Democracy For the Heart of America

August in Texas is more than just hot. It is stifling, oppressive, drenching, and about as uncomfortable as possible. It is so hot it is scary. The temperature is almost always above 100 during the day and cools down to about 75 at night.

Yet, in these conditions, 12,000 people came to central Texas last August to show their support for the mother of a soldier who died in Iraq. Cindy Sheehan came here to talk to the president at his vacation home to ask him what was the noble cause her son died for.

Cindy never got her audience with the president but she did build a movement. Since last August, Cindy has returned to Crawford three times and her followers have come here to join her each and every time.

Democrats Versus the Peace Movement?
Commentary: With Congress still blindly heeding the Bush administration, the anti-war movement is the only hope for peace in Iraq.

By Stephen Zunes

July 12, 2006

mother jones

Article created by Foreign Policy in Focus.

The U.S. Congress failed in recent weeks to take even symbolic steps to encourage a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, even though the majority of Americans support an end to the war. Many anti-war advocates are hoping that the mid-term U.S. elections in November will push Congress into Democratic hands and thereby increase the chances of ending the war. Don't hold your breath.

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Not In Our Name: Vietnam, Iraq and the Voters' Pledge

By Dan Ellsberg

According to recent opinion polls, most Iraqis don't believe that we're making things better or safer in their country. What does that say about the legitimacy of prolonged occupation, much less permanent American bases in Iraq? What does it mean for continued American armored patrols such as the one last November in Haditha, which, we now learn, led to the deaths of a Marine and 24 unarmed civilians?

Questions very much like these nagged at my conscience at the height of the Vietnam War, and led, eventually, to the publication of the first of the Pentagon Papers in June of 1971, 35 years ago.

Put Away the Flags
by Howard Zinn

On this July 4, we would do well to renounce nationalism and all its symbols: its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its anthems, its insistence in song that God must single out America to be blessed.

Is not nationalism -- that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder -- one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred?

These ways of thinking -- cultivated, nurtured, indoctrinated from childhood on -- have been useful to those in power, and deadly for those out of power.

Bombs Bursting in Air

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
by Cindy Sheehan, Gold Star Families for Peace

The rockets red glare,
Bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night
That our flag was still there.