Write anyway!

Unpublished/un-responded to letters...write anyway!

"Requesting More Context on Iran,"  January 6, 2020, to The Daily, podcast of The New York Times 

Dear Michael and staff,

My name is Terry Fitzgibbons, and I am a subscriber to the NYT and a fan of The Daily.  I appreciate the insight, investigative journalism, and production of the show.

However, after this morning, I am reminded that when it comes to foreign affairs--and here Iran--we need more context.  I have thought this after each of your episodes on Iran in the past several months (e.g. after the oil tanker).  This morning, we had fine reporting.  For each of the reports dealing with Iran, I've thought, "Fine reporting for the 'day of' but we need more background." 

In many instances, people's only background on Iran comes from you.  And so, even though most listeners will come away thinking that the strike on Sulemaini was bad, I am afraid that they will still leave your show falsely thinking that (1) Iran is the aggressor in the Middle East and (2) the United State mostly intervenes for "peace and stability" and (3) the United States should, on the whole, still police and intervene in the Middle East. This does not square with history.  (I write to you as a student of the Middle East, as a veteran of the US Navy, and as a public high school history teacher, in New Jersey).  I think Robert Wright's critique of your coverage is still valid: https://theintercept.com/2018/03/17/new-york-times-iran-israel-washington-think-tanks/.

We need more context and cannot keep pretending that history began a couple weeks ago, or in 2016, in 2003, or even 1979.  We need to start with the post-war era when the United States decided that the Middle East (and the rest of the world for that matter) was its for the carving.  

I keep returning to this 2004 NYT editorial mea culpa on neighboring Iraq: https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/world/from-the-editors-the-times-and-iraq.html

Once again, I write as a fan, but I write as a student and a teacher as well, and as an activist for peace.  Thanks for listening,

Sincerely,

Terry Fitzgibbons

________
"Time to Impeach Is Now," August 5, 2019, to The Bergen Record/Northjersey.com
(Part of Common Defense's LTE campaign)

Dear Editor,

As a veteran and as a constituent of New Jersey’s fifth congressional district, I call on Representative Josh Gottheimer to join the growing ranks of his colleagues demanding impeachment.  The time to impeach President Donald Trump is now.  

Trump uses veterans and the military as props for his jingoistic agenda.  He employs a false patriotism that provides cover for his high crimes and misdemeanors.  We military members took oaths to support and defend the U.S. Constitution.  Trump, likewise, took an oath to the Constitution.  Yet, he has continually violated that oath to enrich his family and himself and to amass more power.  He is unfit to be Commander in Chief.  

While it may be unlikely—at the present moment, at least—that the Senate would convict to remove him from office, the House of Representatives must nevertheless lead.  Impeachment is the moral thing to do.  If impeachment is not used now, then for whom would it be used?  Congress—and veterans and non-veterans alike pushing Congress—must hold this president accountable.  History will judge him and us.  

Sincerely,

Terry Fitzgibbons

_________
"Eternal Vigilance," May 8, 2019,  Letter to The Bergen Record/Northjersey.com

War seems imminent.  Yet, several questions remain:  Who will go first: Venezuela or Iran?  Who is calling the shots: Trump? Pompeo? Bolton?  Will the Democrats cheerlead the effort like they have in so many other wars and coups, militarism being the rare bipartisan bridge?  Who will fight in these wars: our proxies or actual Americans?  If Americans, will it be the children of these policy-makers or the poor and working class once again?  

No matter what you think of the leaders of Venezuela or of Iran--there is certainly much criticism to levy--war is not the answer.  They do not pose threats to the United States.  The opposite is true.  We have a sordid history of threatening and interfering in both.  If only we studied it.

Have we learned nothing from the catastrophic coups in Latin America in the past seventy years?  Have we learned nothing from our previous “interventions” in Iran, starting with the 1953 coup?  Have we already forgotten the devastation we wreaked in Iraq?  Or the war we can’t seem to get out of in Afghanistan?

These hawks are counting on us to be too forgetful, distracted, and indifferent to raise protest against their short-sighted and evil designs.  They are counting on us to take their claims and platitudes at face value.  Let us wake up and prove them wrong.  No war!

-Terry Fitzgibbons

On JROTC and Military Recruiting in High Schools

Portions of a letter shared with school administration

….  I am concerned about military recruiting of our students. I write as a teacher, I write as someone who signed up for the military at 17 myself, and as a result of that decision, I write as a veteran (US Navy 2004-2008).  

            As you know, military recruiting of our students takes place in the obvious scenarios when National Guard members or members of other military branches table in the cafeteria, for instance, or when they post their literature in the school.  The Junior ROTC program is also a method of military recruiting. Additionally, naturally, students are exposed to the military from recruiting stations in town and from media and relatives. What concerns me most is that many of our students who are considering the military (and this number is a higher percentage than the previous two schools I’ve taught at) and whom I have talked to do not fully comprehend what they would be signing up for.  

