Voltaire made that observation after he had been exiled to a penal colony Island by the King of France who didn’t take more harsh action because Voltaire was loved by the public who agreed with his writings that the King was a despot.

When we consider our Government, it follows that we need an accurate explanation of what is meant by “ when the Government is wrong”. And that explanation might be best described by using illustrations or examples.

Of course the most disruptive and harmful conflict is one of immoral or unnecessary conflicts of choice – armies conducting invasions, killing and destroying – for profits to war Industries or for Empire building. However there are many kinds of war – war between nations, religious wars, class wars, wars against drugs, wars against terrorism, even wars between political Parties. And certainly we shouldn’t forget Husband/Wife or Parent/Child conflicts.

But the sobering realization should be that all wars could be avoided. And as you raise your voice to condemn such an absurd statement, all I ask is that you hear me out since it has been proven that the human brain does not work well when it is inundated with facts that it does not want to hear. So lets see if we can agree on something:

War must have something to initiate it. And that thing must emanate from one or both of the potential combatants. Are you with me so far? When conflict arises there is always the opportunity for one or both sides to seek common ground. If either side fails to seek that common ground, physical conflict is likely to arise. The only scenario where armed aggression arises, when one side is seeking peace, is when the other side doesn’t want peace.

The question then becomes, does one side or either side really want peace? If one side doesn’t want peace, then there will be none. But even with this scenario, there doesn’t have to be war – it starts simply because one side chooses to start one. The other side then is forced to defend itself.

Has our Government sought peace in any one of the more than fifty incursions that we have been involved in since World War II? Or were we that side that refused a chance at peace simply because we had the might to assert our will? If you think we started wars only for peace, could you give a good reason why we didn’t invade Russia in the last half of the last century? Why didn’t we invade China? Why did we invade Iraq? Why does our Government want to invade Iran? Could it be that our Government has become a warrior Nation bent on building Empire? Can an honest American claim that all these fifty plus conflicts we have entered into since WWII have been “Wars for Peace”?

Would our Government be wrong if it is correct, that we have not sought peace? Would it be dangerous to oppose such a Government? Even for the citizen of the Government? How badly things can go wrong in a war is best illustrated by the Iraqi War. Remember, the Iraqis were predicted to greet us with flowers as our invading army marched in.

Our Government un-leased a war on Iraq for no reason other than to provide a profit stream for the War Industry and to provide fertile grounds for immoral Corporations to rape the Iraqi resources. While achieving this they used Depleted Uranium (DU) tipped munitions, a volatile radioactive weapon that is spread by wind currents and causes cancers, leukemia, and grotesque birth defects, and will continue to do so for up to 4.5 Billion years. Iraq today is staggered by the high rate of simply hideous birth defects that is causing Iraqi potential mothers to have to make a choice about chance.

Historians could very likely judge this atrocity to be the most heinous crime ever committed against human beings in the history of mankind. Dave Lindorff just recently wrote about this tragedy done to mankind. I hope you read it. What are we going to do about the criminals who are even today enjoying their Blood Profits? Smart money says we will never even scold them.

And to think, this war was wanted by no one except the War Industry, the Neo-Cons of the Republican Party, and the Energy Corporations. Could this historic massacre have been avoided? Absolutely! Should we let it go unpunished? Absolutely not! If we do, what does it say about us as a people? For thousands of years after History no longer remembers George Bush and Dick Cheney, the people of a land that was once Iraq, the cradle of civilization, will still be dying and grotesque births will still be occurring because of what we allowed to transpire in Iraq in the early twenty-First Century. And it may even spread far and wide, even to the United States, a once Great Nation, now just dust in History’s past, once hailed as the Ideal of moral and ethical people, who could even then lie in still radioactive graves, the detritus of an un-necessary war.

In the past year there was serious consideration given to enacting legislation that would approve the prosecution of “Thought Crimes”, with penalties including every thing from torture to imprisonment without trial and all the atrocities done in the name of this War on Terror, but this time the legislation was for prosecution of American Citizens as well as “Terrorists” – can you think “ For Thought Crimes against the State”?

And in spite of all the evidence of the evils of DU, the United States military still uses DU all over the World, and even in the United States.

Think long and hard before you answer those questions I have posed.

But why did the author, like so many others, choose to turn what should have been a constructive argument, into a diatribe? Was it necessary to charge Western discourses, resorting to the ever predictable classification of “us and them”, instead of trying to find a common cause?

The same point can be made regarding other discussions, whether pertaining to human rights (women’s rights in particular), the environment, labor rights, and many others.

In her defense, Amirah Sulaiman was simply following an existing pattern, commonly used to delineate one’s cultural or religious progression, at the expense of another.

But it’s more than that, it’s also a defense mechanism, a haunting reminder that the alleged civilizational clash, although more imagined and politicized, than real, pervades many aspects of our perception of ourselves and of others.

Among Muslim intellectuals, as in societies, this paradigm is omnipresent.

Cultural animosity, collective defensiveness, racism (and Orientalism), among other overriding cultural trends existed long before distained US foreign policy in the Middle East became the defining norm, before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 and the wars against Iraq and Afghanistan. But these events emboldened existing arguments on both sides, with Muslims solidifying as a collective victim, and the US, from a Muslim point of view, seen as a vulgar, but true representation of the West.

Of course, Muslims and Islam had their own ominous representations in the US, thus ‘Western’ media, culture and psyche – the dagger wielding bearded man, who abuses women, whenever he takes time away from blowing up infidels. As comical as I intended this to sound, as disturbingly true such a depiction is in the minds of many.

