The United States of Violence
[This article is adapted from Norman Solomon’s new book “Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America’s Warfare State.”]
We keep hearing that Iraq is not Vietnam. And surely any competent geographer would agree. But the United States is the United States — still a country run by leaders who brandish, celebrate and use the massive violent capabilities of the Pentagon as a matter of course.
********************
Almost fifty years ago, during the same autumn JFK won the presidency, John Hersey came out with “The Child Buyer,” a novel written in the form of a hearing before a state senate committee. “Excuse me, Mrs., but I wonder if you know what’s at stake in this situation,” a senator says to the mother of a ten-year-old genius being sought for purchase by the United Lymphomilloid corporation. “You realize the national defense is involved here.”
“This is my boy,” the mom replies. “This is my beautiful boy they want to take away from me.”
A vice president of United Lymphomilloid, “in charge of materials procurement,” testifies that “my duties have an extremely high national-defense rating.” He adds: “When a commodity that you need falls in short supply, you have to get out and hustle. I buy brains. About eighteen months ago my company, United Lymphomilloid of America, Incorporated, was faced with an extremely difficult problem, a project, a long-range government contract, fifty years, highly specialized and top secret, and we needed some of the best minds in the country…”
Soon, most of the lawmakers on the committee are impressed with the importance of the proposed purchase for the nation. So there’s some consternation when the child buyer reports that he finally laid his proposition “squarely on the table” — and the boy’s answer was no.
Senator Skypack exclaims: “What the devil, couldn’t you go over his head and just buy him?”
“The Child Buyer” is a clever send-up, with humor far from lighthearted. Fifteen years after Hersey did firsthand research for his book “Hiroshima,” the Cold War had America by the throat. The child buyer (whose name, as if anticipating a Bob Dylan song not to be written for several more years, is Mr. Jones) tells the senate panel that his quest is urgent, despite the fifty-year duration of the project. “As you know, we live in a cutthroat world,” he says. “What appears as sweetness and light in your common television commercial of a consumer product often masks a background of ruthless competitive infighting. The gift-wrapped brickbat. Polite legal belly-slitting. Banditry dressed in a tux. The more so with projects like ours. A prospect of perfectly enormous profits is involved here. We don’t intend to lose out.”
And what is the project for which the child will be bought? A memorandum, released into the hearing record, details “the methods used by United Lymphomilloid to eliminate all conflict from the inner lives of the purchased specimens and to ensure their utilization of their innate equipment at maximum efficiency.”
First comes solitary confinement for a period of weeks in “the Forgetting Chamber.” A second phase, called “Education and Desensitization in Isolation,” moves the process forward. Then comes a “Data-feeding Period”; then major surgery that “consists of ‘tying off’ all five senses”; then the last, long-term phase called “Productive Work.” Asked whether the project is too drastic, Mr. Jones dismisses the question: “This method has produced mental prodigies such as man has never imagined possible. Using tests developed by company researchers, the firm has measured I.Q.’s of three fully trained specimens at 974, 989, and 1005…”
It is the boy who brings a semblance of closure on the last day of the hearing. “I guess Mr. Jones is really the one who tipped the scales,” the child explains. “He talked to me a long time this morning. He made me feel sure that a life dedicated to U. Lympho would at least be interesting. More interesting than anything that can happen to me now in school or at home…. Fascinating to be a specimen, truly fascinating. Do you suppose I really can develop an I.Q. of over a thousand?”
But, a senator asks, does the boy really think he can forget everything in the Forgetting Chamber?
“I was wondering about that this morning,” the boy replies. “About forgetting. I’ve always had an idea that each memory was a kind of picture, an insubstantial picture. I’ve thought of it as suddenly coming into your mind when you need it, something you’ve seen, something you’ve heard, then it may stay awhile, or else it flies out, then maybe it comes back another time. I was wondering about the Forgetting Chamber. If all the pictures went out, if I forgot everything, where would they go? Just out into the air? Into the sky? Back home, around my bed, where my dreams stay?”
********************
Suppression of inconvenient memory often facilitated the trances that boosted the work of the Pentagon. But some contrary voices could be heard.
Lenny Bruce wasn’t a household name when he died of a morphine overdose in August 1966, but he was widely known and had even performed on network television. His nightclub bits, captured on record albums, satirized the zeal of many upstanding moralistic pillars. One of Bruce’s favorite routines described a visit to New York by top holy men of Christianity and Judaism. They go to Saint Patrick’s Cathedral: “Christ and Moses standing in the back of Saint Pat’s. Confused, Christ is, at the grandeur of the interior, the baroque interior, the rococo baroque interior. His route took him through Spanish Harlem. He would wonder what fifty Puerto Ricans were doing living in one room. That stained glass window is worth nine grand! Hmmmmm…”
In what turned out to be his final performances, Bruce took to reciting (with a thick German accent) lines from a poem by the Trappist monk Thomas Merton — a meditation on the high-ranking Nazi official Adolf Eichmann. “My defense? I was a soldier. I saw the end of a conscientious day’s effort. I watched through the portholes. I saw every Jew burned and turned into soap. Do you people think yourselves better because you burned your enemies at long distances with missiles? Without ever seeing what you’d done to them?”
