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I Don’t Want To See Their Faces; I Don’t Want To Hear Them Scream
The whole thing is regrettable, really. Shocking, truth to tell. And so sad, I’m sure, for those people, those blanket-wearing, beard-growing, false-god-worshiping, probably-related-to-terrorists, citizens of Afghanistan whose wives and children and babies were gunned down in their beds, shot, murdered, slaughtered, and then burned by one of America’s finest Sunday morning. But hey, what are ya gonna do? These things happen.
It seems the soldier in question was not, in fact, representative of our brave fighting men and women. He was just another in the continuing series of lone gunmen who have been shooting up the world here and overseas for as long as any of us have been reading the newspapers. David Cortright, the director of policy studies at Notre Dame's Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, tells us "This may have been the act of a lone, deranged soldier.” I saw a headline that said he was a rogue. OK; rogues do as often as not, “go rogue” as no less an authority than Sarah Palin would have us know. So given time to reflect a bit, I guess I’m sorry I impugned our noble troops.
President Barack Obama summed it up as succinctly and as eloquently as only a man of his unflappably cool reserve could, I suppose: “This incident is tragic and shocking, and does not represent the exceptional character of our military and the respect that the United States has for the people of Afghanistan.” Well there. And yer goddamn right, Mr. President. Our boys kick butt! We take it to ‘em! We light up the friggin sky! They don’t mess with the U.S.A. and get away with it. You don’t kill three thousand brave American heroes on September the eleventh, ten years ago, and expect your four year old girl to sleep in her own bed unmolested. Unkilled. Unburned. We do what needs to be done to keep America free, and sometimes along the way an enlisted man goes a little nuts. Just one. Just every little once in a while.
Mr. Obama got right on the telephone and called up our “partner” in this whole great reworking of Afghanistan, Mr. Hamid Karzai, and told him we were sorry. Or something like that. He expressed condolences. So did Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta. I’m sure those were awkward conversations, but you know, the buck does stop there, and that’s why we pay those boys the long dollar. Speaking of which, compensation will be paid. You betcha. We have a formula. I don’t know, fifteen hunnerd bucks or so. Each.
And we’re even-handed and generous in spraying our condolences and compensations. When we kill civilians as a part of our regularly scheduled, officially sanctioned, presidentially authorized drone strikes, it makes Mr. Obama sad, too. It is regrettable, of course, that so many children will insist on living in the same hovels as the alleged terrorists we need to kill, or with somebody who kind of looks like one of them or who might once have been associated with them in some way. We were attacked, you know, and candidate Obama said his predecessor wasn’t prosecuting the Afghanistan adventure vigorously enough, but he would, and he for sure, by God has, hasn’t he?
Does it feel different to be dead by drone than dead by M-1? Does Obama have nightmares? Did Bush? Do they wash their hands, trying to scrub off the blood? We do not doubt this particular atrocity was perpetrated by a young man gone leave of his senses, but we are not encouraged that he will be tried in a military court, found crazy, demoted, dismissed, given cursory mental health treatment and some time in an institution. We wonder if our Congress and our President should be pronounced crazy, too. Or maybe just criminal. And what about us, neighbor, in our complicity? We who elected them and will re-elect them or others just as cold and cruel and as able to calculate that the life of an Afghan child is not worth much compared to our unending and unyielding compulsion to exercise extreme power in pursuit of God only knows what.
Has anybody thought to ask Barbara Bush about this situation? You’ll remember she said the victims of Hurricane Katrina the New Orleans cops herded into the Superdome (those they didn’t shoot) so they could sweat and starve and suffer among piles of shit and debris for several days, had a pretty good deal: "And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this—this [chuckle] is working very well for them."
OK! You’re way ahead of me here, aren’t ya buddy? Take Mr. Samad Khan, a farmer who lost all 11 members of his family: wife, kids, maybe an old mom or a crippled dad, for all I know. Eleven times even a thousand dollars each will net him eleven grand. And I’ll bet Afghanistan doesn’t even tax dead baby compensation income. Do we pro-rate babies and old people?
Hell, old Mrs. Bush wouldn’t really have any problem with the midnight murder run itself (yeah, I know, it was three a.m., but I can’t pass a chance at a cheap alliteration without hooking it any more than Lieutenant Calley could leave a peasant hut un-incinerated). Sure, she was talking about her boy’s Iraq adventure, but the emotion is surely transferable: "Why should we hear about body bags and deaths? Oh, I mean, it's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?" A precious thing for sure, you bloated old bag; don’t waste it. Aw, Jesus! That wasn’t nice. I’m sorry, Mrs. Bush. My deepest condolences over the condition of your mind. Fuck, I’m sorry about your whole stupid family.
But I’m not here to “look backward.” President Obama told us years ago there’d be none of that. And I’m not going to beat up Republicans. Why no less a liberal figure than Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State, Madeline Albright, said that, while it did seem a hard choice to make, she believed the deaths of half a million children in Iraq was a worthwhile price to pay to get old Saddam. So five hundred thousand, compared to a dozen or so….