It would be utterly unfair and largely inaccurate to equate the ‘Western’ misrepresentation of Islam and Muslims, with the latter’s misrepresentation of the West. The former approaches its caricatured depiction from a chest thumping, Fox News mentality of militarily powerful and economically stable countries. Its view of the other is largely hegemonic and its standard solution to bringing wars to an end is with military surges and the increasing of military assistance (with Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan being the current cases in point.)

Collective Muslim identity however is largely fragmented, between governments that only represent themselves, and peoples facing many forms of oppression: political tyranny at home, external repression (war, foreign interventions, etc), economic uncertainty (fuelled by inequality and compounded by unfiltered globalization), and extremism.

The so-called war on terror, for obvious reasons, cemented that fragmentation. On one hand, it reinforced many Muslims’ growing sense of victimization; a notion that itself resulted in both submissiveness and extremism. On the other it inspired a re-think, positive at times, self-negating at others: it kindled a affirmative sense of identity and pride among a generation desperate to identify itself according to its own priorities and on its own turf, while, on the other hand, it led to a (minor) movement of intellectual migration, which sought in the ‘West’ an escape from the oppressive reality, of which, of course the ‘West’ is equally responsible.

But it was not war alone (and in itself) that shaped Muslim perceptions of the ‘West’; it was rather the US’ and (to lesser extent Britain’s) insistence that their war championed an essentially Western discourse on democracy and human rights. Such arguments took place in an already hostile atmosphere: incessant media and academic mutterings about Islam’s shortcomings, and a growing right wing, racist tendencies in various Western countries targeting immigrants and minorities, many of whom are Muslims.

When such political, military and intellectual encroachment is backed by such statements as that made by US Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, Lieutenant General William G. Boykin (now retired), then the plot thickens, and the collective polarization of both societies grows. Boykin, author of “Never Surrender: A Soldier’s Journey to the Crossroads of Faith and Freedom,” became famous for his infamous quote, several years ago, in reference to a Muslim militant in Mogadishu: “I knew that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol.”

This was a lone quotation, of course, in a sea of bigoted references that defined many officials and media pundits during the Bush Administration. Such voices are now, somewhat mute, although, its hard to believe that the advent of President Barack Obama has altered a culture in its entirety.

It takes generations for genuine trust to take hold, and the countdown cannot possibly start as long as one US solider is stationed in a Muslim country for the purpose of conducting war and occupation.

Yet again, there is more to all of this. Reversing intellectual dogmas and collective realizations is too convoluted a process; it requires time, action and good will.

In the meantime, Muslims, who insist on living in the shadow of the ‘West’ as unreserved aficionados or obsessed detractors must redefine their own discourses. As for the latter, they must not allow war alone, MTV consumer media culture, hegemonic globalization and racist remarks by a politician or a born again evangelical to taint their entire view of what are essentially unique, diverse and in many ways impressive civilizations that have done much good. Indeed, there is the like of Boykin, but there are millions of others who are peace-loving, ordinary people, some of whom are ardent advocates of human rights, anti-war campaigners, including the thousands who have repeatedly broken the siege on Gaza, and previous to that Iraq. Muslims too must quit caricaturing them, reducing them to enemies, juxtaposing Muslims’ essential righteousness with ‘Western’ essential depravity. Not only are such reductions inaccurate and self-defeating, they also break down possible alliances between the forces of good in this world, in a time when they are of essence.

This is appeasement not peace. Yet, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to US President Barrack Obama for reasons which are baffling. Recipients of the same prize, namely the Dalai Lama and Barrack Hussein Obama, ironically cannot meet as it might discombobulate a delicate international order.

Perhaps the Norwegian Nobel Prize committee was rewarding Obama for not launching a war under false pretexts the way his predecessor George W. Bush did just nine months into office. Otherwise, Obama has achieved nothing except for an exaggerated engagement with the Islamic world.

According to the Daily Telegraph, an “Obamameter” run by the political accountability organization PolitiFact lists “seven broken promises, a dozen stalled initiatives and 117 pet projects still ‘in the works.’”

The Nobel award is symptomatic of all that is wrong with our system.

Our standards are literally being shortened. There is a duality of metrics that separates the rulers from the ruled. When the ruler fails to deliver, a prestigious award provides the fix.

One class sports a long list of titles, awards, “achievements” and those meaningless two-, three-lettered acronyms on ponderous coattails while the other class desperately cling on to the hems for their daily crumbs.

We live in an SMS world defined by abbreviated value-added jargons (VAJ) like ROIs, ERPs, KPIs and thousands of other acronyms that favour paper credentials over knowledge, Ponzi schemes over gold and venality over industry.

One class throws out such jargons, titles and acronyms as yardsticks that others should live by. When ruination knocks at the door, it is the agenda setters and the main culprits who walk away with the fat bonus.

It is not easy to shake off the power of acronyms. If they were alive today, Sigmund Freud and his nephew Edward Bernays may have used them in case studies of population control.

There is power in stilted vocabularies. In a corporate meeting, jargons are routinely resorted by one clueless group to beat the senses of another. Statistics and glossy power points are shoved down your throat. Few seek clarity. No one wants to be seen as a hick. Resolutions are finally passed. Over time, it leads to pseudo-sciences within the once respectable socio-economic fields of study.