********************
We saw butterflies turn into bombers, and we weren’t dreaming. The 1960s had evolved into a competition between American excesses, with none — no matter how mind-blowing the psychedelic drugs or wondrous the sex or amazing the music festivals — able to overcome or undermine what the Pentagon was doing in Southeast Asia. As journalist Michael Herr observed in Vietnam: “We took space back quickly, expensively, with total panic and close to maximum brutality. Our machine was devastating. And versatile. It could do everything but stop.” At the same time that Woodstock became an instant media legend in mid-August 1969, melodic yearning for peace was up against the cold steel of America’s war machinery. The gathering of 400,000 young people at an upstate New York farm implicitly — and, for the most part, ineffectually — rejected the war and the assumptions fueling it. Jimi Hendrix’s rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” was an apt soundtrack for U.S. foreign policy.
********************
Days after the November 2004 election, while U.S. troops again moved into Fallujah for the slaughter, a dispatch from that city reported on the front page of the New York Times: “Nothing here makes sense, but the Americans’ superior training and firepower eventually seem to prevail.”
Superior violence, according to countless scripts, was righteous and viscerally satisfying. Television and movies, ever since childhood, presented greater violence as the ultimate weapon and final fix, uniquely able to put an end to conflict. Leaving menace for dead — you couldn’t beat that. But at home in the USA and far away, the practical and moral failures of violence became irrefutable. In Iraq, sources of unauthorized violence met with escalating American violence. In the United States, war opponents met with presidential contempt.
In a short story, published one hundred years ago, William Dean Howells wrote: “What a thing it is to have a country that can’t be wrong, but if it is, is right, anyway!”
Norman Solomon’s book “Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America’s Warfare State” was published this month. For more information, go to: www.MadeLoveGotWar.com
Hmmmm.. An examination of a world built on thoughts and feelings instead of reality. Interesting.
“The Politics of Denial” is a great book by Michael Milburn and Sheree Conrad. Their research supports Solomon’s piece. They lay lots of blame on spanking children, believe it or not. The beginning of violence.
The nation state is cyclical, school children learn that at one time that the sun never set on the British Empire. So, in any given period of time, one country is right.
As to the current state of affairs, and there is empirical evidence to back this up, current authority is much more violent then certain previous generations.
The United States of violence is the world champion of horror, both in terms of actual horror inflicted on others en masse and via morally deranged movies and television programs. The horror created by US economic policies is even more devastating to the masses than that which is created by our military industrial complex. The USA is the #1 obstacle to peace, justice and democracy in the world. Like the Roman Empire, it will soon fall.
It never hurts to have a little garden, a little stash of gold, food, and something to defend yourself with. If you’ve got money in the bank, you can help speed the collapse by taking most of it out and getting some gold.
———————-
“The American press, with a very few exceptions:, is a kept press. Kept by the big corporations the way a whore is kept by a rich man.” Theodore Dreiser
——————
“To criticize one’s country is to do it a service …. Criticism, in short, is more than a right; it is an act of patriotism-a higher form of patriotism, I believe, than the familiar rituals and national adulation.” J. William Fulbright
*****
“You [soldiers] believe you are dying for the fatherland - you die for some industrialists.” Anatoly Franace
*****
“It is the absolute right of the State to supervise the formation of public opinion.” Josph Goebbels, Nazi propaganda minister
==============
“Real information, subversive information, remains the most potent power of all … we must not fall into the trap of believing that the media speaks for the public. That wasn’t true in Stalinist Czechoslovakia and it isn’t true of the United States.” Harold Pinter
The United States was founded in violence, it increases as weapons become more sophicated. We were the firs to use germ warfare (measles), the first to set car bombs to frighten the public, (vietnam), the first to bomb civilians populations, and the only one to drop an atomic bomb…we are terrorist in the truest sense of the word.
“Humanity’s most valuable assets have been the non-conformists. Were it not for the nonconformists, he who refuses to be satisfied to go along with the continuance of things as they are, and insists upon attempting to find new ways of bettering things, the world would have known little progress indeed.” Josiah Gitt
*****
“People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage.” John Kenneth Galbraith
*******
“In the United States, both the upper levels of the Republican and Democratic Parties are in the pay of the corporate media and communication giants.”
Robert McChesney and John Nichols
======
Good source for news and information:
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com
–
Read about the revolution in Latin America:
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/
An old friend just returned from a trip to Europe via Asia..He is a sought after code de-bugger/system geek - they need him in person to teach.. and show by example…..lucky him….
For the first time in his many travels,(he took a year off), he was truly taken-aback by the depth of fear and hatred so many other people in the world have now of the USA and it’s out control goverment and ability to wage war with no sense of control or even sorrow.
The most often spoken example he heard was the comparsion to the aggressive war a certain country started in 1939 to go after the resources of other countries…
enough said.
draw your own conclusions, but remember this:
The thing that so shocked him was so many people he talked to, even in nations we use to count as allies - said that they WOULD NOT support the USA if a larger war breaks out, for example in Iran, a war some in this country are truly dying to see happen…
This view was held by people of many political standings - not just “leftists”.
In other words they would support some of the other larger nations ganging up on us- the USA, and teaching us a lesson will not soon forget….
Time is running out… wake up …
The picture our national electronic media shows us is very distorted and at odds with reality.
One can not kill 600,000 + iraqis and think it is of no matter, and not worth taking in and really thinking about…
No sane person in Europe or the Mid-East, or Asia disputes this 600k figure - they think it is higher….
And for those who still think this war in Iraq has something to do with terrorism or Islam or any of the other fucking lies of the current administration and its supporters….
I say this:
If you can go out to the local freeway and say there are not 40 million cars and not 5 million SUVs that need someone’s elses oil to run…. and that was not the main reason some folk in this country wanted to put a ‘pro-American’ government in power there in Iraq… then you are truly fuck rat insane and not worth even listening to….
