The following email was sent to my federal elected officials, Senators Joni Ernst and Chuck Grassley, and Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks, on Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2026.
I must be blunt. If you don’t know that what the administration did in Venezuela over last weekend is wrong, there is little hope for you.
I have taken time to understand administration arguments supporting what they called Operation Absolute Resolve. In particular, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said, “It was a law enforcement function to arrest indicted individuals in Venezuela.” Everyone who believes law enforcement was the sole purpose of the operation should stand on their heads.
President Trump’s actions in Venezuela and the Caribbean Sea are an extension of a long U.S. tradition of interference in the region. While in 1934, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt introduced the “Good Neighbor Policy,” pledging not to invade or occupy Latin American countries or interfere in their internal affairs, the region has been rife with covert U.S. operations to overthrow left-wing elected officials. Trump is not unique in this regard.
The public, announced plans from President Trump have been about much more than arresting Nicolás Maduro.
I urge you to use your position in The Congress to de-escalate what is wrong about our incursions into sovereign nations. News reports indicate about 75 people died in the action to capture Maduro. Our nation should think twice before repeating this mistake at the cost of dozens of human lives.
The president is not good at starting on time. One might say he is undisciplined.
At his inaugural ball, President Donald J. Trump said that his “proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and unifier.” What planet is he living on? I understand his rationale of peace through strength. In the case of Venezuela it is as bogus as a three dollar bill. The weekend operations escalated war-like behavior, not peace-making. If peace is what he wants, Trump is going in the opposite direction.
According to the Military Times, U.S. military operations are surging under Trump. He has overseen at least 626 air strikes, compared with 555 for President Joe Biden during all four years of his term. Military operations occurred in eight countries listed in the article. Donald Trump is not a peacemaker.
I viewed the entire press conference about weekend operations in Venezuela. It was hard to stomach all the misrepresentations and lies — the self-aggrandizement — yet it yielded a couple of things.
As many of us believed, the invasion and kidnapping of the Venezuelan president was about taking the country’s oil. Some in the United States have been lusting after it for decades. Trump confirmed this during the presser. How U.S. oil companies would proceed is sketchy at best.
The Cedar Rapids Gazette reported on Sunday:
“We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” Trump said at a Mar-a-Lago news conference where he boasted that this “extremely successful operation should serve as warning to anyone who would threaten American sovereignty or endanger American lives.” (Cedar Rapids Gazette front page, Jan. 4, 2026).
Not so fast! Shortly after Delcy Rodríguez was sworn in as Venezuela’s new president she pushed back on Trump. “We are determined to be free,” she said, according to the New York Times. “What is being done to Venezuela is a barbarity.”
“We had already warned that an aggression was underway under false excuses and false pretenses, and that the masks had fallen off, revealing only one objective: regime change in Venezuela,” she said. “This regime change would also allow for the seizure of our energy, mineral and natural resources. This is the true objective, and the world and the international community must know it.” (New York Times, Jan. 3, 2026).
What should happen next is Donald Trump, Pete Hegseth, Marco Rubio and General Dan Caine — and probably others — are removed from office. The only remaining question is how that gets done.
On Sunday, Jan. 4, Veterans For Peace was part of an anti-war demonstration in Iowa City. Here are some photographs I took.
No War.We The People.No War. No billionaires above the law.Ed Flaherty of Veterans For Peace speaking at the anti-war demonstration on Jan. 4, 2026.
When I became an adult, married, and settled into steady work, it was assumed I would volunteer in the community. The volunteer impulse has its roots in the industrial period after the Civil War. People used less time to produce enough money with which to live our lives. In more modern terms, we could pay for things like our child’s college education without sacrificing a lot at home.
Perhaps the most prominent example was the robber baron Andrew Carnegie whose expansion of the steel industry made him one of the richest Americans and enabled his philanthropy to fund a number of public libraries, among other things. “The duty of the man of wealth,” Carnegie said, is “to consider all surplus revenues which come to him simply as trust funds, which he is called upon to administer . . . in the manner which, in his judgment, is best calculated to produce the most beneficial results for the community.”
I didn’t have “surplus revenues,” yet worked in jobs that created enough money to pay basic living expenses with a bit leftover. While there were limits on potential income, I was afforded regular free time and expected to use some of it to volunteer in the community. My volunteerism really took off when we moved to Big Grove Township.