And it’s Monday, anyhow, and back to work, you know, and the weather looks good and the economy is incrementally better (experts say) and the job creators are working darned hard to create jobs for bums like you and me; gas isn’t as expensive as it might be, all things considered, and President Obama will probably get those lunatic Israelis to hold off bombing Iran until after he’s re-elected (they can kill all the Palestinians they like, of course, because they’re just, well, Palestinians for Christ’s sake.) So this will fade away about as fast as that Koran burning did, don’t you think?
But before we move on, why don’t you do what I did this evening? Google around the WWW and stir up some photographs. Do it on your desktop if you still own one—the portables, the notebooks, the smart phones the cool kids all flash just don’t give you the big picture. You might find the AP photo captioned “Anar Gul points to the body of her grandchild.” You could see eight pictures the New York Times has assembled into a little slideshow.
Let Google Images round up whatever it can find (36,100,000 results in .19 seconds) under the search terms Afghanistan shootings. You’ll see the bodies. The babies. And the faces of their families. We caption them, “the bereaved.” These images should haunt you. Someday somebody related to some of these sufferers, these victims, these collaterally damaged souls, may try to kill you. And I have to tell you, I think you’ll have it coming.
Suppose a foreign army had been rummaging around the United States for a decade. They’d have built us some concrete-block elementary schools of course and drilled a few water wells. And their president or premier or prime minister would have secretly flown in under elaborate and expensive secrecy and security to shake hands with the soldiers and tell them what a good job they were doing bringing peace and stabilization to our misguided land, and who among us would not be grateful for that?
But then suppose, just occasionally, at intervals, one or several of those soldiers or pilots or special forces teams or secret espionage units burned a bunch of civilians for no good reason any of us could see? Mowed ‘em down. Ran ‘em over with a tank. Busted in the door in the nighttime and gutshot somebody’s old grandfather. Would that begin to take the glow off our gratitude?
OK, let’s be specific. Forget the afore-mentioned Samad Khan and the grieving Anar Gul. Don’t trouble yourself about the names of their children. (Do they even name their children like we do, these Muslims?) Pick any names that come to mind—good, honest, American names. Say Sam Knox is missing his wife and kids and Anne Greene sits there numb and devastated as she looks at the blanket her child is wrapped in. Does that feel any different? How much compensation would it take to make them get over it?
Come on, you cowardly bastard—look at those pictures! I know we don’t read so much these days, but you might have run across the term empathy during some mandatory literature course back in high school or college. So. How does it feel?
My kid has annoyed me a time or two today. Loud, wild, antagonistic here and there. (He’s seven.) I told him to stay off the rotten ice on the pond inlet stream while I was cutting bushes, but there he was, “I’m cold!”, up to his knees in slush and muck and icewater, and we quit early and repaired to the woodstove to dry him out. (He did agree he ought have listened to my wise counsel.) Then again, he told me a dozen times he loved me. And when he just couldn’t possibly get to sleep on his own, he had not the slightest trouble when I let him lie on the couch in my office as I wrote my little letter to you all out there.
And there he sleeps. And you could bomb my house and blow up my car and take away a leg and an arm and I might take your compensation check and relocate and regroup and nurse my grievances in the barroom. But if you or you or you or anybody came in here and killed him, I don’t care if you’re Christian or Jew or Mohammedan or a pagan suckled in some creed outworn, if you hurt him accidentally or on purpose, under orders or because you snapped under the pressure of your third deployment. I’d just want to kill you. And I don’t doubt I might kill you slowly and abuse your damned corpse in some ugly way. You and the guy behind you and the army that comes after that. I’d open you up and I’d nail you to the porch floor.
Oh, I’d be a bad person for doing so. Why, you might even say I’d become a terrorist, I suppose. And killing you wouldn’t bring back my wonderful boy, because whatever God you might pray to or believe in only ever made one of him, and you killed him, and there could be no joy, no purpose, no happiness in my life after that other than getting to you and grinding you up and making you pay. You’d compensate me with your flesh for forty-two pounds and forty-four inches of boy. And if I went crazy enough (and I might, and anybody might), I might need to kill a whole lot more who seemed to me to be pretty much like you. And there we would be.
I’m done. The snow is almost gone, and the pond will open up next week and the turtles come out of the mud, and Karter and I may just hatch some frog eggs in a tank in our kitchen. Because he won’t be a pile of bones and guts soaking into a blanket in the back of a truck, you see. I’ll gather him up now and dump him where I want him to sleep, and he’ll wake in the morning to defy me and argue with me and disobey my firm instructions to do this or that, and to love me as I’ll love him because that is how we evolved, and we do what we must do. As it is in Afghanistan and all over this world the United States of America thinks it owns.
Beware the rogue soldier, the corrupt government and the corporate press and the easy justification.