Who lives by the sword… collective karma… what, exactly do we expect will be the results of our actions? Karma is not a belief, it is the absolute and observable law of cause and effect.
What goes around comes around. While I am no soothsayer, I predict that the US will degenerate into a brutal civil war. There will be holocausts in America which will make past ones look like a Walt Disney Story; and the US will be invaded from all four corners of the earth. Americans have no clue the level of hatred it has earned around the globe. None whatsoever. Whether this will happen in my lifetime is uncertain, but it will happen. Not a question of if, but when. America, being the ultraviolent ape nation that it is, will reap what it has sewn.
Wow ! “Made Love Got War” looks better with every post. Time to place and order at your friendly non-corporate bookstore and support an important writer.
We elected Democrats to stop the war crimes in Iraq but they continue to divert public money into private warmonger’s hands against the will of the people.
The insanity of “Manifest Destiny” remains a cornerstone of both political parties.
BIRD WITH TWO RIGHT WINGS
BY: Lawrence Ferlinghetti
And now our government
a bird with two right wings
flies on from zone to zone
while we go on having our little fun & games
at each election
as if it really mattered who the pilot is
of Air Force One
(They’re interchangeable, stupid!)
While this bird with two right wings
flies right on with its corporate flight crew
And this year its the Great Movie Cowboy in the cockpit
And next year its the great Bush pilot
And now its the Chameleon Kid
and he keeps changing the logo on his captains cap
and now its a donkey and now an elephant
and now some kind of donkephant
And now we recognize two of the crew
who took out a contract on America
and one is a certain gringo wretch
who’s busy monkeywrenching
crucial parts of the engine
and its life-support systems
and they got a big fat hose
to siphon off the fuel to privatized tanks
And all the while we just sit there
in the passenger seats
without parachutes
listening to all the news that’s fit to air
over the one-way PA system
about how the contract on America
is really good for us etcetera
As all the while the plane lumbers on
into its postmodern
manifest destiny.
Look closely at the alliances forming - Iran, Russia, China and allies on one side, neutral EU and a few other in the middle and US and ???? on the other.
The main difference between this administration and others is only that the Bushcos have been upfront with megalomaniacism about controlling the world and molding it in our image and supplying our wants to everyone else’s disadvantage.
JOLeary said: “They lay lots of blame on spanking children, believe it or not. The beginning of violence.”
I did an experiment with a cat. I was never violent toward him and gave him lots of love since he was a kitten. He turned out to be the best cat. I repeated the experiment with my son. He turned out to be the best person.
Parenting courses should be as common as driver’s ed to teach how to manage two potentially dangerous objects, a car and a child. In fact, a child rearing license may be a good idea. A child raised non-violently will not become a violent adult. He will recognize violence as dysfunction.
Great post travern.
Till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all”
The human cost of war alone makes it self-evident that we must renounce war.
Movement for the Renunciation of War.
I renounce war, and I will never support or sanction another war.
Signed: _____________________
Dated: __________
Recommended follow-up reading:
“War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning” by Chris Hedges
For a brief synopsis go here:
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/War_Peace/War_Gives_Meaning.html
I leave you with selected highlights of the short story “Chicamauga” by Ambrose Bierce–
Chickamauga
by Ambrose Bierce
“One sunny autumn afternoon a child strayed away from its rude home in a small field and entered a forest unobserved. It was happy in a new sense of freedom from control, happy in the opportunity of exploration and adventure; for this child’s spirit, in bodies of its ancestors, had for thousands of years been trained to memorable feats of discovery and conquest–victories in battles whose critical moments were centuries, whose victors’ camps were cities of hewn stone. From the cradle of its race it had conquered its way through two continents and passing a great sea had penetrated a third, there to be born to war and dominion as a heritage.
The child was a boy aged about six years, the son of a poor planter. In his younger manhood the father had been a soldier, had fought against naked savages and followed the flag of his country into the capital of a civilized race to the far South. In the peaceful life of a planter the warrior-fire survived; once kindled, it is never extinguished. The man loved military books and pictures and the boy had understood enough to make himself a wooden sword, though even the eye of his father would hardly have known it for what it was. This weapon he now bore bravely, as became the son of an heroic race, and pausing now and again in the sunny space of the forest assumed, with some exaggeration, the postures of aggression and defense that he had been taught by the engraver’s art.
Made reckless by the ease with which he overcame invisible foes attempting to stay his advance, he committed the common enough military error of pushing the pursuit to a dangerous extreme, until he found himself upon the margin of a wide but shallow brook, whose rapid waters barred his direct advance against the flying foe that had crossed with illogical ease. But the intrepid victor was not to be baffled; the spirit of the race which had passed the great sea burned unconquerable in that small breast and would not be denied. Finding a place where some bowlders in the bed of the stream lay but a step or a leap apart, he made his way across and fell again upon the rear-guard of his imaginary foe, putting all to the sword.
Now that the battle had been won, prudence required that he withdraw to his base of operations. Alas; like many a mightier conqueror, and like one, the mightiest, he could not curb the lust for war, Nor learn that tempted Fate will leave the loftiest star.
Advancing from the bank of the creek he suddenly found himself confronted with a new and more formidable enemy: in the path that he was following, sat, bolt upright, with ears erect and paws suspended before it, a rabbit! With a startled cry the child turned and fled, he knew not in what direction, calling with inarticulate cries for his mother, weeping, stumbling, his tender skin cruelly torn by brambles, his little heart beating hard with terror–breathless, blind with tears–lost in the forest!