While I am involved in some (volunteer) anti-war advocacy work, I am not in the end a pacifist.  I believe we need a military for defensive purposes. But by definition, I believe, seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds are not best situated (psychologically, economically) to decide to join the military—a decision that can have life or death consequences.  This predicament is compounded because recruiters typically do not tell the whole picture. A recruiter’s pitch usually involves a simple “serve your country...get money for college...get job skills….” When asked about questions of war or fighting—and the possibility of killing, dying, or being maimed physically or mentally—recruiters are evasive.  That is not their fault alone—that is how they have been trained. And therefore, when I ask our students why they want to join the military and if they have considered the very real and serious possibilities and that the military’s mission is to prosecute war, they typically likewise do not have much of an answer. (I did not have an answer myself at 17, but thankfully I escaped unscathed).  I tell these students, “In the end, I will support your decision...I will even write you a letter of recommendation...but you have to do this hard thinking first...come back to me and let’s have a real conversation.”  This hard thinking is not taking place, from my cursory observations, and I believe it is our job as educators to encourage it.

Navy JROTC’s mission is “to instill in students in United States secondary educational institutions the values of citizenship, service to the United States, personal responsibility and a sense of accomplishment.”  I believe in the values of citizenship, service, responsibility, and accomplishment.  However, JROTC is necessarily a military endeavor, and I believe those values can be taught without the military aspect, even from another (non-military) government agency.  Furthermore, it is well understood that the JROTC program is a recruiting tool. That does not negate the good work that is and can be done teaching students leadership, drill, physical fitness, and other values and that does not negate the good work that our ROTC instructors do, with honor and integrity.  But, I believe that we need to name military recruiting as such and deal with it on its face.  Moreover, it is also well documented that JROTC programs are disproportionately housed in lower-income schools and districts, which are then disproportionately made up of students of color.  JROTC and other recruiters are looking to get young people enlisted.  Critics, myself included, describe this as part of the “economic draft.” At my own (predominantly white, suburban, prep) high school, we did not have JROTC or other recruiters tabling.  However, we did have representatives from West Point, Annapolis, and the Air Force Academy who would make official visits.  To the degree that they were recruiting, they were looking for top students to join the officer corps, not to enlist.  This dichotomy between officer and enlisted recruiting is part of the economic draft and further entrenches class divisions in the military and in society as a whole. One of our top seniors (who earned a 4 on the APUSH test by the way), a couple months ago, shared with me his desire to enlist in the navy after graduation. In a private conversation, I asked him where this desire came from (it was mostly for financial reasons).  I told him I would support his decision but that I wanted him to think about the (aforementioned) implications of enlisting. Additionally, I told him that, at the very least, if he still really wanted to join the military, someone of his academic ability should consider the officer route, where you go to college first: the academies (e.g. West Point), ROTC (i.e. not JROTC), or Officer Candidate School (post-grad). He did not know about these options.  If there must be military recruiting at our school, I believe our students should in all fairness know about officer options in addition to enlistment options.     

I believe all good ethics comes down to following one’s conscience.  Good people can serve in the military and survive, morally and physically, if they follow their consciences.  However, the forming of one’s conscience is what must precede the following of one’s conscience. Yes, conscience formation takes place primarily in the family and then in the community, in churches and civil society groups, but we as teachers have a duty to help form our students.  That is a major goal of our deep education, or paideia, as the ancient Greeks would call it.  I am not confident that this conscience formation is happening inside the JROTC curriculum.  History and social studies are fitting places for this conscience formation to take place—I have tried to do that here and there when discussing the Vietnam war draft, for instance—but the curriculum and pacing places constraints on the depths to which this can be done.  Likewise, I imagine English courses could provide space for this to occur as well.    

              I do not imagine that JROTC will disappear any time soon.  I understand that these are district-wide decisions and that in many cases schools receive funding from the Department of Defense.  Nor do I imagine that we will no longer have National Guard recruiters in the school. While both are indeed problematic in my opinion, I do not even wish them away at this juncture.  Our students, after weighing all options, should be able to make decisions for themselves, even if I personally do not think they’re the best decisions. However, to reiterate, I do not think our students—and students more broadly in the district, I presume—are receiving the whole picture when they are recruited explicitly or implicitly by the military....  

While I enjoy the day-to-day of working with young people and I love teaching my history curriculum, this ultimately is the reason I became a teacher: to teach critical thinking so that as citizens we can sift through the hyperbole and hysteria and prevent the next war of choice, to help form consciences so that we are not creating “yes-people” who will just follow orders (in the military or in any field), and therefore to build a more peaceful world….