I differentiate the types of volunteer work I have done since 1993. There is community work: membership on the home owners association board, election as a township trustee, and serving on the board of a senior citizen’s group. There is also what I call advocacy work: serving on the boards of peace-related organizations, politics, and two different county boards. Each had something to contribute to society. I talk about community volunteer work in the rest of this post.
Within the first year we were in our new home in Big Grove Township, I was asked to join the volunteer home owners association board and did. Any monetary considerations were insignificant. A regular person does not volunteer in the community for money. Part of living a sustainable life in rural areas is contributing to the general well-being, I believed. I felt blessed and had to give back to the community in which I lived.
Home owners’ associations get a bad rap. In our case, we managed the association like a small city. We provided a public water system, sanitary sewer district, road maintenance, refuse hauling, and real estate sales and purchases. Over time, we upgraded the roads from chip and seal to asphalt, dealt with changing government standards related to arsenic in drinking water, reduced the number of wells from three to one, complied with changing Iowa Department of Natural Resources standards for wastewater treatment plant effluent, handled a lawsuit, and coordinated activities like road use and maintenance with neighboring associations. If the board doesn’t do these things, they don’t get done. Everyone is the better for such volunteer boards. I served, off and on, for over 30 years. This was the beginning of a long period of volunteering in the community.
In 2012, when only one candidate was running for two township trustee positions, I ran a write-in campaign and won the election. Being a township trustee included managing emergency response and a volunteer fire department with other townships and the nearby city of Solon. Toward the end of my tenure, we formed a new entity to manage these functions. We maintained the local cemetery and supervised a pioneer cemetery where the first person to die in the township was buried. This work helped me understand how tax levies work and how they were used to support things the county did not, things like a small fire department or saving someone’s life in an emergency. There was only a single conflict during my time as a trustee, about the main cemetery. All the trustees showed up at the cemetery to resolve a dispute over a burial plot. No one wanted the job of township trustee and someone had to do it, so I stepped up.
When the local senior citizen’s group had an opening on their board, I volunteered and became its treasurer. This lasted about two years and provided insight into this segment of the community. Everything we did, from providing community meals, to giving home-bound people rides to medical appointments, to arranging outings around eastern Iowa, served an often-neglected segment of the population. It was a great opportunity to learn about the life of our senior citizens before I became one myself.
I am satisfied this activism did some good. I still believe it is important to stay engaged in the community.
IOWA CITY — On Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2025, beginning at 11 a.m. CST, the local chapter of Veterans For Peace will hold three public events in Iowa City to re-dedicate ourselves to the work of peace. Members of the public are invited.
Beginning at 10:45 a.m., we will assemble at the Iowa City Ped Mall. Bells will ring at the 11th hour, 11th day, 11th month, as is tradition. Dr. James Zogby will present brief remarks.
In 1985, Zogby co-founded the Arab American Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based organization which serves as the political and policy research arm of the Arab American community. He continues to serve as its president. Zogby is also Director of Zogby Research Services, a firm that has conducted groundbreaking surveys across the Middle East.
Immediately following the outdoor observance, Veterans For Peace will host a free luncheon at the Iowa City Public Library. Dr. Zogby will address the group in a longer format. His topic is “The war that didn’t end all wars and instead launched a century of conflict.”
At 6:30 p.m., Veterans For Peace will sponsor a screening of the new film Earth’s Greatest Enemy at Iowa City FilmScene, 404 East College Street, Iowa City. This is a documentary exposé of the world’s biggest—and most unaccountable—polluter: the US military. Learn the environmental cost of having a military empire. The film was written and directed by Abby Martin and Mike Prysner. Prysner will attend and introduce the film. Afterward he will host a question-and-answer period. Tickets are pay-what-you-can.
This is the sole Armistice Day observance in the State of Iowa.
More about Dr. James Zogby from the Arab American Institute website:
James Zogby co-founded the Arab American Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based organization which serves as the political and policy research arm of the Arab American community, in 1985 and continues to serve as its president. He is Director of Zogby Research Services, a firm that has conducted groundbreaking surveys across the Middle East.
In September 2013, President Obama appointed Dr. Zogby to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom. He was reappointed to a second term in 2015 and concluded his service in May 2017. He was twice elected Vice Chair.
