Category: Militarism

AN URGENT CCDS MESSAGE: Take Action Now to Stop War with Iran!

Dear CCDS members and friends

Trump’s assassination of Iran’s military commander Qassem Soleimani has escalated with the news that missiles have been launched on U.S. bases in Iraq. We are at a “grave and serious moment” in the words of Rep. Barbara Lee.

Trump’s crazed plot to distract the public’s attention from his impeachment and pending trial in the Senate is putting U.S. troops in harm’s way. If the escalation continues, the safety of the entire world is at stake with the use of nuclear weapons an ever-present danger. We must do all we can to stop this madness.

CCDS is urging turn-out for protests on Thursday, January 9th. See below a message from MoveOn.org. If your area is not holding a protest, work to organize one. All hands on deck.

On Wednesday, January 8th at 8 PM ET, a national strategy call will take place organized by MoveOn, Indivisible and others. Join the call if at all possible.

CCDS National Executive Committee

**************

Dear MoveOn member,

Just as we were about to hit send on this email about nationwide anti-war protests Thursday, alarming news broke that Iran has launched an attack on the American al-Asad air base in Iraq in response to Donald Trump’s reckless, illegal provocations. News is continuing to develop, but it’s already clear that the following email has become even more important.

Assassinations don’t make us safer. Tonight’s attack is clear evidence of that. And that is why on Thursday, we will join together for a day of action across the country to protest and say #NoWarWithIran.

Trump’s unhinged foreign policy has needlessly endangered the lives of U.S. troops and Iraqi, Iranian, and countless other civilians.

We will not be led into another illegal war.

No War With Iran Nationwide Events

Join us on Thursday, January 9 for a #NoWarWithIran demonstration near you and make the anti-war majority in this country visible.

Don’t see an event near you? Sign up to host one.

People in the United States and across the globe are tired of war, from the military families who have seen multiple generations in the same conflicts, to the Iranian, Iraqi and Afghani families in the United States who worry for their loved ones back home.

We’ve learned our lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan and Yemen and global endless war. We will not be led into another costly, unnecessary war of choice. We will not allow our neighbors to be targeted by law enforcement. We will not be divided.

On Thursday, January 9, join MoveOn, Indivisible, Win Without War, the National Iranian American Council and About Face: Veterans Against The War to say #NoWarWithIran and oppose Trump’s war—and spread the word!

Already, we’ve seen Trump’s actions unleash xenophobia, with Iranian-Americans detained at the border in Washington state and asked about their political allegiance. That’s not the country we want to build in 2020. And tonight we’ve seen a dangerous response to these actions.

Where Trump acts with ignorance, fear, war, and moral weakness, we will show up with diplomacy and political courage. We are the majority, we stand united, and we oppose Trump’s war with Iran.

Thanks for all you do.

–Kate, Eric, Reggie, Jayne, and the rest of the team

P.S. Also, join us on Wednesday January 8th for a national strategy call at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT to hear from Senator Elizabeth Warren, Representative Barbara Lee, foreign policy experts, MoveOn leaders, and more to learn how we can take action together to prevent another endless war.

P.P.S. And say you’ll be there Thursday to make the anti-war majority in this country visible!

Want to support our work? The MoveOn community will work every moment, day by day and year by year, to resist Trump’s agenda, contain the damage, defeat hate with love, and begin the process of swinging the nation’s pendulum back toward sanity, decency, and the kind of future that we must never give up on. And to do it we need your support, now more than ever. Will you stand with MoveOn?

Click here to chip in $3, or whatever you can afford.

Contributions to MoveOn Civic Action are not tax-deductible for income tax purposes. You’re receiving this email because you took action with MoveOn. This email was sent to Rafael Pizarro on January 8, 2020.

CCDS JOINS PEACE FORCES IN SAYING ‘NO WAR WITH IRAN’

January 5, 2020

The Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS) joins with progressive, peace, and socialist movements everywhere in condemning the United States assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani on January 3, 2020. We endorse the statements below by the United States Peace Council and Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). We also support the protest demonstrations against the illegal and immoral US assassination that were held January 4, 2020 all across the United States in over 80 communities with thousands of participants. We wish to express our solidarity with the hundreds of thousands of Iranian and Iraqi citizens who also mobilized against this act of war by the United States.

We condemn this political assassination as one more terrible crime committed by US imperialism and US capital in a generations-long history of attacks on the rights, land, and sovereignty of the peoples of the Middle East in the drive to obtain oil and other resources for US multi-national corporations and the US capitalist system.

We agree with the coalition of peace forces who organized the protest rallies on January 4 that along with the violations of international law and morality that we, in the United States, have a responsibility to organize a large peace and anti-intervention movement to stop US war aims, or this war will “engulf the whole region and could quickly turn into a global conflict of unpredictable scope and potentially the gravest consequences.”

