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TechnoratiCollateral Damage
What It Really Means When America Goes to War
Troops, when they battle insurgent forces, as in Iraq, or Gaza or Vietnam, are placed in "atrocity producing situations." Being surrounded by a hostile population makes simple acts, such as going to a store to buy a can of Coke, dangerous. The fear and stress push troops to view everyone around them as the enemy. The hostility is compounded when the enemy, as in Iraq, is elusive, shadowy and hard to find. The rage soldiers feel after a roadside bomb explodes, killing or maiming their comrades, is one that is easily directed, over time, to innocent civilians who are seen to support the insurgents.
Civilians and combatants, in the eyes of the beleaguered troops, merge into one entity. These civilians, who rarely interact with soldiers or Marines, are to most of the occupation troops in Iraq nameless, faceless, and easily turned into abstractions of hate. They are dismissed as less than human. It is a short psychological leap, but a massive moral leap. It is a leap from killing -- the shooting of someone who has the capacity to do you harm -- to murder -- the deadly assault against someone who cannot harm you.
The war in Iraq is now primarily about murder. There is very little killing. The savagery and brutality of the occupation is tearing apart those who have been deployed to Iraq. As news reports have just informed us, 115 American soldiers committed suicide in 2007. This is a 13% increase in suicides over 2006. And the suicides, as they did in the Vietnam War years, will only rise as distraught veterans come home, unwrap the self-protective layers of cotton wool that keep them from feeling, and face the awful reality of what they did to innocents in Iraq
American Marines and soldiers have become socialized to atrocity. The killing project is not described in these terms to a distant public. The politicians still speak in the abstract terms of glory, honor, and heroism, in the necessity of improving the world, in lofty phrases of political and spiritual renewal. Those who kill large numbers of people always claim it as a virtue. The campaign to rid the world of terror is expressed within the confines of this rhetoric, as if once all terrorists are destroyed evil itself will vanish.
The reality behind the myth, however, is very different. The reality and the ideal tragically clash when soldiers and Marines return home. These combat veterans are often alienated from the world around them, a world that still believes in the myth of war and the virtues of the nation. They confront the grave, existential crisis of all who go through combat and understand that we have no monopoly on virtue, that in war we become as barbaric and savage as those we oppose.
This is a profound crisis of faith. It shatters the myths, national and religious, that these young men and women were fed before they left for Iraq. In short, they uncover the lie they have been told. Their relationship with the nation will never be the same. These veterans give us a true narrative of the war -- one that exposes the vast enterprise of industrial slaughter unleashed in Iraq. They expose the lie.
War as Betrayal
"This unit sets up this traffic control point, and this 18 year-old kid is on top of an armored Humvee with a .50-caliber machine gun," remembered Sgt. Geoffrey Millard, who served in Tikrit with the 42nd Infantry Division. "And this car speeds at him pretty quick and he makes a split-second decision that that's a suicide bomber, and he presses the butterfly trigger and puts two hundred rounds in less than a minute into this vehicle. It killed the mother, a father, and two kids. The boy was aged four and the daughter was aged three.
"And they briefed this to the general," Millard said, "and they briefed it gruesome. I mean, they had pictures. They briefed it to him. And this colonel turns around to this full division staff and says, 'If these f---ing hajis learned to drive, this sh-t wouldn't happen.'"
Millard and tens of thousands of other veterans suffer not only delayed reactions to stress but this crisis of faith. The God they knew, or thought they knew, failed them. The church or the synagogue or the mosque, which promised redemption by serving God and country, did not prepare them for the awful betrayal of this civic religion, for the capacity we all have for human atrocity, for the stories of heroism used to mask the reality of war.
War is always about betrayal: betrayal of the young by the old, of idealists by cynics, and of troops by politicians. This bitter knowledge of betrayal has seeped into the ranks of America's Iraq War veterans. It has unleashed a new wave of disillusioned veterans not seen since the Vietnam War. It has made it possible for us to begin, again, to see war's death mask and understand our complicity in evil.
"And then, you know, my sort of sentiment of, 'What the f--- are we doing, that I felt that way in Iraq,'" said Sgt. Ben Flanders, who estimated that he ran hundreds of military convoys in Iraq. "It's the sort of insanity of it and the fact that it reduces it. Well, I think war does anyway, but I felt like there was this enormous reduction in my compassion for people. The only thing that wound up mattering is myself and the guys that I was with. And everybody else be damned, whether you are an Iraqi -- I'm sorry, I'm sorry you live here, I'm sorry this is a terrible situation, and I'm sorry that you have to deal with all of, you know, army vehicles running around and shooting, and these insurgents and all this stuff."
The Hobbesian world of Iraq described by Flanders is one where the ethic is kill or be killed. All nuance and distinction vanished for him. He fell, like most of the occupation troops, into a binary world of us and them, the good and the bad, those worthy of life and those unworthy of life. The vast majority of Iraqi civilians, caught in the middle of the clash among militias, death squads, criminal gangs, foreign fighters, kidnapping rings, terrorists, and heavily armed occupation troops, were just one more impediment that, if they happened to get in the way, had to be eradicated. These Iraqis were no longer human. They were abstractions in human form.
"The first briefing you get when you get off the plane in Kuwait, and you get off the plane and you're holding a duffel bag in each hand," Millard remembered. "You've got your weapon slung. You've got a web sack on your back. You're dying of heat. You're tired. You're jet-lagged. Your mind is just full of goop. And then you're scared on top of that, because, you know, you're in Kuwait, you're not in the States anymore... So fear sets in, too. And they sit you into this little briefing room and you get this briefing about how, you know, you can't trust any of these f---ing hajis, because all these f---king hajis are going to kill you. And 'haji' is always used as a term of disrespect and usually with the F-word in front of it."
The press coverage of the war in Iraq rarely exposes the twisted pathology of this war. We see the war from the perspective of the troops or from the equally skewed perspective of the foreign reporters, holed up in hotels, hemmed in by drivers and translators and official security and military escorts. There are moments when war's face appears to these voyeurs and professional killers, perhaps from the back seat of a car where a small child, her brains oozing out of her head, lies dying, but mostly it remains hidden. And all our knowledge of the war in Iraq has to be viewed as lacking the sweep and depth that will come one day, perhaps years from now, when a small Iraqi boy reaches adulthood and unfolds for us the sad and tragic story of the invasion and bloody occupation of his nation.
As the war sours, as it no longer fits into the mythical narrative of us as liberators and victors, it fades from view. The cable news shows that packaged and sold us the war have stopped covering it, trading the awful carnage of bomb blasts in Baghdad for the soap-opera sagas of Roger Clemens, Miley Cyrus, and Britney Spears in her eternal meltdown. Average monthly coverage of the war in Iraq on the ABC, NBC, and CBS newscasts combined has been cut in half, falling from 388 minutes in 2003, to 274 in 2004, to 166 in 2005. And newspapers, including papers like the Boston Globe, have shut down their Baghdad bureaus. Deprived of a clear, heroic narrative, restricted and hemmed in by security concerns, they have walked away.
Most reporters know that the invasion and the occupation have been a catastrophe. They know the Iraqis do not want us. They know about the cooked intelligence, spoon-fed to a compliant press by the Office of Special Plans and Lewis Libby's White House Iraq Group. They know about Curveball, the forged documents out of Niger, the outed CIA operatives, and the bogus British intelligence dossiers that were taken from old magazine articles. They know the weapons of mass destruction were destroyed long before we arrived. They know that our military as well as our National Guard and reserve units are being degraded and decimated. They know this war is not about bringing democracy to Iraq, that all the clichés about staying the course and completing the mission are used to make sure the president and his allies do not pay a political price while in power for their blunders and their folly.
