Arthur Silber needs your help. It's as simple as that. One of the most insightful, original, informed and meaningful voices in our political discourse today, Silber must scrape by from month to month on the jagged edge of circumstance, battling ill health with notable courage, surviving on nothing but what his blog can bring in. This is a shameful reflection of how our society regards wisdom and truth: as something to be cut off, unsupported, crushed if possible, and if not -- as in the case of Silber's indomitable spirit -- then marginalized, battered, made to suffer.
In recent weeks, Silber has roared back from a particularly vicious bout that laid him low to write a remarkable string of essays, full of the learning, passion, perception -- and wicked wit -- that is a trademark of his work. Some particularly choice example can be found here: Let the Victims Speak; Why America May Go to Hell; and Cultivate Your Sense of Wonder.
In the latter piece, Silber combines older and new material to speak eloquently about the vision that drives his work:
If I had to select just a single word to express my deepest feeling about the world, and about humankind, it would be that one: wonder. I consider it a measure of how unevolved we are that so many people appear to be capable of that feeling only when they contemplate an imaginary, supernatural plane. It is hardly surprising that our world holds so much unnecessary suffering, when so many people are willing and eager to condemn it to second-rate status in favor of one they've made up out of whole cloth...
I think it highly probable that our circumstances will continue to get significantly worse, although this deterioration may come quickly or comparatively slowly. You may live the rest of your life without seeing the worst of what will happen, or even anything close to the worst -- or you may not. There is no way to know, and the variables are close to infinite. But I say again: it does not have to be this way. Extraordinary events have transpired in history before, and they might again. We need a miracle, but not one delivered to us from a supernatural realm: we require a miracle that we create.
It can happen. Hold on to your sense of wonder; if you do not have a sufficiently strong one, then develop it. For me, it is the most precious resource in the world....
Live in the sense of wonder, and in the world of joy. Take it, feel it and pass it on. That's sometimes all you can do -- for someone, somewhere, one day. It's everything.
I now add that, when you engage in this process, you yourself live ecstatically -- today.
Can we afford to let such a voice fall silent? If you have anything at all to spare, get on over to Silber's site and give what support you can.
Tell me that this doesn't sound like something out of a history of Nazi tactics in World War II:
The rules [of engagement]t explicitly allowed the killing of unarmed Iraqis under certain circumstances...Specifically, the snipers were allowed to shoot unarmed people running away from explosions or firefights....Of course, it's not unusual for innocent people to run from explosions.
Didier, who has since been promoted to captain, said that "if that individual makes contact with you and then breaks contact of their own accord and disarms themselves while they are breaking contact, they are still an engageable target because they are not wounded, nor did they surrender." He explained, "They are only breaking contact so that they can engage coalition forces at a later time." In court, Sgt. Anthony Murphy, one of the snipers who was responsible for a questionable kill, testified that he interpreted this order about breaking contact so they can engage at a later time as: "Engage fleeing local nationals without weapons."
In other words, if an innocent, unarmed Iraqi runs away to seek safety from a suicide bombing, a missile attack or a gunfight -- which any human being would instinctively do -- then he is fair game to be killed by an American sniper.
The excerpt above comes from a story in Salon.com, "Killing by the Numbers," about an "elite" U.S. sniper squad that murdered a captured, unarmed civilian in cold blood. A more detailed excerpt follows below, but I'd like to deal briefly with one ancillary aspect first.
The story expands to talk more generally about the sniper program in Iraq, and is careful -- overly careful -- to emphasize that the snipers responsible for so many "questionable kills" are operating in very stressful conditions: sleep-deprived, sweltering in deadly heat, surrounded by potential "hostiles," at constant risk of attack. All true, of course, but it prompts this simple question: What the hell are they doing there in the first place? Why are they squatting and sweltering in "hides" in a foreign land, looking to kill people who never attacked the United States?
Yes, it is entirely understandable that a soldier subjected to nerve-wracking, physically tormenting conditions might fail to act with reason, patience, judgment and prudence. But is this supposed to be some kind of excuse for crimes committed within the context of a larger crime: a war of aggression, the military invasion and occupation of a foreign country without any provocation? Surely many of the Nazi atrocities were committed by men under unbearable mental and physical strain as well. So what? Were they absolved of their crimes? And more importantly -- were their leaders absolved for instigating the larger crime that engendered these atrocities?
