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writing for godot

Remembering the Past Can Predict and I hope Change the Future

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Written by Richard Kane   
Monday, 22 February 2010 03:24
Does anyone remember the antiwar movement around 1963-1966? Back then I attended some antiwar meetings and some demonstrations. At demonstrations carried a sign which said "Negotiate Now". Woman's International League for Peace, one of the larger antiwar groups, published an editorial. Then had it reprinted in ads around the country, asking people to clip and send it to the President, asking him to negotiate and end to the war. A modern equivalent to the spirit back then was the flood of calls, faxes and emails, urging rather than escalate, that Obama accept Vice-President Biden's call to hunker down in secure areas of Iraq. (google ‘Vietnam, negotiate now' for fascinating historical details). Suddenly there is now, nearly 50 years later, a call to negotiate now with the Taliban especially the top leader who was captured in Pakistan and is being grilled by the Pakistanis, negotiate with him and end the Afghan War. Off the subject but needed to be mentioned for the sake of accuracy. One of my father's biggest worries was that communists would show up and ruin the image of the peace protest. Years later as a typewriter repairman under Nixon he was banned from the White House so he had to tell the White House correspondent that he wasn't allowed to come to pick up the machine for repair. The correspondent grilled him a little as to why he was a security risk then called him a few months later saying you had to be doing something right because I too have been banned from the White House.

Back to the article. The usual historic review goes on to tell how peaceful protest began to be eclipsed by more and more militancy, Martin Luther King's nonviolent protest being replaced by militants which thought they were going to make change not ask for it. Then on to today where King's famous antiwar speech is celebrated as history not a call to end the present war.

However I am more interested in the amazing similarities between the early Vietnam peace protest period and the Afghan War today. Both Lyndon Johnson and Barack Obama started out as popular Presidents who were thought to be able to inspire great change. They were both challenged or harassed by former Vice-Presidents who preached toughness. Nixon against communism and Cheney against Muslim extremists. Both of them doing this for most of their political life. Nixon slipped up in debating Kennedy when he ranted and raved about defending Quemoy and Matsu. Kennedy successfully answered by saying it is not worth Americans dying over two little uninhabited rocks. But Nixon went on later to be elected following President Johnson with a claimed "secret plan" to end the Vietnam War. But when becoming President escalated into Cambodia and Laos. I fear that Dick Cheney or a Dick Cheney look alike will claim to have a secret plan to end the war in the next election and/or in 2016 and escalate into Iran and beyond. Nixon had the IRS audit the tax returns of his political enemies. I fear a Dick Cheney type will be able to do a lot more with the help of modern technology and, from my experience, it seems to me we are heading straight in that direction.

Cheney's latest harangue against Obama is that he wants the captured underpants-bomber waterboarded. This, despite the fact that Umar's father, Alhaji, turned him in to the US government by actually going to the US embassy in Nigeria to discuss his son's phone call stating that you will never see me alive again, and Alhaji and Umar's other relatives are part of the team successfully interrogating him to talk, a policy almost as different from past policy as Cheney's dream of waterboarding him. Relying on relatives can be critical going back even a generation to the Unibomber, who terrorized for two years until his brother recognized his published rants against pollution and the corporate executive polluters that the Unibomber had sent package bombs to. Alhaji dreams of getting a semblance of his son back before his son became a total fanatic. Waterboarding Umar would disturb Umar's relatives greatly and perhaps be a warning to other relatives of fanatics never to go to the US for help in preventing their son from killing himself and others. Maybe the Unibomber never would have been captured had Cheney been President.

Nixon's, and now Cheney's, speeches that tough keeps us safe is the opposite of the truth. Ayman Zawahiri, the bloodthirsty Iraq-based al Qaeda leader, who specialized in attacking funerals, markets, religious gatherings and sites,
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2008/11/egypt-2.html
was finally turned in by his own followers to the CIA. This inspired General McChrystal to fight with even more care to avoid civilian deaths in Afghanistan. But in Afghanistan, Mullar Omar put out a strict code of conduct which he is proud of. GI's are no longer at risk when they enjoy the local nightlife when off duty. No more ransoms or mistreatment of captured soldiers, and no religious processions attacked in Afghanistan. When attackers failed to enter and blow up, the central bank of Afghanistan in Kabul (the only full functioning bank). They didn't blow up the street in front of the bank, but retreated into shopping mall bazaar next to it, and took cover, ordering everyone out. Google, Taliban Overhaul Image to Win Allies - NYTimes
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/world/asia/21taliban.htm

Recent changes are quite interesting, Afghan President Karzai heavily urged, Saudi Arabia to facilitate negotiations between him and the Taliban. The Saudis said "no" unless Mulah Omar renounces bin Laden. The, on their bast behavior, suicide-bombers who failed to blow up Kabul's central bank must have been from bin Laden, since very few people not with al Qaeda blow themselves up. Without accepting help from al Qaeda it would be hard for any fighting army to get suicide-bombers. Now things get really strange. Some analysts are claiming that the reason Pakistan arrested Mullah Baradar, but not Mullah Omar, is that Omar kept urging militants to stop attacking Pakistan, so they drag their heels in helping the US to capture or kill Omar. Mullar Baradar also opposed spreading the war to Pakistan, but some analysts claim that he was trying to negotiate with Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan was afraid to be left out of the loop if negotiations occurred. Why hasn't anyone yet suggested that this almost has to mean that he was willing to denounce al Qaeda and never get al Qaeda suicide-bombers to help them with the war. It seems to me that all that the US has to do is seize him away from Pakistani custody, and for President Obama to wine and dine him at the White House during peace negotiations, that is unless Cheney and bin Laden again supplement each other to stop it.

If others join me in returning back almost 50 years to calling for negotiations instead of blaming the US and the US President for everything wrong, both Cheney and bin Laden wouldn't get the world of hate they want. Before peace broke out in Northern Ireland, the population on both sides began fearing their own militants sabotaging the peace process. Let's get positive events in history to also repeat themselves the way unhappy events sometimes do.

RICHARDKANEpa.blogspot.com
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