Abbreviated terms of reference (TOR) are great trinkets for a self-delusional professional rabble. They revel in the mass-manufactured credentials available at schools, universities and e-bay.

In the end, we have an acute global talent shortage in a world brimming with paper qualifications.

Ever heard of the search consultant who slogged more than a year to find a suitable vice president for an international bank? Standards were high; the two-, three-lettered credentials required would fill up a page, including the never advertised GF – Good Family. (If you applied these standards to the military, a field medic is not allowed to man the 20-mm gun at a crucial point in battle).

Six months later, the bank collapsed! Few four-flushers at this bank knew what was going on. Their tasks were neatly delineated. Yet, armed with their vaunted acronyms, they are free to peddle their rattlesnake oil elsewhere. They are in demand as, like Obama, they can promise the world and con the common man into parting with their future.

Welcome to the real world. Like the financial world, “notional” and “fiat” flips into “real.”

War becomes peace! Fiction becomes fact. The worrying signs are there. Astartling number of Britons actually consider Winston Churchill and Mahatma Gandhi to be fictional characters while they vouch for the authenticity of Baker Street’s Sherlock Homes!

The Daily Mail hypothesizes that such ignorance “could well have something to do with the TV insurance adverts inviting viewers to ‘challenge Churchill’ and featuring a lugubrious talking dog.”

That’s the power to sell. The power of fictional imagery! According to a Wall Street Journal report, an astonishing 61% of sub-prime loans were palmed off to those who actually qualified for a conventional loan. The problem lies not with greed per se, but with Key Performance Indexes (KPIs) governing the Job Descriptions (JDs) of bank executives. To meet such metrics, they have to inveigle large quantities of loans in the shortest possible time to achieve maximum profit.

A computerized database of such performances sifts out the “high achievers” from the “underperformers,” the conmen from the common men and, in some instances, the barely literate from the educated. Your worth is spelt out in stats and acronyms. Every trick is employed under the veneer of letters to cheat the uninitiated.

These charlatans set the universal discourse for civilized behaviour, educational standards and career achievements.

The most pressing task for the CEO of America Inc is a financial one. How will he deal with a one quadrillion dollar plus (more than 1,000 trillion) derivatives market that is waiting to explode? It is largely an American creation. The Chinese are threatening to default on a fraction of them and a few trillion in defaults is enough to sink the Western Economy.

Nobel Economics laureates will tell you it is all business as usual, and the bulls are being warmed up for the mother of all matador markets (MOAMM). It is only matter of time…

Time, however, is revealing a disturbing reality.

The Obama Record

Has Obama brought peace to Afghanistan or is he building up troops there? Read the news. The Taliban writ runs throughout half of Afghanistan and slowly, across the western half of Pakistan. Has Muqtada Al-Sadr kissed the cheeks of his Sunni and Kurdish brethren in Iraq with a salam? Isn’t Pakistan’s Jihad Inc. run with US-supplied weaponry?

Why are the entities known as Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda still free to thread the terror mill? Why hasn’t the United States sued for peace and diplomatic ties with neighbouring, little Cuba when it can tolerate every gross human rights violation in China?

If Obama is afraid of Turkish sensitivities over a century-old Armenian genocide, can he be expected to stand up for international justice today?

Has Obama brought universal healthcare to millions of Americans who can’t afford it? How are the deteriorating manufacturing and employment sectors measuring up to reality? Do the marginalized need another sound bite or another lying statistic to reassure them that things are shaping up?

Will the deteriorating value of the US dollar prompt Washington to embark on another Persian Gulf adventure? Every major war in history was fuelled by the re-liquidation needs of an empty treasury. Like the psychology of acronyms, the casus belli is buried under jargons, lies and patriotic grunts.

ROI, ERP, KPI, T-Bill …CIC, Rah, Rah Rah!¹ Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil!

The historical progression is time-tested. When financial systems collapse under the weight of fraudulent practice, it is time for a Fuhrer to step in with catchphrases. They will be earthy and populist and will be addressed to a horde of the disenchanted.

And the clueless!

Let’s face it. This is the first modern generation not to have produced a Nikola Tesla, an Albert Einstein, or a financial whiz who can match the genius of Nikolai Kondratieff. Or how about a Mahatma Gandhi who was rejected five times for the Nobel Peace Prize? Maybe things were not rigid then. Einstein could not fix his hair right, Gandhi wore a loincloth. People could think!

Obama sets Gandhi as his standard. It is a clichéd fashion statement. The contrast cannot be depicted with sufficient brevity. One was born to privilege but “came down” to his true roots. The other was fast-tracked out of a ghetto possibility to the presidency of the United States. It was something unreal and remains so, much like Obama’s tinsel-tinged predecessors.

Mahatma Gandhi eschewed violence. He brought down the greatest empire ever through non-cooperation, by boycotting the financial foundations of Imperial rule. His actions triggered self-rule and independence for many nations. He fought for the poor and wanted them to live in dignity.

Obama the Nobel Peace laureate may turn out to be the anti-Gandhi. Out of the crumbling foundations of our financial system, he and his cohorts must do something. The metrics of today leave him little choice. There is no thinking outside the box.

Instead of fortifying the nation-state, Obama may dissolve them for a borderless commune. Force will be met by force, violence will increase and the foundations of a New World Order will be built on the ashes of the faceless poor.

The Norwegians must have given that award to prevent this spectre.