For as the story also shows, the "questionable kills" by American snipers derive largely from the murderous "rules of engagement" they are given by their superiors -- and by the anxiety of their officers to produce big "kill numbers" to appease the bloodlust -- and PR needs -- of the thugs in the White House and their "counterinsurgency genius," David Petraeus.
But let's return to the story of how a sniper squad murdered Genei Nesir Khudair al-Janabi, an Iraqi vegetable farmer, almost one year ago, after he stumbled upon their "hide" on the banks of the Euphrates.
I. George W. Bush and David Petraeus are preparing to make a new Fallujah in Sadr City, home to two million Shiites in Baghdad. Thousands of people are already fleeing the area before the full-scale slaughter and destruction begin. As in Fallujah, the multitudes who cannot escape will be trapped in a "free fire zone", subjected to ruthless bombardment and ground assault. Thousands -- perhaps tens of thousands -- of innocent civilians stand in the shadow of imminent death.
The assault is part of the run-up to the coming attack on Iran -- an attempt to secure the rear of that new front by destroying Iraq's Shiite nationalist forces. It is also part of an on-going effort to eliminate the strongest rival to the Shiite extremists that Bush has installed in office in Iraq, before the conquered land's fall elections.
The preliminary assault on Sadr City has already begun, of course. As the BBC notes, in the last seven weeks around 1,000 people -- most of them civilians -- have already been killed by the Bush-Petraeus "surge" into the area. Petraeus is frantically building high-walled ghettos in Sadr City, slicing neighborhoods in half, sundering families, destroying communities and livelihoods. Meanwhile, the Iraqi government is circulating leaflets in Sadr City districts, warning the people to leave -- or else.
This, you understand, is liberation. This is freedom. This is the glorious "surge" to victory. As Tacitus noted:
A rich enemy excites their cupidity; a poor one, their lust for power. East and West alike have failed to satisfy them.... To robbery, butchery, and rapine, they give the lying name of "government"; they create a desolation and call it peace.
That translation of the quote was taken from a remarkable article by David Bromwich in the New York Review of Books, a shattering analysis of the nation's hideous and horrifying moral decay in the Terror War. The title says it all: Euphemism and American Violence. You should read the whole thing, but the conclusion is most apt to our immediate subject here:
"History begins today" was a saying in the Bush White House on September 12, 2001—repeated with menace by Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage to the director of Pakistani intelligence Mahmoud Ahmad—a statement that on its face exhibits a totalitarian presumption. Yet nothing so much as language supplies our memory of things that came before today; and, to an astounding degree, the Bush and Cheney administration has succeeded in persuading the most powerful and (at one time) the best-informed country in the world that history began on September 12, 2001. The effect has been to tranquilize our self-doubts and externalize all the evils we dare to think of. In this sense, the changes of usage and the corruptions of sense that have followed the global war on terrorism are inseparable from the destructive acts of that war.
In the name of tranquilized American people, a new evil is about to externalized upon the bodies of the women and children, the old and sick, the innocent and vulnerable in Sadr City. As the BBC reports:
The authorities in Baghdad say they are preparing for an exodus of thousands of people from eastern parts of the city. Fighting between government and US troops on one side, and Shia militia on the other, has intensified recently. Two football stadiums are on stand-by to receive residents from two neighbourhoods in the Sadr City area...
In the last seven weeks around 1,000 people have died, and more than 2,500 others have been injured, most of them civilians. The fighting so far in Sadr City has been fierce - street to street, and house to house.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki is showing a determination to disarm the country's Shia militia groups - particularly the Mehdi Army - that he has never displayed before. However, Iraqi army operations, backed by US ground and air support, have so far failed to overwhelm the Shia militiamen, who are still responding with roadside bombs, sniper fire, mortars and rockets.
The government has distributed leaflets in two key districts of Sadr City, warning people to leave.The speculation is that government forces are preparing for a big push into eastern Baghdad to end the current fighting once and for all. Shortages of water and medical supplies have already made life inside Sadr City extremely difficult.
And this is just the beginning.
II. The story of Fallujah's destruction at Bush's order in mid-November 2004 -- a burnt offering to celebrate his renewal of power -- gives us an intimation of what is about to happen in Sadr City. This is what I wrote, in the Moscow Times, about that assault while it was still going on:
Ring of Fire: The Fallujah Inferno "The inferno…is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space." -- Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities.
