The supplemental appropriations bill funding operations in Iraq and Afghanistan continues to flounder: help us kill it! Here’s a quick summary of the politics around the legislation. The White House and the Democratic Congressional leadership is really lobbying hard for this legislation, threatening to cut political support from freshman House members who might vote against [...]
Archive for June, 2009
Pro-War Movement: We Sound the Same No Matter Who’s “In Charge”
Posted: June 14, 2009 in UncategorizedTags: Democrats, Obama, Pelosi, war funding
Okay folks, I’ve about had it. I have never been a single issue voter, but the folks I’ve voted for lately have just about pushed me to that point. President Obama never claimed to be anti-war, just anti-Iraq-war, but even that stance should allow for some empathy (there’s a word we’ve heard a lot about [...]
Contesting Jihad within Islam: The Servants of God
Posted: June 11, 2009 in UncategorizedTags: Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Afghanistan, al-Qaida, Islam, Khudai Khidmatgars, Muslim, nonviolence, Obama, Servants of God, Taliban
Advocates for increased focus on strategic communications want the U.S. to support voices within Islam that contest al-Qaida’s religious justification of political violence. Opining about peace passages in the Koran is insufficient, however; the version of Islam pushed by the Taliban and al-Qaida is place- and nationality-specific, and their propaganda is buttressed by continued U.S. [...]
Contesting Jihad within Radical Islam, Part 1
Posted: June 10, 2009 in UncategorizedTags: Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Afghanistan, airstrikes, CIST, civilian casualties, Countering Ideological Support to Terrorism, drones, Islam, Khudai Khidmatgars, McKiernan, Michael Doran, Obama, strategic communications
President Obama’s speech in Cairo last week shows that he’s taking the advice of folks urging the U.S. to drop the us-versus-them “War on Terror” rhetorical frame in favor of one that reinforces the idea of a conflict within Islam about the use of violence in political conflict. For quite some time, proponents of “strategic [...]
A rare opportunity just emerged to kill the supplemental appropriations bill funding operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Here’s a quick summary of the politics around the legislation. Here’s a shorter version: items attached to the legislation provoked blocs of Republicans and Democrats into opposition. The White House lobbies hard for this legislation, but if you [...]
Twenty Years Later, We Remember Courage
Posted: June 4, 2009 in UncategorizedTags: Tiananmen Square
Abraham and Obama, Sodom and Afghanistan
Posted: June 4, 2009 in UncategorizedTags: Abraham, Afghanistan, Obama, Sodom
Today, President Obama gave his much-anticipated address to the Muslim world from Egypt. There is a great deal to praise in the speech–a message of partnership, of inclusion, of common humanity. Much like his speech on the need to close Guantanamo, this speech had certain threads that deserve due credit. However, like the prior speech, [...]
Military Analysis Confirms Airstrike in Afghanistan Was a Mass Murder According to “Christian” Just War Criteria
Posted: June 3, 2009 in UncategorizedTags: Afghanistan, Bala Baluk, Christian nonviolence, Christianity, Jesus, nonviolence
The book is being closed on the massive civilian casualties caused by the airstrikes in Bala Baluk: A military investigation has concluded that American personnel made significant errors in carrying out some of the airstrikes in western Afghanistan on May 4 that killed dozens of Afghan civilians, according to a senior American military official. Final [...]
Dear Wikipedia: Please post this list of all our nuclear weapons labs. Love, The Government
Posted: June 2, 2009 in UncategorizedTags: keyboard cat, nuclear weapons
Need a good reason to seek total nuclear disarmament? Here’s one: the systems set up to produce nuclear weapons and to guard them are incompetent. Case in point: U.S. scientists recently forgot how to make an H-Bomb. Seriously we just forgot. The Air Force accidentally flew some live nukes over the U.S. But here’s the [...]
Chris Hedges: “War is Sin”
Posted: June 2, 2009 in UncategorizedTags: Chris Hedges, Christianity, Jesus, nonviolence
Chris Hedges, author of War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning and What Every Person Should Know About War, wrote a fantastic article about the nature of war for Truthdig: “War is Sin.” In it he quotes Rev. William P. Mahedy, a Catholic chaplain in Vietnam, who tells a story about the exchange between [...]