Come on. Just one more time. Look at their faces!
Comments
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154 Comments so far
Show AllYes, exactly. My favourite: the 1 euro coin commemorating the Builder King
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2007_Belgium_1250_Euro_Leopold_II_front.JPG
FYI, GwNorth-- Courtesy of u n c o v e r I r a q . c o m, Albright's subsequent "apology" for making that infamous remark:
________________
Albright's apology
In Albright's autobiography (Madam Secretary by Madeleine Albright with Bill Woodward, Miramax Books (Hyperion), New York, NY, 2003), she apologized for the remark (p. 174-175):
" I regret to say that I aggravated our public relations problems during a 1996 interview on the CBS program 60 Minutes. The segment included a visual tour of Iraqi health care facilities, with pictures of starving children and denunciations of UN policy by Iraqi officials. Little effort was made to explain Saddam's culpability, his misuse of Iraqi resources, or the fact that we were not embargoing food medicine or food. I was exasperated that our TV was showing what amounted to Iraqi propaganda. Near the program's end, Lesley Stahl asked me, 'We have heard that half a million childrean have died [as a result of sanctions]. I mean, that is more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?'
I must have been crazy; I should have answered the question by reframing it and pointing out the inherrent [sic] flaws in the premise behind it. Saddam Hussein could have prevented any child from suffering by simply meeting his obligations. Instead, I said the following: 'I think that this is a very hard choice, but the price, we think, the price is worth it.' As soon as I had spoken, I wished for the power to freeze time and take back those words. My reply had been a terrible mistake, hasty, clumsy and wrong. Nothing matters more than the lives of innocent people. I had fallen into a trap and said something that I simply did not mean. That was no one's fault but my own. There are many times in everyone's life when the mouth works faster than the brain; there was no more regrettable example in my own career than this ill-considered response to Lesley Stahl."
________________
Shorter Albright: Why, it was merely a clumsy and inartful expression of what I REALLY meant-- a slip of the tongue.
* http://home.comcast.net/~dhamre/docAlb.htm
"In politics, nothing happens by accident." ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt
Were the deaths of hundreds of Gazans in winter, 2008, an accident, Mme. Secretary? You are right that it "aggravated our public relations problem." That's all it is for you and your class, a "public relations problem." If you "fell into a trap," it was a trap of your own making. You were trapped the minute you started to think you could go into another country which never hurt us, for ANY reason: oil, Israel or even "Saddam's culpability." (And WHO were YOU, Mme. Secretary, to pass judgment on another nation's leader? Did you never hear the old Arab saying, "Iraq needs a strong man to govern it"?)
Sure wish she could hear us "little people."
I made my first phone call to my local "liberal" talk host, David Sirota, but only talked to his wing man, Turk. But I did talk to Turk for a pretty long time about his and Sirota's complicity in mass murder for support of BHO. Turk became very defensive and asked me how I knew he supported BHO, was I Nostradamus? But I know because they all support the mass murderer.
I know I touched at least a nerve because Turk got angry and hung up. He has children, but lacks the humanity and empathy to feel the pain of the Afghan's who lose their children every day to Amerikan mass murderers.
Please, those of you who have the energy and courage, call out the "liberals" who support Barack the Baby Killer. Call out Rachel Maddow, Ed Schultz, Thom Hartmann, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Randi Rhodes and all of the other "liberal" war mongers and mass murderers of Muslim children. Yes, all of these people bear the blame for the murder of these innocent Afghan villagers.
I find the subject of your post, and those who validate it, to serve as a deflection device. If you make the subject primarily about Obama, or any liberals who support him, you take the focus off the far more persuasive causative factors. Those are the U.S. MIC and its function as the muscle in the glove that furthers the interests of Empire.
Also, I find it MORE than curious that all those apologists for the increasingly inverted totalitarian Homeland Securitystate are conspicuous by their absence, comment-wise, on today's powerful Chris Hedges article.
Makes me wonder if those paid to spy in these threads have any inner feelings of guilt for being part of The Machine that's destroying lives, liberty and ecosystems faster than it can make new enemies.
Right on tomcarberry!
I've been wondering about this. I, too, am sick of the Obama apologists on radio. God, they're everywhere. One of the worst is Thom Hartmann though Ed Schultz and Stephanie Miller are right up there. Hal Sparks is another one. They just won't listen to reason or truth. But Thom Hartmann used to have incredible empathetic capacity regarding other issues outside of politics. Sadly he will not budge on Obama which has led me to quit listening to his show. I end up screaming at the radio. And by the way, Sirota often subs for Hartmann.