Iraqi soldier, body carbonized by depleted uranium shell

And I should note that it’s not just remote places like Iraq and Kuwait and Afghanistan that are being contaminated with super toxic and radioactive uranium dust–nor am I just talking about the stuff that gets picked up in the wind and carried around the globe, or the stuff that gets inhaled by our troops and carried home internally, bad enough as that is.

The truth is that depleted uranium weapons are being exploded and burned right here in the USA in training operations. Who needs terrorists with dirty bombs! The center of Hawaii’s Big Island, for example, which is a military zone, is heavily contaminated by DU ammunition fired by tanks there. Our tanks! The same is true of Vieques Island, long a favored target for the US Navy, which for years has fired shells, including DU-tipped shells, from its ships at the populated island, and also launched DU-tipped missiles at and dropped DU-loaded “bunker-buster” bombs on the place.

While I don’t have direct knowledge, I’d say it’s a safe bet that there are a number of sites on the Mainland US where DU munitions have also been widely used–maybe White Sands Proving Ground, the Marine training area near Joshua Tree National Monument in Southern California, or other such training and testing areas.

The simple truth is that our own government, besides committing an ongoing atrocity in the Middle East, is also doing Osama Bin Laden’s job for him, poisoning our own country with uranium oxide.

Our Nobel Peace Prize president should take note. President John F. Kennedy, whatever his faults, reportedly moved to halt open air testing of nuclear weapons after looking at the rain falling outside the window of the Oval Office and asking a science advisor whether it was delivering nuclear fallout to the rose garden where his two kids played (he was told that it was). Maybe President Obama should consider that the rain today is delivering uranium dust to his wife’s and daughters’ garden in the back yard of the White House. At least he should take a look at pictures of the horribly deformed babies being born to mothers in Iraq (and of the lucky babies that are stillborn), thanks to the radioactive warfare that the US military has been employing against both that country and Afghanistan–his “necessary” war.

There is another irony here too. The US is expressing concern about Iran enriching uranium, and possibly creating a nuclear bomb, which in the unlikely event that it were ever used, might spread some radioactivity around parts of the Middle east, yet it is the US which already has spread close to 2000 tons of uranium dust all over Iraq and Afghanistan over the past 18 years–far more radioactive material than any small Iranian bomb could release.

The recent Nobel Peace Prize awarded to President Barack Obama has drawn criticism from many commentators, including those who claim that the award is premature — that President Obama has yet to “make his mark” on US foreign policy.

Some have argued that Obama lacks the concrete political achievements of Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Jimmy Carter, all of whom have previously been awarded the prize. Others go much further, condemning President Obama for his foreign policy and his continuation and expansion of military operations and related war policies.

Whatever the specific positions of the various commentators, debate over Obama’s credentials as a champion of peace have been focused almost exclusively on his foreign policy and military operations. To the extent that domestic policies are mentioned at all, they are policies such as domestic surveillance, wiretapping, and other matters associated with the prosecution of war abroad.

This may seem natural to many, since we are used to thinking of peace merely as the absence of full-scale military conflict. But this is a very narrow notion of peace. Real peace is the absence of aggression, whether on an international scale or localized within a small area. Real peace requires not merely the absence of large-scale military conflicts, but also the absence of aggression in domestic affairs concerning individual citizens.

While foreign affairs and military operations are no doubt an important aspect of world peace, fixation solely on these issues concedes a fundamentally statist premise: that peace concerns only those conflicts occurring between governments and other large and militarily powerful entities (such as terrorist groups). Under this view, to use force against a government or paramilitary organization is “war,” but to aggress against an unarmed citizen is mere “public policy.”

This view is extremely shortsighted and cannot be expected to yield any genuine or lasting peace. The reason is simple: peace is not a concept which should be restricted — or even primarily directed — towards conflicts between governments and other military entities. It applies just as much to domestic conflicts between governments and their own citizens as to conflicts between military powers.

Peace should also not be restricted solely to the prevention of killing. It applies just as much to conflicts involving tax collectors and the appropriation of private property as to conflicts involving helicopter gunships and the killing of people.

Not only is the absence of military conflict insufficient to obtain genuine peace, once one accepts the ideology of statism, military conflict becomes inevitable. As Ludwig von Mises has explained,

Modern civilization is a product of the philosophy of laissez faire. It cannot be preserved under the ideology of government omnipotence.… To defeat the aggressors is not enough to make peace durable. The main thing is to discard the ideology that generates war.

Thus, to be a genuine and effective advocate for peace, one must oppose the initiation of force in principle and in all its manifestations. One must oppose the initiation of force whether it is undertaken on a small or a large scale, and whether it is directed towards the killing of people, other trespasses against their bodies, or the appropriation of their property. In short, one must accept the nonaggression principle and all that it implies in both domestic and foreign policy.

“Peace Activists” and the “Peace Prize”

Since peace is obtained only in the absence of the initiation of force, any principled advocacy of peace must be built on a fully developed foundation of moral and political philosophy that eschews aggression in all its forms. As Ayn Rand explains,

Laissez-faire capitalism is the only social system based on the recognition of individual rights and, therefore, the only system that bans force from social relationships. By the nature of its basic principles and interests, it is the only system fundamentally opposed to war.…

The trader and the warrior have been fundamental antagonists throughout history. Trade does not flourish on battlefields, factories do not produce under bombardments, profits do not grow on rubble. Capitalism is a society of traders — for which it has been denounced by every would-be gunman who regards trade as “selfish” and conquest as “noble.”

