The ‘Good Germans’ Among Us
“Bush lies” doesn’t cut it anymore. It’s time to confront the darker reality that we are lying to ourselves.
Ten days ago The Times unearthed yet another round of secret Department of Justice memos countenancing torture. President Bush gave his standard response: “This government does not torture people.” Of course, it all depends on what the meaning of “torture” is. The whole point of these memos is to repeatedly recalibrate the definition so Mr. Bush can keep pleading innocent.
By any legal standards except those rubber-stamped by Alberto Gonzales, we are practicing torture, and we have known we are doing so ever since photographic proof emerged from Abu Ghraib more than three years ago. As Andrew Sullivan, once a Bush cheerleader, observed last weekend in The Sunday Times of London, America’s “enhanced interrogation” techniques have a grotesque provenance: “Verschärfte Vernehmung, enhanced or intensified interrogation, was the exact term innovated by the Gestapo to describe what became known as the ‘third degree.’ It left no marks. It included hypothermia, stress positions and long-time sleep deprivation.”
Still, the drill remains the same. The administration gives its alibi (Abu Ghraib was just a few bad apples). A few members of Congress squawk. The debate is labeled “politics.” We turn the page.
There has been scarcely more response to the similarly recurrent story of apparent war crimes committed by our contractors in Iraq. Call me cynical, but when Laura Bush spoke up last week about the human rights atrocities in Burma, it seemed less an act of selfless humanitarianism than another administration maneuver to change the subject from its own abuses.
As Mrs. Bush spoke, two women, both Armenian Christians, were gunned down in Baghdad by contractors underwritten by American taxpayers. On this matter, the White House has been silent. That incident followed the Sept. 16 massacre in Baghdad’s Nisour Square, where 17 Iraqis were killed by security forces from Blackwater USA, which had already been implicated in nearly 200 other shooting incidents since 2005. There has been no accountability. The State Department, Blackwater’s sugar daddy for most of its billion dollars in contracts, won’t even share its investigative findings with the United States military and the Iraqi government, both of which have deemed the killings criminal.
The gunmen who mowed down the two Christian women worked for a Dubai-based company managed by Australians, registered in Singapore and enlisted as a subcontractor by an American contractor headquartered in North Carolina. This is a plot out of “Syriana” by way of “Chinatown.” There will be no trial. We will never find out what happened. A new bill passed by the House to regulate contractor behavior will have little effect, even if it becomes law in its current form.
We can continue to blame the Bush administration for the horrors of Iraq - and should. Paul Bremer, our post-invasion viceroy and the recipient of a Presidential Medal of Freedom for his efforts, issued the order that allows contractors to elude Iraqi law, a folly second only to his disbanding of the Iraqi Army. But we must also examine our own responsibility for the hideous acts committed in our name in a war where we have now fought longer than we did in the one that put Verschärfte Vernehmung on the map.
I have always maintained that the American public was the least culpable of the players during the run-up to Iraq. The war was sold by a brilliant and fear-fueled White House propaganda campaign designed to stampede a nation still shellshocked by 9/11. Both Congress and the press - the powerful institutions that should have provided the checks, balances and due diligence of the administration’s case - failed to do their job. Had they done so, more Americans might have raised more objections. This perfect storm of democratic failure began at the top.
As the war has dragged on, it is hard to give Americans en masse a pass. We are too slow to notice, let alone protest, the calamities that have followed the original sin.
In April 2004, Stars and Stripes first reported that our troops were using makeshift vehicle armor fashioned out of sandbags, yet when a soldier complained to Donald Rumsfeld at a town meeting in Kuwait eight months later, he was successfully pilloried by the right. Proper armor procurement lagged for months more to come. Not until early this year, four years after the war’s first casualties, did a Washington Post investigation finally focus the country’s attention on the shoddy treatment of veterans, many of them victims of inadequate armor, at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and other military hospitals.
We first learned of the use of contractors as mercenaries when four Blackwater employees were strung up in Falluja in March 2004, just weeks before the first torture photos emerged from Abu Ghraib. We asked few questions. When reports surfaced early this summer that our contractors in Iraq (180,000, of whom some 48,000 are believed to be security personnel) now outnumber our postsurge troop strength, we yawned. Contractor casualties and contractor-inflicted casualties are kept off the books.
It was always the White House’s plan to coax us into a blissful ignorance about the war. Part of this was achieved with the usual Bush-Cheney secretiveness, from the torture memos to the prohibition of photos of military coffins. But the administration also invited our passive complicity by requiring no shared sacrifice. A country that knows there’s no such thing as a free lunch was all too easily persuaded there could be a free war.
Instead of taxing us for Iraq, the White House bought us off with tax cuts. Instead of mobilizing the needed troops, it kept a draft off the table by quietly purchasing its auxiliary army of contractors to finesse the overstretched military’s holes. With the war’s entire weight falling on a small voluntary force, amounting to less than 1 percent of the population, the rest of us were free to look the other way at whatever went down in Iraq.
We ignored the contractor scandal to our own peril. Ever since Falluja this auxiliary army has been a leading indicator of every element of the war’s failure: not only our inadequate troop strength but also our alienation of Iraqi hearts and minds and our rampant outsourcing to contractors rife with Bush-Cheney cronies and campaign contributors. Contractors remain a bellwether of the war’s progress today. When Blackwater was briefly suspended after the Nisour Square catastrophe, American diplomats were flatly forbidden from leaving the fortified Green Zone. So much for the surge’s great “success” in bringing security to Baghdad.
Last week Paul Rieckhoff, an Iraq war combat veteran who directs Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, sketched for me the apocalypse to come. Should Baghdad implode, our contractors, not having to answer to the military chain of command, can simply “drop their guns and go home.” Vulnerable American troops could be deserted by those “who deliver their bullets and beans.”
This potential scenario is just one example of why it’s in our national self-interest to attend to Iraq policy the White House counts on us to ignore. Our national character is on the line too. The extralegal contractors are both a slap at the sovereignty of the self-governing Iraq we supposedly support and an insult to those in uniform receiving as little as one-sixth the pay. Yet it took mass death in Nisour Square to fix even our fleeting attention on this long-metastasizing cancer in our battle plan.