Thank you tomcarberry!! You won't find any of radio's liberal talk show hosts saying anything remotely close to the truth Mr. Cooper and you have expressed!
tomcarberry:
AMEN! All of them are Democratic Party propagandists. I'm still angry with Hartmann for supporting the treacherous traitor, Nancy "impeachment's off the table" Pelosi for Congress instead of Cindy Sheehan, who ran against the Bush/Cheney apologist in 2008. He could have influenced his San Francisco audience but doesn't like to stray too far away from Dim control, and keeps (for whatever reasons) that invisible yoke around his neck. Other than that, I like Tom and have learned a lot from him.
tomcarberry
The account of your call to David Sirota's talk show confirms what I have long suspected -- that all of the so-called liberal "progressive" talk-radio hosts screen and censor and moderate the incoming calls within an inch of their lives and only allow the most bumbling and blinkered Obot sycophants to reach the airwaves. Once in a great while, and just to make things appear legitimate, they will allow a dissenting voice to emit a few words of critical analysis on the air and then pounce on the caller with defensive hostility, talk over him or her, and then dump the call.
The entire stable of syndicated Dial Global Obots -- Bill Press, Stehanie Miller, Thom Hartmann, Ed Shuultz, Norman Goldman, Randi Rhodes, and even Mike Malloy, who will on occasion criticize Obama but who who still remains frozen stuck in the Bush-Cheney years and can't escape -- now offer shows that are little more than mind-numbing, dishonest, three-hour infomercials to sell the Obama 2012 re-election campaign.
Plus, the nails-on-a-chalkboard claque at MSNBC -- OFA Central -- are as bad if not worse than their liberal "progressive" talk-radio counterparts, and Ed Shultz manages to shill himself silly in both venues.
The same intolerance and contempt for dissenting voices is rampant among the A-list "progressive" bloggers like DKos and Digby and Josh Marshall, et al., and critical analysis -- especially if the comment is well-written with sources and links and evidence to suupport the assertions -- will cause the offending comment to be deleted, or "ghosted" so that the comment appears on the commenter's screen but is invisible to others on the blog, and/or the commenter's IP address will be blocked, thus resulting in a permanent ban from the blog.
Suffice it to say that many of the A-list liberal "progressive" bloggers -- several of whom are Democratic Party activists -- are as authoritarian and censoring and intolerant of dissent as the right-wing GOPer and Tea Party types they love to rail against with such vigor.
I would have to say that Thom Hartmann is the most odious and dishonest liar of the lot these days. He keeps insisting that the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act was a “Bush-Republican poison pill” inserted into a larger piece of legislation and designed to kill the U.S. Postal Service and the Letter Carriers Union, and that somehow this terrible bill slipped passed the good-and-honest Democrats to become law. D'oh!
The problem with Hartmann’s account of the passage of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act is that it’s absolute bullshit!
The legislation, which was introduced and passed in December 2006, was a stand-alone bill – not part of a “poison pill” that was sneaked into an omnibus bill at the end of the session. The bill was introduced in the House by Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA), who has since retired from the congress, and had three cosponsors, one Republican, John McHugh (R-NY), and two prominent Democrats, Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Danny Davis (D-IL).
The bill, HR 6407, passed the House by Unanimous Consent on a voice vote.
The companion bill in the Senate was passed and agreed to unanimously in the Homeland Security Committee, chaired by Susan Collins (R-ME), and passed the Senate without amendment by Unanimous Consent. The bill was then cleared for the White House and was signed into law by President Bush later that week.
Postal Accountability – Bill Summary & Status
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:HR06407:@@@R
If the Postal Accountability bill was such a “Republican poison pill” – as Hartmann insists -- then why did it pass both the House and Senate without objection by Unanimous Consent? And where was the full-throated opposition by the Democrats and/or Bernie Sanders (I-VT)? [*Crickets*]
Callers to the show on more than one occasioin have attempted to inform Hartmann of the facts surrounding the passage of the Postal Accountability Act and set the record straight, only to be over-talked by Hartmann and dumped from the airwaves. Now, Bernie Sanders says he is "working hard" to "save" the USPS from extinction, but things don't appear to be going terribly well in that regard these days.
But wait! There's more! -- Obama nominated Postal Accountability Act cosponsor John McHugh (R-NY) to the position of United States Secretary of the Army on June 2, 2009. He was confirmed by the Senate on September 16, 2009 and sworn in on September 19, 2009. McHugh still serves the Obama administration as US Secretary of the Army.
PS -- Hartmann has become a besotted Obot, a consummate liar, and, worst of all for a talk-show host, an insufferable bore!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Amen, Sarah!
Your description of what is essentially progressive-liberal authoritarian censorship is entirely accurate; it's also sad and pathetic that the left-leaning audience (visitors, consumers, etc.) mostly displays an authoritarian-following acceptance of what they rationalize as benevolent censorship, euphemized as "moderation".
As for Hartmann: due to added local teevee programming arising from the switch to digital broadcasting, I finally got to see Hartmann on TV.
Before that, I'd only known him from occasional writings-- he used to be published fairly often here, but not so much lately. (I'm not sure why, since his progressive liberal-lite Democratic Party boosterism is perfectly congruent with CD's editorial dominant paradigm.)