Unfortunately, many of the so-called “peace activists” celebrated for their opposition to wars are hostile to the very social system that would ensure a genuine and lasting peace. In fact, these “peace activists” are not in favor of peace at all. They are merely opposed to certain large-scale military operations.

Such activists are often quite happy to lend their support to the initiation of force against domestic citizens, to plunder them of their property for the purposes of redistribution, or to enslave them under the watchful eye of government bureaucracies. In these smaller-scale conflicts, many allegedly “peace-loving” people routinely support statism and aggression as the means to achieve their domestic policy goals.

In the case of many of the recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize, the apparent requirements for the accolade could not be more topsy-turvy if they were penned by Orwell himself. Our newest laureate routinely advocates statist programs that initiate violence against massive numbers of people to rob them of their property and submit them to forcible government control in more and more aspects of their lives.

Some have argued that it is incongruous to award a peace prize to a president currently locked in two wars. But even this is a rosy view of the situation; for one needn’t look as far as foreign policy to find a host of other issues on which this “champion of peace” favors violence as the means of obtaining his desired goals. As president of the United States, he presides over a coercive apparatus larger and more powerful than any in human history, and like his predecessors, he wields his political power against both domestic citizens and foreigners to routinely deny them their property rights, their liberties, and even their lives.

In drug policy, the president is locked in a “War on Drugs” in which he commands government agencies as they violently assault, rob, and imprison people who attempt to trade or ingest substances prohibited by their political masters. In social policy, he is fighting a “War on Poverty” in which millions of people are robbed of their rightful property in order to fatten the wallets of social-service bureaucrats and associated lobbyists, with the residual left over for poorer people. In economic policy, he fights a “War on Greed,” in which people are forcibly prevented from trading their own property as they see fit, and entire industries are nationalized to the inept hands of government masters.

The Principle of Nonaggression

These smaller-scale assaults and robberies are no different in their moral principles from larger-scale conflicts involving armed military forces. The same moral rules apply to both situations. In either context, the initiation of violence is morally wrong, and incompatible with a peaceful society.

If we look to the root of the problem, to the aggression lying behind these “public policies,” then we see that supposedly serene nations like the United States are far from peaceful — notwithstanding the absence of tanks in the streets.

In commenting on the moral principles pertaining to wars, philosopher Jeff McMahan argues that

common sense beliefs about the morality of killing in war are deeply mistaken. The prevailing view is that in a state of war, the practice of killing is governed by different moral principles from those that govern acts of killing in other contexts. This presupposes that it can make a difference to the moral permissibility of killing another person whether one’s political leaders have declared a state of war with that person’s country. According to the prevailing view, therefore, political leaders can sometimes cause other people’s moral rights to disappear simply by commanding their armies to attack them. When stated in this way, the received view seems obviously absurd.

But one can go further than merely looking at acts of killing, and apply this same universality requirement to the use of force in general. As with killing, the initiation of force against the property of domestic citizens does not become any more morally legitimate or “peaceful” when it is done under the direction of political leaders. Notwithstanding their alleged “representation” of the people, it is just as absurd to assume that political leaders can remove the rights of their own domestic citizens as of foreigners.

The apparent serenity of neighborhoods with white picket fences and lush lawns can be deceiving, and it leads many residents of developed countries to believe that peace has been achieved in their own backyard. Indeed, some believe that statist policies such as taxation, regulation, and other property-right violations are still “peaceful,” notwithstanding the threat of force involved, since the enforcement of these rules generally does not involve the use of actual physical violence against the body of any person.

After all, in most “peaceful” nations we are not used to seeing people shot in the streets or hauled off to the gulag. Even under fairly repressive domestic conditions, things can still be “peaceful” in the sense that there is not much overt violence or rebellion.

But this simply means that people have been brought to a state where they routinely comply with the edicts of their political masters, and avoid the incarceration or violence that would result from their refusal to do so. This is clearly not genuine peace, any more than a slave house is peaceful if the will of the slaves for resistance has been broken and overt violence has become unnecessary.

Military Conflict and Domestic Repression

The foregoing analysis is not intended to imply that there is no difference between overseas military adventures and instances of statist domestic policies. Nor is it intended to imply that the analysis of military conflicts is in any way less important than the analysis of domestic policies. The point is that only a principled stand for peace, including consistent opposition to statist policies, can be expected to yield a more peaceful society over time.

There are, of course, many differences between military conflicts and domestic public policies. Military struggles are likely to be far more destructive than domestic ones, but they are also far more complex. While particular war crimes may be morally clear cut, moral arguments over the legitimacy of the wars themselves are often complicated by long histories of retaliation and escalation, involving many different groups, often fighting for generations. On the other hand, taxation, regulation, and the suppression of legitimate civil liberties are quite clearly acts of aggression, in which there is no question of the victim having previously aggressed against the attacker.

For this reason, it is all the more imperative for genuine advocates of peace to take a stand against unambiguous cases of domestic aggression embodied in the statist policies that abound in their own homelands. For if one cannot even recognize the immorality of clear-cut instances of government violence at home, what hope can there possibly be to understand the moral imperatives applying to convoluted, foreign, military struggles with histories tracing back over generations?

Peace versus Statism

While specific conflicts are often complicated, the fundamental principles underlying a peaceful society are relatively simple. If the members of a society accept the nonaggression principle and repudiate the initiation of force, then there will be peace; if instead they support statism, there will be violence, repression, and war.