Similarly, it took until December 2005, two and a half years after “Mission Accomplished,” for Mr. Bush to feel sufficient public pressure to acknowledge the large number of Iraqi casualties in the war. Even now, despite his repeated declaration that “America will not abandon the Iraqi people,” he has yet to address or intervene decisively in the tragedy of four million-plus Iraqi refugees, a disproportionate number of them children. He feels no pressure from the American public to do so, but hey, he pays lip service to Darfur.
Our moral trajectory over the Bush years could not be better dramatized than it was by a reunion of an elite group of two dozen World War II veterans in Washington this month. They were participants in a top-secret operation to interrogate some 4,000 Nazi prisoners of war. Until now, they have kept silent, but America’s recent record prompted them to talk to The Washington Post.
“We got more information out of a German general with a game of chess or Ping-Pong than they do today, with their torture,” said Henry Kolm, 90, an M.I.T. physicist whose interrogation of Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy, took place over a chessboard. George Frenkel, 87, recalled that he “never laid hands on anyone” in his many interrogations, adding, “I’m proud to say I never compromised my humanity.”
Our humanity has been compromised by those who use Gestapo tactics in our war. The longer we stand idly by while they do so, the more we resemble those “good Germans” who professed ignorance of their own Gestapo. It’s up to us to wake up our somnambulant Congress to challenge administration policy every day. Let the war’s last supporters filibuster all night if they want to. There is nothing left to lose except whatever remains of our country’s good name.
Frank Rich is a regular columnist for The New York Times. His most recent book is The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth.
© 2007 The New York Times
The people who are now telling us not to be too zealous are the same ones who, four years ago, were telling us that comparing the regime to the Third Reich, comparing Bush to Hitler or our stormtroopers to Nazis, was irresponsible.
Now they are the ones using “Gestapo” and “good Germans” to characterize the actions of the regime and the non-response of many citizens.
German version: Verschaerfte Vernehmung? Ach, nein! The Fuehrer would never allow such things. We Germans are a moral people who fear God. The Jewish Roosevelt administration has slandered our Reich!
American version: Torture? This government does not torture! Those liberals who say otherwise are aiding the terrorists and undermining the troops. Support the troops!
Hey I just recently watched the movie “The Good German” the good German was a female German Jew who in order to preserve her own life turned in other German Jews who were hiding their ancestry from the Third Reich.
Call it like it is, these are the “Good Americans” among you, otherwise they would be in jail, leave the Germans alone they at least have a free and democratic society today which is thoroughly buttressed with civil society and respect for the rule of law.
Frank Rich joins a host of other mainstream journalists whove suddenly discovered they can come out against the war … and in Rich’s case its fashionably upper west side to do so !! Where was this slime in 2003 when the bombs were raining down on Baghdad ? Thats right .. missing.
Every soldier, sailor, airman and marine should refuse to serve and obey the orders of this criminal administration and just go back home and look for a real job. They took an oath to defend the Constitution and this country from enemies both foreign and domestic, and reneged by becoming henchmen for the anti-American Bush regime.
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Our entire society is complicit in the Iraq war crimes.
Some were duped in the early stages of spin, but now the truth of the invasion and occupation is quite clear. This is no different than how nearly everyone in Nazi Germany fell into line and pretended nothing was wrong.
And most still chant, Support The Troops !
A true story:
Right after we hit a defenseless civilian Baghdad with “shock and awe” bombing, I talked with a local member of the National Guard I have known for years.
After I logically cut through the WMD lies and other propaganda, he got angry and blurted out, “GENOCIDE is the history of the world. They have the oil and we need it.”
I mentioned it might be cheaper and less trouble and more civilized to buy the oil rather than steal it, and he walked away.
Everyone participating in the Iraq occupation is a mercenary. They are all being paid to kill people and steal their resources.
There is nothing honorable about serving in Iraq. Even if you accept an imperial model of our nation and nationalism, Iraq and Afghanistan have all the signs of being historic disasters and in the long run not good for the nation or the world.
And like Germany after Hitler, it may take a very long time to restore our international legitimacy and develop a society that is not the epicenter of evil.
Monday morning quarterbacks waiting until Friday afternoon.
Looks like media whoring.
Finally….
Since four years I have been drawing the parallel between Germans in Hilter’s time and have been asking on blogs “where are the good Americans”. And more recently I have been “bothering” many of you by pointing out that it is not only Bush and neocons, but the complicity goes much, much deeper - the dems (Bush enabler), the media (govt. propaganda organ), the soldiers (the perpetrators), and the vast majority of Americans who don’t like the above list. We Americans are a deplorable, ignorant, arrogant, criminal folk.
while i agree there are many among us who could be considered “good germans”,it should be noted that the last two elections were very likely stolen.it is far past time for action,not in the polling booth or the editorial room of the new york times,but on the streets and in the mountains and valleys all over america.the murderous power-mad bastards who are driving us off a cliff are certainly evil,but not stupid.as they seem hell-bent on the destruction of america they must know the shit is about to hit the fan in a very big way.if we are going down lets go down fighting.
“…leave the Germans alone they at least have a free and democratic society today which is thoroughly buttressed with civil society and respect for the rule of law.”
Just like they were in the early-30’s — but then they had a PearlHa…I-mean, the Reichtag-fire, and a ‘grievance’ against the Zionists who cost them WW-I with America’s-entrance, and the Reparations ‘International-Jewry” imposed at Versailles, not-to-mention the ‘Values-threats’ posed by Communism, and the ‘Security-threats’ posed by Poland/France/etc.
Didn’t Zappa sing “Can’t Happen Here…bop-di-de-bop”?
5,000 years of living within the dominator (”power-over others”) paradigm is a long time.
If we’re going to make it, with any shred of our humanity intact, we have a huge job ahead.
Short-term: fix the fine cluster-fuck of a mess we’ve got ourselves into on multiple fronts.
Long-term: fix the thought-patterns that underlie our actions, like “follow the leader.” (… or teacher, priest, parent, boss, etc).
All across the world the concept of “obedience” is assumed, expected, and not questioned.
A good girl obeys her parents, a good man obeys the word of Christ, G-D, or Allah. Do what your teacher says (reasonable or not), or you’ll get a bad report card; what your professor says, if you want that degree; what your boss says, if you want to get ahead.
