The Alliance for Peace of the Pioneer Valley sponsored an old-fashioned Vietnam War-era teach-in at the Edwards Church in downtown Northampton this afternoon.  It featured three speakers: Michael Klare, Hampshire professor and director of the Five College Program in Peace and World Security Studies, who spoke of what is needed to get people to protest against the War in Afghanistan, Sut Jhally, founder and executive director of the Media Education Foundation in Northampton who focused his remarks on the medias role and the degree to which it is serving the corporate interests that are committed to endless war and Bruce Gagnon, who is spearheading the “BRING THE WAR $$ HOME” campaign in Maine using NATIONAL PRIORITIES PROJECT figures to persuade Mainers that what ails their economy and is causing drastic cutbacks and unemployment is directly connected to war spending.  Each of these men offered insights into what is causing our nation to have such difficulty finding a way to end the Afghanistan War as well as suggestions for what could be done to effect change.

We then broke up into 6 focus groups on such topics as campus organizing, the human cost of war, the economic cost of war and the environmental effects.  I chose to spend the next hour with the economic costs group, which included Mr. Gagnon and it proved to be a lively session, which included a woman from Easthampton asking Bruce and the rest of us what to say to a friend whose son is in Afghanistan and who doesn’t want to hear about how costly the war is since she fears that spending less money on the war effort could cost him his life.

I could tell the woman who asked the question was not entirely satisfied with the answer Bruce gave about there being many servicemen and women’s families who are opposed to military spending and continuing the war.  I approached her after our session ended and asked her if she felt O.K. with the answer that was given and she expressed serious misgivings.  I proceeded to go further in an attempt to offer her additional food for thought vis a vis why we need to end the war and how that could increase the likelihood of her friend’s son returning safely and she asked me to write my ideas on my blog so here I am.  She and her partner told me they would check out the blog to see what I had to offer.  She suggested I make a list of hopefully compelling reasons why her friend’s son would benefit from a decision on our country’s part to withdraw from Afghanistan instead of continuing our occupation of the country. Here they are:

1.  Whatever course of action our current administration takes should not be precipitous and therefore would not increase the likelihood of soldiers being underfunded, underequipped or undertrained.

2.  If the money the Obama administration is seeking for 30,000 additional troops were not granted it would mean that the money could instead be in the form of an appropriation for an expansion of much needed services for returning veterans many of whom suffer from all sorts of physical and emotional wounds.

3.  A decision to de-escalate and eventually end the War in Afghanistan would shorten the length of time to be served in the danger zone that is the entire country and reduce the number of casualties.

4.  With the peace dividend that would be available as spending on the war lessened, jobs could be provided for returning soldiers along with the aforementioned services such as counseling to enable returning veterans to have the best possible chance at resuming their civilian lives with as little disruption as possible.

5.  Finally, by recognizing that the war is unwinnable and that our presence basically serves to inflame resistance and increase hatred towards us, we would be acknowledging that the soldiers who have been obliged to fight such a war have instead become its victims and it is our country’s responsibility to protect them and to guarantee to the greatest degree possible that they can have satisfying lives that are not at risk either in terms of hurting themselves and those they love or being in harm’s way in Afghanistan.

I hope these responses are helpful.  There are surely additional reasons for ending the war to give a parent of a young man or woman serving in Afghanistan or even Iraq.  The bottom line is we need to be able to be convincing in our efforts to join with parents whose lives have been deeply affected by having a son or daughter serving in a country that desperately doesn’t want them there.  I would greatly appreciate any additional ideas you may have upon reading this.

I’ve been waiting for some elected official to bring the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan home to his/her constituents, to let the Tea Party folks see what they really need to be complaining about and it took the mayor of Binghampton, N.Y. to take action.  The article below, originally from HUFFINGTON POST, but discovered by yours truly at www.common dreams.org, tells what he is going to do to let his fellow citizens know the cost of war for their city.  That there is a lengthy quote from the National Priorities director, our very own Jo Comerford, is just icing.

I attended a retirement party for a very special man – Bob Brown.  Not only is his story in CALLED TO SERVE, but it turns out that he is concluding a comprehensively brilliant career as a counselor of high school and college age students, predominantly, but far from exclusively, students of color in Connecticut.  I learned of the legions of students who benefited from his wise, caring and encouraging support over a 40 year career.  We had worked together for many years at an UPWARD BOUND PROGRAM at UCONN in Storrs, but it wasn’t until this evening’s tribute that I saw the great influence he had exerted.  It was very moving and inspirational.  From my interview with him for the book I learned that way back in the late ’60′s he wanted no part of the war in Vietnam and in his remarks this evening he mentioned the connection between the much-needed funds to equalize the playing field for his students and the two wars we continue to throw enormous sums of money at.  I think he would be pleased to know that someone in Binghampton, N.Y. is taking a stand.

ON TAX DAY A REMINDER – WAR IS NOT FREE

by Dan Froomkin

How many tax dollars from your community have gone to fund the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq? And how else could that money have been spent?

The National Priorities Project helps you figure that out quite easily, with its Cost of War web site. It shows you the total amount nationwide, then lets you dig down to see the results by community. You can also calculate the tradeoffs.

And Brave New Foundation today is out with a new online short, starring Democratic Reps. Alan Grayson (Fla.), Raul Grijalva (Ariz.), and Barbara Lee (Calif.), reminding tax payers to consider how the war in Afghanistan is affecting the economy and job recovery in the United States today.

“The resident of Tucson,” Grijalva says, “have paid $298 million of their tax dollars to the war in Afghanistan. That translates to 6,000 new jobs in the health care industry.”

Over on Facebook, Brave New Foundation is also asking you to tell them what would you want to fix if we could spend those funds here at home instead.

Writing for TomDispatch.com, Jo Comerford, executive director of the National Priorities Project, found one mayor who wants everyone to know what he could have done with his city’s ‘war tax’.

Matt Ryan, the mayor of Binghamton, New York, is sick and tired of watching people in local communities “squabble over crumbs,” as he puts it, while so much local money pours into the Pentagon’s coffers and into America’s wars. He’s so sick and tired of it, in fact, that, urged on by local residents, he’s decided to do something about it. He’s planning to be the first mayor in the United States to decorate the facade of City Hall with a large, digital “cost of war” counter, funded entirely by private contributions.That counter will offer a constantly changing estimate of the total price Binghamton’s taxpayers have been paying for our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan since October 2001. By September 30, 2010, the city’s “war tax” will reach $138.6 million–or even more if, as expected, Congress passes an Obama administration request for supplemental funds to cover the president’s “surge” in Afghanistan. Mayor Ryan wants, he says, to put the counter “where everyone can see it, so that my constituents are urged to have a much-needed conversation.”