Anyway, after catching Hartmann's teevee act for about five minutes, it was glaringly obvious that he is a poseur extraordinaire.
The more I reread this article the more I like it. BUT, the information is not totally new...Bill Blum, Ward Churchill, and others have been saying similar things for a long time. When will we learn?
About the powerful photos - anybody out there remember the Robert Fisk war photos? They inspired my war protest that led to my arrest. Maybe it's time for another protest..one that will be more effective than those in the past...........
The visceral emotion of the article brings new life to constant facts.
Thanks, Mr. Cooper, for expressing directly and eloquently the thoughts and feelings many of us have regarding the state of the human condition and the impunity with which those in power snuff out precious human lives.
When Springtime finally comes into full bloom here in America, and the citizens of conscience and good will take to the streets to express their 'rage at the machine', my fear is that these same sociopaths and their helmeted police mercenaries will show no mercy as they 'control' the crowds.
Then we will all have the opportunity to really share the confusion and grief of those 'far away people' depicted in these photos and truly, finally. understand what we have wrought.
Rachel Maddow -- rachel@msnbc.com
Christopher Cooper,
thank you for writing this moving essay. i read your words and i studied the photo you provided. i'm speechless. the one thought that keeps running through my mind is what are the children in the back of that van thinking ? their friends were murdered for what purpose - to what ends ?
and how will they respond ?
as a nation we are morally bankrupt - beyond redemption.
...peace...
I've often wondered how you get one human being to kill another without first being "deranged". Killing is taught behavior, this case happens to be an extreme example.
After WWII the brass was quite upset because a study had shown that a very high percentage of soldiers could not bring themselves to shoot the enemy and kill them.
So they brought in the specialists in Psychology and revamped their training. Since then basic training is not so much training to be a soldier, sailor, airman or airwoman, or marine who knows how to work in a unit, is fit enough for the job and able to use the equipment. It is all about breaking down the moral character of the individual and reshaping them into killers.
This is not about rogues. This is about Empire using Psychological manipulation, the kind revealed in the Stanford Experiments, to turn young people into Storm Troopers. You don't have to use clones to make them.
Another problem is that these people who have been so misshaped come back to the U.S. damaged. The ones who have been most damaged and now can only relate to the world around themselves by being violent authority figures are the ones who go into our law enforcement. They pepper spray innocent protestors. They beat to death minority traffic violators. They smash in the heads of other vets who reject Empire and join Occupy.
Thanks for keeping it real.
"Let Google Images round up whatever it can find (36,100,000 results in .19 seconds) under the search terms Afghanistan shootings."
Tried the same google search a minute ago and got 197,000,000 hits in .33 seconds. People have noticed.
Thank you Mr. Cooper for this extraordinary heartfelt article. I'm sickened by the spineless Democrats, and the utterly inhumane Republicans. And, above all, I'm sick of Empire, enough already!
What a cast of characters all the politicians are! There may be an exception, but too few of them left to make a difference.
If we stop voting, will they go away?
A 'no show' at the elections would send a terrifying message to those who rule.
Suddenly, they'll be asking, "Now that the masses have finally realized the political structure is a smoke screen, how long before they figure out who really runs the show and come for us?"
And, yes, politicians would be too afraid to go to work lest 'mobs' become reminded (and therefore enraged) of their duplicity and complicity.
Most people and certainly progressives are nonviolent but since all forms of violence are the basis of elite rule, that and continuous lying about it, the elite undoubtedly fear that others would treat them no differently.
"Come on. Just one more time. Look at their faces!"
Won't make much difference if they don't relate.
We're supposed to believe we're all aghast at what happenned in Uganda because millions viewed a youtube video. But the filmmakers themselves thought posing with automatic weapons was a "lark". We pay Ugandans 600.00 a month to protect our embassy and State Department in Iraq and we house them in shipping containers.
A lot people cheered on regime change in Libya. Anyone know how things in Libya are today? The people of Zambia exist by selling our used clothing because the WTO and US based multinational corporations were allowed to buy off their country's resources and infrastructure because we extended/promoted to their corrupt government predatory loans. I could go on, but why bother. They are different just like our indigenous peoples were different. For some they don't and will never deserve better treatment, because they are different. They look different. Those same people will never see the similarities or commanlities amongst humanity.
We're blind to what we've done to Ireland, Greece and other allies, why would we have any sympathy for these people?
I realize what you are trying to do with your explanation of what you would do if something happened to your son. But I choose to remember and follow the example of how the Amish responded when their 10 daughters were shot and 3 killed while at school by another "lone looney" who said he killed them in reaction to the death of his daughter. If we'd reacted like the Amish more than Mr. Roberts after 09/11 the world would be a better place, rather than what it has become through retribution and mindless male reaction.
How many have to die to prove our manhood and superiority? This isn't an "island" we can vote people off of. By subjugating others we really don't make ourselves anymore important or those we're responsible for any safer.
