Florida Veterans
for Common Sense
FLORIDA VETERANS FOR COMMON SENSE, INC.
RESOLUTION
TRY ACCUSED TERRORISTS IN FEDERAL COURT
Whereas, consistent with the Constitution of the United States and the rule of law, the Justice Department has announced its intention to prosecute the Christmas bomber and other accused terrorists in federal court.
Whereas, some argue that suspected terrorists be tried only before military commissions and that the use of criminal court procedures to try terrorist suspects demonstrates that the Administration is weak on national security.
Whereas, the Justice Department has successfully prosecuted more than 300 terrorists since 2001 in Federal Court and there is no reason to sacrifice normal due process and criminal justice principles in cases involving terrorism.
Whereas, our values as a nation are reflected in our system of justice including reliance on an independent judiciary under the Constitution.
Whereas, the abdication of normal criminal justice procedures in the face of terrorist threats and for political expediency gives victory to those who seek to destroy those values.
Now, therefore, it is resolved that Florida Veterans for Common Sense demands that suspected terrorists be charged with crimes by the Justice Department and tried in Federal Court using traditional criminal justice procedures and not by military commissions.
Adopted this 18th Day of February, 2010
________________________________
Harvey Gochberg,
Secretary,
A Resolution in Opposition to the Troop Escalation for
Whereas, the
Whereas, home foreclosures are at record highs and unless the economy improves more Americans will become homeless and forced to live in tent cities.
Whereas, President Obama has decided to escalate the number troops in
Whereas, the cost of the escalation alone in
Whereas, the
Whereas, many military functions are contracted to private mercenary companies that often results in waste and corruption.
Whereas, National Security Advisor Retired General James L. Jones estimates less than 100 Al Qaeda operate in Afghanistan and he doesn’t foresee an immediate danger of Afghanistan falling to the Taliban.
Whereas, many Afghans, perhaps the majority, do not want American troops in their country.
Whereas, the American presence in
Whereas,
Whereas, Congress has the sole Constitutional authority to declare war and fund military operations.
Wherefore, it is resolved that Florida Veterans for Common Sense Inc. calls on Congress:
Adopted this 14th Day of January, 2010
S/ Harvey Gochberg
Secretary,
LETTER TO PRESIDENT OBAMA
October 29, 2009
President Barack Obama
1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Washington, D.C. 20500
VIA FAX: (202) 456-2461
Dear President Obama,
The members of Florida Veterans for Common Sense thank you for showing your respect for the soldiers recently killed in Afghanistan when their bodies arrived home in America. We know that you are heartsick for the personnel who made the ultimate sacrifice and for their families and loved ones.
As you are acutely aware, our soldiers are doing their best to carry out your orders. With that knowledge, and the awesome responsibility to send soldiers into harms way, we applaud your efforts to weigh all factors before sending more soldiers to Afghanistan as recommended by General McChrystal and others.
Our members recognize that your administration inherited two wars from the previous administration, but we beseech you not to be constrained by its failed strategy for Afghanistan. A new strategy must be forged.
In our view, our troops should be brought home from Afghanistan before more lives are wasted in misadventure. No cogent national security interest exists that justifies the costs in both lives and treasure to maintain combat troops in Afghanistan. As the Pentagon acknowledges, Al Qaeda in Afghanistan has been decimated. And, Al Qaeda doesn’t need to use Afghanistan to plan and execute operations against American and our allies.
Please find with this letter the position statement of Florida Veterans for Common Sense in respect to troop levels in Afghanistan. If you, or your staff, have any questions, please contact us.
Thank you for your consideration of our viewpoint from the perspective of veterans.
Sincerely,
Gene Jones
President, Florida Veterans for Common Sense, Inc. __________________________________
Join Florida Veterans for Common Sense
IRAQ WAR POSITION PAPER
Florida Veterans for Common Sense: Withdraw from Iraq (Sept. 2009)
A new Iraqi government was established in 2005. We have given the Iraqi government more than adequate time and resources to train personnel sufficient to maintain the peace.
