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Reports

Veterans Say No to NATO

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Posted on May 17, 2012

By Amy Goodman

Veterans of the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan are now challenging the occupation of Chicago.

This week, NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, is holding the largest meeting in its 63-year history there. Protests and rallies will confront the two-day summit, facing off against a massive armed police and military presence. The NATO gathering has been designated a “National Special Security Event” by the Department of Homeland Security, empowering the U.S. Secret Service to control much of central Chicago, and to employ unprecedented authority to suppress the public’s First Amendment right to dissent.

The focus of the summit will be Afghanistan. “Operation Enduring Freedom,” as the Afghanistan War was named by the Bush administration and continues to be called by the Obama administration, is officially a NATO operation. As the generals and government bureaucrats from around the world prepare to meet in Chicago, the number of NATO soldiers killed in Afghanistan since 2001 topped 3,000. First Lt. Alejo R. Thompson of Yuma, Ariz., was killed on May 11 this year, at the age of 30. He joined the military in 2000, and served in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Shortly after his death, The Associated Press reported that Thompson would be receiving the Purple Heart medal posthumously and is “in line for a Bronze Star.” On Wednesday, President Barack Obama awarded, also posthumously, the Medal of Honor to Leslie H. Sabo Jr., killed in action in Cambodia in 1970.

While the president and the Pentagon are handing out posthumous medals, a number of veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan will be marching, in military formation, to McCormick Place in Chicago to hand their service medals back. Aaron Hughes left the University of Illinois in 2003 to join the military, and was deployed to Iraq and Kuwait. He served in the Illinois National Guard from 2000 to 2006. Since leaving active duty, Hughes has become a field organizer with the group Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW). He explained why he is returning his medals: “Because every day in this country, 18 veterans are committing suicide. Seventeen percent of the individuals that are in combat in Afghanistan, my brothers and sisters, are on psychotropic medication. Twenty to 50 percent of the individuals that are getting deployed to Afghanistan are already diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, military sexual trauma or a traumatic brain injury. Currently one-third of the women in the military are sexually assaulted.”

IVAW’s Operation Recovery seeks increased support for veterans, and to stop the redeployment of traumatized troops. Hughes elaborated: “The only type of help that [veterans] can get is some type of medication like trazodone, Seroquel, Klonopin, medication that’s practically paralyzing, medication that doesn’t allow them to conduct themselves in any type of regular way. And that’s the standard operating procedures. Those are the same medications that service members are getting redeployed with and conducting military operations on.”

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Another veteran—of the anti-war movement of the 1960s—and now a law professor at Northwestern University, longtime Chicago activist Bernardine Dohrn, also will be in the streets. She calls NATO the “militarized arm of the global 1 percent,” and criticizes Chicago Mayor and former Obama White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel for misappropriating funds for the summit: “Suddenly we don’t have money here for community mental-health clinics. We don’t have money for public libraries or for schools. We don’t have money for public transportation. But somehow we have the millions of dollars necessary ... to hold this event right here in the city of Chicago.”

Occupy Chicago, part of the Occupy Wall Street movement, has been focused on the NATO protests. The unprecedented police mobilization, which will include, in addition to the Chicago police, at least the Secret Service, federal agents, and the Illinois National Guard, also may include extensive surveillance and infiltration. Documents obtained through Freedom of Information requests by the activist legal organization Partnership for Civil Justice (PCJ) indicate what the group calls “a mass intelligence network including fusion centers, saturated with ‘anti-terrorism’ funding, that mobilizes thousands of local and federal officers and agents to investigate and monitor the social-justice movement.” PCJ says the documents clearly refute Department of Homeland Security claims that there was never a centralized, federal coordination of crackdowns on the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Aaron Hughes and the other vets understand armed security, having provided it themselves in the past. He told me the message he’ll carry to the military and the police deployed across Chicago: “Don’t stand with the global 1 percent. Don’t stand with these generals that continuously abuse their own service members and then talk about building democracy and promoting freedom.”


Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.

Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 1,000 stations in North America. She is the author of “Breaking the Sound Barrier,” recently released in paperback and now a New York Times best-seller.

© 2012 Amy Goodman

Distributed by King Features Syndicate


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americanme's avatar

By americanme, May 18, 2012 at 12:17 pm Link to this comment

NATO is a Cold War vetigial organ that is now being used to commit genocide against non.white majority countries to rip off their resources.

Period.

It is just another arm of the gringo government.

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By gerard, May 17, 2012 at 9:23 pm Link to this comment

The help and participation of returned military personnel is absolutely invaluable to any citizen movement toward restoring and supporting democratic rights. I thank each and every one from the bottom of my heart!