Once a person knowingly countenances a single act of aggression against property rights, any moral objection to violence they may have had is breached. Regardless of whether the issue in question is drug prohibition, estate taxes, zoning regulations, or government welfare schemes, support for the violation of property rights establishes the principle that the initiation of force is a legitimate means for achieving one’s ends — that it is morally proper.

The transition to supporting larger-scale acts of aggression is then just a matter of degree, with the extent of support differing from person to person. Such a person may certainly oppose large-scale military conflicts out of concern for the scale of the destruction. But theirs is not an objection to the use of aggression itself; it is merely a concern that this much violence goes too far!

Without a principle against aggression per se, there is no logical basis for any agreement on the level of violence that is legitimate. There is no logical basis to say that this much violence is okay, but that much is too much. And so, inevitably, once the principle of nonaggression is tossed aside, people are led on a path to statism and destruction, upping the ante until full-scale war is the result.

The Nobel Peace Prize for Barack Obama makes perfect sense. It is an award routinely bestowed on those who do their utmost to aggrandize government and agitate for increased statism in pursuit of their goals. As philosopher Hans Hermann-Hoppe once noted, “If you want to win the [Nobel Peace Prize], it is good that you are a mass murderer; at least that helps.” Although President Obama is by no means the most oppressive recipient of this infamous prize, his penchant for statist policies at home and abroad makes him an ideal candidate for the award.

Since some have charged that awarding the prize to President Obama is premature, I will save them the suspense: Obama will continue to work to expand US government power both abroad and over its domestic citizens. He will continue to push forward a statist agenda and he will routinely use violence to plunder people of their rightfully owned property, suppress their civil liberties, and deprive them of their lives. As such, he will become, if he is not already, a perfectly fitting recipient for the Nobel Peace Prize.

LIES USED TO JUSTIFY THIS INCLUDE:

Afghanistan is a “good war” against the “real terrorists” who attacked Americans

Barack Obama referred to the war as the “the central front in our battle against terrorism.” According to our the new president, “I think one of the biggest mistakes we’ve made strategically after 9/11 was to fail to finish the job. …We got distracted by Iraq.”

The war in Afghanistan had nothing to do with responding to the 9/11 attacks. It was launched to defeat reactionary Islamic fundamentalist trends and groups that have posed obstacles to U.S power and to restructure the Middle East and Central Asian regions in order to deepen U.S. domination.

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Afghanistan is one front in this global war because of its strategic location. It was a U.S. target before 9/11. A Pakistani diplomat told the BBC that he was informed of the U.S. intent to attack Afghanistan in mid-July of 2001 (see U.S. ‘planned attack on Taleban’, September 18, 2001.)

When various Islamic fundamentalist forces were fighting the Soviet Union in Afghanistan they were funded and armed by the U.S. President Reagan called them “freedom fighters.” Today they are an impediment to U.S. goals and are now called “terrorists.” We are supposed to accept that this requires the people of the U.S. to support U.S. aggressive wars in order to protect “our safety,” regardless of how many lives are sacrificed in other nations.

The U.S. has freed the people of Afghanistan, particularly women, from oppressive rule

The Bush regime used concern for the women to justify slaughter of civilians, creating a situation where women were even more vulnerable to the Taliban, religious reactionary fundamentalists who oppress women, progressives, and the people of Afghanistan in general. Life under the Taliban was and is a living hell of reactionary religious strictures and suffocating social relations.

But during the years of Soviet occupation, the U.S. supported the Taliban in the hope that they could unite the various and fractious forces within the country, better enabling the U.S. to achieve its goals in the country.

 Even now, after the U.S. overthrow of the Taliban, both Obama and Biden have recently talked of negotiating with some “moderate” factions of the Taliban to get them to support the current Afghan government and U.S. goals. Since the U.S. invasion, the people of Afghanistan continue to be under the domination of reactionaries who are now in the service of the U.S.

The Karzai regime is a puppet government of the same hated landlords, militia heads, and feudal and tribal chieftains that have tormented the people of Afghanistan for decades. Corruption within the government is endemic. Opium production and trade makes up one-third of the country’s gross domestic product.

Women are still deeply and cruelly oppressed in Afghanistan. An Afghan woman dies during childbirth every 30 minutes; 87 percent of Afghan women are illiterate; only 30 percent of girls have access to education in Afghanistan; one-third of women experience physical, psychological, or sexual violence, including honor killings; and 70 to 80 percent of women, including many children, face forced marriages in Afghanistan.

“We broke it, now we must rebuild it”

The argument is that even though the initial invasion was wrong, the U.S. now owes it to the Afghan people to rebuild the country. Obama has promised increased economic aid.

But what little aid is delivered to the country evaporates into a cauldron of corruption and is used to support the reactionary rulers of the country. A recent poll conducted by the Afghan Center for Socio-Economic and Opinion Research indicates that the vast majority of the Afghan population views public corruption as a major problem, and wanted the United States military to leave.

Apologists for the U.S. occupation would argue that at least the U.S. is making people in Afghanistan more secure. But in the above poll, only 42% had confidence that the U.S. coalition forces could provide security in Their areas. One in six of those polled reported nearby bombing or shelling by U.S. forces in their area. One in five reported civilians being killed by U.S. coalition forces in the last year in the areas where they lived.

People continue to suffer. According to the United Nations Human Development Index, Afghanistan is the 174^th poorest nation. Afghanistan’s Independent Human Rights

Commission (AIHRC) in December 2008 reported that 37 percent or about ten million people in Afghanistan suffer from severe poverty, with millions earning less than $1 per day.

