The Anti-Empire Report, No.
15
November 19,
2004
by William
Blum
Some thoughts on that election thing
"How can 59,054,087 people be so dumb?" asked the Daily Mirror of England
in large type on its front page two days after the American presidential
election.
What the Brits may not realize is that many of those
who voted for Bush actually pride themselves on their ignorance. They associate
being any kind of intellectual with elitist East and West Coasters, the dissolute
1960s, "old Europe", and other nasties on their love-to-hate list; for many
of them as well, whether consciously or unconsciously, it is a source of
satisfaction that they have a president who's no smarter than they are.
"Moral values", we are told, is the thing that was of
primary concern to most of those who voted for Bush. The daily horror brought
by Bush to the people of Iraq does not indicate less-than-noble moral values
in the minds of these Americans. Bush is a religious man; religious people
are moral people; ergo, Bush is a moral man. Discarding a clump of embryonic
tissue cells, as unconscious as a rock, is much more "morally" upsetting
to these good folk than sending a cruise missile screaming into a crowded
Iraqi apartment building. Two people of the same sex who love each other
and wish to get married is a greater crime in their, and god's, eyes, than
the sadistic torture of Iraqi prisoners.
There is now discussion amongst progressives about reaching
such people, trying to win large numbers of them over. This is certainly
an understandable goal, but I suggest that we not waste our time, energy,
and resources. Certainly, with any one individual amongst them, if we secluded
that person on a farm with a dozen articulate progressive activists for a
few months, and with a plethora of moving audio-visual materials, something
would probably click in that individual's head. But we haven't got enough
activists, time, or farms to make even a crease in the target population
of "Valueites".
As ignorant and lacking in empathetic imagination as
they might be, these people, if transported to Iraq to see the bombs falling,
the houses destroyed, the missing limbs, the mangled children's bodies, the
wailing parents -- even such Americans would be moved to a higher political
consciousness. This has already happened with a number of American military
personnel in Iraq, but is of course impossible to arrange for the many
Valueites.
In any event, any such tactics couldn't be pursued in
behalf of an electoral campaign that supports the war every bit as strongly
as Bush does. (See, as an example chosen at random, the John Kerry
campaign.)
Whether trying to win over Valueites in behalf of the
Democratic Party, an independent party, or for any other reason, we must
keep Harry Truman's dictum in mind: "If you give the voters a choice between
a Republican and a Republican, they'll always choose a Republican." Who knows
how many liberals and radicals stayed home on election day because Kerry
failed to offer them anything like a decent alternative to Bush? I went to
my polling place only because Nader was on the ballot. The 18-to-29 portion
of the population voted decisively in favor of Kerry. But how many more of
these idealistic young people stayed home in disgust?
I've tried to console myself by thinking that it's good
that Kerry lost for at least two reasons:
1)Kerry would probably not have alienated the rest of
the world as much as Bush did, and thus might get more support for the historical
continuance of American interventions, resulting in even more American
interventions, this time under unindicted war criminals Secretary of Defense
Wesley Clark and Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke. Bush, on the other
hand, is now free to continue infuriating the entire planet, increasing
anti-Americanism to yet more frightful levels, and driving the empire into
total disgrace and disintegration in some unpredictable manner, hopefully
not taking the entire planet along. This may be the only way the American
imperial dragon will be slain.
2)If Kerry won, the chance of any reform of the Democratic
Party would have been negligible, and the party would have moved even further
to the right, confident that the voters had "vindicated" their conservative
policies.
