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TechnoratiThe Battle For A Country's Soul
A lady asked Dr. [Benjamin] Franklin, "Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?"
"A republic," replied the Doctor, "if you can keep it."
-Papers of Dr. James McHenry, describing the scene as they left the Federal Convention of 1787 in Philadelphia
Seven years after al-Qaeda's attacks on America, as the Bush administration slips into history, it is clear that what began on September 11, 2001, as a battle for America's security became, and continues to be, a battle for the country's soul.
In looking back, one of the most remarkable features of this struggle is that almost from the start, and at almost every turn along the way, the Bush administration was warned that whatever the short-term benefits of its extralegal approach to fighting terrorism, it would have tragically destructive long-term consequences both for the rule of law and America's interests in the world. These warnings came not just from political opponents, but also from experienced allies, including the British Intelligence Service, the experts in the traditionally conservative military and the FBI, and, perhaps most surprisingly, from a series of loyal Republican lawyers inside the administration itself. The number of patriotic critics inside the administration and out who threw themselves into trying to head off what they saw as a terrible departure from America's ideals, often at an enormous price to their own careers, is both humbling and reassuring.
Instead of heeding this well-intentioned dissent, however, the Bush administration invoked the fear flowing from the attacks on September 11 to institute a policy of deliberate cruelty that would have been unthinkable on September 10. President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and a small handful of trusted advisers sought and obtained dubious legal opinions enabling them to circumvent American laws and traditions. In the name of protecting national security, the executive branch sanctioned coerced confessions, extrajudicial detention, and other violations of individuals' liberties that had been prohibited since the country's founding. They turned the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel into a political instrument, which they used to expand their own executive power at the expense of long-standing checks and balances.
When warned that these policies were unlawful and counterproductive, they ignored the experts and made decisions outside of ordinary bureaucratic channels, and often outside of the public's view. Rather than risking the possibility of congressional opposition, they classified vital interpretations of law as top secret. No one knows to this day how many more secret opinions the Bush Justice Department has produced. Far from tempering these policies over time, they marginalized and penalized those who challenged their idées fixes. Because the subject matter was shrouded in claims of national security, however, much of the internal dissent remained hidden.
Throughout this period, President Bush and Vice President Cheney have continued to insist that they never authorized or condoned "torture," which they acknowledge is criminal under US law. But their semantic parsing of the term began to seem increasingly disingenuous as details from the secret detention and interrogation program surfaced, piece by piece. By the last year of the Bush presidency, many of the administration's own top authorities, including Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell and former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, as well as John Kiriakou, the former CIA officer involved in the capture of the high-ranking al-Qaeda member Abu Zubayda, acknowledged that as far as they were concerned, waterboarding was torture.
Such extreme measures were perhaps understandable in the panic-filled days and weeks immediately after September 11, falling into place among other historic infringements of civil liberties during times of dire national security crisis. Yet seven years later, the Bush administration's counterterrorism policies remained largely unchanged. There had been some alterations and improvements. But the legal framework survives despite nearly universal bipartisan acceptance outside of the Bush administration that Guantánamo should be shut down, that the military commission process was hopelessly flawed, and that the human rights violations at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere were not the work of a few "rotten apples" on the bottom, but rather the result of irresponsible leadership at the top. In fact torture, which was reviled as a depraved vestige of primitive cultures before September 11, seemed in danger of becoming normalized.Through four congressional election cycles and two presidential campaigns, there has been surprisingly little intelligent debate about the Bush administration's approach to terrorism. Top administration officials continue to insist that their program is legal and effective; while critics complain, they rarely provide their own proposals for a better system. Since the Democratic Party gained control of Congress in 2006, there have been stirrings toward investigation and reform. But in July 2007, a bill to close Guantánamo was defeated when the Senate voted overwhelmingly (94-3) against transferring the detainees to prisons in the United States. Clearly, the fear of appearing "soft" on terrorism still haunts elected officials.
The presidential election of 2008 may prove a turning point. In a hopeful sign of change, both parties' presidential nominees have taken strong, principled stands against torture, promising to close loopholes that secretly sanction it, and to bring the country's detention and interrogation policies back in line with its core constitutional values. Yet neither candidate had put forward a coherent alternative by June 2008. The Bush administration's "New Paradigm" remains intact, allowing the administration to claim all of the powers that flow from war, while allowing detainees almost none of the rights that either the military or criminal justice system confers.
Senator John McCain's opposition to torture surely runs as deep as that of any politician in America. He captured the essence of the issue eloquently in a simple declaration in 2005 that "it's not about them; it's about us." Yet in a nod to the conservative base of his party, even McCain has feinted to the right, siding with the Bush White House in early 2008 against proposed legislation that would limit CIA officers to the humane interrogation techniques allowed by the military.
An obvious reason for the political caution is fear. By the measure that matters most, the Bush administration can point to its record in fighting terrorism as a success. There have been no terrorist attacks in America since September 11, 2001. No rival wants to be accused of breaking this streak.
Yet it is hard to know if the Bush administration's success represents the vanquishing of new credible threats, or rather the absence of any. As former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld himself acknowledged in 2003, "Today we lack metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror." During the Bush years, it's been almost impossible to tell. In the absence of government transparency and independent analysis, the public has been asked to simply take the President's word on faith that inhumane treatment has been necessary to stop attacks and save lives.
Increasingly, however, those with access to the inner workings of the Bush administration's counterterrorism program have begun to question those claims. In March 2008, after President Bush announced his intention to veto legislation requiring the CIA to abide by the same interrogation rules as the military, Senator Jay Rockefeller, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, challenged the administration's entire rationale. Rockefeller's criticism over the years was muted, at best, and so his bold rebuke was particularly noteworthy. "As Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee," a statement he released said,
I have heard nothing to suggest that information obtained from enhanced interrogation techniques has prevented an imminent terrorist attack. And I have heard nothing that makes me think the information obtained from these techniques could not have been obtained through traditional interrogation methods used by military and law enforcement interrogators. On the other hand, I do know that coercive interrogations can lead detainees to provide false information in order to make the interrogation stop.
In other words, according to one of the few US officials with full access to the details, the drastic "ticking time bomb" threat used to justify what many Americans would otherwise consider indefensible tactics had never actually occurred, other than on the TV sets of those watching Fox-TV's terrorism fantasy show 24.
Rockefeller asserted that the Bush administration's approach was not only unnecessary, it was also undermining the security that it claimed to safeguard. "The CIA's program damages our national security by weakening our legal and moral authority, and by providing al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups a recruiting and motivational tool," he said. "By continuing this interrogation program, the President is sacrificing our strategic advantage for questionable tactical gain."
Doubt has begun to emerge from within the administration itself, too. In 2006, a scientific advisory group to the US intelligence agencies produced an exhaustive report on interrogation called "Educing Information," which concluded that there was no scientific proof whatsoever that harsh techniques worked. In fact, several of the experts involved in the study described the infliction of physical and psychological cruelty as outmoded, amateurish, and unreliable.
In confidential interviews, several of those with inside information about the NSA's controversial Terrorist Surveillance Program have expressed similar disenchantment. As one of these former officials says of the ultrasecret program so furiously defended by David Addington, chief of staff and former counsel to Vice President Cheney, "It's produced nothing."
While the Bush administration can point proudly to its record of no terrorist attacks on America since 2001, its progress in bringing the perpetrators of the September 11 attacks to justice is less impressive. The administration certainly could claim a number of top al-Qaeda scalps. Yet as of June 2008, both Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri remained at large. The government's own statistics, meanwhile, showed that both the number of terrorist attacks around the world and the estimation of the threat posed by al-Qaeda were growing. According to the most recent National Intelligence Estimate, issued in April 2006, "A large body of all-source reporting indicates that activists identifying themselves as jihadists, although still a small percentage of Muslims, are increasing in both numbers and geographical dispersion." The report noted carefully, "If this trend continues, threats to US interests at home and abroad will become more diverse, leading to increasing attacks worldwide."
The war in Iraq, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the deteriorating security situations in Afghan-istan and Pakistan have all reportedly contributed to the radicalization of the Muslim world. But according to one former official who traveled extensively through the Middle East, no subject was described by Muslims he spoke with as more deeply disturbing than America's abuse of the detainees. Eric Haseltine, the former top adviser on science and technology to the Director of National Intelligence, worries that prisoner abuse has profoundly hurt what he defines as the most important battle in the war on terror- the struggle to win the support of the next generation of Arab youth. "I came away from my many visits to the Middle East convinced there is a widespread belief that if America abuses prisoners then there can be no true freedom for anyone," he said. "It seemed to me that our greatest sin in the eyes of Muslims was not invading the Middle East, or even our support of Israel: our greatest sin was robbing Muslims of hope."By many estimates, by the end of the Bush years, America's reputation as a lead defender of democracy and human rights was in tatters. According to the Pew Global Attitudes Project, in June 2006 public opinion in two countries in the world supported the US war on terror-India and Russia. Meanwhile, corrupt and repressive states, including Egypt, Sudan, and Zimbabwe, have all justified their own brutality by citing America's example. Egyptian President-for-Life Hosni Mubarak declared that the US treatment of detainees proved that "we were right from the beginning in using all means, including military tribunals, to combat terrorism." Even the most dependable of US allies, including Germany, Denmark, and the European Union, by 2008 had all accused the US of violating internationally accepted standards for humane treatment and due process. Canada went so far as to place America on its official list of rogue countries that use torture.
The Bush administration's controversial antiterrorism program had other unwelcome consequences as well. Seven years after the attacks of September 11, not a single terror suspect held outside of the US criminal court system had been tried. Of the 759 detainees acknowledged to have been held in Guantánamo, approximately 270 remained there, only a handful of whom had been charged. Among these, not a single "enemy combatant" had yet had the opportunity to cross-examine the government or see the evidence on which he was being held.
The military commission process was clearly plagued by problems to the point of dysfunction. One stalwart official after another has stepped forward with astounding accusations of impropriety. In a sworn statement in the spring of 2008, for example, the former top prosecutor in the Office of Military Commissions disclosed that the Pentagon had pressured him to time "sexy" prosecutions for political advantage, and to use evidence against the detainees that he considered tainted by torture. After resigning in protest, the prosecutor, Air Force Colonel Morris Davis, also disclosed that when he suggested to William Haynes, the general counsel at the Pentagon, that a few acquittals might enhance Guantánamo's reputation for fair treatment, as had been true of the war crimes trials of the Nazis in Nuremburg, Haynes was horrified. "We can't have acquittals! We've got to have convictions!" Davis quoted the top Pentagon lawyer as saying. "If we've been holding these guys for so long, how can we explain letting them get off?"
