The United States is the lone military superpower in the world. The decision to launch an unprovoked and unjustified attack on Iraq in 2003 was made by the Bush administration and supported by many in Congress and supported by much of the press.
It is important, then, to consider how the media treat the current crisis in Iraq. As many have observed–from the FAIR Blog (6/16/14) to the Daily Show (6/17/14)–corporate news outlets are relying on some of the very same pundits and politicians who were enthusiastically backed the war in the first place.
It’s obviously quite revealing that these people are invited onto television at all–further proof, if any were needed, that there is no accountability for being so wrong in so many important ways.
The US chooses to bomb other countries; it’s not compelled to bomb by some mysterious force. (cc photo: Andy Dunaway/US Army)
But it’s also revealing to hear how media talk about the prospect of the United States military going back to war in Iraq. Indeed, many journalists made it sound like something that was being done to the United States:
“Could America be drawn back into war?”
—Diane Sawyer (ABC World News, 6/12/14)
“There’s a real possibility that the US could somehow be drawn back into a war in Iraq.”
—Jim Miklasziewski (NBC‘s Today, 6/12/14)
“Extremist fighters now minutes from the capital. Will we be drawn back into war?”
—Martha Raddatz (ABC‘s This Week, 6/15/14)
“As insurgents overran those cities and advanced toward Baghdad, the alarm was sudden and real: Was the US going to be drawn into a third Iraq war?”
—Gwen Ifill, PBS NewsHour (6/13/14)
The United States was not “drawn” into Iraq in 2003; it made a conscious decision to launch a war. Thus it cannot be “drawn back” into the conflict either. It is nonetheless quite revealing that journalists employ this language, making US warmaking sound like a reaction–not an action.
The compulsion is a psychological one. A suicidal and murderous one. And liberals as well as conservatives are compelled. Americans hate losing control. God told G.W. Bush to invade Iraq, and God is apparently working in the hearts and minds of the folks that are “drawn” back to Iraq. If we are ruled by the same type of irrational compulsions that apparently rule both the Shiites and the Sunnis, who do we think we are to “straighten” everyone out?
“Worship preceded or followed by evil acts becomes an absurdity. The holy place is doomed when people indulge in unholy deeds.” “The prophet is a man who sees the world with the eyes of God, and in the sight of God even things of beauty or acts of ritual are an abomination when associated with injustice.” (from The Prophets, Volume I by Abraham Joshua Heschel, page 11 and page 212, Hendrickson Publishers)
I should have added the obvious conclusion: Beware of false prophets
The true prophets are always men and women of peace. And don’t claim you are a person of peace if you are contemplating the use of America’s awesomely deadly military hardware.
It’s our fault (we, the Public.) Were we asked whether we wanted to go to war (anywhere?) No, never. One of the reasons the American Public finally put an end to the Vietnam War was because we had live TV footage of US soldiers in Vietnam, and sometimes bloodied and ravaged; and could see at first hand the carnage we were wreaking there. So the “powers that be” wised up and all that is outta here anymore. No more pictures of dead GIs, even though they’re dying just as brutally; and any picture of a wrecked country X is always due to country X’s pathetic failure to try to be like the USA – it has nothing to do with America’s treatment of that country in the past or the present.
So Americans are f**king wimp a**holes – cash your check from a job you fear losing to go to the home that you fear losing to watch TV which insures you won’t learn anything about the real world. But you know this and you do it anyway – because, darnit, the couch is comfortable and you aren’t facing eviction next month yet. So you keep your mouth shut on the job and you keep your mouth shut in your social groups and you never lift a finger to oppose the way things are – golly, that would be rocking the boat! We all know that being a “good American” nowadays means never being confrontational about politics; we’re supposed to pay our taxes so that the government can spend 90 cents of every dollar on waging war on innocents everywhere in the world; waging war on the civil population if it might like to light up a joint; eavesdropping on the public against the law and paying lawyers to make sure it seems “gray” and/or necessary; and ignoring the public welfare, so that the police have lots to do all the time.
That’s the country you live in now and chances are you’re well-described above. Forget Civil Rights, Labor Rights, Political Rights, Economic Rights: those all rock the boat and a whispering campaign might get you fired.