Zogby is featured frequently on national and international media as an expert on Middle East affairs. Since 1992, he has written a weekly column that is published in 12 countries. In 2010, Zogby published the highly-acclaimed book, Arab Voices. His 2013 e-books, “Looking at Iran: The Rise and Fall of Iran in Arab Public Opinion” and “20 Years After Oslo,” are drawn from his extensive polling across the Middle East with Zogby Research Services. His most recent book is, “The Tumultuous Decade: Arab, Turkish, and Iranian Public Opinion – 2019-2019” analyzes the fascinating transformations taking place across the Middle East region following the US withdrawal from Iraq and the Arab Spring.
Dr. Zogby has also been personally active in U.S. politics for many years; in 1984 and 1988 he served as Deputy Campaign manager and Senior Advisor to the Jesse Jackson Presidential campaign. In 1988, he led the first ever debate on Palestinian statehood at that year’s Democratic convention in Atlanta, GA. In 2000, 2008, and 2016 he served as an advisor to the Gore, Obama, and Sanders presidential campaigns.
For the past 3 decades, he has served in leadership roles in the Democratic National Committee. He currently serves as Chair of the DNC Ethnic Council, an umbrella organization of Democratic Party leaders of European and Mediterranean descent. He served on the DNC’s Executive Committee from 2000 to 2017 and for more than a decade served as Co-Chair of the party’s Resolutions Committee.
In 1975, Dr. Zogby received his doctorate from Temple University’s Department of Religion, where he studied under the Islamic scholar, Dr. Ismail al-Faruqi. He was a National Endowment for the Humanities Post-Doctoral Fellow at Princeton University in 1976 and is the recipient of a number of honorary doctorate degrees.
Kathy Kelly speaking to Veterans for Peace Midwest Conference in Cedar Rapids, Iowa Sept. 21, 2024.
On Sept. 21, 2024, the Veterans for Peace Midwest Conference was held at the Kiteville Hotel in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. One of the featured speakers was Kathy Kelly, who is a familiar face to peace activists in Iowa. She gave a talk titled “Who Are The Terrorists?”
Kelly’s work took her to Bosnia, Haiti, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Gaza, and other countries where she worked for peace. Her story is worth reading on Wikipedia.
Never again should humans detonate atomic munitions. It is 90 seconds to midnight according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Doomsday Clock. Read what you can do to mitigate the dangers in our nuclear armed world by clicking here.
Yahoo Drummers at the end of our Independence Day parade entry in Coralville, July 4, 2024.
The Independence Day parade in Coralville is likely the last hurrah for many of us in the People’s Coalition for Social, Environmental and Political Responsibility. Our members are aging. Some of the 100 Grannies for a Livable Future died. The World War II members of our chapter of Veterans for Peace also passed. The number of Yahoo Drummers is diminished with two playing the rear guard of this year’s parade entry. This event is a big deal in the life of the county. I hope others replace us going forward.
My right hip began to bother me at some point in the parade. When I got home, I found my feet sore. I walked in two parades and drove a vehicle in a third, yet my parade walking days are over. I hope to recover from the aches and pains, yet I don’t want to exacerbate them either.
Riders in the People’s Coalition for Social, Environmental and Political Responsibility Independence Day parade entry in Coralville, July 4, 2024.
Beginning at the turn around from walking east to west, I got a bug in my brain that concerned me about shooters. For the rest of the parade I scanned the crowd with that in mind. There were none, and that was good. I couldn’t shake the irrational fear.
What impressed me most about the parade was the youth of those gathered. Children and parents alike seemed very young. It is time for some of us oldsters to step aside to make room for the young.
Placard made for the Independence Day parade in Coralville, July 4, 2024.
War has always been devastating yet the devastation of the Israel-Hamas war is unprecedented. What makes this war different is it is occurring in the ever-present media-influenced eyes of a populace unfamiliar with the long relationship between Israel and Palestine. People young and old are being activated by this public war: donating money to relief funds, protesting, and more. There are a lot of moving parts.
That said, I don’t know what else to say, other than there should be an immediate, permanent ceasefire; humanitarian aid should have unfettered access to the Palestinians; and both sides should release any hostages or unlawful detainees. At yesterday’s Democratic district convention, we passed a resolution saying those things.