There is of course no space, nowhere to move or breathe in the sealed chamber of the American Infoglomerate – the vast entanglement of corporate media and government propaganda that smothers the body politic with hysterical outpourings of diversion, drivel and deadening white noise. Here, events occur in a total vacuum: they have no history, no context, no consequences. Stripped of the heft and scope of reality, they can easily be molded and distorted to fit the prevailing political and business agendas. Amnesia, ignorance, confusion and fear are left to rule the day: excellent fuel for the stokers of the inferno, who use the heat to work their alchemical magic – transforming human blood into gold.
"There are more and more dead bodies on the streets and the stench is unbearable. Smoke is everywhere. It's hard to know how much people outside Fallujah are aware of what is going on here. There are dead women and children lying on the streets. People are getting weaker from hunger. Many are dying are from their injuries because there is no medical help left in the city whatsoever. Some families have started burying their dead in their gardens."
This was a voice from the depths of the inferno: Fadhil Badrani, reporter for the BBC and Reuters, trapped in the iron encirclement along with tens of thousands of civilians. It was a rare breath of truth. The reality of a major city being ground into rubble was meant to be obscured by the Infoglomerate's wall of noise: murder trials, state visits, Cabinet shuffles, celebrity weddings – and, above all, the reports of "embedded" journalists shaping the "narrative" into its proper form: a magnificent feat of arms carried out with surgical precision against an enemy openly identified by American commanders as "Satan," the Associated Press reports.
One of the first moves in this magnificent feat was the destruction and capture of medical centers. Twenty doctors – and their patients, including women and children – were killed in an airstrike on one major clinic, the UN Information Service reports, while the city's main hospital was seized in the early hours of the ground assault. Why? Because these places of healing could be used as "propaganda centers," the Pentagon's "information warfare" specialists told the NY Times. Unlike the first attack on Fallujah last spring, there was to be no unseemly footage of gutted children bleeding to death on hospital beds. This time – except for NBC's brief, heavily-edited, quickly-buried clip of the usual lone "bad apple" shooting a wounded Iraqi prisoner – the visuals were rigorously scrubbed.
So while Americans saw stories of rugged "Marlboro Men" winning the day against Satan, they were spared shots of engineers cutting off water and electricity to the city – a flagrant war crime under the Geneva Conventions, as CounterPunch notes, but standard practice throughout the occupation. Nor did pictures of attack helicopters gunning down civilians trying to escape across the Euphrates River – including a family of five – make the TV news, despite the eyewitness account of an AP journalist. Nor were tender American sensibilities subjected to the sight of phosphorous shells bathing enemy fighters – and nearby civilians – with unquenchable chemical fire, literally melting their skin, as the Washington Post reports. Nor did they see the fetus being blown out of the body of Artica Salim when her home was bombed during the "softening-up attacks" that raged relentlessly – and unnoticed – in the closing days of George W. Bush's presidential campaign, the Scotland Sunday Herald reports.
What they saw instead were two loudly devout Christians, Bush and Tony Blair, clasping hands and proclaiming that Artica Salim had been torn to shreds in order to fight terrorism – specifically, the terrorism of Jordanian thug Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The city's alleged refusal to turn over Zarqawi was the ostensible reason for the attack; yet halfway through the assault, with dead civilian bodies already stinking in the streets, Coalition commanders finally admitted the truth: Zarqawi wasn't in Fallujah – and hadn't been there for weeks, perhaps months.
But then, Zarqawi leads a peculiarly charmed life. Three times before the war, U.S. forces were set to kill him and destroy his organization. It wasn't that difficult; after all, he was operating in Kurdish-held Iraqi territory, where the U.S. military had free rein. Yet each time, Bush called off the strike, the Wall Street Journal reports. He needed Zarqawi for his pre-war propaganda, so he could point to an "al Qaeda ally in Iraq" – even though Zarqawi was on Bush's Iraqi turf, not Saddam's. And Bush still needs Zarqawi, or someone like him – a killer whose lurid malefactions obscure the even larger crime that set all these atrocities in motion: an unprovoked aggressive war based on lies, whose only goal is the imposition of a regime that will enrich Bush's cronies while advancing American dominance of the world's resources.
Bush and Zarqawi are mirror-image enemies: foreign terrorists breaking into Iraq to spread indiscriminate death and ruin in pursuit of their brutal visions. Everywhere they go, everything they touch, everyone they draw to their cause becomes inferno.
