by
Brian Mann on April 25th, 2011
The Glens Falls Post-Star is reporting that a new anti-war group has formed at ACC in Queensbury. They’ll hold a rally on Thursday evening, featuring at least one veteran Marine who now opposes America’s continuing wars overseas.
A newly formed ACC student club, Peace Not Propaganda, organized the event.
Secretary and organizer Christopher Schmidt, a first-year student, said he hopes the event will provide an alternative viewpoint.
“A lot of soldiers go in for financial stability, and it’s kind of sad. A lot of these people don’t believe in the cause, they’re just going in for money,” he said.
The “Rally for Peace!” will be held at 12:30 pm Thursday at the Miller Auditorium in Dearlove Hall at Adirondack Community College.
Tags: college, war
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If you are going to oppose military action, then why not oppose having a military? If you are for one but not the other, what you are for is a spending money for the sake of spending money.
This rally is a good sign. It’s too bad that the peace movement has pretty much withered since Obama’s election.
Pete: I think it’s perfectly reasonable to be in favor of the military as a national defense force but not as an imperial conquering force. Of course we could cut the military by a significant amount and not affect national security (and probably improve it by not creating so many enemies). But the military’s current bloated size serves ends that have nothing to do with security (corporate welfare, a substitute for rural economic development policies, etc). It should be like homeowners insurance: there in case of emergencies but you hope you never have to use it.
scratchy, that is an interesting observation and pretty accurate. We have basically expanded the war (sorry make that “wars” efforts (4 if you want to include Pakistan) and yet this administration is cut all kinds of slack in the press. I wonder what that is? Bush was a demigod, Obama appears to be treated as some kind of passive observer?
The anti-war movement took a break after the election of Obama for good reason. Obama promised to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, close Gitmo and put the prisoners on trial in open court. It was appropriate to give him some time to make those things happen. But Obama has not gotten a pass from the Left. Patience has been running out.
I think it is also true that a portion of the anti-war movement is feeling defeated and demoralized. They finally get someone in office who they thought was going to be their guy, only to have – as Paul points out – the wars continued and expanded.
I’m also not sure it is clear what could be accomplished by continuing the movement as it was under Bush.
I think those two things have more to do with the lack of a movement right now, than who is in office.
I think this is a good sign. Now is the time when it came make a difference. We have some important decisions coming up this year, leaving Iraq in December, not entering in any of these civil wars breaking out in the Middle East and leaving Afghanistan.
I think Obama will have a tendency to possibly wander into deeper engagements unless pressured. Leaving Iraq in December as planned and starting the draw down in Afghanistan would be major accomplishments for him I hope he sees that.
There are several problems here. First is that technically we are not at war and this creates the second problem.
If we were actually at war, our objective would be to wage war until someone surrendered or there was no one left to surrender. But what we having been doing since Korea is fighting with one hand, sometimes two, tied behind our backs. We seem more worried about so called civilian casualties than we worry about our troops.
So in a sense I agree we should get out – get out of any place we are not willing to wage war to win a victory. I also think we should pull our troops out of every single country where we are not engaged in any fighting and we certainly shouldn’t have our troops involved in any nonsense such as the nonsensical War on Drugs.
Knuckle: that’s exactly the problem. True movements depend on policies and results, not on personalities or party affiliation or whether the guy in power is one of “you” not one of “them.” Effective movements don’t give those in power “a break.” They keep the pressure on until they get the desired result, not until they get the desired warm and fuzzy rhetoric. You don’t “give him time” and hope for the best. You try to make the best happen. That can only happen when you act as participants in democracy, not spectators.
Brian MOFYC, I didn’t say the movement gave Obama a break. In the words of that lousy 80’s song “(he) made me promises,promises/ (he) knew (he) would not keep”.
We was bamboozled! Who knew a politician would go back on his promises?!
But why do we think we were bamboozled?
He said he would leave Iraq on a timetable and he is, he said he would escalate Afghanistan and he did.
I don’t think people wanted to listen to what he was saying, he was one of those guys who everyone just projects their own positive fantasies on.
I didn’t vote for him and I don’t like much of what he is doing, but I have to admit he is doing what he said he would do; health care, big spending to stimulate the economy, escalate Afghanistan and leave Iraq.
He didn’t close Guantanimo or try those guys in civil courts, which he said he would do but were good decisions not to. These guys cannot be convicted in civil courts, they were tortured, they were given to us on the battlefield, we could never prove them guilty of anything. We could not prove Bin Laden guilty in our civil courts if we caught him. He didn’t fly the planes, there is no paper trail, he applauded and encouraged, but that is it. Think of the fallout for Obama when these terrorists are found innocent.
Personally, I’m all for peace, every service member I ever knew wanted peace. Getting shot at stinks. But as far as thinking that a bunch of kids at ACC have any real grasp on what the real world is like and what sacrifices are required…nah, I don’t think so.
Mervel, your comment is very accurate.
But Bret, and this is a sincere question, weren’t you one of the people asking in earlier comment threads where all the anti-war protesters had gone since Obama took office? If so, at least give them points for upholding ideals. If you weren’t, apologies.
OA, you’re certainly right in that sense. I just wonder what the drive is suddenly. Who is pushing this and why? If the media/anti war groups were trashing Obama over his war making as they did with Bush or if they had done the same with Clinton as they did with Bush1 then I wouldn’t be so skeptical.
Why? Libya. Another open-ended war/not war. And an Afghan strategy that doesn’t appear to be working. And war fatigue. What have we gotten out of this?
History is long and ugly. Just about every problem in the world today can be laid upon the backs of England. You know England, that country that fought against us twice on our own soil.
In the case of Afghanistan, we probably wouldn’t be there if we had not sided with the Taliban against the Russians. If we hadn’t done that, there might not have been a 911.
I hope Obama listens to his better Angels and really does get us out of all of these wars. I mean I don’t even like his domestic agenda but if he really did get us out of Iraq and Afghanistan and didn’t start any new wars; I would vote for him in 2012.
Chris Schmidt is the person who seemingly single-handedly forced accountability on the Glens Falls Police department for their use of Tasers.
Almost a year ago Schmidt met with the City’s Common Council and demanded that the police department be held accountable for the large number of Taser incidents/abuse in the city. The Mayor promised to have yearly reporting on Taser use. From my reading of the Post Star Taser use is down significantly since that meeting. I believe the first report is due in a week or so.
Can one person make a difference?
Pete, correction: the Taliban did not exist during the Soviet/Afghan war. We supported various Mujahiddeen groups. There were many of those groups headed by various people who came to be known as Warlords including Ismail Khan who is now some sort of government minister, Ahmad Shah Massoud who was assassinated just before the World Trade Center attack, and Gulbaddin Hekmatyar who is currently our enemy in Afgahnistan but is not considered Taliban.
After the Soviets left, the Mujahiddeen started a civil war to control the country and the Taliban was formed (probably funded by the Pakistani ISI and aided by the CIA) as a means to unite the country–probably so that Unocal could run an oil pipeline through Afghanistan to bring Central Asian oil to a port in Pakistan.
Knuck,
It’s always the CIA, screwing around and screwing things up. But they do have fun, just like the DEA. Games, games and more games until the military needs to go in and try to fix up the mess.
We should never deal with war lords or tribal leaders anywhere. It’s like dealing with the Hatfields and McCoys. As Tatter says, “You can’t fix stupid.”