Achtung, indeed.
The book, The Chalice and the Blade by Riane Eisler speaks to both of these. There is an another way, an alternate paradigm…and we’re not there yet. She calls this the “partnership model.” It assumes “power-with” others, not “power-over” them.
citizen1
==We Americans are a deplorable, ignorant, arrogant, criminal folk.==
Speak for yourself.
anney October 14th, 2007 3:14 pm
citizen1
==We Americans are a deplorable, ignorant, arrogant, criminal folk.==
Speak for yourself.
===================
anney October 14: Don’t worry, I am….. And I am ashamed to be an American.
jeff best: Amen, brother. Take to the streets, withhold our labor! All working people. Those that prefer indentured servitude, let them remain in apathy and ignorance. They are easily manipulated and controlled, but those of us ready to restore what has been taken and given away by BOTH political parties these past seven years, it is time to do more than talk. The General Strike, in the cities, the valleys, the mountains, and the prairies, has to start soon.
More foreclosures, bankruptcies, and valueless money is on the way, not to mention more dead and maimed for the cowards in government. Wake up America!
FRANK RICH I am ashamed for you.
It is not WE who did not know, and it is not YOU who did not know.
BUT it is YOU, who as a news reporter, did not do your job.
You did not report what you knew ..and you damn well know it.
At the very begining of this “war” (invaison) one could see there was something very wrong….LIES and pictures! Prisoners with bags over their heads..photos from Guantanamo prison with prisoners kneeling blindfolded handcuffed behind their backs…remember “Have a Nice Day” a note left at the scene of a mass killing by “our boys” then the horrible photographs that followed.AND the lies from this administration..from the very beginning …if I could see it.. why not you..a man as informed as you.
Sincerely yours,
Cassandra
As the USA is a democracy, ruled by the majority, the only conclusion that the world can draw is that the USA WANTS to torure people…and plans to continue torturing people…
The Cheneybush market research team looked out the window, Saw that We The People actually love torturetainment, and realized that selling the real thing would be a cakewalk. As if millions who actually pay to watch a half dozen people tortured in the most creatively heinous ways imaginable would give a sh*t if a few terristsss got dunked or frozen or humiliated.
“Saw IV” opens Oct. 26. Hypocrites - the line forms to the left.
The way the executive fascist cancer and congressional paralysis have progressed, only organized revolutionary effort by a PEIOPLE’S MOVEMENT can stop the slide into the abyss. Nothing less will do. Only the effort to knock out and replace the tenets -economic and political- of capitalism can put the country on the road to peace, justice and harmony with the world and planet Earth. Our method will be peaceful,electoral,democratic. Usually capitalism, when it loses or thinks it is going to lose, does not respect democratic processes and strikes insiduously and violently. If that happens, then “we the people” will continue defending our Constitution by bringing down the OUTLAW government by using all appropriate means.
It is futile at this moment to discuss methods of arriving at a detailed exhaustive list of programs. It is clear by now that the masses of the people and the progressive political organizations want solutions to a few vital problems, such as PEACE, WORLD DISARMAMENT & DRASTC CUTS of MILITARY BUDGETS, NOT FOR PROFIT UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE, FREE PUBLIC EDUCATION, ELIMINATION OF POVERTY, PROTECTION OF PLANET EARTH AND SUSTAINABLE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT. These demands can be expresed with fewer words, such as
PEACE, DISARMAMENT, JUSTICE, ENVIRONMENTAL SANITY.
It is not important if the local organizations of a People’s Movement differ about how many and which of the key demands they want to emphasize or campaign for. They can add or substract as many as they want, if they feel that their effectiveness will be boosted at their local level. What is important is that the locals are free to develop their initiatives, but, while retaining their organizational identity, they consider themselves a local branch of the big tree of the PEOPLE’S MOVEMENT which fights for PEACE - JUSTICE - DISARMAMENT- ENVIRONMENTAL SANITY against the “two” political stooges of the merchants of war, exploitation and environmental degredation.
The big question is to have a starting spark for a People’s Movement by someone who is respected in the progressive movement for his/her courage, honesty, intelligence and leadership qualities. No matter how many times I have tried to think of the right person, I always come up with the same conclusion: CINDY SHEEHAN. Her run against Pelosi can also serve the local initiatives for setting up People’s Movement branches by rallying support
for her election, by adopting all or some of her PEACE-DISARMAMENT-JUSTICE-ENVIRONMENTAL programs
and organizing financial assistance for her election. Let us hope that Cindy has noticed our chattering and gives us some clue.
I refuse to blame those who are finally coming to their senses, that is a self-defeating exercise. I applaud all who have the courage to speak out against the inhumanity being perpetrated by our government, and aided and abetted by the ignorance of our populace.
Why condemn those whose voices are now in concert with us? Why not welcome them to the struggle? Embrace them, join our strength to theirs, and together end this criminal and insane government that now plagues us all.
It does no good to attack those who might someday stand in the streets by our sides. Save your selfrighteousness for you books - what we need now is strength and solidarity.
We are going to be in this mess (snafu) for a long, long time, witness the right wing fundamentalist law schools spitting out lawyers like cookies in a hallow tree and shipping them right off to Washington to fight the good battle, all in the name of God. If abortion fell off of the books and all of the gays in this country moved to another country what would be left to monopolize the rights agenda? World domination throught Southern Baptist Christianity? Then what? Bring back slavery??
Just what is their agenda? I really would like to know and I wouldn’t be surprized if maybe god would be interested too.
“Why condemn those whose voices are now in concert with us? Why not welcome them to the struggle? Embrace them, join our strength to theirs, and together end this criminal and insane government that now plagues us all. ”
Hogwash. Media complicity got us this far. You welcome these pigs back into the ‘fold’ and they will screw you where it hurts all over again when its convenient. The mainstream media could not get enough of the ‘war’. This is nothing but expediency and it rings hollow.
If the NY Times really cared they would plaster their paper with images from the war (yeahing burnt kids, pregnant moms clutching their kids while being riddled with bullets, charred bodies) … but our fragile psyche cannot handle this imagery !
