An Essay About Pro-Palestinian Democrats And Progressive Jewish-Americans

I recently read an article published 7/7/26 on CNN.com about Jewish-American progressives and the Democratic Party. Although this was sort of news to me, I had heard some stuff about the problem the article describes- supporting the Palestinians has become a litmus test  required by progressives in the Democratic Party and this was causing some problems for Jewish-American progressives who are at least sort of pro-Palestinian but also support Israel in some ways. 

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If our goal is to get the Jewish Israeli population to transform their relationship with the Palestinians, it will work a lot better if we can convince them that accusations of anti-Semitism among us are untrue.

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In the last 18 years I have given a lot of thought to blending support for the Palestinians with opposition to anti-Semitism. I have more to say about my qualifications, etc. in the final section of this essay at the very bottom. One thing I will mention here is that although it’s just a BA, I have a degree in a very relevant field- Ethnic Studies. If you want an example of me contributing to the progressive community on this issue, I got a Guest Opinion published in a MSM newspaper (see this or read it here).                   

My position is that progressive Jewish-Americans who are sort of zionist should be treated as part of the progressive community but simultaneously need to re-evaluate their understanding of what is going on with Israel and the Palestinians. There IS a problem with anti-Semitism among progressives and this, among other things, hobbles the Palestine Solidarity Movement (PSM) in America (I am not sure how many pro-Palestinian activists refer to it as the Palestine Solidarity Movement, but it’s a pretty good way of referring to us).

Progressive Zionists?!?!?!?

Although there is a spectrum for this, and at one end maybe some self-identifying progressive Democratic people don’t qualify as progressive, there are a lot of progressives who are Jewish and probably most of those are, to one degree or another, zionists. A big part of why I say that is an idea I adopted in recent years- that I’m not going to look at something political that I dislike and automatically and always say “I’m a progressive and I don’t like that, so that’s not progressive.” I initially came up with it when I thought about how many progressive activists I came across who were bizarrely friendly to the Libertarian Party and I decided that if they were SOME of the time capitalistic economically but only SOME of the time, and checked ALL the other boxes for stuff like opposing racism, supporting the environment, etc. they should be considered progressive. I also decided, in a similar spirit, that although I greatly value the DEMOCRATIC part of democratic socialism and am open-minded about the term “State Capitalist,” the Soviet Union actually had been about some kind of socialism.

Another reason to consider these Jewish-American progressives PROGRESSIVE is that when Irish-American GOP members expressed support for the Provisional Irish Republican Army (the one associated with Gerry Adams) in the 1980s, the other GOPers didn’t evict them from the party when their ethnicity led them to support what was, IN THE 1980s, a SOCIALIST organization.

One more reason is that the GOP Irish-American IRA supporters did a lot of conservative stuff, which I assume they were passionate about and for which they got credit for from their fellow GOPers. They kept LGBTQ+ people out of the NYC St. Patrick’s Day parade, they opposed Affirmative Action as passionately as they supported the MacBride Principles (Affirmative Action for Catholics in N. Ireland), they supported the invasion of Iraq, etc. etc. etc. I get the impression that the Jewish-American progressives we’re talking about have done and are doing tons of good progressive work that they deserve credit for.

No Pasaran?!?!?!?

That phrase is Spanish for “they shall not pass,” and the Spanish original was a rallying cry for the anti-fascist side of the Spanish Civil War.

This bunch of extremist progressive supporters of the Palestinians who are pushing a McCarthyist-like agenda overlap heavily with the “Uncommitted” movement in 2024 who urged critics of Israel to vote for anybody BUT Harris and sometimes were quite friendly towards Trump. This despite the fact that they are the kind of progressives who would insist that they are more radical than I am but basically sided with a fascist who probably IS the most pro-Israel US President we have had. Apparently being VERY pro-Israel is okay if you’re a fascist but being a little pro-Israel is not okay if you’re a progressive.

I also have to say at some point, that the people who coined the phrase “Genocide Joe” to refer to Biden in connection with Gaza and protested him never did get around to giving Donald Trump the same treatment, and Trump was much more in favor of Israel than Biden was and much more in favor of genocide for the Palestinians than Biden was (I don’t think that Biden was anywhere near that hostile to the Palestinians). I think that until Trump spoke about a Gaza Riviera describing the Gaza War as genocidal was going a little too far.

Was the June 1st 2025 Boulder Attack Anti-Semitic?

As you may know, June 1st 2025 in Boulder, CO there was a violent attack on a non-violent demonstration of support for the Israeli hostages. In a Guest Opinion that was published three days later in the local MSM paper here, I described it as anti-Semitic. Apparently a lot of Americans supporting the Palestinians refuse to call it that. In a recent email with one of these people (in this case a Jewish-American man) I wrote the following:

“You have said that the Pearl St. attack was not anti-Semitic. I realize it was a slightly (politically) pro-Israel activity that was attacked, but their focus was the hostages. And you have to take into consideration that they were non-combatants far from a battlefield. Yes, the Israeli flag was displayed, but that may have been less political than it usually is. In general, they were CIVILIANS and a physical, lethal attack on them from someone who is on the opposite side of a conflict which often touches on religion is bigoted, and I will not apologize for saying that in my essay. Unlike usual I am not sure what is analogous in N. Ireland- although I'll tell you this- not everyone in N. Ireland who identified with the Irish flag during the conflict was a supporter of the IRA and/or Sinn Fein.”

There’s also the fact that, in N. Ireland the main thing, conflict-wise, that the unionist (British-identifying) paramilitaries did was intentionally kill Catholic civilians (and about 99% of those Catholics were totally INNOCENT). Often it was in retaliation for republican violence, but anyone who wasn’t a sectarian asshole (and even some who were) labelled it anti-Catholic because they were innocent civilians.

Lastly, although I think the Palestinians and their American supporters have a point or two when they refer to many of the Palestinians in Israeli prisons as hostages, the fact is, there is nothing inherently colonial about Jewish-Americans being concerned about the hostages that were held by Hamas or others. The hostage-taking was roughly as bad as the murders of Oct. 7th- worse when you consider the medical problems made more complicated by being hostages, or the possibility of being raped, etc. I am open-minded about referring to the active duty IDF members taken prisoner Oct. 7th as something else, but in general the extremist parts of the Palestine Solidarity Movement are wrong about the hostage-taking.

Why the issue of the Palestinians?

I am less certain of my position on this aspect, but combined with everything else I will mention it. Why this issue? I’m certain that for most progressive Americans in the PSM it’s just a coincidence that the oppressor of the Palestinians is, largely, a big chunk of the world’s Jewish population. But I am certain there are also plenty of people who use the k-word and are obsessed with attacking Jewish people. 

On one hand, the conflict IS very important. It’s short history has contributed to making the region a “dangerous neighborhood.” For decades BEFORE Oct. 7th, the Palestinians, in different ways, faced one degree or another of serious injustice and inequity. And the United States is heavily involved as a sponsor of Israel and in some bizarre way is also seen by some as a mediator for peace there.

I was involved most of the time between 1995 and 2005 with the IRELAND Solidarity Movement (which was almost exclusively American) and the American Left really dropped the ball on that one. Why the difference? I understand that America isn’t propping up the UK the way we prop up Israel. But A) the oppression of Northern Ireland Catholics was serious, probably more serious than American progressives understand, and B) the UK (until Trump) was the most important ally of the United States in the entire world, and C) the Northern Ireland issue would have given engaged American progressives opportunities to drag a significant chunk of the Irish-American population towards the Left, and D) the US government did not have a good record on The Troubles. (I explain a lot more about those four points in an essay here starting with the words “Here are some of the reasons…” about 3/4 down from the top and ending with the third paragraph (you will then need to skip down to the very last section of the essay starting with “What makes me confident about….”)) (the fourth point I make is backed up in a post here about halfway from the top starting with “Ways in which Washington D.C. was bad…..” )

Another problem with this focus on Israel and use of it as a litmus test is that there have been a lot of very reactionary people who were anti-Zionist. There is not a strong, consistent connection between being a progressive and being opposed to Zionism.

I am not sure I am proving this aspect of my argument beyond the shadow of a doubt, but the differences are glaring in terms of the extent to which progressives today are embracing one cause and how they neglected the other cause in the mid and late 1990s.

Yes, These People Are Being Obnoxious, But Israel As A Jewish State Is Not Acceptable

Here’s the thing. I’m sure that many of the Jewish-American progressives are (according to the CNN article linked to at the top) supporting Israel to such a small, acceptable degree that I probably have no or little problem with them at all- i.e. if they simultaneously also identify as supporters of the Palestinians. But I’m also sure that many of them, for example, object to use of the phrase “Israeli Apartheid,” a phrase that, in different ways, accurately captures how the Palestinians were treated in the Gaza Strip (before Oct. 7th) and have been treated in the West Bank, and in East Jerusalem, and in the internationally recognized borders of Israel. I did a post that debunks the idea that applying the word “apartheid” to Israel is inaccurate and/or anti-Semitic. About 1/3 of the articles it’s based on are from The Times of Israel, which I believe is a fairly mainstream web publication based in Israel and about 1/3 of the articles are from the BBC (the BBC’s professional coverage of N. Ireland 1997-2005 probably means that they are a good source in general, especially for issues that DON’T involve people frequently setting off bombs in London for decades).