Arthur Silber has the second part of his powerful "Choosing Sides" series up now: Killing Truth and Hope -- The Fatal Illusion of Opposition. There is little I can add to the insight and eloquence of the piece -- just go read the whole thing, and follow up on the links provided there as well.
But I would like to highlight two particular aspects of the post. First is Silber's succinct description of the "corporate-authoritarian political system" that confronts us at every turn with its soul-crushing, death-dealing power:
This system encompasses every area of our national life....The military-industrial complex -- or what is now often more accurately described as the military-industrial-congressional complex -- is the most significant component of these interrelationships, but there are many other parts. They encompass all major industries, and almost every minor one, as well as many of our educational and cultural institutions....
This system as it exists today consists of innumerable interrelated, constantly moving parts. Countless agencies, commissions and bureaucrats act in concert and on their own to expand their power, and that of government generally. The system has a life of its own; it is its own reason for being. It sustains itself, and it seeks more and more territory for its dominance. The exercise of power and the acquisition of still more power are not directed at the improvement of the lives of "ordinary" Americans, whoever they may be; ordinary Americans are of no interest or concern to the ruling elites, except insofar as their labor and often their lives are necessary for the maintenance of the lives of immense comfort and privilege enjoyed by the powerful. Power is not the means to some other end, although that claim is a crucial element of the extraordinarily successful propaganda so willingly swallowed by the public. Power -- its exercise and maintenance, and the acquisition of still more power -- is the end.
Again, see the original for the several illuminating links provided.
Silber also deals extensively with two important articles by Pam Martens recently published at Counterpunch. (Here and here.) As Silber notes, Martens is a personal admirer of Barack Obama, and believes him to be a more or less sincere tool of forces beyond his control. Yet this does not prevent her from doing what legions of "progressives" -- especially in the blogosphere -- seem congenitally unable to do: look at the reality of the Obama campaign in the face. And Marten's reality-based analysis of the campaign's real nature is absolutely devastating. She shows the true backers of Obama's candidacy:
A Wall Street cartel of financial firms, their registered lobbyists, and go-to law firms that have a death grip on our federal government....Seven of the Obama campaign’s top 14 donors consisted of officers and employees of the same Wall Street firms charged time and again with looting the public and newly implicated in originating and/or bundling fraudulently made mortgages. These latest frauds have left thousands of children in some of our largest minority communities coming home from school to see eviction notices and foreclosure signs nailed to their front doors. Those scars will last a lifetime.
She also exposes the rank hypocrisy of Obama's claim to be free from the influence of the Big Money lobbyists who wield such overwhelming, sinister sway in Washington. This claim is, to put it bluntly, an egregious lie. As Martens demonstrates, Obama's Wall Street backers are also some of the worst, most corrupt lobbyists -- such as Greenberg Traurig, former home of that master criminal of the Bush Regime, Jack Abramoff.
Senator Obama's premise and credibility of not taking money from federal lobbyists hangs on a carefully crafted distinction: he is taking money, lots of it, from owners and employees of firms registered as federal lobbyists but not the actual individual lobbyists. But is that dealing honestly with the American people?
The 2008 Obama presidential run may be the most slickly orchestrated marketing machine in memory. That's not a good thing. Marketing is not even distantly related to democracy or civic empowerment. Marketing is about creating emotional, even irrational bonds between your product and your target audience.
Martens goes on to report that "the Obama campaign has spent over $52 million on media, strategy consultants, image building, marketing research and telemarketing." As Silber says, you should read Martens' articles in their entirety to get the full impact of her facts and analysis.
In his piece, Silber kindly quotes from a post I wrote, in which I noted that the very small differences between the two major parties could have significant effects, because "even minute mitigations in the operation of vast power structures can translate into real benefits for many ordinary people, simply due to the scale on which such structures operate." But Silber goes on to note, quite rightly:
If you choose to support one party over the other because of those "minute mitigations" that "can translate into real benefits for many ordinary people," that's fine -- but intellectual honesty ought to compel you to recognize the great danger you're courting.
He has much more to say on this theme -- again, go read the whole thing -- but it is a point worth stressing again. As I noted in this earlier post ("Disabuse Your Illusion"):
Whether these mitigations of injustice and suffering in certain instances outweigh the cost of participating in – and thereby to some extent legitimizing and perpetuating – a system that inevitably produces injustice and suffering on a massive scale is a question that each person must decide for themselves, in their own individual conscience.