“Hogwash,” So you are willing to paint all with the same brush, regardless of degrees of complicity? To follow your reasoning would be to limit ourselves when that is exactly what we SHOULD NOT BE DOING. I agree with most of your points, but I do not agree when you strongly imply, insinuate, that people cannot change. I am not yet that cynical toward everyone - just with this administration and SOME members of the press.
A hero of mine, David Cline of VFP, once told me that it didn’t make any difference when you came to the table - just as long as you arrive. Personally, I am thankful for each and every human who has awakened to this travesty; each and every human who has chosen to have a voice, however meager, however late.
I may have missed it, but I think Frank Rich failed to come right out and say that the war itself is a criminal endeavor. He decried many aspects of it, to be sure: the mercenaries, the torture, the role of the press, the role of the public, the role of the administration. He decried the number of Iraqi refugees (4 million) and the lacking body armor for OUR troops, and the scandal of veterans’ care (OUR veterans) at Walter Reed.
However, I think he missed two things. He failed to mention how many Iraqis we’ve murdered so far (about 1.2 million, as recently calculated by a British polling firm). And he somehow failed to say that the war itself is a lie, an unjust war, based on lies, a filthy oil & power grab, a violation of every conceivable principle of international law or justice. To come right out and say that would probably be more than even a very liberal NYT writer (especially one fond of being invited to fashionable parties in Manhattan) is capable of.
This is the first ever post I am going to make but I have been a long time reader (and financial contributor to) Common Dreams. We already live in a fascist state. I am teaching my 6 year old daughter that the current president is a bad man and she (to her credit) is getting it. Although we talked about it a few days ago, yesterday in the car she asked, out of the blue, why President Bush would not give health insurance to children. She wanted to know his reason for this. It made me think (and this is where this post is pertinent to Frank Rich’s topic) about the ramifications of teaching my child liberal values. I am waiting for the time when (not if) she is castigated at school by her peers, teachers or other parents for what my wife and I are teaching her about the American government and the president. There are many evil people among us who hate liberals (like Germans were taught to hate the Jews prior to and during WWII). The right wing media machine is pounding into conservative brains each and every day that liberals are non-patriotic and America hating. A neocon at work the other day told me that he thinks there will be a civil war in this country because of the divisiveness. I am truly scared for my child and what she is growing up in. Will she be bullied at school because she has liberal parents? Would the school bring us in to say that we should not be teaching our child that Bush is an awful man who has no morals or conscience? How far away are we from a scenario like that? Because of the neocon and democrat’s complicity in our democracy’s destruction our government needs to be revamped from top to bottom. They are not going to let go without being forced to. Perhaps I am one of the “good Americans.” I hope not.
Please be kind. It is my first posting and I know it was a bit rambling. Thanks for taking the time to read it.
If you thought these wars were a just collective punishment to be meted out to the peoples of Afghanistan and Iraq, because of 9/11, then those same rules of justice imply you deserve another million of what happened on 9/11. You make nation attacked in response to a building attacked, and five years to a promised decade of war for the events of one day.
On your own scale of retribution, your entire nation should be sterilized to nuclear ash for a million years for your crimes. For me it will be enough that you live to see the fruits of your mis-applied lives and policies. Many generations of your armies wounded in mind and body with chronic disability. Your nation in economic slavery to the rest of the world, and your democracy a joke. Your freedoms to lock up and ignore protesters that no one envies. Your population dying from third world diseases. Your nation in civil disarray. The word American being a synonym for stupid, loud, uneducated, unhealthy, self-important, antisocial, deluded with religious mania and dangerous. Your leaders of society are worshipers of Mammon. Someone who only seeks to defraud, and cannot work with others. Someone to avoid and contain at all costs. Makers of delusional entertainment pap. This is what it means to be an American today.
You are all definitely an example for the rest of us. It may will be, given your current mental state, that you manage to make and carry out your own just retribution. Given your penchant for having some new nuclear power stations, and of course by your own reckoning that does means you intend to make more nuclear weapons, we give you about fifty remaining years during which self-destruction might occur. A matter of random radioactive decay, in a poisonous dangerous mass.
White America doesn’t believe in the Bill of Rights or the Constitution or the Declaration. Its a shared joke, after all the white male slave holders who wrote those docs didn’t believe in them either. They believed in, just like the white male general population:
White Male Supremacy; Human Slavery; Gender Slavery; Massive child abuse; Constant war; and Genocide. We did them all and got away with it. Hurrah for us. We also nuked civilian populations, used germ warfare, chemical warfare, and murdered a 500000 Iraqi children because we didn’t like their Boss. And we got away with it all.
Why would we ‘repent’? Would the Germans have ‘repented’ if they had won? No, I don’t think so. The justifications hold up until we’re forced to trade war criminals for crude and food. Then we’ll be very sorry and 40 years later some will say what a good man GW was. Just like Hitler.
Until then, business as usual, Murder Incorporated.
Peace
Under the Nazis, everyone whose protest was noticed found himself severely punished in some way, sent to jail or a concentration camp or executed.
40,000 Germans died that way.
I did not protest out loud because I wanted to survive the nightmare.
What do we Americans have to fear if we protest?
One of many crimes the German high Command was condemned for was “Collective Punishment”. The German citizens were charred in their cities by being bombed to smitherens because they supported the Nazi Regime.
WE as US citizens knowingly RE-ELECTED Bush Cheney team on 2004. Now the rest of the world is asking the same question the German people were asked in 1945. In all honesty we can not claim that we did not know about the atrocities our agents, uniformed or out of it are committing in Iraq and Afghanista. Only 4 days ago airstrikes killed 9 children and 6 women in one air raid. This was after our un-uniformed troops, the mercenaries, killed another 17.
We as a nation are going to have to face the same judgement as the Germans faced in ‘45 for generations to come.
Blackwater and the like are members of the “thug class” which will become equivalent to the SS and Gestapo of Nazi Germany as we progress more and more toward a fascist totalitarian state.
Right now they are showing the American people, as well as the rest of the world, just how brutal they can be.
They may one day be showing that brutality to us more directly as this government takes more unconstitutional power for itself, and as the American people finally start to wake up and resist this takeover of our democracy.
Afluent muslims should be working 24/7 to change a/their culture of grotesque sexism into avantagarde contemporary feminism.