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By radson, May 17, 2012 at 5:57 pm Link to this comment

Madame Goodman

The reason for hosting the NATO Summit in Chicago should be obvious to you .When one considers the reasons for hosting the event in a major city to begin with and the possibility of turmoil arising from such an event then other questions should arise.Now you are aware that the G 8 has moved to Camp David ,a more secure environment that will not stir up much visual protests .So why is the NATO Summit not following suite ,this gathering of cold war warriors could be held in a more private setting ,yet it is not ,so what gives.Well perhaps the recent Summits that took place in Seattle ,Toronto and the recent Olympics in Vancouver and the up and coming London Games should ring a bell .The Chicago Summit is an intentional training exercise for the Corporate Security State ,this is where the Blue Suited Soldiers are going to perfect their trade ,although for whom most of the Cops are not aware of.Now Rahm Emanuel is going to praise the efforts of the
Military Industrial Security Complex and Fog Rasmussen will be harping the R2P nonesense along with the European Missile Defense rhetoric -like a real sophist- and Hillary will be smiling like a cat while the tax payers are going to foot the bill.I agree with peaceful protests but I think that the best course of action would be to not protest and deny the Security Complex of a Realistic Training Exercise and at the same time observe the SELF created violence to justify their own presence,it would lead to some very educational incentives for the students of many countries.

cheers

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thecrow's avatar

By thecrow, May 17, 2012 at 4:42 am Link to this comment

The Afghan president on Wednesday demanded that President-elect Barack Obama put an end to civilian casualties as villagers said U.S. warplanes bombed a wedding party, killing 37 people — nearly all of them women and children.

The bombing Monday afternoon of the remote village of Wech Baghtu in the southern province of Kandahar destroyed an Afghan housing complex where women and children had gathered to celebrate, villagers said. Body parts littered the wreckage and nearby farm animals lay dead.

Jalil said American forces came into his village late Monday night or Tuesday morning — after the bombing run — and searched the villagers and detained some of the men. Jalil said he told the Americans that they could search his vineyards and his home but that they wouldn’t find any militants.

‘The Americans came and told us, ‘You are sheltering the Taliban,’ and I told the Americans ‘Come inside and see for yourself, you are killing women and children,’’ Jalil said. ‘After they saw that all the dead were civilians, they gave us permission to bury the bodies.’

Another witness to the bombing, Mohammad Nabi Khan, told AP at the main hospital in Kandahar city that two of his sons, ages 4 and 11, and his wife’s brother were among the dead.

‘What kind of security are the foreign troops providing in Afghanistan?’ he asked.”

http://michaelfury.wordpress.com/2008/10/30/the-ones-who-attacked-us/

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By Alan MacDonald, May 17, 2012 at 4:40 am Link to this comment

Ayers and Dohrn noted that NATO is essentially a secretive global military force—- which is certainly correct.

NATO acts as a facade for the countries
militarily supporting NATO wars, in order to disguise the governments’
continuing support for wars throughout the globe—- and indeed the
entire concept of “Global War”.

Ayers and Dohrn did not disclose as clearly, however, what entity employs NATO as a global war machine, if
not the individual countries that hide beneath its disguise?

Clearly the political pawns of the countries
trying to hide their military actions/killing behind the facade of NATO,
such as our own gutless and complicit Obama, are not the real actors directing NATOs’
Global Wars and killing.

The political pawns in countries like the US are merely trying to
hide their own responsibility/culpability, and that of their countries’,
from being the directors of this continuing new form of Global War.

So, the question remains, “who are the actors of Global War”?

Who are the actual decision makers, who direct NATO, this new ‘global
war’ vehicle, to carry-out massive and continuing wars throughout the
globe?

My conclusion, is that this new format, new methodology of disguise for waging individual wars around
the globe, that seemingly can’t be stopped by any individual countries
is actually the new
Disguised Global Empire (DGE).

Yes, the new model of disguised and non-transparent lack of national
responsibility has now proven to be a successful new, post-nation-state, 21st
century model of global power to prosecute individual wars in any areas
of the globe that need to be disciplined —- all of which can be ‘plausibly
denied’ by individual countries and their individual faux-leaders, like
Obama.

Now that this new post-nation-state model for starting individual
wars anywhere on the globe through the defused and ethereal lack of
direct responsibility provided by the Global Military and Global War
Making vehicle of NATO has proven so successful and ‘plausibly
deniable’, the next logical step is to use this ‘non-transparent’ and
defused/non responsibility disguise of local wars around the globe in
various resource ‘territories’ like; Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya,
etc. etc. to “bring the game to the next level” and facilitate truly
Global War under the same proven disguise of NATO.

This point was hinted at by Bernadine Dohrn, when she
described the four types of wars that NATO’s non-transparency and
disguise could be employed to prosecute; preemptive, humanitarian,
‘hot’, and ultimately, nuclear war.

So, we are left with the question of who directs this disguised
global war making power of NATO, which is independent of national
responsibility, and has proven that it can act with ‘plausible
deniability’ apart from any countries or country leaders?

What hidden beast can this be except for Global Empire?

A Global Military Force independent and uncontrolled by any country or leader?

Proven capable of starting and prosecuting death, destruction, war, and torture anywhere on the globe?

Now, not content with multiple and individual wars around the world,
is it preparing to precipitate and launch a pre-emptive Global War?

Faced with these multiple and reinforcing realities of a new and
existentially dangerous form of Disguised Global Empire, what should the
most effective popular demonstration and protests, particularly by the
Occupy movement, be in Chicago regarding NATO and the Global Empire that
controls it?

The only sensible and effective answer is to alert, warn, inform,
engage, and energize the people of the world to recognize, expose,
confront, and ultimately excise this disguised global Empire by
demonstrating a popular and progressive action plan to “Occupy Empire”!

Best luck and love to the “Occupy
Empire” educational and revolutionary movement.

Liberty, democracy, & justice
Over
Violent/Vichy
Empire,

Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine

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PatrickHenry's avatar

By PatrickHenry, May 17, 2012 at 3:36 am Link to this comment

NATO needs to be transformed into UNATO, an armed police force subject to will of the United Nations.

Standing armies only invite aggression.

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