As the FBI and other early critics had warned, the administration's use of coercion to force confessions has created legal havoc. Impassioned disputes over the admissibility of evidence obtained through torture have crippled the administration's efforts to prosecute many detainees. In May 2008, the Pentagon announced that it was dismissing charges against Mohammed al-Qahtani, the Saudi suspected of having been the "twentieth hijacker," apparently because the inhumane treatment to which he had been subjected during his long interrogation in Guantánamo, all of which had been authorized by Rumsfeld, had destroyed the credibility of his confession, hopelessly tainting the case.In one particularly poignant case in 2004, suspicions of torture caused a Marine Corps prosecutor to reluctantly drop charges against Mohamedou Ould Slahi, an alleged al-Qaeda leader in Guantánamo who was accused of helping the Hamburg cell that planned the September 11 attacks.
The prosecutor, Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Couch, had been enlisted specifically because he had wanted to help bring justice for a friend who had been the co-pilot of United Flight 175, the second plane that al-Qaeda crashed into the World Trade Center. After he pieced together the record of torture techniques to which Slahi had been subjected, however, Couch, who is a devout Christian, could no longer continue the case in good conscience. "Here was somebody I thought was connected to 9/11," Couch told The Wall Street Journal, "but in our zeal to get information, we had compromised our ability to prosecute him."
In February 2008, the Bush administration announced its intention to bring capital murder charges against six detainees it said were linked to the September 11 attacks, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. But the taint of torture loomed over these prosecutions, too. Notably missing from the list of the accused was Abu Zubaydah, one of the detainees whose waterboarding sessions had been videotaped by the CIA. The CIA's destruction of the videotapes, which was under criminal investigation by an outside counsel by May 2008, clearly jeopardized any future prosecution of these two figures, whom the administration had previously described as key al-Qaeda leaders.
Despite Bush's vows to hold the perpetrators accountable after the publication of photos from Abu Ghraib, as of the spring of 2008 no senior Bush administration official had been prosecuted or removed from office in connection with the abuse of prisoners. By April 2006, the nongovernmental organization Human Rights Watch estimated that more than 600 US military and civilian personnel were involved in abusing more than 460 detainees. President Bush sporadically mentioned a wish to close Guantánamo, but since September 2006, six new detainees have been sent there, including two from unspecified CIA black sites. At the same time, the US prison at Bagram air base outside of Kabul was being expanded to hold some thousand prisoners, according to Human Rights Watch. If Bush or Cheney regretted the uncounted deaths, disappearances, and torment of prisoners in their administration's custody, or the false intelligence and contaminated prosecutions that these tactics produced, they didn't express it.
After some dozen internal investigations, mostly by the military, a number of low-ranking enlisted soldiers and officers were convicted or disciplined for prisoner abuse. But by design, the investigations were focused downward in the chain of command, not up to those who set the policy. As Major General Antonio Taguba told The New Yorker, his investigation of Abu Ghraib was limited to the military police below, not those above him. "I was legally prevented from further investigation into higher authority," he said. "I was limited to a box."
The CIA, meanwhile, quietly investigated seven or more allegedly mistaken renditions of innocent victims, and sent several homicide cases resulting from prisoner abuse to the Justice Department for possible criminal prosecution, but not a single officer was charged. Instead, President Bush gave George Tenet, who presided over the creation of the CIA's interrogation and detention program, the Medal of Freedom. One of the most flagrant instances of unjust treatment was the case of Khalid el-Masri, a German citizen who was falsely identified as a member of al-Qaeda with a similar name. Flown to Afghanistan, he was, he later said, tortured by the CIA. The female officer who pushed to keep Khaled el-Masri imprisoned in Afghanistan after his mistaken rendition was promoted to a top post handling sensitive matters in the Middle East. El-Masri, meanwhile, was denied the opportunity to bring a civil suit against the US government for his false imprisonment because the Bush administration succeeded in arguing that simply addressing the subject of rendition in a US court would violate national security. Back in Germany, he was reportedly beset by emotional problems.
By the last year of the Bush presidency, growing numbers of former administration insiders had abandoned the government with the conviction that in waging the war against terrorism, America had lost its way. Many had fought valiantly to right what they saw as a dangerously wrong turn. With Bush, Cheney, and Addington still firmly in power, it was hard to declare their efforts a success. Still, with change in the air, there was a sense that history might be on their side. Jack Goldsmith, the assistant attorney general who objected to the Justice Department memo allowing torture, moved to Boston to teach law at Harvard, where he was ironically greeted with protests because of his association with the Bush administration's policies. Matthew Waxman who, as deputy assistant secretary of defense fought unsuccessfully to uphold the Geneva Conventions, moved to New York, where he, too, began to teach law, in his case at Columbia.Alberto Mora, as general counsel of the US Navy, had campaigned within the Pentagon to end the coercive methods used at Guantánamo. He left the administration as a pariah in the eyes of some Pentagon colleagues but was given the John F. Kennedy Foundation's Profiles in Courage Award in 2006 for speaking out. Most of the FBI agents who opposed "enhanced" interrogation techniques retired and joined private security firms, taking vast amounts of wisdom about Islamic terrorism with them.
In Charlottesville, Virginia, Phillip Zelikow, the director of the 9/11 Commission, who returned to teaching history at the University of Virginia, tried to take stock. In time, he predicted, the Bush administration's descent into torture would be seen as akin to Roosevelt's internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. It happened, he believed, in much the same way, for many of the same reasons. As he put it, "Fear and anxiety were exploited by zealots and fools."
Jane Mayer is a staff writer for The New Yorker. The essay in this issue is based on her book The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals, which was published in July by Doubleday. (August 2008)
© 2008 The New York Review of Books
110 Comments so far
Show All"I'm late, I'm late for a very important date. No time to say hello goodbye, I'm late."
I am really impressed by this blog/thread. Many sound historical observations. Some of you must be as old as I am.
Meanwhile, as for "hating America," I really, really, really HATE the United States. Why? Because it has BETRAYED ME AND THE EXPECTATIONS I WAS TAUGHT BY IT ABOUT IT.
Most of you know what I mean here. Where is the Democracy? Where is the Republic? Where is the Justice System? Where are the First Ten Amendments to the Constitution? Where is Habeus Corpus? Where are the Consequences?
I hate to say it, but Pat Robertson was probably right (for the wrong reasons at the time). Obliterate Washington, D.C. As long as it is there, you cannot afford to shut it out of your mind, because it has the power. It is sick beyond remediation, let alone redemption. Washington D.C. is bankrupt, economically and morally.
-30-
The USA has long been the Standard Bearer holding up the Fesces for the Roman Empire as a NEW Forth Reich! We are run by corporate/military fascist's, kowtowing to the Commanders of the Bilderberg organization. The Rothschilds International Banking throat hold on all monetary power, assures that the hidden Shadow Government stays in power, and controls the media propaganda mill. Thus, you, and all the rest of the dummed down minions, swallow the evening news swill and ask for more, because you are being manipulated to do so.You are NEVER told the truth about anything! Every word uttered on any of the NEWS outlets is nothing more than frosting coated bullshit. None of it is based on what the foul pretenders running the show are really up to.
The USA is like the EVIL Umbrella Corporation, of the Resident Evil films, for it's godless and soul-less nasty tenicles are controlling everything you see, hear, believe, and want. You have no choice, because you are owned, and you have no real rights, outside those that are told to you by the corporate talking head,i.e the fake government. The powers behind the curtain, are steadily working to keep you stupid and in the dark, about what it is they are really doing. People disappear and die for asking to many or to deep of questions.
" You will believe what they tell you to to believe", or else! The USA is worse than any mafia syndicate in history. We are even worse than the NAZI'S.
All the unfounded 9-11 Flag waving, God Bless America declarations, and pomposity of arrogant mis-leaders, guised neatly into a anti civil rights propaganda campaign, was all orchestrated to end the Constitution and Bill of Rights. The "Final Solution', is again being dusted off, and will be implimented against all who question their tax paying/debtor slave status.
Real Social Justice/Democracy does not exist in the USA. Nor does Human Rights and Freedom. They are delusions of the booboisie! The USA never had a soul, and it never will. It is death to everything it touches.
The only truth that can be spoken loud enough, or strong enough, to make the fascist state listen to it's own citizens, is out of the barrel of a civilian owned gun!
Keep that in mind later when they start to round up civilian dissidents and pack them off to the FEMA concentration camps. Fuck Fascist USA!
Your United States of America is a huge Zionist organized crime syndicate. And the extent to which you participate in this economy is the extent to which you are complicit in murder, fraud, the trafficking of deadly narcotics, exploitation of children and many other highly criminal acts.
voxclamantis July 28th, 2008 10:40 pm
America is not exceptional in that sense. But we are different. We have never been a multicultural society. Not at any time. We are a multiracial society. We have blended bits of clutures into ours which changes it and enhances it.
Our Constitution does make a difference. It can be bent, has been before, will be again probably. But it beats anything thats in second place.
There is always confusion when someone refuses to accept the old Marxist and Fascist views of America put forth as critisism. In reality I'd certasinly agree with many things we have done wrong. Over two centuries there have been many mistakes. But we have still built a free society that gives almost anyone a better chance than anywhere else in the world. Having seen most of the world, America has been better
"that somehow our frontier soldiers exterminating indigenous people has a more acceptable moral flavor than Nazis exterminating Gypsies and Jews."
Certainly not. At least we didn't eliminate them altogether. So is a limited atrocity better than a complete atrocity? Don't think so.
"What exactly is the distinction between us and the NVA that explains why we behave better"
I don't believe for a minute that we would have done to our own people what they did to theirs. It wasc horrible Human nature may be the same, but attitudes are not. I think ours is better.
"if we were repelling a foreign invasion, as were the NVA, we would be fairly ruthless as well."
It was a bit more than ruthless. But at the same time we never really blamed them. They were just trying to kill us and we didn't want to be killed. One of the bravest acts I sathere was by an NVA regular. I'd buy that guy a drink today anytime. It's very hard to explain the difference, make that extremely hard concerning what happens in a war and what the guys fighting it think. Either side. I am sure
"The reason we are so worried about the legitimizing of torture and the drift of our society into ignorance and paranoia is that young Americans are no different from young Germans and young Japanese."
Absolutely. Empphatically so. But even the "torture" we are so upset about doesn't even compare to what others do. And thats a fact. But it doesn't mean we can't slide down that slippery slope.
But are we as bad as many here post. Of course not. Are we the cause of the worlds ills? Of course not. Do we have an Empire? Of course not. Can we do better? You bet. I could pick 10 people from this list randomly, we could all get plasterd on Saki and we could provide better leadership than we have had for the last 12 year's.
Pulling up past mistakes and trying to apply them to present circumstances or trying to say that is the way things still are is mostly mistaken thinking in my view.
