OutOfIraq

IRAQ MASH

davidswanson — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:57:50 -0500

By David Swanson

I had to read a lot of books about the current war and occupation in Iraq before I found one that's laugh out-loud hilarious. It's a book about a U.S. military hospital in Iraq, a journal kept for a 10-month tour of duty by an operating room medic. The story never leaves the hospital, and it focuses in large part on the relationships among the characters working there, including pranks and hijinks aplenty. One almost inevitably thinks of MASH and its fictional Army hospital in Korea, but there are major differences.

The basic similarity between MASH and this brilliant new book, "Mass Casualties" by Michael Anthony, is disturbing to consider. These are two episodes from different corners of an empire of bases, wars, and occupations spanning multiple generations and continents. Unless the United States shuts down its empire or is forced to do so, similar accounts will be possible in endless times and places for years to come.

The novel on which the MASH movie and television show were based was written by an Army surgeon, but written as fiction. "Mass Casualties" is presented as nonfiction, although written with the touch of a good fiction writer. This new story is packed with adultery, drug abuse, corruption scandals, blackmail, depression, insomnia, suicide, emailed sex photos, and other elements that are not exact parallels to MASH. But the overriding theme, the straight-man to the pranks and dark humor, is the familiar and powerful force of military stupidity.

The military stupidity in this tale includes bureaucratic unaccountability, and -- in the background -- the general cluelessness as to what the whole point is of being in Iraq. But the dominant dimwittedness is found in some of the individual characters, whose names have been changed but who are supposedly presented as they really were. These include a superior officer so angry and abusive that Anthony's unit bonds over its members' common hatred for this man.

Serious injustices and self-destructive policies are addressed head-on in this book, but they pop up in the course of such an entertaining drama that they do not look like they would from a more familiar angle. I'm reminded of the Bush Chain Gang, the giant papier mache heads of Bush, Cheney, and gang with prison outfits and balls and chains, produced by the Backbone Campaign. When these comical creatures come marching through town and absolutely everyone of all political persuasions wants to have a photo taken with them, conversations are opened up about the lawlessness of high officials that would not otherwise occur and could not otherwise take the form they do.

"Mass Casualties" is a book I would recommend to any young person being targeted by military recruiters, to any person opposed to war, to any person in favor of war, and in fact to anyone with an interest in humanity and the enjoyment of an uproarious story about a bunch of ordinary people put through outrageous hardships who for the most part make no attempt whatsoever to come through with any dignity intact.

David Swanson is the author of the new book "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union" by Seven Stories Press. You can order it and find out when tour will be in your town: http://davidswanson.org/book.

C-Span to Show David Swanson Book Event on Cable and Online Sunday Nov. 22nd 7:45 a.m. ET

davidswanson — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 22:28:10 -0500

C-Span's Book TV, which can be watched on cable television on C-Span 2 or online at http://www.booktv.org plans to air a book event they recorded when I was in Miami, Florida.

Here's more info.

They'd told me they would run about 90 minutes, and so that was -- I think -- about what I did, including opening remarks and questions and answers. But their website says they're showing 1 hr and 7 min, which makes me suspect that they cut something out, most likely some of the Q&A. That's unfortunate.

I expect it to be a good show, in any case, and remember it as a good event. Please tell everyone to watch, record it, spread the word. Thanks!

Here's more about the book: "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union."

Authoritative Rejection of Afghanistan War

davidswanson — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:29:04 -0500

By David Swanson

The last time I was on Laura Flanders's GRIT tv I argued that the American public opposed the occupation of Afghanistan, but another guest -- some Washington, D.C., "progressive" -- argued that this had no relevance, since the American public didn't know anything about Afghanistan.

When the RAND Corporation held a forum on Afghanistan recently on Capitol Hill, Zbigniew Brzezinski claimed that it was uncontroversial that US troops had to stay in Afghanistan. I pointed him to polls of Americans, and he replied that Americans get fatigued and don't know any better.

When I spoke to a philosophy department at a university this month, a number of the professors objected to my advocacy of majority-rule on the grounds that experts often know best.

Let's set aside for a moment the ludicrous propaganda that maintains that the reason we occupy other people's countries is to impose democracy on them. Let's assume we're imposing the rule of elite experts. Even so, even on those terms, here are some possible responses to this line of thinking.

1.-While spokepeople for the U.S. military (including television news experts) are certainly the experts at war, they are not the experts at peace. If the question is one of choosing between war and peace, or deciding whether warlike or peacelike means will best reach some desired end, then why only include one type of expert opinion?

