OpEdNews » The Other Costs of War: An Evening with Scott Ritter and Cole Miller

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Tag(s): Charity; Children; Heroes; Heroes; Media; Message; Peace; Republican; Responsibility; Scott Ritter; (more...) Truth (less...)
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April 26, 2008 at 02:26:42

The Other Costs of War: An Evening with Scott Ritter and Cole Miller

by Michael Fox Page 1 of 1 page(s)

www.opednews.com

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Stephanie Miller mentioned on her radio show that she would be hosting an event at the Hayworth Theatre in Los Angeles Tuesday evening. With Stephanie there, it surely would be a lively event – but it was that and so much more. The real theme of the evening was the costs of the wars that go undiscussed, and the messengers had important tales to tell. Two true American heroes (in order of appearance)with a lot to teach us:

Cole Miller
The founder of No More Victims, Cole Miller did something many of us might dream of doing, might talk about doing, and certainly might (and, hopefully will) assist with financially: He got angry enough with the human destruction of war (the stuff our sanitized media rarely show), the damned ghastliness being committed in your name and mine; so angry that he created a charity to help, one by one, children who have been seriously injured, disfigured and maimed by our bombs, bullets, fire and assorted other horrors.

The filmed history of the injuries sustained by two such children could melt the iciest heart. Then a little boy – no different than yours or mine – who had an eye out blown out of his head, and was left stranded with burns so severe on his face that he couldn’t close his mouth, came on stage, having been brought by NMV to the United States, and having completed extensive reconstructive surgery. It is a cost of war that is America’s to bear.

I had the opportunity to talk with this child, who cheerfully chatted with his limited English vocabulary, and I felt it was particularly important that I did so, because…

You see, there’s something I haven’t discussed in my columns before, because it isn’t germane to the political and economic analyses I write: I was burned beyond recognition in an explosion a few years ago, and after spending two months in a coma, I was, over the course of five years, surgically reconstructed from head to toe. I have had over thirty operations on my face alone – and another fifty on the rest of me. It is brutally painful, astronomically expensive, and takes years to get to where you look or feel anywhere near normal again. The level of treatment I received should be available to innocent children burned by war waged by our government.

Cole Miller is a man who’s defined his purpose as taking responsibility for the damage wrought by his country against innocent children (no four-year-old is The Enemy!). The cost of his work must be underwritten by all of us.

Scott Ritter
Scott Ritter has spent years taking to any available podium to shout his truth-telling message about our radical warmongering government, and call them out on their lies. It’s really very simple: he knows where weapons of mass destruction are and are not. He tells the truth about weapons stockpiles, and he has the very best Intelligence on the matter. Time and again, he’s been derided and silenced in the media, suppressed by the government, and yet, time and again, vindicated in the end. The truth will out.

If he had political aspirations, his performance would be the most dynamic campaign stump in history – only he doesn’t have such goals; just doesn’t want it. But after years of public speaking, Ritter has morphed his lectures into what can best be described as a phenomenal non-fiction performance-art theatre piece; a monologist with punch. He tells his story with laser sharp clarity, and he’s both inspiring and introspective. His lengthy military service gave him a spine and a sense of honor that has clearly been tested time and again, and time and again, he took the path of conscience over professional expediency or party loyalty. At the same time, the military training gave him something I suspect he may not even be aware of.

Ritter’s body moves with the precision of a dancer choreographed by Fosse. Staccato movements animate his discussion, his every gesticulation punctuating each sentence in a way few public speakers can achieve, and he’s got messages to convey:

WE have abrogated our accountability as citizens. If the economy is collapsing because our government has shirked its regulatory duties, it is we who have allowed them to get away with it. We have to take responsibility for what sponsors we support, in what we invest, and the ramifications of where we choose to spend or not spend.

With his new book, Waging Peace, as a guide, he advocates the concept of War Prevention being injected into the national mindset in much the same vein as Fire Prevention (which, he points out, has its own month). As a former Marine, one who has seen and been a part of the most gruesome aspects of war (and graphically describes), he knows how truly mad war is – and his extraordinarily dramatic storytelling skills really work there. He hates war, and is a self-described conservative Republican with a Kucinich-like focus on peace. How refreshing is that? An ex-Marine who marvels at bird-watching, and uses it as a spot-on metaphor for how passive Americans get fed their news (mama bird “pukes” food into her chicks’ mouths, TV news does the same, regurgitating stories to the lazy viewer).