The press knows all this, and if reporters had bothered to look they could have known it a long time ago. But the press, or at least most of it, has lost the passion, the outrage, and the sense of mission that once drove reporters to defy authority and tell the truth.
The Legions of the Lost and Damned
War is the pornography of violence. It has a dark beauty, filled with the monstrous and the grotesque. The Bible calls it "the lust of the eye" and warns believers against it. War allows us to engage in lusts and passions we keep hidden in the deepest, most private interiors of our fantasy lives. It allows us to destroy not only things and ideas but human beings.
In that moment of wholesale destruction, we wield the power of the divine, the power to revoke another person's charter to live on this Earth. The frenzy of this destruction -- and when unit discipline breaks down, or when there was no unit discipline to begin with, "frenzy" is the right word -- sees armed bands crazed by the poisonous elixir that our power to bring about the obliteration of others delivers. All things, including human beings, become objects -- objects either to gratify or destroy, or both. Almost no one is immune. The contagion of the crowd sees to that.
Human beings are machine-gunned and bombed from the air, automatic grenade launchers pepper hovels and neighbors with high-powered explosive devices, and convoys race through Iraq like freight trains of death. These soldiers and Marines have at their fingertips the heady ability to call in airstrikes and firepower that obliterate landscapes and villages in fiery infernos. They can instantly give or deprive human life, and with this power they become sick and demented. The moral universe is turned upside down. All human beings are used as objects. And no one walks away uninfected.
War thrusts us into a vortex of pain and fleeting ecstasy. It thrusts us into a world where law is of little consequence, human life is cheap, and the gratification of the moment becomes the overriding desire that must be satiated, even at the cost of another's dignity or life.
"A lot of guys really supported that whole concept that, you know, if they don't speak English and they have darker skin, they're not as human as us, so we can do what we want," said Spc. Josh Middleton, who served in the 82nd Airborne in Iraq. "And you know, 20 year-old kids are yelled at back and forth at Bragg, and we're picking up cigarette butts and getting yelled at every day for having a dirty weapon. But over here, it's like life and death. And 40 year-old Iraqi men look at us with fear and we can -- do you know what I mean? -- we have this power that you can't have. That's really liberating. Life is just knocked down to this primal level of, you know, you worry about where the next food's going to come from, the next sleep or the next patrol, and to stay alive.
"It's like, you feel like, I don't know, if you're a caveman," he added. "Do you know what I mean? Just, you know, I mean, this is how life is supposed to be. Life and death, essentially. No TV. None of that bullsh-t."
It takes little in wartime to turn ordinary men into killers. Most give themselves willingly to the seduction of unlimited power to destroy. All feel the peer pressure to conform. Few, once in battle, find the strength to resist. Physical courage is common on a battlefield. Moral courage, which these veterans have exhibited by telling us the truth about the war, is not.
Military machines and state bureaucracies, which seek to make us obey, seek also to silence those who return from war and speak to its reality. They push aside these witnesses to hide from a public eager for stories of war that fit the mythic narrative of glory and heroism the essence of war, which is death. War, as these veterans explain, exposes the capacity for evil that lurks just below the surface within all of us. This is the truth these veterans, often with great pain, have had to face.
The historian Christopher Browning chronicled the willingness to kill in Ordinary Men, his study of Reserve Police Battalion 101 in Poland during World War II. On the morning of July 12, 1942, the battalion, made up of middle-aged recruits, was ordered to shoot 1,800 Jews in the village of Józefów in a daylong action. The men in the unit had to round up the Jews, march them into the forest, and one by one order them to lie down in a row. The victims, including women, infants, children, and the elderly, were shot dead at close range.
Battalion members were offered the option to refuse, an option only about a dozen men took, although a few more asked to be relieved once the killing began. Those who did not want to continue, Browning says, were disgusted rather than plagued by conscience. When the men returned to the barracks they "were depressed, angered, embittered and shaken." They drank heavily. They were told not to talk about the event, "but they needed no encouragement in that direction."
Each generation responds to war as innocents. Each generation discovers its own disillusionment, often at a terrible personal price. And the war in Iraq has begun to produce legions of the lost and the damned, many of whom battle the emotional and physical trauma that comes from killing and exposure to violence.
Punishing the Local Population
Sgt. Camilo MejÃÂa, who eventually applied while still on active duty to become a conscientious objector, said the ugly side of American racism and chauvinism appeared the moment his unit arrived in the Middle East. Fellow soldiers instantly ridiculed Arab-style toilets because they would be "sh-tting like dogs." The troops around him treated Iraqis, whose language they did not speak and whose culture was alien, little better than animals.
The word "haji" swiftly became a slur to refer to Iraqis, in much the same way "gook" was used to debase the Vietnamese and "raghead" is used to belittle those in Afghanistan. Soon those around him ridiculed "haji food," "haji homes," and "haji music." Bewildered prisoners, who were rounded up in useless and indiscriminate raids, were stripped naked and left to stand terrified for hours in the baking sun. They were subjected to a steady torrent of verbal and physical abuse. "I experienced horrible confusion," MejÃÂa remembered, "not knowing whether I was more afraid for the detainees or for what would happen to me if I did anything to help them."
These scenes of abuse, which began immediately after the American invasion, were little more than collective acts of sadism. MejÃÂa watched, not daring to intervene yet increasingly disgusted at the treatment of Iraqi civilians. He saw how the callous and unchecked abuse of power first led to alienation among Iraqis and spawned a raw hatred of the occupation forces. When Army units raided homes, the soldiers burst in on frightened families, forced them to huddle in the corners at gunpoint, and helped themselves to food and items in the house.
"After we arrested drivers," he recalled, "we would choose whichever vehicles we liked, fuel them from confiscated jerry cans, and conduct undercover presence patrols in the impounded cars.
"But to this day I cannot find a single good answer as to why I stood by idly during the abuse of those prisoners except, of course, my own cowardice," he also noted.
Iraqi families were routinely fired upon for getting too close to checkpoints, including an incident where an unarmed father driving a car was decapitated by a .50-caliber machine gun in front of his small son. Soldiers shot holes into cans of gasoline being sold alongside the road and then tossed incendiary grenades into the pools to set them ablaze. "It's fun to shoot sh-t up," a soldier said. Some opened fire on small children throwing rocks. And when improvised explosive devices (IEDS) went off, the troops fired wildly into densely populated neighborhoods, leaving behind innocent victims who became, in the callous language of war, "collateral damage."
"We would drive on the wrong side of the highway to reduce the risk of being hit by an IED," MejÃÂa said of the deadly roadside bombs. "This forced oncoming vehicles to move to one side of the road and considerably slowed down the flow of traffic. In order to avoid being held up in traffic jams, where someone could roll a grenade under our trucks, we would simply drive up on sidewalks, running over garbage cans and even hitting civilian vehicles to push them out of the way. Many of the soldiers would laugh and shriek at these tactics."
At one point the unit was surrounded by an angry crowd protesting the occupation. MejÃÂa and his squad opened fire on an Iraqi holding a grenade, riddling the man's body with bullets. MejÃÂa checked his clip afterward and determined that he had fired 11 rounds into the young man. Units, he said, nonchalantly opened fire in crowded neighborhoods with heavy M-240 Bravo machine guns, AT-4 launchers, and Mark 19s, a machine gun that spits out grenades.
"The frustration that resulted from our inability to get back at those who were attacking us," MejÃÂa said, "led to tactics that seemed designed simply to punish the local population that was supporting them."