2.-While U.S. experts on war and peace could provide two different views, there are experts, including historians, from around the world whose knowledge should be utilized. And the experts on Afghanistan ought, by any understanding, to include the Afghan people. If the US public is irrelevant because it does not know Afghanistan (and somehow this is an argument for bombing the place rather than refraining from doing so), surely the Afghan public knows something about their nation. And they want the occupation ended. How can we so easily dismiss THAT expert opinion?

3.-Don't trust Afghan opinion? Want to save Afghanistan from the Afghans? Well, what about this: Howard Hart, a 25-year CIA veteran who ran operations in Afghanistan for three-and-a-half years during the Cold War, spoke at the University of Virginia yesterday and argued that the United States should withdraw from Afghanistan. He said that the original goal had supposedly been to destroy al Qaeda, which had long since left, and that creating a legitimate government (something most people and the law hold that a foreign occupation can NEVER do) would require hundreds of thousands of troops, cost “umpteen billion” dollars, and still be next to impossible. Watch three former high-ranking CIA officials say the same thing, and a lot more worth watching, at http://rethinkafghanistan.com

4.-Too out-dated for you? The current U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, General Karl W. Eikenberry, who was responsible for building and training the Afghan security forces from 2002 to 2003, and who was top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan from 2005 to 2007, has told President Obama he opposes sending more troops. He argues for sending civilians to assist with agriculture and other useful projects that would give Afghans an alternative to violence. This is a direction supported by US activist groups that have visited Afghanistan and studied the problem, such as http://jobsforafghans.org

5.-New York Times reporter David Rohde was held hostage for seven months by the Taliban in Afghanistan, and upon release reported on what motivates Afghans to engage in violence. The reasons he provided suggested that (as with most foreign occupations in any other time or place) the occupation was motivating the violent resistance to it rather than helping to ease unrelated tensions:

"Some of the consequences of Washington’s antiterrorism policies had galvanized the Taliban. Commanders fixated on the deaths of Afghan, Iraqi and Palestinian civilians in military airstrikes, as well as the American detention of Muslim prisoners who had been held for years without being charge. . . . They said large numbers of civilians had been killed in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Palestinian territories in aerial bombings. Muslim prisoners had been physically abused and sexually humiliated in Iraq. Scores of men had been detained in Cuba and Afghanistan for up to seven years without charges. To Americans, these episodes were aberrations. To my captors, they were proof that the United States was a hypocritical and duplicitous power that flouted international law. When I told them I was an innocent civilian who should be released, they responded that the United States had held and tortured Muslims in secret detention centers for years. Commanders said they themselves had been imprisoned, their families ignorant of their fate. Why, they asked, should they treat me differently?"

6. The senior U.S. civilian diplomat in Zabul province, a former Marine Corps captain with combat experience in Iraq named Matthew Hoh, not only agrees with the U.S. Ambassador that escalating the war in Afghanistan makes no sense. He resigned in September in protest of the continued occupation. He wrote in his resignation letter:

"The U.S. and NATO presence and operations in Pashtun valleys and villages, as well as Afghan army and police units that are led and composed of non-Pashtun soldiers and police, provide an occupation force against which the insurgency is justified. In both RC East and South, I have observed that the bulk of the insurgency fights not for the white banner of the Taliban, but rather against the presence of foreign soldiers and taxes imposed by an unrepresentative government in Kabul. The United States military presence in Afghanistan greatly contributes to the legitimacy and strategic message of the Pashtun insurgency. In a like manner our backing of the Afghan government in its current form continues to distance the government from the people. . . . Our support for this kind of government, coupled with a misunderstanding of the insurgency's true nature, reminds me horribly of our involvement with South Vietnam."

7. A career diplomat and former Army Colonel who helped reopen the U.S. embassy in Kabul, Ann Wright, similarly resigned in protest of the invasion of Iraq in 2003. She now agrees with Hoh's assessment on Afghanistan. It is to such authorities, who have been right years ahead of any permissible schedule, that we should turn for guidance. Also of note, the United Nations has withdrawn much of its international staff and threatened to withdraw entirely from Afghanistan. NATO allies are scheduling the end of their participation as well.

8. U.S. President Barack Obama's national security adviser, James Jones, says there is no guarantee that sending troops to Afghanistan would accomplish anything useful, and that they could just be "swallowed up". Is the National Security Advisor's advice worthless? What about Vice President Biden who never saw a war he didn't like? He doesn't like this one and wants to move it somewhere else (like Pakistan).

