Today's Stories

May 26, 2008

Uri Avnery
The Syrian Option

Bill Quigley
War Immemorial Day

Marjorie Cohn
Hillary's Assassination Politics: Her Last Shot?

Raymond J. Lawrence
Pain Pays: Getting Rich at NY Presbyterian Hospital

May 24 / 25, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Death-Wish Hillary Primes Manchurian Candidate

Jeffrey St. Clair
Yellowstone: How Sununu Shrank the Ecosystem

Barbara Rose Johnston
Dam Legacies, Damned Futures

Nikolas Kozloff
U.S. Fourth Fleet in Venezuelan Waters

Adriana Kojeve
The Environment and the 2008 Elections

Robert Fantina
Justice Department's Revelations on Torture

Dave Lindorff
Bush's War on Children in Iraq

David Yearsley
The War on Kitsch

Nelson P. Valdés
The Buying of "Democracy" Agents in Cuba

Kathleen M. Barry
Celebrating Ethnic Cleansing

John Ross
Mexico's Narco Opera Reaches for High Point

Allison Kilkenny
Apathy Doesn't Live in Bronx

Fred Gardner
Orangeburg, 1968

Elizabeth Schulte
Can the Whole World be Fed?

Daniel Gross
Remembering the Wendy's Massacre: the Dangerous Side of Retail Work

Christopher Brauchli
The Search for a Token Right-winger

Richard Rhames
A Nation of Sheep

Daniel Cassidy
My Mother

Poets' Basement
Davies, Klipschutz and Willson

Website of the Weekend
Happy Birthday, Bob

May 23, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
War Abroad, Poverty at Home

Alan Farago
The Radical Extremists of the Building Industry

Conn Hallinan
Ballots and Bullets: From Beirut to Bolivia

Mark Engler
The World After Bush

George Wuerthner
Cars and Cows: Living Large in America

Kamran Matin
The Kurds and American Neo-Imperialism

Sandy Boyer /
Shaun Harkin
The Long Incarceration of Pol Brennan

Robert Weitzel
A "Holey" Instrument of Peace in Iraq

Cindy Sheehan
An Uphill Battle

Liaquat Ali Khan
Pakistan's Futile Constitutional Amendment

Website of the Day
A Message from the Moral Compass of the McCain Campaign

May 22, 2008

Vijay Prashad
Racist Grammar

Joanne Mariner
A Military Commissions Cheat Sheet

Sharon Smith
60 Years of Apartheid

Jeff Birkenstein
Disaster Redux: Some Early Thoughts on the Earthquake in China

Brendan McQuade
From Obama to the PRTs in Iraq

Peter Morici
The Sorry State of the Banking Industry

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Restoration Boulevard

Dave Zirin
What I Want to Ask Mary Tillman

Ron Jacobs
CPR for the Antiwar Movement

Stephen Lendman
Immoral Hazard

Website of the Day
Hagee: God Sent Hitler to Drive the Jews to Israel

May 21, 2008

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Gothic Politics of Hillary Clinton

Nikolas Kozloff
U.S. Military Bases in South America

Alan Farago
Miami, Cuba and the Presidential Campaign

Dave Lindorff
Big John and the Scary, Scary Iran Threat

David Model
Genocide in Iraq?

Eric Walberg
Afghanistan: Who is the Enemy?

Franklin Lamb
Lebanon Gets a President

Kenneth Couesbouc
Tax Against Tyranny

Website of the Day
Child Labor and War-Affected Children: a Photo Essay

May 20, 2008

Ralph Nader
A Trip Inside Google

Uri Avnery
With Friends Like These

Patrick Irelan
The Empire and the Fleet

Ray McGovern
Come Out, Admiral Fallon, Wherever You Are

David Macaray
The UAW Strike Against American Axle

Chris Genovali
Big Oil on the Water: Skating Around the Tanker Issue

Ibrahim Fawal
Birmingham, Israel and the Nakba

Christopher Ketcham
Let Us Now Praise Famous Suicides

Andy Worthington
Guantánamo Trial Delayed

Martha Rosenberg
Merck is a Repeat Offender

Website of the Day
Defend the Students Who Pied Tom Friedman

May 19, 2008

Saul Landau
Cuba Will Live

Paul Craig Roberts
The Metamorphosis of the Conservative Movement

Brian McKenna
Brotherly Love in Philly's Badlands

Patrick Cockburn
City of the Dead: Mosul on Lockdown

B. R. Gowani
The Central Problem Pakistan Needs to Tackle

Dr. Trudy Bond
Psychologists and Torture: If Not Now, When?

