I’m a lucky woman. Today I hold in my arms my newborn son, born in good health – both his and mine. As the Washington bureau chief for a news site that covers issues important to women, I often cover the ideological warfare over reproductive rights.
A frightening moment at the beginning of my pregnancy gave me an almost visceral perspective on the most recent Supreme Court battle over abortion, one that has already inspired lawmakers in a number of states to enact or contemplate action to further limit a woman’s right to make decisions about her reproductive life based on the best medical option for her particular circumstances.
My pregnancy officially began the way many end: with a late-night trip to the hospital. Last October, before I was able to confirm with my doctor the positive results of an at-home pregnancy test, I headed to the emergency room after I experienced some bleeding, a sign of possible miscarriage.
Here’s footage of the Code Pink protesters being ejected yesterday from the Petraeus hearings. Today, I got this back-slapping message from Code Pink, a group I support.
The clip and the e-mail both make me cringe. Much as I admire the passion of these well-intentioned folks, I fear that their message is lost on those who most need to hear it. It also risks alienating allies who worry that these sort of antics only serve to marginalize anti-war activists by making us look — well — goofy.
Code Pink says it is all for “embarrassing ourselves” and being “rude for peace.” Fine. I’m all for civil disobedience; sometimes it’s the right card to play. But I don’t think this latest theater did anything to advance our position and, in fact, may likely have set us back.
We don’t often criticize our own, because as activists we are so glad to see people doing ANYTHING that we dare not question their tactics. But it’s been my experience that we spend too little time thinking strategically in our impatience to “do something.” It’s ironic, I think. Too little strategy, too much posturing — isn’t that exactly how we got into Iraq?
Becci Robbins
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From Code Pink:
Sept. 11, 2007
Dear becci,
Remember when Colin Powell stood in front of the UN in 2003 to make his case for war? Remember how he lied about weapons of mass destruction? Remember how the country was fooled into entering a disastrous war? Well, the Bush administration is pulling the same tricks again with the Petraeus report.
Yesterday afternoon when General Petraeus presented to Congress what amounted to lies, exaggeration and p.r. spin about the “successes” of the so-called U.S. “troop surge” in Iraq, we were expected to sit in the room and quietly listen. When polite political discourse in the halls of Congress countenances torture, murder, theft of resources, and ongoing occupation, we think that rudeness is the correct response. If it’s embarrassing for women to shout out, “War criminal” at war criminals in expensive suits and military uniforms, then we are all for embarrassing ourselves.
Our CODEPINK heroes Medea, Liz, Desiree, Leslie and Mona made a distinctly unladylike scene in the Petaeus hearing. They stood up for truth in the face of official lies. They stood up for the 2.2 million internally displaced Iraqis, the 2.5 million Iraqi refugees, and the 650,000 Iraqis and 3,700 U.S. soldiers — more Americans than those killed in the horrific attacks on US soil six years ago today — who have died in this miserable war and occupation.
Thankfully some members of Congress are waking up. Today, Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA) plainly said “I don’t buy it” to General Petraeus. Please help us get more of our Reps to stop buying Bush’s war by signing our pledge to “Whip Congress into Shape.” When you pledge to do a simple action every week to end the war, you will get a personalized pledge page to pass around to your friends, invite them to sign on, and watch your impact spread across the country! The CODEPINK member who inspires the most pledges by the end of each month will win an unforgettable trip to the CODEPINK house in DC!
This week, we’re asking everyone to call your Senators (202.224.3121) and say “Petraeus can only betray us. Don’t be duped again. Don’t buy Bush’s war.”
Proud to be rude for peace,
Dana, Desiree, Farida, Gael, Gayle, Jodie, Karin, Liz, Medea, Nancy, Pamela, Patricia, Rae, Samantha, and Vanessa
America’s Military Kids Are Latest Collateral Damage
By Stacy Bannerman
The Women’s Media Center
The children of the troops serving in Iraq are experiencing significant collateral damage at home, according to two staggering new reports on the occurrence of child maltreatment, neglect, and abuse during combat-related deployments.