Then, for more than an hour, he wandered with erring feet through the tangled undergrowth, till at last, overcome by fatigue, he lay down in a narrow space between two rocks, within a few yards of the stream and still grasping his toy sword, no longer a weapon but a companion, sobbed himself to sleep.
Hours passed, and then the little sleeper rose to his feet. The chill of the evening was in his limbs, the fear of the gloom in his heart. But he had rested, and he no longer wept.
Confident of the fidelity of his forces, he now entered the belt of woods, passed through it easily in the red illumination, climbed a fence, ran across a field, turning now and again to coquet with his responsive shadow, and so approached the blazing ruin of a dwelling. Desolation everywhere! In all the wide glare not a living thing was visible. He cared nothing for that; the spectacle pleased, and he danced with glee in imitation of the wavering flames. He ran about, collecting fuel, but every object that he found was too heavy for him to cast in from the distance to which the heat limited his approach. In despair he flung in his sword–a surrender to the superior forces of nature. His military career was at an end.
Shifting his position, his eyes fell upon some outbuildings which had an oddly familiar appearance, as if he had dreamed of them. He stood considering them with wonder, when suddenly the entire plantation, with its inclosing forest, seemed to turn as if upon a pivot. His little world swung half around; the points of the compass were reversed. He recognized the blazing building as his own home!
For a moment he stood stupefied by the power of the revelation, then ran with stumbling feet, making a half-circuit of the ruin. There, conspicuous in the light of the conflagration, lay the dead body of a woman–the white face turned upward, the hands thrown out and clutched full of grass, the clothing deranged, the long dark hair in tangles and full of clotted blood. The greater part of the forehead was torn away, and from the jagged hole the brain protruded, overflowing the temple, a frothy mass of gray, crowned with clusters of crimson bubbles–the work of a shell.
The child moved his little hands, making wild, uncertain gestures. He uttered a series of inarticulate and indescribable cries–something between the chattering of an ape and the gobbling of a turkey–a startling, soulless, unholy sound, the language of a devil. The child was a deaf mute.
Then he stood motionless, with quivering lips, looking down upon the wreck.”
*************************
The longer our awakening takes, the crueler will be our shock at what has been wrought. Peace now!
A strong argument can be made that America’s gluttonous energy consumption provides the “might makes right” that allows its poor policy decisions and subsequent blowback to be more easily ignored and more quickly forgotten.
With better decision-making, driven largely by populist common sense, other nations are able to provide better domestic services, and more productive foreign policies, using fewer resources. If the United States reigned in its resource consumption, then it too could come to rely on better decisions, less blowback, and more peace/prosperity for less effort.
It is time for a Department of Peace!
If you’re a Kucinich supporter I urge you to go to http://democracyforamerica.com/pulsepoll and vote for DFA to support Kucinich for president. Sorry for the cross posting.
Regarding the mountain of dead people caused by firearm violence in our civil society, take a look at this citation from Bob Herbert’s article “Hooked on Violence,” New York Times, April 26, 2007:
“…since the murders of Robert Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, well over a million Americans have been killed by firearms in the United States. That’s MORE THAN THE COMBINED U.S. COMBAT DEATHS IN ALL THE WARS IN ALL OF AMERICAN HISTORY.” (capitals mine)
Might there be a low-level civil war going on in our midst? If so, what exactly is the nature of that war?
Uh Norman, the US was always a violent nation as this country was founded on and credited with violence be it genocide against the Native Americans or continuing to push and wipe them off. Just like the settlers used clever tactics to pit Native American tribes against each other, the neocons and neolibs are happily engaged in pitting people in other countries against one another rather than improve and correct the crumbling infrastructure in the US.
In the name of God, the All Merciful, the Mercy-giving
“Superior violence, according to countless scripts, was righteous and viscerally satisfying. Television and movies, ever since childhood, presented greater violence as the ultimate weapon and final fix, uniquely able to put an end to conflict”
Too true. I think, as a society, we tend not connect our day-to-day/ personal actions with the global reality we see happening in the world today.
The scary thing is that it takes very little for an average “normal” person to cross that boundary of behaving in a humane way. We really need to pay attention to the smaller scale violence in our society in order to stop the larger scale violence from happening.
Ezeflyer: you are definitely right. The Prophet Muhammad, peace on him, said that nothing but good comes from kindness. There was also this prostitute who once gave water to a thirsty dog and the Prophet, peace on him, said that because of that act of kindness she was going to Heaven.
salaam
About 5 years ago I watched a TV segment from Afghanistan. The US-installed ex-oilman puppet president was sitting in a car, guarded by US gunmen, apparently CIA or Blackwater… then, about a dozen locals slowly approached the rear of the car to see their president or possibly ask for an autograph. One of the guards turned toward these men and without saying a word, opened up on them with his machine-gun, just mowing down all of them, in a bloody pile. That’s when I first realized that our mission was built on madness and genocide…and today the slaughter goes on….
POET: Moving posting
The past 2 nights I watched 2 movies I’d never seen before. One, UNDER SEIGE and the other, TRUE LIES. What amazed me was that both films (each done in the l990’s) conveyed a theme that had to do with either terrorists seeking blackmarket US weapons OR an outright attack by terrorists on our shores. In both films some form of Arab names were used.