In general, some Jewish-American progressives need to understand that a self-defined “Jewish State” of Israel does now and very likely would in the distant future, involve continued inequality for Palestinian-Israelis- when the Israeli Left is in power that would change a little, but about 3-4 years later Likud or other right-wing parties would get into power and use the formally Jewish identity of the State as encouragement and cover for re-imposing anti-Palestinian policies. I have no idea how progressives can accept a state based on religion and/or ethnicity. It is so much in conflict with progressive values. (If you think that I have a double standard because I am not opposed to the 26-County Irish state based in Dublin and I support uniting the two parts of Ireland, see a post here and read the very last part starting with “Lastly, here is my response….” )

At some point I need to link to a post that takes a fairly comprehensive look at why I think Zionism was a bad idea and and why I believed in the one-state solution. On one hand, since Oct. 7th and Israel’s response I have leaned towards saying that now there must be so much hate on both sides that maybe the two-state solution is better. On the other hand, people who believe in justice and equality and peace might continue pushing for the one-state solution and I would sort of still support that and I can’t help but criticize progressives who rejected the one-state-solution BEFORE Oct. 7th. I should also say that uniting Ireland is more or less the one-state solution for that conflict, whereas re-partitioning Ireland would be comparable to the two-state solution in the Middle-East and is something that Sinn Fein and most Catholics in N. Ireland would never accept.

Anti-Semitism Weakens The Palestine Solidarity Movement

Was there anti-Semitism in the college campus protests that swept the nation 2-3 years ago? I am certain that Trump is not nearly as concerned about anti-semitism as he is hateful of Muslims, Arabs, and the Left. But some of the articles about that issue quoted Jewish-American leaders who said that although Trump is not helping and is exaggerating  the problem and/or that they hate Trump, there was a problem with anti-Semitism in those protests.

I make a big deal on my blog about the need to purge the PSM of anti-Semitism (to a large degree I am influenced by an article here that helps define what is anti-Semitism and what isn’t anti-Semitism in connection with the conflict). I have written on this topic here, here, here, and here (this last one is probably the best). I am not sure how popular or unpopular anti-Semitism is in America, and there’s a spectrum that makes this difficult to measure, but I think there’s at least a small majority of Americans who oppose it. So there’s a very good chance based on that alone that this bigotry costs us political influence and the Palestinian people support. If our goal is to get the Jewish Israeli population to transform their relationship with the Palestinians, it will work a lot better if we can convince them that accusations of anti-Semitism among us are untrue. More members of the PSM who are either Jewish or allies, numerically and strategically outweigh any loss of support from people who are simply anti-Semitic and show little potential for change.

On a personal level and on a political level I greatly value the Jewish-American population. Those who were/are liberal or progressive were disproportionately involved in the anti-Vietnam War effort, with supporting the anti-racist cause, and with Democratic Party victories. In my experience they were disproportionately involved with supporting the N. Ireland Catholic population during the conflict. On a personal level I have had some friends here and there who are Jewish, my Mom’s best friend almost her entire life was a Jewish woman, etc. My fiancé who I’ve been with for 6 and 1/2 years is partly Jewish. In case anyone thinks (after all I have written here) that  I will do anything to get along with Jewish people I should explain something- when I started thinking of leaving the Catholic Church about 5-10 years ago, I decided to convert to a Protestant Church after spending maybe an hour contemplating the idea that Christ was NOT the Son of God and then dismissing it and sticking with Christianity.

I think I say enough things in this essay that contribute to this statement: Anti-Semitism is destructive to our communities, our political movements, our nation, and our world. No more or less than, for example, anti-Muslim bigotry (some will say that the greater number of Muslims means that anti-Muslim bigotry is more destructive to humanity, but I am also influenced by the facts that within the last century we almost lost the Jewish population and anti-Semitism is the fuel for the neo-Nazi movement which is still a threat).

Islamophobia and Support for Israel Weaken The Movement Against Anti-Semitism

Via articles on the Southern Poverty Law Center web-site and other sources I have encountered anti-Muslim bigotry from Jewish-American people who were and are more right-wing than left-wing, but I am not sure how widespread is some mild variant of Islamophobia among progressive Jewish-Americans. I imagine it’s a small but significant problem because A) Jewish-Americans are basically White Americans and exposed to the same propaganda all white people are and B) Israel IS in a conflict that usually pits it against Muslims and that is often influenced by religion.

Most of what I would say to liberal or progressive Jewish Americans who might be islamophobic is either typed in, or linked to from, these paragraphs. These Jewish-Americans should spend some time thinking critically about how they see muslims and Palestinians. 

When progressive, Zionist Jewish-Americans say pro-Israel stuff alongside a ton of progressive things they make it a little more difficult for us to get progressive anti-Semites to abandon their bigotry because it is easy for people to experience that as politically maddening- that people would be progressive on all issues but one, about their people (when GOP Irish-American IRA supporters do their version of that I go a lot further and simply call them racist). The Palestinians do have very serious and legitimate national grievances and national aspirations and Jewish-American people denying that doesn’t help the fight against anti-Semitism.

Conclusions

People who are politically active and/or are inside certain communities can help advance these twin agendas of supporting the Palestinians and opposing anti-Semitism. When we convince progressive anti-Semites that their bigotry is wrong, we strengthen the PSM in America and the more people who hear the PSM’s message from people who oppose anti-Semitism, the more progress we make taking down anti-Semitism, the more Jewish Israelis will take us seriously— this goes around and around in an upwards spiral.

Some things that will help with combatting anti-Semitism:

1) American supporters of the Palestinians who believe that because Jewish-Americans are not oppressed (AS JEWISH-AMERICANS) no effort should be made to avoid friction with that community need to understand that we’re all standing in a lake of gasoline called ANTI-SEMITISM and we need to avoid creating unnecessary sparks that could set it on fire. 
2) The Irish political party Sinn Fein, which interacts with Americans a lot and which is largely against anti-Semitism, needs to stop putting out (side-by-side) the following two statements: A) that there must be a boycott of Israel and B) that it was okay that the IRA accepted aid from Nazi Germany (they need to repeal the second of those two statements).
3) It wouldn’t hurt if supporters of Israel would speak about anti-semitism in their own ranks (i.e. The Rapture, and the anti-Soros stuff, and comparing reasonable things like COVID-19 public health measures and hostility towards Republicans in our society with what Nazi Germany did to Jewish people).
4) Critics of Israel need to abandon two ideas I have encountered. The first is that because the conflict is asymmetrical it’s okay for the military wing of Hamas to target civilians. The other idea is that Palestinians are so powerless that they have the power to make war, but not the power to make peace. (I criticize both ideas here).
5) I think that a lot of American progressives fail to express enthusiasm, when looking at history, for the Allied cause in World War II. I’m thinking of people who are not anti-Semitic but who might be giving other people the wrong idea about the Holocaust, simply because they take their usually solid criticism of America too far.
6) Critics of Israel need to remember that although a majority of Jewish-Americans support Israel, that majority is a VERY SMALL minority of American Zionists.

I can only come up with two ideas to counter anti-Muslim bigotry besides everything else I have said or linked to above. 

1) If the opportunity arises, we should ask the US military if they would behave the way they did in Iraq 2003-2008 were they to find themselves policing a rocky Peace Process in N. Ireland (I am not sure how popular this shirt is, especially for the POST-Bush GOP, but the text of a shirt here should be discussed, especially the one about collateral damage).
2) I have read, at least once, the argument that anti-Muslim bigotry in America today resembles the anti-Catholic bigotry that occasionally surged and retreated in this country over the decades until about the 1940s (I think it has surged a little bit since then in terms of left-wing ignorance about Catholic politics). I used to be Catholic (I’ve sort of started converting to the Episcopalian Church) and I experienced anti-Catholic bigotry in this country at least two or three times (I also kind of experienced it in Northern Ireland twice).
3) The two very last statements in this conclusion should balance things a little.

It’s been about 15 years since I read huge amounts of information from the Southern Poverty Law Center, but if we DO see a resurgence of the Nazi skinhead movement, we should, as united communities, counter them by ANY AND EVERY means available. This will be more effective and successful if Muslim-Americans and Jewish-Americans cooperate and have not pushed each other away, and this future battle requires them to start massive dialogue now.

I am concluding with a quote from the hard-working opponents of organized hate, right-wing politics and economic injustice at the Southern Poverty Law Center. In one of the articles in the Fall 2008 issue of their publication, they wrote the following (it’s a statement by the author of that article, Sonia Scherr):
 

“Although criticism of Israel does not typically amount to anti-Semitism — and many critics of the Jewish state are unfairly accused of bigotry — in some cases those who denounce Israel also cross the line into denigration of Jews as a group.” 

My Qualifications And Some Other Stuff About Why You Should Consider What I Say In This Essay

I could be more familiar with this in some ways- but in other ways I believe I have a lot to offer. I  have read a ridiculous number of articles about the conflict there, I have read a ridiculous number of articles about anti-Semitism, and I have given a lot of thought to blending support for the Palestinians with opposition to anti-Semitism. Although it is just a BA, I got a degree in a very relevant field in 2003 at CU-Boulder— Ethnic Studies. When I attended the 2002 National Conference of Sinn Fein Youth in Galway, Ireland, I was representing the Anti-Racism Commission of the Democratic Socialists of America (see below). It might be relevant that I am engaged to marry a woman who identifies partly as Jewish- enough that I have been to three Passover Seders with her in the last four years.

I was a member of DSA from 1995-2002 and my familiarity with it gradually declined after 2002. I left for a hybrid of personal and political reasons but I have some reason to believe that I would probably still feel at home in it today if not for the personal stuff. The political stuff is not relevant to this. Even today I am not as literate when it comes to socialist theory as I should be, and around 25-30 years ago I knew even less. During that time I vaguely identified as a Marxist and I was either a third-party fan or reluctant to register as a Democrat. I have done an okay job of educating myself more since then and I now use two terms in combination to describe my political beliefs- democratic Marxist and left-wing social-democrat. I’ve been registered as a Dem since 2004. I am not officially with any political organization, although I might be close to identifying with Indivisible.