And this question is certainly pertinent in the case of Barack Obama. For by the choices he has made in picking advisers to help him shape his policies, he has given every indication that while his presidency might represent a better management and presentation of the current system, it will in no way overturn or even seriously challenge it on any essential point. In other words – and bearing in mind the type of not-insubstantial mitigations noted above – he will keep doing what Bush has been doing, only more competently, less radically, with a greater care for the long-term viability of the power structure. And what is that structure that Obama seeks to refine and extend? It is an imperial system based on militarism and the exaltation of elitist profit and privilege above all other concerns.
It's your choice. But as Silber says -- "at least be honest about the nature of your choice." Have the courage to do what Martens and Silber are doing, and look reality in the face.
Do you want to know what the entire American political establishment -- Democrat and Republican, conservative and "progressive" -- really stands for? Do you want to know what they all support, whole-heartedly, without the slightest objection or demur? Do you want to see their true vision for the world, behind all the pious rhetoric and poisonous lies? Then look no further; here it is, in the raw:
A leading human rights group on Tuesday accused Ethiopian troops in Somalia of killing civilians and committing atrocities, including slitting people's throats, gouging out eyes and gang-raping women. (AP)
"The people of Somalia are being killed, raped, tortured; looting is widespread and entire neighbourhoods are being destroyed," said Michelle Kagari, Africa Programme Deputy Director at Amnesty International, speaking from Nairobi.
Witnesses described to Amnesty International an increasing incidence of Ethiopian troops killing by what is locally termed "slaughtering" or "killing like goats" -- referring to killing by slitting the throat. The victims of these killings are often left lying in pools of blood in the streets until armed fighters, including snipers, move out of the area and relatives can collect their bodies.
In one case, a 15-year-old girl found her father with his throat cut upon returning home from school, after Ethiopian security forces swept through her neighbourhood.
Other cases in the report include:
Haboon, a 56-year-old woman from Mogadishu, who said her neighbour's 17-year-old daughter was raped by Ethiopian troops. When her 13 and 14-year-old sons tried to defend their sister, the soldiers beat them and took their eyes out with a bayonet. The mother fled. It is not known what happened to the boys. This girl is in a coma as a result of the injuries she sustained during the attack.
Guled, aged 32, who said that he saw his neighbours "slaughtered". He said he saw many men whose throats were slit and whose bodies were left in the street. Some had their testicles cut off. He also saw women being raped. In one incident, his newly-wed neighbour whose husband was not home was raped by over twenty Ethiopian soldiers. (Garowe Online)
Ceebla'a, aged 63, from Wardhiigley, said she fled Mogadishu on 15 November 2007 with her young children after some shooting in the area. One day she saw three men leaving their shops being picked up by Ethiopian soldiers for investigation. The next morning she saw the bodies of the three men on the street. One was strangled with electrical wire. The second had his throat cut. The third had been chained ankle to wrist, and his testicles had been smashed. (Amnesty report)
These Ethiopian troops were armed, trained and funded by the Bush Administration, then sent into Somalia as a proxy army for yet another Terror War "regime change" operation in late 2006. American military forces have been directly involved in the operation, on the side of the invaders, throughout the conflict, from the very beginning to this day -- as evidenced by the U.S. missile attack last week that killed at least two dozen civilians in the course of an "extrajudicial" assassination of a Somali insurgent leader.
There has been no objection to any of this from any major figure in American politics. Barack Obama doesn't object to it. Hillary Clinton doesn't object to it. Nancy Pelosi doesn't object to it. It goes without saying that John McCain and the Republicans don't object to these latest war crimes by their blood-drenched leader. The entire Washington power structure has lined up to support this hideous project: military aggression, murder, destruction and rampant atrocity. Somalia -- already one of the world's most fragile and ravaged nations -- is being battered into utter destruction before our eyes....and in our names.
"The human rights and humanitarian situation in Somalia is growing worse by the day. This report represents the voices of ordinary Somalis, and their plea to the international community to take action to end the attacks against them, including those committed by internationally-supported [Transitional Federal Government] and Ethiopian forces."
Security in many parts of Mogadishu is non-existent, and the entire population of Mogadishu bears the scars of having witnessed or experienced egregious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law.
"There is no safety for civilians, wherever they run. Those fleeing violence in Mogadishu are attacked on the road and those lucky enough to reach a camp or settlement face further violence and dire conditions."