The Algebra of Occupation
It is the anonymity of the enemy that fuels the mounting rage. Comrades are maimed or die, and there is no one to lash back at, unless it is the hapless civilians who happen to live in the neighborhood where the explosion or ambush occurred. Soldiers and Marines can do two or three tours in Iraq and never actually see the enemy, although their units come under attack and take numerous casualties. These troops, who entered Baghdad in triumph when Iraq was occupied, soon saw the decisive victory over Saddam Hussein's army evolve into a messy war of attrition.
The superior firepower and lightning victory was canceled out by what T. E. Lawrence once called the "algebra of occupation." Writing about the British occupation of Iraq following the Ottoman Empire's collapse in World War I, Lawrence, in lessons these veterans have had to learn on their own, highlighted what has always doomed conventional, foreign occupying powers.
"Rebellion must have an unassailable base... it must have a sophisticated alien enemy, in the form of a disciplined army of occupation too small to dominate the whole area effectively from fortified posts," Lawrence wrote. "It must have a friendly population, not actively friendly, but sympathetic to the point of not betraying rebel movements to the enemy. Rebellions can be made by 2 percent active in a striking force, and 98 percent passive sympathy. Granted mobility, security... time and doctrine... victory will rest with the insurgents, for the algebraical factors are in the end decisive."
The failure in Iraq is the same failure that bedeviled the French in Algeria; the United States in Vietnam; and the British, who for 800 years beat, imprisoned, transported, shot, and hanged hundreds of thousands of Irish patriots. Occupation, in each case, turned the occupiers into beasts and fed the insurrection. It created patterns where innocents, as in Iraq, were terrorized and killed. The campaign against a mostly invisible enemy, many veterans said, has given rise to a culture of terror and hatred among U.S. forces, many of whom, losing ground, have in effect declared war on all Iraqis.
MejÃÂa said, regarding the deaths of Iraqis at checkpoints, "This sort of killing of civilians has long ceased to arouse much interest or even comment."
MejÃÂa also watched soldiers from his unit abuse the corpses of Iraqi dead. He related how, in one incident, soldiers laughed as an Iraqi corpse fell from the back of a truck. "Take a picture of me and this motherf---er," said one of the soldiers who had been in MejÃÂa's squad in Third Platoon, putting his arm around the corpse.
The shroud fell away from the body, revealing a young man wearing only his pants. There was a bullet hole in his chest.
"Damn, they really f---ed you up, didn't they?" the soldier laughed.
The scene, MejÃÂa noted, was witnessed by the dead man's brothers and cousins.
The senior officers, protected in heavily fortified compounds, rarely experienced combat. They sent their troops on futile missions in the quest to be awarded Combat Infantry Badges. This recognition, MejÃÂa noted, "was essential to their further progress up the officer ranks."
This pattern meant that "very few high-ranking officers actually got out into the action, and lower-ranking officers were afraid to contradict them when they were wrong." When the badges -- bearing an emblem of a musket with the hammer dropped, resting on top of an oak wreath -- were finally awarded, the commanders brought in Iraqi tailors to sew the badges on the left breast pockets of their desert combat uniforms.
"This was one occasion when our leaders led from the front," MejÃÂa noted bitterly. "They were among the first to visit the tailors to get their little patches of glory sewn next to their hearts."
War breeds gratuitous, senseless, and repeated acts of atrocity and violence. Abuse of the powerless becomes a kind of perverted sport for the troops.
"I mean, if someone has a fan, they're a white-collar family," said Spc. Philip Chrystal, who carried out raids on Iraqi homes in Kirkuk. "So we get started on this day, this one, in particular. And it starts with the psy-ops [psychological operations] vehicles out there, you know, with the big speakers playing a message in Arabic or Farsi or Kurdish or whatever they happen to be saying, basically, saying put your weapons, if you have them, next to the front door in your house. Please come outside, blah, blah, blah, blah. And we had Apaches flying over for security, if they're needed, and it's also a good show of force. And we were running around, and we'd done a few houses by this point, and I was with my platoon leader, my squad leader, and maybe a couple other people, but I don't really remember.
"And we were approaching this one house, and this farming area; they're, like, built up into little courtyards," he said. "So they have like the main house, common area. They have like a kitchen and then they have like a storage-shed-type deal. And we were approaching, and they had a family dog. And it was barking ferociously, because it was doing its job. And my squad leader, just out of nowhere, just shoots it. And he didn't -- motherf---er -- he shot it, and it went in the jaw and exited out.
"So I see this dog -- and I'm a huge animal lover. I love animals -- and this dog has like these eyes on it, and he's running around spraying blood all over the place. And the family is sitting right there, with three little children and a mom and a dad horrified. And I'm at a loss for words. And so I yell at him. I'm like, 'What the f--- are you doing?' And so the dog's yelping. It's crying out without a jaw. And I'm looking at the family, and they're just scared. And so I told them, I was like, 'F---ing shoot it,' you know. 'At least kill it, because that can't be fixed. It's suffering.' And I actually get tears from just saying this right now, but -- and I had tears then, too -- and I'm looking at the kids and they are so scared. So I got the interpreter over with me and I get my wallet out and I gave them twenty bucks, because that's what I had. And, you know, I had him give it to them and told them that I'm so sorry that asshole did that. Which was very common.
"Was a report ever filed about it?" he asked. "Was anything ever done? Any punishment ever dished out? No, absolutely not."
The Plaster Saints of War
The vanquished know war. They see through the empty jingoism of those who use the abstract words of "glory," "honor," and "patriotism" to mask the cries of the wounded, the brutal killing, war profiteering, and chest-pounding grief. They know the lies the victors often do not acknowledge, the lies covered up in stately war memorials and mythic war narratives, filled with stories of courage and comradeship. They know the lies that permeate the thick, self-important memoirs by amoral statesmen who make wars but do not know war.
The vanquished know the essence of war -- death. They grasp that war is necrophilia. They see that war is a state of almost pure sin, with its goals of hatred and destruction. They know how war fosters alienation, leads inevitably to nihilism, and is a turning away from the sanctity and preservation of life. All other narratives about war too easily fall prey to the allure and seductiveness of violence as well as the attraction of the godlike power that comes with the license to kill with impunity.
But the words of the vanquished come later, sometimes long after the war, when grown men and women unpack the suffering they endured as children: what it was like to see their mother or father killed or taken away, or what it was like to lose their homes, their community, their security, and to be discarded as human refuse. But by then few listen. The truth about war comes out, but usually too late. We are assured by the war-makers that these stories have no bearing on the glorious violent enterprise the nation is about to inaugurate. And, lapping up the myth of war and its sense of empowerment, we prefer not to look.
We are trapped in a doomed war of attrition in Iraq. We have blundered into a nation we know little about, caught in bitter rivalries between competing ethnic and religious groups. Iraq was a cesspool for the British in 1917 when they occupied it. It will be a cesspool for us as well. We have embarked on an occupation that is as damaging to our souls as to our prestige and power and security. We have become tyrants to others weaker than ourselves. And we believe, falsely, that because we have the capacity to wage war we have the right to wage war.
We make our heroes out of clay. We laud their gallant deeds and give them uniforms with colored ribbons on their chests for the acts of violence they committed or endured. They are our false repositories of glory and honor, of power, of self-righteousness, of patriotism and self-worship, all that we want to believe about ourselves. They are our plaster saints of war, the icons we cheer to defend us and make us and our nation great. They are the props of our civic religion, our love of power and force, our belief in our right as a chosen nation to wield this force against the weak, and rule. This is our nation's idolatry of itself. And this idolatry has corrupted religious institutions, not only here but in most nations, making it impossible for us to separate the will of God from the will of the state.