Some people might point out that practically no one has heard of me and suggest that I have done nothing in recent years to earn a prominent stall in the marketplace of ideas. The short version is that while I did a ton of activism in Boulder 1994-2004, since Aug. of 2001 I have been dealing with a “perfect storm” of things that are A) largely or completely not my fault and B) largely personal tragedy (in some ways that situation has been almost overturned since I started dating my fiancé in 2020, but in a lot of ways I still struggle with stuff vocationally, mentally, emotionally, etc.). During the time since 2001 I have continued reading a HUGE amount of political material, I have developed some analytical skills through writing a lot, and I have made some decent contributions to the progressive community. Since 2008 I have published about a million words on this blog. Although in the last 6 years my blog has gotten only about 10 page-views a week on average, 2008-2018 there were about 10,000 first time visitors (who may have looked at several posts and/or come back some other time for more) and in the first few months of the pandemic there were somewhere around 100 page-views a day. 2011-2022 I volunteered an average of five hours a week at a large food-bank in this area. Since early 2021 I have gotten a total of about 10 LTEs and about six Guest Opinions published in a mainstream Boulder County publication and a sort of mainstream Boulder County publication. Since 2010 I have gone to a progressive event or protest about twice a month on average and in the last year it’s been about twice a week on average.

A big part of why few people have heard a lot about me as a political activist in the last 20 years is that I have 4+ mental disabilities that got worse or more numerous at a few different points in the last 25 years (for more about my mental health and progressive politics, read this).           

Trump, Iran, and Genocide

Below is something I wrote about a week after Trump threatened to destroy the civilization of Iran in early April. 

 

Tom 

 

 

I am glad that President Trump has so far not gone through with his threat to destroy Iran. It is damning of him and his voters that he made the threat and he is guilty of threatening genocide (“Conspiracy to Commit Genocide” and “Direct and Public Incitement to Commit Genocide” are crimes in international law (according to the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide ) and it’s reasonable to assume that Trump’s threat involved planning with high-ranking members of his administration). If there was no conspiracy because it was nothing but a threat, Trump should say so, apologize and acknowledge that even the threat by itself is harmful (and he would still be guilty of the incitement charge)). Although some of his supporters, for various and not-necessarily progressive reasons, have criticized him, the GOP don’t seem to understand how criminal it is to make the threat that he made. Some think that he was just being politically tactical and would never actually do it and therefore it’s okay. It’s so far from OK it is globally considered a crime. It reminds me of a scene in the Denzel Washington film "Training Day" where a cop interrogating college students who just bought drugs threatens to get the young woman in the group gang-raped.

The US should be more sensitive about this sort of thing- not because we have a great history of doing the right thing (we don’t). But because we did the wrong thing when it came to American Indians, because we are more familiar than most countries with the genocide of European Jews, and because we’re more familiar than most countries with the near-genocidal treatment of the Irish during the so-called “Potato Famine.” There are millions of Americans who lost relatives (and not distant ancestors) to Adolf Hitler’s Final Solution, and/or who are also similarily related to many Jewish people who were lucky to survive Nazi Germany- who would have been killed if not for that luck, Allied sacrifice, and/or their own efforts to escape the Holocaust.

I believe that one way to concisely capture the evil of genocide is that a 100%-successful effort could be described as the cultural equivalent of an animal species going extinct. I worry that putting it that way focuses too much on what other populations lose when the victim is (at least to a moderate degree) exterminated. But it contributes to understanding the severity of this crime.

Genocide is so horrible that it should be universally opposed by all nations. Although I am not a fan of the Islamic Republic, I have opposed Trump’s war since day one, and I have a little factoid relevant to this. Although I believe there is at least a fair amount of anti-Semitism in Iran (and I say that while supporting the Palestinians) in 2007 a TV mini-series was made by and broadcast by official Iranian media- a movie based on a true story of how an Iranian diplomat in Paris during World War II engineered some kind of Oscar Schindler-type effort that saved at least about 500 Jewish lives. The mini-series is called “Zero Degree Turn” and there’s an article that seems fair about it here.

Trump is of course selective, more so than most American politicians, in his opposition to genocide. It’s like his attitude to COVID-19, when he explicitly said that states would get more help from Washington if their governors publicly said nice things about him. It was a politically-indiscriminate PANDEMIC, and he saw it as transactional. He is, almost 100%, sensitive when it comes to the Holocaust, because he wants Jewish votes and Jewish money. When he thinks it will help him, he threatens the misanthropic destruction on an entire civilization.

Trump’s threat might give some nations and other actors the impression that genocide or threatening genocide is okay.

Lastly, Trump’s threat greatly undermines how the rest of the world sees the US. We have lost more moral authority on the global stage and we didn’t have much to begin with. It will increase support for or indifference towards any effort at carrying out another 9/11. We have already taken two steps backwards during Trump’s second administration in terms of conciliation with the Muslim world- supporting Netanyahu’s Gaza War, and the first month of Trump’s Iran War. What Trump has threatened would inflame hatred for us throughout the world.

If Trump were to go through with his threat it would be a nightmare for the Iranian people, a nightmare for the Middle-East, and would guarantee pandemic-level hatred of Americans for decades.

The Russian Invasion of Ukraine: Trump, Putin, and Zelensky

Although Trump has significantly corrected his attitude towards the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there are several things that people should know about Trump’s record on that issue. 

First is the fact that in general he is very deferential to Russian President Vladimir Putin. This has taken the form of Trump siding (for example) in July 2018 with Putin over his own intelligence community when it came to the allegation that Russia interfered with the 2016 election hoping to help Trump get elected. Trump’s initial response to the February 2022 full-fledged Russian invasion of Ukraine was that Putin was “smart.” In the Spring, Summer and Fall of 2025 Trump would occasionally express a negative opinion of Putin’s behavior in relation to the war but continued to occasionally act as if Putin was a partner for peace (i.e. at the August 2025 Summit between the two leaders).

Why is Trump so deferential to Putin? In addition to reading a huge number of relevant articles at CNN, Politico, the BBC and some miscellaneous sources, I read the 2018 book “Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin's War on America and the Election of Donald Trump” by David Corn and Michael Isikoff. They don’t analyze hardly anything AFTER the 2016 election, but there’s plenty of material about how Trump admires Putin and is connected to him in a few ways. There’s some small possibility that Putin has a compromising video of Trump.

More generally we know that Trump likes strongman leaders (including El Salvador's Nayib Bukele, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman, and many others). Although this will not be a lengthy description of Russia’s democratic deficit, Putin is widely seen as a strongman. Some bases for this includes the legal shackling of pro-democracy foreign NGOs, the extreme suppression of gay rights and information about homosexuality itself, and the muzzling of any anti-war voices in the last four years. In Trump’s first administration Mike Pompeo was for one year Director of the CIA and then spent three years as Secretary of State. Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine, Pompeo said that Putin, with his KGB background, knows how to “use power” and should therefore be respected.             

It’s also possible that Trump is friendlier to Putin than Ukraine’s President Zelensky partly because the latter is socially liberal. Although Trump makes it difficult to say that he hates the LGB in LGBTQ+, he is certainly on the HOMOPHOBIC half of the spectrum between HOMOPHOBIC and ANTI-HOMOPHOBIC, while Zelensky has expressed support for gay marriage. Zelensky is also against anti-Muslim bigotry. And as far as I can tell, Zelensky has also lobbied non-white nations for support without referring to them as “shit-hole countries.” (On a brief, related note, between this paragraph and the fact that Zelensky is partly Jewish, Putin’s propaganda when the war started, that there was a serious Nazi problem in Ukraine, was nonsense)

Although it is almost ancient history at this point, we need to take a closer look at the February 2025 meeting in the Oval Office where Trump and VP Vance attacked Zelensky. There’s a lot of details about the amount of aid sent Ukraine’s way that I won’t go into here but which undermine Trump’s idea that Zelensky was an ungrateful brat. There’s one thing about that which seems to have been barely mentioned in the mainstream media. When Zelensky came to the White House that day he brought a special gift for Trump. Trump is at least moderately if not seriously into martial arts and Zelenksy brought Oleksandr Usyk's 2024 undisputed heavyweight world boxing championship belt as a gift for Trump. He made a small mis-step and postponed presenting it to Trump- after Trump and Vance ambushed him he left the Oval Office and almost nothing has been heard about the belt since then.

There are three more aspects of Trump’s failure to support the VICTIM of the invasion, and one is that he briefly pushed the idea that UKRAINE was the aggressor in the war. Trump was probably saying it because he’s pro-Putin, but it also reminds me of what a lot of American progressives believe about the war. Whether it’s coming from Trump or the Left, it should be understood that Ukraine is definitely the victim- the Russian military crossed the border, it wasn’t the other way. Some progressives believe that Ukraine’s desire to join NATO justified the invasion. I have no idea how people who are usually driven by a strong opposition to state aggression believe that WANTING to join a military alliance which MIGHT be a threat to Russia is worse than ACTUALLY INVADING Ukraine. If Ukraine had invaded Russia that would be as bad as what Russia actually did. Ukraine was nowhere near invading Russia and they are clearly the smaller, weaker state which had already been militarily violated twice by Russia. It’s Orwellian. 

