mission

“We’re Human Fodder Caught In The Crossfire Of Armed Groups And Armed Governments: The elite 1% of armed groups and armed governments are waging economic, environmental and military wars against the people! They and perhaps we ourselves too have lost our imagination and empathy.” By Dr. Teck Young, August 13, 2014, http://www.mintpressnews.com/author/dr-teck-young/

Article printed from MintPress News: http://www.mintpressnews.com

URL to article: http://www.mintpressnews.com/human-fodder-caught-crossfire-armed-groups-armed-governments/195248/

“International Day of Nonviolence in Afghanistan,” Dr Hakim, October 4, 2014, http://www.countercurrents.org/hakim051014.htm

Countercurrents.org

“Endless War: Obama Secretly Extends US War on Afghanistan: Obama allowed the military to dictate the terms of the endgame in Afghanistan,” Common Dreams staff, November 22, 2014,

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2014/11/22/endless-war-obama-secretly-extends-us-war-afghanistan

Dr Hakim, (aka Dr. Teck Young, Wee) “is a medical doctor from Singapore who has done humanitarian and social enterprise work in Afghanistan for the past nine years.” He has been “a friend and mentor to the ‘Afghan Peace Volunteers,’ an inter-ethnic group of young Afghans dedicated to building non-violent alternatives to war.” In 2012, Dr. Hakim received an International Pfeffer Peace Prize. [http://www.mintpressnews.com/author/dr-teck-young/]

The International Pfeffer Peace Prize was established in 1989 by the Fellowship of Reconciliation’s (FOR) Leo and Freda Pfeffer. Its espoused purpose: to honor people around the world “who are working for peace and justice.” Leo Pfeffer was a US “theoretician on religious liberty and separation of church and state, who had argued these constitutional issues before the US Supreme Court.” He was “a founding member of the Jewish Peace Fellowship.” http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/International_Pfeffer_Peace_Prize

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A lifelong American writer and writer/activist (former academic and staffer with the U.S. government in Washington), Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett is credentialed in education and print journalism and public affairs (PhD, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan; MA, The American University, Washington, DC). Her work concerns itself with news and current affairs, historical contexts, and ideas particularly related to acts and consequences of U.S. foreign relations, geopolitics, human rights, war and peace, and violence and nonviolence. Dr. Bennett is an internationalist and nonpartisan progressive personally concerned with society and the common good. An educator at heart, her career began with the U.S. Peace Corps, teaching in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Since then, she has authored several books and numerous current-affairs articles; her latest book: UNCONSCIONABLE: How The World Sees Us: World News, Alternative Views, Commentary on U.S. Foreign Relations; most thoughts, articles, edited work are posted at Bennett’s Study: http://todaysinsightnews.blogspot.com/ and on her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/carolynladelle.bennett. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/08UNCONSCIONABLE/prweb12131656.htm http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/SKU-000757788/UNCONSCIONABLE.aspx Her books are also available at independent bookstores in New York State: Lift Bridge in Brockport; Sundance in Geneseo; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center in Buffalo; Burlingham Books in Perry; The Bookworm in East Aurora

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