Hi.  I don't want to divert or dilute attention from today's main essay,
which expresses my own concerns and beliefs.  But I got Sheer's
Truthdig notice (at the bottom) and clicked on to a fascinating
combination of articles and rapid responses from readers, becoming
part of the discussion.  Very different than reading letters to editors
two days later, and actually complementing 'Beginning of the End.'
Give it a try.
Ed

From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

It's the Beginning of the End--For the Empire, Not Just the War

by Kim Scipes
December 1, 2005
submitted by the author to portside

ZNet has just published my latest piece today (December
1, 2005 in the US), "It's the Beginning of the End--For
the Empire, Not Just the War."  It's at
<http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?sectionID=11&itemID=9233>
As you will see, this goes considerably beyond most of
my labor-related writing.

In it, I argue that the issue we need to put forth
before the American people is the question:  how do we
want the US to relate to countries of the world:  are
we going to try to continue to dominate it, or are we
going to try to live in peace and harmony with
countries around the world?  Obviously, both choices
have ramifications for Americans and for people around
the world, and I suggest a few.

Even if my sketching is on target, we're going to need
the collective efforts of everyone to draw in the
details.  I hope each of you will contribute (even
more)!

Note that while I see John Murtha's recent statement
arguing for a US pull-out from Iraq as being an
important US political development, between the time I
wrote this and publication, Nancy Pelosi--the leading
Democrat in the House of Representatives--has shifted
her position to where we now endorses Murtha's.  And
Bush's speech yesterday was quite long on rhetoric and
VERY SHORT on facts and details.  (In fact, the New
York Times this morning in an editorial compared Bush's
plan to Nixon's Vietnamization plan, and argued that
Bush needed to get out into the US public more.  They
ended the editorial with this statement:  "A president
who seems less in touch with reality than Richard Nixon
needs to get out more.")

I strongly believe there is an opening today for
progressives in the US situation to have an impact far
beyond anything we've been able to do since 1975.  We
need to be bold, and not just attack the war--I think
we need to go for the gold:  the US Empire.

If you think this piece is worth wider consideration,
please forward widely.  And encourage everyone--in
addition to all the other work they are doing--to write
a letter to the editor of their local paper arguing
these points.  PLEASE SPREAD WIDELY!

In international solidarity--

Kim Scipes

PS:  One of the most interesting things in what
discussion is taking place in the US media about the
war is the US' relationship with Saddam Hussein.  Put
"Saddam Hussein CIA"--just like that --into Google and
see what you come up with:  the first few articles (of
almost 5 MILLION) are dynamite, and again, take the
discussion beyond just this war but to the Empire.

=====

It's the Beginning of the End-For the Empire, Not Just
the War
by Kim Scipes

ZNet  - December 01, 2005

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?sectionID=11&itemID=9233

This past September, I wanted to write something about
the juxtaposition of the extremely successful
mobilization against the war in Iraq on September 24th
with the failed mobilization the following day in
support of the war. A phrase kept running in my head
from someone progressives do not generally quote:
Winston Churchill. After the British defeat of the
German Afrika Korps in Egypt in November 1942, during
World War II, Churchill stated, "Now this is not the
end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it
is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." And I couldn't
get that phrase-the end of the beginning-out of my
head. Yet that article, that I could've and should've
written, got lost in the day-to-day hub-bub of my life.

What a difference two months makes! On November 17th,
Pennsylvania Democratic Congressman John P. Murtha made
a speech, pointing out that not only did the Emperor
have no clothes on, but that the Emperor had lied about
ever having clothes in the first place. In Murtha's
statement, he's summarizes some of what the Department
of Defense has told Congress:

Oil production and energy production are below pre-war
levels. Our reconstruction efforts have been crippled
by the security situation. Only $9 billion of the $18
billion appropriated for reconstruction has been spent.
Unemployment remains at about 60 percent. Clean water
is scarce. Only $500 million of the $2.2 billion
appropriated for water projects has been spent. And
most importantly, insurgent incidents have increased
from about 150 per week to over 700 in the last year
(emphasis added). Instead of attacks going down over
time and with the addition of more troops, attacks have
grown more dramatically. Since the revelations at Abu
Ghraib, American casualties have doubled...I have
concluded that the presence of US troops in Iraq is
impeding this progress. www.commondreams.org/cgi-
bin/print.cgi?file=/headlines05/1117-08.htm .