We are certainly better as a country than when I was growing up in many ways, but we have also lost some important things.
Do you understand what I'm trying to say? Does this answer at least in part what you asked?
GwNorth July 28th, 2008 7:12 pm
"The us also had a program of eugenics in the 1920's and 1930's on which the nazis based many of their own eugencis programs. The US system was the model for the Nazis."
I was aware of that. And you pegged it right. Nutty scientists abound in every nation. The SCOTUS has a lot top answer for.
voxclamantis July 28th, 2008 10:42 pm
"marc - I take back the part about you being a smart guy. Please drift downstream."
Please. We simply don't need that kind of talk here.
interesting exercise idea.
if this is the battle for a country's soul. we are assuming it as a person. create the US as a person and imagine what it's " story" is.
I've always thought of the country as about a 19-20 yr old boy.. who is at that state where they think they know it all, and kicking someone's ass was the solution to any disagreement/ infringement- and the rest of the world patiently waiting ( less patiently these days) for us to grow up, hoping we don't do too much damage before we got there. but I don't know what the story is.. what wound or perception etc....
btw- in the fight for the soul.. strip corporations of person-hood.. and disempower all lobby groups. we the people.. aren't competing on a level playing field.
dear site moderator:
i am sincerely curious to know what it was about my second comment to have it still awaiting approval after 24 hours. i might assume it would be a matter of it's content and/or links. i have no criticism with the site's policies, mind you, nor plan on contesting them, but the curiosity of it is strong. if it's worth anything to inform me and if you can spare the moment, please do feel free to email me. i am on the site's maillist. thank you.
john farwell
okc, ok
Attempting to continue the comparison between the Nazis and Allied powers in Europe--
There's a relatively obscure 2005 book called "NATO's Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe" by Dr. Daniele Ganser, a Senior Researcher at the Center for Security Studies (CSS) at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland.
At the close of WWII, CIA and MI6 recruited and trained thousands of former SS officers and troops while augmenting their ranks with European fascists to establish a sophisticated network of underground terrorist cells throughout Europe, Scandinavia and Turkey. This Operation Gladio was supposedly established as a hedge against a possible USSR invasion of Western Europe, but in reality this was a terrorist operation in which operatives planted and detonated bombs in heavily-populated civilian areas as false-flag operations blamed on leftists for the purpose of consolidating greater and greater power in the hands of far-right governments and the police.
marc - I take back the part about you being a smart guy. Please drift downstream.
Thomas More - So then what is your view of human nature? I think our problem here is with the idea of American exceptionalism - that somehow our frontier soldiers exterminating indigenous people has a more acceptable moral flavor than Nazis exterminating Gypsies and Jews. Is it the American constitution, American multiculturism, our food, our water, that makes American atrocities not comparable to the atrocities of others? Is there a right and a wrong way to hack people to pieces? Are we really a better species of human being on this continent? Has our system of government penetrated our DNA and made us and our children immune to the nastiness that infects foreigners? How does this work exactly? On the face of it, you would think that human nature is pretty much the same everywhere. The reason we are so worried about the legitimizing of torture and the drift of our society into ignorance and paranoia is that young Americans are no different from young Germans and young Japanese. When we should be scared is when we think there are no dark imps inside us urging us to kick out the stops and become monsters. What exactly is the distinction between us and the NVA that explains why we behave better, and what is the point of believing that we are protected from becoming devils by some magic pill that make "us" better than "them?" I think that if we were repelling a foreign invasion, as were the NVA, we would be fairly ruthless as well.
wash those fingers and your buttocks tonight miftin. maybe then you will get laid and relax a little bit... floss too young man.
and miftin, thank god einstein left germany before they shoved him in an oven. another example of pacifists hiding behind.... you know the rest mustard fingers
and he does not wipe properly, look at his fingers they look like mustard but don't smell like mustard
i still think miftin is a horse toothed jack ass and a money faced stinky foul mouthed booey
This thread is a good example of "Why We're Losing the Ability to Think".
It was an Albert Einstein quote paraphrased, and he was talking about marching in lockstep to martial music and killing under the cloak of war as nothing short of murder. As a life-long socialist, Einstein also mentioned that he'd rather be torn apart by wild animals than take part in so base an action as war. So you can take this as you may. After all, unless your government uses an all mercenary private military of foreign nationals, you pretty much need a militarized populace. Or at the very least, a populace that accords respect to military ideals, that is, destruction of life and property through organized violence.
>>The Isotopes story is akin to the reports of the syphilis infection of blacks I would suspect. But I don't have enough knowledge of this to dioscuss it intelligently
Actually no it is quite true just as the CIA mindcontrol experiments on mental patients is quite true.
Not only did they feed children radioactive isotopes but they injected people directly with Plutonium.
http://www.democracynow.org/2004/5/5/plutonium_files_how_the_u_s
The us also had a program of eugenics in the 1920's and 1930's on which the nazis based many of their own eugencis programs. The US system was the model for the Nazis.
The United States was the first country in the world to practice forcible strerilization in order to improve the gene pool. It was not thousands...or tens of thousands..there were hundreds of thousands sterilized.
The doctors behind this move in the United States spoke openly of creating a master race, clean of all undesirable genes.
The supreme court ruled it was LEGAL for the Governmnet to do this.
Nutty scientists live everywhere.
pk
miftin July 28th, 2008 6:36 pm
So you are not speaking of the military per se, or military service but of a militaristic society? For example the Spartans or North Korea.
Militarism is the opposite of art. It is institutional violence unquestioned. Art gives rise to individual life while militarism gives rise to collective death.
how am I supposed to swallow a work where, again, even before the very first comma, 9-11 is attributed to the mythical 'al-Qaeda', and the Bush\Cheney follow-up viewed as a bizarre reaction in the face of overwhelming opposition and sense, rather than both acts being seen as a premeditated one-two punch by Bush\Cheney to get control of America's military, judicial, legislative and every other branch...I can't...does anyone think anymore?
miftin July 28th, 2008 1:25 pm
How would you define militarism?
..................................................
This is a fairly good example of what you were talking about Rich.
RichM July 28th, 2008 12:37 pm
"Resolved: Women are Superior to Men,"
I'm going to tell my wife you said that!
First two paragraphs....fair comment. Thats one reason I put "point by point" in there. Clearly stated and generally what is happening.
"When you're criticizing the US role in different wars, it doesn't mean you're criticizing the soldiers who participated in those wars, or their families."
More than fair. But some here take great glee in the deaths of our serving troops, at least thats what they say. Some call them murderers which is comical. If we are speaking about various wars, I've got a lot to say about some of them myself.
I guess when people suggest that if someone is patriotic they must be a neocon, etc, that would be a specific hatred of America. But its not hard to tell who does.
I would certainly disagree about an Empire tbhat we don't have, but could have. Always will.
I would also disagree about some of your conclusions on WWl and ll, but as you say....far to complicated for this venue.
"Vietnam alone was the 2nd worst crime against humanity of the 20th century"
Maybe not.
"exceeded only by the Nazis."
Certainly not.
Hitler would have been wrong. We were dumb. We rebuilt Europe. We rebuilt Japan. We never looted the countries we conqured. If not for us Europe would be speaking Russian now. No propaganda, fact. Stalin wouldn't have hesitated.
I guess you could do revisionist history as Obama did in Berlin anbout the Berliners resisting the Russians and winning out. Ha!
But your main point is correct. We should all make sure we are speaking about the same thing and not go so far afield.
Another source worth reading and mentions Jane Mayer:
http://www.slate.com/id/2195533/entry/2187178
"He's a Muslim," exclaimed Bobby, a heavy set white man on a big Harley hog, "he's a god damn Muslim and he's going to get shot, you watch. He won't get my vote."
One would think Bobby was a racist but he gets along with the black folks in the community very well and voted for the only black candidate for sheriff in the county. He's a Christian, he says, but doesn't go to church, "they're too judgmental."
I've thought about the possibility of Obama being assassinated too but it seemed just too creepy for me to verbalize. It does make some sort of very dark sense, if you think about it. After 9/11 and the war criminality around all that anything is possible. We do live in a ruthless fascist state today, after all.
The Democrats are euphoric about their candidate, the first black man to win their nomination certainly is cause for some wide celebration. The euphoria is no surprise, of course, they were euphoric about John Kerry, an elite mumblebum. No matter what Obama says or does, or has said or has done, his Democrat disciples will make all the necessary excuses for him to keep him as high as possible on their pedestal. Listening to all this I can't help but feel I'm not alone in feeling like this kind of talk, and the media treatment of the Obama Campaign, is setting America up for another great fall.
Obama is being lauded as a hero, a champion, "the peace candidate," even a messiah ...and we know what happens to them. The same thing that happened to RFK, KING, RFK, Jesus, etc. etc.. Whether or not Obama is what his supporters imagine him to be, it is certainly not beyond the darkest corners of elite power to murder him in order to plunge the nation into yet another state of shock under which the elite's National Security State can implement the final solution to the problem of American democracy that has irked them for 200 years, finally crushing it. Is this why GW Bush is so cocky?
The Obama Campaign is not based on truth, its based on image sufficient for the drama to unfold. Is the organization behind Obama sufficient to carry on a movement without him? Perhaps it could be but it won't, because it isn't. Americans have been programmed to run to daddy government when something bad happens and do not see through the dark mask of those behind this evil murdering torturing empire. Despite those of us screaming there is an iceberg ahead the arrogant captains of middle management will stay the course, round up the dissenters, lock them up in Halliburton's camps all the while echoing the empty slogan, America Unite. Unite hell, wake up and fasten your seat belt, its going to be a rough ride.
Well, to paraphrase Albert Einstein, people who joyfully march in lockstep to militarism have already earned my contempt; they have been given a large brain by mistake when only a brain stem would suffice.
GwNorth July 28th, 2008 12:18 pm
The Isotopes story is akin to the reports of the syphilis infection of blacks I would suspect. But I don't have enough knowledge of this to dioscuss it intelligently.
There are various estimates yes. As to the number, its irrelevant, one was too many.
"The point is there are people inside your Government and amongst your people who would act every bit as savagely as the Nazis if given the opportunity."
No disagreement. Especially among our present group.
The fault with us at the moment is us. We don't need much help.
"There is no American "exceptionalism". The Americans are not a people apart from the rest of the World, they are a part of the rest of the world."
I would agree with this, but at the same time say to you that our country and culture is different than most. That ought to confuse things,
For myself, anyone is welcome anytime to suggest anything. I am at liberty of course if I disagree to tell them they are lost on a red planet. I learn lots from people I don't agree with once in a blue moon.