Great literary voices to find everywhere
This way muslim men probably will gain the status of people in the global contemporary unspoken lexicon.Today they all can be tortured. They are simply subhuman.
all of our young men and women the young men and women that went to serve in afganistan and iraq went for love of country and family and a very naive belief in their government and their president.those volunteers to serving their country have been betrayed,and in more ways than one.on top of everthing else,bush funneled billions of dollars into his terrorist mercenarie henchmen and allowed the LEGITIMATE soldiers,to sacrifice as a result of it.bush insults them for their service. in the event of death or injury,the soldiers families are compensated little. we are all aware of the scandals like walter reed.during the vietnam war,the leader of the coalition of the people’s party,dr. benjamin spock..did not alienate the armed forces,he merged with them and we combined efforts to end the war.the “vietnam veterens against the war” and the “peoples party,became an alliance and wielded considerable power-TOGETHER !!AND THIS IS WHAT IS NEEDED,NOW !! MERGE YOURSELVES WITH PAUL RIEKOFF AND THE afganistan and iraq veterns !!do not alienate our LEGITIMATE soldiers.you may need someone who wants to defend your home and family-someday.who do you want ??our legitimate and human armed forces or sub-human mercenaries !!
exactly, leighton. Any government which openly and however cynically deploys thousands of mercenaries as part of its total strategy for the pursuit of a war of aggression, in order to butress an ongoing occupation, is capable of any outrage. And, as events in New Orleans have demonstrated, those Blackwater rifles are to be trained on us, whether we choose to believe it or not.
AS for whether we’re all responsible for the debacle in Iraq, hell no, a lot of us aren’t, we are only responsible for not having spoken out even more engergetically against this war at its very beginnings. Some of us never bought into this mess at all. I know it’s hard to remember that, but it’s the truth. It’s not that we think ourselves superior, it’s just that we trusted what our earlier political experience during Vietnam and the Central America period taught us about the United States ruling elite: there is no vile or violent act which cannot be prettied up to justify the aims of empire.
There is an elite governing class in the United States. The actual intent of people in this country who want to believe otherwise, and hence buy into the line about “humanitarian intervention” doesn’t count for anything, and maybe now a few more of them know it. But time will tell.
Sindbaad says:”We as a nation are going to have to face the same judgement as the Germans faced in ‘45 for generations to come.”
I don’t think so, as mentioned in earlier post the only reason the Germans faced any judgement was because they lost the war. The U.S. will not loose this war. At some point we will declare that Iraq is free regardless of what the situation is there, leave and our history books will write it up as a “noble enterprise”. Americans rarely look beyond the MSM for news so will be and are unaware that the rest of the world sees us as arrogant fools who learned nothing from history. When our kids and grandkids are saddled with the bill for the Iraq fiasco - how it all happened will be blamed on funding children’s health insurance. I even predict that GW will go down in the history books as one or our most brave and courageous Presidents, a man who stood by his principles.
gnob,
congratulations on your post. Don’t be stymied that no one made any observations about it, that’s kind of de rigueur for posts. I would argue that there already is a civil war going on in this country even though it’s currently quite civil. Brothers and sisters friends and families have been divided from each other already as far as I can tell. Lines have been drawn in the sand and we all have seen where it is we stand.
On Rich, there’s a really good kind of literary article that came out today that I enjoyed very much.
http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/content/view/2616/81/
On the NYTimes in general, I would have to say that I’ve never found it to be anything more than half true in every article I’ve ever read. So I skim them all indiscriminately. That half truth thing is just too annoying for me.
Frank Rich wrote about cultural trends for Arts & Leisure from 2003 to 2005.
“White America doesn’t believe in the Bill of Rights or the Constitution or the Declaration.”
No, Just those who are Christian zealots.
Torture doesn’t work in interrogation it causes terror and pleases directly or by proxy the sick bastards who practice it or order it.
Hand in hand with torture is advertising it to a target population while denying it to the rest of the world.
You also have to con and desensitize lots of collaborators to bury the natural guilt of inhuman acts.
Acting tough while in total fear because of your own inadequacy like Bu$h the inferior and Shotgun Dick is also required. Neither one was tough enough to face real military duty themselves.
It ain’t simple being a war criminal.
gnob..the important thing is to exercise your freedom of speech at least 3 times a week..one hour a day..or it will get flabby !!
Rage against those who dare to speak up their mind hopefullly this time in 2008 will be scrutinized + halted as deserved.
If frank rich evolves good for him + all of us.
where is the problem?
i have a problem with holding an election and voting–unless bush is impeached first !!why should we continue to give the ruling elite,what they most desire-OUR VOTES !!i am fed up with doing their bidding !!i think dennis kucinich would even agree…i think alot of people would feel the same !!impeachment is a tiny little penalty,for the scope of the crime.GIVE THE PEOPLE WHAT THEY WANT-IMPEACHMENT !!!!!!!!!why should we give them what THEY want ??
I’m afraid it may be a bit late to try to awaken the American people and get them to the face reality of Iraq. The sad truth is that those who are awake now in this country are probably the only people who will be awake to the realities of our government’s evildoings. Many of us were wide awake to the Bush administration long before the war began. Unprecedented simultaneous demonstrations happened around the world before the war broke out–by far the largest worldwide demonstrations in world history to try to prevent an unnecessary and immoral war from happening. And yet it did happen, turned into the catastrophe we predicted, and is still going on. What we face here is that our constitutional system has been taken over in an auto-coup, a classic fascist takeover. The signs are clear as crystal, but we the awakened minority appear doomed to witness the already twisted reality as it becomes ever more dysfunctional and inhuman, as the super-rich set themselves further away from the majority, as the two party fascist establishment continues to rely on war, until finally a coalition of other countries put a stop to it.
anney 13 quoting citizen1 wrote:
“citizen1
==We Americans are a deplorable, ignorant, arrogant, criminal folk.==
anney 13 then said:
Speak for yourself.
COMMENT:
Citizen1 appears to be offering an opinion of the greater society that allows its government to commit heinous crimes. Describing the society as deplorable, ignorant, arrogant, and criminal is a legitimate opinion. If you are none of those, then he probably isn’t talking about you, but that doesn’t mean he should only speak for himself.