Prophets are not those who speak of piety and duty from pulpits -- few people in pulpits have much worth listening to -- but are the battered wrecks of men and women who return from Iraq and speak the halting words we do not want to hear, words that we must listen to and heed to know ourselves. They tell us war is a soulless void. They have seen and tasted how war plunges us into perversion, trauma, and an unchecked orgy of death. And it is their testimonies that have the redemptive power to save us from ourselves.
Chris Hedges is the former Middle East Bureau Chief of the New York Times, a Pulitzer Prize winner, and a Senior Fellow at the Nation Institute. He is the author of several books including War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. This piece has been adapted from the introduction to the just-published, Collateral Damage: America's War Against Iraqi Civilians (Nation Books), which he has co-authored with Laila al-Arian.
Copyright 2008 Chris Hedges
75 Comments so far
Show AllThe Iraqis are not "enemies". Bush issued an unlawful order to invade and occupy a sovereign nation which the commanders of our military forces obeyed contrary to the oaths they made when they received their commissions. The Iraqis are victims of the war crimes which have subsequently occurred and are presently occurring.
I condensed this article down to four paragraphs and have been using it as a hand out for the past two days--
You feed your children a bunch of national and religious myths, then you ship them off to a vast enterprise of industrial slaughter in Iraq. And when they come home broken and psychologically scarred because of the awful reality of what they did to innocents in Iraq--realizing that they have been betrayed; no longer believing in your myths about the virtue of the nation--they attempt to give us a true narrative of the war and they are silenced by your media.
Instead, your media simply continue to promote the mythic narrative of glory and heroism because this is what the public wants. The reality of war is the back seat of a car, where a small child lies dying with her brains oozing out of her head. That's the reality of war. The essence of war is death. War breeds gratuitous, senseless, and repeated acts of atrocity and violence. Abuse of the powerless becomes a kind of perverted sport for the troops. War is a state of almost pure sin.
You construct your heroes out of clay. You dress them in uniforms with colored ribbons for the acts of violence they committed. You imbue them with glory and honor, power and self-righteousness, patriotism and self-worship--all that you want to believe about yourselves. This is America's idolatry of itself.
Rather than listening to preachers in pulpits, you should be listening to your real prophets--the hollow wrecks of men and women who return from Iraq and speak a truth you do not want to hear. They tell us that war is a soulless void; an unchecked orgy of death. It is their testimonies, and only their testimonies, that carry the redemptive power to save us from ourselves.
well if the USA was doing something positive they would get more support. Into the 6th year and water and electricity are hit and miss? What BULLSHIT. They are there for one reason that is OIL and racism.
If any one attacked my new country ( CANADA) I would defend it to the death.
With memorial day now past, a person asked if I supported the troops, would I honor those who have fallen. My answer was no. It would be glorifying an institution, the military, whose sole purpose is to kill people, and if they don't succeed in killing a person, then they will destroy their property/means of livelihood. It's time we end having a standing military. We didn't have one as a nation when it began, why is it necessary now? Who's going to invade? Canada? Mexico? (although Mexico would certainly have a good reason to: the US stole, yes, stole, over have their country in the mid-1800's) Let's face it, the only military power to be frightened of anymore on the planet is the US military and with the advent of NorthCom, it is even in position to be unleashed on its own people. Time to get rid of it.
Luckylefty: You have my respect!
Peaceman, you're right. Her heart is in the right place and I flew off the handle. It happens.
Siouxrose - I do not and will never agree with your 'cosmology' for the reasons stated but that don't make you a bad person. I apologize.
luckylefty: C'mon man, I'm surprised at you. Whether or not you believe in astrology, religion, the rapture, tooth fairy or anything else, don't attack one of our progressive, decent friends on Common Dreams. Save your energy for attacking the Repulsivecans and the Democrats who collaborate with them. Isn't the "liberal/left weak enough without adding to the problem? You're much sharper than that, luckylefty. I'm holding you to a higher standard.
Peace and Harmony
Ahhhmazing. "...Mercury is the purveyor of all forms of communications."
GET A GRIP. This is the 21st century and although we are in a RETROGRADE period because we have deliberately surrendered complete control of our lives to corporations and the Oligarchy WE have created, this is NOT the 11th century. Stellar bodies DO NOT impel human behaviors and constellations (THE SIGNS OF THE ZODIAC)never even existed except as interesting encapsulations of human qualities and traits, as are the "so called" planetary "influences".
PRIESTS, SOOTHSAYERS, and AUGERERS have made their living fleecing the gullible for as long as they have existed. AND IF YOU DON'T BELIEVE IN THE GODS AND SACRIFICE ANIMALS TO THEM UNDER THE AUSPICES OF VENUS, you will die!!
Gimme a break. Like we haven't got enough troubles without taking on pre-literate superstitions. BUT I have checked your horoscope: IT'S GOOD NEWS! Your Libra is trine Uranus and squares PLuto with your Sun at 30 degrees Saturn, with Taurus in your mid-Heaven (that's 12 miles outside of Stockton Ca). Because of these exemplary signs you'll coming into some money soon and love is on the horizon. That'll be $30.
Peace.
FVHorn: Jun 5, 5:59am post: Excellent! You said it very well!
Same, same, GI!
Siouxrose: Good posts all, but the Jun 5,11:13am comments are right on target!
RichM and others: It appears more and more of us are having "difficulties" with some of our "postings" and none of us should be surprised if our infamous "Uncle" in D.C. has something to do with it. Reminds me of a documentary I saw several years ago about Nazi Germany. If you had a typewriter in your house or apartment and the Gestapo found out about it, you would be taken downtown for "questioning." "What are you typing, who did you give it to?" etc. Even the "father" of the rocket, Werner Von Braun wasn't safe.
Like the cigarette commercial for female smokers decades ago said: "You've come a long way, baby." In just seven and a half-years! They couldn't have done it without the help of the Democrats.
Both major parties know the docility of the average American and how most are willing to go along with anything the government and big business proscribes for them.
AuntEm: Thanks for posting the info.
Rich,(and others who are experiencing problems with getting your posts accepted):
This usually takes the form of going into an interminable state of "waiting for moderation" - a period that NEVER ends.
There is a new "cookie" that gets planted in your browser that causes this at CommonDreams. You will find the cookie filed under "www.commondreams..." if you sort the cookies alphabetically. It clearly looks out of place.
Remove it and leave everything else intact, then you will be able to write a post. You will be asked to log in again.
I've found that some of those "posts waiting for moderation" will turn in to bona fide posts and some will disappear altogether, but you will be able to go on from there.
Hope that helps anyone who is experiencing this stuff. Rich has obviously figured it out, because his posts are appearing here.
NDP~ thanks for the comments. I used to think it was just a matter of "waking people up" or relying on their own moral compass to set things right if only they were told the truth. But after having lived around this area of the country for over a decade, I realize that these people, at the heart of it, are very mean. They don't want to know the truth. They want to remain in their cocoon and sit around chatting and drinking their pina colatas. They're all smiles and polite and just adore your dog but they're a bunch of fascists, basically. If you engage anyone around here in a serious conversation, within one minute they're literally walking away from you because you don't think like a fascist.
