Here are two chicks who talk more sense than all the guys who pundit with their blowhard dicks in the air

1. A Female Perspective
Busting Loose of the War Engine
By LAURA SANTINA (from counterpunch.org)

We have been living under a black, cold cloud for nearly three and a half years.

We wake up and go to sleep afraid. Our conversations are wary and fearful. We feel the hatred from people from other countries. We know the War on Iraq is generating more hate and more terrorists. We know our private lives are being monitored and recorded by agents of our own government. We know our soldiers are killing innocent Iraqi civilians. We know the unleashed sectarian violence in Iraq is out of control.

We know that the only way to end this bloody debacle is to bring the troops home and we are finally finding the courage to say it. The time-to-get-out-of-Iraq message sent by Connecticut voters on behalf of Ned Lamont was loud and clear. They voted against an old-liner whose voting record was in lock-step with the war machine.

It is too late to cry over spilt milk, but one can't but wonder what might have happened after 9/11 with a wiser, saner leadership. Attacking Iraq was topic A at President Bush's very first national security meeting, according to Paul O'Neill, former Treasury Secretary. As is common knowledge, Bush and his team just used 9/11 as an excuse to follow through with their plan. Someone poked a finger in our eye so we poked two fingers in somebody else's eye? The decision will be seen as the village idiot of US foreign policy for years to come.

The kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers became Israel's "9/11." The Israeli leadership used the incident to justify their attack on Lebanon.

The US/Israeli military strategies exposed by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker conjured up pictures of hedonistic old men who hold leadership positions in both governments. Tony Blair appeared to have a day pass. They were on their hands and knees playing with wind-up toy soldiers, miniature bombers and bunker busters on a plastic replica of the Middle East the size of a football field. They jabbed each other in the ribs and whispered about secret torture camps. They studied the bombing and strafing of Kosovo and plotted the bombing and strafing of Lebanon. They scribbled notes that read, "Faster! Faster!" and passed them to white coats furiously constructing nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. Orders for weapons rang in from every corner of the earth and the gold piled high against the walls. The old men paused and giggled and slapped shiny medals on one another's chests, oblivious to the death cries, oblivious to the future of the earth.

The Connecticut election brought with it an autumn breeze that lifted the veil covering the US/Israeli War Propaganda machine. People saw the Wizard of Oz, or was it Karl Rove? sitting on a mountain of blood-soaked corpses, whipping up fear and spinning facts, spewing one-sided sound bites into his microphone.

So why did it take us nearly three and a half years to realize that the senseless torture and massacre of innocent people was probably not a good idea? The National Intelligence Council published a report in January, 2005, indicating that the War on Iraq was actually a training ground, not a deterrent, for terrorists. Why did it take us so long to catch on and what have we lost?

It took us so long because the Democrats in Congress (except for a few notable men and women) stood silently by and watched and voted for war. They seemed to be shrink-wrapped. Hopefully, one day we'll find out why. It is clear, though, in studying their voting records which members of Congress, such as Joe Liebermann, were influenced not only by the Bush team, but by the Israeli Lobby that has such a tight grip on the country, as described by Tom Hayden in Counterpunch.

It took us so long because of an eerie media blackout. All but one of the daily papers endorsed the war. The corporate media continued, and still continues, to pound the US/Israeli War Propaganda drum daily. "Unpatriotic" and "anti-Semitic" warnings were used to threaten anyone who disagreed with the US/Israeli war policies. There was no balanced analysis of the Israeli occupation of Palestine, the US invasion of Afghanistan, the US invasion of Iraq or the recent brutality in Lebanon. It was hard to find any perspective but that of the Bush administration. It was very hard to even find out how many people on the other sides had been killed. The attacked and occupied people were not only demonized, but were given no voice.

The Middle East, in spite of what the US/Israeli media want us to believe, is not a cohesive block preying in Israel. It is a bunch of contending, struggling little countries that never even came to the collective military or humanitarian aid of their Palestinian brothers who have been oppressed by Israel for so many years. Hezbollah, originally a terrorist organization much like Menachem Begin's militant Zionist organization, Irgun, had matured into a democratically elected, if minor, element of the Lebanese government. Now the Israeli/US attacks on Lebanon have motivated 80% of the Lebanese population to support Hezbollah.

