Peace Talk — Winter 2005-06
The Quarterly Newsletter of Peace Action Maine
When I was a child in elementary school on Peaks Island in the 1950s, we were required to participate periodically in a drill to protect ourselves from a nuclear attack. It was said that a fearsome enemy far away had the ability to deliver an atomic bomb to our island that could destroy it. Our drill consisted of getting under our desks to protect ourselves from “the bomb.” Even at seven years old, we all knew how silly it was to hide under a desk to protect ourselves from the firestorm of an atomic bomb. Yet we dutifully did it. What we later found out was that these drills and fallout shelters were a sham, a waste of money designed to focus our attention on the terrible unknown so that we would support a vast military machine to protect our corporate interests abroad.
Some things just don’t change
We are now being bombarded with an array of fantastic potential threats and conspiracies of terrorists that threaten our security again. Predictably, we are being required to maintain a large military machine supported by a large bureaucratic machine to ensure our security. Indeed, we are told that it is our patriotic duty to do so. Therefore, we must now subordinate our normal rights through the Patriot Act, and we must also allow for a complete gutting of human rights for everyone else so our bureaucrats can make sure that we are forewarned of pending plots by terrorists. It seems that we are beginning to be confused about who the real terrorists are. We are beginning to understand that the destabilization of America by fear-mongering and insisting that the terrorists are coming, especially when criticism of the current administration gets out of hand, is the real plan behind “homeland security.”
Some things just don’t change
In the name of “homeland security” we have deployed millions of expensive, unwatched cameras to protect ourselves from an unseen enemy. The enemy is everywhere. We have gutted the National Guard, protectors of the homeland, to fight a war against unsubstantiated terrorists in a foreign land, taking away many of our first responders, teachers and other valuable members of our communities. Maine Army National Guard mechanics are given over to guard duty because our homeland citizen army in Iraq is broken and abused. We cannot serve the needs of American citizens brutalized by natural disasters because FEA is a bastion of cronyism, devoid of the experience necessary to serve those made homeless and jobless by those disasters (FEMA is about to evict 15,000 Katrina refugees from the only housing they have, exactly the opposite of what FEMA was formed to do). We are beginning to gut human services to those who need help the most because we give deep tax cuts to the very wealthy. We prosecute a war in Iraq that kills innocents, and we commit crimes against humanity through the indiscriminate use of white phosphorus, depleted uranium ammunition and the gratuitous destruction of entire cities. We train people who were not terrorists to become terrorists in reaction to our brutal and cruel destruction of their cities and economies.
Upon reflection, perhaps we are the terrorists. We have weakened homeland security through our short-sightedness and our refusal to ask tough and honest questions. If we want the Iraqis to have self-rule, why are we building fourteen permanent bases in Iraq? Why does the newly-discovered Iraqi torture camp resemble our own? If we believe in free enterprise, why does government give no-bid contracts in Iraq and Mississippi to cronies of the Bush Administration? If the Bush Administration believes in truth, why are they coaching soldiers, as seen on TV, preparing to talk with President Bush (their commander in chief) about supporting the war in Iraq? If the Bush Administration believes in democracy, why are they always managing the truth?
Some things must change, and they must change quickly
Perhaps the best and most effective change would be to remove those who have failed to represent the interests of ordinary citizens. To use a military term, we must make our political institutions “stand down” to keep destructive agendas from being rammed through our legislatures before we have time to define the things we need to do first and foremost. Perhaps it is time to get out of Iraq immediately and stop the slaughter of our soldiers and innocent Iraqis. Perhaps it is time to realize that those who got us into this war and have no plan to get out of it are about to serve us with an unconscionable bill for this illegal, immoral war. Perhaps it is time to hold our politicians accountable. They seems to be more interested in getting elected than in dealing with the needs of their constituents. Perhaps Governor Baldacci should gather together other governors and call our National Guard troops back home; they have been abused enough. Perhaps Senator Collins should fire her military aides and hire people who want human promise to be pursued instead of inventing enemies and instead of supporting permanent bases in Iraq and elsewhere. Perhaps Senator Snowe will get tired of being lied to by the Pentagon and her President and call for accountability. Perhaps Tom Allen will get a heart and fight more passionately for the principles he writes and speaks so blandly about. Perhaps all of us should take stock of our complicit silence and start building a world in which security for all is as attainable as it is desired.
I have a son named Ben. He is in the Vermont National Guard serving in Ramadi, Iraq. He has almost been killed five times in the last four months. He works 12 hours a day, and more, in unrelenting, mind-numbing conditions, being shot at and mortared every day and night. The stress is tearing him apart. Some day I want him to be able to tell his unborn children that his grandfather used to hide under desks in fear of faceless enemies who never came with the promised bomb. I want him to be able to tell his unborn children that he took part in a horrific, painful war overseas against people who were wrongly defined by politicians as terrorists, but that other wiser, more honest representatives of the people put a stop to it by demonstrating that we were lied to.
However, there are days that I would just settle to have Ben back home safe where he belongs.
Thank you.
Dexter Kamilewicz of Orr's Island, has spoken out against the war in Iraw on local access television and radio programs and in newspapers. He is a member of Military Families Speak Out, Maine Peace Actionand PeaceWorks.