Cindy Sheehan
Whose War is It?

John Mohawk
The Warriors Who Turned to Peace

Remi Kanazi
When Free Speech Doesn't Come for Free

Robert Day
I Get a Horse

Website of the Day
Evolve or Die

May 17 / 18, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The View from the Crusaders' Castle

Tim Wise
Testosterone is Not to Blame: Why Sexism isn't the Reason for Hillary's Loss

Andy Worthington
Gitmo Trials: Betrayal, Backsliding and Boycotts

Robert Fantina
The Double-Talk Express Derails

Karim Makdisi
In the Wake of the Doha Truce

Harry Browne
Only Ireland Can Vote on EU's Future

John Ross
Suicide by Taco? The Demise of Mexico's PRD

Dave Lindorff
Fear at the Pump

Robert Weissman
Pharmaceutical Payola

Laray Polk
Bush Family Appeasement

David Yearsley
Puritans in Seattle

Ron Jacobs
Riot Squads, Privatization and the National Front

Paul Quinnett
My Last Flight

Sam Bahour
Refugees are the Key

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
Poverty Wages

Dr. Susan Block
The Groom May Kiss the Groom

Kim Nicolini
Paranoid Park: Inside the Fractured Landscape of Male Adolescence

Jeremy Scahill
John Cusack's War

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Dominguez, Gerard and Davies

May 16, 2008

Stephen Soldz
Involuntary Drugging of Detainees

Jonathan Cook
Police Attack Al-Nakba March

Paul Craig Roberts
Lies of Aggression

Christopher Brauchli
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Pharmacy

James L. Secor
Olympic Torch China: the View from Shaoxing

Franklin Lamb
Did Hezbollah Thwart a Bush/Olmert Attack on Beirut?

Linn Washington, Jr.
The Price of Protecting Racist Cops

Dave Lindorff
What West Virginia Means

May 15, 2008

Stan Cox
Big Brother Close Up

Jeff Halper
Rethinking Israel After 60 Years

Greg Moses
Living for the Children of Palestine

John Ross
Why Mexican Justice is a Euphemism

Ron Jacobs
Go to Work, Go to Jail

Binoy Kampmark
Indian Jailbirds: the Case of Binayak Sen

Eve Spangler
We Should Not Celebrate Dispossession

Martha Rosenberg
Meat Wars with South Korea

Website of the Day
Idaho Wolf Killers

May 14, 2008

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Oil Wars

Reza Fiyouzat
Torture, a Bully's Creed

Felice Pace
California Water Politics: Of Dams and Water Buffaloes

Hamdan A. Yousuf / Dania S. Ahmed
A Generation Defined by War

Robert Weitzel
Hillary's "Final Solution" to the Persian Problem

Ralph Nader
You're Either with the American People or the Big Auto Bosses

Dave Lindorff
Hillary, McCain and the Stupid Vote

Missy Comley Beattie
White Heaven: Hillary's W. Virginia Idyll

Neve Gordon
Israel as a Site of Struggle

Dr. Susan Block
A Washington Witch Hanging

Website of the Day
Hillary's Downfall

May 13, 2008

David Rosen
Sexual Terrorism: the Sadistic Side of Bush's War on Terror

Alan Farago
Nuclear Florida: Beachfront Reactors in an Age of Rising Sea Levels?