To break this three and a half year spell, we need first to loosen the stranglehold of the military industrial complex President Eisenhower warned us about: enormous military budgets, huge standing armies, weapons development industries that market their weapons to anybody who'll pay. As the war engine of the world, we are on a collision course and we need to shut it down and break loose before the world blows up in our faces.

There were no terrorists in Iraq before the US invasion. The US created terrorism in Iraq and will continue to activate terrorist cells until the "training ground" is shut down and the US troops are brought home. The insurgency is fueled by the occupation. The Iraqi leaders of all factions agree that the US must be expelled. No one can guess beyond the US exit. Civil war may continue or it may not. If it does, the US will be in a better position to influence a peaceful solution than we are as occupiers bashing down doors with M16s.

We need to construct a new foreign policy in which the US becomes an integral part of creating a peaceful, functioning world. The possibilities are immense. Nixon visited China and made peace. We are still trading with China. Lebanon is much less intimidating than China. After years of being an arch enemy, the USSR is our ally. War is a pretty fundamental testosterone game. Isn't it time to raise the bar? Isn't it time to step up to the plate as a reasoned world player instead of a demented prince who breaks promises and refuses to honor treaties? Isn't it time to use our intelligence, creativity and resources to negotiate peace treaties and build alliances?

The losses suffered in this recent, savage phase of history have been catastrophic. The wasted human lives will weigh heavily on our collective conscience for years to come. Over 100,000 people are dead or wounded.

A terrible new kind of anti-Semitism is spilling into the hearts and minds of Americans. I heard about it bubbling up across the country and witnessed it personally in San Francisco at a recent peace demonstration. It was the passion behind anti-Israel slogans chanted. It was the fire in an anti-Jewish chant. It was a protest from people whose friends and families had been murdered or whose apartment buildings, roads, water systems, bridges and hospitals had been bombed by the savage Israeli attack on Lebanon. It was a protest from people with relatives in Palestine. It was an anguished cry from people who had been allowed no voice in the US or Israel.

Two men wearing yarmulkes listened to the chanters and scribbled their own handwritten sign which read, "Israel, stop the killing!" The beleaguered expressions and nods of some of the older marchers, some of them also Jewish, acknowledged their agreement with the chanters.

The Washington Post-ABC News poll taken at the time of the Connecticut election indicated that most Americans are anti-incumbent, which means they don't like the way the people in office have done their jobs. They want decisive policy change. The Democratic Party, just as in the last election, is side-stepping the issue that is strangling the country. They are clinging to the Democratic National Committee economic fixation with the "middle class."

The people of Connecticut, the new patriots who had the courage to vote their consciences, have given us hope. They voted for a new, anti-war voice. We need more new voices, new visionaries. We are short of time. We need candidates, from whatever political parties, who are not afraid to look the War on Iraq straight in the eye and call for withdrawal. We need one another, on the ground, doing everything we can to bring this war engine to a dead stop. So very much is at stake, for us and for the world.

(Laura Santina is co-chair of the Berkeley/East Bay branch of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. She is a freelance political and environmental writer and author of the novel, The Used Husband Store. She can be reached at: lsantina@sbcglobal.net)


2. It's Time to Make Some Judgments, Take Some Actions
American Responsibility and Palestine
By MEGAN WILES (from counterpunch.org)

Something about Palestine is an ego trip for a white girl. You have delusions of grandeur, that you will arrive on the scene and the Palestinians will have parades and cry "Peace! Oh, yes, peace at last." You feel you can keep people safe because you are an American with Inalienable Rights, that Nobody can do Anything to you, that people will listen to you because you are a Westerner with access to powerful and rich people. You come here half expecting that you will end the occupation single-handedly. You believe soldiers will listen to you, will obey your orders because, after all, you have paid for their guns and jeeps and military-issued boxer briefs.