The American-backed invasion, and the depradations of the American-backed TFG, which was helped into power by Somali warlords in the pay of the CIA, have, inevitably, radicalized opposition forces, some of whom respond with similar brutality. As in Iraq and Afghanistan, violent "regime change" aggression only exacerbates the extremism it purports to combat. And, as in the other Terror War operations, the chaos wrought by the war in Somalia breaks down all vestiges of society and human communion, leaving people prey to freebooting criminal gangs and the ravages of desperation.
In the face of all this deliberately fomented horror -- and its embrace by the entire American political establishment -- it is difficult to regard the U.S. presidential race as anything other than a sickening obscenity, played out on a stage drenched in viscera. "Oh my god, did you hear what Harold Ickes said about Barack?!" "Mercy me, did you hear what those latte-swilling Obamaniks said about Hillary's gas tax plan?!" This is juvenile navel-gazing taken to sinister extremes. I honestly cannot fathom such people, who pretend to care about politics and policy -- yet ignore the unspeakable ruin and suffering that are the reality of our politics, the accepted, bipartisan results of our policies.
Until we have a politics that considers the fate of Haboon and her children to be just as important, just as meaningful, just as real as our own, there will be no end to this cycle of atrocity and terror, no end to ruin and revenge, no real change, no matter who is elected.
(More details from the Amnesty report can be found after the jump.)
Serving the System: Disillusion, Deception and the Obama Campaign fd, with all respect, a lesser evil is still evil.
I don't know why you think Obama would advance any other than DLC-approved SCOTUS appointments. He did nothing to stand in the way of the approval of Scalia or Roberts. He could have filibustered ...
Serving the System: Disillusion, Deception and the Obama Campaign Point well taken. Obama is clearly an establishement candidate. But after what we've been through the last 8 years, eye-opening as they have been, I'm glad he's an establishment candidate, because it means he has a chance to win. I'll take him over M...
Fallujah Revisited: Bush, Petraeus Prepare 'Cleansing' of Sadr City Mother's Day update:
"While reports so far today point to a ceasefire in Sadr City, Saturday night brought no relief to the residents as US forces continued a heavy bombardment of this community of over 2 million people. The independent Voices of Ir...
Shot of Wonder: Supporting Arthur Silber That the species still produces a beautiful spirit, noble heart and luminous mind such as he, demonstrates some hope for us. To help him is a joy and honor.
Shoot, Kill, Lie, Repeat: America's New Moral Universe The superficialities which may drive these self absorbed monsters are a matter of no concern. The likelihood that they may change their view of the world and it's peoples to one which is not predicated upon fear, terror and avarice seems highly unl...
The Enduring Legacy of Gerald R. Ford no thanks, Jessica. Obama is a fraud. But please go ahead and vote for him yourself -- and buy a Prius, and put an Obama 08 sticker on it. That's enough to save the world!
Shoot, Kill, Lie, Repeat: America's New Moral Universe Chris, have we considered Bush's allowing of [i]einsatzgruppen[/i] tactics may be revenge related, but not in a 9/11 revenge sense. No, I mean something far more personal.
In the early 40's Dubya's grand-father was charged with trading with the ene...
Shoot, Kill, Lie, Repeat: America's New Moral Universe DR. RON PAUL has been LOUDLY declaring this for many years, and has been campaigning with this absolute clear guarantee: "I WILL IMMEDIATELY BRING ALL US TROOPS HOME FROM EVERY FOREIGN NATION AND END THESE UNCONSTITUTIONAL LAWLESS FASCIST GLOBAL FOR...
Shoot, Kill, Lie, Repeat: America's New Moral Universe I read Arthur Silber's 05/09 post after I made my comment here and I must admit to being ashamed. I agree with everything he said, and I can't believe I spewed despair when Arthur, of all people, had posted a HOPE note the day before. Lord. I AM lost...
Annals of Liberation: Buried Truths, Bloody Lies and Our Expert Executioners
Sunday, 16 March 2008
(UPDATED BELOW.) (UPDATED AGAIN.)
For a proper perspective on the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, check out Winter Patriot on the Winter Soldier hearings in Washington DC. WP has all background -- and the vital links -- to this important conference, where the Iraq Veterans Against the War are presenting hard truths about the bloody, brutal -- and brutalizing -- reality of the continuing American war crime in the shattered land. Get over there now, read WP's excerpts, then hop to the many links to further details.