Not one, but two very powerful and moving articles in commemoration of the assassination of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King on today’s www.commondreams.org and I want to honor the ideas and the dot connecting they epitomize.  It was exactly a year before his untimely death that Dr. King delivered one of his most stirring and controversial speeches at Riverside Cathedral in which he connected the dots between the War in Vietnam and the fight for social justice and equality on the homefront.  Such a speech could most assuredly be made now!  We continue to fight a futile war that is impoverishing our country in support of at best questionable leadership in Afghanistan and those who are already struggling to make it in this economy – a job, a home, healthcare, etc… – are the victims.  So it was in 1967 when King spoke out against the carnage and against its effects on our people. Here’s the speech and be forewarned, the parallels are eerie indeed:

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/058.html

And here are the two articles. See what you think…

Published on Saturday, April 3, 2010 by The New York Times

WE STILL DON’T HEAR HIM

by The New York Times
by Bob Herbert
The great man was moving with what seemed like great reluctance. He knew as he climbed from the car in Upper Manhattan that he was stepping into the maelstrom, that there were powerful people who would not react kindly to what he had to say.

“I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight,” said the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “because my conscience leaves me no other choice.”

This was on the evening of April 4, 1967, almost exactly 43 years ago. Dr. King told the more than 3,000 people who had crowded into Riverside Church that silence in the face of the horror that was taking place in Vietnam amounted to a “betrayal.”

He spoke of both the carnage in the war zone and the toll the war was taking here in the United States. The speech comes to mind now for two reasons: A Tavis Smiley documentary currently airing on PBS revisits the controversy set off by Dr. King’s indictment of “the madness of Vietnam.” And recent news reports show ever-increasing evidence that we have ensnared ourselves in a mad and tragic venture in Afghanistan.

Dr. King spoke of how, in Vietnam, the United States increased its commitment of troops “in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept, and without popular support.”

It’s strange, indeed, to read those words more than four decades later as we are increasing our commitment of troops in Afghanistan to fight in support of Hamid Karzai, who remains in power after an election that the world knows was riddled with fraud and whose government is one of the most corrupt and inept on the planet.

If Mr. Karzai is at all grateful for this support, he has a very peculiar way of showing it. He has ignored pleas from President Obama and others to take meaningful steps to rein in the rampant corruption. His brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, the kingpin in southern Afghanistan, is believed by top American officials to be engaged in all manner of nefarious activities, including money-laundering and involvement in the flourishing opium trade.

Hamid Karzai himself pulled off a calculated insult to the U.S. by inviting Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the presidential palace in Kabul, where Ahmadinejad promptly delivered a fiery anti-American speech. As Dexter Filkins and Mark Landler reported in The Times this week: “Even as Mr. Obama pours tens of thousands of additional American troops into the country to help defend Mr. Karzai’s government, Mr. Karzai now often voices the view that his interests and the United States’ no longer coincide.”

Is this what American service members are dying for in Afghanistan? Can you imagine giving up your life, or your child’s life, for that crowd?

In his speech, Dr. King spoke about the damage the Vietnam War was doing to America’s war on poverty, and the way it was undermining other important domestic initiatives. What he wanted from the U.S. was not warfare overseas but a renewed commitment to economic and social justice at home. As he put it: “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

The speech set loose a hurricane of criticism. Even the N.A.A.C.P. complained that Dr. King should stick to what it perceived as his area of expertise, civil rights. The New York Times headlined its editorial on the speech, “Dr. King’s Error.”

Mr. Smiley, in his documentary, noted that “the already strained relationship between President Johnson and Dr. King became fractured beyond repair.” And donations to Dr. King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference “began to dry up.”

So it took great courage for Dr. King to speak out as he did.

His bold stand seems all the more striking in today’s atmosphere, in which moral courage among the very prominent — the kind of courage that carries real risk — seems mostly to have disappeared.

More than 4,000 Americans have died in Iraq and more than 1,000 in Afghanistan, where the Obama administration has chosen to escalate rather than to begin a careful withdrawal. Those two wars, as the Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz and his colleague Linda Bilmes have told us, will ultimately cost us more than $3 trillion.

And yet the voices in search of peace, in search of an end to the “madness,” in search of the nation-building so desperately needed here in the United States, are feeble indeed.

Dr. King would be assassinated exactly one year (almost to the hour) after his great speech at Riverside Church. It’s the same terrible fate that awaits some of the American forces, most of them very young, that we continue to send into the quagmire in Afghanistan.

DR. KING’S ECONOMIC DREAM DEFERRED

by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship

Forty-two years ago, on April 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated, gunned down in Memphis, Tennessee. To those of us who were alive then, the images are etched in painful memory: One day, Dr. King is standing with colleagues, including Ralph Abernathy and Jesse Jackson, on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel; the next, he’s lying there mortally wounded, his aides pointing in the direction of the rifle shot.

Then we remember the crowds of mourners slowly moving through the streets of Atlanta on a hot sunny day, surrounding King’s casket as it was carried on a mule-drawn farm wagon; and the riots that burned across the nation in the wake of his death — a stinging, misbegotten rebuke to his gospel of nonviolence.

We sanctify his memory now, name streets and schools after him, made his birthday a national holiday. But in April 1968, as Dr. King walked out on that motel balcony, his reputation was under assault. The glory days of the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott and the 1963 March on Washington were behind him, his Nobel Peace Prize already in the past.

A year before, at Riverside Church in New York, he had spoken out — eloquently — against the war in Vietnam. King said, “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death,” a position that angered President Lyndon Johnson, many of King’s fellow civil rights leaders and influential newspapers. The Washington Post charged that King had, “diminished his usefulness to his cause, to his country, and to his people.”

With his popularity in decline, an exhausted, stressed and depressed Martin Luther King, Jr., turned his attention to economic injustice. He reminded the country that his March on Washington five years earlier had not been for civil rights alone but “a campaign for jobs and income, because we felt that the economic question was the most crucial that black people and poor people, generally, were confronting.” Now, King was building what he called the Poor People’s Campaign to confront nationwide inequalities in jobs, pay and housing.