Or as canuckchuck (17) wrote:
” As the USA is a democracy, ruled by the majority, the only conclusion that the world can draw is that the USA WANTS to torture people…and plans to continue torturing people…”
COMMENT:
That’s right, the world blames the USA as a nation of people who claim to have a representative government - a government that represents them, all of the people, and not just some of the people in the government. Thus, citizen1 has that right to blame the USA as well. Ordering citizen1 to speak for himself is a cheap shot worthy only of a knee-jerk flag-waver.
And hedology (26) wrote:
“The word American being a synonym for stupid, loud, uneducated, unhealthy, self-important, antisocial, deluded with religious mania and dangerous.”
COMMENT:
Exactly the image I’ve found of Americans held by other folks from other lands. “They” don’t hate our freedoms” folks: they hate the Americans’ criminal government of, by, and for the people. Individually “they” may like some of us, or not, but the term “Ugly American” is hardly new, and it seems a majority of Americans are living up to that image. If you aren’t one of the Ugly ones, educate those around you if you can. And good luck with that!
Oh, and apologies to the other Americans of the Western Hemisphere for the US stealing the name “American,” but just hope we don’t steal your country.
gnob (25) wrote:
“This is the first ever post I am going to make but I have been a long time reader (and financial contributor to) Common Dreams.”
COMMENT:
Thanks for reminding me to make my contribution. Common Dreams is a precious resource, worth at least the price of a magazine subscription or two, or a daily newspaper subscription or two or more.
gyptian -
I couldn’t agree with you more. Many of us depended on writers such as Rich who were fortunate enough to be given space weekly in The New York Times to shine a light of truth BEFORE the war began. You were exactly right. He was definitely “missing” when the country needed him most. Too little, too late.
bakunin,
you see that’s the kind of prophetic gibberish we keep warning y’all folks about. rumors of war and such. go back now from whence you came!!! probably the educational system.
- only kidding, uh, about the prophetic part.
So many smart, caring comments. Thanks gang.
Nice post gnob. Write more here, please. If I was a little kid, I’d love a parent like you–who cares about the world and who has the values of cooperation as you seem to. I hope your daughter witnesses American war crimes trials for President Bush and others who supported him in this bleak time.
Addressing this post:
1651925 October 14th, 2007 6:59 pm
You were in Germany in the 1940s I see. I think referring to the context at the time is a very important point with regard to looking at Germany, past and present. It is true that the consequences at this time in protesting in America (which I do from time to time) are not what they must have been under the German police state in the National Socialist era. Thanks for the comment. Regarding present-day Germany, I recall an interview with Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder with Charlie Rose during which he stated that Germany cannot use force except with the approval of the UNSC.
http://www.germany-info.org/relaunch/politics/speeches/092403_cr.html
We have that condition in 6 (2) of our own Constitution but ignore it. We can learn from present-day Germany in this regard.
Regarding this comment:
PowerofLove October 14th, 2007 3:07 pm
Thanks for the great comment. I agree with the framework Riane Eisler wrote in The Chalice and the Blade. What a wonderful way of understanding those two patterns of history and the current task! I also like David Korten’s recently published book, The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community. It uses some of Eisler’s ideas. Also good is an older book by Lewis Mumford called Myth of the Machine Part 1. It elaborates on some similar aspects of history.
I think the point of the article is to be good progressives and bring forth a new progressive regime as happened (in part) starting in 1932 with the progressive New Deal era which lasted until about 1976. It is time for progressive change once again. It happened in Germany since the bleak days of 1932 to 1945. It can here too.
Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) Poem about Nazi Germany
Rewritten for our era…..
When the Administration came for the Muslims,
I remained silent;
Because I was not a Muslim.
When they locked up the gays,
I remained silent;
Because I was not gay.
When they came for the immigrants,
I did not speak out;
I was not an immigrant.
When they came for the progressives,
I remained silent;
I wasn’t a progressive.
When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.
The American people have simply intuited a dirty little secret that no one above has mentioned. Forget the Germans. Forget all the high-minded talk about the Constitution. This country was FOUNDED on the systematic extermination of the native population and the enslavement of another group of people to do the dirty work. No wonder it’s still in their blood.
Is there any ANY sign of local fifth column activity to impede the madness?
Nope.
Face it. We’re pussies.
Are we indeed all pussies? If self recongnition is indeed the path to self improvement I’d be willing to say yes to that. Noam Chomsky is constantly asked “What can we do?”, and he never gets tired of saying that we have lots of options for action, for educating us and others, for participation, and protest, and most of it without any justified fear of retribution. He the contrasts this to many much harsher environments where people refuse to live the lie all the same and fight the fight, even if it costs them their lives.
So let’s not spend too much time hating ourselves for our inaction, and get ready to use and build our power.
jumperpin….fun with anagrams..anagram for COMMONDREAMS = COMMANDOES definition:A MEMBER OF an ‘elite’ Or ‘irregular’ fighting force…….(classmates)-contra,raider,partisan,guerrilla,freedom fighter,BUSHWACKER (welcome to the fifth column)
The answer has to be with education and less religion.
White Rose: Absolutely!
Quark: Good point.
purvis ames: Sad but true.
bakunin: That is correct, but remember, demonstrations are usually one day affairs and are more like street theater. When we coordinate the plan to walk off our jobs and initiate the General Strike, then we’ll see change taking place. Too many still think the Dems are gonna rescue the fair maiden from the villian, but as you know, ain’t happening.
1651925: Very true. Yes indeed.
Thanks to those of you I haven’t mentioned, but I agree with the comments.
Yes, it does depend on the definition of ‘torture.’
But that’s not all, it also depends on the definition of ‘people’.
As in: ‘that’s not a person, that’s an unlawful enemy combatant.’
As in: ‘that’s not an American, that’s a consummer, we’re out of Americans, they all disappeared, BUT we have a special today on recent Canadians.’
Terrorist in, terrorism out.
Disturbing, but excellent column!!
Yes, ‘ordinary Americans’ have been co-opted by the global corporate Empire behind this facade of ‘Vichy America’, just as ordinary Germans and ordinary French were co-opted by the Nazi Empire and its phony agent government, ‘Vichy France’.