We in CCDS join with our brothers and sisters at home and abroad in demanding:

  • No War Against Iran
  • The Elimination of Crippling Economic Sanctions Against Iran.
  • The Withdrawal of United States Military Forces and Bases, and the End to Arms Transfers in the Region
  • And a Qualitative Shift From Militarism to Diplomacy in Relations With the World

National Executive Committee
Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS)

Statements:

United States Peace Council
Democratic Socialists of American (DSA)

Sleepwalking into a Big War

Soldiers rehearsing for this year’s 9 May Victory Day parade in Moscow Sefa Karacan / Anadolu Agency / Getty

West fearful as it loses military advantage

The major powers are planning for war and claim that’s the best way to defend against war. Will this mutual hawkishness lead to armed conflict?

by Michael T Klare

Le Monde Diplomatique

September, 2016

As the US presidential race approaches its climax and European officials ponder the implications of the UK’s Brexit vote, public discussion of security affairs is largely confined to strategies for combating international terrorism. Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are trying to persuade voters of their superior qualifications to lead this battle, while European leaders scramble to bolster their countries’ defences against homegrown extremists. But though talk of terrorism fills the news media and the political space, it is secondary in the conversations of generals, admirals and defence ministers: it’s not low-level conflict that commands their attention but rather what they call ‘big wars’ — large-scale, high-level conflict with great-power adversaries like Russia and China. Such major conflicts, long considered most unlikely, are now deemed ‘plausible’ by western military strategists, who claim that urgent steps are needed to deter and, if necessary, prevail in such engagements.

This development, overlooked by the media, has serious consequences, starting with heightened tension between Russia and the West, each eyeing the other in the expectation of a confrontation. More worrying is the fact that many politicians believe that war is not only possible, but may break out at any moment — a view that historically has tended to precipitate military responses where diplomatic solutions might have been possible.

The origins of this thinking can be found in the reports and comments of senior military officials (typically at professional meetings and conferences). ‘In both Brussels and Washington, it has been many years since Russia was a focus of defence planning’ but that ‘has now changed for the foreseeable future,’ states one such report, summarising the views at a workshop organised in 2015 by the Institute of National Strategic Studies (INSS), a branch of the US National Defence University. The report says that as a result of Russian aggression in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, many defence experts ‘can now envision a plausible pathway to war’ and this, in turn, ‘has led defence planners to recognise the need for renewed focus of the possibility of confrontation and conflict with Moscow’ (1).

‘A return to great power competition’

Such a conflict would be most likely to occur on NATO’s eastern front, encompassing Poland and the Baltic states, and would be fought with high-tech conventional weapons. But these planners also postulate that it could encompass Scandinavia and the Black Sea region, and might escalate into the nuclear realm. So US and European strategists are calling for a build-up of western military capabilities in all of these regions and for moves to enhance the credibility of NATO’s tactical nuclear options (2). A recent article in the NATO Review calls for the increased inclusion of nuclear-capable aircraft in future NATO military exercises, to create uncertainty in Russian minds about the point at which NATO commanders might order nuclear strikes to counter any Russian breakthrough on the eastern front (and presumably deter such an assault) (3).

This way of thinking, though confined until recently to military academies and thinktanks, has begun to shape government policy in significant and alarming ways. We see this in the new US defence budget, in decisions adopted at the NATO summit in July, and in the UK’s July decision to renew the Trident nuclear missile programme.

US defence secretary Ash Carter said the new budget ‘marks a major inflection point for the Department of Defence.’ Whereas the department had been focused in recent years ‘on large-scale counter-insurgency operations,’ it must now prepare for ‘a return to great power competition,’ possibly involving all-out conflict with a ‘high-end enemy’ such as Russia or China. These countries, Carter declared, ‘are our most stressing competitors,’ possessing advanced weapons that could neutralise some US advantages. To overcome this challenge, ‘we must have — and be seen to have — the ability to impose unacceptable costs on an advanced aggressor that will either dissuade them from taking provocative action or make them deeply regret it if they do’ (4).

In the short term, this will require urgent action to bolster US capacity to counter a potential Russian assault on NATO positions in eastern Europe. Under its European Reassurance Initiative, the Pentagon will spend $3.4bn in fiscal 2017 to deploy an extra armoured combat brigade in Europe and to pre-position the arms and equipment for yet another brigade. To bolster US strength over the long term, there would be greater US spending on high-tech conventional weapons needed to defeat a high-end enemy, such as advanced combat aircraft, surface ships and submarines. Carter noted that, on top of this, ‘the budget also invests in modernising our nuclear deterrent’ (5). It’s hard not to be struck by echoes of the cold war.

Continue reading Sleepwalking into a Big War