Tom Hayden ( 23
NORTH BAY BOH EMI A N | SEP T E M BE R 7–1 3, 20 1 1 | BO H E M I AN.COM
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Whether you're an avid collector or just curious about art, this is an incredible opportunity to visit the studios of Napa Valley’s artists and fine craftspeople.
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Friday, Sept. 9, 7-10pm
the vast importance of the ongoing WikiLeaks whistleblowing campaign against the global secrecy establishment. Consider just what we have learned about Iraq and Afghanistan because of WikiLeaks: tens of thousands of civilian casualties in Iraq never before disclosed; instructions to U.S. troops not to investigate torture when conducted by U.S. allies; the existence of Task Force 373, carrying out night raids in Afghanistan; the CIA’s secret army of 3,000 mercenaries; private parties by DynCorp featuring trafficked boys as entertainment; and an Afghan vice president carrying $52 million in a suitcase. The efforts of the White House to prosecute Julian Assange and persecute Pfc. Bradley Manning in military prison should be of deep concern to anyone believing in the public’s right to know. The news that this is not a physical war but mainly one of perceptions will not be received well among American military families or Afghan children, which is why a responsible citizen must rebel ďŹ rst and foremost against the “Official Story.â€? That simple act of resistance necessarily leads to study as part of critical practice, which is essential to the recovery of a democratic self and democratic society. Read, for example, this early martial line by Rudyard Kipling, the English writer of the white man’s burden: “When you’re left wounded on Afghanistan’s plains and the women come out to cut up what remains / just roll to your rie and blow out your brains / And go to your God like a soldier.â€? Years later, after Kipling’s beloved son was killed in World War I and his remains never recovered, the author wrote: “If any question why we died / Tell them because our fathers lied.â€?
A Hope for Peace 6780 Depot Street, Sebastopol | www.sebarts.org | 707.829.4797
An important part of the story of the peace movement, and the hope for peace itself, is the
process by which hawks come to see their own mistakes. A brilliant history/autobiography in this regard is Daniel Ellsberg’s Secrets, about his evolution from defense hawk to historic whistleblower during the Vietnam War. Ellsberg writes movingly about how he was inuenced on his journey by contact with young men on their way to prison for draft resistance. The military occupation of our minds will continue until many more Americans become familiar with the strategies and doctrines in play during the Long War. Not enough Americans in the peace movement are literate about counterinsurgency, counterterrorism and the debates about “the clash of civilizationsâ€?— i.e., the West versus the Muslim world. The writings of Andrew Bacevich, a Vietnam veteran and retired Army lieutenant colonel whose own son was killed in Iraq in 2007, is one place to begin. Bacevich, a professor at Boston University, has written The New American Militarism and edited The Long War, both worth absorbing. For the military point of view, there is the 2007 “Army-Marine Counterinsurgency Field Manualâ€? developed by Gen. Petraeus, with its stunning resurrection of the Phoenix model from Vietnam, in which thousands of Vietnamese were tortured or killed before media outcry and Senate hearings shut it down. David Kilcullen even calls for a “global Phoenix programâ€? to combat al Qaida– style groupings. These are Ivy League calls to war, Kilcullen even endorsing “armed social scienceâ€? in a New Yorker article in 2007. For a criticism of counterinsurgency and defense of the “martial spirit,â€? Bing West’s recent The Wrong War is a mustread. West, a combat Marine and former Pentagon official, worries that counterinsurgency is turning the army into a Peace Corps, when it needs grit and bullets. “America is the last Western nation standing that ďŹ ghts for what it believes,â€? he roars. Not enough is being written about how to end the wars in Iraq,