"Such as a blackwater"
This is a real worry. And much more dangerous than many think. At least thats my opinion. Marines coming back from Iraq are less than thrilled about these thugs. Not all are of course, but most are just that.
jrmart July 28th, 2008 11:56 am
I hope we are going to do something about this stuff. Start proposing some realistic goals. My hope anyway.
jrmart July 28th, 2008 12:05 pm
I'm very glad to hear it! Nothing wrong with shame and dissent. I could dissent all over the place with some of the stuff thats been going on and we have certainly allowed some things to be done that we should beashamed of. But some here have posted much more than that at times.
Sorry even Bush and Dick Vader aren't close to the Nazi's. Though given time I fully believe Dickie would make a very good imitation of Himmler.
Good points on our mistreatment of the tribes. But thats something that can't be rectified now. The same as slavery. It was a shameful period in the worlds history and our real shame is we didn't follow the British when they outlawed slavery. But once again, theres nothing to be done now. We've done all we can do to atone for it. Theres really nothing left to do.
Pax
The whole discussion here comparing the US to Nazi Germany is not being conducted constructively. In part, this is because the two sides of the argument are not really talking about the same thing. Just as in a discussion of a poorly-formulated proposition like "Resolved: Women are Superior to Men," it's always going to be possible to cite arguments supportive of, or in conflict with, the stated proposition. If there's no agreement about what's really being discussed, all that can take place is endless arguing.
On the one hand, for example, the US never ran a system of methodically-designed death camps like Auschwitz & Treblinka, etc. On the other hand, the US govt has very definitely killed many millions of helpless & innocent people, and overthrown more foreign governments than the Nazis ever did. The US managed to build its global empire in a somewhat sneakier way than the Brits did, & that the Nazis attempted. The US was more clever about public relations & image management. Its style has not been so much direct military seizure (though there's been some of that, too). Rather, the US tried to accomplish the same degree of exploitation & control over foreign economies, but by indirect methods. It was neocolonialism, not colonialism. The method changed, but the goal of domination didn't change. It's very unclear that domination with improved image management is morally superior to domination with clumsy image management.
Thomas More (11:22 am) writes, "I am frankly puzzled by the hatred of America by some Americans...."
- It's too imprecise to just say "America" in that sentence. That word can mean anything from apple pie, New Orleans jazz, autumn leaves in New England & Rocky Mountains to the specific actions of US foreign policy. When you're criticizing the US role in different wars, it doesn't mean you're criticizing the soldiers who participated in those wars, or their families. It doesn't mean you don't like George Gershwin or Ernest Hemingway.
Without going into the detail that's really required, WWII was basically an extension of WWI -- and though WWII is always presented as a clash of "good vs evil," the truth about WWI is that it was not at all a "good vs evil" conflict. Both sides had reasonable claims. WWI was basically a conflict between Germany & Britain for access to colonies & trade routes, & for dominance in sea power. It was a conflict for the "top dog" position, & there's no good reason to accept the notion that Britain was entitled to be permanently dominant over Germany. The US, after making a fortune by selling supplies to both sides of the European war, finally entered the conflict on the Brits' side, not because the Brits were morally in the right, but because by 1917, Wall St had lent so much money to the UK that we'd become financially dependent on a British victory. So when the Russians dropped out of the war, Wilson felt obliged to pick up the slack. And by that time, the US ruling class recognized that here was the perfect opportunity to "help" the Brits in such a way as to displace them from the top dog position, & take over that role for ourselves.
So, the US role in WWI was not about freedom or justice. It was pure greedy self-interest. And when you add to that the shameful way the Allies tried to screw Germany in the 1919 Versailles Treaty, you see that Germany had good reason to feel mistreated.
The US role in WWII itself was similarly a demonstration of clever PR tactics. We did horrible things during the war (Dresden, nuking Japan, etc) but we weren't as bad as the Nazis. However, even before the war was over, the US showed its true colors by exploiting to the max the historical opportunity to reorganize the whole world economy on terms favorable for US empire. In the Cold War that followed, we were ruthless, murderous, & relied on fantasic levels of propaganda & image management. The argument could well be made that the main thing that distinguished us from Nazis during this period was not so much morality as skillful perception management. Vietnam alone was the 2nd worst crime against humanity of the 20th century, exceeded only by the Nazis. And what we did throughout Latin America was something Hitler would certainly have admired & studied carefully, had he still been around. He would have watched the postwar growth of the US empire and said, "Ja, diese Amerikaner sind nicht so dumm!"
blackfeather7
Nothing Exists.
George Wanker Bush and Fat Death Cheney definitely exist. The graveyards in Iraq and the USA are the proof. What no longer exists is the constitution, the rule of law, the common good, humility, etc. etc. etc. Eight years of stupidity, arrogance, blazing greed, swaggering truculence and pure, downright evil have completed the punkification of the USA. On to John McCain for the next thrilling chapter.
It is up to us as citizens of this great nation to make sure our politicians return us to a course of justice and human rights.
I don't agree that we always "get the government we deserve", but it is up to each and every one of us to change it!
Abraham Lincoln said it best: "The People are the rightful masters of both Congress & the courts. Not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow those who would pervert the Constitution."
If your "representatives" in Congress fail to listen to your demands for change and justice, throw their butts out and replace them with someone who WILL listen.
It is way past time to "clean House"... and the Senate!
>>No argument there. We did some things that were not good. As to killing as many Phillipinos as the Japanese. Sorry. Didn't happen
Are you so sure. Deaths in both incidents are estimates, but it estimated by multiple sources (You can do searches if you wish) that up to 1 million Filipinos died in the Philipine American war which is as many that are estimated to have been killed during the Japanese occupation.
Keep in mind as well the tactic the Americans used to defeat the "freedom fighters". They copied what the British had done in South Africa during the Boer war.
They burned down Villgaes and then rounded up men women and children and incarcerated them in Concentration camps.
There are also well docummented cases of your Governmnet experimenting on its citizens such as radioactive isotopes sprinkled on the breakfast cereal of Children.
This is comparable directly to the worst of the atrocities committed by the Germans.
I entered into a debate on another board where a suggested that if Pakistan proves ot be a threat to US troops the US Government should launch a massive Nuclear strike against that country and destroy it and everyone in it.
He rationalized this with the suggestion that it an appropiate response to a threat on US forces.
The point is there are people inside your Government and amongst your people who would act every bit as savagely as the Nazis if given the opportunity.
There is no American "exceptionalism". The Americans are not a people apart from the rest of the World, they are a part of the rest of the world.
Unless there are people who will point this out and are willing to point it out over all the "How dare you suggest such..." commentary, then it more likely that day will come.
Your country is on the brink of a serious economic collapse. One leader with "Charisma" suggesting that the fault lies with Arabs, or Mexicans or "Afghanis" or "Russians" , along with a further erosion of the sytsem of Governence that puts checks and balances on the Presidency....and yes you will have your own brownshirts running around kicking heads in.
Such as a blackwater.
pk
Thomas More:
hatred of America by Americans?? I fear you misjudge shame and dissent with hatred. It is the LOVE of America that bring out the truth.
Study history?
What the Nazi's did in 1930, not 1940, is what is comparable to the Bush Administration. Thankfully we do have a Republic with some solid safeguards, one of which is vocal dissent.
Study History?
ok, lets ask the Shawnee, the Souix, the Arapahoe, the Navajo, et al about genocide. All the while extolling the virtue of Manifest Destiny.
That is History too.
To see only the good in America allows the evil to flourish in the dark.
Thomas More..."Then the world is a sick place, not us."
We are the world.
Nothing exists.
ok, so what the fuck are we going to do about it?
elect a Bush clone? let the impeachment movement die for lack of public support? yes probably we will just write our little opinions here and think what honorable little boys and girls we are.
i am ashamed.
skippyagogo41 July 28th, 2008 1:00 am
"Tom, I was comparing the actions of the governments. Don't think I mentioned the soldiers other than to say that all sides in war commit acts of barbarism that would make your stomach turn."
Didn't think you did. In fact I think theres truth in everything you said. I would disagree that our Marines were anywhere close to the Nazi's treatment of the Russians. Though make no mistake about it, according to my father there were certainly times when they gave less quarter. Depended on the Japanese mostly.
Iwo Jima was by far the worst he said.
I am frankly puzzled by the hatred of America by some Americans. Maybe they haven't been anywhere else or seen very much of the world. I don't know. But if anyone thinks that we have or are now close to being like the Nazi's, I'd say they should study a bit more history.
Its sort of like speaking about wire tapping and comparing that with the Gestapo's unfettered authority. Sometimes I have a hard time making myself clear.
Pax
..................................................
"I guarrantee, the next terrorist attack that occurs in the USA will be seen by the world as JUSTICE."
Then the world is a sick place, not us.
NIETSCHZE/IDNEARTHE SEA: Good posts.
Interesting discussion, all the way.
TERI D: As to the wound you reference, don't you think apart from the focus on the logical sectors of the brain (to the diminishment of FEELINGS like empathy) the US history (a la Howard Zinn's reckoning) has a lot to do with this shadow the nation carries? There is also the economic factor, that war quite sadly makes a lot of $ for those inclined to profit from the countless lives brought to premature waste. It's best to recognize that events are the product of a sum of causes, so we get out of the habit of thinking there is ONE singular precipitating factor.
GwNorth July 27th, 2008 11:57 pm
Yoy seem to be confused about our incursions into Cambodia & Laos and who was doing the killing there. Vietnam was a place we shouldn't have been but it wasn't like Iraq. The Philipines? No argument there. We did some things that were not good. As to killing as many Phillipinos as the Japanese. Sorry. Didn't happen.
Iraq? No question. We attacked them with no provocation. But to even compare that with the Nazi's methods. is so historically inaccurate, what can I say.
"The lesson to be learned from Germany is that ANY nation can collapse towards such a state. No nation is immune to it."
No question about it. Though I hope that any other country that reached the depths of the Nazi's would still not be as bad.
I'd be glad to counter (if I can) any point by point argument that America is like Nazi Germany or that our methods, our soldiers and Marines are anything like them. Sweeping generalizations tend to obfuscate issues.
Make no mistake, we have plenty in our history to hang our heads about. But much more to be proud of. As to America being different than many other countries, of course we are. There isn't another country composed like ours. We are the most multi-racial coountry in the world. Both our strength and weakness.
Saying America isn't different and better than some countries would be like suggesting that all cultures have equal value's in all areas.
curmudgeon99 July 28th, 2008 12:02 am
I well understand the time frame but suggestions of comparing even the CIA an organization I long ago lost any respect to with the SS is too much.
It seems as if every time anything is mentioned about wars or fighting about 3 seconds later we have cries of Nazi's, murdering soldiers and Marines. There seems to be an almost pathalogical inability to seperate those who serve and those that are responsible for their presence where ever they are.
"Have you talked to VietNam era GIs who have some pretty horrific tales to tell? These are offset by others who prevented even more cases like My Lai."