(Trump leans towards supporting Russia not because he thinks the invasion is legally a good cause, but partially for the same reason that he recognized Israel’s claim to sovereignty over the Golan Heights- he agrees with his Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller who said “We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else. But we live in a world, in the real world that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power”)

Trump has some times suggested that Zelensky is an illegitimate President because elections haven’t taken place since the invasion. This is nonsense. Because of the war martial-law has been declared and elections held under those conditions would be illegitimate. No one has said that the United Kingdom (outside of Northern Ireland) was no democracy during WWII even though they suspended normal politics and did so when practically ZERO parts of the Union were occupied by a foreign power and when there was a barrier (the sea) between them and their enemies.

The very last thing I’ll talk about is the main thing that inspired me to write this- it’s something that I don’t think anyone has said in defense of Zelensky. Part of the rationale for the Oval Office ambush of Zelensky was that he dressed very casually for a meeting IN THE OVAL OFFICE WITH THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT. At the beginning of the war Zelensky decided that he would dress in a military style to express that he was symbolically with Ukraine’s soldiers in harms way. He wore that outfit all the time, including meeting with other governments. Apparently Trump and his supporters decided that was dis-respectful of Trump. The thing is, Trump loves the idea of being some kind of “war-time president.” During the first several months of the Pandemic he tried that, apparently thinking that leading during a major health crisis was similar enough to leading during armed conflict with a foreign nation. In Aug 2025 he declared that he was a “war hero” (apparently because he decided that Netanyahu was a “war hero” and Trump was supporting Netanyahu or maybe Trump just felt left out and so declared that he and Netanyahu were “war heroes”) The thing is, Zelensky was a war-time leader for real, in a conflict where a decent chunk of his country was either occupied or made up the front lines, where initially a massive effort was made to seize the Ukrainian capitol and where the invasion involved tanks, soldiers armed with powerful fully automatic rifles etc. Zelensky’s status as a war-time leader is twice as legitimate as George W. Bush’s was, and Trump has ZERO claim to being a war-time leader. Although this can be taken too far and I’m not sure if I can be totally non-political about this, tweaking some of the rules of statehood to accommodate a real War-Time leader seems appropriate, especially in this case (in the movie “Iron Jawed Angels” when suffragettes continue protesting the President after America entered World War I they were severely criticized for protesting a war-time President but they shouldn’t have been).

Trump is on the side of aggression, land-grabs, social conservatism, and is in no position to be criticizing political leaders when it comes to how democratic they are. Although the cause of Ukraine is not something that energizes me as a socialist, it is an important cause and I’m glad to say that most Saturdays when I protest Trump with local progressives near a Tesla dealership in Superior (CO), there’s usually one or two Ukrainian flags held by the protestors.

 

An earlier post on the war is here. 

Trump, Gaza, and Genocide

(This (with a tiny bit of editing) was published 3/8/25 in the Daily Camera here (a small part of what is below wasn't submitted to the Camera- the parenthetical italicized statements))

 

Since 10th grade (1991-92) I have supported the Palestinians (i.e. I have publicly said in the last 18 months that if it resembled, in terms of targets and methods, what the Irish Republican Army did I would probably support an armed campaign by the Palestinians (see this and this). Since Oct. 8th I have often but decreasingly thought that a lot of Palestine solidarity activists might be using the term “genocide” inappropriately. Looking at the UN definition, yes there have been and are several elements of the crime found in the war on Gaza and to a much lesser degree, Israeli Apartheid in general (stretching back to the creation of the state). In the last 18 months I was not certain that there was an INTENT to destroy the Palestinian population. After I learned what kind of government there is in Israel now, and as the assault on Gaza went on and on and on, I started thinking- more and more that maybe, yes, something I THOUGHT was possible was ACTUALLY HAPPENING- the genocide of the Palestinians. But that’s nothing- in terms of my certitude that it’s genocide and in terms of the national destruction involved- compared to what Donald Trump has proposed.

Moving the entire Gaza population elsewhere would eliminate them as Gazans. They would be leaving their land, not because it’s become a “dust bowl,” not because the place was nuked and humans in general couldn’t live there anymore, etc. but because of hatred towards them in connection with their racial and/or national and/or religious identity (one thing that backs me up on this is an explanation here of how Apartheid IS the right word to apply to Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians in areas it controls). And transforming that now-blood-drenched beach-front property into something that practically no Palestinian could afford to live in would underline their loss- news reports (for example) about Trump’s Riviera would be reminders of what Trump did and would be rubbing it in. In general, Trump’s plan would involve some kind of national trauma comparable to the historical trauma experienced by American Indian communities.

(Nothing in this essay is meant to excuse or justify what happened Oct. 7th, which was mostly an attack on Israeli civilians. I have written a LOT of material critical of Hamas (here, here and here), but at this point it is time for me to focus more on the Palestinians)

In Ireland, the political party Sinn Fein (which was associated with the IRA and is now the biggest party if you look at votes in both the North and the South) announced that they will be boycotting the St. Patrick Day events at the White House this year and they are doing that because of Trump’s plans for Gaza. It might help everyone if I explain something here- SF, especially in the last 3-4 decades, makes a fair amount of effort to avoid conflicts in America with American politicians when it’s about something not central to justice for N. Ireland Catholics and/or peace in N. Ireland. That should help Americans understand how serious this situation with Gaza is- SF and most of the world are terrified by what Trump said.

In addition to the trauma experienced by Gazans, Trump’s plan will not bring peace to the middle-east. To one degree or another almost everyone there supports the Palestinians. If Egypt and/or Jordan cooperate with Trump, the governments in those two countries will probably be overthrown. The odds are pretty good there will be various renewed efforts to attack Israel. There will be more efforts to attack American targets.

There are some other flaws in Trump’s plan. How many REALLY nice pieces of real estate are A) empty of people and B) lucrative enough that two million or more Palestinians could prosper there? I have no idea what location Trump is thinking of. He kind of skirts around this, but he should be politically apprehended for pretty much saying that there will be no reconstruction in Gaza as long as the Palestinians are there but as soon as they are dragged away THEN it will be re-built for rich people. And he’s pretty much said that no, there will be no return.

Trump and Israel must be stopped before they do something horrible.

(An essay I wrote about the flaws in the Zionist argument and how to resolve the conflict is here)

My Review of Larry Bond's 1991 Anti-Apartheid Novel "Vortex"

In a book report (it wasn’t very analytical) I did in 2022 about a sort of sci-fi/sort of techno-thriller novel with a left-wing message, I admitted that a big chunk of the fiction I read is by Tom Clancy or authors like Tom Clancy (1989-2009 it was about 70% and since 2009 it’s been about 25% (hopefully I won’t go to Socialist Hell)). As far as I can tell, the author of the book I just referred to (David Mace) is progressive. If you look at the books I’ve read in the Tom Clancy genre there’s a handful with some stuff that is liberal or even progressive. It’s usually a small island of progressive viewpoints (by characters you’re supposed to like) with an ocean of center/center-right politics. There is one book which is written by someone much more right-wing than left-wing but which can nonetheless be greatly enjoyed politically by progressives, if you think about it the right way. I’m talking about Larry Bond’s 1991 novel “Vortex.”

“Vortex” is about Apartheid South Africa, and a “last gasp” attempt by hardliners to maintain Apartheid and Afrikaner colonialism. I believe the story starts in May of 1992, although it’s not clear what the year is. I am not sure how much or how little progress was made in the Peace Process between Mandela’s release and May of 1992 (in reality). Towards the very beginning of the book the President of SA talks about significant progress being made, which prompts the main villain (Karl Vorster, a Cabinet member) to carry out something which is basically a coup, but which appears to be the ANC’s military wing (MK) assassinating the rest of the cabinet (although this is known by almost no one until the last 1/3 of the book, the MK operation was manipulated by Vorster and the Intelligence agency he runs). He then reverses the small number of reforms that had been made to Apartheid, invades neighboring Namibia, and turns the security forces loose against Blacks and any dissent by whites.

The situation becomes chaotic. The leader of the Zulu population (who, in reality, may not have been as militant as the ANC was during the anti-Apartheid struggle) calls for the rest of the world to take action against the new regime and his people take up armed struggle. A large chunk of the military in Cape Town refuses to massacre white civilian protestors and rebels against the government.

Things also start to fall apart for Vorster in Namibia, whose government asks the Cuban Army in Angola to help repel the invasion. Although this is more complicated, to one extent or another during most of the book you can root for the Cuban Army. The head of the Cuban Army in Africa (General Antonio Vega) convinces Castro that Cuba should resolve the conflict by invading South Africa and overthrowing Apartheid. With some help from other “anti-Imperialist” countries (including three Libyan units probably the size of battalions) three columns (probably around 2,000-3,000 men in each) enter SA from the east, north and west. Because the Cubans hid their preparations for the invasion the SA military is still focused on Namibia and rapid progress is made, especially the column approaching Pretoria from the West. Because it is a desert and a sparely populated area (and because he is psychotic) Vorster eradicates that column with a nuclear bomb. SA is on the verge of using two more nukes to attack strategic targets when the US military captures them and removes them from the country in a massive airborne operation. Shortly after that the US military lands something like a division on the east coast of SA (at Durban) and starts fighting the SA Army on it’s way to Pretoria. Naval aircraft start attacking the East column of Cubans.

As you might guess, the US military stops the Cubans from reaching Pretoria until they (the US) can get there first. The aftermath of this victory for the US is largely a GOP fantasy. Because of some significant friction with the Cubans (see below), the ANC abandons it’s commitment to socialism. There IS something about recognition of the trade-unions, something proposed by the occupying US military, but I think we’re talking about something that is probably engineered to foster a pretty centrist labor movement.

There are two large aspects of this story relevant to how close it is to being a progressive book.

