massive resistance

From After Downing Street

The last six and one half years--heck, twenty-six and one half years--have taught us that no matter how inert and telefixated we are on spam-speak modern mass media, we can change things if we want to.

Get off our asses, get out from in front of the screen and out into the public space.

If we can't convince Congress to stop blowing money on war and weapons, then we have to shut down the Pentagon with peaceful disobedience.

Afghanistan is a smoldering brushfire and our "leaders" want to attack Iran.

They will not stop until they have destroyed everything: our economy, our society, our environment, our world.

As hard as it is going to be for us, we are going to have to stop and drop everything, and go and save democracy. The war machine has to be unplugged first, or it will consume everything that is good in America. I believe it will require peaceful, passive resistance and civil disobedience on a massive scale.

To those who are given much, much will be required. We need to walk away from our orderly lives, our plans and our preconceptions, because this project is bigger than anything we ever imagined and we don't know what we will have to give to get peace, maybe everything.

It's time to stop waiting and start acting for peace.

From Daily Kos

Karen Kwiatkowski has been an outspoken critic of Rumsfeld and the neocons' war policies since before the invasion of Iraq.

She writes a column for the web, called, "Without Reservation"  It's worth a read.

Anybody who hates war and waste and loves progress wants to see the Bush Administration, especially Rumsfeld and the neocons in the Pentagon, get thrown out on their faces in disgrace and failure.

But it's really a matter of kill or be killed, for us.  As Paul Krugman explains in his book, The Great Unraveling,

I don't know where the right's agenda stops, but I have learned never to assume that it can be appeased through limited concessions.

   --Krugman, Paul, The Great Unraveling,Norton, New York, 2005, p. 19

Krugman goes on to quote the step-father of neoconservatism, Henry Kissinger, who said,

It is the essence of a revolutionary power that it possesses the courage of its convictions, that it is willing, indeed eager, to push its principles to their ultimate conclusion.

Like a real soldier, Kwiatkowski hasn't run from the front lines in the war for America's soul.  She speaks out.

Torture destroys the torturer. Torture weakens the societies and the governments that practice it. And for all that, torture is generally not effective for the purpose it portends.

But driving tubes into the noses of stubborn resisters of some government's will is not the only worrisome form of force feeding.

Centralized states, like the one managed from Washington, D.C., practice force feeding on a much grander scale. We the people, have been force-fed fantastic suggestions of fear and threat. We have had "preemptive strike," and the "need" for war against distant countries jammed down our throats.

But what is so righteous about Kwiatkowski's intellect is that she takes everything a step further.  Her knowledge of the Bush Pentagon and the American War Machine and the Republican leadership requires her to go a step further in defense of America.

She says she went to Capitol Hill recently, where she was assured that we would be acting militarily against Iran soon.

Gary Hart told the Marjority Report on Air America tonight that he doesn't think any conflict with Iran is possible, because our military is too depleted.

Kwiatkowski concludes her piece, Force Feeding, by saying this:  

Americans have for now lost our appetite for war. The predictable response of the Bush Administration is to insist that the force feedings must continue.

The U.S. government says that "force-feeding [at Guantanamo] was designed to improve the prisoner's health." Whether we are praying and waiting in an isolated steel cage in Cuba for freedom and justice or praying and waiting with loved ones in our living rooms for some sign of humility and morality from Washington, we know better.

If America isn't America anymore, I guess we have to change with the times, too.