No War with Iran

Iran, quick notes:
1. Call now, write now to stop war with Iran. First time? Scripts available: http://act.winwithoutwar.org/sign/stop-war-with-iran-now/.
2. All out tomorrow (Sat. Jan 4) to stop war with Iran and get troops out of Iraq. Check the listing for a city near you: https://www.codepink.org/01042020.
3. Two years ago, when I got back on Facebook after an eight-year hiatus, my very first post was from retired Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, one of the few top people from the Bush era to fully own our crimes and not just say "Mistakes were made." I re-share his piece here from Feb. 2018 (https://www.nytimes.com/20…/…/05/opinion/trump-iran-war.html). I thought, naively and somewhat self-righteously, that I could help stop the next war, which is why I got back on Facebook. Staying in touch with family and old friends' photos is a nice bonus--keep it coming and I'll try vice versa--but I still, perhaps naively, think we can stop this war. 
4. I support impeachment, but let's remember that our war-making is the larger crime (I get the narrow Ukraine-gate legal strategy; I don't believe condemnation should be zero-sum or "what about?"; it should be equal opportunity condemnation). Analogously, let's remember Watergate was pretty "small potatoes" compared to Cambodia/Laos/Vietnam (https://chomsky.info/priorities02/). Both parties have been guilty, and therefore both are in need of repentance. 
5. "Wag the Dog" anyone? Great flick (1997).
6. Can't call or march or protest? Donate to AboutFace (https://aboutfaceveterans.org/donate/) and/or  
VeteransForPeace (https://www.veteransforpeace.org/take-action/donate).
7. To argue against war with Iran is not to argue that Iran is a good actor. Iran certainly has its own transgressions. But, a, our transgressions in the region are far, far greater (plus it's not our region in the first place); we are the worse actor. And b, the biggest threat Iran poses is to its own people (see the protests a couple weeks ago or in 2009, for instance). But, let's not pretend we give a damn about the Iranian people. I wish we did, but history proves otherwise.
8. To condemn the extrajudicial targeted assassination of Suleimani is not even to defend his career or policy (in Iran, in Syria, in Iraq, or elsewhere). But, it is to uphold the rule of law, to not escalate into war, and to have perspective (consider our "Suleimanis" over the years).
9. There are many easily accessible histories of Iran and US-Iran relations (One example: https://theintercept.com/…/ghosts-of-mossadegh-the-iran-ca…/). Some thumbnail highlights:
a. at the behest of the UK and the precursor company to British Petroleum, the CIA helped overthrow the democratically elected Mohammed Mossadegh, 1953.
b. For 26 years, we fully supported the dictator, Shah, Muhammad Reza Pahlavi, until he was thrown out by the mullahs/new dictators we didn't like.
c. In the Iran-Iraq war, 1980s, we gave Saddam Hussein (remember him?) chemical weapons to use against Iran. But, playing both sides, we also gave Iran weapons in that nifty Iran-Contra scheme. 
d. In the 1980s, my former employer shot down an Iranian passenger jet, Iran Air Flight 655, killing 290 civilians on board. We said it was accidental (I'll give the benefit of the doubt that it was), but our war-like posture that led to it was not accidental, and we never apologized.
e. In 2002, we said Iran was part of an "axis of evil." Declassified and leaked documents show that Pentagon planners (and business partners) have been salivating at the prospect of war with Iran for decades. This put it back on our radar: "Iran is evil." 
f. Economic sanctions and warfare against the Iranian people for the past two decades: a tried and true strategy used in Chile, e.g., to make its "economy scream" (H. Kissinger).  
g. Positive step: Iran nuclear deal, 2015
h. Despite international observers and even our own intelligence community reports that the deal was working relatively well, President Trump pulls out of the nuclear deal, 2018. Who is the "rogue state"? (https://www.jacobinmag.com/…/iran-war-donald-trump-sanction…)
i. Military and economic squeezing of Iran in the meantime, with the help of UAE, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Israel. With the goal of external or internal provocation. This is classic "how-you-start-a-war."  
10. The masters of war in these United States of Amnesia are counting on us not caring, not acting, not knowing our history. Let's prove them wrong!
11. After stopping this one, let's rebuild this movement so it's not just reactive: https://www.thenation.com/…/how-to-revive-the-peace-moveme…/
12. Speaking of "masters of war," a little Dylan to take us out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEmI_FT4YHU
(13. Time to write this? On paternity leave and Caroline napping, believe it or not. 
14. Thanks, Dad, and maybe one other, for making it this far. Love, T)
Addendum:https://nonzero.org/post/suleimani-assassination-moralism