The whole, entire reason the US Empire invaded Afghanistan is because the Empire didn't/doesn't want a hydrocarbon pipeline to transit Iran--Jealosy and the hubris associated with always getting one's way caused these deaths and all those that came before. And still the US Empire demands TAPI be built--a demand since 1996. But that demand will never be fulfilled as events have dictated otherwise; thus, all the death and destruction wrought by the US Empire and its allies in AfPak will be for absolute zero, with the only profit going to the Mercahnts of Death and their Heroin producing allies and shareholders.
Truth. Except I think we won't stop until it is built. Those that are invested stand to lose nothing in the way of money or family. They don't value their own souls so that's not really on the table. The rest of us are the only ones ask to sacrifice that.
Yep, plus there is a lot more than just building a pipeline.
"US Identifies Vast Mineral Riches in Afghanistan"
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/world/asia/14minerals.html?pagewanted=all
quote: "The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan..."
Yeah, I know about the mineral riches, too. It's of interest to note that the Russians didn't disrespect Afghans in the same manner as the US Empire, and as a result are being looked to as partners by Afghans hoping to rebuild their country once the US Empire and its allies leave, and the same holds true for China. The US Empire, its nationals and allies will never be welcome in Afghanistan as a result of its utterly grotesque Barbarism. Yes, a pipeline will be built--to bring Iranian gas and oil into Afghanistan, and via that, possibly Turkmen gas, too. I also doubt Karzai will last long after the US exits--he is at bottom the US's tool.
But if you or you or you or anybody came in here and killed him, I don’t care if you’re Christian or Jew or Mohammedan or a pagan suckled in some creed outworn, if you hurt him accidentally or on purpose, under orders or because you snapped under the pressure of your third deployment. I’d just want to kill you.
You betcha.
Make you feel big? You really think that mindset is going to protect you and yours? Mr. Roberts the man that gunned down 10 Amish little girls in retaliationn for the death of his daughtor felt the same way. 3 little girls are dead and so is he. Who's defending his family now?.... The families of the dead little girls that had nothing to do with the death of his daughter.
The author has a large hole in his reasoning as his child has already been poisoned by industrial and pharmaceutical pollutants both on purpose and accidentally, yet he says nothing about them or threatens those emitting the poisons. And that's what sullies his rant in my eyes--his inconsistency.
True. What good does it do to write, from within the belly of this American Empire.
---SWL
The level of sarcasm, scorn, and outrage in this article is far less than deserved for the criminally insane leaders of empire. Obama is as drenched in the blood of Afghanistan as the troops he deploys. And now it is such an easy step to mass murder in Iran. As Sting crooned, when it comes to war, “murder by numbers … is easy as one-two-three”.
This, Barack gravely intones, “does not represent the exceptional character of our military”? Oh, really? This is not representative of the mass-murderers of Fallujah or Haditha, of the troops who urinate on their victims, who collect the fingers of dead civilians as trophies, who force prisoners to stage homosexual orgies in Abu Ghraib, who burn holy Korans (by accident of course), who kill real children by remote video game, who rape women, who torture and kill helpless prisoners at Bagram, or who have committed the many other unpublished atrocities covered up by our MSM propagandists and our noble military?
In fact this is exactly what we can expect of low level mercenaries, dehumanized and trained to kill (for a living) manifestly without cause---except profit. And we should all realize that these same fine men and women, if they survive, will return to the roost before long.
You, Barry, Nobel laureate and agent of transcendent change, continue to heap incalculable guilt and shame upon your own head and on all of our heads. Be certain that one day you will be called to account for your bloody crimes.
Doug Terpstra
You well and truly nailed it!
Afghanistan is indeed Obama's war -- the "good war" that he embraced with the manly gusto of a pipsqueak Commander-in-Chief, who ordered a "Surge" of his very own which ultimately starred awesome man-crush General David Petraeus, the most overrated failure in the history of warfare.
Alas, Obama’s “good war” in Afghanistan was clearly a disastrous Bush-Cheney war (and protracted brutal occupation) when the new president took the oath of office in 2009, and conditions on the ground had long since devolved into a grotesque and catastrophic mess on a scale that rendered terms like “mission creep” and “quagmire” inadequate to the task of describing the stench of death and destruction and corruption and failure that was obvious to all those who had the eyes to see and the willingness to apprehend the grim reality.
During his first term in office, Obama has demonstrated that he is even more Bush-Cheney than Bush and Cheney ever dared to be, and their war crimes and crimes against humanity are now Obama’s war crimes and crimes against humanity plus an escalated wave of drone strikes and targeted assassinations for good measure.
Of course, war criminals at the top of the political food chain always pardon, absolve, and grant each other immunity, so don’t expect anything resembling accountability or the application of that quaint phenomenon known as “justice.”
