UPDATE: Tuesday, Oct 31, 2023 · 5:49:43 PM +00:00
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Robert Naiman
Some commenters on the diary appear to believe that the call for #CeasefireNOW implies leaving the hostages in place. It does not. See the IfNotNow website. The IfNotNow call for #CeasefireNOW includes freeing all the hostages. Obviously, keeping civilians captive is an act of violence. Just ask two million Palestinian civilians being kept captive in Gaza under the longstanding Gaza blockade.
I watched Pharaoh Bibi on CNN last night. (Yes, I’m attending the Graduate Seminar in Advanced Masochism now.)
“There will be no ceasefire!” Pharaoh Bibi thundered. “There will be no cessation of hostilities!”
We asked nicely for “ceasefire.” Even the Pope asked. But Pharaoh’s heart was hardened.
We need to escalate against Pharaoh Bibi now. It’s time to put the threat of “Gaza War Powers Resolution” on the table.
A “Gaza War Powers Resolution” is our only means to force a vote in the House now on terrain favorable to bipartisan Gaza War refuseniks, dissenters and skeptics, rather than on terrain favorable to Pharaoh Bibi.
“National Security Democrats” are On the Move. These people were our worst enemies on ending unconstitutional U.S. participation in the Saudi genocide in Yemen. But “let’s not argue and bicker about ‘oo killed ‘oo.” That was then, this is now. The First Rule of Washington is: “The more somebody screwed us in the past, the more valuable they are to us as a Validator now.” Remember when John Murtha became our House Champion on GTFO Iraq? That guy was the Gold Bars Menendez of the Pentagon-industrial-Congressional complex in the House. That guy never met a fantastically expensive, completely unnecessary weapons system he didn’t want to fund with our tax dollars so he could collect the cash from Boeing, Raytheon, and Lockheed Martin. When John Murtha become our House Champion on GTFO Iraq, we danced naked in the streets.
National Security Democrats got the Pentagon briefing. They know what a “biblical catastrophe” for human beings a wider ground war in Gaza would be. We need something useful and sharp for National Security Democrats to do which adds pressure towards the goal of #CeasefireNOW but does not explicitly call for it. A Gaza War Powers Resolution would do that. “Set many horses riding.”
The next step is a “Congressional war powers threat letter.” It’s like asking your lawyers at “Rabinowitz, Rabinowitz, & Rabinowitz” to send a “cease and desist” letter. “You better stop doing what you’re doing, or else, it’s War Powers Time!” The threat letter should contain such phrases as: “Article I of the Constitution,” “Congressional war powers,” and “the War Powers Resolution of 1973.” It should also contain such phrases as “the Arms Export Control Act of 1976,” “Section 502B of the Foreign Assistance Act,” and “the Leahy Laws.” The threat letter should contain such words and phrases as “white phosphorus,” “refueling,” “intelligence sharing for targeting airstrikes,” “civilians,” “civilian infrastructure,” “hospitals,” and “schools.” The threat letter should say how many aid trucks are getting in to Gaza each day right now and how many the UN says are needed. It should “name and shame” any parties who appear to be responsible for any discrepancy between those two things. It should mention “Gisha,” an Israeli human rights group which monitors the Gaza blockade and which exposed long ago by “liberating” Israeli military documents that it was official Israeli military policy to push Gaza “right up to the edge of famine without crossing over.” It should ask what the hell shutting off electricity and internet in Gaza has to do with the security of Israeli civilians.
The threat letter should prominently mention the fact that the State Department official who was in charge of ensuring that U.S. arms transfers to Pharaoh Bibi comply with U.S. law just resigned in protest of the fact that there was zero prospect that he was going to be allowed to do his job, since that had never happened before in human history. He was on CNN last night too. He said there was more debate inside the Trump Administration over U.S. arms transfers to Saudi Arabia for its genocidal war in Yemen than there is inside the Biden Administration right now over U.S. arms transfers to Pharaoh Bibi for what he is doing right now to two million human beings in Gaza.
Let that sink in. Biden Admin-Pharaoh Bibi is worse right now on U.S. law compliance than Trump-Mister Bone Saw. Asking the Biden Administration nicely to comply with U.S. law on this isn’t going to walk the dog right now. As the development economist Jeff Sachs once said of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank: “You wanna reform these institutions, you gotta hit them over the head with a two-by-four!” The Gaza War Powers Resolution is our two-by-four. Biden Administration officials know full well what we did to the Trump Administration with the Yemen War Powers Resolution - Trump’s first veto - which Yemen war those Biden Administration officials themselves started in March 2015 when they were serving as officials in the Obama Administration. They understand full well the threat we wield with #GazaWPR.
“#GazaWPR. It’s ‘#CeasefireNOW’ for National Security Democrats.”