However, the degree of sophistication in the lures, lies, and Three Card Monte-like con of today’s global corporate Empire (and its MSM handmaiden) in ‘Vichy America’ would make Goebbels’ eyes water with admiration. After all, Goebbels’ limited PR could hardly hide from German citizens the fact that Germany had become a one-party Nazi Empire and that ‘Vichy France’ was a phony government run by the Nazi Empire. Whereas, today, in the much more sophisticated PR of ‘Vichy America’ the fascist Empire can hide behind a Three Card Monte scam of the twin phony Republican and Democrat corporate parties AND the corporate Empire’s MSM to con the American citizens. Today’s American citizens, unlike Germans or French citizens in WWII, see what appears to be a functioning two-party system, which all the MSM lies about as being a democracy instead of a hidden Empire.
Yes, Frank, the American people cannot totally escape responsibility — which is why I have long said that we may lose our mortal souls if, as ‘ordinary Americans’, we allow the global corporate fascist Empire to turn us into Bush’s ‘willing executioners’ for oil and Empire.
However, the primary responsibility, like the penultimate responsibility for all war crimes committed in a ‘war of aggression’ lies first and foremost with the senior officers — the paid officers of the EMPIRE that launched this global ‘war of aggression’.
Who were the senior political and media officials who were paid and benefited from the launch of this war of aggression, launched by the guileful Empire hiding itself behind the façade of ‘Vichy America’??
They were the vast majority of the phony Republican/Democrat corporate Empire’s phony, two-sided government of ‘Vichy America’, AND the vast majority of the co-opted elite MSM shills for that Empire. In short, the entire phony and corrupted system of American politics and political media analysis is guilty of working directly for the global corporate Empire that has taken over our democracy and built the arrogant, vicious, global Empire hiding behind this carefully constructed façade of ‘Vichy America’.
Too little too late, Frank.
You’ve already shown us all a bit too much with your slagging off of MoveOn FOR THEIR EXERCISE OF FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS.
It pains me to say this because I admire you as a writer. But you’ve cowered as badly as the worst of all that mulch.
Come on. Stand up. If you’re such a great Ameican, use that platform of privilege you have for what the CRIMINAL REGIME running the US deserves. Stop quivering in your little Hillary shadow and worrying about a useless Democrat’s “electability.”
FUCK IT, Frank. Now I’m not sorry for using profanity.
There’s nothing more obscene in our generation than what’s been done to us and the world in our name.
And in short, you was afraid.
As astute writer put it, “It is not WE who did not know, and it is not YOU who did not know.
BUT it is YOU, who as a news reporter, did not do your job.
You did not report what you knew ..and you damn well know it.”
Exactly, precisely, inevitably.
I maintain respect for you as a man and for your writing. It’s not too late to redeem yourself. STAND UP.
These posts are not coming from “the Loony Left,” “the blogosphere,” or the “progressives.” They’re coming from utterly crushed, despairing American men and women with children and families and loved ones. We’re sick and hopeless. You, your colleagues, have indeed let us down for number of years.
Torture is not the full extent of the moral crime that’s been committed. What’s been done to us as a country is nothing short of social, cultural murder.
You enjoy a position of prestige. Pay the piper. Write the truth. Call for what you know and we all know you must call for. Do it openly, in your “newspaper of record” voice.
Great Article!!!!!!!!!!
James Critchfield, a former CIA handler, said, “We went to bed with the devil.” He was referring to the United States decision to use Reinhard Gehlen, the captured Nazi Spy Chief, as a CIA informant.
Instead of arresting Reinhard Gehlen, the United States put him in charge of the German Republic’s spy agency. He proceeded to hire and protect his fellow Nazi agents.
The CIA was the receiver of mis-information about the U.S.S.R. from Gehlen’s agency.
When World War II was over, instead of attacking Spain as the Russians, British, and French had wanted, the United States formed an alliance with Francisco Franco, dictator of Spain and collaborator with Hitler. German documents were seized in Berlin that proved said collaboration and documented the Nazi espionage system used within Spain, Argentina, and the United States.
The CIA has modeled itself after and used many of the Nazi techniques in its intelligence system. The use of private companies was a Nazi technique to hide and protect their personnel. The use of Dyn Corp and Blackwater is merely the perfection of said system.
You are watching the devaluation of the dollar from $.89 to 1 Euro (2001) down to $1.43 to 1 Euro (Today) and it will drop to $1.60 by the end of the year. You are watching the cost of a barrel of oil jump from $55.00 (2001 ?) to $84.00 (Today) and it will increase to $100.00 a barrel shortly. You are seeing mortgage failures by the 100’s of thousands every month and those will increase next year.
The American People need to read books like: “Shock Doctrine” by Amy Klein, “La CIA y 11 de Septiembre” by Andreas Von Bulow, “Club Bilderberg” by Daniel Estulin, and many more because the Corporate Media has refused to inform the American Public about their role in the support of the “Illegal Invasions” of Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Capitalist Way, “The End Justifies The Means.” “So what if a million people have died in Iraq, the U.S.A. will have control of their oil.”
Peaceman and Quark -
Here’e two significant steps forward that could be taken immediately in the now Democratically controlled Congress to hasten the end of the US occupation of Iraq and to dissasociate the American people from Little George’s dream of Middle East empir.
First, simply repeal the 2002 Iraq War Authorization for Use of Military Force resolution.
A bill cosponsored by Senator Robert Byrd and Senator Hillary Clinton has already been introduced to do this. Harry Reid should put it down for lengthy floor debate and demand Democratic party line unity on it. With luck, the GOP will fillibuster.
With a mere majority for repeal (or, if the cards fall right, a veto-proof margin) Congress will have rescinded the sole legal basis for a continued US military presence in Iraq (or for spilling it over into Iran). Tell the war’s supporters that the burden is now on them to draft a new AUMF, with a new mission statement based upon current conditions, if they expect continued funding to maintain a pointless, counter-productive occupation. They will fail to pass a new AUMF.
Second, when the dust settles on this rehash of how the 2002 AUMF was stampeded through Congress, by simple resolution (not subject to veto), Congress should declare that no member of the armed services can be punished in any way for refusing to obey an order to deploy into Iraq (an unauthorized war zone).
