Obama became president by co-opting the anti-war movement and pretending that he opposed his predecessors' war-making. He was lying, and his war policy is thoroughly consistent with Bush's - indeed with that of all US presidents who have killed, wounded, and made homeless well over 20 million human beings in the last 50 years, mostly civilians.
He has not been the lesser evil but, as Glen Ford says, the more effective evil - effective in carrying out the policy of control of the world's greatest energy producing region, as a means for the control of the Eurasian economy for the benefit of the US 1%.
Obama's had to kill a lot of people to achieve this goal, and few have been more helpful than those liberals who contend that they can "have little long-term positive impact, so [they] are not campaigning for a no vote"! With opponents like that, who needs allies?
It's duplicitous to twist a call for Turkey "to open a humanitarian aid corridor in its own territory to transmit the humanitarian and military aid from the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government" to Kobane into support for more US and Turkish military action in the region, even if done with feigned reluctance.
We should be opposing Obama's war-making, not trying to find ways to support it.
--CGE
On Oct 13, 2014, at 4:04 PM, Robert Naiman <naiman at justforeignpolicy.org> wrote:
> Hi, Carl.
>
> 1. I disagree that Kobane now equals Benghazi then, for many reasons that I won't go into right now because I'm up against a writing deadline, but am happy to come back to later on this thread or elsewhere. For example, as you yourself noted, Chomsky has joined others in calling for a Turkey to allow a "humanitarian corridor" to protect Kobane.
> 2. We are not calling for people to support the U.S. war against ISIS. We think it's a foregone conclusion that Congress will overwhelmingly vote yes on any AUMF that reaches the floor. We think that whether there a few or fewer no votes will have little long-term positive impact, so we are not campaigning for a no vote. Instead, we are campaigning for any AUMF to prohibit the use of ground combat forces and to be narrow and limited, as the Progressive Caucus has called for. We think that these are winnable fights that if won will have a significant, positive long-term impact.
>
> In particular, we are campaigning for any AUMF to have a time limit, a "sunset," as I wrote in my Nation piece in August. And we want the sunset to be as short as possible. So far, Kaine's is the best: one year.
>
> Also, we want the targets of any AUMF to be named and limited, e.g. limited to ISIS, Nusra, and other Al Qaeda type groups, as in Kaine's AUMF.
>
> Finally, we want Congress to impose public reporting requirements on civilian casualties from U.S. airstrikes, so we won't continue the "he said/she said" unaccountability soap opera on civilian casualties of the drone strike policy, which has, as I predicted, already started with respect to U.S. airstrikes in Syria.
>
> These points are explained in the text and background of our MoveOn petition in support of the Progressive Caucus resolution:
>
> Help the Progressive Caucus Limit the Iraq-Syria war
> http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/help-the-progressive?source=c.em&r_by=1135580
>
> All best,
>
> RN
>
> ===
>
> Robert Naiman
> Policy Director
> Just Foreign Policy
> www.justforeignpolicy.org
> naiman at justforeignpolicy.org
> (202) 448-2898 x1
>
> On Mon, Oct 13, 2014 at 11:59 AM, Carl G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu> wrote:
> Bob--
>
> '...mere slogans of “no war” and “stop the bombing” aren’t morally, politically, or strategically sufficient right now...'
>
> That's a curiously periphrastic way to call for support for the Obama administration's war in the Mideast.
>
> It suggests that you do recognize that you're reversing what you seemed formerly to be saying about a 'just foreign policy.'
>
> Kobane seems to be playing something like the role that Benghazi did in the preparation for the US/NATO attack on Libya.
>
> 'When a non-violent uprising began, Qaddafi crushed it violently, and a rebellion broke out that liberated Benghazi, Libya's second largest city, and seemed about to move on to Qaddafi's stronghold in the West. His forces, however, reversed the course of the conflict and were at the gates of Benghazi. A slaughter in Benghazi was likely, and as Obama's Middle East adviser Dennis Ross pointed out, "everyone would blame us for it." That would be unacceptable, as would a Qaddafi military victory enhancing his power and independence. The US then joined in UN Security Council resolution 1973 calling for a no-fly zone, to be implemented by France, the UK, and the US, with the US supposed to move to a supporting role.