I remember an article that appeared several years ago in Harper’s that mentioned how the CIA (or was it FBI?) had money in its budget that was specifically earmarked for writers, artists and no doubt today’s movie makers, that would assist that certain “themes” considered important to the (military-industrial) state became embeded into mass consciousness.
After reading that the Project for a New American Century had its sights on the Middle East and its oil for the past 20 years, one wonders if big money did no see fit to plant the suggestions of terrorism, weapons getting into the wrong (re: Arab) hands all the way back then, i.e. in films with big stars like Arnold.
Noting how Thompson did his time on Law & Order, and Reagan was a B-movie actor, one wonders if Arnold is being groomed for some high position in a new world order government? How many of these guys win their ratings in macho movies where like John Wayne they earn hero status in a virtual world? But more and more that virtual world melds with this one, after all in this nation we already have the dubious distinction of an intellectual civil war between the faith based and the reality based “communities.”
I’m posting this because looking back at these films, the issues raised hardly seem merel coincidental.
Ezeflyer,
my cat’s name is “Mittens”
seriously though…
everyone should check out and read - out loud - in groups - antiphonally - Ambrose Bierce’s “Devil’s Dictionary” this Hallowe’en.
Nice thought on this thread. Remember to stop and smell the ruses.
This ought to be titled the United World of Violence. Rwanda, Burma, Tibet, Zimbabwe, the list goes on and on.
This should be fact checked:
#
Paris October 18th, 2007 12:27 pm
The United States was founded in violence, (EVERY country in the world was, what is your point?) it increases as weapons become more sophicated. We were the firs to use germ warfare (measles)(NO WE WEREN’T, THE SPANISH CONQUISTDORS IN MEXICO WERE), the first to set car bombs to frighten the public, (vietnam) (WRONG, ANTI-BRITISH GROUPS WERE DOING THIS IN INDIA IN THE 1930’s), the first to bomb civilians populations (HAVE YOU EVER HEARD OF “GUERNICA”? OR COVENTRY?), and the only one to drop an atomic bomb…(PAYBACK FOR THE RAPE OF NANKING) we are terrorist in the truest sense of the word.(NO, YOU ARE CRAZY IN THE TRUEST SENSE OF THE WORD.)
The killing of over a million Iraqi civilians — two million counting from the 1990s during the first Gulf War when Bush Sr gave Saddam the green light to invade Kuwait plus the following sanctions which killed them — makes the U.S. a terrorist country; the most dangerous terrorist country with thousands of nukes and the world’s most powerful military.
Paris is not “crazy.”
It must suck to live there. I bet you are glad you live somewhere else, lillulu.
This entire complex—a mass cultural self-bombardment of fantasies, wishes and delusions to replace complete failure in reality—was born in the Puritan colonies that thought their foolish macho-soldiers (in reality, Indian-hating farmer-nincompoops) were going to march across Connecticut “unnoticed,” and surprise a whole fort full of Pequot Indians at Mystic CT in May 1637 (intending of course to trap and massacre them to the last woman and child: three cheers for the Bible). The Pequots and Mohegan Indians, who knew of course that the fools were coming, organized a complete decoy-and-ambush for them, and kicked their Christian asses into the Atlantic; and so the fools marched home with one huge lie about their success and “victory” that was trumpeted from one end of the colonies to the other by the ministers and other con-men running the show. Nor did 300 years of later American critics, historians and teachers, all of them sucking tenure from the empire, ever bother, once, to actually walk the landscape and see if what the books said was possible. It was not. But the paradigm was born—war for resources, a completely inept and murderous disaster each time, a windfall of wealth in which to pretend that “the system works,” and a tidal wave of liars on every side declaring victory where “God led his people.” (What else could they say who had no idea what they were doing or what was going on in the real world anyway?) http://ancientgreece-earlyamerica.com . Don’t let them tell you “we can’t go back”—because if we don’t and fail to recover our bearings, we are truly finished, like all the other pea-brained dinosaurs….
Son ofPowerslave,
I’m not sure what to make of your screen name…but the suggestion that dropping a nuclear bomb on a civilian population can be payback for the rape of nanjing is an appaling suggestion. Not that I have any ill will for you and your family, but how would you feel if some Iraqi set off a “dirty bomb” in your living room and when asked what his justification was replied, “A payback for Fallujah”…Wake up..I don’t know what Hammurabian world you are living in..but this is the 21st century.
Yup,
The USA war on VietNam is not the same as the USA war on Iraq.
They were both wars, and wars are a racket.
“WAR IS A RACKET”
- Major General Smedley D. Butler, USMC
Two-Time Congressional Medal of Honor Recipient
read all about it
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm
The US is no better or worse than past empires. They think that if they don’t exercise their monopoly on violence some other gang will see it as a weakness and replace them. They are 100% right. It’s too late for them to try to earn the love of the people; they will never be anything but hated. Their only chance is to keep fear alive and well.
Radicalconfucian, if someone dropped an atom bomb on me, I would not really appreciate it. If some Iraqi group DID do such a thing, it would be an act of war. Since we are at war….that is a risk we are taking. The Japanese STARTED World War II, THEY converted it into a race war, before December 7th with their genocidal practices in China, and after Dec 7 with their barbaric behavior in the Philipines, Hong Kong, and myriad other places. Frankly, I have zero sympathy for them. And, if I DID have sympathy, it would be for the victims of the Tokyo firebomb raid in March of 1945, which killed even more people than either of the atom bombs did.
How far is a culture willing to go to get what it wants? Do the people and the leadership have the same goals? And if the leadership is willing to take steps that the public finds extreme, how does the public prevent its leadership from taking action? Those seem to be the central questions here.