Under the Constitution, Congress has the sole, exclusive power to raise and support an army, and to promulgate rules and regulations governing the land and naval forces. Rather than cutting off the money, first empower the troops - individually - to turn against service in a neocolonial force of occupation. “Support the troops” by legally recognizing their rights, as volunteer citizen soldiers, to disobey illegal deployment orders.
If George Bush presses on like none of this matters, and especially if the lame duck Bush/Cheney regime tries to escalate into a wider war against Iran, that’s when impeachment goes to the center of the table: impeachment for lying about torture, for lying about NSA warrantless wiretapping, and for lying about the initial Iraq invasion propaganda campaign (with the Downing Street memos as Exhibit A).
Bill from Saginaw
Until the gestapo is at the door, most people just don’t care. Give them Britney news and American Idol and their world is great.
My foolish Americans, you may fear the terrorists who may kill some of us, but the real danger of our destruction lies with our fellow Americans.
Ironically, Rich stops short of articulating the obvious truth of America at the moment: concentrated corporate power, whose cause of obscene profits we serve by invading and occupying Iraq, has replaced political authority. Which is how a certain Italian gent of a prior generation defined fascism.
Good lord! Fascism in the good old Hew-Hess-Hay? That’s crackpot talk, fella——and never you mind about torture and our archipelago of secret prisons; pay no attention to the Supreme Court’s installation of The Decider; ignore the rampant anti-intellectualism orchestrated by the administration; forgive the lies; and smile for the “security” cameras. Above all, remember that War is Peace.
Crackpot talk!
None dare call it fascism.
Gnob,
In response to your post. I appreciate your sincerity and your effort to “do the right thing” re- your daughter. I would only add two thoughts that came to mind. Re- your daugher, don’t only teach her about the ‘bad’ guys in gov.
Teach her also out of the timeless wisdom traditions that humanity has discovered. Although the monotheistic traditions - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam seem (to me) to be somewhat (and in many cases, extremely) compromised. It’s hard to find fault with the basics of Buddhism and Taoism.
I mean, what’s not to like about cultivating wisdom (the capacity to see things as they are) and compassion (for all living beings)? …and the understanding that all things in the universe are interrelated and interdependent…
What’s not to like about deeply understanding the relationship between the continually changing opposites (Yin and Yang, Dark and Light, Pleasure and Pain, “Good and Bad,” Loss and Gain)?
By the way, neither of these “paths of awakening” - (here I’m not speaking of the “relgious” aspects, per say) - posit a “God” image at the peak of some hierarchy…and yet Reality itself is still seen as infinitely Sacred.
purvis ames October 14th, 2007 11:55 pm said:
” This country was FOUNDED on the systematic extermination of the native population and the enslavement of another group of people to do the dirty work. No wonder it’s still in their blood.”
Right on. After having “annoyed” some of you for having said that our troops should be prosecuted for war crimes and because they are the executioners of the war, and after having annoyed even more of you for having said that we are a deplorable, criminal folk, let let say something that I have said on other occasions. Contrary to what most of we are taught, this country was not built on the principle of pursuit of happiness, but on genocide and ethnic cleansing of the native Americans.
By the way, have you noticed that besides genocidal US, the other two big supporters of the Iraq adventures are UK who are well known for colonialism, and Australia, which too was established through a policy of genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Australian aboriginals?
And again, by the way, it id no surprise that Americans have no problem with the genocidal policy and ethnic cleansing native Arab population of Palastine to create an colonial Israel.
It all fits together.
T Comer: Yes indeed, very well said!
please forgive me if this seems off-topic:
What if Michael Moore dedicated a movie to Al-Qaeda? What if a U.S. President dedicated a major U.S. initiative to Al-Qaeda? What if Michael Moore gave all kinds of money to Al-Qaeda? What if multiple successive U.S. admins and CIA gave money to Al-Qaeda (or unnamed “mujahideen” “freedom fighters”)?
What if Ward Churchill said that Americans NEEDED a major catastrophic event to change our foreign policy?
What if numerous U.S. foreign policy officials — including members of the Defense Policy Board — stated that Americans NEEDED a major catastrophic BLOODBATH for the same reasons … to change our foreign policy to a more aggressive stance, radically reshape and privatize the military, ramp up spending, and invade multiple countries around the world, starting with Iraq?
What if numerous U.S. high-level foreign policy officials described *IN ADVANCE* the NEED for a major “LUCKY” catastrophic attack on Americans that would “do the trick” to invigorate Americans’ ‘interests’ in foreign policy rather than boring domestic spending on our own lives, children, infrastructure? What if you could read about them positively pining for such an event? Would that be a CONSPIRACY THE-ORY???
In what case would the media report it? In what case would they ignore it? http://www.Takeoverworld.info/
I admit, I posted this on another article. But what if the WHOLE POINT (one of them) in the War on Terror was domestic fascism?
Hell, they rolled back communism, then liberalism, why not democracy itself? Samuel “Crisis of Democracy” Huntington thinks there’s a problem with too much democracy … so do his friends, AND so do the Neo-conservative Strauss followers.
Interesting to say the least dilbert g. Perhaps they read Orwell’s 1984 not as a novel but as a blueprint. Of course George himself doesn’t care for reading, but some of his handlers might.
Perpetual war to control the masses. Hmmmmmmm
TComer
Mr. Rich says it like it is. Each week the war goes on, we become more and more culpable. In other countries, ordinary citizens have conducted work strikes. The only thing the neocons understand and believe in is money. We can demonstrate in the streets, write letters, and sign petitions until hell freezes over and they won’t care because none of it hurts their bottom line. They don’t give a rip if they’re the most hated administration in history. But what if we ALL decided to call in sick the first week of December? What if we stayed home, watched TV, drank hot cocoa and saved our pennies? A non-violent national headcold that significantly cripples the economy would get us closer to peace than anything else that’s happened so far.
Good Americans
The author of the above ends his peace, by doing the same thing that he accuses the American people of doing. “There is nothing left to lose except whatever remains of our country’s good name.” There is absolutely nothing left of our good name at all. If we ever had a good name, it went down the toilet with the illegal invasion of Iraq. As the murder, torture, and brutality continues, and our bad name keeps getting worse,most Good Americans, like Good Germans, just go about their daily lives, and could give a shit.