What is the mission in Iraq now? Are United States armed forces in Iraq to avoid civil war between Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds? If so, should our soldiers be forced to stay in perpetuity because Iraqis cannot reconcile their differences?
Reconstruction efforts have failed. Billions of dollars are unaccounted for. Corruption is rampant by both Iraqis and Americans. Basic services are still not back to pre-invasion levels. Reconstruction should be transferred to the United Nations, or other international agencies. The American military should not be used for reconstruction in Iraq.
Maintaining troops in Iraq jeopardizes our national security. Every dollar wasted could be spent at home to stabilize our economy. What is gained by saving the Iraq’s economy if we weaken our own by continuing to spend $12 billion per month in Iraq? Nobel winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has calculated the cost of the Iraq operation alone at three trillion dollars.
Over 4,324 Americans have been killed and 69,659 have become ill or wounded, and the carnage continues. Many returning soldiers suffer from injuries, post traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury that will haunt them forever.
Our military is stretched and our personnel deserve a lengthy tour at home. In WWII, combat soldiers averaged six months in a combat zone. In Viet Nam, they averaged eleven to twelve months. In Iraq, many have deployed to Iraq for several years.
Keeping troops in Iraq lends credence to the beliefs that we invaded Iraq to occupy a Middle Eastern, Muslim country, or to control Iraqi oil. These beliefs are fertile recruiting tools for our enemies. We can’t successfully combat terrorism with tactics that create terrorists as fast, or faster, than our soldiers can kill them. Maintaining troops in Iraq diminishes our capacity to combat terrorists.
If the Iraqis need more help, it should be under the aegis of the United Nations or some other umbrella group with soldiers from Muslim countries.
An 18-year-old kid off the streets of New York or a farm in Georgia can be trained as a Marine in 13 weeks, so why don't the Iraqis have robust military and police forces in Iraq after so many years? The Marine knows who his government is and what he is fighting for. Does the Iraqi? Our troops have done their duty to stabilize Iraq and should be withdrawn from Iraq immediately on a timetable consistent with their safety.
__________________________________________________________________
Florida Veterans for Common Sense, Inc., a 501 (c) (4) corporation. FLVeterans@aol.com
Join Florida Veterans for Common Sense
Veterans Benefits
We have a simple contract with the members of our armed forces: You fight for us; we will take care of you. At times, that contract has taken a beating. Ask just about any veteran. So, when my friend, a retired Army captain, told me recently that his health care co-payments were going up, I knew it was happening again. And, this time it is happening in the middle of a war in Iraq, and while we are facing perhaps decades of a struggle against terrorism. And, my friend’s increased payments are just a small part of it. The Florida Sun Vets magazine points to reports that the Department of Defense is going to raise TRICARE premiums for military retirees under the age of 65. At the same time, the Veterans Administration backlog of disability claims, which had improved dramatically in recent years, now is back up to more than 368,000, says the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Two different funding sources are involved, the DOD and the VA, but both involve veterans. The Military Officers Association of America (MOAA) puts a fine point on all of this: The Joint Chiefs of Staff are having to choose between weapons and health care at a time of hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts and billions of dollars more in budget pork. MOAA believes this is only the first round of cost-shifting and that this is the most serious threat to military benefits in years. And, those aren't the only problems. Our warriors of today are being affected by glitches in the system.
Sgt. Edward Wade of the 82nd Airborne Division, lost an arm and suffered a traumatic brain injury in Iraq, but he has had to battle the Army to obtain care at Walter Reed Army Medical Center for the loss of his right arm.
Capt. Troy O’Donley, Army National Guard, had to insist on remaining on active duty to receive care at WRAMC, showing the need for providing equal access to care for wounded members of the Guard and Reserve.
We must have improved services for our military, active, honorably discharged and retired. Much has been accomplished in the Veterans Administration in recent years, but much more needs to be done.
And, it must be done on a continuing, transparent, sensible basis. Neither the DOD nor the VA can solve the biggest overriding problem. Only Congress can move veterans health care from a discretionary to a mandatory funding source. This would eliminate the year-to-year uncertainty about funding levels that have prevented the VA from adequately planning and meeting the needs of veterans, the same uncertainty that puts our military leaders in a no-win situation with the DOD.