But he had to prove that he could still be an effective leader, and so he came to Memphis, in support of a strike by that city’s African-American garbage men. Eleven hundred sanitation workers had walked off the job after two had died in a tragic accident, crushed by a garbage truck’s compactor. The garbage men were fed up — treated with contempt as they performed a filthy and unrewarding job, paid so badly that 40 percent of them were on welfare, called “boy” by white supervisors. Their picket signs were simple and eloquent: “I AM A MAN.”

A few weeks into their strike, which had been met with opposition and violence, Dr. King arrived for meetings and addressed a rally. Ten days later, he returned to lead a march through the streets of Memphis that ended in smashed windows, gunshots and tear gas.

Upset by the violence, he came back to the city one more time to try to put things right. The night before his death, King made his famous “Mountaintop” speech, prophetically telling an audience, “Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land!”

The next night he was dead. Twelve days later, the strike was settled, the garbage men’s union was recognized and the city of Memphis begrudgingly agreed to increase their pay, at first by a dime an hour, and later, an extra nickel.

That paltry sum would also be prophetic. All these decades later, little has changed when it comes to economic equality. If anything, the recent economic meltdown and recession have made the injustice of poverty even more profound, especially in a society where the top percentile enjoys undreamed of prosperity.

Unemployment among African-Americans is nearly double that of whites, according to the National Urban League’s latest “State of Black America” report. Black men and women in this country make 62 cents on the dollar earned by whites. Less than half of black and Hispanic families own homes and they are three times more likely to live below the poverty line.

The non-partisan group United for a Fair Economy has issued a report that features Martin Luther King, Jr., on the cover with the title, “State of the Dream 2010: Drained.” Dr. King’s dream is in jeopardy, the report’s authors write, “The Great Recession has pulled the plug on communities of color, draining jobs and homes at alarming rates while exacerbating persistent inequalities of wealth and income.”

Nor will a recovery ameliorate the crisis. “A rising tide does not lift all boats,” United for a Fair Economy’s report goes on to say, “because the public policies, economic structures, and unwritten rules of racism form mountains and ridgelines, and hills and valleys that shape our economic landscape. As a result, a rising economic tide fills the rivers and reservoirs of some, while leaving others dry and parched.”

This is a perilous moment. The individualist, greed-driven free-market ideology that both our major parties have pursued is at odds with what most Americans really care about. Popular support for either party has struck bottom, as more and more agree that growing inequality is bad for the country, that corporations have too much power, that money in politics has corrupted our system, and that working families and poor communities need and deserve help because the free market has failed to generate shared prosperity — its famous unseen hand has become a closed fist.

It is hard to overstate the consequences of choosing more of the same — the very policies that have sundered our social contract. But hear the judgment of Nobel Laureate Kenneth Arrow, echoing Martin Luther King, Jr.’s life and martyrdom. “The vast inequalities of income weaken a society’s sense of mutual concern,” Arrow said. “…The sense that we are all members of the social order is vital to the meaning of civilization.”

Bill Moyers is managing editor and Michael Winship is senior writer of the weekly public affairs program Bill Moyers Journal, which airs Friday night on PBS. Check local airtimes or comment at The Moyers Blog at www.pbs.org/moyers .

Maybe it was having a dear friend tell me that one of our fellow alumni of Trinity College, circa ’71, was a co-founder of the WORLD SOCIALIST website.  Or maybe it was reading about the riotous response of millions of Greeks to the “austerity plan” they are being subjected to due to the awful decisions of government and industry in their country.  Could it have been the on-going unemployment figures, which don’t include those who have fallen off the radar or the estimated 50% of people out of work in Detroit.  Whatever the reason, when I came upon the following article and saw that it was one of the “most popular of the week” and had already accumulated over 329 comments, I realized it was synthesizing a lot of my growing concern about our country and its current path.  I particularly appreciated the references to Martin Luther King’s words of 43 years ago about “a true revolution of values” that “will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies.” How true those words still ring, since in the years since he uttered them we have not come close to bringing about what he was advocating.  Instead our country has even more seriously lost its moral compass as the following indicates, so here is the article in its entirey.

TIME FOR A U.S. REVOLUTION – 15 REASONS WHY

by Bill Quigley

It is time for a revolution. Government does not work for regular people. It appears to work quite well for big corporations, banks, insurance companies, military contractors, lobbyists, and for the rich and powerful. But it does not work for people.

The 1776 Declaration of Independence stated that when a long train of abuses by those in power evidence a design to reduce the rights of people to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, it is the peoples right, in fact their duty to engage in a revolution.

Martin Luther King, Jr., said forty three years ago next month that it was time for a radical revolution of values in the United States. He preached “a true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies.” It is clearer than ever that now is the time for radical change.

Look at what our current system has brought us and ask if it is time for a revolution?

Over 2.8 million people lost their homes in 2009 to foreclosure or bank repossessions – nearly 8000 each day – higher numbers than the last two years when millions of others also lost their homes.

At the same time, the government bailed out Bank of America, Citigroup, AIG, Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the auto industry and enacted the troubled asset (TARP) program with $1.7 trillion of our money.

Wall Street then awarded itself over $20 billion in bonuses in 2009 alone, an average bonus on top of pay of $123,000.

At the same time, over 17 million people are jobless right now. Millions more are working part-time when they want and need to be working full-time.

Yet the current system allows one single U.S. Senator to stop unemployment and Medicare benefits being paid to millions.

There are now 35 registered lobbyists in Washington DC for every single member of the Senate and House of Representatives, at last count 13,739 in 2009. There are eight lobbyists for every member of Congress working on the health care fiasco alone.

At the same time, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that corporations now have a constitutional right to interfere with elections by pouring money into races.

The Department of Justice gave a get out of jail free card to its own lawyers who authorized illegal torture.

At the same time another department of government, the Pentagon, is prosecuting Navy SEALS for punching an Iraqi suspect.

The US is not only involved in senseless wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, the U.S. now maintains 700 military bases world-wide and another 6000 in the US and our territories. Young men and women join the military to protect the U.S. and to get college tuition and healthcare coverage and killed and maimed in elective wars and being the world’s police. Wonder whose assets they are protecting and serving?