As a Native American, I know how far European settlers were willing to go to achieve the goal of estabilshing a home on this continent. They recast the indigenous population as “savages,” despite many advanced practices of the cultures here, and in spite of initial welcoming and helpful actions on the part of Eastern tribes. European immigrants were willing to relocate, kill, and confine the people they found here. The Supreme Court made it legal. And the new society justified it by demonizing those it harmed. How much of that process was driven by the American leadership and how much was driven by the American public, I honestly don’t know. But considering doctrines such as Manifest Destiny, it’s clear the leadership set precedents. And because the public shared the goal of settling the new territory, it followed willingly.
We have to ask ourselves whether we share the goals of this administration—if we even understand what the goals are. And if we do share the same goals, how far we are willing to go to achieve them? If we are not willing to go as far as the administration, if we can’t even agree on what the goals are, we need to find a way to force the administration to change its actions. Decisions are being made for us, without our consent, and atrocities are being committed in our name. If we are not willing to go where we are being led, we must find a way to change course.
In the name of God, the All-Merciful, the Mercy-giving
Jack37, Radicalconfucian–love your comments.
SonofPowerslave: Your comments are delusional, heartless and inhuman. How in the world can you begin to justify Hiroshima and Nagasaki?????? Its hands down inexcusable. Wiping out two major cities within a matter of seconds (giving them no warning–not that that would help anyway), maiming people for life, destroying the environment for generations to come–as well as causing miscarriages and deformities even today, half a century later.
Even if there was a real defense reason (which there wasn’t) it still would be unacceptable. Dropping an Atomic bomb is never an act of war–it’s an act of aggression, and aggression is absolutely unacceptable.
It’s down right barbarism. But unfortunately people with an exceptionalist, imperialist mindset don’t seem to comprehend that.
If you cannot find sympathy for you fellow humans than you really need to reassess your human identity.
Dropping the atom bomb on the Japanese was an act of war. A racial war of extermination that the Japanese started. Had they not behaved like barbarians…
And, had they had the bomb before we did, do you seriously think THEY would not have used it? They bayoneted babies in Nanking for fun…
Someone said:
“Of course Iraq is not Viet Nam.
Iraq is a DRY heat, and this time the language our troops don’t speak is ARABIC.”
From “The Great Turning” by David C.Korten
Charting Human Consciousness
Fifth Order:Spiritual Consciousness
Spiritual Creatives live in a complex, evolving INTEGRAL WORLD’which they engage as evolutionary co-creators.
Fourth Order:Cultural Consciousness
Cultural Creatives live in an INCLUSIVE WORLD and see the possibility of creating inclusive, life-affirming societies that work for all.
Third Order: Socialized Consicousness
Good Citizens live in a SMALL WORLD ,play by the rules of there identity group ,expect fair reward,and compise the swing voters.
Second Order:Imperial Consciousness
Power Seekers live in MY WORLD,play up to the powerful,and exploit the oppressed.
First Order:Magical Consciousness
Fantasizers live in a OTHER WORLD and place there faith in magical protectors.
The higher orders are culture of Earth Community and the lower orders are culture of Empire.Those that Jack37 refered to had a few hunderd fewer years to reflect on than does SonofPowerslave in his case its clear that he can’t think much higher than the Second Level.
As you can see “Any dumbfuck can Murder ,Kill,Kill,Kill”
Anti-Flag
SonofPowerSlave: The imperialism of the Japanese was a lesson that they learned at the feet of the British, French, and Dutch colonialists. (By the way, have you ever wondered what the Americans were doing in the Phillippines to begin with? Read up on it.) And if you want to talk about racism, check out the newspaper editorials, magazine articles, and newsreels that the American media produced during their racist war against Japan.
And don’t try to tell me “They started it”. That is an argument that belongs on playgrounds, not in discussions about history. History is a complex chain of events with multiple root causes to any single event. Even if we took “they started it” as a valid point, “they” were not in the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If you cannot understand the fact that targeting civilians can never be justified, I question why you would bother saying that you would have any sympathy for the victims of the Tokyo firebombing raid or why you would differentiate between those victims and the victims of the atomic bombings.
Oh, and the “bayoneting babies” line is so 1914.
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President Bush giggled and grinned while discussing World War III today. “But this — we got a leader in Iran who has announced that he wants to destroy Israel. So I’ve told people that if you’re interested in avoiding [grinning] World War III [end grinning], it seems like you [begin giggling] ought to be interested in preventing them from having the knowledge [end giggling] necessary to make a nuclear weapon.”
Bush has redefined the Iranian threat yet again, now the mere “knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon,” is excuse enough to attack Iran. Bush’s smirking and giggling performance during the speech marks him as not just as a fool, but a madman.
Then and now, “Jimi Hendrix’s frenzied rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” was an apt soundtrack for U.S. foreign policy.”
Then and now, the leadership of the United States is in the hands of psychopaths, cowards, incompetents, warmongers and profiteers.
.
It’s the same gene pool at work which combined genocide, slavery and land theft even while proclaiming their freedom from the rule of Kings.
“All Men Are Created Equal” — except the majority which happen to be feminine, except the conquered and controlled native Indians, except the African slave in America.
The farce of establishing equality by distributing the stolen land to the elites, to “heartland” warriors who would conquer Indians, the earth’s natural resources to a few private families — and a “King-of-the-Hill” economic system which continues to move the nation’s wealth into the hands of the few.