As long as the Jack Boots don’t become known for arbitrary political busts at 2AM, you’re content to leave things this way. So, do we still teach our children that Colonial Revolutionaries were really brave? Do we still try to encourage admiration for them? And if so, exactly when along the educational path are we made to forget to admire revolutionaries? I know for a fact that children are NOT taught how cool the Wobblies (IWW) were; I know they are NOT taught how the AFL sold labor out; I know for a fact that they are NOT encouraged to think in terms of Strikes for Rights; and I know for a fact they are NOT encouraged to STAND UP AGAINST THE CURRENT GOVERNMENT even when there’s a good reason to do so. We hear about “redress” always in terms of having elections – but nary a word about what to do when the system itself is corrupt and your electoral choice is between Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
The Occupy movement did not go away so much as it was punished for trying – by news outlets we need to learn to confront. When someone who wants SocioEconomic Justice in this country is widely agreed by the media to be a whack job, a wing nut, then I think it’s time for y’all to figure out to pull the plug on those jokers.
So (1) don’t vote for R or D any more ever; at least until there is a third party that CONSISTENTLY gets better than 25% of the vote. (2) don’t vote for anyone who makes or owns more than 10 times what you make or own; and ignore all the threats aboutbad guys getting in, all we have are bad guys getting in anyway. (3) FORCE your representatives to CHANGE THE LAWS to say that the United States WILL NOT send troops anywhere without the consent of a 3/5 majority of the AMERICAN PEOPLE. It’s our fricking country and if you’re too stupid to make the f**kers accountable then by hell, you’re putting that in MY face. bub. HINT: our wartime (military) expenditures should be NEAR ZERO BY NOW and WE THE PEOPLE did never endorse for GI Joe or Jane to be ANYWHERE outside the boundaries of the USA, and that’s a fact. The Soviet Union is GONE and “Terrorism” cannot take its place, the sycophants to the Military Industrial Complex can go to hell. We were owed a PEACE DIVIDEND, so fricking where is it 23 years after the fact??
Really – how long are you going to let the a**holes rape you before you get enough of a clue to get mad and fight back?
Bush can still be impeached!
Bush has yet to face the Hague for War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity.
Three of the five SC justices who stole the 2000 election are still on that bench and should be removed by popular demand;
All BushCo appointees were appointed by someone who wasn’t a valid president in either term and so must go, starting with Roberts and Alito;
If the a**holes in the financial community who caused and profited from the “housing bubble” are not in jail, what’s up with that, and let’s PUT them in jail;
If we want GMO-laden foods to be so labeled, that’s our choice and Monsanto can kiss our asses;
The sooner we nationalize the energy and telecommunications industries, the better off we’ll be;
And Dammit, far better off RED than DEAD. Let’s get the “gum” out of the “gummint.”
You heard it here now – so get moving.
That was a really good diatribe, Arthur Nonymous.
It pains me to point out that George W. Bush cannot be brought up for trial at the Hague for war crimes, because the USA, when it signed the treaty establishing the court there, did so with the proviso that no American can be tried for war crimes there.
The following are edited to correct historical inaccuracies:
“Could America be lied back into war?”
–Diane Sawyer (ABC World News, 6/12/14)
“There’s a real possibility that the US could somehow be lied back into a war in Iraq.”
–Jim Miklasziewski (NBC’s Today, 6/12/14)
“Extremist fighters now minutes from the capital. Will we be lied back into war?”
–Martha Raddatz (ABC’s This Week, 6/15/14)
“As insurgents overran those cities and advanced toward Baghdad, the alarm was sudden and real: Was the US going to be lied into a third Iraq war?”
–Gwen Ifill, PBS NewsHour (6/13/14)
Nonymouse – you forget, the weasel are in control, and they have no intention of letting any of the American People get out of their grasp of Greed. They have too much at stake – Trillions per year – to let you or I do anything short of an actual French Style revolution, that is taking them and making them a head shorter.
Everyone says we have to ‘pay’ in order to have the ‘best’; but instead of the Eagles of Industry, all we have gotten are the Cockroaches of Commerce.