In fact, the U.S. spends $700 billion directly on military per year, half the military spending of the entire world – much more than Europe, China, Russia, Iran, Pakistan, North Korea, and Venezuela – combined.

The government and private companies have dramatically increased surveillance of people through cameras on public streets and private places, airport searches, phone intercepts, access to personal computers, and compilation of records from credit card purchases, computer views of sites, and travel.

The number of people in jails and prisons in the U.S. has risen sevenfold since 1970 to over 2.3 million. The US puts a higher percentage of our people in jail than any other country in the world.

The tea party people are mad at the Republicans, who they accuse of selling them out to big businesses.

Democrats are working their way past depression to anger because their party, despite majorities in the House and Senate, has not made significant advances for immigrants, or women, or unions, or African Americans, or environmentalists, or gays and lesbians, or civil libertarians, or people dedicated to health care, or human rights, or jobs or housing or economic justice. Democrats also think their party is selling out to big business.

Forty three years ago next month, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. preached in Riverside Church in New York City that “a time comes when silence is betrayal.” He went on to condemn the Vietnam War and the system which created it and the other injustices clearly apparent. “We as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing oriented” society to a “person oriented” society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”

It is time. Bill is legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights and a law professor at Loyola University New Orleans. Quigley77@gmail.com

This article really needs no introduction.  The link it makes between what we’re doing in Afghanistan with the largest offensive in the 9 years of that awful war and what we could be doing in Haiti if we had the wisdom to channel our funding away from the devastation we’re causing in one country and towards the beyond dire needs of another is profound and deeply disturbing.  Read on…

Dollars for Death, Pennies for Life

by Norman Solomon
When the U.S. military began a major offensive in southern Afghanistan over the weekend, the killing of children and other civilians was predictable. Lofty rhetoric aside, such deaths come with the territory of war and occupation.

A month ago, President Obama pledged $100 million in U.S. government aid to earthquake-devastated Haiti. Compare that to the $100 billion price tag to keep 100,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan for a year.

While commanders in Afghanistan were launching what the New York Times called “the largest offensive military operation since the American-led coalition invaded the country in 2001,” the situation in Haiti was clearly dire.

With more than a million Haitians still homeless, vast numbers — the latest estimates are around 75 percent — don’t have tents or tarps. The rainy season is fast approaching, with serious dangers of typhoid and dysentery.

No shortage of bombs in Afghanistan; a lethal shortage of tents in Haiti. Such priorities — actual, not rhetorical — are routine.

Last summer, I saw hundreds of children and other civilians at the Helmand Refugee Camp District 5, a miserable makeshift encampment in Kabul. The U.S. government had ample resources for bombing their neighborhoods in the Helmand Valley — but was doing nothing to help the desperate refugees to survive after they fled to Afghanistan’s capital city.

Such priorities have parallels at home. The military hawks and deficit hawks are now swooping along Pennsylvania Avenue in tight formation. There’s plenty of money in the U.S. Treasury for war in Afghanistan. But domestic spending to meet human needs — job creation, for instance — is another matter.

Joblessness is now crushing many low-income Americans. Among those with annual household incomes of less than $12,500, the unemployment rate during the fourth quarter of last year “was a staggering 30.8 percent,” Bob Herbert noted in a February 9 column. “That’s more than five points higher than the overall jobless rate at the height of the Depression.”

Herbert added: “The next lowest group, with incomes of $12,500 to $20,000, had an unemployment rate of 19.1 percent. These are the kinds of jobless rates that push families already struggling on meager incomes into destitution.”

The current situation is akin to the one that Martin Luther King Jr. confronted in 1967 when he challenged Congress for showing “hostility to the poor” — appropriating “military funds with alacrity and generosity” but providing “poverty funds with miserliness.”

Such priorities are taking lives every day, near and far.

Early this month, the National Council of Churches sent out an article by theologians George Hunsinger and Michael Kinnamon, who wrote: “What the Haitians obviously need most is massive humanitarian relief. They need food, water, medical supplies. They need shelter and physical reconstruction. . . . Over half of Haiti’s population are children, 15 years old or younger. Many were already hungry and homeless before the earthquake hit.”

But the warfare state, with vast budgets for military purposes, has scant funds for sustaining life.

These priorities kill.

Norman Solomon is national co-chair of the Healthcare Not Warfare campaign, launched by Progressive Democrats of America. His books include “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.”

Very sadly I have learned of the passing of a great citizen of the world.  Howard Zinn’s words, whether in written form in such radical works as THE PEOPLE’S HISTORY OF THE U.S. or in countless speeches that aroused deep within many a passion for social justice, will live on and remind us of his quest for the unvarnished truth.  His life was a fine example of one lived fully and in service to getting the word out about our country’s true history, about those who deserved the credit they all too rarely received and those whose greed or righteousness caused great suffering for our country and the world.  I will miss knowing he is watching and observing and commenting about our current societal, political and cultural woes.  He made America better for having lived a life in pursuit of as much knowledge as he could possibly obtain and then share of what our country really did, regardless of what it said and says it stands for.  We always need such men and women, to make others accountable and to provide us with true heroes such as the ones he chronicled and quoted in VOICES OF THE PEOPLE’S HISTORY, a theatrical version of which he took on tour around the country inspiring the VOICES OF WORKING PEOPLE that I was so happy to be part of for several years here in the Valley.  We have lost a national treasure, one whose likes we will are not likely to see again soon.  Let us do what we can to effect change to honor his memory.  Here is a thoughtful obituary that tells about his life from his humble beginnings as the son of Jewish immigrants in NYC to his epic battles with John Silber, BU president and arch rival while Mr. Zinn taught at the university.  His is an inspirational story about a man who refused to accept the status quo whenever someone was being oppressed by it.  I hope President Obama honors him in the upcoming State of the Union.  I believe he would feel honored if Obama finally follows through on his pledge to end the ban on gays and lesbians in the military, which the word has leaked out he is about to announce.

Howard Zinn, Historian who Challenged Status Quo, Dies at 87

by Mark Feeney

Howard Zinn, the Boston University historian and political activist who was an early opponent of US involvement in Vietnam and a leading faculty critic of BU president John Silber, died of a heart attack today in Santa Monica, Calif, where he was traveling, his family said. He was 87.