We are told by reliable news sources beyond the spin of the corporate media that nine young children were murdered in this latest atrocity by U.S. troops – or one “rogue” troop if you can believe that whopper – and yet Obama has still not invoked the names of Malia™ and Sasha™ to suggest that he is dripping with fatherly empathy.
Obama, who now stands dripping with the blood of Afghan children, is interested in one thing in this latest debacle: Damage Control!
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We all have on our hands, our minds and our hearts, the blood of hundreds of thousand murdered in the Middle East since 2002. And maybe it's millions. The body count is not the point. What are we going to do to stop this? There are supposedly 200,000 some folks who are part of this website. And there are hundreds of thousands or even millions more in the wings. When will we move to stop this machine of death?
Honestly I don't know. Maybe when women have more control in the world. I don't see much hope as long as men have sole control. Or maybe someday when organized major religions evolve more along the lines of the Amish. I am not even sure about that in that they retain the old patriarchial systems. In a perfect world it would be when each of us owns up to our own responsibility and says "no more". But I don't see that happening anytime soon. It's too attractive to go along for instant gratification and celebrity. Personal/moral responsibility does pay very well these days.
Margret Thatcher, Hillary Clinton, Condoleezza Rice, Madeleine Albright,...
Don't forget Angela Merkel, the new Iron Lady, fighting proud German/NATO wars overseas and with her boot on Greece's neck.
NC Tom & Tom Carberry: Fod God's sake read a book on feminism, read something to get your minds off the same redundant track that tells you that just because the FEW women allowed up the power chain do what men do, that they speak for (or represent) all women. For the hundredth time... IF a society conditions ALL citizens to behave in accord with patriarchal standards, beliefs, and "values," and if this conditioning process has gone on for centuries... then both genders will be molded along lines that suit a masculine ideology.
Try: The Chalice & the Blade by Riane Eisler or The Cosmic Mother, or When God Was a Woman, by Merlin Stone.
Whenever a poster points out how society has been conditioned around the macho values of:
self against other
competition not cooperation
me first and no concern for others' welfare
War, war, and more war...
War against nature
War against Islam
War against minorities
War against the Indigenous
War against drugs
War against terror
Ed. AD Nauseum
Then people will behave in ways that adapt to those asymmetric metrics.
Enough!
And EVERY time anyone uses the word "WE" as a stand-in for our nation, as entity, even though it's obvious that narrow bands of elites are determining its foreign and domestic policies, they do a disservice to Truth! Use WE if YOU go along... do NOT speak for the millions who are NOT spoken for in these egregious life-deadening decisions!
I just want to add my voice to the chorus of praise for Cooper's well-executed (pardon the expression) gonzo screed.
I haven't re-read it in a long time, but I recommend a piece Kurt Vonnegut wrote in 1969 entitled "Good Missiles, Good Manners, Good Night".
As I recall it, it speaks to the exact same disconnect within the Beltway and power elite that Cooper writes about here. Only the names and places have changed; Vonnegut writes about Nixon, and Melvin Laird-- and Mrs. Laird, coincidentally a high school classmate of Vonnegut's-- and Vietnam.
Vonnegut mordantly marvels at how these movers and shakers can so civilly, pleasantly, and abstractly discuss policies, actions, and weaponry that wreak heinous and pitiless death, mayhem, and utter destruction upon ordinary unprivileged innocent persons around the world.
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
Thanks for the reminder, OS.
"Dr. Sternglass, a professor of radiation physics at the University of Pittsburgh, promised that, if Mr. [Melvin] Laird’s [Secretary of Defense] and Mr. [Richard Milhous] Nixon’s [President of USA, far to left of Obama] Safeguard Antimissile system was ever used, all children born after that (anywhere) would die of birth defects before they could grow up and reproduce."
"So I marveled again at the cheerfulness of our leaders, guys my age. They were calling for nothing less than the construction of a doomsday machine, but they went on smiling. Everything was OK."
Kurt Vonnegut
Vonnegut could vent himself with his wonderful humorous insights into our own humanity and inhumanity. I think Cat's Cradle presents a marvelous insight into humanity. We all should heed Mother Night's warning -- "you are who you pretend to be." Let's not pretend to be sheep, or worse, lambs to the slaughter, as Bruno Bettelheim wrote of the Jews in WWII.
I'll add a tip o' the hat to those you two have made to Vonnegut...
I re-read several of his over the winter, and was forced to re-confront Dresden...
what a miraculous occurence, in his life, that he did not perish with all of those thousands of others in the murderous madness that took place that night...
sometimes, one can but quake in the power of fate...
anguish within the moral maze that leaves the good dying at the hand of the bad...
other times, however, one can act...
alter fate...
we could all do it, together, on September 22, 2012...withdraw from the monied, propertied, electrified world...
learn to support and share local resources with our neighbors...
or we can all run from drones pulling a Dresden on your town, or mine...
probably both...these drones work in coordinated fashion...