9. Mikhail Gorbachev has some experience with occupations of Afghanistan. He advises withdrawal.

10. Increasingly, U.S. military veterans are advocating for withdrawal, and -- in small but rapidly growing numbers -- active duty soldiers (in the UK as well as the US) are refusing to comply with the illegal order to participate. If the military is an authority, are its members -- rather than its top commanders alone -- not a part of that authority?

11. The money to pay back the loans and the interest on those loans that are used to fund this war must come from the American people. There is no higher authority on where the American people choose to spend their money than the American people. So, at some point we must return to them as the rightful deciders.

12. Those who opposed attacking Afghanistan in the first place, including Congresswoman Barbara Lee, and those who opposed attacking Iraq as well, included long-time diplomats, historians, public commentators, journalists, bloggers, activists, politicians, and scholars. The extraordinary degree to which they got things right is routinely treated as reason to exclude them from public debate. We take as authoritative the opinions of people who are usually wrong, but censor the latest views of those who are usually right. We do this at our peril. Instead, we would be well advised to get some real news from RealNews.com: http://tr.im/ETuV And if we have to watch television, watch Bill Moyers who says he would support a draft if it would end these wars. Or listen to Norman Solomon, Ray McGovern, Tom Hayden, Gareth Porter, and all the valuable reports not shown on Fox or MSNBC: http://afterdowningstreet.org/taxonomy/term/110

13. Ought not the highest authority for non-criminals to be the law? It is illegal to invade and occupy other nations. It is illegal to target civilians. It is illegal to use depleted uranium. It is illegal to imprison people without charge or trial. It is illegal to torture. An unelected government supported by a foreign occupying army has no legitimacy. The damage we are doing to the rule of law cannot be overstated. The United Nations has warned the United States about its ongoing illegal use of drones.

14. Just ask some of the more courageous members of the Afghan Parliament, who have been locally elected. Ask Malalai Joya.

15. Ask experts on occupations and insurgencies like William Polk, who says the United States should withdraw.

16. Ask Congress, where members are speaking out for withdrawal, signing bills in support of exit plans and against escalation, and committing to voting No on any funding bills to continue the wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq: http://afterdowningstreet.org/whipwars Even former Congressman Charlie Wilson says: Get out of Afghanistan. Even Congressman David Obey has expressed concern, and he chairs the committee that writes the checks.

17. Shouldn't reverse experts be considered as well? Those pushing to continue and escalate our wars have been endlessly wrong and indisputably dishonest. Shouldn't any elite in-the-know expert think twice before agreeing with Dick Cheney?

I'm not accepting the notion of just rule by experts. I favor majority rule, with minority rights protected, and freedom of the press made real. My point is that even on its own terms defending the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan and Iraq as validated by experts is a miserable failure.

Video: Bruce Gagnon Interviews David Swanson

davidswanson — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 09:50:13 -0500

This is the latest from Bruce Gagnon's cable TV show, which is shown all across the state of Maine, and which you can ask to have shown in your part of the country.

Watch Video.

(It's way better quality than the internet requires, so please be very patient for it to start. Then ask your local cable station to play it.)

Here's the source with more information. And we expect smaller versions to be posted there soon for those of you not working at super computers.

How to End Wars

davidswanson — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 08:46:22 -0500

By David Swanson

Around the United States, peace groups are engaged in effective campaigns against proposed new military installations, local funding of weapons companies, and the routine destruction of the environment and of workers' health by such companies. Activists are building better media outlets, educating young people, educating old people, keeping military testing and recruiting out of schools, and discouraging the Army from building real-weapon video arcades in shopping malls. But when it comes to stopping our wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, our citizens are less clear how to go about it.

The peace movement was defunded and demobilized by the absurd belief that an election alone would make a difference, and now there is widespread desire to tell everyone that it didn't. Certainly, it didn't. We have a larger military budget, bases in more nations, and more troops and mercenaries on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq combined now than before the election. We need to understand that this was entirely predictable and predicted. Those who expected something from an election alone need to be clear that such expectation was entirely - not just partially - misguided. Disappointment with a president needs to be replaced with acknowledgement of strategic error. The latter generates less despair and allows clearer thinking about strategy going forward.

There is still and will always be a role for journalists, bloggers, authors, and pundits to expose the abuses of any and all government officials, including the president. But the primary role of peace activists should have nothing to do with presidents, or with senators. We have virtually no ability to influence them. When you're invited to discuss these wars on a television show, by all means expose what the president is doing. But asking members of an activist group to spend their time writing or calling the White House is a waste of energy that could be better used. It should be directed at the House of Representatives.