The U.S. State Department in 2008 stated the infant mortality rate is 154.67 deaths per 1,000 live births. The U.S. State Department admits that at least 3 million Afghans are refugees in other countries. Less than 1/4^th of the adult population is literate, with the U.S. State Department estimating that only 12 percent of females are literate. Life expectancy is only 43.1 years and the unemployment rate in 2008 was 40%.

More U.S. troops will only increase the death and destruction. The longer the U.S. and its allies remain, the longer the suffering will continue for the Afghan people.

If the U.S. and it allies leave, the Taliban will return to power and it will be even worse than before the invasion

Neither Taliban nor U.S. rule, through its puppet allies, is in the interests of the Afghan population. Two historically obsolete and reactionary forces are contending in the country: the Islamic fundamentalist forces led by the Taliban and the outmoded ruling strata of the imperialist system, led by the U.S. These two reactionary forces reinforce each other, even while opposing each other. But supporting the U.S. imperialists to defeat the Taliban will not advance the interests of the Afghan people. Our choices are not limited to supporting the Taliban or supporting the U.S. imperialists in the war.

We Demand U.S. Withdrawal of All Troops Now!

When Obama announced his escalation of the Afghanwar on February 17th he said, “I do it today mindful that the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan demands urgent attention and swift action.”

He is right that the situation is urgent and demands swift action, but not in the way he meant. We must demand the removal of all U.S. forces, including allied forces immediately. We must oppose the war and occupation and expose the crimes of the U.S. imperialists there. To do less will forsake the people of Afghanistan and enable the U.S. to continue its crimes in that country.

The current debate is focused entirely on the question of troop levels. How many more troops should be sent over in order to pursue the war? The administration has already approved an additional 21,000 American service men and women to be deployed by November, which will increase our troop levels to 68,000. Will another 40,000 do the job? Or should we eventually build up the levels to 100,000 in addition to that? Why not 500,000 – just to be “safe”? And how will public support be brought back around to supporting this war again when 58 percent are now against it?

I get quite annoyed at this very narrow line of questioning. I have other questions. We overthrew the Taliban government in 2001 with less than 10,000 American troops. Why does it now seem that the more troops we send, the worse things get? If the Soviets bankrupted themselves in Afghanistan with troop levels of 100,000 and were eventually forced to leave in humiliating defeat, why are we determined to follow their example? Most importantly, what is there to be gained from all this? We’ve invested billions of dollars and thousands of precious lives – for what?

The truth is it is no coincidence that the more troops we send the worse things get. Things are getting worse precisely because we are sending more troops and escalating the violence. We are hoping that good leadership wins out in Afghanistan, but the pool of potential honest leaders from which to draw have been fleeing the violence, leaving a tremendous power vacuum behind. War does not quell bad leaders. It creates them. And the more war we visit on this country, the more bad leaders we will inadvertently create.

Another thing that war does is create anger with its indiscriminate violence and injustice. How many innocent civilians have been harmed from clumsy bombings and mistakes that end up costing lives? People die from simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time in a war zone, but the killers never face consequences. Imagine the resentment and anger survivors must feel when a family member is killed and nothing is done about it. When there are no other jobs available because all the businesses have fled, what else is there to do, but join ranks with the resistance where there is a paycheck and also an opportunity for revenge? This is no justification for our enemies over there, but we have to accept that when we push people, they will push back.

The real question is why are we there at all? What do our efforts now have to do with the original authorization of the use of force? We are no longer dealing with anything or anyone involved in the attacks of 9/11. At this point we are only strengthening the resolve and the ranks of our enemies. We have nothing left to win. We are only there to save face, and in the end we will not even be able to do that.

Truth is war’s first casualty. The Afghan war’s biggest untruth is, “we’ve got to fight terrorists over there so we don’t have to fight them at home.”

Many North Americans still buy this lie because they believe the 9/11 attacks came directly from the Afghanistan-based al-Qaida and Taliban movements.

False. The 9/11 attacks were planned in Germany and Spain, and conducted mainly by U.S.-based Saudis to punish America for supporting Israel.

Taliban, a militant religious, anti-Communist movement of Pashtun tribesmen, was totally surprised by 9/11. Taliban received U.S. aid until May, 2001. The CIA was planning to use Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida to stir up Muslim Uighurs against Chinese rule, and Taliban against Russia’s Central Asian allies.

Al-Qaida only numbered 300 members. Most have been killed. A handful escaped to Pakistan. Only a few remain in Afghanistan. Yet President Barack Obama insists 68,000 or more U.S. troops must stay in Afghanistan to fight al-Qaida and prevent extremists from re-acquiring “terrorist training camps.”

This claim, like Saddam Hussein’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction, is a handy slogan to market war to the public. Today, half of Afghanistan is under Taliban control. Anti-American militants could more easily use Somalia, Indonesia, Bangladesh, North and West Africa, or Sudan. They don’t need remote Afghanistan. The 9/11 attacks were planned in apartments, not camps.

The United States should not be waging war on Taliban. However backwards and oafish its Pashtun tribesmen, they have no desire or interest in attacking America. Even less, Canada.

Taliban are the sons of the U.S.-backed mujahidin who defeated the Soviets in the 1980s. As I have been saying since 9/11, Taliban never was America’s enemy. Instead of invading Afghanistan in 2001, the U.S. should have paid Taliban to uproot al-Qaida.