Take a look at the insanity of our lives centered on gas-guzzling cars and plastics.
Take a look at overpopulation — 7 BILLION shortly — pollution of the planet — death of species — and understand that our insane systems are about to not only bring an end to our species, but an end to the planet, itself.
Whatever opportunities along the way to end this insanity, violence has struck: A United Nations dedicated to Human Rights, a president who ended the Cold War, a Pope who would point to the right of Catholics to exercise their own conscience, even in regard to birth control. Warnings from scientists — Rachel Carson, a Concensus of Nobel Prize Winners.
Somehow the violent can always sell their insane ideas;
always move a few steps further to total destruction.
Patriarchy, organized patriarchal religions, Manifest Destiny/Man’s Dominion Over Nature, Capitalism . . .
these are suicidal paths.
“The United States was founded in violence, (EVERY country in the world was, what is your point?) it increases as weapons become more sophicated. We were the firs to use germ warfare (measles)(NO WE WEREN’T, THE SPANISH CONQUISTDORS IN MEXICO WERE), the first to set car bombs to frighten the public, (vietnam) (WRONG, ANTI-BRITISH GROUPS WERE DOING THIS IN INDIA IN THE 1930’s), the first to bomb civilians populations (HAVE YOU EVER HEARD OF “GUERNICA”? OR COVENTRY?), and the only one to drop an atomic bomb…(PAYBACK FOR THE RAPE OF NANKING) we are terrorist in the truest sense of the word.(NO, YOU ARE CRAZY IN THE TRUEST SENSE OF THE WORD.)”
If ‘picking-nits’…
Long before the Conquistadors used germ-warfare, Crusaders flung diseased-bodies over the walls of Constantinople with catapults (and they got the ‘idea’ from Roman-tactics…no-doubt such tactics go, unrecorded, back to Ur).
The first car-bomb (cart-really, but same-difference) was used against JDR/WallStreet by an Anarchist — turn-of-century.
The first bombing-of-innocent-civilians (assumed to refer-here to an aerial-bombing?) was ordered against Iraqi-Bedouins by then-foreign-officer Winston Churchill — pre-WW-I (Guernica was flown, later, by varied/European ‘pilot-volunteers’).
Regards the A-Bomb…’guilty as charged’. [NOT as “Nanking(or other)-payback”, but to impress/influence approaching Russian-’allies’, and set the Stage for post-War American-dominance]
To me I feel that the worst atrocity ever done by mankind was the atom bombing of 2 cities full of civilian people (what if 5 had been ready?) by a nation that just reached a crowning pinnacle of achievement and was virtually untouchable after the devastating results of the WWII on the rest of the world.
This does not bode well for humanity, does it?
“They would have done it to us” justification for it is pretty weak - as if this world is about a race to the bottom of who can commit the worst atrocities before the other does!
Well, on the other hand, maybe that is what it is all about? The last person standing on a radioactive, germ-ridden, species-depleted planet is the winner!
I used to feel that the atomic bombing of Japanese civilians was just about our worst sin in a long list of sins…until I heard a journalist say “there were no Japanese civilians…the entire population was made up of soldiers, uniformed or not”…then I realized that the only reason the civilians were eager to kill Americans is because their leaders told them to do so…Conclusion? Government is the problem all over the world, not the people!!
MeAlsoTo: How old are you? You poor thing you must have been spanked.
To the adults in the discussion, I can recommend a very good segment of Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now program today on the subject of the connection of Hollywood and Pentagon violence;
Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People
“Where are the human images of Arabs and Arab Americans? That’s the topic of a new film called “Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People.” It’s based on a book by the same name by acclaimed media critic Jack Shaheen. Both the book and the film explore the American cinematic landscape to reveal a stark pattern of Arab stereotyping and its disturbing similarity to anti-Semitic and other racist caricatures through history.”
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/19/144225
MeAlsoTo, I tried to edit out my criticism but the edit button didn’t work. I apologise, as I realise you were only responding to the beaten child SonOfPowerslave, and in fact you are just correcting historical inaccuracies. But it is a waste of time and no justification for anything to ascertain “who did what first”. Children’s playground stuff for sure!
I made a video last year that sends this same message
It’s called “America Loves Violence”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYY5YgT0McM
The last of the Tribes were rounded up around 1895. Now it seems the white folks have come a long way to find themselves nowhere at all. Perhaps the paradox is in losing you win..and in winning you lose.
Perhaps? Who can say about such things?
ThinkForMyself October 19th, 2007 3:42 pm
To me I feel that the worst atrocity ever done by mankind was the atom bombing of 2 cities full of civilian people
You have a limited knowledge of atrocities, my friend. In the mid 1990’s, 600 THOUSAND Tutsis were murdered in Rwanda. Yet the atomic bomb was worse? In the 1970’s, Pol Pot exterminated ONE THIRD (3 million human beings) of Cambodia’s population. But the atom bomb was worse? For that matter, WE incinerated 125,000 Japanese in a firebomb raid involving 1,000 B-29s in March of 1945. But, the atom bomb, of course, was worse?
dolker; How true it is.
DRAGONSLAYER; That’s why real anarchists, especially the great Emma Goldman, reject the power struggle in politics. How about ‘communalism’? ‘One for all and all for one’? I think that would be the most democratic form of governing. Many Native American groups adhered to this system. The Apaches of the Southwest practiced it.
traven; I agree with what you said. People will tolerate a bully for so long and eventually lose their fear and rise up against the odds.
ezeflyer; You hit two home runs! A+ on your posts.
