(Humanist, Dec 09)

The person reporting on this youthful enthusiasm was Pat Elder, who serves on the Steering Committee of the National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth. Elder also described young teenagers congratulating each other for “killing ragheads” and “wiping out hajis.”

All of this fun went on at the Army Experience Center (AEC), a 14,500-square-foot “virtual educational facility” in the Franklin Mills Mall in a suburb of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The U.S. Army opened the center in August 2008 and planned to run it for two years as a pilot program. If the center proved able to recruit as many new soldiers as five ordinary recruiting stations, the Army planned to build them nationally. The AEC cost more than $12 million to design and construct, but of course the Army spends several billion dollars a year on recruitment.

Peace activists and concerned citizens from the surrounding area and up and down the East Coast quickly formed a campaign dubbed “Shut Down the AEC” (shutdowntheaec.net). Through a series of nonviolent protests and demonstrations, some of them involving arrests, protesters raised concerns and generated a flood of negative media attention for the Army’s latest recruitment tool. As a result, the Pentagon called on Donna Miles, a writer for the American Services Press Service, the Pentagon’s propaganda arm. Miles had already published soothing articles following scandals at Abu Ghraib, Walter Reed, and various incidents involving civilian casualties. As Elder points out, “Either Miles is incredibly prolific, with 229 articles attributed to her this year, or she’s a pseudonym for several under the employ of the Pentagon.” 

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We were there to shut down the Army Experience Center (AEC), the Pentagon’s $12 million experiment in the use of video games and modern media to indoctrinate youth into the military’s culture of violence.

The AEC looks like a giant classroom nestled in the heart of the heavily-trafficked mall, but instead of desks, the room is filled with cutting edge TV monitors, video game consoles and hypermodern “mission simulators,” each one a tool in the Pentagon’s fight for the hearts and minds of the United States’ malleable youth….

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On Tuesday, the leaders of the two parties went to the president and told him that he could continue or escalate wars, or not, that the matter was entirely (albeit unconstitutionally) up to him. But Obey has released a statement suggesting otherwise. After all these years of professed helplessness, Obey is now speaking as if he recognizes the power of Congress to fund or defund wars. Obey expressed his view on how to proceed in Afghanistan:

“[W]e need to more narrowly focus our efforts and have a much more achievable and targeted policy in that region, or we run the risk of repeating the mistakes we made in Vietnam and the Russians made in Afghanistan. There are some fundamental questions that I would ask of those who are suggesting that we follow a long term counterinsurgency strategy.”
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The congressional elections of 2006 and 2008 were almost universally understood as shaped by public desire to end the war in Iraq. Last month, when a war supplemental spending bill (another $97 billion for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan) was expected to easily pass in the House with bipartisan support, 51 Democrats sought to please their constituents by voting No. Tuesday evening, when the same bill stood a good chance of failing, 20 of those same Congress members voted Yes and one did not vote. But 30 stood by their vote when it actually meant something. They were joined by 2 more, for a total of 32 Democrats voting No.

A coalition of progressive bloggers had been whipping hard to reach the total of 39 and fell short by 7. In fact, we fell short by 12, because the White House persuaded 5 Republicans to oppose their own party and vote Yes. Most Republicans were voting in opposition to International Monetary Fund spending that had been added into the bill by the Senate. At least one Republican, Ron Paul, and maybe as many as 9, when they voted No were opposing the war funding as well.

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After Downing Street’s coalition includes over 200 veterans groups, peace groups, and political activist groups and has worked since May 2005 to pressure both Congress and the media in order to hold Bush, Cheney, and their aides accountable for crimes and abuses of power. The coalition takes its name from the emergence in May and June of 2005 of several documents that quickly came to be known as the Downing Street Memos.

After Downing Street has been named Most Valuable Progressive by the Nation Magazine three of the five years it has existed.

The exposure of the lies that led to the invasion of Iraq has resulted in increased opposition to that war and resistance to similar attempts to generate public support for a war on Iran.  After Downing Street works to oppose any military attack on Iran.  http://afterdowningstreet.org/iran

After Downing Street advocates for the restoration of a rule of law and the deterrence of future crimes through the prosecution of past ones.  A wealth of resources for holding high officials accountable for their crimes is available at http://prosecutebushcheney.org

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Readers of the Times, therefore, should take with a huge grain of weaponized salt the paper’s “review” of Robert Greenwald’s new documentary, Rethink Afghanistan. With no sense of the painful irony of writing such jibberish in the Times, reviewer Andy Webster declares that the film could “use balance, something in short supply here:”

At an almost breathless pace that leaves little room for reflection, Mr. Greenwald presents a flurry of sights, voices and figures, many of them compelling but all reflecting his point of view. A historical summary is fleeting. What appears, again and again, are terrifying images of children: dead, hideously maimed or, in one instance, almost put up for sale by a frantic civilian in a refugee camp. Military engagements, it seems, are messy and claim innocent lives.

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To watch the film, go to Brave New Film’s Rethink Afghanistan website.

In April of this year, when some torture memos were released, Senator Patrick Leahy asked Bybee to come in and testify.  Bybee refused.  Leahy has not subpoenaed him.

President Obama has declared that neither the lawyers like Bybee who wrote the memos nor the former president and vice president and secretary of defense and attorneys general, none of the top culprits, will be prosecuted.  Instead, Obama has given his attorney general permission to consider prosecuting a few low-ranking personnel who strayed from the policies laid out in the illegal memos.  This can only more firmly establish that presidents can legalize crimes by ordering memos written.

Meanwhile Bybee and five of his colleagues are facing a likely indictment in Spain.  And Bybee’s impeachment and/or resignation from his cushy judgeship has been advocated by Congressman Jerrold Nadler, Senator Russ Feingold, the New York Times, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the Courage Campaign, Progressive Democrats of America, Bruce Fein, Common Cause, Democrats.com, People for the American Way, The World Can’t Wait, ThinkProgress, Crooks and Liars, Digby, Scott Horton, After Downing Street, ImpeachBybee.org, Jeremy Scahill, Dave Lindorff, Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, Senator Patrick Leahy, American Freedom Campaign, National Lawyers Guild, John Podesta, MoveOn, Veterans for Peace, National Accountability Network, Code Pink, Velvet Revolution, and the Salt Lake Tribune, among others.  Political parties and towns have begun passing resolutions calling for Bybee’s impeachment.

Our representatives in Congress earlier this year impeached a judge who had groped employees.  Jay Bybee has arguably done worse, and yet has not been impeached, apparently because he is a former member of the executive branch and a “conservative.”  Seriously.  The word we hear out of the House Judiciary Committee is that they will not impeach Bybee because Fox News would not like it.  This was the same reason that Chairman John Conyers gave us for not impeaching Bush or Cheney.

But our republic’s survival may require impeaching Jay Bybee.  It appears to be the only way that Congress could force the Department of Justice to enforce our laws, the only way Congress can force more information into the public realm, and the only way that Congress can begin to check executive power.

And it’s not just about torture.  Jay Bybee did not just “legalize”
torture.  He also “legalized” aggressive war.

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Take Action: http://impeachbybee.org

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