The Pashtun tribes want to end foreign occupation and drive out the Afghan Communists, who now dominate the U.S.-installed Kabul regime. But the U.S. has blundered into a full-scale war not just with Taliban, but with most of Afghanistan’s fierce Pashtun tribes, who comprise over half the population.

Obama is wrestling with widening the war. After eight years of military operations costing $236 billion US, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan just warned of the threat of “failure,” a.k.a. defeat. Canada has so far wasted $16 billion Cdn. on the war. Western occupation forces will be doomed if the Afghan resistance ever gets modern anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles.

The U.S. is sinking ever deeper into the South Asian morass. Washington is trying to arm-twist Pakistan into being more obedient and widening the war against its own independent-minded Pashtun tribes — wrongly called “Taliban.”

Washington’s incredibly ham-handed efforts to use $7.5 billion US to bribe Pakistan’s feeble, corrupt government and army, take control of military promotions, and get a grip on Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, have Pakistan’s soldiers on the verge of revolt.

Obama has been under intense pressure from flag-waving Republicans, much of the media, and the hawkish national security establishment to expand the war. Israel’s supporters, including many Congressional Democrats, want to see the U.S. seize Pakistan’s nuclear arms and expand the Afghan war into Iran.

Obama should admit Taliban is not and never was a threat to the West; that the wildly exaggerated al-Qaida has been mostly eradicated; and that the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan is causing more damage to U.S. interests in the Muslim world — now 25% of all humanity — than Bin Laden and his few rag-tag allies. The bombing in Madrid and London, and conspiracy in Toronto, were all horribly wrongheaded protests by young Muslims against the Afghan war.

We are not going to change the way Afghans treat their women by waging war on them, or bring democracy through rigged elections.

I wish Obama would just declare victory in Afghanistan, withdraw western forces, and hand over security to a multi-national stabilization force from Muslim nations. Good presidents, like good generals, know when to retreat.

Eric Margolis is a columnist for the Toronto Sun. His web site is foreigncorrespondent.com.

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Stephen –

This morning, Michelle and I awoke to some surprising and humbling news. At 6 a.m., we received word that I’d been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009.

To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who’ve been honored by this prize — men and women who’ve inspired me and inspired the entire world through their courageous pursuit of peace.

But I also know that throughout history the Nobel Peace Prize has not just been used to honor specific achievement; it’s also been used as a means to give momentum to a set of causes.

That is why I’ve said that I will accept this award as a call to action, a call for all nations and all peoples to confront the common challenges of the 21st century. These challenges won’t all be met during my presidency, or even my lifetime. But I know these challenges can be met so long as it’s recognized that they will not be met by one person or one nation alone.

This award — and the call to action that comes with it — does not belong simply to me or my administration; it belongs to all people around the world who have fought for justice and for peace. And most of all, it belongs to you, the men and women of America, who have dared to hope and have worked so hard to make our world a little better.

So today we humbly recommit to the important work that we’ve begun together. I’m grateful that you’ve stood with me thus far, and I’m honored to continue our vital work in the years to come.

Thank you,

President Barack Obama
————————————————————————-
Mr. Obama, you have not been working with me, or millions of other Americans, nor have you promoted anything more than the peace of the grave for uncounted Afghan and Pakistani peasants. You call anybody who has fought for “justice and for peace” terrorists or insurgents. Anybody who objects to hegemony by the United States is either co-opted, killed or subverted.

On the home front, you and your bought and paid for lackeys in Congress pass ever more draconian laws to subvert our Constitution and destroy our privacy, our right to protest, our basic freedoms under the Bill of Rights. No law that is supposed to provide some sort of relief to We the People is passed until the lobbyists have gone over it with a fine tooth comb and made sure that the profits of the wealthy and the cartels are not touched.

This Winter, there may be a hundred million Americans living under cardboard in the streets, begging for food for their families. We are rapidly returning to the “Gilded Age” of the 1890’s where the wealthy rode their carriages from party to party, grinning at the hordes of people clutching their rags together, their hands out for a coin or two to buy some food for their families. This is what the people running this nation still consider the “natural order of things.”

More and wider wars, war crimes and crimes against humanity, billions more for the war machine and its profiteers, while the people suffer and starve, their jobs outsourced to places where people will work an eighteen hour day for a handful of rice. Health care is rapidly going down the tubes, mortgages are being foreclosed, and in some areas, banks and other financial institutions, who cannot sell the foreclosed homes are having them torn down, to prevent anybody from living in them.

Now, you are embarked on a program to spend still more money on new, advanced, nuclear weapons when we can destroy the planet twenty or thirty times over with the horrors already sitting in their silos on hair trigger alert. New weapons of pain and distress, to be used to disperse protestors of government policies are being developed and distributed to law enforcement. NorthCom is training combat brigades in “suppressing civil unrest.” So starving, homeless, sick people here in the United States will be dealt with, should they protest their plight under the American Oligarchy, of which you are apparently the poster boy.

When the war criminal Henry Kissinger got his Nobel Peace Prize, the whole thing became nothing but a public relations farce. The farce continues and will, apparently, as thousands or tens of thousands, here and abroad, die for the profits of the Oligarchy.

You said, “To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who’ve been honored by this prize — men and women who’ve inspired me and inspired the entire world through their courageous pursuit of peace.”

That was the only accurate statement in your letter to me. I would say, “For shame, Sir,” but you have none, so why bother.

With disgust and sadness,
Steve and Adrienne Osborn