LevantReport.com is an initiative of Texans for Sane Foreign Policy.
When looking at America’s foreign policy over the last 150 or so years, sometimes I feel like I’m looking at one of those giant collages that is composed of literally thousands of smaller pictures, strategically placed to provide the right color and hue in the right place. In such collages, the larger picture is somehow representative or a recapitulation of the collection of pictures as a whole. I don’t think I am remiss in saying that many of our fellow Americans see only the red, white, and blue waving proudly in the air. They fail to see that the red is not only the blood of fallen soldiers, but of millions of innocent women, men, and children all over the world who have unjustly and avoidably died as a direct result of America’s foreign policy.
On this site we will seek to zoom in on those individual events in the history of America’s foreign policy with all it’s ugliness, contradictions, and horror – especially in the Middle East. Why? Well, because the search for truth, whatever the cost, is the soul’s one true path. We do it because we refuse to be that man described by Solzhenitsyn who sees the crimes of the state and remains silent and thus must say to himself: “I am in the herd, and a coward. It’s all the same to me as long as I’m fed and warm”.
We must look carefully at what our government has done to other countries in our name and ask ourselves is this what makes us exceptional, special, or chosen? Is this the legacy we want to leave our children and grandchildren? We hope that as you “zoom in” you, too, will see that in your name and with your tax dollars, atrocities, massacres, and crimes against humanity, all those things that contradict the very fiber of what it means to be American, have been carried out by those at the very top of our government. With that knowledge we hope you will join us in peacefully standing up and saying to the U.S. government, “Up to here, and no more. Not in my name. Not with my taxes. ”
That is precisely what occurred last month, when literally millions of Americans and citizens of countries all over the globe stood up in peaceful resistance to a blatantly fraudulent cry for war against the already beleaguered and suffering Syrian people. We hope that this moment will not die down, but instead spread to every corner of this country. Our small efforts have not been in vain, even in the areas of Texas where the war hawks have traditionally found ready support and fodder.
Last month, a couple of dozen committed East Texas folks banded together to protest the war and Syria, and despite our small size, we made a huge splash in the newspapers and the local news channels. More importantly, we got people rethinking foreign policy and asking very fundamental questions that cut to the heart of the problem with America’s foreign policy: Qui bono? Who benefits from all of our wars, violence, drone strikes, targeted assassinations, and covert operations? If there is a silver lining in the Syria crises, it is that the whole world saw who the beneficiaries of American foreign policy are…. who they always are: The enemies of peace, radicals, fundamentalists, terrorists, tyrants, and megalomaniacs.
We hope you will join us on this difficult journey. It will not be easy, but if we are to even hope for peace for our children, and our children’s children, this is the only path open to us. Again, Solzhenitsyn said it best:
So you will not be the first to take this path, but will join those who have already taken it. This path will be easier and shorter for all of us if we take it by mutual efforts and in close rank. If there are thousands of us, they will not be able to do anything with us. If there are tens of thousands of us, then we would not even recognize our country.
Levant Report 