We cannot expect to tolerate such absolute unaccountability as we are witnessing, and at the same time remain a superpower for much longer; the press is complicit in our demise for failing to provide accurate information to the public, as our Founders expected when they attached the Bill of Rights to our Constitution. That we cannot detect nor admit the failures we created in Iraq does not bode well for making the needed corrections here at home. Thank you, A. Nonymous for elaborating on some of these items here earlier.
Have to say told you so to the countless people I argued with in 04 when I said that Bin Laden would never work with Hussein and that we should have stayed out of the country and support the Shiites and Kurds so it would be a civil war and not an invasion.
Lucymarie: thanks for that info, I didn’t know that. But of course … International Criminal Court is okay only if Americans cannot be prosecuted. Jobless and depressed I’ve just watched all the “24” series as reruns, and it truly captures that aspect of the Authoritarian American Spirit: it’s not a crime if we did it. Everything is always excused by exigency and it’s left to others to pay for the fallout.
Well, then that has to be fixed and if America is to join the ‘League of Civilized Nations’ then we have to submit to the rule of law. Too. Kind of obviously a “Duh” moment … and everyone who raises alarms at discussing the doing of that (becoming accountable), you know where they stand: on the side of Stalinism (toss in Hitler and Mussolini if you like.)
Padremellryn: all my polemics are written with a thorough understanding that the weasels are in control. That’s what they’re about. I’ve undertaken a multiyear study of history and economics to get to the bottom of why things are the way they are – how is it possible for things to remain as corrupt as they are and to have been so bad for as long as has been the case? In fairness, democracies have made a lot of progress – say, since 1605; but we’ve entered a stage in world history where that progress is being erased, and the American administration is at the center of that movement.
What bothers me more than anything else is that there is, quite simply, no open discussion of these issues. There is no national dialogue about America’s current situation vis-a-vis the flow of world history. For any student of History it has to be the most alarming and depressing thing to realize that every progressive movement has been successively crushed by the forces of reaction, to the current day. I hope my longterm study can provide me “the solution” to the problem – violence solves a lot of problems but fuels the reaction that invariably stifles the revolution (whichever revolution – you mention the French Revolution but if you read history you see how that ended up giving us Napoleon.)
I am beginning to see that the root cause of all our problems is the simple formula Capitalism + Bureaucracy. One day I would like to write The Book to bring things up to date – if anyone would read it. But I am still reading, with 1300 titles to go. Right now I am recommending three seemingly unlikely books to “explain it all”, as long as you read them from the subversive point of view. They are:
* C. Northcote Parkinson: Parkinson’s Laws
* Dr. Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull: The Peter Principle
* Dale Carnegie: How to Win Friends and Influence People
Somewhere if I could find it I wrote wonderful one-line summaries of why these books are actually quite central in explaining why everything sucks and why it remains in the state of sucking. Suffice it to say that they regard the human Ego and “human nature.” None of these books takes cognizance of the fact that the phenomena they describe operate within a Capitalist social structure – for that I assume one has to turn to Marxist analysis (I haven’t gotten to my Marx-related books yet so I can’t testify to that assumption yet.)
I can tell you that people have known for 200 years that Capitalism sucks and that Socialism should replace it; and that much of world history has in fact been about trying to stop that awareness from having any impact on things. You mention “Trillions of dollars” as the stake, but I would say it is really about the unaccountable (cf Mike Pribula above) power behind being able to accumulate that money.