Portrait of Howard Zinn by Robert Shetterly from his series, Americans Who Tell the Truth.

“His writings have changed the consciousness of a generation, and helped open new paths to understanding and its crucial meaning for our lives,” Noam Chomsky, the left-wing activist and MIT professor, once wrote of Dr. Zinn. “When action has been called for, one could always be confident that he would be on the front lines, an example and trustworthy guide.”For Dr. Zinn, activism was a natural extension of the revisionist brand of history he taught. Dr. Zinn’s best-known book, “A People’s History of the United States” (1980), had for its heroes not the Founding Fathers — many of them slaveholders and deeply attached to the status quo, as Dr. Zinn was quick to point out — but rather the farmers of Shays’ Rebellion and the union organizers of the 1930s.

As he wrote in his autobiography, “You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train” (1994), “From the start, my teaching was infused with my own history. I would try to be fair to other points of view, but I wanted more than ‘objectivity’; I wanted students to leave my classes not just better informed, but more prepared to relinquish the safety of silence, more prepared to speak up, to act against injustice wherever they saw it. This, of course, was a recipe for trouble.”

Certainly, it was a recipe for rancor between Dr. Zinn and Silber. Dr. Zinn twice helped lead faculty votes to oust the BU president, who in turn once accused Dr. Zinn of arson (a charge he quickly retracted) and cited him as a prime example of teachers “who poison the well of academe.”

Dr. Zinn was a cochairman of the strike committee when BU professors walked out in 1979. After the strike was settled, he and four colleagues were charged with violating their contract when they refused to cross a picket line of striking secretaries. The charges against “the BU Five” were soon dropped, however.

Dr. Zinn was born in New York City on Aug. 24, 1922, the son of Jewish immigrants, Edward Zinn, a waiter, and Jennie (Rabinowitz) Zinn, a housewife. He attended New York public schools and worked in the Brooklyn Navy Yard before joining the Army Air Force during World War II. Serving as a bombardier in the Eighth Air Force, he won the Air Medal and attained the rank of second lieutenant.

After the war, Dr. Zinn worked at a series of menial jobs until entering New York University as a 27-year-old freshman on the GI Bill. Professor Zinn, who had married Roslyn Shechter in 1944, worked nights in a warehouse loading trucks to support his studies. He received his bachelor’s degree from NYU, followed by master’s and doctoral degrees in history from Columbia University.

Dr. Zinn was an instructor at Upsala College and lecturer at Brooklyn College before joining the faculty of Spelman College in Atlanta, in 1956. He served at the historically black women’s institution as chairman of the history department. Among his students were the novelist Alice Walker, who called him “the best teacher I ever had,” and Marian Wright Edelman, future head of the Children’s Defense Fund.

During this time, Dr. Zinn became active in the civil rights movement. He served on the executive committee of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the most aggressive civil rights organization of the time, and participated in numerous demonstrations.

Dr. Zinn became an associate professor of political science at BU in 1964 and was named full professor in 1966.

The focus of his activism now became the Vietnam War. Dr. Zinn spoke at countless rallies and teach-ins and drew national attention when he and another leading antiwar activist, Rev. Daniel Berrigan, went to Hanoi in 1968 to receive three prisoners released by the North Vietnamese.

Dr. Zinn’s involvement in the antiwar movement led to his publishing two books: “Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal” (1967) and “Disobedience and Democracy” (1968). He had previously published “LaGuardia in Congress” (1959), which had won the American Historical Association’s Albert J. Beveridge Prize; “SNCC: The New Abolitionists” (1964); “The Southern Mystique” (1964); and “New Deal Thought” (1966). Dr. Zinn was also the author of “The Politics of History” (1970); “Postwar America” (1973); “Justice in Everyday Life” (1974); and “Declarations of Independence” (1990).

In 1988, Dr. Zinn took early retirement so as to concentrate on speaking and writing. The latter activity included writing for the stage. Dr. Zinn had two plays produced: “Emma,” about the anarchist leader Emma Goldman, and “Daughter of Venus.”

Dr. Zinn, or his writing, made a cameo appearance in the 1997 film “Good Will Hunting.” The title characters, played by Matt Damon, lauds “A People’s History” and urges Robin Williams’s character to read it. Damon, who co-wrote the script, was a neighbor of the Zinns growing up.

Damon was later involved in a television version of the book, “The People Speak,” which ran on the History Channel in 2009. Damon was the narrator of a 2004 biographical documentary, “Howard Zinn: You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train.”

On his last day at BU, Dr. Zinn ended class 30 minutes early so he could join a picket line and urged the 500 students attending his lecture to come along. A hundred did so.

Dr. Zinn’s wife died in 2008. He leaves a daughter, Myla Kabat-Zinn of Lexington; a son, Jeff of Wellfleet; three granddaugthers; and two grandsons.

We’ve Ignored King on War

Kathy Kelly would have been a most appropriate choice for the Nobel Peace Prize and the piece that follows provides excellent evidence.  She starts with a reference to a young woman in Pakistan who evidently sent a message to Hillary Clinton to the effect that America has only made things worse by its presence in her part of the world.  Hearing once again this phrase, “Speaking Truth to Power”, which Ms. Kelly has chosen for the title of her article, I thought it would be worth finding out where and when it originated.  Here’s what I discovered.  The phrase was used as the title of a document written in 1955 by a group of Quakers writing on behalf of the American Friends Service Committee seeking “An Alternative to Violence” in response to the intensifying arms race and Cold War. This is taken from the document:

Our title, Speak Truth to Power, taken from a charge given to Eighteenth Century Friends, suggests the effort that is made to speak from the deepest insight of the Quaker faith, as this faith is understood by those who prepared this study. We speak to power in three senses:

To those who hold high places in our national life and bear the terrible responsibility of making decisions for war or peace.
To the American people who are the final reservoir of power in this country and whose values and expectations set the limits for those who exercise authority.
To the idea of Power itself, and its impact on Twentieth Century life.

Our truth is an ancient one: that love endures and overcomes; that hatred destroys; that what is obtained by love is retained, but what is obtained by hatred proves a burden. This truth, fundamental to the position which rejects reliance on the method of war, is ultimately … a belief that stands outside of history.