Because you're not going to get this information from the America's media mandarins. The New York Timeshas not deigned to mention the hearings at all. The Washington Post buried a story on it deep inside the paper on Saturday -- and a very skillful piece of dampening it was, too. Five of the first 11 paragraphs were given over to the handful of "counter-protestors" who showed up to denounce the veterans. It was not until the 19th paragraph that the Post mentioned any specific incident -- a gunship attack on an apartment building in November 2003. No details were given.
Meanwhile, Patrick Cockburn -- another longtime eyewitness to the realities of Iraq whose voice you will never hear in the hushed and reverent corridors of the corporate media -- provides yet another portrait of Iraq's deepening ruination in The Independent. From "Iraq is Not a Country Anymore":
'It reminds me of Iraq under Saddam," a militant opponent of Saddam Hussein said angrily to me last week as he watched red-capped Iraqi soldiers close down part of central Baghdad so the convoy of Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister, might briefly venture into the city.
Five years after the invasion of Iraq, the US and the Iraqi governments claim that the country is becoming a less dangerous place, but the measures taken to protect Mr Maliki told a different story. Gun-waving soldiers first cleared all traffic from the streets. Then four black armoured cars, each with three machine-gunners on the roof, raced out of the Green Zone through a heavily fortified exit, followed by sand-coloured American Humvees and more armoured cars. Finally, in the middle of the speeding convoy, we saw six identical bullet-proof vehicles with black windows, one of which must have been carrying Mr Maliki.
The precautions were not excessive, since Baghdad remains the most dangerous city in the world. The Iraqi Prime Minister was only going to the headquarters of the Dawa party, to which he belongs and which are just half a mile outside the Green Zone, but his hundreds of security guards acted as if they were entering enemy territory.
Five years of occupation have destroyed Iraq as a country. Baghdad is today a collection of hostile Sunni and Shia ghettoes divided by high concrete walls. Different districts even have different national flags. Sunni areas use the old Iraqi flag with the three stars of the Baath party, and the Shia wave a newer version, adopted by the Shia-Kurdish government. The Kurds have their own flag.
The Iraqi government tries to give the impression that normality is returning. Iraqi journalists are told not to mention the continuing violence. When a bomb exploded in Karada district near my hotel, killing 70 people, the police beat and drove away a television cameraman trying to take pictures of the devastation. Civilian casualties have fallen from 65 Iraqis killed daily from November 2006 to August 2007 to 26 daily in February. But the fall in the death rate is partly because ethnic cleansing has already done its grim work and in much of Baghdad there are no mixed areas left.
John McCain is in the locked-down, walled-off, ethnically cleansed Iraqi capital right now, pumping for his 100 Years of War and touting the "success" of the surge. But as ThinkProgress points out, the surge is so successful that McCain is now unable to go to the open-air market he visited last April, when with "100 American soldiers, with three Blackhawk helicopters, and two Apache gunships overhead," he took a brief stroll to show how safe Baghdad already was. The marketplace is now under the control of Shiite ethnic cleanser Moqtada al Sadr, and U.S. reporters were told by their security guards that "they didn't believe it was safe for an American to be in that area."
Arthur Silber expands on Cockburn's piece in a post very aptly titled, "Over One Million Murdered -- and Nothing has Been Learned." Silber also peels the paint off the pack of "wise men" assembled by the New York Times this weekend to assess the progress and problems of the imperial adventure in Mesopotamia. Their conclusion: keep killing, but do it better next time. Silber lays it on the line (as always, go to his site and follow the many links):
Of course, neither the NYT nor any of the "nine experts" refer to the invasion and ongoing occupation as a war crime. Not a single one of these eminent personages acknowledges that Iraq had never attacked us, that Iraq constituted no threat to the U.S. of any consequence whatsoever, and that these facts -- which are the only facts relevant to a determination of whether the U.S. had any justification at all to launch this criminal war -- could have been known in the winter and spring of 2002-2003, and that these facts were known to many "ordinary" persons in the United States and around the world. But none of the "ordinary" persons who understood the truth were "experts." None of them belonged to the ruling class.
Silber then gives chapter and verse from the hideous gospels of these willing executioners, and concludes:
Behold the wisdom of the ruling class, now increased by benefit of the deaths of more than a million innocent people: the next time the United States wages a war of aggression, the next time the United States violates the Nuremberg Principles, the next time the United States installs a brutally cruel colonial occupation force -- do it efficiently.