I know what some of the ‘solutions’ are, but they’re not solutions if they can’t be effected (in practice.) So my goal is to try to discover that “meme” which people can use to overthrow our current system and then find a way to distribute that meme – worldwide, to all our Homo Sapiens brothers and sisters everywhere and with luck, all at once. It can’t be measured but I bet there are few people who want this revolution more than I do: liberation of humankind from the predations by others using UNACCOUNTABLE power – and mind you, that IS the theme of Humanity throughout History. {laughs} So all I’m trying to do is solve all of humanity’s problems once and for all … wish me luck. :)
The first ingredient is an awareness of world history in some depth, especially from an economic point of view. Economics drives everything, in fact, so you must remember that and work (study) from that viewpoint. Money equals Human Energy and so it is astonishing to see how much of it has been stolen from the people who created it (in general plebians like you and me.) You’re reading this now and you can (and must) undertake it for yourself: learn history to understand how everything from the past has been leading to the present moment. I by no means have “read all history” but I have read enough to show me fairly well how we’ve gotten to where we now are. You can see my reading list, read my comments about books I’ve read and see how much more I have to read, at ecsd.com/books/index.html (use Firefox, IE has some bug I have yet to program around and even later Firefox has minor issues …)
The current propaganda for the public is that issues of “Realpolitik” are behind us. If you read the history of the interactions between nations leading up to WWI you would have to be amazed at how countries have treated other countries and peoples as pawns on chessboards. Our leaders pretend to us that the world no longer works that way, that everything is now on some sort of “progressive democratic” footing; but they’re lying, and leaders are now playing International Politics very similarly to how they used to. It is true that publics won’t tolerate naked wars of aggression as they used to; that is, Americans would not accept a war with Mexico to CONQUER Mexico (as they did in 1846); but we clearly see that things are still couched in terms of “National Interest” with nobody explaining what that means, and the subtext is that the public will go along with things supposed to “protect America” – as if, for example, arguing against labeling GMO foods in any way protects Americans or allowing the WTO to prohibit US food manufacturers from labeling tuna as “Dolphin Safe” in any way protects Americans – or more importantly, how recklessly using military force in the Middle East to control oil flows “protects” Americans when it is trivially argued that our behaviors there incent the creation of the very Terrorists we pretend to be defending ourselves against. It might well be true that we can get oil more cheaply if we wage some wars to kill off the leaders who won’t sell oil to us at below-market-rates or who won’t otherwise let the US dictate trade policy to them, but Americans – on average – thank God – are sufficiently enlightened to know that doing such things is ethically and morally wrong. That is why we have to be lied to that “Abdul has a nuke” or that the Taliban oppressing the civilian population in rural Afghanistan is a central problem for the US population. I agree that Muslim Fundamentalism sucks, but the way to get rid of it is to improve the standard of living in the affected countries, and to empower (educate and pay) women. Not wage war against it. Nothing America (viz. those in power) wish to do is going to improve the standard of living in the affected countries. All we’re going to do is create more suffering, deprivation and casualties and I’m ashamed of my fellow Americans that they ignore this in favor of administration blandishments that somehow what we’re doing over there is necessary – for any reason. Remember I mentioned “ego” above – Americans will not want to know that all the suffering we’ve inflicted has been needless and done for extraordinarily selfish reasons promulgated by mere handsful of people. People avoid any news that tells them their inaction has had horrible, cruel results. They block it out because, yes, no one of them can stop it unilaterally – but as I complained in the prior post, have any of them ASKED for these things to stop? And when will we as a people realize that the lie that this is a functioning Democracy remains THE tool to use to change national policy? “They” have to capitulate to “us” because they //promised// to do so. So when Americans en-masse tell the politicians to get the f**k out of the Middle East, no ifs ands or buts, THEN we will see if we provoke an Authoritarian Coup for the CFR and Neocons to keep control of our country against our will – and by the way, //that coup will fail.//
Continuing with the theme of historical studies, read the history of Labor in the US. If you do that I predict you will become radicalized if you have not already been. Labor LOST its wars – that is what you should learn; but you will also see the extent to which the “owning classes” were (and remain) willing to go to suppress the rights of laborers, and I remind you that we are (statistically) ALL LABORERS. Their fight is YOUR FIGHT TOO. I recommend the 10-volume “History of the Labor Movement in the United States” by Philip Foner, Art Preis’s book about the CIO “Labor’s Giant Step” and books by Anna Rothschild and James Matles (see my bibliography.)
I’ve read a lot about the French Revolution and more about the Russian Revolution (and its aftermath, Stalin.) The Stalin story is very sad, about how unaccountable power can triumph over everything, especially reason. The society described in “1984” was modeled on the Soviet Union under Stalin, but the gut awful fact is that American Bureaucracies suffer just as much from what afflicted Soviet bureaucracies – and when you’ve read Peter and Parkinson, you’ll see why that’s a problem.