In addition to the humanitarian reasons to do this, there is a very practical one. We need our finest young men and women to continue enlisting to help in the struggle against terrorism. Ensuring them the best possible health care is a big incentive to do so.
More importantly, Our senior military leaders would not be put in the dishonorable position of choosing between money for weapons and money to help veterans. __________________________________
Join Florida Veterans for Common Sense
Our fiscal year starts October 1 and dues for those who wish to be voting members are only $25.
Checks should be made payable to Florida Veterans for Common Sense and brought to the meeting or mailed to treasurer, Dennis Plews, at 27 Fletcher Ave., Sarasota, FL 34237.
Or you may Pay online with Paypal
the safer, easier way to pay
(no Paypal account required)
Memorial Day Talks: May 30 & May 31, 2010
I want to welcome my fellow veterans, my brothers and sisters, to your West Pasco Historical Society, a place that remembers, a place that makes sure that others never forget.
Today, on this Memorial Day, I want to share some memories with you of wars and freedom. As an old Marine and one-time soldier, I can only echo the thoughts of the Roman centurion when he sought the help of Jesus: I am not worthy to have survived my military service, to stand beneath this roof in this place of peace, but I know that few human beings love peace as much as warriors do, for they remember what wars did to them and to others, firsthand.
A number of years ago, at the high school in
And then an older teacher spoke, a veteran of the time between the Korean War and the Vietnam Conflict, who told how he encouraged his students to join the fight against communism in
We gather to celebrate another Memorial Day, in the shadow of new wars. I joined the Marine Corps in a time of peace, just out of college. Some time after, my younger brother Johnny—a big bad mother—was given a choice of jail or the Marines—he chose the Marine Corps. That choice led to his death at the age of 33 from exposure to Agent Orange during his tour in
So many good young men were taken from us during the World Wars, and Korea, and Vietnam, and all the conflicts since then, and right now, today, our forces are engaged in battles in Afghanistan and Iraq, and no doubt elsewhere as well. Those we lose to our wars are forever young: no gray hair for them, not pot bellies, no worries about bills, or cholesterol, or thinning hair. No pain—not any more. Yet they and we have lost so much with their early deaths. For many of them there was no marrying, no having children, no having grandchildren. No nights of loving. No more laughter, No satisfying work or career. No dreams of retirement. No time to learn the full meaning of their precious lives. No more time. No more life.
Forgive me for not praising their sacrifice on our behalf for some concept of freedom. Do we really want young people to sacrifice themselves for us, do we? And I’m sure they would sooner be alive than dead. Death in battle is sometimes but not always heroic. In the heat and smell and chaos of battle, the young don’t think of national interests or freedom at such a time. Those who fight do so for the person to their right and left, fighting with courage, and tenacity, sometimes in sheer terror and madness, but they always hope to live, even if just to fight another day in another place.
These men and women forever young deserve to be remembered, and loved and perhaps even honored. They would be embarrassed by such attention for merely doing their jobs well. If asked if their sacrifice was worth it, they would probably say—sacrifice—what sacrifice? I didn’t give my life to defeat the Germans or the Japanese, or to defeat communism, or to save
I hoped in the aftermath of my service in
If only that monument could speak—what might it say? Let me try to speak for it, for those names that includes at least 13 of my friends:
I am a
My men and I believed the lies that we were too young to die, too good to lose, too strong to suffer. How could we believe that?
We Americans went to save the South Vietnamese from their North Vietnamese brothers, and we ended up slaughtering any and all Vietnamese: North and South, soldiers and civilians, men and women, old and young. What a brave beautiful people they are! I bear them no hatred for fighting us so fiercely. They deserve their costly victory. I don’t deserve their gift of forgiveness.
Those of you who knew and loved a veteran lost to war, think of them often when they were young, and strong and full of life. Remember them with all their strengths and weaknesses. Remember them whole, and full of promise. Please, remember them. All wars represent failure with no ultimate victors, just victims. But never doubt for a moment how much these young people and my brother Johnny loved their friends, their family, the military in which they served, and the country responsible for their deaths.