Well, we'll have to wait to see how number one plays
out. As for the second, the prospect of the Democrats returning to more liberal
ways does not appear to be off to a running start. A week after the election,
veteran Democratic political and policy operatives began an advocacy group
aimed at "using moderate Senate Democrats as the front line in a campaign
to give the party a more centrist profile", as the Washington Post (November
11) put it. They call themselves Third Way (Did someone say Tony Blair?),
from the idea that there should be an alternative to conservative and liberal
orthodoxies. They also entertain the conceit that they're "progressive
centrists". One of them, Sen. Birch Bayh of Indiana, a possible 2008 presidential
candidate, said that the election day exit polls showed there are more
self-described conservatives, 34 percent, than self-described liberals, 21
percent, while 45 percent described themselves as moderate. "Do the math,"
Bayh said. Presumably, if the polls had shown more conservatives than moderates
he would be urging the party to become conservative, this time out of the
closet. The Post added, however, that some Democrats believe that the Bush
campaign "showed that softening ideological edges or seeking common ground
with opponents is not a winning strategy."
Kerry forfeited playing the "values" card by his support
of the war, but he could have played the equally important "national security"
card by exploiting Bush's awful record: Not only did September 11 occur on
Bush's watch (while Bush read a book about goats to a class of children),
but the US bombing and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq have unleashed
scores of terrorist acts against American targets, as was predicted -- military,
civilian, Christian, and others targets -- in the Mideast, South Asia, and
the South Pacific, including two major ones in Indonesia. Bush won by a large
margin amongst those who cited terrorism as one of their main concerns. Did
Kerry say a word about this record to question Bush's success in fighting
terrorism?
What century are we living in?
350 years ago, in the English Civil War, both Catholics and Protestants went
into battle shouting, "Kill for Jesus". Presented here is a short current
report to show you how far humankind has come since that time.
Fallujah ... a dialogue amongst a group of young insurgents:
"I had a vision yesterday that I would finally be granted the martyrdom"
... "A friend was injured in an attack. They took him to the hospital. When
he opened his eyes he saw a beautiful woman. He cheered and thanked God that
he had finally become a martyr and was granted one of the divine virgins.
But then he realized that he was still alive and started crying." ... "They
exchanged Koranic verses and sayings of the prophet Mohammed, divine poetry
about the beauty of martyrdom."{1}
With US forces massing outside Fallujah ... "35 marines
swayed to Christian rock music and asked Jesus Christ to protect them ...
[the marines] perceive themselves as warriors fighting barbaric men opposed
to all that is good in the world. ... waved their hands in the air, M-16
assault rifles beside them, and chanted heavy metal-flavoured lyrics in praise
of Christ ... 'Victory belongs to the Lord,' another young marine read. ...
The marines then lined up and their chaplain blessed them with holy oil to
protect them."{2} ... Marine Colonel Gareth Brandl declared: "The enemy has
got a face. He's called Satan. He lives in Fallujah. And we're going to destroy
him."{3}
As another writer named William once said, "A plague
on both your houses!"
The thing called "collateral damage"
John Danforth, US Ambassador to the United Nations, said last month that
the Security Council "has pussyfooted around" its obligation to confront
all terrorists for too long. The council's new anti-terrorism resolution,
he declared, "states quite clearly that the intentional targeting of civilians
for death or serious bodily injury are criminal and never justifiable. The
alternative position is that some 'root causes' may, from time to time, justify
terrorists. The resolution, which we have adopted, states very simply that
the deliberate massacre of innocents is never justifiable in any cause.
Never."{4}
If one were to ask Danforth about the tens of thousands
of innocent civilians killed by the United States in Afghanistan and Iraq,
the good ambassador would most likely quote from his State Department handbook:
"Those were not deliberate deaths, they were all accidental. Why, we even
have a name for it, 'collateral damage'."
But if day after day, year after year, in one country
after another, the same scenario takes place -- American aircraft dropping
prodigious quantities of powerfully-lethal ordnance, with the full knowledge
that large numbers of civilians will perish or be maimed, even without missiles
going "astray" -- what can one say about the intentions of the American military?
The best thing that can be said is that they simply don't care. They want
to bomb and destroy for certain political ends and they are not particularly
concerned if the civilian population suffers grievously. "Negligent homicide"
might be the suitable legal terminology. The most charitable. As to bombing
houses in Fallujah because an (often unreliable) informant has reported that
a "bad guy" is there ... Well, killing innocent bystanders when targeting
someone else has long been considered murder in Western law.