Manage future wars of conquest and future occupations competently. Commit your crimes -- and your murders -- with skill and expertise.
In this way, the ruling class is now prepared to do it all again -- against Iran, or Syria, possibly China in five or ten years. It will not matter that another nation will not have attacked us, or even had the capability of doing so. All that will be of consequence is that the United States manages its future crimes expertly and efficiently....
Our government is a government of monsters, advised by "experts" who are monsters. If the United States should suffer another horrifying attack on a scale equal to or even worse than 9/11, do not wonder why. You know why, but most of you don't want to acknowledge the explanation or face what it means, even now.
A million deaths will not deter them. Will five million? Ten million? No. They will not. This is your government, and it will be your government under a new Democratic or Republican administration.
For to be sure, denunciation, demonization and marginalization are the fates awaiting anyone in public life who dares utter a word of truth in freedom's fair and happy land. That's why the testimonies of the Winter Soldiers of Iraq are being buried or ignored -- just like the bodies of the million dead now rotting in Iraqi soil.
The Chicago Tribune gives a portrait in miniature of the "monstrous losses" suffered by the Iraqis associated with the paper's Bagdhad bureau.
UPDATE II: Guardian correspondent Ghaith Abdul-Ahad revisits Baghdad, the city where he was born and lived for 30 years: Death, destruction and fear on the streets. Here's an excerpt of real life in the "liberated land" after the "successful" surge:
Few Baghdadis would try [traveling across the city] these days. Most now live in walled, effectively ethnically cleansed, communities. Travelling across the city means hopping from one frontline to another and negotiating countless militia-controlled fiefdoms.
To do it I must make elaborate preparations. First, two separate ID cards, one with a Sunni name, another Shia. Then the rings: Shia militiamen favour two big ones. As we approach Shia checkpoints I stick my hand out of the window wearing them, wave Salam, and am almost always waved through.
I grew up in Karrada, a mixed neighbourhood, but I went to school in Adhamiya, a strongly Sunni area where the insurgency started. Soon after the war Adhamiya was taken over by al-Qaida but today it is controlled by an anti al-Qaida Sunni militia. The main threat comes from across the highway: the Shia area of Qahira. The highway between the two areas resembles a scene from the West Bank: two high concrete walls separating the two sides of the road. The militiamen say they feel safe inside Adhamiya, but a few yards outside the neighbourhood it is very different. "Our limit is the checkpoint at Antar square," their commander tells me. "After that the Mahdi army of Qahira will kidnap us."
In the market the vegetable sellers say that each time they bring in food supplies, they must bribe the Iraqi army soldiers manning checkpoints. "We are worse than Gaza because if they don't let me through that checkpoint I have to drive all around the area and try to get through another checkpoint, and 99% I will be dead."
Not far from the checkpoint and behind the famous Abu Hanifa mosque was a small park. Because so many have been killed in the area, and because people can't move outside it, it has been converted into a cemetery. Three thousand graves have been dug in two years, according to the man who supervises it. An old man sprinkling rosewater on his son's grave told me: "He was killed by the Shia Mahdi because his name was Omar" - a common Sunni name...
Another day, I changed my ID card and car and visited the other side of the wall. It is a poor area, controlled by a Shia militia, some of whose members are affiliated to the Mahdi army.
There were two funeral tents that day, one for Hussein, a young boy whose brother says he was killed mistakenly by the Americans the night before, the other for Jassim, a pick-up driver whose father and cousins say he was killed by the people of Adhamiya...
There is no such thing as a Baghdadi any more. Everyone now is identified with a particular walled neighbourhood, guarded by one of a dozen or so militias.
Divide and Rule. Set all at each other's throats, arm all sides, murder and destroy, and the profits soar, the contracts are endless, and we settle in for the 100 Years War.
Sad to say, the only thing that might stop it, is the coming economic collapse.
But I doubt this....Privatize the Profits, Socialize the Losses.
Great article, what scare me is the cost of the war back home. I hope we find the billions of dollars for our soldiers when they come home because they will need it. I wrote an article myself regarding the cost from the Federal, State and local level as it pertains to California... http://www.mcallisterhotel.org/newsletter/?p=25
George W. Bush and David Petraeus are preparing to make 
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