Saul Landau
The Crisis at Home

Saree Makdisi
Forget the Two-State Solution

Paul Craig Roberts
How Empires Fall

Andy Worthington
Gitmo's Suicide Bomber

Brother Bede Vincent
The Problem with Rev. Wright--There are Too Few Like Him

Linda Mamoun
Marketing Ethnic Cleansing

David Macaray
The Myth That Won't Die

Website of the Day
Burning the Future: Coal in America

May 12, 2008

St. Clair / Frank
The Pentagon's Toxic Legacy

Ziga Vodovnik
Rebels Against Tyranny: an Interview with Howard Zinn on Anarchism

Gary Leupp
Why All of Our Efforts Won't Stop an Attack on Iran

Frankln Lamb
Choufeit's Bloody Pentacost

Suzanne Baroud
The Ambition of Hillary Clinton

Martha Rosenberg
Farmer Ernie's Chamber of Horrors

Dave Zirin
The Boss's Boycott

Carl Finamore
I Ain't Gonna Work No More

Peter Morici
Recession Watch

Richard Rhames
The Third Way to Nowhere

Website of the Day
The Untold Story of Black New Orleans

May 10 / 11, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Real Clear Numbers: 101,000 Casualties a Year

Franklin Lamb
Hezbollah Eases Up and Beirut Opens Its Shutters

Ciara Gilmartin
A Surge in Iraqi Detainees

Diane Farsetta
Inside a Nuclear Industry Soirée

Kent Paterson
Mother's Day in Ciudad Juarez

Alan Farago
The Social Engineers

Rannie Amiri
Beirut on the Brink

Patrick Irelan
Bolivia, Morales and the Red Ponchos

Robert Fantina
The Lexicon Legacy of George W. Bush

Nikolas Kozloff
El Salvador 2009: Another Feather in the Cap of Chavez?

George Ciccariello-Maher
The Yumare Massacre, 22 Years On

David Yearsley
Bacharach at 80

Ron Jacobs
Rosa Luxemburg's Shock Doctrine

John Holt
Can Yellowstone Survive?

David Michael Green
It's So Over

Ben Terrall
Dealing Sleep

Kim Nicolini
The Best Film of the Bush Era?

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Orloski, Frisella, Gladstone-Gelman

May 9, 2008

Franklin Lamb
A Wild Day in Beirut

Andy Worthington
The Afghans of Gitmo

Benjamin Dangl
Polarizing Bolivia

Mark A. Huddle
Remembering Mildred Loving, an Unsung Hero of the Civil Rights Movement

David Macaray
Hollywood Gives SAG the Brush Off

Dave Lindorff
Team Clinton: Going Down Ugly

C.G. Estabrook
The Way We Live Now

Matt Kosko
McCain, Clinton, Obama and the Wages of Lesser-Evilism

Robert Weissman
Big Business is not the Solution to Global Poverty

Michael Dickinson
Jailing the Joint

Website of the Day
The Role of Third Parties in the U.S.A.

May 8, 2008

Sharon Smith
Rockefeller Family Fables

Saul Landau
The NATO Axiom

Laura Carlsen
A Primer on Plan Mexico

Binoy Kampmark
Food Riots are Coming to the U.S.

Kenneth Couesbouc
China's Paper Feet

Liaquat Ali Khan
Pakistan's Constitutional Shenanigans

Franklin Lamb
Blindsided, Hezbollah Mulls Its Response

Sen. Russ Feingold
Government in Secret

George Wuerthner
The Problems with Conservation Easements

Richard W. Behan
A Brief Exposé of a Fraudulent War

Adam Federman
Marching for Sean Bell

Website of the Day
State of the Air

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Retreating from Hell

A Different Memorial Day

By Col. DAN SMITH

“There is many a boy here today who looks on war
as all glory, but boys, it is all hell.”

William Tecumseh Sherman, Michigan  Military Academy, June 19, 1879

Monday May 26 is the fifth Memorial Day that U.S. ground forces have occupied Iraq. Over the last twelve months – or more precisely, since Memorial Day was May 28 last year – over the past 364 days, more than 615 U.S. military personnel have died in Iraq. Iraq’s government says that its security forces suffered 1,424 fatalities over the same period while Iraqi civilian deaths attributed to the violence in the country totaled over 9,625.