RICH M: According to the astro-LOGICAL template, Mercury is the purveyor of all forms of communications. Three times a year for periods of about 25 days each, from the perspective of earth traveling its elliptical orbit, it appears to be bypassing Mercury. This gives the illusion that the "winged wonder" is moving in reverse. Astrologers have noted a higher propensity for problems with electronic equipment (sometimes cars, as they are run by electrical/computer data more and more) and basic communications at such times. I am not thrilled that OBAMA has been declared winner on this dubious influence, as it could raise some issues later. I could fill a book with all the glitches I have personally faced under a retrograde Mercury... on the plus side, it will pull back, like an oceanic undertow UNFINISHED business/correspondence from the past, inclusive of decisions left on those proverbial "back burners."
Mercury turns direct on June 19. Expect a wild ride in the first 2 weeks of August as eclipses hit Leo, the sign of royalty and Obama's sign, too.
dear miftin,
After reading Chris Hedges article I felt as you: "BATSHIT", gutwrenched, and thankful
that there is someone out there who is so articulate and passionate about the realities
of war.
If this could be dramatized with all it's gore and horror as a stand-in for the Fox
"American Idle" show there might be a start for awareness in the US "pop" population.
RichM, there you are. Help, the other threads are being inundated with the dimocratic apologists. I've missed your articulate comments.
Sometimes when signing in under a certain article, I've noticed that the posting window box doesn't appear, but it does if I go to other articles, while staying signed in. In order to comment under the article I wish to, I have to sign out, then sign in under some random article, then go back to the one originally intended, as I had to with this article.
Hopefully you can continue your commenting, I enjoy your insights.
Siouxrose -- What is Mercury retrograde? Is there a fix for it?
Magnificent article by Hedges...
Again, I note that CD is not accepting my posts any more. (I'm sure the Dem Party loyalists here will be pleased to know that.)
RICH M: It could be Mercury retrograde. I have had glitches with both Yahoo and the mail I send every month (due articles) on AOL. Sometimes it really is just a glitch! (sometimes...)
My posts are not being accepted on CD's current threads -- only on threads that are at least a day old. Very odd, indeed....
Victory! How and when will we know that we have 'won' this stupid war? Who will bow down before us and surrender? Or, is this a war that isn't about war at all, and we will know we have won when the oil fields are up and running at full capacity and we have the rights to every last drop?
@ubrew12 June 4th, 2008 11:55 pm
thank you for bringing Tolkien into this.
"Deserve death? I dare say he deserves death. But can you give life? Be not so quick to wish for death. Even the wise know not what role the most miserable have to fulfill."
FV HORN: Interesting post. Did you catch an article that appeared on CD a few years ago which chronicled what occured when a tribe of baboons that got some food from behind a resort in Kenya saw the dominant males die out due to the food being poisoned? Instead of the next level of males taking over and resuming the positions of the deceased males, a very different social arrangement, far more egalitarian, resulted.
Mankind has largely fitted societies to might makes right, masculine views of the deity, a celebration of logic and cold-hearted reason without due respect for compassion or the right brain attributes that tend to draw diffusive things together. In short, societies have been RULED by ego, what mystics term the first chakra for centuries. The result then, of war, is less a product of human nature as that nature that's been--like Pavlov's mice--programmed into the socio-economic spheres, fueled by religious rhetoric which forms the mortar of the false structure.
UBREW: Boy, you and I have completely antithetical views! To say that destruction of OTHER constitutes a tribute to Creator, whoa, boy... that's what LUCIFER is all about. Taking over the Creation, which as biology relates, is all about EVOLUTION is not for mortals to deconstruct as tribute to a God of life! Now a God death & destruction (and that would be Mars, boys and girls) is an entirely different matter. It totally explains the lust for war and why so many intelligent persons are blind-sided when it comes to religion SUPPORTING war. The basic understanding of Deity has been corrupted to suit elites that must go to war to assure seizure of the next generation of enviable assets.
The key is to expose the corruption of the MSM in the MSM - simple. Once their cover is blown their power is gone. We need to picket NBC, NYT, CNN, Washington Post and all other "news" outlets with one single message.
We know where the WMD are, they are in Israel - just this message is enought to sink the rotten stack of cards.
My father was a combat veteran of WWII in the Pacific theatre. He killed the enemy and, in turn, was almost killed by them. He never talked about the killing and the dying, even when his inquisitive son asked what he did to earn the Navy's Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC).
What I learned from my father was that there are no "just" wars, motivations notwithstanding, killing is murder.
whatfools June 4th, 2008 5:53 pm
I just hope Obama is saying only what he has to say now so as not to alienate certain sections of the electorate. Note that his phraseology gives him great lattitude for his actions at a later date.
Check out this article in today's UK Independent:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/revealed-secret-plan-to-keep-iraq-under-us-control...
About how Cheney is trying to force the Iraqis to sign up to permanent US bases (50!), immunity for US forces from Iraq law, etc., by the end of this month. Read it and weep.
When Tamerlaine the Great entered Bagdad in the Middle Ages with his Mongol hordes, he ordered made an actual, real mountain of skulls. He had everyone in Bagdad killed, as he did everywhere he was opposed. When Joshua was commanded by his god to take a city, all were put to the sword, taken as slave, or raped.
The Battle of the Somme in The Great War was a feast of murder... 10,000 murders per day every day for a straight four months. One battle... in one war. Within living memory.
In WW2, the allies snuffed out whole cities, with firebombing and atomic bombing, children and all. McNamara, who was part of this, said the allies acted like war criminals and would have been hung themselves as such, had they lost, or had justice been done.
Since that time, around 100,000 nuclear weapons have been built to use in destroying 'the other'. And the newest gun, the MetalStorm gun, fires at the rate of one Million rounds per minute. And the newest Russian/Chinese missiles have rendered the 'star wars' project into so much junk, and their newest anti-ship missile-torpedos have guaranteed our navy can only battle pirates and third-world countries without total destruction. So it goes, on and on and on, haplessly and out-of-control.
Chris Hedges says War is a Force That Gives (Us) Meaning... that is, the terrifying questions and pointlessness of human existence is replaced by the us vs. them cameraderie and kill-or-be-killed simplicity of War. And the innate emotions that rage in human mammals, inherited from our dinosaur and simian ancestry, are given cultural and religious permission to be vented on the 'enemy'.
It is not just America that has the contagion Chris Hedges discusses. It is inherent in the species. Our tribe expands, your tribe has to die. Baboons in Africa are acting this way now, taking territory, killing other animals, threatening all others in big gangs, as they expand because their predators have been decimated, and the natural balance has been upset.
So the catastrophe that is Iraq was easily foreseen before the war. And the Bush War Criminals did not care. They needed the external enemy for their own greedy purposes. And America has murdered millions of Iraquis in the last three decades. But this did not touch Americans. And in true nazi style, when pain did come to America, REVENGE was taken on innocent villagers in the form of 'kill one of ours, we kill a hundred of yours.'
The primitive brain in control. The primate-ive brain in control. It is obvious we are, as Darwin put it, DEscended from monkeys, not ASCENDED. But in order to ascend, in order for our species to survive, we better start ignoring those that claim wars solve problems. They are apes. They fight the other guy that thinks war will solve his problem. So they really fight the mirror version of themselves. So it is a circle jerk.
Hopefully, we as a semi-intelligent species will learn to cooperate instead, and learn that what affects some affects all, in all kinds of ways. This means no more capitalist neocon 'filosofy', nor libertarian-me b.s., nor one-world fascist rule, but cooperation on a global scale. As even macho Hemingway put it, ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.
But the call of the Tribe is great within us, as is the selfishness of the self. It will take rational and calm thinking to heal the planet, not the thinking of the greedy, the stupid, and the mean, who seem to rule most everywhere most of the time, even unto the present.
If we don't get it, prepare for ten thousand nukes to bloom.