And when we look at the House, we see that the easiest way to quickly generate a large list of cosponsors is to propose bills. This pleases our closest allies in the House and impresses funders and allies in Washington, D.C. But it is not the easiest way to use the House to actually end wars. A bill with no teeth to it instructing the Pentagon to produce a plan to exit Afghanistan someday is something that one could almost imagine passing the Senate and being signed by the president. At best that process might move public opinion a bit more in the right direction. But it would further enforce in the public's minds, and Congress's, the idea that when and where wars are fought should be determined by the president or the Pentagon.

Passing a bill barring the spending of any money on an escalation in Afghanistan shifts the discussion to one of opposing an escalation rather than demanding withdrawal. This has led many peace groups to self-censor their demands for withdrawal. And passing such a bill through the Senate and persuading the President to sign it, or overriding a veto is a beautiful fantasy, but a far, far, far more difficult undertaking than a simpler and more direct approach.

If you want to stop funding wars, or even just the escalation of wars, the easiest way is to just not fund them. This can be done in the House alone. The Senate is not needed. The president is not needed. Rather than passing a bill stating that you won't fund wars, and then dreaming about getting the Senate to pass it too, you can choose to not pass bills that fund the wars. If the House makes clear that it will not fund an escalated war, then the war cannot be escalated. If the House makes clear that it will not fund a continued war, then the war cannot be continued.

The process of signing congress members onto a bill against funding or a bill requiring an exit plan is not counterproductive. It nudges them in the right direction. It creates a discussion about the possibility of including such measures in funding bills. It identifies lists of congress members to target in lobbying for stronger commitments. But when these bills are all we ask for, then they are not compromises or middle-ground. They are harder to move forward when they are all we ask for. And moving them forward without a broader vision of how we actually end the wars doesn't get us anywhere in the end.

Our primary demand must be: publicly commit to voting no on any bill that funds these wars. If unrelated measures are included in such bills, they must still be voted down and those other measures passed separately. If your representative is worried about funding a withdrawal itself, assure them that a bill to fund purely withdrawal has our support. If they are worried about abandoning foreign nations, assure them that we support diplomacy and aid. But we need them to join the list of their colleagues who have committed to voting no on bills that fund the wars. And we need them to lobby their colleagues to join them on that list.

By moving our focus to Congress we do something else useful. We allow people to protest wars who refuse to protest a president. By identifying wars with a president, we grant all future presidents the power to make wars, and we discourage participation in citizen activism by people who fantasize about the president being their friend or who think it's not wise to protest a popular president.

Our focus on Congress should include their responsibility on Iraq as well as Afghanistan and Pakistan. Congress has now required the Pentagon to provide it with monthly reports on its progress toward fully withdrawing from Iraq by the end of 2011. When those reports are not forthcoming or do not credibly suggest progress toward that goal, congressional committees must be forced by us to subpoena Secretary of "Defense" Robert Gates. And in fact, the House Judiciary Committee must be compelled by us as soon as possible to restore the checking power of impeachment by opening an impeachment inquiry into Jay Bybee, a federal judge who, while employed by the Justice Department, signed memos purporting to legalize torture and aggressive war. At the very least, Bybee must be subpoenaed, and Congress must use the Capitol Police to enforce that subpoena rather than futilely asking the Justice Department to do it.

If Congress asserts the power to hold war criminals accountable (which, again, can be done without the Senate or the president), we will be in a far better position to deter further wars and escalations, and Congress will be in a better position to cut off funding.

In June, 32 congress members voted No on war funding. They should be thanked and rewarded. But they should, above all, be asked and pressured to make a commitment to join this list of members committed to voting No from here on out: http://afterdowningstreet.org/whipwars

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has said that he'd like to see another $50 billion passed in another supplemental war spending bill in the next few months. This is money to fund an escalation that we are supposed to believe has not been decided upon yet. This must be stopped. Some congress members are speaking against it. Even the Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee David Obey has suggested he might oppose this. He very much needs to be encouraged by people around the nation to not put our money where his mouth isn't.

I just had the privilege of speaking at a rally in Portland, Maine, where an enthusiastic crowd of Mainers demanded the actions I'm proposing here. Their two congress members voted the right way in June, and they are working to win their public commitments to continue that practice and to lobby their colleagues to join them in that commitment.