Many times. I am one, two tours. Yes there were many other instances like Mai Lai that were prevented, there were also some others involving lesser numbers that happened from 60 to 72. I know of 2 for sure. No doubt.
My Dad who served on Iwo Jima, Guadalcanal, Bougainville and a few other places confirms what you heard from your fathers friends. But he also said the same thing any combat vet from Viet Nam would say too. You haven't seen anythinhg till you have seen whaty the Japanese did. What Charles and the NVA did, especially to their own people. It was beyond description.
No disagreement on our imperfection, or about instances in our history. But even then (early1900's) the Boxer Rebellion gives you a perfect example of a difference even then. In my opinion at least.
project paperclip - now I have heard everything. Maybe we whould start looking at those folks as human beings. They strayed from the straight and narrow but were brought back into the flock. I forgive them as I hope you all can forgive me for my transgressions and failures in life - Lord knows there have been plenty! There have been plenty of German and Japanese leaders who in their youth did unspeakable things - yet they have, for the most part, become members of the human family once again. Why? We forgive them and ask that they forgive us. Omaha Beach is a mass grave filled with the blood and bone of young German men and young American men.
Good question TeriD. I would love to know. Unfortunately it's not our government any more and George Inc. has decided it is not in his best interest for us to know.
This is the most depressing site I have ever stumbled onto. The fella that told me to give it a try must have been pulling my leg. Does everyone here go to therapy sessions mid week? Is there no positive news and opinions here? Phil Ghram might be right - not about the nation at large - but about this site... your guys are a bunch of whinnnnners. My God, have some faith in yourselves and work hard to make progressive?? changes. It never surprises me, whenever I talk to right of center folks (there are a ,ot of them here in KY) they always seem so happy and content. Not everything is going there way but on average they are OK even during the Clinton years. You guys need to get some backbone and ambition - stop all the crap about this that and the other thing are bad about the USA and advance the cause. Besides, you can tell me all the historical minusha ya want - who is to say your facts are right and mine or anyone elses are wrong. Just because you tell me your side of the story does not make it right. Maybe the historians on this site are trying to advance their own agenda?
canuckchuck- ohyee
it has been a very long time since the US has been the " good guys".. have we ever really been the good guys? in .. it is probably time to closely re-examine our history. Have we ever truly been " the good guys"... ? What has motivated us/ US? who has ever really been calling the shots, and to what end?
What is the story behind the history?
"…the Bush administration invoked the fear flowing from the attacks on September 11 to institute a policy of deliberate cruelty that would have been unthinkable on September 10."
UNTHINKABLE? Do Americans have mass memmory loss, are living in self-denial, or are all of you just incredibly stupid??
What the hell do you people think was going on in Central America from the 1800's right up to the 80's? a Freaking Tea Party?
Raping, torturing and murdering Catholic Nuns didn't seem all that "unthinkable " to Regan and Co.
Hell, you even have "The School of the Americas" to teach rape and torture to some of your favourite Foreign and domestic Right Wing lunatics.......stop kidding yourselves...the USA stopped being that "Beacon of Hope to the World" a LONG fucking time ago.
No, GwNorth it did not happen in Germany overnight, and it hasn't happened here overnight either.
Since the early eighties with the advent of the Gipper our human rights, our rights as citizens, have been slowly but steadily eroding. The fact that Clinton was a democrat did not stop him from helping the neocon movement along.
Now that we are starved for money at home, infrastructure falling apart, schools and the arts neglected, police turned into something that looks suspiciously like storm troopers, torture and murder defended as if it were a presidential prerogative, I'd say we were almost there.
In fact four more years should easily do it.
Regarding Marc's assertion that somehow the US isn't as bad in any way in comparison to Nazi Germany: this could be true except look at what the US did after the war with Project Paperclip when Nazi scientists and officers were brought over to the US to help in fighting the new "Cold War" against the USSR. Not all the war criminals were tried at Nuremburg, because some ended up working for the US, such as Reinhard Galen and Wherner Von Braun. Galen became the head of Interpol eventually.
It is also asserted that Hitler may have studied how Americans commited genocide against Native Peoples in getting a strategy together for the Final Solution.
You can come up with your own opinions about these assertions or facts, but all in all I would say that America today, with the Bush Administration and its destruction of the Bill of Rights, its "unitary executive" dictatorial un-constitutional rule, its use of the military to hold and render so-called terorist suspects and waging a war and occupation on a sovereign nation without just cause, is making history that in the long run will have students of history in the future (and presently) making comparisons of this country to some of the worst totalitarian states that have come and gone.
"Canada went so far as to place America on its official list of rogue countries that use torture."
Than how come Bush Jr, Cheeny, Rice etc have been allowed into Canada without being arrested????
I call upon my home country to uphold its tradition of justice, and stop bring Bush's bitch.
IMPEACH DUBYA AND DICKIE.
native son-
yes, you are correct.. the US does not have a soul. or perhaps rather.. it has a soul that is damaged or wounded, and like an addict ( addiction a symptom rather than a cause- read: breaking open the head) it is lashing out in some unidentified need or pain.
What wound in the US collective needs healing? What is the deep collective need to punish and condemn? Does it come from the western religious paradigm that is deeply embedded in the psyche/ collective? is it the ancient wound of the convicts ( rejects) and second sons ( un-inherited that founded and built the US?
On the individual level, each person would benefit on asking- why does this make me angry? why do I want this person to pay/ suffer, etc.. retribution is not a solution.. just a reaction.. to .. something far more insidious and insubstantial that lies deep in the heart of the civilized soul.
much of it comes from the heirchical nature of western brain development. the indigenous perception is lateral, based on the brain not developing to read. Reading in fact changed the way, and areas of the brain processes information, from whole brain, to sequential and heirarchical. this is why marketing is so insidious.. it understands how to play on the whole brain.. which we do not generally use; therefore it has the advantage over us. As do politicians- who, face it.. are marketing to us. Wasn't it jackson browne who sang: they sell us everything from youth to religion, the same time they sell us our wars...?
we won't win a battle for a country's soul, by fighting.
paraphrase here of an enlightening story/ parable(?):
they play the game of " grab the neck".. where each one tries to grab the neck ( choke) the other person. But in fact they miss and grab their own neck and are only hurting themselves. perpetually trying to " get even".. The uncle says, only by forgiving can they end the game. jack replies,..." but that's not getting even."
" no, but it is getting free." ( -4rth tower of inverness; ZBS)
so- how can we apply this to ourselves and our country?
native son, i'd love to talk more, probably off-thread though. email/ im?
" By the measure that matters most, the Bush administration can point to its record in fighting terrorism as a success. There have been no terrorist attacks in America since September 11, 2001. "
wow, that's 7 years...
The first World Trade Center bombing occured in 1993...then there was an EIGHT year lull intil the next one ocurred in 2001...should we not give the credit for that to Bill Clinton, who SUCESSFULLY aprehended and procecuted the 1st WTC bomber in the exisitng US Criminal Justice system....
compared to THAT, Bush Jr. is a total failure....WHERE IS OSAMMA bin LADEN???
All Bush has done is torture and murder 100's of thousands of people who had absolutely NOTHING to do with Sept 11 /01, and make the USA a torture state that is reviled across the planet.
I guarrantee, the next terrorist attack that occurs in the USA will be seen by the world as JUSTICE.
Such extreme measures were perhaps understandable in the panic-filled days and weeks immediately after September 11.
This isn't the first time we have had a terrorist attack. And it probably will not be the last. It is all a part of our modern world. American's might as well learn to accept it as part of being Israel's friend and benefactor. Admittedly the death toll wasn't as high from WTC #1 and Oklahoma City. These were terrorist attacks also. But, it is the first time at least 60 or 70% of the country lost their collective conscious and lost touch with reality due to an attack. We had a corrupt President who took full advantage of the fear to gain more power for himself. Who used that fear against his critics and any sane notion of going after bin laden the normal way. They were talked into invading Afghanistan that bankrupted the Soviet Union and will probably bankrupt us too. After that came Iraq a country who had nothing at all to do with 9/11. But, the point is most of the country were worked into a frenzy by unscrupulous people (Bush and Co) bent to gaining more power (which is why I don't hold that against politician's who voted for the war. A lot of people were sucked into the whirlpool). And all in the name of some phony 'war on terror' that anyone with a brain knew couldn't succeed from the beginning. Because terrorism is not a country it's an ideology. We will never succeed in fighting it until we figure out what it is and start fighting it. But, Bush hasn't for 7 long years now. He has just agitated and created more extremist's with his cocky rhetoric and ignorance. I think the whole country has lost it's soul. What we used to know as right is no longer right in Neocon's eyes. The problems won't be solved until American's reject their thinking and get back on track.
I would like to compliment the architects of the commentary discussion here - more and more I am finding that this dialogue is the most important part of articles posted and I think both the criticisms and the agreements with the article itself are on the whole well founded.
It does strike me that there is an attempt to rewrite history couched within the article, which also makes some very good points we would agree with, notwithstanding they are points we have already come to a consensus on. So I think that underlying revision is worthy of the most attention. I was particularly struck by the attempt to equate what Bush is doing with rendition and torture and illegal captivity to Roosevelt's internment camps. I agree with the early post that there is no legitimate comparison. The comparison I would make is to the Soviet Union's gulag archipelago (see Solzhenitsyn.) I suppose that the Soviet Union escaped retribution by being itself dissolved - is that going to be our fate? Is that the way a country restores its soul? Germany went through a period in which it was cut in half, and one might say that this mutilation also had something to do with the restoration of soul. Perhaps the Germans can tell us; it might be too early yet for the Russians to do so.
Just interposing a separate line of thought here, stimulated both by the article and the ensuing dialogue. Thank you all.
Miftin, wife was born and raised in MT olivet. She and I have never been to any big wig university. We have been together since after high school. He family and my famikly are third generation farmers. NO, contrary to the beleif of some we are not related - so don't bother to ask. Anyway, my wife has made it a point to reveal all the boys she has dated and she never mentioned dating any arrogant out of state horse tooth jack asses by the name of miftin.
BLOWBACK
Jane Mayer is correct in recognizing that America's war on terrorism is actually increasing terrorism. People whose country is occupied illegally for self-serving purposes and whose family members or friends have been killed tend to support insurgents and hate their conqerors.
At the very core of this tragic "War on Terrorism" is that it is an amorphous, ambiguous, and empty concept because terrorism is not a country or a coherent group of people connected by geography. Terrorism is a method of warfare and frequently a response by people who feel outgunned to further their political cause. Possibly U.S. leaders should examine why there are terrorists.
http://www.stateofdarkness.com
It appears to me that our adoption of "coercive interrogation" stems from our SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP with Israel, where torture has been documented by Amnesty International for decades. See also: Alan Dershowitz on the "ticking bomb scenario" , wherein a Harvard Law Professor demonstrates legal cleverness by arguing from absurdity. He absolutely refreshes the definition of "shyster".