It appears that quite a few are placing blame on the Obama Administration only and the 'liberal' shows who support him. I find that interesting as, and correct me if I am wrong, both the Republican and Democratic administrations can be placed in the guilty chair. War is heroic, war is definitely masculine, but most of all war is Hell, always has been and always will be. War defines America. Who was it who said, "Walk softly and carry a big stick?" Teddy Roosevelt? Doesn't matter except for the fact that with every generation of war mongers the soft walk covers more territory and the stick gets bigger and bigger. We are a nation of imperialistic, controlling imbiciles without a single visionary among them and the new bunch vying for top dog do not have a clue about the future of America or this planet or the Universe. There is no future for us or our children or grandchildren. And, everyone laughs at Dennis Kucinich for suggesting an attempt to Promote Peace.
Chris has been away far too long but I understand his reluctance to tackle any of the screwiness on going in today's world. It has to be too draining and exhausting physically, mentally and emotionally. A world minus common sense and rationality borders on insane and leaves one with an overwhelming and unbearable sadness, futility and helplessness.
Your point is? Dennis Kuncinich could have been our savior? He couldn't even preserve his position on a single payer health care system.
Yeh, annabelle, the Obama Administration is just as responsible, as are the "liberal" shows who support him, because he's done little, if anything to ameliorate the situation. Moreover, he's extended, expanded and ante-ed up the G. W. Bush/Cheney policies, including the current USA wars abroad, and the attacks on Civil Liberties, for example.
Many many of us are just as disgusted-- I am also shocked that a Secretary of State-Ms Albright- would display such ignorance with her statement that 500,000 children killed and maimed was an acceptable price to pay(Iraqi price) for the removal of a tyrant. She should stick to the truth it is more reasonable. -half million Iraqis is ok to show who is boss.
Are you aware the current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned peaceful aid boats to not attempt to reach Palestine. How is that any different? And she also told the Palestinian people they should not attempt to gain Statehood recognition with the UN. She threatened UNESCO about supporting them. Not really too different from Albright's position.
http://www.thejc.com/news/world-news/55864/clinton-warns-unesco-over-palestinian-membership
Madeline Albright hasn't been Secretary of State for quite some time now. Since 2001 actually. Ask yourself what Rice, Powell, Burns or Clinton ever did for the citizens of the world. They did a lot for the major energy producers and multinational coporations but little for anyone else.
Poor William Jospeh Burns was Secretary of State for one day. January 20 to the 21 of 2009.
I agree with you entirely. One of my first thoughts on hearing this was the hypocrisy of the crocodile tears oif the establishment who condone drones that have killed many women and children and other civilians "by mistake".
If the fate of the families killed by a soldier , possibly traumatised and horrified by the bloodiness of war , can be publicised and pitied, then the news media should also publicise eith eqaul disgust the truth about the victims who have been bombed from the air whether in Gaza or Baghdad, or Afghanistan or Libya by American and European armed forces. The pity and horror of war, and the human cost is ignored by those who seek to gain political glory, or roll in billions through the arms trade.All wars must cease.
If we had empathy and courage we would violently revolt against our corrupt government. Sadly, tho, spoiled Americans have neither.The longer we have delayed doing this, the harder it has become. Perhaps we will be conquered.
Americans have already been conquered by the forces that control the US Empire, but at least it's easy to defect.
As a nation we've already been conquered by multi-national coporations. Individually most of us have already been conquered by media PR campaigns. So many of us only care about image. We no longer know right from wrong. We base all our decisions on supporting the "image". Even our concepts of faith are based on well modulated media campaigns. How many "christian churches" now preach that if you're not prosperous it's because you've failed as an individual?
gardenernorcal,
Christian churches have preached this for hundreds of years. Calvin taught it. All the great 18th and 19th century American preachers taught it, from Jonathan Edwards to Henry Ward Beecher. Christianity and Capitalism merged long ago and welcomed the money changers back into the Temple.
Indeed, palsimon. But I'd say more: there is now enough evidence to argue that the US has become the most deranged, the most cowardly, and the most immoral nation on earth. And the least free. If you think that I exaggerate, then consider what Craig Roberts, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration, recently said: :
"Americans in 2012, although only a few are aware, live in a concentration camp that is far better controlled than the one portrayed by George Orwell in 1984. Orwell, writing in the late 1940s, could not imagine the technology that makes control of populations so thorough as it is today. Orwell’s protagonist could at least have hope. In 2012 with the erasure of privacy by the US government, protagonists can be eliminated by hummingbird-sized drones before they can initiate a protest, much less a rebellion. Never in human history has a people been so easily and willingly controlled by a hostile government as Americans, who are the least free people on earth. And a large percentage of Americans still wave the flag and chant USA! USA! USA!
The Bush regime operated as if the Constitution did not exist. Any semblance of constitutional government that remained after the Bush years was terminated when Congress passed and President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act. 53."
Nothing can be done: only an apocalyptic environmental catastrophe can help by wiping the slate clean.