I asked why he mentioned being a conservative Republican seven times, and whether he saw a way for someone like him to change that party from within, as damaged as it is after being hijacked by neocon wars and trickle-up economics for so long. He answered that he’s an American before his party or political label. It really is braver, whether Democrat or Republican, to stand up to the politicians within your own party, demanding truth and accountability, standing against yet another war of aggression.

And his day job? He’s a fireman near Albany. Scott Ritter is saving lives, as he still lives with the scarring memory of the lives he took in combat. Cole Miller is helping to put lives back together.

If either of these heroes will be speaking in your town, go. Tell anyone you know to go, too. And tune in to Stephanie, because she’s doing us a life-saving service as well: keeping us laughing, and we need to laugh, too – now more than ever.

Michael Fox is a writer and economist based in Los Angeles. He has been a corporate controller, professor, and small business entrepreneur. After a life-altering accident, he spent five years learning more about medicine and the healthcare industry than he ever intended. In addition to writing about economics and related geopolitical issues, he is passionate about the performing arts and writes theatre, film, and opera criticism.

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2 comments

Writer from California
john de herreraWriter from California

some ides to consider

1. The contract between citizens and elected officials is the Supreme Law, i.e. our constitution. There is no law higher than the seven articles and twenty-seven amendments which make up the U.S. Constitution.

2. The Constitution provides for three branches of government: the Congress, the Executive, and the Judicial. Of the individuals who people these three branches, some are elected, some are appointed, but all must swear an oath to obey the law before government issues checks for their efforts.

3. You and I are upset with governance. We’re upset with governance because of things like a judicial branch preventing a state from determining who won electoral votes in a hotly contested presidential election, an executive branch holding closed-door meetings with private-sector energy corporations, and a legislative branch failing to standardize the electoral process, securing it once and for all from corporate interests. These key points and many others are why we’re upset with governance.

Possibly the most egregious thing about governance is that it’s failed to secure The Vote from corporate interests. We’re currently burdened with what one blogger has termed Faith-Based Voting. We shouldn’t have faith-based elections. The tallying of votes should be based on more than faith. When you check what voting systems each state currently has, you would be surprised how many are like Pennsylvania. In other words, if you have doubts, too bad. Votes are unrecountable, unverifiable, and unauditable. Where there are paper trails, there are too many cases where proper procedure is not followed, and chain of custody is ignored. It’s easy to say it’s tin foil hat stuff to claim irregularities, but it’s just as crazy to suggest we’re getting true results. How do we get proof when votes are unrecountable, unverifiable, and unauditable? It’s like one presidential candidate says when they talk about unitary executive powers and warrantless wiretaps: you don't have to prove the power is being abused to object. It doesn't matter if you absolutely trust private corporations to tally votes, we spend more time telling people they sound paranoid than we do objecting to a system that demands scrutiny. Whether or not elections are accurate we cannot know. This has been going on for at least 6 years. Faith-Based Voting should be a thing of the past, instead it is still with us, and the silence surrounding it is deafening to those of us paying attention.

Why hasn’t the Congress drawn up blueprints for an official U.S. Voting Unit and mandated voting machine vendors to build them to spec? This is the obvious, common sense solution which would immediately extinguish many points of failure. So why hasn’t any legislation of the like made its way to the floor of the House or the Senate? It’s because corporate interests have gridlocked the legislative branch, and prevented it from acting in the public interest. Corporate interests, in the form of lobbyists, lawyers, and professional politicians, have become an aristocratic title system which operates at will.The Constitution prohibits the establishment of aristocratic title systems or anti-republican governing bodies, though with corporate laws and charters, both are now the norm. How can anyone believe that individuals, functioning as aristocrats, in the same manner as aristocrats, with a title system and organizational scheme that’s aristocratic, somehow conclude they’re Not aristocrats? Simply because they and their system is dressed in corporate clothing? The corporatists match aristocrats in both function and arrogance, pretending to have powers they do not, and pretending the average citizen is ignorant of the pretense. Through legal hair-splitting and inaction, corporatists have technically overthrown what was once a republican government. This must be addressed with specific prohibitions, and it must be written into the Constitution. For decades we’ve seen how corporatists frustrate efforts to restrain them by statutory, legal and regulatory means. Short of armed revolution, constitutional amendment is the last recourse.