George W Bush clearly intended to lie to the American People to defy NATO and wage this illegal war to be paid for exclusively by the American Taxpayers. Now trying to "Kick the Can down the Road" to escape the mess he has created. He is the Rogue son of George HW Bush who I voted for perhaps by being young and not understanding politics but after my education from University of Maine I know what I am and have more understanding. Obama 2008
While Bush did not heed the advice of his political opponents, fellow Republicans, academia and foreign governments, he did listen to the corporate sector. In fact the corporate sector wrote the playbook and Bush continues to follow it to a tee much to the delight of Big Oil, defence contractors and every other benefactor from the illegal wars and occupations. 9-11 was nothing more than an excuse (and a poor one at that!) to emaciate a government that still clung on to that illusory phrase "for the people, by the people". A social safety net that included everything from our military and police down to our Medicare, social security and the needs of the poor, was replaced with an efficient mechanism in which government solely exists to tax the general public so as to provide corporate welfare on such a grand scale that history has no parallels.
The sophisticated, but crude propaganda that supports this national theft has permeated the MSM, our schools, our entertainment and even our daily bread to the extent that the general populace still believes that we're living in a functional democracy.
Both mainstream parties are beholden to their corporate sponsors at the expense of the needs of the electorate. Yet the author seems to miss the point when she says…
"Through four congressional election cycles and two presidential campaigns, there has been surprisingly little intelligent debate about the Bush administration's approach to terrorism."
The absence of debate is not surprising, but rather expected if you're in control. A dumbed-down population is in no mood to challenge the status quo, proof that corporate propaganda is quite effective at either hoodwinking the citizenry or silencing any criticism.
The only thing that is mildly surprising these days is that critical articles like this appears at all, but then again Ms. Mayer's readership pales in comparison to Fox News's audience, posing no serious threat to Mr. Bush or his puppet masters.
All this talk of torture is missing the point unless we examine the root of this problem. The culprit is an ideology of unfettered capitalism that trumps the needs of the many for the profits of a few. Only someone who wholly embraces this ideology has any chance of moving up the corporate ladder. On the other hand, any critics of this 'school of thought are marginalized or ignored. The result is a perpetual state of political ignorance by both the general public and the few who pull the strings. This author would have been more on point if she attacked the conditions required for such despicable acts rather than the acts themselves
Tom, I was comparing the actions of the governments. Don't think I mentioned the soldiers other than to say that all sides in war commit acts of barbarism that would make your stomach turn. In some cases the barbarism goes beyond what most people could tolerate (death camps), but all sides in WWII participated in terroristic acts, execution of pow's, sinking ships without regard to survivors. War is sometimes necessary, but the Great Man W.S. Churchill said of WWII that it should be known as the 'unnessary war'. It was certainly not necessary for bush to launch a war in Iraq, just as it wasn't necessary for Hitler to launch a war in Poland.
Churchill was asked once about the difference between submarines and u-boats, he said that U-boats were crewed by murderous thugs who sank our ships, submarines were crewed by our valiant sailors who sank theirs. At the end of the last war it was argued that the u-boat captains should be put on trial for their actions, the reason they weren't is that the USN did to the Japanese what the u-boats were unable to do to GB. For what it's worth, the GI's of WWII showed as much mercy to the Japanese soldiers as the Germans showed to the Russians (and vice versa of course).
I'll echo the thoughts of others, the most important lesson to be learned from the WWII is that _ANY_ nation, any group of people, at any time, can sink to the horror that was demonstrated by the Germans, the Empire of Japan, or the brutality of the allies. Yes, we were almost as brutal as the enemy.
Almost, at least we didn't execute all the Germans even though there were some who advocated that we ensure that the Germans never rose to the capability of launching another war. (that idea ended due to the threat of communism)
Didn't hear anything about the supreme war crime that encompases all the rest? On a side note Obama mentioned in his press conference with the president of France a few days ago that SarKozy(mispelled?) came the USA in 2006 after being or before he was elected and visited just two American Senators....Obama and McCain. Gee, who really picks the candidates and winners?
Compliant Republicans, gutless and useless Democrats and corporate media which has been receiving its pay from owners who have a vested interest in war profits have served up my America to the Bush dogs of war. Anyone who still thinks that America is still blessed by God is completely insne or a fool.
Thomas More - you miss the point entirely - our conduct has been conducted for several centuries.
No one is equating our GIs with the SS that I can see. (although listening to the tales of (mis)conduct committed by GIs in Europe and in the Pacific from my fathers friends would possibly give one pause for thought.)
Have you talked to VietNam era GIs who have some pretty horrific tales to tell? These are offset by others who prevented even more cases like My Lai.
>>Ethopia would certainly not agree that Italy had legitimate grivences against them
What was Americas legitimate grievance against the peoples of cambodia, and Laos and Vietnam, and The Philipines and Iraq?
Again as par for the course you try and advance some innate virtue in Americans. It does not exist. They set up Concentration camps in the Philipines and killed as many (if not more) Filipinos as the japanese did.
The lesson to be learned from Germany is that ANY nation can collapse towards such a state. No nation is immune to it. All it needs is for that Countries citizens to believe they are somehow superior to anothers, which is the very thing you suggest.
Germany did not adopt the nazis over night. Laws and protections eroded over the years using the same techniques your own President uses, starting with the "Reichstag Fire".
PK
This attempted fascist takeover of the United States is also detailed in the book "Trading With the Enemy: The Nazi-American Money Plot, 1933-1949" by Charles Higham. Unfortunately, the book is out-of-print. I have two copies.
Hey Marc, I went to school down your way. That's right, I attended a state-supported university in Kentucky...and I attended it on the GI Bill. So don't get all Holier-Than-Thou with me because I may have dated your wife before you met her.
"There are some who take offense at Americans being compared to the Germans of WWII yet none of them have given a valid reason why such a comparison is "ridiculous".
The records of the two should certainly be enough for anyone. Babi Yar, Treblinka, Warsaw Chetto, Auschwitz, the cleansing of the lesser before the war, the Gestapo. If anyone believes there is any comparison between the Gestapo and any of our law enforcement organizations there is really not much to say. Its pure fantasy. The history, even the living hiostory is still here to tell you the difference.
I suggest that there are quite a few, starting in Spain and ending in Manchuria that would disagree with the premise that the Axis powers had a lot of legitimate grivences.
Ethopia would certainly not agree that Italy had legitimate grivences against them.
It may be fashionable to say, but its simply not true that there is any comparison between America and any of these powers from WW2.
Sure you can pick a few of our mistakes, but that won't balance out....sort of like a BB on that side and an Abhrams A1 on our side of the scale.
For more 'illustrious' actions by U.S., check out book by Gen. Smedley Butler, USMC (ret).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler
War Is A Racket
Major General Smedley Butler, USMC. He joined the Marine Corps when the Spanish American War broke out, earned the Brevette Medal during the Boxer Rebellion ...
www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4377.htm
Smedley Butler on Interventionism
Smedley Butler on Interventionism. -- Excerpt from a speech delivered in 1933, by Major General Smedley Butler, USMC. War is just a racket. ...
www.fas.org/man/smedley.htm
He was also known for exposing an anti-FDR plot by a cabal of US business interests, which allegedly included many families who support the current Bush regime and have receieved many no bid contracts for their support(read bribes)
"Rumours of the plot reached Washington, where the Committee on Un- American Activities (CUAA)--was already exposing fascist intrigues. Its cochairmen were John McCormack (D MA) and Samuel Dickstein (D NY). CUAA got in touch with Smedley Butler: did the general have anything to tell them? After prying out all the plans he could, Butler asked a friend, an experienced newsman, to confirm the whole incredible scheme. The reporter visited twice with an agent of the conspirators (a wounded Marine vet) and set down his findings.
Secret executive hearings of CUAA opened November 20, 1934. Sworn testimony showed that the plotters represented notable families --Rockefeller, Mellon, Pew, Pitcairn, Hutton; and great enterprises-- Morgan, Dupont, Remington, Anaconda, Bethlehem, Goodyear, GMC, Swift, Sun.... Some people named as plotters laughed, all denied everything."
"The reader who wishes to examine the official testimony is referred to the government report, `Investigation of Nazi Propaganda Activities and Investigation of Certain Other Propaganda Activities: Public Hearings Before the Special Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives, Seventy-third Congress, Second Session, at Washington, DC, December 29, 1934. Hearings No. 73-D.C.-6, Part 1.' Extracts of the censored testimony are revealed in the books A MAN IN HIS TIME, by John L. Spivak [NY: Horizon Press, 1967], and ONE THOUSAND AMERICANS, by George Seldes [NY: Boni & Gaer, 1947]" (p 140).
http://www.eclectica.org/v1n1/reviews/wharton_plot.html
Phillip Zelikow must have been in on the careful planning for 9/11 or he wouldn't have been the 9/11 commission director later. And while we're at it, how come Common Dreams never publishes anything by Paul Craig Roberts?
There's a nifty little article on CounterPunch called "Are You Ready to Face the Facts About Israel?"
The Brits had their revolution and formed a republic which went straight to being a dictatorship and a military wallah invited the dead kings son back to be king again, That says something about kings and republics, not sure what but this country is sliding with the greatest of ease towards a dictatorship.
This country elected a congenital idiot as presdent, not once but twice, good God. What were the general population scared of, terrorists, as a nation we behaved like cowards scared of someone elses fairy tales, The soul of this country is commerce, everything as a price, everything. Sorry but you can talk till you are blue in the face and nothing will change, elect a democrat and there will be no substantial changes, the presdent will still have far too much power and will be in the hands of them that provided the fortunes needed to run a two year election campaign. Try a 30 day campaign like the brits do.
The constitution is mostly about property rights and very little human rights. and will never change because the system has within it the seeds of its own destruction, commerce and the republicans have fed and watered the seeds and nowhere do I hear of another continental congress to try again to get it right.
Those secessionists in Vermont are on the right track.
"Senator John McCain's opposition to torture surely runs as deep as that of any politician in America. "
Meaning: not at all.
There are some who take offense at Americans being compared to the Germans of WWII yet none of them have given a valid reason why such a comparison is "ridiculous".
What is it that makes Americans, by nature "More Virtous" ?
If you can not claim a genetic difference , then all you have left is a difference in Culture or Political systems.
I would point out it a fact that US officials deliberately spoonfed disabled children radioactive isotopes sprinkled on cereal, that they injected peoples with plutonium directly, without their knowledge so as to measure the effects and that they experimented with mind control with MK Ultra experiments on mental patients just as examples.