Chris Hedges displays empathy for human suffering, which makes him an admirable, inspiring man. Empathy is absent from the pulpit, press conferences, political talk shows. Always has been.
Now we have many conservatives coming forth to denounce the invasion and occupation of Iraq; but only as a botched job. There is no regret for the terrible suffering of so many innocents. They're just, as this article's title states, "collatoral damage."
There is not now, and never will be, a "compassionate" conservative.
The prophets dont get time on Larry King or Faux, and the brain dead don't read anything which does not fit their personal ideology.
Obama kind of proved he is no prophet for change tonight, and those waiting for God to help you are in for a long wait. The psychopaths and their god Lucifer rule. They are the kind of guys who shoot barking dogs for fun. Humans are fair game as well.
I was so pleased to see this article posted here where comment could be made. I thought this article was as fine as they come! Thank you, Chris Hedges.
This is a profound statement of REALITY, at a time when the fog and tension of the last eight years is finally being lifted. Yet, CONgress has voted to extend the post 9/11 spending party for next year !! (and btw, alot more goes for biochemical weapons to be used against US ... )
The earthchanges are coming soon, 2200 marines are doing "exercises" in Indianoplis - not done since Reconstruction, we do not know if another false flag will be pursued and our maaaaaahvelous new Presidential candidate gets away with genocidal spin already. Zbig is the REAL candidate .. If Obama (a legal eagle) was a real LEADER he'd be in DC complaining about the kangaroo trials and the refusal to obey GENEVA. That would be leadership, but we're not going to see it.
http://www.petitiononline.com/everyman/petition.html
This is the petition for the removal of Nancy Pelosi as House Speaker. This corporate bought woman (who made sure Shirley Golub's campaign never got anywhere) is NEVER going to put impeachment on the table. We can be organizing at the STATE LEVELS to get the honest attorney generals to DO THE RIGHT THING and uphold the Constitution and the SUPREME LAW OF THE LAND, working with the lawyers who know International law. Why not propose a Town Hall meeting in your state and get the funds to advertise it and emulate the model of Vermont.
No more pardons! No more use of du ! Start pumping oil from Alaska and using solar energy .. mind our own bloody business as a nation and give hope to our children. Israel can learn how to take care of itself and get along with the rest of her neighbors.
So much is at stake and NONE of the victims in Guantanmo Bay deserves to die; most are innocent, just picked up on bounties. See freedetainees.org. The stories will make your heart break ..
The energy we are wasting fighting CONgress would be better applied to getting ourselves together as the earthchanges come !!
Man, I could barely make it through this article. This stuff is driving me batshit. It's been driving me batshit since I read my first Noam Chomsky book back in 1986.
It would be one thing if I could actually associate on a regular basis with people who also understand these issues. But either people are just working stiffs who think "politics" is just something rich people do to them, or people are educated and making money exploiting the working stiffs and they use every means in the book to ridicule the message and destroy the messenger because they like the illusions and lies to remain just as they are.
"They are our false repositories of glory and honor, of power, of self-righteousness, of patriotism and self-worship, all that we want to believe about ourselves. They are our plaster saints of war, the icons we cheer to defend us and make us and our nation great. They are the props of our civic religion, our love of power and force, our belief in our right as a chosen nation to wield this force against the weak, and rule. This is our nation's idolatry of itself. And this idolatry has corrupted religious institutions, not only here but in most nations, making it impossible for us to separate the will of God from the will of the state."
I've been saying it for months, "we" are a nation of blaspheming idolators. That is HOW the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq was made possible.
JRR Tolkein knew Anglo-Saxon mythology before he fought in WWI, and that knowledge led him to write the exciting story, 'The Hobbit' for his children. But, it was what he experienced in the trenches of WWI that directed the development of his follow up story: "The Lord of the Rings'. He sought to understand how human societies, ordinary and peaceably developed, could harbor within themselves the seeds of mass-murder, with which they could justify so much death among 'others'.
Not to be too glib about such a weighty subject, but Tolkeins story reveals that the uncertainty that attends the knowledge of our own mortality is what makes us corruptable, and willing to deal in death. Its as if we are saying to God, 'we don't know when we will die, but we know when we will make others die'. Its a way of getting a handle on our own mortality, to be able to decide its timing for others.
That uncertainty grows as we grow older and feebler, which is the source of the old saying, 'old men start wars, young men fight them'.
In Tolkeins story, elves didn't start wars, but men did. Why? Men were mortal, and elves were not. Men aged, grew old and infirm, and elves never did. The FIRST war of the ring was in fact a war by men AGAINST elves, and what they were after was the secret of immortality. And the Ring offers immortality (of a kind), to its possessor. In Tolkeins story, only the innocent Hobbits could vanquish the ring, as only our children, fighting and dying on the field of battle, can vanquish the blood-lust we feel directed by the uncertainty surrounding our personal mortality.
Those who conduct and control wars don't fight them, and avoid seeing the kinds of consequences Chris Hedges points out in his excellent article. They want to remain remote to others mortality, the mortality they caused, even as they suspect God is remote at their own mortality. In an odd way, they are honoring their creator by acting out in this way.
Lorax: Religion and religious leaders provide a form of control over the ruler and reenforces compliance with common law. Both god and religion evolve as the awareness of the population increases. We have a long way to go before there is enough widespread awareness to make religion and god unnecessary. Religion is not the source of all "evil". There is no evil, just either differences in perception and awareness, or psychological disease. The source of all suffering is in the need to feed one's ego. Religion can be corrupted and perverted too. Priests in the catholic church used to be married. The church became mysoginist half way through its history.
We are entering the phase of believing not in the all knowing white bearded god, but in a different kind of God. John Paul II called on catholics to think of god as female. Many now talk of god as some sort of superior being but not one with power or involved with humankind. As we progress, god will evolve into an abstract embodying the laws of physics that give matter its characteristics. Finally, we will reach the stage where it will be accepted by everyone who isn't daft, that god does not exist and is not necessary.
Obama has just stated that America is tied to Israel's apron strings now and in the future, that Israel's security is his top priority. God help us!
In so doing he has shown to the world that nothing is going to change in America if he gets to be President, that he is just another opportunistic politician who has his eyes fixed firmly on the Jewish vote and is aware of the power of the Jewish-controlled media.
See my blog for further thoughts.
www.dangerouscreation.com
Do any of you believe that the US will ever give up militarism, imperialism and war? The rest of the world hopes so and would appreciate it. The world's peoples are grown up and can talk about things. Violence happens when words are not available to communicate with others. Mr. Hedges is calling out for communication between peoples in order to stop the unnecessary bloodshed that destroys body and minds of all involved.
Reading this article, like so many others both current and historical, that have dealt with the subject of war as it really is, sans the nationalistic rhetoric that 'we' are somehow bringing something better to those we slaughter, strips the noble savage right down to just pure savage. I suspect that the average Iraqi citizen will always feel the rage and hatred instilled in he or she by this historic event called "liberation" or "democracy", just as the American Indian or the African American quite often feels at the memory of the treatment they received at the hands of our Christian nation.
"They continually preach hatred toward other religions, hatred toward homosexuals, and hatred toward abortionists. Then, in unbelievable acts of hypocrisy, they commit pedophelia, theft, adultery, and bribery."
You left out murder.
With all his sabre rattling against Iran, Hamas, Venezuela, Ecuador, Afghanistan and Pakistan, it's clear that Obama does not understand what Mr. Hedges so carefully illustrates.