As you may or may not know, the Constitution contains the convention clause. It’s found in Article V and it states that once the requisite applications for a convention hit the doorstep of Congress, that branch “shall call a convention....” The congressional record shows all fifty states have at one time or another applied for such a convention, yet one Congress after another simply ignores this. The legal term is Laches, or ignoring something on purpose. In other words, the individuals who perpetuate our aristocratic title system of corporate governance have prevented and continue to prevent a national convention of state delegates, held on authority of Article V of the U.S. Constitution.

Traditional arguments against convoking such a convention are that it might tamper with the Constitution itself, or that such a convention might be taken over by corporate interests and subverted to such ends. These arguments are bogus, not only irrational but illogical, because a convention is simply the process of opening discussion and building consensus. Nothing discussed at a national convention can somehow accidentally become new law. For an idea to become a law it must of course first be ratified, and to ratify an amendment proposal requires 38 states agree to it. With the country as polarized as it is today, it’s likely the only idea with any chance of being ratified would be one concerned with electoral reform, one that would secure The Vote from private interests once and for all.

Of the Bell Curve of political consciousness, there will always be citizens like you and I who are paying attention, and who can see past the smoke and mirrors of our homemade aristocratic establishment. Perhaps the governing class has served us well enough over the years, but ever since it stopped a state from counting votes in a critical presidential election, and foisted upon the nation an executive administration which has repeatedly disobeyed the Constitution and the rule of law, it’s become clear the time has come to create a 28th Amendment.

Recent legal history, the denial of certiorari by the Supreme Court in October of 2006, has allowed a lower court ruling to stand, and that ruling has deemed the convention call as discretionary, that it’s up to our aristocrats whether the nation will ever convoke an Article V Convention. In terms of political science, this means we no longer need to seek further applications from the state legislatures, we simply need to galvanize a tipping-point majority of Americans around the idea that the time has come to convene. This website, http://www.articlev.org suggests how such an effort might be carried out. This website, http://www.foavc.org has further information about the subject.

Whatever you’re upset about in terms of governance, it’s our position that nothing short of a national convention of state delegates is going to do anything to redirect the ship of state. Not a new executive administration, and certainly not legislation from a branch where corruption has become institutionalized. An Article V Convention is anathema to the corporatists. What corporate power is dead-set against, authentic Americans should be all for.

Perhaps we’ll have to wait for our less astute, fellow citizens to come round to the truth that the next president will not and cannot bring an end to corporate rule. This would likely be ten to twelve months from now. Hopefully everyone concerned will be here, ready to dust off our Constitution and put it to work for us.

by john de herrera (34 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 148 comments) on Sunday, April 27, 2008 at 4:23:32 PM

KEVIN STODA has been blessed to have either traveled in or worked in nearly 100 countries on five continents over the past two and a half decades. He sees himself as a peace educator and have been a promoter of good economic and social development--making him an enemy of my homelands humongous spending and its focus on using weapons to try and solve global issues."I am from Kansas so I also use the pseudonym 'Kansas' when I write and publish. I...

to see more of bio, click on member name
ALONEKEVIN STODA has been blessed to have either traveled in or worked in nearly 100 countries on five continents over the past two and a half decades. He sees himself as a peace educator and have been a promoter of good economic and social development--making him an enemy of my homelands humongous spending and its focus on using weapons to try and solve global issues."I am from Kansas so I also use the pseudonym 'Kansas' when I write and publish. I...

to see more of bio, click on member name

NO More Victims and Scott Ritter

I appreciate you lifting up these two heroes.

When I was in Jordan two years ago, I met one of the boys from Iraq who you refer to. I was impressed with what NO MORE VICTIMS is up to and ask every American to aid and support the organization financially.

Scott Ritter is a hero in terms of carefully explaining Iraq's and Iraqis situation to Americans on DN and other media for over a decade. He is why I could tell my family in Missouri, Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas to not believe the Bush-Clan lies in their drum beats to war in 2002 and 2003. I had heard enough from Ritter, who had been sent by America to check out Iraq's weapons many times, to know that there were no WMD's of the nuclear type around.

Americans must be better informed and listen to alternate media and voices--and do it regularly.

That is the way to get America to change when so much other misleading propaganda is out there.

by ALONE (129 articles, 1 quicklinks, 4 diaries, 279 comments) on Monday, April 28, 2008 at 9:14:36 AM