Yes, it was written in 1955, but it contains lessons we have yet, as a country and world, to learn.  Ms. Kelly is a powerful voice speaking her truth to power and the organization she represents, Voices for Creative Nonviolence, is planning an important effort leading up to President Obama’s budget submission for fiscal year 2011 to stop the funding of an endless war that only serves to create more folks who hate us and to destroy the lives of many of those who serve.  Here’s what she has to tell us:

There’s a phrase originating with the peace activism of the American Quaker movement: “Speak Truth to Power.”  One can hardly speak more directly to power than addressing the Presidential Administration of the United States. This past October, students at Islamabad’s Islamic International University had a message for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.  One student summed up many of her colleagues’ frustration. “We don’t need America,” she said. “Things were better before they came here.”

The students were mourning loss of life at their University where, a week earlier, two suicide bombers walked onto the campus wearing explosive devices and left seven students dead and dozens of others seriously injured. Since the spring of 2009, under pressure from U.S. leaders to “do more” to dislodge militant Taliban groups, the Pakistani government has been waging military offensives throughout the northwest of the country.  These bombing attacks have displaced millions and the Pakistani government has apparently given open permission for similar attacks by unmanned U.S. aerial drones.   Every week, Pakistani militant groups have launched a new retaliatory atrocity in Pakistan, killing hundreds more civilians in markets, schools, government buildings, mosques and sports facilities.  Who can blame the student who believed that her family and friends were better off before the U.S. began insisting that Pakistan cooperate with U.S. military goals in the region?

In neighboring Afghanistan, 2009 was the deadliest year for Afghan children since 2001, according to the Afghanistan Rights Monitor. In a January 6 statement, the group noted that in 2009 about 1050 children had died in suicide attacks, roadside blasts, air strikes and the cross-fire between Taliban insurgents and pro-government forces, both Afghan and foreign.  The group’s director, Ajmal Samadi, noted that this figure amounted to nearly three children per day. It’s estimated that nearly one third of these children’s deaths were caused by US/NATO coalition forces. This week, hundreds of Afghans have taken to the streets in protest after the Afghan government said its investigation has established that all 10 people killed by U.S. led forces on January 3rd, in a remote village in Kunar province, were civilians and that eight of those killed were schoolchildren, aged 12-14. The London Times reports that the U.S.-led troops were accused of dragging the innocent children from their beds, handcuffing several of them, and then killing all eight of them.

Stories of carnage, horror and impoverishment aren’t new in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Pakistan.  Ten years ago, each of these countries suffered under severely repressive governance and extremes of poverty. In the case of Iraq, these conditions were made immeasurably worse by U.S.-imposed economic sanctions that punished innocent Iraqi citizens for their inability to rise from under Saddam Hussein’s brutal regime, all the while rendering them completely dependent on Hussein’s regime to meet their basic survival needs. Yet in all this suffering that preceded the U.S. invasions of the region, there were very few accounts of suicide bombings in the lands where the U.S. is now at war.  The kidnapping and torture industries, now rife in all three countries, had not developed, and their entire economies had not been hobbled by blatant official corruption.

What has U.S. invasion and occupation unleashed in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan? And how are these wars creating security for U.S. people?

The New York Times reported on November 14, 2009 that, according to internal U.S. government estimates, it costs one million dollars to keep one soldier in Afghanistan for one year.   Consider this sum in light of the fact that, in Afghanistan, district governors earn 70 dollars per month. Their operation budget is 15 dollars per month, and half of them have no dedicated office.  Or, in light of the UN estimate that the Gross Domestic Product, per capita, in Afghanistan, is less than $1,000 per year.  Or that The United Nation’s Children’s Fund, better known as UNICEF, says Afghanistan is the worst place in the world to be born, having the highest infant mortality rate in the world with 257 deaths per 1,000 live births.  Only 70 percent of Afghans have access to clean water.

Kai Eide, the outgoing Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for Afghanistan, briefed the UN Security Council on January 5, 2010.  With regard to military activities, he bluntly stated that “civilian casualties, house searches, and detention policies are sources of recruitment for the insurgency.”

President Obama’s administration is soon expected to request another “emergency” supplemental expenditure for the Iraq and Afghan wars, this time for between 40 and 50 billion dollars.  If (some would say, when) this figure is approved, it will make 2010 fiscally the most costly year of the ongoing War on Terror, surpassing President Bush’s expenditures by a significant margin.   Before the year is out, President Obama will also have submitted a budget item to fund the wars in 2011, with military services already planning to request something in the range of $160 to $165 billion.

The U.S. Constitution states that Congress shall make no law to abridge the right of people to assemble peaceably for redress of grievance.  We are deeply aggrieved by the folly of these wars. Our right to free speech is irrelevant if we don’t exercise it, and so we intend to raise the lament of those who bear the brunt of our wars but whose voices seldom reach U.S. government figures. For two weeks this January, leading up to the date when President Obama is due to submit his budget for Fiscal Year 2011 to Congress, Voices for Creative Nonviolence and friends will gather in Washington D.C. for a “Peaceable Assembly Campaign” project.  (www.peaceableassemblycampaign.org [1])

We’ll be meeting with elected representatives to raise questions about the folly and the crime of war, holding daily vigils at the White House, and engaging in acts of nonviolent civil disobedience to emphasize our refusal to cooperate with the war makers.

Please join us in this year-long campaign, whether in Washington D.C. this month, or participating locally where you live.   Visit the Voices website, www.vcnv.org [2], to learn more about ways to become involved, both locally through this coming summer and in the Days of Resistance in Washington.

We’ll be there from January 19th through February 2nd.