And Republicans-and a number of weak-kneed Democrats-
either condemned Murtha or ran as far away hastily as
they could.

However, we progressives need to understand what this
meant. Murtha is a former Marine, who was decorated for
bravery for fighting in Viet Nam. He's been a long-time
supporter of the military, and has long-time
relationships with senior officers throughout the
military. He's served in the US Congress, and on the
House Defense Appropriations Sub-committee, for over 30
years. In other words, this wasn't Ted Kennedy
condemning the US invasion, but it was John Wayne, or
Rambo, or who ever is the most militaristic, gung-ho,
crazed symbol around today, defecting from the
President. And telling everybody that was what he was
doing. This was BIG.

Now, let's be clear: Murtha hasn't become a peacenik:
in fact, there were problems with his approach, as he
wants to keep the US military in the "Middle East" for
the future, and he wants to station Marines just "over
the horizon" from Iraq (i.e., so they can re-invade
immediately). But he said, unequivocally, that the
President's war was "a flawed policy wrapped in
illusion." Bush and his War Machine was hit right
between the eyes and cold-cocked: he couldn't have been
hit any harder other than by impeachment, and I'm not
even sure of that. (Sy Hersh, in an article published
in the New Yorker on November 28th, quoted an
unidentified defense official as saying that the White
House was "beyond angry at [Murtha], because he is a
serious threat to their policy-both on substance and
politically.")

Murtha's statement moves us from "the end of the
beginning," I believe, to "the beginning of the end."

Between September 24th and November 17th, however,
there was Hurricane Katrina. There are many others who
have written and spoken much more eloquently than I can
about this, but one point needs to be made about that
hurricane and the aftermath: as limited as it's been,
for the first time in 25 years, we've have been able to
have a serious widespread public discussion about
poverty and race in this country. Katrina tore the scab
off these issues.

And the National Priorities Project brought out
research showing that 44 percent of all military
service people recruited during 2004 are from the rural
areas of the US, which basically means they are poor
whites. Along with this, as Michael Moore has shown, we
also know that recruits are coming out of the
impoverished inner cities, with African Americans and
Latinos being forced into the military by lack of
viable economic alternatives. In other words, we have a
economic draft currently taking place in this country,
"drafting" our poor men and women of all colors into
the military-and many, to Iraq.

Tied to the above is that the US is spending
approximately $450 billion for the military this year.
That does not include the almost $250 billion for the
Iraq war to date, nor he $44 billion for our vaunted
intelligence systems that failed so obviously on 9/11.

At the same time, we know several things: our society
is becoming more and more unequal-in fact, not only
much more unequal than any other so-called developed
country in the world, but more unequal than a number of
the poorest countries on the face of the Earth,
including Bangladesh! (See
www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?sectionID=
18&itemID=6061 for a report from last year.) We have
General Motors, once the most powerful corporation in
the world announcing 30,000 jobs will be cut in the
near future. We know 45 million Americans have no
health insurance. We know African-American and Latino
poverty rates are more than double that of whites. We
know women make around 74% of what males make.
Additionally, our schools are in desperate shape and
our drop-out rates are incredible.

And we know that in 2003, of the world's military
spending, the United States spent 47% of that total
amount. Our next closest competitor, Japan, spent 5%.
And, in fact, the 14 closest competitors to the United
States, spent less money combined on their militaries
than the US did alone. Who are we afraid of?

Without trying to elaborate these points or add others,
I think the basic situation has been delineated. Our
social situation is terrible: take away credit cards
and mortgage refinancing, and our economy in general
would be in terrible shape. Millions of blue-collar
workers have lost their jobs over the past 30 years,
and many will never see the jobs or make that kind of
money again. We see growing numbers of mothers with
children under three going into the work force to try
to make ends meet, whether they are alone or with a
partner. A college degree won't even solve their
problems: where in the past, a college degree used to
guarantee a good job, today all it will guarantee is
the chance to apply for a good job.