Just study the Filipino-American as example, then detail to me why Americans were more "Virtous". It estimated that as many as 1 million Filipino Civilians were slaughtered by the Americans. They were starved to death and buried in mass graves. No quarter shown to men women or children.
Filipinos saw their villages burned to the ground and were locked up in concentration camps where many starved to death.
How is any of that more "Virtous"? Someone at some level justified all this with a rather tortured reasoning just as they now justify torturing prisoners or as the justify developing germs and bacterias that will target specific races.
I would suggest that the only difference is in fact one of Political and legal systems and of the moral outrage the citizens of a given country would have against such practices.
I would also suggest that condemning that very outrage as shameful because it equates the "Virtous American" with the "Evil Nazi" will only mean the Government of America feels even less bound to hold to the concept of Human rights.
The reason they now openly practice and support torture is because they can count on so many Americans buying into that "Virtous American" myth and getting more outraged at being compared to the Germans by the critics, then they are at the acts of its Government.
Keep clinging to that myth and you will just devolve even more as a society.
pk
Oh for crying out loud Marc... I'm disagreeing with you, not invalidating you as a human being. Besides, I thought you'd left. What are you doing still here? Because you're a smart guy and cd is more fun. I'm serious about the storytelling. I agree with you that our soldiers have behaved better than SS troopers probably actually did, but the recruits are the same - testosterone addled kids who will do as they are trained. Training varies from regime to regime, but the human raw material - our appetite for abusing one another - our dark, aggressive underside - is the same regardless of race or country. History is a collective myth. There is some truth in it, but you have to be careful believing it completely. Sorry about your misfortunes.
I hate it when the left beats up on the left - the only victor is the right. I thought only the right were hostile and intolerant to ideas and opinion. Wow was I wrong. I have entertained all scenarios all my like - more so than most folks on this sight. How many of you folks have entertained the possibility of loosing a years planting of corn and soy and a full herd of cattle from a freak tornado and the baseball hail that follows in its path? Lolt of folks here need to grow up and experience how harsh life can be. how bout this voxclamantis - try burying your first born after watching him suffer from birth complications - did he have a shared disease. No just a 3 month old who was a gift from God. Don't tell me about marbles boy - thats agame for kids like you noy for men like me who bust hump to feed sorry sacks like you in you. If you got all the answers be a man and run for office and make a change - rather than sit in your soiled undies in your moms basement and blog all day. With the attitude of this crown we can expect a mccain predidency in Nov.
but to equate GI Joe with SS storm troopers and Japanese guards at Battaan is ridiculous."
Its not only ridiculous, its shameful.
The Waffen SS had little in common with the Wehrmacht troops. Not in training, not in equipment nor in purpose.
No training of our special forces is anything like the training of the SS, especially the officers.
Equating America with Nazi Germany is only possible if you use different time frames. But if anyone is speaking of the period from 1937 to 1945.....no comparison at all.
If you study the National Socialist Party you can see the metamorphisis as it grew in power. There is no resemblence to America except in its early years from say 34-36 when many good things were accomplished.
hoytdouglas (8:45 pm) writes, very succinctly, "She could have shortened this article by 75%."
- I agree. I've heard a lot of noise lately about Mayer & her new book, but I'm entirely unimpressed by this article. It's too long, says nothing we didn't know, & is constructed very defensively. It comes replete with dubious underlying shadings, as noted by numerous posters above.
As is often the case for articles published by CD, many of the posters' comments are more astute & thought-provoking than the article itself.
She could have shortened this article by 75%.
"Seven years after al-Qaeda's attacks on America," ...Not!
"as the Bush administration slips into history," ...Don't count on it.
"While the Bush administration can point proudly to its record of no terrorist attacks on America since 2001," ...And tiger prevention too; no tigers on 5th Avenue.
"its progress in bringing the perpetrators of the September 11 attacks to justice is less impressive" ...Duh!
"Yet it is hard to know if the Bush administration's success represents the vanquishing of new credible threats, or rather the absence of any." ...Double Duh!!
Nothing Exists.
As for Dr. Zelikow's comments, I think the examination of this man's 911 commission work showed him to be quite untrustworthy. See Shenon's, The Commission
Now pay attention to marc melchiori, who is going to pick up his marbles and go home rather than entertain the possibility that we precious Americans could, at heart, be compared to the beasts of northern Europe or the fanatical yellow hordes. Marc needs to read up on storytelling - the collective myths about virtuous "us" versus terrible "them," always invented by the victors. We are living in a world made almost entirely of fiction, and to get around in it we need to learn cognitive skills comparable to driving on ice.
Of course human beings are constituted the same. If there were something substantially different between the sadomasochistic pathologies of the Germans, the Americans and the Congolese, some expert would have noticed it by now. What makes Americans (whose appetite for mass annihilation beats anybody's) so morally superior to the population of any other part of the world. Is it that we eat more beef? That we grew up watching Ozzie and Harriet? Wake up Marc. The human race has a shared disease.
"seven years after al-Qaeda's attack on America...."
shoulda stopped reading right there. How much sense can she make after opening like that?
Anyway, al Qaeda, Taliban, and Osama himself are creations of yhe us- Ziggy and Carter at he beginning, then forever after CIA. So you don't like haw they are acting now? It's called "blowback"- deal with it.
But not by jailing and torturing tens of thousands of Muslims without charges.
and not by bombing, strafing, sniping, and murdering Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq
they should be bombing their own stupid selves
the u.s. military thinks it's ok to kill "suspects". I have yet to hear a word of complaint about this. True, we do not like it when they hit civilians- and it seems like they always do. But allowing them to bomb certified "suspects" means permission to bomb innocents also. And it seems to clear the way for the neo con form of jurisprudence- not really original. It is a verbatim copy of the one made famous by Joe Stalin.
Soul's done gone, Mayer. See if you can find it anywhere
I'm going to end this discussion. I hear your viewpoints, but do not agree 100%. thanks for hearing mine. Good talking with you all. Maybe I'll try again some other day. Not sure this is the site for me. I;m more in the FDR vein - and all along I though I was the progressive. Wish you all good luck - keep fighting the good fight - but remember we are a good country deep inside - lets get ready to put a good spit shine on ourselves and become that city on a hill. Peace from Mt Olivet KY. God Bless
Jane Mayer writes:
"While the Bush administration can point proudly to its record of no terrorists attacks on America since 2001, its progress in bringing the perpetrators of the September 11th attacks to justice is less impressive. The administration certainly could claim any number of top Al Quaeda scalps. Yet as of June 2008, both Osama Bin Laden and Ayman el-Zwahiri remained at large. The government's own statistics, meanwhile, showed that the number of terrorist attacks around the world, and the estimation of the threats posed by Al Quada, were growing."
Although Jane Mayer's recent book is an excellent resource and her highlighting of the Bush administration's perfidy on torture as official US policy to the mainstream media is commendable, the foregoing analysis is simply pathetic. Take each of these four sentences, one at a time.
Prior to 9/11, there had been only a meagre and comparatively pale handful of successful international terrorist strikes on US soil in the country's entire history, regardless of who was president and what the nation's foreign policies were. There was the truck bombing of the World Trade Center parking structure in the early 90's, and an armed assault by Puerto Rican nationalists on the House of Representatives in the early 50's. You can add the Robert Kennedy and McKinley asssassinations if you want to stretch the meaning of "international terrorist" inspired attacks that far. Pearl Harbor was an act of war. How can Bush supposedly point with pride to the absence of a 9/11 followup disaster as causal proof of anything?
Put concisely, the Bush regime's "progress" in bringing bin Laden or Zwahiri to justice is nonexistent. The neo cons scoff at the whole law enforcement model of seeking "justice" from the outset. This is war. They want these guys dead or alive. And dead is always easier and preferable, because it avoids the messy prospect of whatever might possibly emerge at a trial, no matter how rigged that tribunal might be.
Second, the White House and the Pentagon's psy ops propaganda machine have incessantly claimed various Al Quaeda "scalps" (interesting choice of terms, that) while waging their war on terror simultaneously with their war upon Iraq during the last six years. Remember the all-purpose boogeyman Zarkawi? He always surfaced, Zelig-like, to foment an atrocity or two just when the Iraqi insurgency and civil war was flaring up, conveniently putting an outside-agitator evil face on things, until he was finally smote down by a Hellfire missle (so that a power struggle over control of "Al Quaeda in Iraq" could become the focus of US media attention). How about Hamdan, Lind, el-Zubadei, and Moussasoui?
Best of all, Khalid Sheik Mohammed is a really, really big scalp - he masterminded everything since the grassy knoll incident in Dallas back in '63, if you want to believe his water board induced confession like the 911 Commission chose to. KSM also personally is volunteering to take the rap for the beheading of Daniel Pearl, so nobody would needs address any more awkward questions towards the Pakistani ISI (who turned KSM over to the CIA in the first place).
Yes indeed, Bin Laden and Zawhiri remain at large today (or is it Memorex?)' somewhere in those damn northwest territory border tribal areas within the great arc of instability. How convenient for all concerned with perpetuating war and paramilitary derring do on a global scale.
Small wonder, therefore, that terrorist attacks statistically are up all over the world, except for within the borders of the United States of America.
That's just what Al Quaeda always wanted.
And that's just what George Bush hoped for, too, when he babbled his testosterone crazed adolescent schoolyard slogans about killing Them over There, so we all can sleep tight over here.
Bill from Saginaw
marc melchiori ( 6:43 pm ) claims "...Listen, we're a good country, we have done many a horrible thing - but to equate GI Joe with SS storm troopers and Japanese guards at Battaan is ridiculous."
- What do you imagine justifies this claim? Don't you recognize that what you're really saying is, "America is better than other countries. America Ãœber Alles!" It's pure mindless nationalism, inculcated in you by your life-long exposure to US propaganda. If you grew up in Nazi Germany or the 1930's Japan, you'd feel exactly the same way -- except favoring the forces of Germany or Japan.
The main thing that motivated ordinary German soldiers & Japanese soldiers was their instinct to defend their country. It was just the same thing that motivated American GI's, & had nothing to do with sophisticated independent analyses of the world political situation of the time.
You might try to argue that SS storm troopers weren't exactly the same as regular German Wehrmacht troops, because they were chosen on a more selective basis. However, that argument would apply equally well to CIA agents, Special Forces, etc. It's really exactly the same thing.
Here's an "unpleasant truth" that Americans won't face about WWII: Actually, the moral situation between the Axis countries and the Allies was not at all black and white. The Axis countries had plenty of legitimate grievances.
marc
American's then were not as bad as the nazis, to argue that they were is something people who don't read or understand history might believe.