The results of a three-year study recently published in the American Journal of Epidemiology stated: “War has a profound emotional impact on military personnel and their families. The rate of occurrence of substantiated maltreatment in military families was twice as high [during] deployment.” Most victims were four years old or younger and the perpetrator was usually the civilian parent who remained at home while a spouse was deployed.
An even greater finding of abuse was uncovered in a similar study published last week in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). Looking at families of enlisted Army troops with verified reports of child maltreatment, the study found: “Among female civilian spouses, the rate of maltreatment during deployment was more than three times greater; the rate of child neglect was almost four times greater; and the rate of physical abuse was nearly twice as great.”
Skyrocketing stress levels in the parent left behind are one of the key factors contributing to elevated rates of neglect and abuse, according to the research. The JAMA study found that the primary offenders were non-Hispanic white civilian females, who, according to other informal surveys and anecdotal reports, are also reporting higher rates of secondary post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). War-related “secondary trauma” shares some of the same symptoms as a full-blown diagnosis, including emotional withdrawal, increased anxiety, and poor anger management.
Several pro-choice senators plan to repeal President Bush’s “global gag rule,” which blocks U.S. funds from going to any overseas health clinic if it uses its own, private, non-U.S. funds to provide legal abortion services, give referrals, or even take a public pro-choice position.
Take action now and urge your senators to vote to repeal the global gag rule – just click here.
Help ensure that women around the world aren’t denied critical health services because of bad Bush policies!
Commemorating the troops at a 2005 vigil in Columbia.
I’m John Bruhns and I served in Baghdad as an army sergeant for the first year of the war. Within my first days there, I realized that so much of what I had been told—about weapons of mass destruction, connections to 9/11—was just White House spin to sell the war.
I’m seeing the same thing all over again now. Even with this being the bloodiest summer for US troops in Iraq, even with Iraqi casualties running at twice the pace of last year, and even with 15 of 18 of President Bush’s own benchmarks unmet, the White House is at it again. They’re telling us that black is white, up is down, and things in Iraq are going just great thanks to the troop “surge.”
This month Congress is going to vote on war policy for the next year—and Bush is hoping all this “progress” talk will scare Congress away from voting for withdrawal. We can’t let that happen. Almost 4,000 US troops have died. We’ve spent half a trillion dollars in Iraq. Every day you turn on the news and more people are killed. We need Congress to stand up and fight to bring our troops home this fall.
I need your help to make sure that happens. Can you sign this petition demanding that Congress begin a fully funded redeployment and start bringing our troops home from Iraq immediately? I’ll deliver your comments to Congress myself next week. Clicking here will add your name.
I left Iraq on Feb. 27, 2004, and from what I hear from my friends who are still there—many on their third or fourth deployments—it’s worse now than ever before. The “surge” was a failure and it’s time to draw down our troops.
This president can’t be trusted, his policy is reckless and it’s more and more dangerous every day.
Here’s what’s happened in Iraq since the escalation went into effect.
Violence has gone up in Iraq. This summer is on track to be one of the bloodiest summers for Iraqis and U.S. troops, with nearly twice as many U.S. troops killed this July than the previous July. 1
The surge has not created political stability. The central premise of the surge was that it would increase political stability. Two years after Sunnis were brought into the political transition, a Sunni bloc withdrew from the government. This week’s original Government Accountability Office report showed that 15 out of 18 of Bush’s own political benchmarks remain unmet.
We’ve poured weapons into Iraq’s civil war. Another GAO report earlier this summer showed that the Pentagon lost track of nearly 200,000 weapons given to Iraqis. We distribute weapons and then they disappear and we don’t know what happens to them. What we do know is that violence increases—both among Iraqi sectarian groups and against American troops.