First, the US government moves very slowly at each stage of the crisis and are usually far behind Cuba. And they (characters who are officials of the US government) are pretty honest about why they are initially very slow and behind Cuba, and they’re also very honest about why they DO send their own invasion force after Cuba invades- they don’t want Cuba to get credit for overthrowing Apartheid. I will add a lot of details to this in about a year when I read this book (for the 6th or 7th time) and take some notes, but in general, Cuba looks better than the US government.

On the other hand, there are some things Bond has the Cubans do that A) usually involve quite a bit of imagination on Bond’s part and B) make Cuba look bad. After one of his columns is wiped out by a nuke, Vega decides to compensate for that by using chemical weapons. In all fairness to Vega and in all fairness to Bond who was probably tempted to really slander Cuba at this point, they use NON-PERSISTENT chemical weapons which become impotent pretty quickly after they are released into the air. This means they’re not quite as indiscriminate as they would be if they were persistent. We don’t know how many battles involved Cuban chemical weapons, but there was at least one. And some small part of the nearby black population was affected, with some deaths.

Those black deaths contribute to the erosion of congeniality between the Cuban Army and the ANC’s military wing, Spear of the Nation. There is one bizarre incident that was a pretty good example of Bond trying to reassure most of his readers that he did not go commie while writing this book. The Cubans ask the black population in one town to help them make an airfield they took over functional again. There weren’t enough volunteers so a small number of Blacks were forced to help. This of course contributes to the conflict developing between the Cubans and the ANC. Bond does sort zig-zag a bit and quotes Vega’s thoughts, pointing out that he has Black officers on his staff- who he describes as brave and competent.

There is something I really need to say about Bond. Vortex is his second book. His first and third books are politically fairly centrist overall. His fourth and fifth books, I thought were racist towards Muslims and I will never read them again and I haven’t read anything he wrote after book five. (see this and this (and look for my name)). (I lost track of those two novels in my collection for several years but in the end I made a decision about 5 years ago to throw them away instead of taking them to a thrift store (I’m not totally okay with that, because it resembles book burning, but throwing them away was probably the right thing to do))

There is one last thing I need to get out of the way. In the very first sentence of the book, in a section that includes maybe 500 words, it sounds like Bond is saying that rural, uneducated Zimbabweans think that helicopters flying at night are “demons.”  There’s a bit more to that short first section, and I also think after I explain this next part, progressive readers will feel comfortable assuming that Bond is not racist towards Black people. In his first book (about a second Korean War), one of the main characters is an Air Force pilot who gets shot down behind enemy lines, and is rescued at night by a helicopter. This character does say that the helicopter appears like a demon.

It’s a massive book- 896 pages in paperback. If you’re not totally against anything military and you hate Apartheid, you will probably like this book. In about a year I will probably read it again and take some notes and have more to say.

Fuck Hamas

This is my position on what happened in Israel and Palestine in early Oct.

First, as far as the history of that conflict, about 20% of my knowledge comes from Juan Cole’s site Informed Comment and about 20% is from the BBC. The rest, about 60% is from various sources, some  mainstream, some progressive, including The Nation, the Washington Post, the Times of Israel, etc. In the last week it’s something like 50% the BBC, 10% Juan Cole, 10% CNN and the rest is miscellaneous.

I have been a supporter of the Palestinians pretty much since I started becoming more than a tiny bit political. I sort of explain my general thoughts about the conflict in a post here. I have only briefly been VERY familiar with Israeli and Palestinian politics, and that was the first 2-3 months of 2020 when I was reading about 15 articles a day on the web-based newspaper The Times of Israel. I used to be a member of what used to be the American section of the Socialist International (the Democratic Socialists of America) and in 2001 learned that Fatah, the leading part of the PLO (Arafat was a leader of Fatah), was a less-than-full member of the SI. Until recently I basically supported them.

That was increasingly (in recent years as more and more criticisms were made of the PLO) because of who the main alternative was. My position has always been- “Fuck Hamas.” To one degree or another Hamas is a lot more socially conservative than Fatah is, and I think that the activities of the military wing of Hamas were more likely to intentionally kill innocent civilians than the PLO was when they were fighting Israel.

But for decades now I have heard about the PLO being corrupt and abusing their power. They also have done a horrible job of advancing the interests of their people. Although that’s been clear to one degree or another for decades now, there was a BBC article that really explained that just recently. And then there was a BBC article accusing the President of the Palestinian Authority (sort of an extension of the PLO, in the West Bank) of giving a VERY anti-Semitic speech. As you’ll understand if you read that article, Abbas said that European Jews were targeted because they had money. This is not true and even if all Jews were rich, how in the world would that justify killing them- especially when rich people outside the Jewish population were not targeted as well.

I won’t discuss this in this essay, but I am not sure who I can support among the political movements in the Palestinian population.

The Palestinians have very serious and legitimate grievances. Those who are Israeli citizens experience a fair amount of inequality. Those living in the West Bank have it worse (they are state-less), and in different ways the residents of the Gaza Strip have it even worse than that. The first two of the three aspects of the Israeli state I just referred to are often referred to as being governed by “Israeli Apartheid.” I explain how that’s a legitimate term for how the Palestinians are treated here. The two state solution has been dying a slow death for decades as Israel plants settlers in the West Bank, changing the “facts on the ground” that will make an independent Palestine non-viable.  The Israeli Right, who are in power right now, wants to annex all of the West Bank, at the expense of the Palestinians living there.

So, yes, the Palestinians have every reason to be FURIOUS with the Israeli state and the Israeli people. But what Hamas has done in the last few days is horrible. IF it had been aimed at the military and (using methods that avoid civilian death) government and commercial buildings, I would at least sort of approve. But that’s not what happened. What happened was a massacre of civilians and, especially with a right-wing extreme Zionist government in Jerusalem, it will provoke an even greater (UPDATE 310/10/23 bigger, and/or more extensive) response than what we have seen in the last few days. It will probably bury any chance at peace for a generation.

Is that guaranteed? Fortunately it is not. We need to continue our efforts to change American policy on Israel. That effort will be boosted if we do more to incorporate opposition to anti-Semitism into our solidarity work in support of the Palestinians. That is one of the main themes in my post on Zionism and a one state solution. At the risk of scheming internationally, this is one more reason to support the Irish political party Sinn Fein. After SF got within striking distance of leading a left-wing and republican government in Dublin in 2020, Juan Cole wrote a post about what that might mean for the Palestinians. In recent years there has been a trend of bigger and bigger percentages of the Jewish-American population supporting the Palestinians, and this will help.

In general I am a supporter of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions, although I worry that a CULTURAL boycott could fuel anti-semitism. But an economic and political BDS network would be awesome.

So, we need to do a better job than we have done. And I think that a good place to start is to react to recent events by condemning Hamas, talking up a one state solution, and doing more of what we have already done.

 

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UPDATE 10/12/23 There is another item on the same theme here.

My Position on Ukraine

As I’ll explain below, I basically support Ukraine. I don’t see a Nazi problem there any more serious than what most white countries have, I don’t see why it’s so important for Russia to intervene in support of the the Russia population in Ukraine, I find Putin offensive for various reasons, etc. However I am also concerned about a war starting between the US and Russia.

About 40% of my info for this is from CNN, about 40% is from NPR, and the rest is miscellaneous stuff including Dave Anderson’s column.

1. I have heard almost nothing about a current problem with Nazis in Ukraine. According to Dave Anderson in the Boulder Weekly, the Nazis are no longer politically significant. I DID read on CNN.com about a battalion of the Ukrainian military that is more right-wing than most military units. But I got the impression it was also not very significant. I have read that the President of Ukraine is Jewish, probably less than 100%. And although it’s not a good sign for him that I feel a need to say this, I get the impression he is okay with people of color (he recently addressed some body of the African Union and met with his counterpart from Indonesia). I have read of Putin making vague references to Nazism in Ukraine, but they’re incredibly vague. I have heard some stuff making me think that RUSSIA is the one with the Nazi problem.
2. I have heard almost nothing about Russian-speaking people being oppressed in Ukraine. I’m not sure what to think of what happened with Viktor Yanukovych. I don’t remember exactly what happened, but everything else I have read indicates that Ukraine is a healthy democracy and aside from the thing about Yanukovych I have not heard of anything about the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine being oppressed.
3. I don’t believe that NATO expansion explains what Putin is doing to Ukraine and I’m certain it doesn’t justify it. Putin has been acting like an imperialist- taking little bits here and there into his State or at least his spheres of influence- parts of Georgia, then a part of Ukraine and now more of Ukraine.
4. I cannot understand why anyone would blame the Ukrainian people for fighting back. At least some part of that population is going to be under the rule of a foreign nation, a foreign nation that has shown zero respect for the Ukrainian people (what Putin said shortly before the invasion, and what his forces have been doing as part of the invasion). I can only imagine how horrible that is.
5. I don’t like Putin. Last I heard, about 15-20 years ago, he made governors in Russia appointed instead of elected. He’s friendly with Trump. He’s incredibly homophobic. In general he seems pretty repulsive to me. My hope is that if the Ukraine invasion is too costly (in economic and military terms) it might weaken Putin.

6. Practically every European country that is not Russia is in NATO. And some of the exceptions are in the EU which is also supporting Ukraine. Critics of Biden’s Ukraine policy have been out-voted by almost all of Europe that is not Russia. They are worried about Russian aggression.

I realize what I just wrote might not change many minds. I’ve only been reading about 1,000 words a day about the conflict and related issues and in earlier years I am sure I missed a lot of relevant stuff. But I do support Ukraine.