And for the future, can we learn to question the call to war? Can we learn to distrust patriotism when it is arrogant and plain wrong? Can we learn to love peace? Can we save ourselves and all the lives that grow out of our lives? We must. We have to. Otherwise, our children and children’s children will become soldiers some day, and some will always die. So, practice love. Practice patience. Practice forgiveness. Practice peace. _________________________
MEMORIAL DAY TALK 5/30/10
By: Gene Jones, President FLVCS
On this Memorial Day weekend as we remember and honor those who sacrificed so much for us, let us also reflect on the true meaning of patriotism.
Every Memorial Day I always think about my Granddaddy, who for me was the greatest of patriots. He served as a “Doughboy” in the bloody trenches of
Granddaddy was too tough to give up and survived although he lost part of a lung and suffered for the rest of the life.
Like many veterans, my Granddaddy didn’t talk much about his war experiences, but he did relate enough for me to know that he had come face to face with hell on earth.
Granddaddy hated war like only those who have experienced combat can. Over the years, he conveyed to me in his own gentle way the horrors of war along with the unmistakable message that war should be avoided unless necessary to protect and defend our people.
Although he never complained, it was clear he didn’t believe that the WWI victory was worth the cost to him and his compatriots. He came to believe the doughboys didn’t bleed and die to protect our country, but that politicians had allowed America to become entangled in foreign squabbles and that we fought to prop up European monarchies, the very circumstance our founders warned us to avoid.
After his WWI experience, Granddaddy questioned most everything politicians said about foreign policy and foreign threats. And he had good reason to be skeptical. After all, the very politician who had campaigned on a peace platform ordered him to
Yet for all the hardship he endured, Granddaddy was not a pacifist. Although weakened by war, I have no doubt he would have still fought for us in an emergency if needed.
When I graduated from high school, the Vietnam War was heating up. I could feel Granddaddy’s pain about that development. He knew I was subject to the draft and liable, like him, to be ordered halfway around the world to fight and kill, or be killed, by people who were no threat to us. He never advised me not to serve, but warned me in subtle ways to avoid the fight if possible and to be on guard for big shots who’d sacrifice my safety for their own interests.
The last time I saw my Granddaddy, I was shipping out for my Air Force assignment in
I’m proud to say my Granddaddy was a citizen soldier who stood up when called. He was a true patriot who knew that
and he questioned the hogwash used to justify it.
He had internalized the lessons taught by the Founding Fathers like John Quincy Adams who admonished us not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy; Thomas Paine who told us that the author of a war lets loose the whole contagion of hell and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death; and Benjamin Franklin who viewed war as expensive folly.
Unlike my granddaddy, most citizens today have forgotten, or never heard, our founders’ sage advice about war and as a consequence we have widespread ignorance and denial concerning our country’s militarism.
Since WWII, by my count, we have bombed 23 countries (some twice) and have used force, quasi-military interventions, or the threat of military attack over 60 times to overthrow or interfere in the internal affairs of foreign governments. You should note that these operations in the main have been directed against weak and mostly defenseless nations.
Here is a partial list of the countries:
We’ve used force against
We haven’t let other South American countries manage their own affairs either. We’ve intervened in
We are now operating bases in
Asian countries include:
In Africa:
In the Middle East and Central Asia:
European countries have not been spared our attention either. We’ve intervened in
Constant warfare weakens us and militarism is destroying our democracy. Our Constitution vests the power to declare war to Congress. James Madison said specifically, “The power to declare war including the power of judging the causes of war is exclusively vested in the legislature and that the executive has no right to decide whether there is just cause for war.” George Washington said that no important offensive expedition could be taken until after the Congress deliberated and authorized the action.
We should heed James Madison’s advice who said that the executive is the branch most interested in war and that if tyranny and oppression comes to
The last time Congress declared war was against the Axis powers in WWII.