Mike Pribula: yes: ACCOUNTABILITY is problem number one. We have to make our “leaders” accountable; that every decision can be tagged to its authors and that they have to be made responsible to EXPLAIN why they made the decisions that they did but moreover have to be forced to DEBATE the public IN public about their decisions. We have to eliminate the laws that render bureaucrats unreachable following decisions they have made. The way our administration gets away with what it does is because they can make all sorts of bogus rationalizations for their decisions and actions and do not have to DEBATE what they say and do. And of course the media do NOTHING to aid the people to establish this accountability. So we get the occasional story about gay-bashing politicians being caught getting blowjobs in public restrooms or the occasional story about embezzlement or high-finance crime; they have to toss us some crumbs now and then; but we never get ANY DISCUSSION about the serial murder by our forces of foreign nationals on foreign soil or whether the public should have a say in that happening. We never get ANY DISCUSSION as to why the richest, most powerful nation on Earth still has 21% of its people in poverty. Our media serves the people who pay their bills – and that’s not average Joe you or me. That is why I have called for extensive boycotts of repeat media offenders. If the NYT can’t be prevailed upon to pass along the views of common American folk then they should be PUT OUT OF BUSINESS, and the same goes for all TV, Radio and Newspapers.
It’s our country. What are you doing to TAKE IT BACK from the Monied Interests and Fascists? Please keep the question prominently in mind.
Read History – in particular from 1900 onward. Read the history of Socialism and Labor. Then you’ll understand my cute parting statement:
If you’re not Red, then you’re dead in the head.
For Lucymarie: I tried to find a direct contact, none listed …
in viewing your site at Google (ugh – I’m an ISP and if you own a domain I’ll host it for free; Google is one of the many places I boycott for cause) I have the following feedback: (1) favorite movies; I think I get the general tenor of your preferences so my offerings may not be up your alley but I liked Dark City, and think V for Vendetta is one of the most powerful films made about the times we live in (and Hugo Weaving is The Man, with his use of voice.) (2) Music, my favorites are, I think, Waldstein, Op31#3, Appassionata. For me the definitive rendering of W and A sonatas is by Walter Gieseking. Another favorite is Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, version played by Leonard Pennario. Contact me for content.
(3) As re: catalogs of crimes, see the 9th edition of “Democracy for the Few” by Michael Parenti, or for a cheaper summary his “The Face of Imperialism.” Anything he writes is excellent; you may be particularly interested in his “To Kill a Nation: the Attack on Yugoslavia” and also possibly his “Blackshirts and Reds”. It wouldn’t hurt to read everything he’s written; he’s sort of an unmentioned member of the “Zinn / Chomsky / (Edward S.) Herman” group.
There is also “On the Justice of Roosting Chickens” by Ward Churchill, sections 2 and 3 catalog US actions and the criminality of them since even prior to the American Revolution.
If you like “graphics”, i.e. cartoons, in relation to muckraking there is “The Forbidden Book”, a collection of material relating to McKinley’s invasion of the Philippines, and a few others along that line – one by Zinn, one about the IWW, and one by Joel Andreas “Addicted to War.” And of course Thomas Nast, a graphic polemicist of the past.
(4) If you want a wordpress blog of your own I can set it up for you and host it (you pay for the domain if you want your own domain.) You’re also invited to be a guest blogger at thankmefornotkillingyou.com if you like. You can reach me at support@ that place.
Great minds think alike, or some other pathetic cliche. Ciao.
Depleted uranium (DU) weapons were first used during the first Gulf War against Iraq in 1991. The Pentagon estimated that between 315 and 350 tons of DU were fired during the first Gulf War. During the 2003 invasion and current occupation of Iraq, U.S. and British troops have reportedly used more than five times as many DU bombs and shells as the total number used during the 1991 war.
reporter Dahr Jamail discusses how the U.S. invasion of Iraq has left behind a legacy of cancer and birth defects suspected of being caused by the U.S. military’s extensive use of depleted uranium and white phosphorus. Noting the birth defects in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, Jamail says: “They’re extremely hard to bear witness to. But it’s something that we all need to pay attention to … What this has generated is, from 2004 up to this day, we are seeing a rate of congenital malformations in the city of Fallujah that has surpassed even that in the wake of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that nuclear bombs were dropped on at the end of World War II.” Jamail has also reported on the refugee crisis of more than one million displaced Iraqis still inside the country, who are struggling to survive without government aid –
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/3/20/ten_years_later_us_has_left
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/19/us-depleted-uranium-weapons-civilian-areas-iraq
http://rense.com/general56/dep.htm