I AM worried about the US getting into a war with Russia. In fact, in 2016 I told 1-3 people that Russia was the only issue where I preferred Trump over Clinton (I voted for Clinton (there were enough serious problems with Trump (i.e. he accepted support from David Duke) that I ignored the fact CO is not a swing state and failed to vote for a good 3rd party)). I can’t believe that Zelensky repeatedly asked for a no-fly zone and I’m really glad that Biden answered with a firm NO. I think the US can help Ukraine defend itself and at the same time avoid a conflict with Russia (Vietnam didn't become WWIII and neither did Afghanistan in the 1980s). Although I ended up looking a little stupid with that book review about nuclear war, the tension between the US and Russia is one of the reasons I am trying to promote the book and discussion about nuclear war.

Tom

Mutually Assured Destruction: My Review of David Mace's "Fire Lance"

 I somehow stumbled onto the sci-fi novel “Fire Lance” in High School. It may have played a small role in me moving towards the left during those years (when I was 16 I became a member of the Rocky Mountain Peace (and Justice) Center at least partly because of their position on nuclear weapons). I’ve read it 2-3 times since then, most recently a couple of weeks before this post was published.

It was written in 1986 by a British sci-fi writer named David Mace. I read one of his other books but I didn’t like it very much (Fire Lance is one of my favorite books). It’s one of my favorite books because it’s both politically progressive and reminds me of the centrist/centre-right author Tom Clancy who often wrote about the military (I might go into more detail about this in a future post, but between 1989 and 2009 about 70% of the fiction I read was by Clancy and people like him- since 2009 it has gone down to about 1/4 of the novels I read).

Fire Lance is about a nuclear war between the USSR and the US. It’s not clear when in the future it takes place, but I think maybe it’s supposed to be about 10-20 years in the future from the author’s perspective in 1986. It’s pretty vague about the political situation that became a shooting war. It started with satellites in space going down and then there was some conventional action in Europe, and then it went nuclear. Some large majority of each side’s nuclear arsenal is used before they stop.  Around the same time they stop, nuclear winter sets in. Although almost the entire book takes place on a US naval vessel where they have no idea what it’s like on land outside the underground American command centers (i.e. Cheyenne Mountain), at one point a soldier who spent weeks at the beginning of the war outside those command centers talks about what that was like in the aftermath of such a total nuclear war. The breakdown of society and the freezing conditions that would be part of a nuclear winter are well illustrated.

Both the President and Vice-President are killed and the “government” is made up of the military and national security bureaucrats, all unelected. After the conventional war is over and the nuclear war winds down, they spend their time debating whether or not to start things up again with the Soviets. Before the story starts the “soft-liners” or “‘no more war’ people” in the places like Cheyenne Mountain are eliminated and the debate shits to those who want to wait and see what the Soviets do, and on the other side those who want to start the war again immediately. One of the only significant military units still capable of attacking the USSR is the Vindicator, a futuristic surface ship with a small number of offensive jets and Anti-Submarine Warfare helicopters and the Fire Lance system- hundreds of nuclear armed cruise missiles.

One of the two main characters is David Drexel, a British national working for the US government on national security matters. Although he’s primarily a survivor and bounces between the two factions in the US “Government,” he also has some good progressive commentary about American politics and foreign policy. He criticizes us for supporting totalitarian anti-Communist governments and on a related note for enforcing a foreign policy that is pro-life when it comes to abortion.

The other main character is the Vindicator’s Commanding Officer Captain Richard Bedford. He’s pretty non-political and doesn’t side with either faction. But after learning that the Fire Lance attacks his ship is making on the USSR are not in response to recent nuclear attacks by  the Soviets, he tries to stop the series of missile launches after the first third are launched. A hardliner shoots him for this. The second in command takes over and finishes the three-part series of launches partly because he's a technocrat and partly because the hardliner brought a squad of elite Army soldiers with him and the new CO wants to avoid further bloodshed on the ship. Bedford has some good thoughts about the need to stop the nuclear war.

There’s some interesting scientific commentary about whether or not life on Earth will survive a nuclear winter. Drexel says that the radioactive dust in the atmosphere that blocks out the sun won’t go away but at some point will come down- which I assume means human survivors would be breathing it and it would get into our water. If what Mace has Drexel say is accurate, that can’t be good. I’m also uncertain of this next thing, but it might be true. Drexel says that the radioactive dust in the atmosphere will also destroy the Ozone Layer and that means that undiluted UV rays will get through and destroy almost all life on Earth.

At the end, the Vindicator, once thought to be unstoppable, is stopped by various Soviet attacks and is abandoned. At the very end, as the survivors use life rafts to get to a frozen island nearby, it’s clear that they’re all going to die. If what Drexel said about the ozone is right, everyone is going to die. Overall it’s meant as a very damning illustration of nuclear war.

Three other things I like about it:

1) As I sort of already said, I like the stuff about how the military works and how the Soviets try to stop them.
2) At one point the ship is very close to Ireland and the Captain considers as likely the idea that the Irish would be very hostile to his ship. He thinks- “It wasn’t Ireland’s war. It was Ireland’s planet.”
3) At one point when US military spending is described by the author, the defunding of social programs is mentioned as something that allowed that military spending to be increased.

It’s 314 pages long. I do recommend it for any progressive who enjoys stuff about the military.  You might be able to find it at a used book store but your best chance is probably a library or Amazon (if it becomes ethical to buy from Amazon).

**********

I wanted to offer some thoughts about nuclear war.

Although I believe that any movement towards a nuke-free world is positive, I DO focus mostly on the US. We started it, and I’m an American. For multiple reasons I would like to see the US change it’s foreign policy in a progressive way and gradually reduce it’s conventional military. It should, at the very beginning of this process begin getting rid of it’s nukes. As that process is going on, they should negotiate with almost every country on Earth to form a new global alliance. This global alliance should be about a global response to any use of nuclear weapons, where the guilty party will be shunned. I would support getting rid of American nukes right away but I think it would be very difficult for a majority of politicians here to support that outside the context I just described.

Tom

 

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 UPDATE 6/30/22

A friend suggested I read some stuff by a CU-Boulder scientist named Brian Toon. I read a CPR article about his work on nuclear winter and watched a TED Talk he did on the same topic. I then exchanged a few emails with him. I read another article about his work on nuclear winter.

The CPR article is here. The TED Talk is here.

 

As far as the ozone layer, here's what I read in the novel: "Now Ozone is particularly susceptible to chemical degradation, especially by nitrogen containing compounds- and there'll be an awful lot of those in the dust veil, because you get such nitrogen compounds in the smoke produced by combustion.”

Above I wrote: "I’m also uncertain of this next thing, but it might be true. Drexel says that the radioactive dust in the atmosphere will also destroy the Ozone Layer and that means that undiluted UV rays will get through and destroy almost all life on Earth."

I am not sure how much I screwed up (the "dust veil" is the radioactive dust in the atmosphere (actually, although I confirmed that the book says the veil is radioactive, Toon sounded less sure about that, like maybe it's not radioactive)).

Although I wasn't going to ignore that part of the book (the part about humans surviving nuclear winter), I also tried to make it clear that I and the book are not great sources of scientific information (some of what Toon wrote in his emails I didn't totally understand). But Brian Toon IS a great source of scientific information. If you read the two items above and want more, he forwarded to me two articles as attachments that I can forward to you. Let me know.

I'm not saying I have done a great job of this so far, but the more I think about it, the more I think we need to encourage awareness about this issue.

Tom

 **********

UPDATE 7/1/22

One last thing from Prof. Toon:

There are 4 sorts of radioactivity in a nuclear war.  There is prompt radiation released when the bomb goes off.  This would kill a lot of people near ground zero, but they likely die first from blast and fire.  Second if there is a ground burst radioactive isotopes will attach to dust lifted from the ground.  The dust is relatively large and so it falls out fast (hence the name fallout).  This fallout can make a  strip of radiation hundreds of miles long downwind of the explosion.  Anyone in that who doesn't shelter for a week or so is potentially in trouble.  Ground bursts go after things like missile silos so most bombs are air bursts.  The isotopes from these will not attach to large dust particles so they will float around in the air until they get rained out, likely in a week or two.  By the time they reach the ground the radioactivity level will have fallen and so exposure will not be very dangerous.  For instance this happened from a Nevada test, which resulted in a radiation dump in a rain storm in upstate New York.  No one has looked at the rainfall frequency and the deposition of the radiation on the ground so the odds of radiation poisoning are not clear.  Generally the military says don't worry, no one will be hurt.  The forth type of radiation is long lived isotopes that can take decades to decay.   These isotopes explain the 1963 nuclear test ban treaty.  Kids teeth and bones were picking up this radiation.  Generally however, it is believed that this radiation is not much above the natural levels.  So again the military says don't worry.

 

Movie Reviews D

13 going on 30 (IMDB Wikipedia)

A non-political comedy but a good one.

I give it 3 stars out of 5.

Bulletproof (IMDB Wikipedia)

Another non-political comedy, but a really good one.

I give it 5 stars out of 5.

The Candidate (IMDB Wikipedia)

This about a fictional candidate for Senate in 1972. He’s inconsistently progressive. He criticizes the Teamsters union for attacking the United Farm Workers. He’s initially in favor of busing for desegregation. I was thinking about it recently and I decided that busing was a good way to desegregate schools.

I give it 2 stars out of five.

Ishtar (IMDB Wikipedia)

It’s more of a comedy than a serious drama or action film but it’s kind of critical of US foreign policy in the Arab world; although it’s about a made-up country.

I give it 3 stars out of 5.

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (IMDB Wikipedia)

A non-political movie that’s sort of a cross between a comedy and drama. 

UPDATE 5/5/21 I give it three stars out of five.