George W. Bush confirmed for us that congress has abdicated its authority to the executive. He called himself “The Decider.” He was correct because Congress no longer determines issues of war and peace. And perhaps the president doesn’t either. We learned last week that General Patraeus has issued an order authorizing covert military operations in
Permanent war puts our liberties at risk. Wars and threats are used to justify jailing people and denying them the right to trial or even habeas corpus. We torture people and euphemistically call it “enhanced interrogation.”
Terrorist threats are used as justification by presidents to claim the right to be judge, jury, and executioner. By executive order, presidents assert the authority to kill American citizens aboard.
Our warfare state is maintained by lies and propaganda that we as citizens and our politicians are unwilling to confront. In the run-up to the
Our own Senator Nelson said that the administration lied to him in order to get his vote to authorize the invasion, but as far as anybody knows he has done nothing to hold anybody accountable.
Many who spread the lies and propaganda about
Militarism makes us poor. We have massive deficits and the economy is strained as a result of wasteful defense spending. President Obama’s new budget freezes everything except war spending. Some politicians say we don’t have the money to help unemployed people but these same politicians will vote to fund the Afghan war escalation by borrowing money.
According to the 9/11 Commission, in the years leading up to the attack the Department of Defense had an annual budget greater than the GDP of Russia. We are now spending, adjusted for inflation, more on the Pentagon than in any year since 1946.
Our war spending is just under that of the rest of the world combined. We spend about three times the combined defense budgets of
Congress is considering right now a supplemental appropriation in excess of 35 billion dollars to fund the war escalation in
Joseph Stiglitz, the Noble Prize winning economist, calculates that the
War spending increases the national debt and crowds out domestic spending that could increase our competitiveness.
And, we should note, the Pentagon can’t even account for how it spends the money according to its own inspectors general and the Congressional Budget Office. The Pentagon spends with little oversight or control. As an example, it paid the Iraq National Congress, headed by convicted bank fraudster and self proclaimed “hero in error”Ahmed Chalabi, $300,000 per month to generate “intelligence” to justify the Iraq invasion although the CIA knew he was a con.
Whose pockets were lined and whose pockets are lined by the billions we pay mercenary companies operating in
After his retirement, Marine Corps Commandant General Smedley Butler reflected upon his long career suppressing indigenous political movements particularly in
The worst consequence of perpetual war is the terrible price our soldiers pay. Nearly two million soldiers have served in
Our culture has become callous to the horrors of war. Barbara Bush said it’s not relevant to hear about body bags and death. Marine General Mattis said it is a hell of a hoot to fight and its fun to shot some people. General McChrystal, speaking about
In
We have now been at war in
And
Yet in the face of all this militarism, we must not give up. As Eleanor Roosevelt said, “It isn’t enough to talk about peace. One must believe it. And it isn’t enough to believe it. One must work at it.”
Many citizens still question the counterproductive wars and wasteful defense spending. Congress is stirring. Alan Grayson has filed the War is Making Us Poor Act and Senator Gordon has threatened to filibuster the bill to fund the Afghan War Escalation.
Veterans opposed to unnecessary wars are speaking out and are learning to be politically effective. Veterans for Peace has struggled to end war since the Vietnam War and Florida Veterans for Common Sense formed in opposition to the
We must persevere and speak truth to power. As John F. Kennedy said, “Peace is a daily, a weekly, a monthly process gradually changing opinions, slowly eroding old barriers, quietly building new structures.”
Instead of authors of war, we should be authors of goodwill and friendship to bind up the wounds wrought by so much war. We can best memorialize our soldiers by working for peace and, like Granddaddy, remaining skeptical of propaganda by political and military elites who seek war.
We should have learned by now that victory in war can generate more enemies. Donald Rumsfeld noticed in
This weekend, as we reflect on the sacrifice of our soldiers we should keep in mind that we can only build a safe and prosperous future with peace.
And we should hold close George Washington’s admonition:
“CULTIVATE PEACE AND HARMONY WITH ALL.”
_______________________________________________________________________
Florida Veterans for Common Sense
100 Wallace Street, Suite 255
Sarasota, FL 34237
phone: 941 349-5131
email:FLveterans@aol.com