In Afghanistan, when, on successive days in October 2001,
US gunships machine-gunned and cannoned the remote farming village of
Chowkar-Karez, killing as many as 93 civilians,
a Pentagon official was moved to respond at one point: "the people there
are dead because
we wanted them dead"{5}, while US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld commented:
"I cannot deal with that particular village."{6}
On occasion, US bombing campaigns do have as part of
their agenda the causing of suffering in the hope that it will lead the people
under the falling bombs to turn against their government. This was a recurrent
feature of the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999. US/NATO officials, in their
consummate arrogance, openly admitted to this again and again.{7}
And in Afghanistan we had the example of the chief of
the British Defense Staff, Adm. Sir Michael Boyce, declaring that the bombing
will continue "until the people of the country themselves recognize that
this is going to go on until they get the leadership changed."{8}
But as Telford Taylor, chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg
trials, has asked: "Is there any significant difference between killing a
babe-in-arms by a bomb dropped from a high-flying aircraft, or by an
infantryman's point-blank gunfire? ... The aviator's act [is described] as
more ‘impersonal' than the ground soldier's. This may be psychologically
valid, but surely is not morally satisfactory."{9}
Conscientious objectors
Awhile ago some soldiers home on leave from Iraq refused to go back. Nineteen
soldiers in Iraq refused to go on what they called "a suicide mission". The
military has forced thousands of soldiers in Iraq to postpone their departures
when their enlistment obligations ended, incensing many of the GIs. More
than 2,000 former soldiers in the states, ordered back to duty, are resisting
in various ways. Some of the last have applied for exemptions based on hardship,
others have gone to court to avoid being sent to the killing fields.
A number of these young men have applied to become
conscientious objectors. Very few of them have so far succeeded in becoming
a C.O., one reason being that the government still rejects the idea of "selective
opposition" to a particular war, as opposed to a pacifist opposition to all
wars. I wonder if any of those trying escape the god-awful war are familiar
with a method that was successful during the Vietnam War on some occasions.
Choosing the right moment, with a bunch of other soldiers and at least one
officer within hearing distance, today's aspiring C.O. could ask his fellow
soldiers in a raised voice if they know why they're in Iraq, whether they're
prepared to kill and be killed for oil, Halliburton, and American imperialism,
denounce the war as illegal and immoral, and point out that the vast majority
of Iraqis had a better life under Saddam Hussein than they do now under the
American occupation. The person might not be able to get all this in before
being grabbed by the military police, but his military career, in one way
or another, would likely be over. The same tactic could be used in the states
prior to being shipped to Iraq.
Of course, you wouldn't actually want to advocate this
to any present member of the armed forces. That could bring down upon you
the wrath of several kinds of domestic police, and a taste of justice Ayatollah
Ashcroft style.
Anti-communism redux
Richard Morin is the Director of Polling for the Washington Post. In his
column of November 14 he discussed a study by two university economists of
the possible reasons for the remarkable drop in life expectancy in Russia
since the fall of communism. The professors and Morin are certain that the
drop is not due to either the soaring unemployment rate or the elimination
of the state-run health care system. Instead, they point the finger at "alcohol
consumption and feelings of hopelessness". Hmmm. I pointed out to Mr. Morin
what I think would be obvious to many a high school sophomore, that unemployment
and lack of needed health care can contribute directly to alcohol consumption
and feelings of hopelessness.
What can explain the refusal of these three educated
people to look the obvious in the eye other than ideology? Like most Americans,
they may find it difficult to admit that the Soviet system had some very
good things going for it, which are missing in their new capitalist
paradise.
Oh, it's a conspiracy theory? (chuckle, chuckle, wink, wink)
"The Latest Conspiracy Theory -- Kerry Won -- Hits the Ether", read a Washington
Post headline on November 11.