The US, Afghanistan and the War on Terror

 Before he lost the 2020 election, Trump was close to ending the US military presence in Afghanistan. He had promised to do so, referring to it as an endless war. I had mixed feelings about it. In the first two years after 9/11 I supported our presence there, even while I actively and solidly opposed the invasion and occupation of Iraq (I describe that work here).          

I was influenced by a minority statement from members of the national leadership of the Young Democratic Socialists and believed that it was a time, like WWII, when the progressive thing to do was to support an American-led multi-lateral effort against fascist forces who were a threat to justice and peace in the world. 9/11 was largely about killing as many Americans as possible and it’s easier to kill civilians than it is to kill members of the military, so Al-Qaeda primarily went after civilians. Even the plane that DID target the military had civilians on board. And, not everyone working in the World Trade Center was a “little Eichman” as Ward Churchill said (Ward was my faculty advisor and in general I am proud of that, but he was wrong about somewhere around 99% of the people who were working in the WTC). Although it would have been a crucial part of successfully defeating Al-Qaeda, I don’t think that changing America’s foreign policy to address the complaints of Al-Qaeda would have been enough by itself to stop them. A successful and progressive war on terror would have involved an armed conflict with Al-Qaeda and that’s partly because America’s imperialistic foreign policy (and crucially it’s support for Israel) is not the only thing that motivates Al-Qaeda and it’s supporters to want conflict with the US. It’s relevant that we are a relatively liberal society and they are religious fundamentalists who see most Americans as infidels. In short, Al-Qaeda are religious fundamentalist fascist terrorists who had carried out an attack aimed at killing as many American civilians as possible and who were sheltered by the Taliban government in Afghanistan.

I believe that if we had done the following, we would have been victorious against Al-Qaeda:
1. Changed American foreign policy, especially when it comes to the Middle-East. Looking beyond the Middle-East, I think that a lot of progressive and non-aligned/independent people and groups and nations in this world would have been more interested in helping America defeat Al-Qaeda if we were pursuing a better foreign policy aimed at reversing the transfer of wealth between the global “North” and the global “South” and democratizing the global economy and generally pursuing global justice. Looking at the Mid-East specifically, we shouldn’t be supporting Israel for a whole range of reasons that have nothing to do with Al-Qaeda (I make a pretty good argument against Zionism here) but forcing Israel to negotiate seriously and respectfully with the Palestinians would also dry up a lot of Al-Qaeda’s support in the Arab and Muslim worlds.
2. Made the War on Terror very multi-lateral. Although I’ll concede that NATO’s involvement in Afghanistan hasn’t seemed to help, the effort against Al-Qaeda would have been even less successful if it were just the US. In the very early months after 9/11 Germany offered ground forces and the US declined the offer. It would have been more multi-lateral and if other things on this list had happened there would have also been some Muslim nations prominently involved in Afghanistan.
3. The US had purged itself of bigotry towards muslims. Instead we had popular commentators and politicians spewing anti-muslim bigotry which affected how the Muslim world reacted to 9/11 and the invasion of Afghanistan.
4. Had a better set of domestic policies. Going back to part of #2, we would have had more allies globally if American DOMESTIC policy was better. A lot of progressive and non-aligned/independent individuals and groups and nations aren’t enthusiastic about helping the US government when they consider how much poverty and inequality there is in America.
5. Stayed out of Iraq. They had nothing to do with 9/11 and Saddam was hostile to Al-Qaeda. The invasion meant shifting resources from Afghanistan to Iraq and angered a large part of the Muslim world.
6. Treated Al-Qaeda and Taliban members captured in Afghanistan as POWs. We would have been doing the right thing and we wouldn’t have been heavily criticized as we were by almost the entire world. I’m obviously not a fan of either group but I believe strongly that when combatants are captured, they should be treated as POWs. Whether they were allied airmen during WWII, or IRA members in N. Ireland, or American pilots in Vietnam, or the German SS or Islamic State members, they deserve(d) to be treated as POWs.
7. Abstained from torture. We not only tortured, many American politicians like Peter King of NY, praised the Bush administration for it’s use of torture (I’m thinking primarily of waterboarding and what happened at Abu Ghraib in Iraq; see this). This turned a huge chunk of the world’s population against us.

So, that’s pretty much why the War on Terror has not been won and why we briefly faced something close to a state (in the north of Syria) based on a version of Islam even worse than the one that Al-Qaeda embraces.

Returning to Trump’s idea of pulling out of Afghanistan, a large chunk of the US military and many civilian commentators don’t believe the Taliban has been following through on their part of the peace deal they agreed with Washington. It seems likely that they will continue with their war against Kabul and when the US and NATO are gone, they will probably win. And they will probably be a safe haven for Al-Qaeda and/or the Islamic State. And one or both of those two will attack America at some point. I doubt that America will change its Israel policy anytime soon. In general I don’t think Biden will have a consistently progressive foreign policy.

Although I have difficulty saying this, I am more in favor of than against us withdrawing from Afghanistan. What do I think we should do when we leave, the Taliban win, and there’s an Al-Qaeda or IS attack on America? What I referred to positively in the list above, and once that’s done, a multi-national invasion of Afghanistan (unless the Taliban hand Al-Qaeda and IS over to some appropriate authority (possibly the US, possibly someone else)).

(one last thing is that there needs to be a change in the US military (especially the Army and Marines), where they make more effort to avoid civilian casualties. It’s estimated that in Iraq tens of, or a couple hundred thousand(s) of Iraqi civilians were killed by the US military. I learned from an interview on the radio of a political acquaintance that when his son was being trained for deployment to Iraq with the US Army Corps of Engineers, he was told to fire at gunmen even if there were civilians in the way who could easily be shot by accident. The US military needs to understand that when they do stuff like that, they are not increasing their odds of surviving the war, because the relatives and friends of civilians killed by the US military are likely to support or become anti-US combatants)

 

(UPDATE 5/9/21 I forgot to mention something. About a week before I wrote this post I wrote a brief note on the same subject in a post of reviews of Law and Order: SVU:

I’m going to keep this pretty brief. Sometime around 2000 I signed at least one if not two email petitions criticizing the Taliban BEFORE 9/11. The first two years of the US invasion of Afghanistan I supported it, partly because of how offensive the Taliban are. I got the impression that Afghan women didn’t support the invasion, but I also supported it because of 9/11 (Al-Qaeda was based there), so it wasn’t just the misogyny of the Taliban (which, by itself wouldn’t justify an invasion considering the opposition of the Afghan feminists). After two years I realized that under George W. Bush’s leadership the War on Terror was a disaster and in that context the war in Afghanistan was not going to help and was just going to make things worse. But I also can’t imagine a successful War on Terror that doesn’t include defeating Al-Qaeda. I’ll take that thought a little further in another post that I’ll work on soon and publish soon.

 

I AM concerned about what a Taliban victory would mean for girls and women in Afghanistan. An article sort of about that is here) 

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UPDATE 10/24/23 A little more on why a progressive and successful response to 9/11 would have involved taking down Al Qaeda. In 1998, a few months after the Good Friday peace agreement in N. Ireland was ratified by the voters, a splinter group from the IRA detonated a bomb in Omagh, N. Ireland, and killed 29 civilians. The thing is, at that time maybe about 1% of the Catholic population supported armed struggle, and yet the splinter group (the "Real IRA") was able to carry out attacks. Even if all seven things on that list above were done, it would not have 100% ended Al Qaeda's willingness and ability to carry out attacks on western targets.

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UPDATE 7/3/24 I believe that there are a bunch of progressives who seem to think that the American civilian population just has to take hit after hit after hit until they stop voting for ass-holes. I don't think American civilians deserve to die.

The Palestinain-Israeli Peace Process is Over

I just sort of stumbled onto a news story about something I had been largely ignoring for about 2 months. The Peace Process between Israel and the Palestinians is over. Read this. I have done two important posts about this issue. One is about how the term "Apartheid" is an appropriate description of how Israel treats the Palestinians, and one is an argument against zionism.

A good source of information about the conflict is here. For a more frequently updated and relatively neutral source, see The Times of Israel.

Tom

Fuck George W. Bush: Three New Poems

Below are three more poems. For an explanation of how I write my poems, see this. The last one is based on lyrics I agree with, the others are NOT.

For the rest of the lyrics, click on the "lyrics" label at the bottom.

1. Smash the Klan II. What you think it's about.
2. From Out of the Ashes. The birth of the Provisional IRA in Northern Ireland.
3. Surf the Euphrates. About the Iraq War.

“Smash the Klan II” based on “Aryan Pride” by Final War. Original lyrics are here.

1. This is about slightly militant opposition to the KKK among white people. It’s sort of inspired by the time that I joined around 100-300 people in 1995 protesting a “rally” by the Klan in Boulder. At the end we surrounded the building they had rallied in front of and trapped them there for about an hour or two until the police tried something sneaky that involved getting them out in an ambulance.
2. Instead of “crossing the border,” many Mexican-Americans are partly or totally descended from Mexicans who lived in what was Mexico until it became CA, NV and the South-West of the US (and TX).
3. The 54th Mass was the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment, the segregated Black unit that fought in the American Civil War and whose story is told, accurately or otherwise, in the movie “Glory.”
4. Racists have a greatly exaggerated sense of how much anti-white bigotry there is. In a paragraph more than half-way from the top of this post that starts with “Even without that…” I explain why I think anti-white bigotry is a very small problem.
5. I exaggerate how easy it is for white people to get a job, although if we focus on times when it’s a white person and a person of color, it IS pretty easy for the white person to get the job. Affirmative Action helps a lot, but “Hispanics” and Blacks still have an unemployment rate fairly close to twice that of white people (it’s a bit higher for Blacks than for “Hispanics” and the gap fluctuates a bit, but it’s around twice; see this). Racists think that white people are discriminated against and have more trouble getting a job. Of course, that’s probably because they think that the natural order of things should involve full employment in good jobs for white people and see anything else as unfair.
6. My thoughts about the white identity and European-American ethnic identities are in the first 2/5 of this (you should also read the conclusion, which is the second to last section) (I realize that BEFORE they read that many anti-Klan white people might not like what I say, but I think that after they read it, they will).
7. The St. Patrick Battalion was a group of American soldiers, most Irish and almost all Catholics, who deserted the US Army during the US-Mexico War and joined the Mexican Army. I’m sure it varied from individual to individual, but to one degree or another they thought that what the US was doing to Mexico was unjust (they were also alienated by anti-Catholic bigotry in the US Army (and of course Catholics *used to be* on the Klan’s list as well)).
8. After I started altering stuff, I switched the first verse with the chorus. Also, there were only three verses in the original, and the fourth verse is totally mine.
9. **70% of this poem is me, 30% is the original. I don’t know if the 3rd line of the second verse in the original lyrics I found on-line is what was actually written by the original lyricist.

