The Greg Abbott campaign crafted this birthday card for their supporters to send to Wendy Davis, his Democratic opponent in the race for the U.S. Senate in Texas. I’m not sure that they wish Wendy well.
The card could also be sent to Antiwar.com, which is now conducting a fundraising drive. Antiwar.com was investigated by the FBI after 9/11 on the flimsiest of justifications. As far as I know, no one connected with that website has been “vanished.”
On Twitter @jimbovard
It is regrettable that the Washington Post’s editorials on foreign policy are rarely as profound as its editorial cartoons.
Someone could easily compile a list of Washington Post editorials and guest articles by bellicose nitwits urging U.S. preemptive strikes for each venue that Tom Toles lists in this ‘toon.
Jon Utley, the publisher of American Conservative and one of the most dedicated and principled pro-freedom and antiwar activists in the nation, celebrated his 80th birthday last month. Hundreds of folks gathered at D.C.’s Metropolitan Club to hear him speak about his life and to hear tributes from a dozen speakers ranging from Human Events publisher Allan Ryskind, to Dan McCarthy, to Fran Griffin.
Jon was born in the Soviet Union in 1934. His mother was Freda Utley, a bestselling author who helped awaken Americans to the Soviet peril in the 1940s and beyond. Ms. Utley also wrote one of the first books published in America on the horrendous sufferings in postwar Germany – “The High Cost of Vengeance,” published by Regnery in 1949, available at this link.
His father, Arcadi Berdichevsky, was murdered in Stalin’s Gulag in 1938. Return to the Gulag, a film on his father’s fate, has been shown on PBS and on other venues around the nation. Reason.com described the movie: “In 2004, Utley embarked upon a search to learn of his father’s fate. This documentary traces Utley’s journey through former labor camps and cities in northern Russia and his final uncovering of the horrible truth at the dreaded camp city of Vorkuta within the Arctic Circle.” You can watch the 28-minute documentary here.
Jon has been in the forefront of the antiwar movement since 1990, when he spearheaded a group to oppose George H.W. Bush’s war against Iraq. He has been a rare voice of reason and grace in conservative circles, patiently pointing out how foreign warring was destroying American freedom – as well as wreaking pointless havoc abroad. He has also been a generous supporter of groups ranging from the Future of Freedom Foundation to Antiwar.com, where his columns continue to trounce bloodthirsty politicians of all stripes.
Jon has always been kind in his comments and encouragement on my writing. Some years ago, I saw that he was heading to an ACLU awards dinner that featured some fashionable left-wing keynoter who didn’t seem truly concerned with freedom. I asked why he was going to the ACLU event.
Jon replied, “So that somebody will care when government agents take us away.”
Hearing that line from someone whose father vanished in the Gulag makes it impossible to forget.
Happy birthday, Jon, and thanks for all you’ve done for freedom for 60+ years!
I am mystified by all the whooping on the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address. Most of the commentators seem to believe that Lincoln was an honest man touting the highest ideals.
The fact that warmongers like George W. Bush and Obama purport to idolize Lincoln should be a warning sign to attentive folks.
Massachusetts abolitionist Lysander Spooner offered the most concise refutation to President Lincoln’s claim that the Civil War was fought to preserve a “government by consent.” Spooner observed, “The only idea . . . ever manifested as to what is a government of consent, is this—that it is one to which everybody must consent, or be shot.”
The main lesson from the Gettysburg address is – the more vehemently a president equates democracy with freedom, the greater the danger he likely poses to Americans’ rights. Lincoln was by far the most avid champion of democracy among nineteenth century presidents—and the president with the greatest visible contempt for the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Lincoln swayed people to view national unity as the ultimate test of the essence of freedom or self-rule. That Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, jailed 20,000 people without charges, forcibly shut down hundreds of newspapers that criticized him, and sent in federal troops to shut down state legislatures was irrelevant because he proclaimed “that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.”
Lincoln’s rhetoric cannot be judged apart from the actions he authorized to enforce his “ideals”:
In a September 17, 1863, letter to the War Department, Gen. William Sherman wrote: “The United States has the right, and … the … power, to penetrate to every part of the national domain. We will remove and destroy every obstacle — if need be, take every life, every acre of land, every particle of property, everything that to us seems proper.” President Lincoln liked Sherman’s letter so much that he declared that it should be published.
On June 21, 1864, before his bloody March to the Sea, Sherman wrote to the secretary of war: “There is a class of people [in the South] — men, women, and children, who must be killed or banished before you can hope for peace and order.”
On October 9, 1864, Sherman wrote to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant: “Until we can repopulate Georgia, it is useless to occupy it, but the utter destruction of its roads, houses, and people will cripple their military resources.” Sherman lived up to his boast — and left a swath of devastation and misery that helped plunge the South into decades of poverty.
General Grant used similar tactics in Virginia, ordering his troops “make all the valleys south of the Baltimore and Ohio railroad a desert as high up as possible.” The Scorched Earth tactics the North used made life far more difficult for both white and black survivors of the Civil War.
Lincoln was blinded by his belief in the righteousness of federal supremacy. His abuses set legions of precedents that subverted the vision of government the Founding Fathers bequeathed to America.
Hundreds of folks turned out today in DC to protest NSA surveillance. The sign makers outdid themselves for this worthy cause —
[[ on Twitter – @jimbovard ]]
Marching from Union Station to the base of Capitol Hill…
Plenty of “Thank You Snowden” signs in today’s crowd…
Kelley Vlahos, the only journalist adept enough to write for both Fox News & Antiwar.com –
K
Yesterday was the 30th anniversary of the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut. The incursion into Lebanon was one of the biggest debacles of the Reagan administration. Unfortunately, though Reagan eventually recognized his folly and pulled troops out, other presidents did not recognize the tragic lessons of the pointless loss of American troops.
Here’s a piece I wrote ten years ago on the Lebanon debacle for Counterpunch (excerpted from my 2003 book, Terrorism and Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice, and Peace to Rid the World of Evil (St. Martin’s/Palgrave).
Counterpunch, October 8, 2003
The Reagan Roadmap for an Antiterrorism Disaster
by James Bovard
In his televised speech to the nation on September 7 [2003], President Bush declared, “In the past, the terrorists have cited the examples of Beirut and Somalia, claiming that if you inflict harm on Americans, we will run from a challenge. In this, they are mistaken.” There are many parallels between the 1982-84 U.S. deployment and decimation of U.S. troops in Beirut and the current Iraqi situation. None of them bode well for the success of Operation Iraqi Freedom or the life expectancy of American troops.
Few Americans remember the bitter details of one of Reagan’s biggest foreign debacles. Lebanon had been wracked by a brutal civil war for seven years when, in June 1982, Israel invaded in order to crush the Palestinian Liberation Organization. U.S. troops were briefly deployed in August in Beirut to help secure a ceasefire to facilitate the withdrawal of the PLO forces to Tunisia.
Continue reading “30th Anniverary of Beirut Marine Corps Bombing Debacle”
