Watch Medea’s interview on #OccupyWallStreet with Oz House Alt News:

LA CODEPINK was present yesterday at both Obama LA fundraisers to challenge him to immediately end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, bring all troops and contractors home and ensure real human security by creating jobs and ensuring access to healthcare, education, housing and food. Check out the CBS LA coverage of his appearance, featuring a quote from me around the minute mark.

CODEPINK NYC Coordinator Melanie Butler was interviewed on KPFA’s Letters and Politics program today. Listen to it online.

On the positive side, the White House guarantees an official response to any petition that reaches 5,000 signatures within 30 days. The site launched yesterday and I immediately put up a petition for the U.S. to immediately withdraw all troops and contractors from Afghanistan and Iraq. The petition doesn’t have a lot of signatures yet. One reason is that it does not show up when you “view all petitions” or when you “search petitions by topic.” No explanation given why the anti-war petition doesn’t show up, but perhaps we can build momentum without their promotional help. Will you sign the petition today?

As if it wasn’t bad enough that they’re censoring the use of their petition site, in order to participate in this new process you must register for an account on whitehouse.gov And, some people have been unable to connect to the government server housing this petition site. They want petition creators to share a shortened URL (the anti-war petition is http://wh.gov/g07 ) but it can be an extremely slow process to get there.

Perhaps by next week, they’ll have the technical glitches worked out. In the meantime, join us in demanding an immediate end to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Below is the full text of the petition:

WE PETITION THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TO: immediately end the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and bring all troops and contractors home.

The Afghanistan War is already the longest in U.S. history and neither Americans nor Afghans are safer today than we were ten years ago. Our military presence has propped up a corrupt government full of war lords and drug lords.

In Iraq, our military continues to inflame ethnic tension and Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.

CODEPINK: Women for Peace and people throughout the United States demand an immediate end to the wars. All troops and contractors must return to the United States and funds should be re-directed to life-affirming activities. Make Jobs, Not War – it’s as simple as that.

Please take the time to sign our petition and review the other available petitions.

And if you haven’t done so already, send Obama an email telling him you agree the government should make jobs, but it should also end the wars.

This morning, President Obama made some remarks on economic growth and deficit reduction. His remarks could have been worse, but they also could have been much, much better.

I am glad that Obama acknowledged that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have cost US taxpayers lots and lots of money; $1 trillion was the figure the president gave. It’s also nice that he has said he will veto any bill that cuts Medicare without taxing the rich. And I appreciate his brief rebuttal to those ridiculous accusations of “class warfare.”

However, I’m less impressed with certain assumptions behind President Obama’s statements today. I disagree with the assumption that profligate war spending is somehow inevitable. And I disagree with the assumption that Medicare and Social Security need to be on the chopping block to make up for the deficits caused by profligate war spending. What if Obama said that the necessity of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other vital programs meant that the US might no longer be able to afford its wars, instead of saying (in so many words) that our inevitably wasteful war spending is part of what is endangering the social safety net?

We must ask why the war did not figure more prominently in Obama’s deficit talk. We need to question the assumption that the movement for economic justice is somehow separate from the movement to end war, occupation, and militarism.

In other words, we need to remind President Obama and Congress: Bring our war dollars home!

Medea Benjamin is cofounder of the human rights group Global Exchange and the peace group CODEPINK.

Since coming to Washington, Barack Obama has won a Nobel Prize for Peace, but he hasn’t been much of a peacemaker. Instead, he has doubled down on his predecessor’s wars while launching blatantly illegal ones of his own. But, as his supporters would be quick to point out, at least he’s standing by his pledge to bring the troops home from Iraq.

Right?

That’s certainly what America’s latest war president has been saying. Speaking to supporters this month, he was unequivocal. “If somebody asks about the war [in Iraq] . . . you have a pretty simple answer, which is all our folks are going to be out of there by the end of the year.”

Obama’s statement was a welcome reaffirmation of what he promised on the campaign trail. “If we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am President, it is the first thing I will do,” he thundered in the fall of 2007.  “I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank.”

But don’t count on cashing that check. The Washington Post brings the unsurprising news that Iraqi leaders have agreed to begin talks with the U.S. on allowing the foreign military occupation of their country to continue beyond this year – re-branded, naturally, as a mission of “training” and “support.” The move comes after an increasingly public campaign by top White House and military officials to pressure Iraqi leaders into tearing up the Status of Forces Agreement they signed with the Bush administration, which mandates the removal of all foreign troops by the end of 2011.

As with any relationship, saying goodbye is always the hardest part for an empire. The U.S. political establishment has long desired a foothold in the Middle East from which it could exert influence over the trade of the region’s natural resources. Remember, Iraq has lots of oil, as those who launched the invasion of the country in 2003 were all too aware. They aren’t too keen on giving that up.