Resources to help in this effort (and a place to report your results) in your congressional district can be found at http://afterdowningstreet.org/whipwars. Here's a flyer on ending the war in Vietghanistan: PDF. Here's how to step up your activism. Here's what's needed instead of bombs and guns. Here's a way to nonviolently resist.

Here's a very useful list of top targets and multiple ways to contact them. You can help with that even if they are not your representative.

What I am proposing is not easy. It's just the easiest path we have. It will be easier, the more of us get involved, the more of us refrain from discouraging each other with our knowledge of how hard the struggle will be, and the more of us who are willing to go beyond lobbying to nonviolently disrupting, including by sitting in our congress members' offices and refusing to leave until they agree to leave Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. These wars, like all wars, are Congress's wars. The blood is on their hands and they represent us.

Video: Maine Demands End to Wars

davidswanson — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:02:33 -0500

Five Videos:

War Whip 0911

Bob Fertik — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:43:11 -0500

These are the members of the House Progressive Caucus who voted for war funding on June 16, 2009. If they had voted against war funding then, our troops would be coming home by now. We will keep calling these Members until they promise in writing to vote against war funding now.

Harman Hemming on Harm She's Done

davidswanson — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 16:58:23 -0400

In this video (full length 1:13:15) scroll ahead to 53:55 to hear veteran CIA analyst Ray McGovern question Congresswoman Jane Harman on her vote for the Authorization to Use Military Force. McGovern also asks her about her rather dramatic shift two years ago to a position of opposing warrantless spying and civil liberties abuses, and whether that shift should be credited to the primary challenge made by Marcy Winograd, which Winograd is renewing next year.

At about 1:01 Harman responds. She claims not to have altered her views whatsoever, which is of course demonstrably false. As McGovern points out, her initial response to the publication of a report on warrantless spying was that it should have been kept secret. On the Authorization to Use Military Force, Harman claims great gullibility and ignorance. She points out that only Congresswoman Barbara Lee voted against it, and claims no one could possibly have known what horrors it would be used for. This is the same law President Obama claims gives him the power to imprison people without charge.

Blocking Escalation of War Not Good Enough

davidswanson — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 13:58:24 -0400

By David Swanson

Why is it that every time we elect "peace" candidates we defund the peace movement, stop calling for an end to wars, and limit our demands exclusively to opposing war escalations?

In 2006 we voted into Congress the candidates who looked most likely to end the war in Iraq. We congratulated ourselves on a job well done. Then we mildly urged them not to escalate the war they'd been elected to end, and they escalated it anyway.

In 2008 we voted into Congress and the White House the candidates who looked most likely to end the war in Iraq. Candidate Obama promised to pull out two brigades per month for sixteen months. Here we are in month 10 and that withdrawal has yet to begin. And what in the name of all that is true, good, and free-of-hope are we doing about it? Not a god damned thing.

Meanwhile Obama promised, much less noisily, to escalate a war in Afghanistan and has done so with no resistance, even as the American people have (at least in polls) turned against it. Now party leaders in Congress have given Obama the go-ahead for a larger escalation, and what have we done?

To begin with we've accepted the terms of the debate that our government officials always impose on us following an election: Are you for an escalation or do you think the current troop/mercenary levels are adequate? There is no room in that debate for arguing that the entire enterprise is illegal, barbaric, self-destructive, and must be immediately replaced with civilized acts of aid and diplomacy.

Of course we should oppose an escalation, just as we should prefer a "public option" to no healthcare reform at all. But self-censoring our demand for single-payer shifts the debate so far right that we can't even pass a public option. And self-censoring our demand for an end to wars shifts the debate to a point where the middle ground becomes an escalation of half the largest size anyone proposes -- and the war in Iraq is not even mentioned.

Well-meaning peace groups are pointlessly urging us to lobby the president, and are publicly whipping congress members on the following items: sponsorship of a bill that would require some sort of non-binding exit plan for Afghanistan if actually passed by the House and Senate and signed by the president, and sponsorship of a bill that would deny funding for an escalation in Afghanistan if actually passed by the House and Senate and signed by the president. But getting either of those bills through the Senate is going to be significantly more difficult than getting the House to stop funding the wars, and thus far no organizations have begun building a public list of House members committed to voting No on war money.

In June, because all the Republicans were voting No on the war money for their own crazy reasons, we only needed 39 Democrats to vote No to block it, and we managed to get 32. We could easily line up 39 right now if we worked at it. Then we could begin building from there in the direction of 218. Even if all you wanted to oppose was escalation, the way to actually do so would be to build a whip list of House members committed to voting No on war funding bills that did not limit troop levels in Afghanistan to the desired level. Nobody is doing that. The next supplemental spending bill will probably come by spring, and it'll come sooner the greater the escalation, but peace coalitions tell me they think it's smarter not to prepare for such fights ahead of time.