>
> 'There was no effort to institute a no-fly zone. The triumvirate at once interpreted the resolution as authorizing direct participation on the side of the rebels. A ceasefire was imposed by force on Qaddafi's forces, but not on the rebels. On the contrary, they were given military support as they advanced to the West, soon securing the major sources of Libya's oil production, and poised to move on.
>
> 'The blatant disregard of UN 1973, from the start began to cause some difficulties for the press as it became too glaring to ignore. In the New York Times, for example, Karim Fahim and David Kirkpatrick (March 29) wondered "how the allies could justify airstrikes on Colonel Qaddafi's forces around [his tribal center] Surt if, as seems to be the case, they enjoy widespread support in the city and pose no threat to civilians." Another technical difficulty is that UNSC 1973 "called for an arms embargo that applies to the entire territory of Libya, which means that any outside supply of arms to the opposition would have to be covert" (but otherwise unproblematic).' [Noam Chomsky]
>
> --CGE
>
> On Oct 13, 2014, at 11:06 AM, Robert Naiman <noreply at list.moveon.org> wrote:
>
>> Dear C G ESTABROOK,
>>
>> Yesterday I wrote to you, urging you to sign and share our MoveOn petition urging the Obama Administration to do all it can to pressure Turkey to allow Kurds to save Kurds resisting the ISIS siege of Kobane:
>>
>> Obama: Press Turkey to Stop Massacre of Syrian Kurds
>> http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/save-kobane
>>
>> Press reports since Friday have made me cautiously optimistic that Kobane can still be saved. Kurdish defenders are fighting bravely and creatively, and having some success in holding ISIS back. Tens of thousands of Kurds demonstrated in Germany on Saturday, showing that world Kurdish public opinion has not given up on saving Kobane. And while I don’t think that the Obama Administration is yet doing all that it could be doing in terms of putting pressure on Turkey, the Obama Administration is clearly doing some things that are helping Kurdish defenders save Kobane – so say Kurdish officials in Kobane.
>>
>> To me, the situation in Kobane shows that – contrary to what some people on the left have been saying – mere slogans of “no war” and “stop the bombing” aren’t morally, politically, or strategically sufficient right now for Americans who are rightly concerned about endless war to engage Washington and U.S. public opinion about the war against ISIS in Iraq and Syria. In my view, Americans are right to be concerned about civilians threatened by ISIS, and right to have sympathy for civilians threatened by ISIS who support some degree of U.S. military intervention against ISIS.
>>
>> This is a key reason why – again, contrary to what some people on the left have been saying – I think that the Congressional Progressive Caucus was very wise to stake out a more nuanced position than simply “supporting” or “opposing” the war. And this is a key reason why Just Foreign Policy is supporting the CPC resolution, which neither supports nor opposes the war per se, but says that Congress should debate and vote on the war, just like the U.S. Constitution and the majority of Americans say, that no U.S. ground combat troops should be used, just like President Obama and the majority of Americans say, and that any Congressional authorization of force should be narrow and limited, just as the Obama Administration has said.
>>
>> On Wednesday, we are doing petition delivery events at local Congressional offices in support of the CPC resolution together with Progressives for Democratic Action. I’m sorry for the late notice if you are seeing this information for the first time; I originally planned to write you about this over the weekend, but we diverted ourselves to address the Kobane emergency.
>>
>> Here is the alert that we sent to the Just Foreign Policy list on Friday evening. At this writing, we have almost ten thousand signatures on our petition in support of the CPC resolution.
>>
>> Thanks for all you do for justice,
>> Robert Naiman, Just Foreign Policy
>>
>
>