American's now... That's a different thing isn't it? Bush has launched a war for oil, (much like hitler launched a war for 'livingspace' or the Japanese Empire launched a war for oil and empire) he's ordered the torturing of suspects and has had his gov't set up show trials that would have made the soviets blush.
The real diff about the idea of post war trials is that the allies allowed for the defendants to be found 'not guilty'. Hitler and his thugs would never have allowed such a thing. Bush today has no intention of allowing any of those at Gitmo to be found 'not guilty' either. The show trials Hitler would have wanted to have are being held by bush's present day america. Not a very good thing to happen to your country.
Atrocities in war are a staple, but we're not in a real war. The usa is occupying two countries and making noises about launching a war against Iran to distract the so-called electorate from the debacle of the last 7 years. There's a good reason that the people who founded the UN stated that it was War itself that was the supreme war crime.
For every type of Dresden atrocity there was another committed by the Nazi's. What the allies did at Dresden was matched in brutality by what the Germans did in Ukraine. I say that not to justify their actions, but to point out that had the world not gone to war in the first place those atrocities would not have occured. I'll be clear, I didn't mean to suggest that appeasement would have worked either. The peace treaty of Versaiiles was greatly to blame for the outbreak of war in the next generation. Marshal Foch (leader of the western armies in WWI) was off by 64 days when he said of the treaty of V that it was nothing more than a twenty year ceasefire.
americans not as bad as the nazi. Now I have heard it all. What planet are we living on? I can honestly say that only a handful of strange inmates would agree with that idea. Sure if we lost Ike and Macarthur would be shot - the only difference would have been at least we gave Donitz and Speer and Homma a trial. Listen, were a good country, we have done many a horrible thing - but to equate GI Joe with SS storm troopers and Japanese guards at Battaan is ridiculous. Come on folks - with this kind of stuff we will never get the public to support us on universal care, living wages and affordable housing. Don't kill the common dreams we all have!
skippyagogo41 July 27th, 2008 1:12 pm
Thanks for a bit of real history.
The Nazis and their German population had a saying as things got worse and worse for them under their own tyranny---"Aurhausen," meaning "there is no choice, there is no alternative" but to follow their self-referential and self-destructive belief-system to the very catastrophic end. The ancient Israelites and post-Holocaust Jews today have their own expression/phrase that means exactly the same thing---expressing to anybody outside a willful choice to turn away from the demands and compromises and changes of the real (outside, multi-sided) world....So it seems it has come to be America's turn to say this, even though it wasn't true before and isn't now. Except for people too fat, proud, selfish and inexcusably naive to think for a moment that it is they who must change in order to get out of hell....We can at least speak to interrupt their murderous fantasies. Do it where and how you can. The provincial Ugly American has a whole lot of guns and bombs to run out of....
"WE CAN'T HAVE ACQUITTALS! WE HAVE GOT TO HAVE CONVICTIONS!"
Let's remember that these people are only "SUSPECTS." They haven't been charged with any crime. After what this administration has done (contaminated) to every branch of gov't., including Congress, one should be ashame to be a Republican.
Well, well......just a tad too late, don't you think?? Most Americans were "high-fiving" and cheering when the bombs and missiles began to rain down on Iraq in the unnecessary war of choice for Israel in Iraq. Over 100 prisoners died in US captivity after 9/11, and even DOD admits 34 were MURDERED! Most in America have completely swallowed the false flag attacks on 9/11, and are not smart enough to see that the 911 Commission report is a whitewash.
Now that the evil has won, these unAmerican cowards who brought us the Iraq war, and torture, and murder slink back into academia, or to some think tank in DC. These war criminals will never be brought to justice, because YOU will not demand it. Obama has NO interest in having the American people get the truth about 11 Sept. So, add another to the list containing the attack on the USS Liberty, JFK's assassination, and Vincent Foster's murder.
But, this time, over 4100 Americans have died, with over 30,000 wounded, and the final tab will be $2-3 Trillion. Folks, that is 2 to 3 THOUSAND BILLION dollars. Yet, I read that the expenditure of about $10 Billion a year for 20 years is needed to fix all the bridges that need repair/replacement in the USA. Now, where do you want to spend your money?? For Americans, or Israel??
voxclamantis (5:26 pm) - Excellent post. You write that "...You and I, ladies and gentlemen of the enlightened left, are kidding ourselves if we think we can stand outside history and repair our broken country just by impeaching a few rascals, though I will admit it wouldn't be a bad start."
I'd extend that line of thought by commenting that as true as it is that we'd be kidding ourselves to think we can repair our broken country "just by impeaching a few rascals," we'll do even less repairing, if we DON'T EVEN DO THAT!
And to have silver-tongued scoundrels like Obama flatly denying (see the CNN video I posted a link to above) that the US has anything to apologize for, in its foreign policy of the last 7 1/2 years -- this merely insures that we have zero chance of impeaching. Obama & the Democrats will see to it that there is no impeachment -- and beyond that, that there will not even be any public acknowledgement that the US has done anything seriously wrong. This kind of denial is entirely of a piece with Truman's "never losing a night's sleep" over the eradication of Hiroshima & Nagasaki; and with the US never acknowledging that it's committed monstrous crimes, in SE Asia, throughout Latin America, in Africa & Indonesia, & in the Middle East.
Immanuel Kant wrote: "Never do anything in a time of war that you will regret in a time of peace." While Cheney and company have no regrets and should be sitting in the dock in the Hague, the rest of us should take Kant'swords to heart and Ms Mayer's as well.
Bryan D: You like so many folks who can't write and write on the Internet you show your frustration and anger by using four letter words. What you show is your ignorance. Please clean up your act, grow up, or go elsewhere.
I can remember my father, who was an FBI agent, talking with his friends about the Nuremburg Trials. His primary comment was that if the Germans had won, our leaders would have been in a similar docket especially over the deliberate bombing of civilian populations(i.e. Dresden). He was privilege to enough info that he felt the trials were a mistake since it set a standard we could not meet - in the future have our leaders tried under the same format.
In other words, we were and are hypocrites in this affair
"... the human rights violations at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere were not the work of a few "rotten apples" on the bottom, but rather the result of irresponsible leadership at the top."
Neither of these simplistic alternatives comes close to explaining or exorcizing Abu Ghraib. It is not a few bad apples at either end that we can simply pick out and toss from the batch. We are in a somewhat worse pickle than that.
Most of us are in the thrall of ideologies - what Walter Davis calls "fantasmatic consciousness" in his perceptive if badly written book "Death's Dream Kingdom." We have carefully repressed the monsters in the American psyche for 60 years and probably longer, and they are now popping up behind every tree. Stand by, we're in for more.
Since nearly all of us (including educated progressives) refuse to submit to guilt (a tool of manipulative religion, right?) or any form of negativity, hand-wringing, bad feeling and the like, we stand by default with Harry Truman in "never losing a night's sleep" over the eradication of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the day we became the world's foremost mega-terrorist dominatrix.
We don't torture to acquire information. We don't torture because Cheney made us do it. We torture because we have turned into a race of predatory sadomasochists. Individuals with psychosexual disorders do not have a good prognosis for cure, and I suspect neither do societies.
But simply substituting another ideology or making intellectual amends isn't going to do the trick or make America sane again. We need to sit down and eat worms. We need to feel as bad as we are. We need stultified shock. We need to understand how powerless we have become to fix ourselves. Some sobbing and screaming is perhaps in order, because simply voting for somebody nicer than George Bush is not going to be the magic fix. The last time we had an opportunity to vote about our own mental health was 1945. It was a bad wrong turn, and we are far down that road now, in a dream world of American vigilantism and exceptionalism and potency and false optimism.
You and I, ladies and gentlemen of the enlightened left, are kidding ourselves if we think we can stand outside history and repair our broken country just by impeaching a few rascals, though I will admit it wouldn't be a bad start.
It's time to stop pretending that the 9-11 attacks were carried out by a handful of box-cutter-carrying terrorists and the Bush administration just happened to step in and take advantage of the situation ..
duh!
Even the so-called critics of the Bush administration's post 9-11 behavior refuse to face the obvious ..
At the very least the Bush administration knew the attacks were coming and decided to let them happen.
No other conclusion is plausible.
If it was really just negligence on their part, they never once apologized for failing to protect America, they never once offered to resign for failing to protect America.
AS for America's heritage, like the European nations from whom the founders migrated, the legacy of brutish imperialism came along. That does not mean there is not SOME pattern of evolution.
James Carroll writing for the Boston Globe 3 years ago explained that America was always seeking after its ideal of itself--as that free nation, yet negotiating with elements that were adhered to its darkest past traditions. Since a nation gets a birthchart at its point of inception, ours has the sun in Cancer, sign of the past and traditions. This is also the sign of bloodlines and family ties; but the nation's moon is in the advanced-thinking, freedom-loving, invention prone sign of Aquarius. This combination of sun and moon is out of synch, causing a restlessness in the population. It truly marks the battle between the past and its hold on our mass psyche and the ideals to which the nation as an entity was born to aspire.
As for those who favor methods of "eradicating" terror (by using it), theirs too is a long legacy. Since I believe in reincarnation, it's easy for me to see those who would use torture as the same ones hired by the church-state to torture confessions out of heretics. The savage aspect of some persons has never been overcome; but when a society itself condones or looks away from such practices, ALL carry some of the karmic burden and are apt to share in its inevitable blowback.
The point the article makes about Muslims seeing in these prisoners' lack of options a verdict of hopelessness is powerful. Hopelessness, along with lack of funds, desperation, anger and vengeance certainly fuels the next generation of would-be warriors/terrorists. In metaphysics it's believed that the thoughts focused upon produce results. Well, Bush focusing on "evil" has indeed increased its presence here and abroad.
I'M VERY SORRY, JANE MAYER, but when I got to your mid section where you quote and admire Sen Jay Rockefeller for really giving the Bushies hell over torture, I found it made MOOT just about the entire article. FOR goodness sake Jane, Sen Jay Rockefeller voted FOR Pres Bush' 'Military Commissions Act' which passed into law last year.
*****So when you extol HIM as your American Idle you better know he Favors torture, and the Kangaroo military trials now being held at GITMO !! HE voted for Torture along with Sen Bill Nelson, Fla, and that goodie goodie Joseph Lieberman, and every Repubby in session.
***When you discuss 911, you also canonize Philip Zelikow, but forget that he and other 911 Commissioners have admitted they were lied to in testimony, and they glaringly failed to consider Bldg 7, World Trade Center==and Gee how did it fall to the ground without ever being hit by one of those nasty big JumboJets !!!AS the 911 Victims Relatives have strongly stated, that Commission and it's Report were a "Cover-up" of what really happened that Day !
**So Jane Mayer, if all the above print is supposed to help us understand or recover the heart and soul of our Nation, you sure are taking us down a VERY STRANGE PATH TO OZ !!!