Siouxrose; Good comments. I think I remember the ‘Harper’s’ magazine article.
White Rose; “War is a Racket”! It damn sure is. It is gangsterism on a national level. Legalized crime by politicians serving their ‘constituents’ which are the rich and the super-rich, ( remember Dufus saying-”this is my base: the haves and the haves-more” ) not us common citizens.
“…in fact you are just correcting historical inaccuracies.”
Actually, I was ‘correcting-corrections’ (hopefully highlighting the folly of-such).
I agree that ‘finger-pointing’ at any particular nationality/race/creed/etc. is a useless-exercise, other than as a proper listing/insight into diverse “on-going Crimes-of-Interest”, or a pattern of behaviors . All humans share their adaptable-Nature which, under given provocation/motivation/propaganda/experience and interpretations of-same, can give-rise to ‘Horrors or Honors’ — as dictated. History is replete with examples and Cautionary-Tales that well-illustrate no particular Grouping is above-Criminality if/when their Interests are served and/or their Actions can be internally-rationalized. [Nor are any ‘beyond redemption’…]
SonOfPowerslave October 19th, 2007 10:04 pm wrote “The atom bomb, of course, was worse?”
Thanks for pointing out that some people might want to compare atrocities by comparing say, the numbers of dead/maimed or else compare some of the brutal aspects of the atrocity. Ethnic cleansing by the machete in Rwanda is pretty brutal, for sure!
Thus people might miss my humble point that it is the whole context that is so awful that it very nearly makes me ashamed to be a human!
Just think of it this way for a brief moment! A group of human beings, leaders of the the most powerful and advanced and rich nation on the face of the earth ever seen, actually CHOSE to drop some kind of unbelievable weapons of mass destruction on cities when they could have chosen otherwise! Even if this exercise was not meant as a message to Stalin as some researchers claim, but if we instead take the justification given at the time at face value - then why could not they have used a warning shot? Or bombed a military target? And why two bombs, not just one? (as I alluded to earlier, the plan might have been for even more bombs but they weren’t ready!)
That is why I have chosen this as the worst atrocity over the others, of which the list in the 20th century is unfortunately rather long as you hinted.
Others may beg to differ, but I so far I find it hard to top “WMD use by the already powerful and practically untouchable”.
If it WAS a message to Stalin, then it was recieved loud and clear…The Sovs never started a nuclear war with us.
Criticizing a country (US) for dropping a bomb or two (or two million, we killed FAR more Japanese in incendiary raids than with A-bombs, and our little British brothers did some pretty nasty things at Hamburg and Dresden too) which is an act of war when that country is AT WAR, a war it did not start, is rather disingenious.
SonOfPowerslave , Sorry if you interpret my post as “disingenuous” (lacking in candor) Hard to help this in a short post when there is not the room to explain the premises one holds and the model of the world on has. I appear to be critisizing a country for one thing. In fact I was not actually critisizing the the USA in this instance but humanity of which the USA is part. In fact I was pointing my finger at the “leaders” of the USA in this instance - and that to me is far different from the whole country. In fact although I chose to target the use of WMDs it does not follow logically that I do not also condemn the Dresden bombing atrocity and all other war atrocities and unnecessary invasions. It does not mean that the rich elites that “lead” all countries escape my crtisicm either!
In my model of the world, there is a war of the rich and powerful on the masses to keep their privilege and power on going for centuries and we usually miss this fact and only focus on the wars they invent to further their profits, privelege and power. Aiding them, in all countries, (not just the USA) is a system of popular fantasy about the culture and a system of education and media that discourages one from thinking for oneself. I am trying to learn to think for myself, and that sometimes is not so easy as it sounds after being raised in the North American version of its cultural fantasy of being the “good guys”.
So yes it is a tough world when nations are driven against each other and a war erupts (and who “started” the war? - do some investigation, you might find most wars might actually be “started” not by one side or the other but by powerful people behind the scenes owing no allegiance to any nation but only to money!) and then comes a horrible situation of “kill or be killed”. I don’t deny this is a horrible reality of war and it would be some tough decisions I would have to make if I was giving commands.
You remind me of myself for about the first 35 years of my life, SonOfPowerslave! At least in this way: I too jumped to defend the indefensible of which the WMD use on Japan is just the best example. From my own lips has also come the illogical justifications that my history books, teachers, culture, leaders TOLD ME TO THINK over and over again!
But just because it is spoken over and over again, does not make it true.
So the past five years I have done research and it has caused my model of the world to change, and there is no going back. My model goes beyond enemies who are “duped” into attacking my nation (those are real) but I thought maybe the lesson of the use of the atom bombs could be a wake up call that there are also powerful enemies who rule us. (in all countries not just USA)
And after five years of research, my learning is not over. For example I don’t yet know what it is we can actually do, to affect a change. Maybe that is where you can help me out with some suggestions.
Be skeptical all the time! Please question me and what all posters on this web site say! Don’t take anything at face value! Dig, research, think for yourself! Above all, question everything you have been taught since you were born. There is reality out there. I don’t blame anyone who wants to stay safe in what they believed for years and years, and that is their choice and I won’t critisize them for it. I suspect just by the fact that you are reading these things instead of sitting in front of the 10 o’clock news (or whatever) means you are a step ahead of the others in this way already.
What a comfort! Someone else finds “The Child Buyer” frightening. Best be careful not to mix it up with OSCard’s “Enders Game” stories.
The brain research and cloneing were just gleams in eyes back then. And now what ?