And as is to be expected when one maintains the most powerful – and expensive – military in world history, there are strong institutional pressures within the Pentagon for maintaining the status quo. Peace may be good for children and other living things, but it’s boring for generals – especially politically ambitious ones – and bad for bomb manufacturers.

The longer U.S. troops stay in Iraq and ensure that country’s fidelity to U.S. policy, the more weapons the Iraqi government will buy from American companies. Indeed, Prime Minister Maliki just announced that Iraq would buy 38 F-16 fighters, taking billions of dollars away from food and shelter for poor Iraqis while boosting Lockheed Martin’s war chest. Add in the fact that Iraq is situated right next to Iran, the one oil-rich country in the region opposed to U.S. hegemony, and you’ve got a good recipe for indefinite occupation.

Of course, if Obama was as committed to withdrawing “all troops from Iraq” as he claims, all he would need to do is stick by the Bush-era agreement for troops to leave by December 31. Doing so would not only provide him cover from claims he is surrendering to the terrorists – hey, a Republican negotiated the deal – but it would fulfill a key campaign pledge and help soothe liberal anger over his escalation of Afghanistan and his illegal war in Libya.

Obama has no plans for a full withdrawal, though, as his hand-picked appointees make clear. You can almost hear him thinking: What are liberals going to do, vote Republican?

Echoing the top military brass, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates first noted earlier this year supposed Iraqi “interest in having a continuing presence” in Iraq. His successor, Leon Panetta, then told senators during his June confirmation hearing that he had “every confidence” the Iraqi government would ask for such a U.S. presence beyond 2011.

Like clockwork, Iraqi leaders are set to ask for just that, with The Washington Post reporting that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his allies have decided any request to extend the U.S. occupation will “not require signing a new accord.” That means no messy parliamentary battles or referendums, where the popular anti-American sentiment would surface.

Ah, democracy.

The Obama administration is prepared to keep about 10,000 troops in Iraq, and their “non-combat” tasks could include training, air defense, intelligence, reconnaissance and joint counter-terrorism missions. These are the same sort of operations that have left at least 56 U.S. soldiers dead since Obama announced the end of U.S. combat operations last August.

One thing is certain: U.S. officials who once claimed to be bringing democracy to Iraq couldn’t be more thrilled at the subversion of it. Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, alluded to that in a comment remarking on the Iraqis’ recent decision to open talks with the U.S. on an extended, rebranded occupation. “There are some very difficult political challenges, internal challenges associated with reaching this decision,” he noted, said “challenges” being the fact that the people the occupation is ostensibly being extended to protect don’t actually want the “protection” the U.S. government is offering.

Mullen added that a final agreement must include “guarantees of legal immunity for American forces.” Obviously, we wouldn’t want any ungrateful Iraqis to prosecute U.S. soldiers if they kill civilians while engaging in “non-combat” duties.

Here at home, opinion polls have for years shown that two-thirds of Americans oppose the war in Iraq. Opposition to a continued presence has also been building in Congress, always the most lagging indicator. On July 22, Congresswoman Barbara Lee and 94 other representatives sent a letter to President Obama urging him to bring all U.S. troops and military contractors home by the end of this year and she is introducing a bill that would cut off funding.

As for the Iraqi opinion, anti-U.S. cleric and politician Moqtada al-Sadr put out a statement on August 3 saying that any foreign solider remaining in his country after 2011 would “be treated as an unjust invader and should be opposed with military resistance.” We’ll mark him down as a “no thanks.” According to Al-Iraqiya TV, meanwhile, 2.5 million of al-Sadr’s compatriots have signed a petition calling for U.S. troops to get out.

“We want them to leave, even before the end of this year,” Youseff Ahmad, a tribal sheik from the Iraqi town of Al Rufait, recently told one reporter. “They’ve destroyed us. They’ve only brought killing and disaster.” Ahmad spoke after having just witnessed U.S. troops’ “training” and “support” mission in action, the consequence of which was “a shootout involving bullets, grenades and American Apache helicopters that left the tribal Sheik and two others dead, and several wounded, including two young girls.”

Even top members of the Iraqi government are saying no thanks, even if their more powerful colleagues are toeing the U.S. line. On Sunday, Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi said that a continued American military presence in Iraq would be “a problem, not a solution,” adding that training could be done by other countries at a cheaper price.

American officials acknowledge that al-Hashemi is speaking for the bulk of his fellow countrymen, with U.S. diplomats telling The New York Times that their own polling shows a “majority of Iraqis have a negative view of the American role in Iraq.”