Kathy Kelly, a co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence. [3] Kathy Kelly’s email is kathy@vcnv.org

It is Christmas morning and a quick check of www.commondreams.org turned up the following reminder that we here in America, those of us of Christian or other affiliations who choose to celebrate this holiday, have the luxury of spending the day with family and friends, safe from the threats from which many cannot take a day off.  The story below is about a man who made the mistake of enlisting in the armed services back in ’04 because he’d lost his job and because a recruiter promised him he could be a cook and not have to deal with combat.  I have heard this story before.  In my book, CALLED TO SERVE: STORIES OF THE MEN AND WOMEN AFFECTED BY THE VIETNAM DRAFT, and in stories from men who I didn’t get to interview as well, I have heard the sad tales of recruiters who promised the man before them that they’d be safe, that enlisting meant they’d not be put in harm’s way as would the draftees.  But it turned out again and again to be the big lie. One of the men in the book not only saw combat, but the ensuing PTSD and the drugs that he took to self-medicate became the theme of his next 20 years.  Of course, others don’t come back at all.  And now, with the dreaded and inhumane STOP-LOSS policy, which though diminished continues to this day, the military can rely on its “involuntary extension” to keep those who have served their expected tour of duty for numerous additional tours.  Thankfully there are now several organizations including MARCH FORWARD (http://www.pephost.org/site/PageServer?pagename=VSMTF_aboutus) and IVAW (http://www.ivaw.org/) that support those who have served and, due to their conscience and what they have witnessed and participated in, want to end these awful wars.  Below you can read about a man who is seeking asylum in Canada and who has experienced first hand the dreadful tactics of our military, the racism and the destruction wrought…in our names.  I also recommend reading the comments that you can find at the website where the article appears (http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/12/24-3).  Quite a few make reference to similar experiences during the Vietnam War.

WHY A RESISTER CHOSE CANADA OVER THE WAR IN IRAQ

by Rodney Watson
I am from Kansas City, Kansas, and I joined the U.S. Army for financial reasons in 2004 after my steady job of seven years ended.

I enlisted for a three-year contract with the intention of being a cook and not in a combat role. I wanted to support the troops in some way without being involved in any combat operations.

A recruiter promised that I could do this.

In 2005 I was deployed to Iraq just north of Mosul where I was told that my duties as a cook would be to supervise and ensure that the local nationals in the dining facility were preparing meals according to military standards.

But instead of supervising in the dining facility, I was performing vehicle searches for explosives, contraband and weapons. I also operated a mobile X-ray machine that scanned vehicles and civilians for any possible explosives that could enter the base.

I had to keep the peace within an area that held 100 to 200 Iraqi civilian men who would be waiting for security clearances, and shoot warning shots at Iraqi children who were trying to set up mortars to fire at the base.

In Iraq I witnessed racism and physical abuse from soldiers toward the civilians.

On one occasion a soldier was beating an Iraqi civilian, called him a “sand nigger,” threw his Qur’an on the ground and spat on it. The civilian man was unarmed and was just looking for work on our base. He posed no type of threat and was beaten because soldiers brought their personal racist hatred to Iraq.

This was not what I had signed up for.

After all the wrongs I witnessed in Iraq, I decided that once my one-year tour of duty was over I would never again be part of this unnecessary war.

When I returned home, my unit was informed that we would be redeployed within four months. This would put me beyond the term I signed up for. I was going to be stop-lossed and forced to serve past my contract.

While on two-week leave I made my decision to come to Canada and not return to my base at Fort Hood, Texas.

I have been here in Vancouver since early 2007. I have been self-sufficient. I have fathered a beautiful son whose mother is Canadian. I plan to marry her and to provide our son with a loving and caring family unit.

I have made many friends and I have built a peaceful life here.

My son and my wife-to-be are my heart and soul and it would be a great tragedy for my family and for me personally if I were deported and torn away from them.

I think being punished as a prisoner of conscience for doing what I felt morally obligated to do is a great injustice.

This Christmas I hope and pray that people will open their hearts and minds to give peace and love a chance.

I appeal to the Canadian government to honour your country’s great traditions of being a place of refuge from militarism and a place that respects human rights by supporting my decision, and the decisions taken by my fellow resisters to refuse any further participation in this unjust war.

I ask that you urge your government to respect the will of the majority of Canadians by acting on the direction it has been given twice by Parliament to immediately stop deporting Iraq War resisters like me and to let us become permanent residents here.

My heart goes out to the families who have lost loved ones in this unnecessary war.

© Copyright Toronto Star 1996-2009
Rodney Watson is an Iraq War veteran who was ordered deported by the Harper government this fall. On Sept. 18 he took refuge in Vancouver’s First United Church. Dec. 27 will be his 100th day in sanctuary. Watson’s request to remain in Canada on humanitarian and compassionate grounds remains outstanding.

I’ve been waiting to comment on the decision announced this week to send 30,000 troops – at a cost of $1 million each per year of our depleted treasury – to Afghanistan.  I have discussed the plan with my 6th graders who responded with great intelligence and sensitivity to the issues raised by our current presence there and what our escalation might mean.  Some were very concerned that we could possibly make things worse.  Others expressed their hopes that the situation could improve, that we could help the country develop its defenses and its police so as to actually be able to maintain a governable country that would enable us to leave in the 18 months that the plan calls for.  Almost all of those who spoke, and many wanted to voice their views once we had discussed how we got to the point of Obama’s plan, pointed to the importance of the attitudes towards the U.S. of the Afghan people; what I would call the psychic war to win the hearts and minds of those whose country we’re occupying.  I just listened as I have been doing along with reading as the week as unfolded.

Then I saw this piece last night and since it expressed some of the thoughts I have been having and since it harkened back to some of the history that I believe has relevance, I want to share it.  Not only does it feature someone whose name betokens a time in our history when decisions were having to be made about how to proceed in a war that was already a severe drain on our economy and our spirit as a nation, but it also features another McGovern, no relation to George, who is taking a stand against this war based on deeply held beliefs and principles.  James P. McGovern – a representative from Worcester in the very heart of Massachusetts, the state where the majority of voters supported the earlier McGovern and many of us had bumper stickers that read “Don’t Blame Me, I’m from Massachusetts”, is seeing and saying that the people our government says it wants to eliminate, al Queda, have almost entirely left Afghanistan and are currently in Pakistan – and Yemen, Somalia and heaven only knows where else. Escalating the war in Afghanistan, aside from the expense in lives and money, is just not the right move to accomplish what the government is holding aloft as a noble cause.  Here are McGovern’s words, “In 2001 we voted to dislodge Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda moved. They are in a different neighborhood now, a different country: Pakistan. What the hell are we doing in Afghanistan? Why do we need 100,000 American troops to go after less than 100 members of Al Qaeda that might be left in Afghanistan. It makes no sense to me.”  Me either!  And wonder no longer about Mr. Kerry.  The man who famously said after returning from Vietnam, “Who wants to be the last man to die for a mistake?” refuses to acknowledge that this war, and now its escalation, begs the same question…