Some friends with family ties in Palestine were present at the convention. One spoke during debate over the resolution. He pointed out the plight of children in the war zone. What heartless fool could not be affected by this?
I read about the use of artificial intelligence in generating military targets. Computers find targets, which may or may not be reviewed by a human before striking. What algorithms often find is the best place to target someone is in the evening when they are at home. Often the whole family is present when the bombs hit.
On-campus protests have drawn an undue amount of attention. The varying responses by school administrations and law enforcement has been both appalling and comforting. The temptation is to compare it with my own campus protests over the Vietnam War in 1970-1973. That is the wrong impulse. Things have changed on campus in more than 50 years.
Another temptation is to blame the U.S. administration for the war. President Joe Biden is an easy scapegoat. While exerting public pressure for him to change tactics is acceptable in a democracy, it is of itself, no solution. When it comes to the Mideast, there will unlikely be consensus in an approach to peace-making.
It feels hopeless some days. I contribute to relief funds as I can, write my congressional representatives, and pray for resolution. There is no assurance there will be a resolution in the Mideast, and that’s part of the problem.
Newman Abuissa, chair of the Iowa Democratic Party Arab American Caucus, speaking at a peace vigil in Iowa City on Dec. 29, 2023.
I studied the Israeli Six-Day War (June 1967) and the Yom Kippur War (October 1973) while I was in the military. We figured with the Vietnam War over, the next major conflict would be over oil in the Middle East. We lifted Israeli tactics and put them into practice in our Mechanized Infantry Division in preparation for the inevitable conflict. General Norman Schwartzkopf, who led U.S. forces during the First Gulf War, served as Assistant Division Commander in the same unit I was in, although after I left Germany.
Besides that, I haven’t studied the Middle East to any extent. It has been a blind spot in my knowledge of history. A friend from high school was serving in the Peace Corps in Israel during 1973. By chance, I ran into him while leaving a youth hostel in Florence, Italy. We walked to Piazza San Marco and chatted about life since I had last seen him stateside. I don’t recall what he said about the war, but it was one contributing factor to his return to the states. When I boarded a bus to Fiesole was the last time I saw him.
A group of local peace activists held their regular Friday afternoon vigil at the University of Iowa Pentacrest on Dec. 29. KCRG-TV was there and wrote this story.
Iowa City, Iowa (KCRG) – The Iowa City chapter of Veterans For Peace held a peace vigil in front of the Pentacrest in downtown Iowa City on December 29th.
They were joined by people from the following groups: Iowa City Action for Palestine, Iowans for Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace, Iowa Physicians for Social Responsibility, Mennonite Peace Group, Johnson County United Nations Association, and the Johnson County Interfaith Coalition who all spoke at the event.
The chapter’s co-founder Paul Deaton called for a ceasefire as well as allowing unrestricted humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip.
“There is a need for peace in this world and if we don’t work for peace we won’t have peace,” said Deaton.
‘Veterans For Peace’ handed out leaflets outlining their positions, saying being critical of Israel’s actions is not the same as being anti-Semitic.
The leaflets also stated “Support for Palestinian justice and a cease-fire does NOT equate to endorsement of Hamas.”
The group holds peace vigils every Friday.
Groups come together in Iowa City at vigil for peace in Israel-Hamas War KCRG-TV, Dec. 29, 2023.
I don’t understand the Middle East any better than I did in 1974 when I ran into my friend in Florence. What I do understand is what I told KCRG-TV, “There is a need for peace in the world and if we don’t work for peace we won’t have peace.” Working for peace are words to live by.
Take action to raise awareness of the need to eliminate nuclear weapons by folding a crane for peace between Aug. 4-9, along with others associated with the nuclear disarmament movement and the Nuclear Threat Initiative.
Crafting a brighter future starts with all of us. Between the anniversaries of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August, people around the world fold and share paper cranes on social media with a message about what a future without nuclear weapons means to them.
Join people across the globe in demanding a more peaceful, hopeful future.
This project is simple. First, fold a paper crane. Instructions are in this short video.
Next, take a photo of the crane or cranes you folded. Craft a message about why we must move closer to, not further from, a world without nuclear weapons. It could be as simple as a single word or phrase. Finally, post your photo to social media with your message and the hashtag #CranesForOurFuture.
Please join us in this fun project with a broader meaning. For more details, click here.
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