The answer to this is law. That means war crimes trials for the crime of illegal aggression. Here is a key representation of that law, from the Nuremberg Tribunal:
>>The Tribunal now turns to the consideration of the Crimes against peace charged in the Indictment. Count One of the Indictment charges the defendants with conspiring or having a common plan to commit crimes against peace.
Count Two of the Indictment charges the defendants with committing specific crimes against peace by planning, preparing, initiating, and waging wars of aggression against a number of other States. It will be convenient to consider the question of the existence of a common plan and the question of aggressive war together, and to deal later in this Judgment with the question of the individual responsibility of the defendants.
The charges in the Indictment that the defendants planned and waged aggressive wars are charges of the utmost gravity. War is essentially an evil thing. Its consequences are not confined to the belligerent states alone, but affect the whole world.
To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.>>
by Justice Jackson, Prosecutor at Nuremberg
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/proc/judnazi.htm#common
We need to work towards those trials for those responsible for the invasion, occupation and destruction of Iraq, and the killing of up to 1.3 milliion Iraqis.
psm, I too opposed the war from the beginning. War is failure.
It is an excellent piece- no argument from me. But whose idea was it to put that heading on it? It wasn't there in Tomdispatch. Why does it matter? because when you use soldier speak, you are aiding and abetting. That term is used instead of "Dead Women and Children". We need to call things by their right names.
check out 'a thousand splendid suns' by khaled hosseini. it will change forever the way you see u.s. invasions. you can get it at http://isohunt.com/torrent_details/25684479/thousand+splendid+suns?tab=summary and it's a really great novel top boot.
This horror will not remain caged in Iraq, it will visit us in the U.S. We have done everything to stop this other than resort to violence. At what point does it become moral to take violent action at home? This is no longer tolerable.
Siouxrose June 4th, 2008 5:56 pm
"A few weeks ago when looking at a photo of Cheney I realized how much he has come to fit the form of a 21st century LUCIFER."
What a great description! Fits him to a T!!
It is no secret. War is the United States's biggest export and always has been.
Bottle. your comments are worth quoting. May I do so in a Letter to the Editor that i would like to send to my local paper?
I thought this article was going to be about the domestic damage stateside as a result of the war, lowered levels of security, raise in crime and suicide rates, clawback of civil liberties and social benefits, economic cost of a war based economy, that kind of stuff.
FIREFEM: Excellent post!
As perverse as it may sound we should have flown bombers over Iraq and dropped PlayStations, cash, toys, medicine and food. We then should have opened Wal-marts and Costco's. We'd own Iraq with nary a shot; and several hundred thousand or even a million lives saved. It only proves what a murderous nation we are to use the violence we have used. The Wal-Marts and Costcos are another issue with their own ramifications but at least you're alive to fight another day.
ARVY: Excellent post.
ALIEN SOUP: Good response to HELLO KITTY. I'd add, too, that the media is owned by the same corporations that profit directly from war. They are not going to kill the goose (public awareness) that's got their golden ($) egg.
I guess I lack the requisite testosterone to relate to the PASSION with which Hedges approaches this subject matter. He reminds me of a reformed drug addict now lecturing addicts on the reasons to give up (in this case) the great fight. Even the title of his prior book, :War is the FORCE that tives us meaning." The very title suggests a seduction, and then the whole article provides all the reasons why such a passion is diabolical.
There were many religious references in this deeply written essay, and they tended to focus on the sense of power given to ordinary fools in the form of deciding who gets to live or die.
A few weeks ago when looking at a photo of Cheney I realized how much he has come to fit the form of a 21st century LUCIFER. His orchestrating this invasion and the subsequent death of over 1 million citizens of a nation merely caught in the economic cross fire (not having done anything remotely aggressive to qualify grounds for "just" war) is a THREAT to the God of Creation. He determines HE has the right to cast all these individuals to a premature mortality, and for some who have been left behind, the maiming and disfiguration added to loss of loved ones may feel like a worse fate than death.
We like to say science is great, but so many things in life that are good possess negative counterparts and vice versa. (This fitting the symbol for Yin and Yang, each encompassing the other.) Thus the science that gave a dead soul like Cheney an artificially beating heart is also a co-factor in the carnage that has come to follow.
Hedges does a good job of documenting, and he certainly paints a clear and brutal depiction of the war, yet again, it seems to me he's trying to wean himself of the passion in it that gives HIM meaning. Alas, societies have been formatted for so long to follow allegiance, line up, succumb to false religious notions, show cruelty towards reformers, rebels and visionaries and in short allow the god of destruction (not Jesus, nor any true prophet!) to gain their homage. Mankind must transcend MARS RULES!
A Brief History of U.S. Interventions: 1945 to the Present, by William Blum; Z Magazine, June 1999
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/US_Interventions_WBlumZ.html
The engine of American foreign policy has been fueled not by a devotion to any kind of morality, but rather by the necessity to serve other imperatives, which can be summarized as follows:
* making the world safe for American corporations;
* enhancing the financial statements of defense contractors at home who have contributed generously to members of congress;
* preventing the rise of any society that might serve as a successful example of an alternative to the capitalist model;
* extending political and economic hegemony over as wide an area as possible, as befits a "great power."
This in the name of fighting a supposed moral crusade against what cold warriors convinced themselves, and the American people, was the existence of an evil International Communist Conspiracy, which in fact never existed, evil or not.
The United States carried out extremely serious interventions into more than 70 nations in this period.
All the more reason that Bush and Cheney need to be impeached before leaving office. If Congress refuses to do its constitutional duty, then it is OUR duty, the average citizens' duty to set up a tribunal to impeach the bastards. The thought of them being able to lead normal lives enriched by government pensions and corporate money sickens me.
As I watched all three candidates at AIPAC pledging their allegiance to the State of Israel I could only think that What It Really Means When America Goes to War is that we squander our blood and treasure to please Zionists. As it was. As it is. As it will be...
Another excellent piece by Mr. Hedges.
Our Founding Fathers knew this when they wrote our Constitution. They had just lived through 8 or 9 years of a brutal civil war. They'd not only seen an army of occupation, assisted by mercenaries (the Hessians), deal with the local people. They'd also seen the brutal fighting between a population that splits between those loyal to the existing government and those who demand a better situation.
Because of this, they made sending this nation to war very difficult. They deliberately made it impossible for the President to go to war on his own (contrary to the anti-American ideas of the current Administration). The deliberately made the decision to go to war the responsibility of the Congress, elected by the people. This includes the House of Representatives, which is the most democratic body they could create in a horse and buggy era. They also gave the House the direct control over the money to finance the war.
They did this because they knew exactly what Mr. Hedges describes, and they wanted to make sure that it was only on a democratic decision of the people that the nation could go to war.
Too bad we've let a bunch of people who hate America change this.
Chris --Fine use of the english language to sear the ugly reality of war over the hype of the George Bushes and Dick Cheneys of this world(cowards-in-chief).
Lorax--Sorry you're so sick.May you be well soon.
Words,all too often,fail me. Bob
"And this colonel turns around to this full division staff and says, 'If these f—ing hajis learned to drive, this sh-t wouldn't happen.'"
...Great job! A U.S. soldier just blamed a civilian's death on his lack of driving ability???!!! But, let me guess, when this guy gets back from Iraq, the flag-waving, more-patriotic-than-thou public will be touting him and his buddies as "heroes." Just because someone signed up to be brainwashed in the military, doesn't make him a hero.
The Bible calls it "the lust of the eye" and warns believers against it.
Yeah right. The Bible is the CAUSE of it.
The Christian religion teaches nothing except for intolerance, hate, and death. They continually preach hatred toward other religions, hatred toward homosexuals, and hatred toward abortionists. Then, in unbelievable acts of hypocrisy, they commit pedophelia, theft, adultery, and bribery.