FireDogLake, which hosted our whip list in June, is fully immersed in healthcare struggles. United for Peace and Justice and a new anti-escalation coalition have both refused to host a list of congress members committed to voting No on war funding or even escalation funding. So, I'm going to provide, not a replacement for the anti-escalation campaigns, but a necessary addition to them. I'm going to post a list at the top of http://afterdowningstreet.org and encourage you to ask these 32 heroes from back in June (plus a very short list of Republicans) whether they are committed to voting against further funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Please phone them at (202) 224-3121 and post your responses on the website.

Tammy Baldwin
Michael Capuano
John Conyers
Lloyd Doggett
Donna Edwards
Keith Ellison
Sam Farr
Bob Filner
Alan Grayson
Raul Grijalva
Michael Honda
Marcy Kaptur
Dennis Kucinich
Barbara Lee
Zoe Lofgren
Eric Massa
Jim McGovern
Michael Michaud
Donald Payne
Chellie Pingree
Jared Polis
Jose Serrano
Carol Shea-Porter
Brad Sherman
Jackie Speier
Pete Stark
John Tierney
Nikki Tsongas
Maxine Waters
Diane Watson
Peter Welch
Lynn Woolsey

Ron Paul
Walter Jones

Your Town Can Demand Justice More Powerfully Than You Can

davidswanson — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 16:04:04 -0400

By David Swanson

Most city council members take oaths to defend the Constitution. The Constitution makes the rights and standards in its amendments and in international treaties the supreme law of the land. Our nation has a rich tradition of local governments lobbying state and national governments through the passage of resolutions. Under Clause 3, Rule XII, Section 819, of the Rules of the U.S. House of Representatives local governments may petition Congress. Under the First Amendment, we all can.

Just in recent years, on issues of peace and justice, hundreds of cities have passed resolutions in favor of peace, diplomacy, restraint from launching wars, and the cessation of wars in Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan, including 287 cities, 4 counties, and 17 states on Iraq alone. Through this and many other means, we have thus far prevented an attack on Iran, and we've won over a majority of the country to support ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan -- which we will eventually end if we keep up the struggle.

Over 100 cities passed resolutions urging the impeachment of Bush and/or Cheney. They have yet to be impeached, but an impeachment push drove Alberto Gonzales out of town, may yet nail Jay Bybee and bring down the whole criminal power structure, and has solidly laid the groundwork for prosecutions. In fact, three cities have already passed ordinances committing their police to arresting Bush or Cheney should they dare to visit. I strongly recommend that your town do the same, as well as publicly backing the impeachment of torture-memo author Jay Bybee.

Meanwhile, Berkeley, Calif., has now joined United Nations human rights treaties that are not supported or complied with by the United States as a whole. And Amherst, Mass., may invite released Guantanamo victims to settle within its welcoming borders.

Perhaps most impressively, the Bill of Rights Defense Committee (BORDC) has led a campaign that has seen 414 local, county, and state resolutions passed defending our civil rights against abuses in the PATRIOT Act, and committing local police to noncooperation with federal violations of rights that were created by the U.S. Constitution.

Now the BORDC is launching a campaign to pass a pair of new ordinances, which I cannot recommend more strongly. These are powerful tools for restoring the rule of law and defending our civil rights. Passage of resolutions by towns often leads to their passage by states and to support for their substance by congress members, as well as to public education and a shift in media discourse.

The first model resolution offered by BORDC (which you can alter to suit local needs) limits local law enforcement efforts in support of federal warrantless spying. Of course, local and state police, as Americans, are required to comply with the Fourth Amendment anyway. But what happens when the feds say otherwise? This explicit legislation backs up those who take a stand.

The second model resolution is even more important. It places your town on record supporting federal and requiring local criminal investigations into torture. It includes an optional clause requiring the arrest of accused torturers as in the three ordinances noted above.

A third resolution that I can imagine but have not drafted would be modeled on this torture accountability resolution and require a criminal investigation of warrantless spying, which is not only unconstitutional but also illegal under state law in most states.

While we understand that there is strength in numbers in the abstract, too seldom do we employ that power through our levels of government from the smallest and most democratic up to the largest and most corrupt. Together, our towns can save our country, if we force our local representatives to take action.