Ethnic cleansing is happening in Baghdad. The once Sunni dominated city is now dominated by Shiites. Here is a quote from the most recent Newsweek: “When Gen. David Petraeus goes before Congress next week to report on the progress of the surge, he may cite a decline in insurgent attacks in Baghdad as one marker of success. In fact, part of the reason behind the decline is how far the Shiite militias’ cleansing of Baghdad has progressed: they’ve essentially won.”
As an Iraq war veteran I felt so much relief after the November of 2006 election—I felt like we would finally end this mess and start bringing our troops home from Iraq. I’ve been let down a lot over this last year and I want to do everything I can to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Congress has the power to force redeployment and they have to use that power this fall. Nothing is more important to me than making sure we start bringing all our troops home—and I need your help to make sure that’s what happens.
Please sign the petition today.
Thanks for all you do.
John Bruhns, former US Army Infantry Sergeant.
Sept. 5, 2007
Was anybody really shocked to hear that anti-gay US Sen. Larry Craig was arrested for soliciting sex from a man in a public restroom recently? Since this incident became news Sen. Craig has continuously denied that he is guilty of soliciting sex in public and vociferously denied that he is gay…again!
Hopefully, some day Sen. Craig will discover that there is no sin in being gay; the sin is in living a lie and lacking integrity. It may come as a surprise to some, but it takes far more honesty and integrity to live one’s life openly as a gay man or a lesbian than it does to live one’s life as a heterosexual. There is no social cost or threat to living one’s life as a heterosexual if that is in fact who you are. Openly gay and lesbian people risk everything they have every day of their lives just to be who they are and to love who they love. Sen. Craig simply never had the guts to do this and he has now been exposed as the fraud and the hypocrite that he is.
Unfortunately, there is no shortage of this brand of politician who, as proof of their own moral superiority, would gladly legislate away whatever can be taken from gay and lesbian Americans, while at the same time pleasuring themselves with the T-room trade and who knows what other hypocrisies.
But here is a truth worth taking to heart as we watch Sen. Craig’s life of lies unravel…ANY openly gay or lesbian person who lives his or her life with honesty and integrity is by definition morally superior to Larry Craig. They are in fact morally superior to ANY closeted anti-gay politician who lies to his constituency, his family, his friends and most importantly to himself while doing egregious harm to the lives of gay and lesbian Americans.
Craig’s bathroom arrest pales by comparison to the more fundamental sin and disgrace of the closeted gay politician who spends a lifetime using his closet as a sniper’s nest against the LGBT community. The closet often protects these hypocrites from public scorn, but it cannot shield them from living in mortal fear that they will ultimately suffer the same fate as Larry Craig…as every last one of them should!
No doubt our remaining senators of this stripe will support Senator Craig’s resignation.
Things are looking very good for the New Jersey Clean Elections pilot program. A high rate of participation in the three eligible districts (15 of 20 candidates have opted in), coupled with good press coverage, support from the governor, and positive feedback from the candidates signals the potential to not only continue the pilot program, but expand it to more districts and eventually take Clean Elections statewide.
“With the positive results already being achieved by this year’s program, what once was thought of as a lofty goal is coming closer to becoming a historic reality,†said leading supporter Assembly Speaker Joseph Roberts Jr. (D).
Conventional wisdom says that the American public is fundamentally conservative – hostile to government, in favor of unregulated markets, at peace with inequality, wanting a foreign policy based on the projection of military power, and traditional in its social values.
But as a June report by Media Matters demonstrates, that picture is fundamentally false. Media perceptions and past Republican electoral successes notwithstanding, Americans are progressive across a wide range of controversial issues, and they’re growing more progressive all the time.
This report gathers together years of public opinion data from unimpeachably nonpartisan sources to show that on issue after issue, the majority of Americans hold progressive positions. And this is true not only of specific policy proposals, but of the fundamental perspectives and approaches that Americans bring to bear on issues.
Nor is the progressive majority merely a product of the current political moment. On a broad array of issues, particularly social issues, American opinion has grown more and more progressive over the past few decades. In contrast, it is difficult to find an issue on which the public has grown steadily more conservative over the last 10, 20, or 30 years.