Some of the Palestinians believe this, too, that you have magic keys, a mystical power to open checkpoints and minds and stop bulldozers from destroying their homes. They ask you "Please talk to them." They ask you this while holding their babies, they ask you to explain to the men with guns that they are sick and cannot wait in line in the hot sun. They ask you to bring medicine from America, to help them build factories, to talk to George Bush and tell him how much they are suffering. They ask you to speak to the American people, all 200 million of them, to tell them to stop sending tax money to the American government, who is sending the money to the Israeli government, who is sending the money to Palestinians in care packages of bullets and rockets and monster bulldozers.

And you become sick with guilt because you know it is your responsibility to help with these things, because you know it is being done in your name and with your money, but mostly it is your responsibility because you try to be a good human being and when people are suffering you believe this is wrong and you want it to stop. You know that if you were a Palestinian--and there's really no rhyme or reason as to why you weren't born in Palestine, nothing special you did to deserve to be born in America--you would wish that people cared enough about you to stop this horrible thing being done to you.

The longer you are in Palestine, the more you learn, the more you see, you realize that there is actually very little you can do. You are mostly alone here, and there are 200 million people back in America and they feel bad about the stuff that you tell them, but not bad enough to take direct action to stop the killings, stop the wall, stop home demolitions. It will take thousands of people to do this, thousands of people to rebuild Palestine, thousands of people to stop the governments of America and Israel who are slowly killing the Palestinians. Surely out of 200 million, there are a couple thousand who have the time and resources to help you fix this problem. But they are not here. There are only 10 Americans here. You want to get pissed at people. You want to say "Why are you making me do this alone? Why am I the only one fixing our mistakes? Why aren't you here, too?"

In the same instant, you forgive them, because you know it's hard, when you have families and bills and when you are trying to find your own happiness, too. You forgive them and you decide not to judge them because you are not God, and you know that you are no saint. Because you know that when you leave this place you will be secretly glad to return to the quiet streets and the endless water and the malls full of cold air and shoes.

My friends and family and homies, the world is seriously sick right now, and the American government has not only proved themselve to be incapable of fixing things, they have also proved that they are the instigators of the sickness. We have a war in Afghanistan, a war in Iraq, we pushed for and financially supported the war in Lebanon, we support the Occupation of Palestine, and there is talk of war with Iran and North Korea. Please email back if you disagree.

We can't sit back and allow them to do what they want with our tax dollars and our power, because they are abusing it and they are killing people, and meanwhile our own education system has gone to shit, millions of people don't have health insurance, everyone is working two jobs just to get by, New Orleans is still a pile of rubble....it goes on and on. We have to take things into our own hands. We have to start working on the world's problems--and the problems within our own country-- as if they are are our own problems. It's the only way things will change. We have to be brave enough to say "This is not who we want to be anymore. This is not the way we want the world to be anymore." No one is going to do it for you. I repeat--if you are unhappy with the conditions of the world, the conditions of your country and your life, you have to do something about it personally, because no one is going to do it for you.

End sermon. Things seem really bad right now, but at the same time I feel a current of change moving through our people. I think you all are tired of this militaristic, war-driven, corporate-controlled society we live then. I think you all know that there is a better way to live. I think you ready for it to happen, and I trust the day is approaching when you will feel you have the power to make it happen, when we stand strong together and take back our country.

My humble advice? Start small. Start with yourself--examine your job, your lifestyle, the things you buy--investigate how your own actions impact the world at large. Read independent media. Go to a lecture that sounds crazy and progressive and radical, and see what you think. Don't just give your money away to charity--this is still expecting other people to do the work for you. Roll up your sleeves, dig in, do volunteer work, educate yourself on political candidates, call your congressman when you're pissed off. Participate in government--this is what democracy is. Be the change you wish to see in the world.

I don't know anything, I'm not an authority on anything, but I know we can't go on living the way we are, the world cannot sustain it. I know most people are unhappy, and we need to do something about that.

(Megan Wiles is an actress who teaches Theater of the Oppressed to young people through the Center for Survivors of Torture and War Trauma in Saint Louis, Missouri. She can be reached at missmagan3@yahoo.com)