No wonder Nouri al-Maliki and his thuggish cronies, fearful their power to torture and suppress political opponents will evaporate without U.S. support, aren’t willing to let average Iraqis have a say in their country’s future. The question is: will Americans, who support a complete withdrawal and want to bring the war dollars home, ever get a say in the future of their country? Tell President Obama to stick to his promises and bring the troops home.

Medea Benjamin (medea@globalexchange.org) is cofounder of CODEPINK and Global Exchange.

Charles Davis (davis.charles84@gmail.com) is an independent journalist who has covered Congress for public radio and the international news wire Inter Press Service.

In this age of austerity, all the politicians are talking about the need for spending cuts. But when it comes to shared burdens and slashed budgets, don’t expect the Pentagon to start holding bake sales, despite what you may have heard about reductions to its obscenely bloated funding.

Citing the U.S. government’s $14.3 trillion debt, lawmakers from both parties have seized the moment to try and attain long hoped-for cuts to Social Security and Medicare. But the recent deal does seem to include some good news for lovers of peace: the push for reductions would encompass the war-making part of the state. Indeed, according to a “fact sheet” released by the White House on the bipartisan compromise, the recent deal to raise the national debt ceiling “puts us on track to cut $350 billion from the defense budget over 10 years.”

Popular liberal pundits, such as The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson and Ezra Klein, reacted by calling the supposed defense cuts “gigantic” and “unprecedented.” The White House says they’re the first spending reductions since the 1990s.

But don’t start cheering yet. As with any other major bipartisan initiative in Washington – the Iraq war and the Wall Street bailouts come time mind – there’s ample reason to be skeptical.

First, the cuts for 2012 are virtually nil. Security spending—which includes the Pentagon, State Department, Homeland Security, part of Veterans Affairs and intelligence spending—will be capped at $684 billion in 2012, a decline of merely $5 billion (less than 1 percent) from this year.

Yes, there are potentially far more drastic cuts down the road. In addition to the first $1 trillion in cuts over the next decade, a bipartisan Congressional committee must come up with an additional $1.5 trillion cuts by November — or trigger an automatic across-the-board reduction of $1.2 trillion starting in 2013, half of which would be expected to come from military spending.

However, expect this threat of deep military cuts – if cutting defense by 3 percent a year can be called “deep” when it has grown at a rate of 9 percent over the last decade – to be used as a bargaining chip by Democrats to extract concessions on tax increases from Republicans; don’t hold your breath expecting them to actually materialize. And with House Republicans already pledging to “fight on behalf of our Armed Forces,” by which they mean the military-industrial complex, don’t expect Democrats to put up much of a fight. Even were Obama so inclined, the idea that he will expend political capital on cutting military spending even as he expands the war on terror in Libya, Yemen and Somalia is doubtful, especially with an election looming.

But let’s put aside cynicism and accept the Obama administration at its word. Let’s assume the White House and Congress agree to cut military spending by $350 billion a year over 10 years. While the numbers may sound impressive out of context, that’s like draining an Olympic-sized pool with a glass from your kitchen: you’re going to be at it for awhile. The military budget has ballooned so much over the last decade that even if it was cut in half tomorrow the U.S. would still spend more than it did in 2001.

Indeed, the Obama administration’s proposed military budget for 2012 – the baseline from which future cuts are projected – is at its “highest level since World War II,” according to the non-partisan Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, “surpassing the Cold War peak” set by Ronald Reagan and a Democratic House of Representatives in 1985. Even if, instead of over a decade, the whole, entirely-subject-to-change $350 billion was cut from the defense budget in one fiscal year alone, the U.S. would still lead the globe in military spending, devoting twice as much to guns and bombs as its closest and much more populous rival, China. And that’s without factoring in the cost of any new wars.

Of course, official budget numbers don’t tell the whole story. Factoring in interest payments for past military expenditures, spending on veterans’ care and other defense-related items not included in the Pentagon budget, economist Robert Higgs estimates the yearly grand total spent on the military is $1 trillion or more, with over half of the federal income tax going to the military. And that massive national debt that’s being used to justify cuts in social spending? Nothing has contributed to it more than the dramatic rise in military spending over the last decade, a factoid you might have missed if you get your news from a television.

The tragic irony is that debt caused in large part by foreign military adventures is being used to further a class war here at home, even as the bloodshed continues in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and beyond. Too bad that, rather than denounce this morally and fiscally damaging addiction to militarism, politicians prefer to orchestrate the decline of the American empire from within.

Medea Benjamin is cofounder of Global Exchange and CODEPINK.

Charles Davis is an independent journalist. Follow him on Twitter and check out more of his work on his website.