And, amazingly, the left has seemed incapable of taking
advantage of the situation. Our organizations should be
growing like crazy, our finances expanding. Yet, if
this is happening, it certainly is not being made
obvious.

There are all kinds of reasons for this. Rather than
rag on the left for our deficiencies, I'm going to
argue that our biggest problem collectively is that we
are being too timid; we have not taken advantage of
what is going on. And we need to get off our butts and
strike while the iron is hot!

Yet, I don't think it is enough to challenge the war,
and the "war president." I basically think that the war
is over, politically, although that doesn't mean there
won't be a lot more killing and dying going on between
today and when the US withdraws (and afterwards).

I believe that for the first time in 30 years we can
have perhaps our biggest issue heard and responded to
by the American public. We need to ask in every place,
and in every way imaginable, a simple question: How
should the US act toward all the other nations of the
world: do we want to continue trying to dominate them,
or do we want to find ways to help other countries and
try to live in peace and harmony?

The choice is stark. If we want to continue dominating
other countries, we will have to keep pissing away $400
billion (give or take) every year from here until
infinity. We must be willing to force our sons and
daughters into the military to fight wars for the US
Empire-and no one can explain satisfactorily how
Rumsfeld can keep 135,000 troops in Iraq indefinitely
without reinstating the draft. We have to accept our
social problems, since we won't have the resources to
address them and fight the war, so that means millions
will be uninsured, and our schools will only get worse,
as millions suffer from inadequate health care.

On the other hand, if we want to live in peace and
harmony, the US military could be drastically reduced,
confined simply to defense of the country's borders
(and not allowed overseas); the International Monetary
Fund and the World Bank could be used to address
developmental and international financial failures
around the world, rather than causing them; our health
care "system" could be replaced with a single-payer
plan than spends its resources in preventing and
treating bad health while promoting good health; and we
could address the glaring disparities in our
residentially-based school systems, which hurt people
of color the most. And we could use the money to create
jobs, and/or create opportunities for all to contribute
to the well-being of our society.

The beauty of this idea is that we do not have to come
up with the answers! (All contributions and ideas are
welcome, however!) We can ask the question, clarify the
issues, discuss the ramifications, and help encourage
our fellow Americans to consider and address the
issues. We may not get to solutions in the quickest,
most eloquent manner, but we will at least be moving in
the right direction, toward social and economic
justice.

Like I said, Murtha's rolling over was the beginning of
the end. We need to make sure "the end" is not just
confined to the war-we need to go much farther than
that: we need to get the American people to decide
whether they want to continue supporting the Empire, or
if they want to build a new world out of the ashes of
the old.

[Kim Scipes is a member of the National Writers Union,
and a long-time global labor activist in the US. He
currently teaches sociology at Purdue University North
Central in Westville, Indiana. His on-line bibliography
on "Contemporary Labor Issues" can be accessed at
http://faculty.pnc.edu/kscipes/LaborBib.htm . He can be
contacted at [EMAIL PROTECTED] ]

_______________________________________________________

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Hello Truthdig friends!

Thanks to you our launch was a success. We are honored that so many people
took a peek at our new site.

New Content
Look at the new content recently posted on our site: http://truthdig.com/

  a.. New Dig — Inventing Sin: Religion and Homosexuality by Larry Gross. No
matter their own scandals, religious institutions through history have a
consistent scapegoat: homosexuals. Larry Gross digs into why churches
condemn gays to damnation.


  b.. Ear to the Ground — Robert Scheer's latest weekly column U.S.
Occupation is Worse than Hussein plus more of Scheer's insightful thoughts
about current affairs.


  c.. Reports — Serious Miscalculations about Syria by Tyler Golson. A young
scholar who has lived in Damascus finds it is not a "rogue state" but a
complex, jittery mosaic surprisingly receptive to America.


  How Bush Created a Theocracy in Iraq by Juan Cole. Retracing the steps of
Shiite religious leaders and parties who have come to dominate the
post-invasion process.
Coming Monday, December 5!


 a.. As the world awaits the fate of Stanley "Tookie" Williams,
Actor/Activist Mike Farrell submits a new Truthdig Report: Can
Schwarzenegger Terminate Death Penalty's Status Quo?
Look for regular updates as we refresh our site with new and compelling
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