Next month, the last of the “surge” brigade combat teams sent to Iraq last spring will rotate out of the war zone, dropping the U.S. presence to about 140,000 troops. Whether or not the fighting ramps back up or continues at its present lower “steady state” is anyone’s guess.  The attempt by Iraqi police and army units to “liberate Basra from “criminals and illegal militias” was at best a draw for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, On the other hand, after some intense fighting that involved U.S. ground and air units as well as some Iraqi army units, it appears – and  it may be just a surface phenomenon – that the Iraqi army has been able to move into a section of Sadr city, the vast Baghdad slum area  that is home to 2 million Iraqis, most of whom are followers of Shi’a cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

While we pause and remember all who have died in Iraq and in Afghanistan this past year, we should also remember those who have been wounded. Here again, there are the soldiers from the U.S., coalition countries, and Iraqis. These are those who have lost one or more limbs, those whose wounds, not as severe, who were not even evacuated from the war zone.

And then there are those who have sustained brain injuries and those suffering from PTSD – post traumatic stress disorder. This month’s release of a RAND study of 1,900 returning combat veterans suggests that 300,000 suffer from PTSD or depression while another 320,000 have some form of traumatic brain injury. Beyond the sheer numbers involved are the long-range concerns: only about half those afflicted by traumatic brain injury seek help, while an unknown number of those with PTSD are ticking time-bombs that can explode at any time or in any place for no apparent reason.

We see and hear these statistics and we have in the United States the ability and the facilities to help those so traumatized. But this Memorial Day we might also spare a thought for those in other countries – especially those “child soldiers – who are forces into the armed conflicts that still split many countries into two or more armed camps. The Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, in its just-released 2008 Global Report on Child Soldiers, points out that in countries that do achieve  the end of armed conflict, invariably it is the adult fighters who are afforded the “DDR structure” – disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration – that is part of the peace-making process. Child soldiers – those under 18 years of age – and especially females – are frequently screened out from the mainstream rehabilitation services on the apparent assumption that “re-integration” for them involves re-entry (or entry) into the education system.

Considering how recently the Bush administration conceded that brain injuries and PTSD were significant problems, it is hardly surprising that the world at large has given so little thought to the needs of those exposed to the traumas of war, regardless of place, age, gender or nationality. And the emotional and psychological damage can be further compounded for children who, escaping the battlefield and fleeing to another country in search of asylum, find themselves arrested and imprisoned.

What the world community must decide – and soon – is whether it has a “responsibility to protect” the psychological health of former child soldiers that is analogous to the “responsibility to protect” the physical being of non-combatants of any age. If the answer is “yes,” this acknowledgement must be specified in all agreements and enforced by regional or UN monitors overseeing the DDR process.  For the world to say “no” would be unconscionable, for if the wars of the 20th century and now the 21st century have taught anything, it is that violence to mind and spirit will revenge itself some way and some day.

Should the answer be “no,” societies in which civil strife was the norm for 20 or more years – not uncommon in Asia and Africa – may well discover that a significant percentage of adults who were child soldiers face a future of psychological struggle at least as intense as that afflicting many returning U.S. veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan.  

Curiously, General Sherman’s dictum, usually quoted as “War is hell,” emerged from America’s own Civil War. That war was both a national and, for those who fought, a personal hell of searing proportions. How many suffered from what we call PTSD, how many endured, how many exploded, will never be known because records would not have been made let alone kept. What remains from that war are the cold stone monuments raised to honor and remember the deeds of the dead.

This Memorial day, as no other before it, our task is to go beyond honoring the dead. It is to finally begin to implement the promise implicit in Sherman’s address to the Michigan Military Academy class of 1879 and explicit in the World War I vow to be “the war to end all wars.”  Truly, war begets nothing but the hell of more war.

Col. Dan Smith is a retired U.S. Army colonel and a senior fellow on military affairs at the Friends Committee on National Legislation. Email at dan@fcnl.org.

 

 

 

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