The truth is that a person is Christian because they are too much of a coward to face their own inadequacies. Their life is less than happy so they throw themselves into some wild fantasy to pacify themselves that "things will be better in another life". It's bad enough that they try to cover their inferiority complex and non-existent self esteem with this rubbish, but they can't accept that others are happier than they are and try to push all this trash on them. They wave around the book they read and shout threats about torture and suffering if anyone refuses to comply. This is because they worship a God that uses fear, intimidation, and torture as His power base (like Cheney). If all that doesn't work, they try to get laws passed to keep others from living the life they choose. (See the censorship of Victoria's Secret, the Marriage Amendment, and the repeal of Roe vs. Wade proposal to name just a few)
I'd sooner send my child to a brothel than a church. At least they won't get lied to there.
So after the churches corrupt these kids morally, physically, and mentally they send them off to war. The result is the atrocities mentioned. So don't blame the soldiers. The wellspring of all evil is religion. The religious are the true enemies of freedom and serenity. The blood is on their hands.
"I have some years on him."—Senator McCain
Yes, but do you really think the White House is a good place to sleep?
I wish someone would explain to me how a military man or chess player, even Gary Kasparov, could ever be qualified to be president.
Ulysses Grant may have been a fair general but was he a good president? I'm old enough to remember the Eisenhower years as a horrid time full of commuter trains and suburban hyper-conformity. Ike coined a nice phrase—"the military-industrial complex." His
sole contribution?
Military men and chess players just want to win. They lack frame of reference other than the chess board.
"I will never surrender in Iraq." But McCain has already surrendered to the benighted thinking that put us there. He surrenders every day to any phantom thought that
will keep us there. He surrendered the decency of his opposition to torture. You can't have torture both ways.
What's under his military veneer, anyway? A rather sentimental, American-centric notion that our presence somehow is always positive.
The British at least gave India cricket. Did we give the Iraqis baseball? Nope. Just dead, maimed or homeless bodies.
Why can't someone like McCain fully contemplate the assertions of the Winter Soldiers? The amount of wrongful shootings, bombings, willful murder, friendly fire casualties, unfriendly rape (one out of three American women in Iraq), done both by American government and American enterprise,
is HUGE!
Is the mindless destruction proportionally greater than in any other American war? All too likely. Is this going to change
under McCain as president? Of course not.
We are not, thanks to our flawed education system, flawed recruitment and chauvinism, suited to occupying Iraq or any other country.
"Learn to be harmless, for those at war
reflect each other. There's plenty to do.
Don't trust the word of men who stand
at Armageddon and battle for the Lord."
-- Keith Maillard
Is this thought too much for a small, confused
brain? Just concentrate then on Maillard's first phrase. LEARN TO BE HARMLESS. That goes for ALL AMERICANS!!!
The imperatives of property have impelled this war, as they have all others under one guise or another.
To end the wars of property is the only war worth fighting.
"The frustration that resulted from our inability to get back at those who were attacking us," MejÃa said, "led to tactics that seemed designed simply to punish the local population that was supporting them."
all this suffering for what is basicaly a publicity stunt..because that is what the War on Terror realy is..a publicity stunt
Sgt Mejia's observation displays the utterly counter productive action of fighting terrorism with military force...the military is designed to fight other military..terrorists are by the very definition civilians and every civilian killed breeds the hatred required to inspire the next civilian to pick up that gun and join in...
the American Government has declared war on it's own service men and women..
it has declared war on itself
hello_kitty: You have the time about right in my view - the first Gulf "War". I remember a lot of hand wringing by the powers that be about the "Vietnam Syndrome" and how wonderful that "war" would have turned out if some of the carnage hadn't been beamed into the public's living-rooms on the nightly news and the good old boys were forced to give up their little escapade without "winning". People could see things weren't going as rosy as the government was telling them it was and reporters had too much access and acted a little too independent of the official narrative. So, for the first Iraq adventure, they clamped down and managed everything that was seen and heard about the "war" and what did come out was how splendid our new toys were doing in eliminating collateral damage and only the bad guys were getting vaporized by these "smart" weapons. It worked so well that all of our little "wars" are handled this way and probably most of our experience of the world we now live in, beyond our immediate physical surroundings, is managed to this degree and beyond. The Matrix might be pure fantasy on a physical, technological level, but it is pretty spot on as to how to manage a population through the complete control and manufacture of audio and visual information.
Hm. I'm white, so i also have to consider my people's original American occupation, which certainly set a high water mark for brutality and racism.
"Turned occupiers into beasts and fed the insurrection"...giving beasts a bad name, there; and where is our insurrection?
Indigenous culture survives, despite my people's best efforts to erase them from the face of the earth--not just them, but every record of their lives and their unimaginable suffering at our hands.
I can't point a finger at the people who engineered the Iraq war without thinking about my own history.
Sgt. Mejia is confronting his own demons--the demons that allowed him to stand by when he saw gross cruelty and injustice. We should follow his example. We are all complicit, and our hands are all bloody.
Don't feel guilty. That does nothing. Be aware of your place in this. What do you want your place to be? Do you want to blame, to deny? Or do you want to stop this psychopathic culture, which devours everything?
"By their fruits ye shall know them"...strange fruit, indeed
This statement by Chris Hedges is deep, and necessarily dark, yet brilliantly expressed and exposed. It says what needs to be said about the crime that has been committed, and is still ongoing.
We stay no longer knowing why
and kill we must or then we die
To stay only to leave another day
till then we kill and die.
We stay yet longer not knowing why
amidst those we kill. We die.
Yea! We know all that, So??? "War is Hell"
What hasn't been said about war in the past 2,000 years, that anybody listened to that was in a position to change it.
In fact, yesterday we were remainded that JFK was murdered several months after his "Peace" speech at American Univ.
My life started with the Spanish Civil War against facisim - its impact on my parents, shortly to be followed by WWII, etc. etc. etc. blah, blah, blah...
This is why, from the very beginning, I have been against this war. Had George Bush or Dick "I've got better things to do than go to Vietnam" Cheney tasted Vietnam in all its horror, they would have never unleased the terror they did. Check that, they would. Greed is good.
I would say this should be required reading for anyone wanting to go to war, but the list of required reading is usually ignored when the drumbeats of war echo into the heads of the willing.
Homer got war right 2500 years ago. Its petty, stupid, sadistic, and pointless.
It has not changed since then.
You cant make war bloodless anymore than you can make a slaughterhouse bloodless. The only way is to actively shun an irrational practice-unnecessary killing.
But that is hard to do, since we havent learned anything since Homer's time.
Hobbesian world indeed.
And this idolatry has corrupted religious institutions, not only here but in most nations, making it impossible for us to separate the will of God from the will of the state.
Not quite. It has undoubtedly corrupted the moral intentions of those whom religious institutions claim as their founders, but at least some of the institutions themselves are merely serving their originally intended purposes. The religious institution called the "Christian" church, in particular, received its official recognition and mandate from an emperor who decided that adopting its symbols and certain selected parts of its dogma could be useful in his military campaigns and, subsequently, as a tool of the imperium itself. In general, it has remained quite faithful to that commission.
The only way to 'win' is not to play.
Meanwhile, back in D.C., the dick, the decider, and their profiteering pals accumulate all the COLLATERAL BENEFITS for which they ordered this hideous atrocity be waged. This noble cause, er, this pet cause of our Nobles: today's Robber Barons.
I couldn't add anything to this article. Haven't read such a work since I read the accounts of war from those who fought in the Great War 1914-18.