Many people hate the Klan for spreading prejudice
Gay people, Muslims, and Jews are on their fucking list
Black people aren’t criminals like you see on your TV
The border crossed Mexican-Americans, its a fact of history

Chorus
Brothers and sisters, join together as one.
We’ve got the fucking KKK totally on the run
in memory of the brave 54th Mass soldiers who died
Fuck the Nazis, and fuck the Klan and fuck Aryan Pride!

Racists cry “Black man, yeah Black man full of hate”
Widespread anti-White bigotry is the bullshit story they narrate
Its fucked up how white people can secure any job by race
It’s funny how the Klan deny that that’s totally the case.

Chorus

Our solidarity won't be broken, and we won’t hide from an affray
We will keep on working until we asphyxiate the KKK
Our message will be spread. Our voices loud and clear
Inform the youth, of the truth, the Klan’s greatest fear.

Chorus

We’ll never be proud of being white, it’s an artificial identity
It’s totally steeped in privilege, hate and inequality
We’re proud of being Irish, Scottish and German, Greek, Polish and Italian
We’re in solidarity with the oppressed, just like the St. Pat’s Battalion

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“From Out of the Ashes” based on “After the Fire” by Skrewdriver. original lyrics are here.

1. This is about the aftermath of the anti-Catholic pogrom in the Lower Falls Nationalist/Republican area of Belfast in Aug. of 1969 (it wasn’t INCREDIBLY Republican BEFORE that month, but not long afterwards it certainly was). In July, August, and September, and mostly during a period of 2-3 days, in Belfast, 1,505 Catholic families fled their homes (probably something like 18% of Belfast’s Catholic population, probably something like 1.8% of the North’s Catholic population). In one night alone 650 families were burnt, or at least forced, out of their homes.
2. The DUBLIN-BASED LEADERSHIP OF THE IRA had demilitarized it in the years before Aug. 1969 and only a few IRA weapons were available to help defend the area, a defense that was largely unsuccessful.
3. The Civil Rights Movement that started in mid- and late 1968 was overwhelmingly committed to non-violence and had hoped to democratize N. Ireland.
4. Provos refers to what we call in recent decades Sinn Fein and the IRA. They broke off from SF and the IRA (what became known as Official SF and Official IRA) partly because of the leadership’s decision to demilitarize the IRA.
6. Initially the British Army kind of saved the Catholics from police-led loyalist mobs and were welcomed for about 9 months, but they became increasingly like the notorious Black and Tans unit of the British Army that served in Ireland during the War of Independence 1919-1921.
7. Squaddie is a term for British soldier.
8. On the night of June 27th 1970, the Church of an isolated Catholic enclave in East Belfast was attacked by a loyalist mob. The British Army wouldn’t defend the area but members of the PIRA did. It was their first major action.
9. I like calling The Troubles the Second Anglo-Irish War, the first being the War of Independence.
10. There is or was a T-Shirt designed by either SF or their old American support organization Irish Northern Aid, that said: “From Out Of The Ashes Arose The Provisionals.” It was referring to the ashes of the mythical bird, the Phoenix (in this case representing the IRA they split off from (actually, I used to think it was the ashes of the burned out homes, and I kind of prefer that interpretation because there were some good people in the Officials in the early 1970s and I don't believe in speaking positively about the feud between the two groups)).
11. Skrewdriver were British and supported the British and Unionist causes in Northern Ireland.
12. Based on a fairly scientific look, only .3% of the PIRA’s operations resulted in civilian death.
13. **62% of this poem is me, 38% is the original.

The fires burned for hours, it was a time of terror.
Dublin had ordered the IRA disarmed but they were totally in error
Those nights there were burnt out homes, our community was battered
Non-violence had been our people’s hope, but now that hope was shattered

Chorus
After the fire, the ruins there did lay.
After the Provo victory there will come a brand new day.

The Falls stood in misery, and initially welcomed the British Army Man
But increasingly the Squaddies acted just like the old Black and Tans
Then, on the night of June 27th, it was known the Provos had come alive-
Seeds of resistance once sown, now had grown, new life that would not die.

Chorus

The new Anglo-Irish War is approaching, and with the Provos we shall be.
They rose from the ashes of August ’69 and they will fight for you and me.

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“Surf the Euphrates” based on “Surf Nicaragua” by Sacred Reich (despite their name, their politics are very progressive- I'm fairly familiar with all of their music and at least some of it is more or less socially liberal and it's also economically progressive and it's anti-war). Original lyrics are here.

1. This is about the Occupation of Iraq.
2. The Euphrates is a major river going through Iraq.
3. One of the MANY reasons Bush had for invading Iraq was that it has a lot of oil.
4. A major argument in favor of invading was that Iraq was connected to Al-Qaeda. In fact, shortly after the war began a poll found that about 70-75% of Americans thought Iraq was responsible for 9/11. It was such bullshit that Tony Blair didn’t use that argument when trying to convince the British people and Parliament to invade. It’s also been strongly suggested that the % of the anti-US forces that were foreign Islamists was very tiny.
5. There were no Weapons of Mass Destruction found, and that was predictable based on what the UN weapons inspectors were saying just before the invasion and what former Marine and former UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter said around 2000.
6. Donald Rumsfeld was the Secretary of Defense.
7. Based on multiple pieces of anecdotal evidence and the existence of Iraq Veterans Against the War (now, About Face), and how unpopular Bush became shortly after the 2004 election, I imagine a lot of American soldiers who voted for Bush in 2000 or 2004 wished they hadn’t after they did one or more tours there.
8. I think another reason for invading Iraq is that it provided multiple opportunities to give money to corporations. Besides arms contractors and those doing privatized work for the military, corporations getting money for reconstruction spent about half of what they got doing actual reconstruction (often a contractor would keep half and give the rest to a subcontractor and sometimes THAT corporation would keep half and give the rest to another subcontractor).
9. This poem is not pro-insurgency. It was reasonable and natural that a large majority of Iraqis wanted the US out, but my favorite slogan of the anti-war movement was “Support Our Troops, Bring Them Home.” Also, some group at some point, and they may have been anti-war, was raising money to send men and women serving there body armor, and I would have supported that (it’s different than giving them extra ammunition with which to kill Iraqi civilians). (it’s also not pro-Saddam- it would be great if Saddam had been pushed out of power in a better way, but the methods that the US and UK used were bad)
10. Besides the insurgency, there was other instability caused by the invasion and occupation- Al-Qaeda attacks on Shiite neighborhoods, ethnic cleansing by Shiites and possibly some by Sunnis, and tension between some of the Shiite population and the Occupation forces. At one point it came close to a full-blown Sunni-Shiite Civil War.
11. The Surge was a brief but dramatic increase in the number of soldiers and Marines in Iraq.
12. Between 1991 and 2003 Iraq was frequently bombed by the US and UK.
13. I think that Bush supporters enjoyed the political dimension of the war, where they tangled with anti-war groups. We were in a time of a “New McCarthyism,” where disagreeing with Bush was seen by a lot of people as politically taboo. As I said, at the beginning of the war, the vast majority of Americans blamed Iraq for 9/11.
14. As far as Bush’s reasons for invading Iraq, here is something I included in two posts about anti-Semitism:

Bush's reasons for invading Iraq were many, Israel was a small part of it. There was the opportunity to give lots of money to corporations in multiple ways, the strong desire for using the US military that most GOPers have, the desire to teach the world a lesson in terms of what the US will do to them if they piss off D.C., the desire for oil, the idea of democratizing the Middle-East. I also heard something about it being connected to countering the growing strength of the Euro. It's possible they half believed that stuff about WMDs and Al-Qaeda. Israel was a small part of it.

15. Bush liked the idea of being a popular war-time president the people would rally around.
16. **46% of this version is me, 54% is the original.
17. In a post here I describe what I did to oppose the invasion.

I know a place Where you're all going to go
They'll pay you to kill for oil If You're eighteen years old
First You'll need a haircut And then some new clothes
They'll stick you in Baghdad To play G.I. Joe

CHORUS:
You think you’re fighting Al Qaeda and that you’ll find WMD
But it’s total bullshit, concocted by Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney
But now it's too late You're entering Iraq
You voted for Bush, you’ll soon wish you could take it back

What is this we're fighting for and What are our goals
To create a cash cow for US corporations and improve Bush’s polls
Instability  and Sunni resistance grow deeper everyday
The situation worsens, the Surge is on it's the way

CHORUS:

Lessons we have learned Are easy to forget
Hints of Vietnam How soon we all forget
First we used sanctions and bombs, now go in the troops
Another chance for the Right to slander anti-war groups