There is another path and Mr. McGovern offers it – a route to ending this war that has us making a major humanitarian aid commitment and has us acknowledging that no matter what we do to rid this part of the world of terrorism, we shall fail, because such a mission cannot help but simply lead to the relocation of those our government would seek to destroy.  Here’s a comment that followed the article below at www.commondreams.org and reminded me of Randy Newman’s song “Let’s Drop the Big One” in which we realized we had enemies everywhere so… “Since at least one Al-Qaeda cell in Hamburg, Germany, also helped plan 9-11, we must start dropping bombs on Germany right away. Germany could become a terrorist sanctuary again, too! And so could Canada. And Monaco. Or Texas, or… gosh, the list is so long–it includes every country!!!!! Let’s just bomb them all.”  It is time to stop the madness, not compound it by throwing more firepower at it…

Another McGovern Takes On a War

Massachusetts Congressman mobilizes foes of Afghan surge

by Michael Kranish

WASHINGTON – Representative James P. McGovern, a political activist since he was a schoolboy in Worcester, walked into his congressional office yesterday and proudly pointed to a 1972 presidential campaign poster on his wall: “We’ve been misled too often. Demand Truth. George McGovern.”

It was a moment that brought Jim McGovern full circle. As a seventh-grader during the Vietnam War, he passed out antiwar campaign literature for the former South Dakota senator, and as a college student he interned in the senator’s Washington office.

Representative James McGovern and a poster on his mentor, Senator George McGovern. (Brendan Smialowski for The Boston Globe)

Now the Massachusetts Democrat, a 50-year-old whose parents still own a liquor store in Worcester, is assuming his mentor’s mantle in more than name (they are not related). He has become one of the most outspoken opponents to President Obama’s Afghanistan strategy, putting forward proposals to cut off funding for the 30,000 additional troops Obama plans to send there and to demand a clear-cut exit strategy.

McGovern said he has no qualms about tak ing on Obama. Even those with the potential to be “great presidents” make mistakes, he said. “There is going to be a fight on this. The question is whether we get it sooner or later.”

While his quest may seem as quixotic as his mentor’s presidential run and has made him a lightning rod for those who deem his antiwar stance misguided, the congressman says he is pushing forward in the belief that every antiwar campaign begins with modest steps.

“McGovern was right” about Vietnam, the congressman said of the former presidential candidate. And he believes that he will be proven right about Afghanistan.

“The mission in Afghanistan does not reflect what Congress voted for in 2001,” McGovern said of the resolution authorizing the military action following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. “In 2001 we voted to dislodge Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda moved. They are in a different neighborhood now, a different country: Pakistan. What the hell are we doing in Afghanistan? Why do we need 100,000 American troops to go after less than 100 members of Al Qaeda that might be left in Afghanistan. It makes no sense to me.”

McGovern’s emergence on the issue also makes him the most visible antiwar leader in Congress from Massachusetts, partly due to a confluence of factors. Senator John F. Kerry, who rose to fame by opposing the Vietnam War, generally supports Obama’s troop surge. The late Senator Edward M. Kennedy, who led the opposition to the Iraq war, has been replaced by Paul G. Kirk Jr., who opposes the surge but will be in office only a few more weeks. That has provided an opening for McGovern.

When most of the Massachusetts delegation met Wednesday night at a Chinese restaurant on Capitol Hill to discuss the Afghanistan strategy Obama had announced the night before, Kerry was openly in favor (although with some qualifications), while McGovern said he was strongly against it.

McGovern said it is “a little bit ironic” that Kerry is a leader in the prosurge effort. Kerry played down the disagreement, praising McGovern as “enormously thoughtful” and saying in a statement that the war “presents as thorny an issue as you’ll find in American foreign policy. There are no good options, and even thoughtful people who care and think alike are inevitably going to find themselves in different places.”

George McGovern, who came to Worcester last month to celebrate his protégé’s birthday, is counting on the congressman to warn Obama that the mistakes of Vietnam are being repeated.

“It is very similar,” the former senator, 87, said in a telephone interview. Former president Lyndon Johnson “thought that by putting in more and more troops into Vietnam that we could make a mistaken war become correct. It just made it worse,” he said.

But others, including Obama, dispute the Vietnam analogy, pointing out that the Sept. 11 attacks were plotted from Afghanistan and warning that it could become a terrorist sanctuary again.

Having learned his skills as a top aide to the late J. Joseph Moakley, the South Boston Democrat, Jim McGovern is following a familiar antiwar strategy focused on funding. As vice chairman of the Rules Committee, he has one of the most powerful positions in Congress, enabling him to be the traffic cop on countless pieces of legislation. He also has a key post on the Budget Committee.

In May, McGovern vocally opposed a funding bill that included money for Obama’s request for 17,000 more troops in Afghanistan. McGovern’s action infuriated the White House. Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, who had worked closely with McGovern during his time as a congressman from Illinois, screamed obscenities at him in a phone conversation, warning that the president’s agenda was at stake, according to McGovern. Emanuel did not respond to a request for comment.

That funding bill eventually passed, but McGovern then made another proposal that angered the White House. He authored a measure that would require the administration to provide Congress with a detailed “exit strategy” for the military to leave Afghanistan. In June, the measure failed, but gained 138 backers, including a majority of Democrats and seven Republicans. While this week, Obama proposed pulling out troops beginning in July 2011, McGovern said that “no one believes” that it is a commitment for withdrawal on that schedule.

Tom Andrews, a former US House member from Maine who is chairman of the Win Without War Coalition, said McGovern’s call for an exit plan has been effective, calling it “a platform from which to build” an effort in Congress to end the war.

But Tarah Donoghue, a spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Republican Party, criticized McGovern’s position, saying, “Winning the war in Afghanistan is critical to our security.” So far, however, the GOP has not come up with a candidate to run against McGovern next year.

McGovern wants the US military mission to be replaced with a massive humanitarian effort. With troops mostly withdrawn, he said, the United States could build schools and do other works that he said would be more helpful to winning support from Afghans.

He acknowledged that seeking a vote on the funding for Obama’s troop surge could take months, perhaps after many of them are already in Afghanistan, which would make a funding cutoff even more politically difficult.

“There are some people who are very anxious about the policy, but say, ‘Let’s low-key it a little bit,’ ” McGovern said. But he said he hopes to win over skeptics by arguing that there should at least be a vote before more Americans are put in harm’s way.

“There’s no way,” he said, “members of Congress can avoid taking responsibility for this.”