This is in keeping with a Post tradition of damage control
of stories embarrassing to the power elite or American narcissism.
In the mid-1980s, there was the famous exposé
by Gary Webb in the San Jose Mercury about CIA funding drug traffickers in
California, which reportedly helped to spawn the crack epidemic. It was clearly
an important story, but the Post refrained from any report on it at all for
about three weeks, until it ran a brief mention of the story as part of a
larger story that cast doubt upon it.
On March 4, 2003, the Post ran the story of US spying
on Security Council members during an ongoing crucial debate about attacking
Iraq. This was a day after the story broke all over the world. Why the wait?
Apparently to locate a UN diplomat or two to make light of the whole matter.
In fact, what finally appeared, on page 17, was not a news story, but a story
playing down the real news story. The Post story was headlined: "Spying Report
No Shock To U.N."
The Post had done the exact same thing three days earlier
with the story about the Iraqi defector, Gen. Hussein Kamel, Saddam's son-in-law,
who had informed the UN weapons inspectors in 1995 that Iraq had destroyed
the vast majority of its WMD, a revelation which didn't fit well with US
preparation to invade Iraq. The Post ran the story on page zero until it
could find someone to cast doubt upon the veracity of Kamel's disclosure.
And now we have the story about the multiple possible
cases of error, manipulation, and intimidation in the presidential voting
and counting. The first mention of this appeared in the Post a full week
after the story had been highlighted all over the world. The Post finally
acknowledged the existence of the story primarily to make light of it, as
the headline above testifies.
These are examples of news coverage that's
counter-journalistic, aimed at suppressing an investigation or creating doubt
about an investigation that's already underway.
What about Watergate? The Post's exposure of Watergate
was so unusual they had to make a movie out of it. And it too would have
been called a conspiracy theory if the parties involved had not been caught
so quickly.
At least the world is paying attention
This should not be surprising to my select body of readers, but it's good
to know about it for possible use with the unenlightened ones of America.
A visit by an Amnesty International team to Darfur, Sudan
in September showed that the US human rights record has weakened its case
to intervene in a human rights crisis elsewhere.
"It has made it much harder for the US to take on its
self-described role as human rights leader," said William Schulz, executive
director of Amnesty International in the United States.
"The US loses an effective voice as a moral force in
the world because of a blotched record of its own." He said that in about
a third of all conversations with Sudanese government officials, they had
brought up one or other element of the US human rights record. Schulz was
of course aware that the US record had been raised by officials to "justify
their own ill-advised practices", but he said that this showed that "if you
commit human rights abuses yourself, you hand fodder to others to justify
their deviations".
Sudanese officials had raised issues such as the detentions
in Guantanamo Bay and the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, said the
Amnesty official.
Amnesty's director-general, Irene Khan, added: "The so-called
war on terror, the way it is being implemented by restricting civil liberties,
has had an enormous impact on our work and that of human rights organisations."
Sudan is not the first country to say that its record is no worse than what
the United States is doing, said Khan. "We've heard this from many countries,
in Asia, in Africa."{10}
Please be quiet. Reading not permitted.
Reading about the new Clinton Library, I had the thought that the future
George W. Bush Library (or Liebrary) will probably not be too big, even if
it holds all three of Dubya's books. (Yeah, I know, the same joke was made
about Reagan's library.)
NOTES
{1} Washington Post, November 9, 2004, p.24
{2} Agence France-Presse, November 7, 2004
{3} BBC-TV, UK, November 6, 2004
{4} Washington Post, October 9, 2004
{5} The Guardian (London), December 20, 2001, p.16
{6} US Defense Department briefing, November 1, 2001
{7} William Blum, Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower,
pp.76-7
{8} New York Times, October 28, 2001, p.B1
{9} Telford Taylor, "Nuremberg and Vietnam: an American Tragedy"
(New York, 1970), p.140-43
{10} Inter Press Service (Rome), September 21, 2004
William Blum <bblum6@aol.com> is the author
of:
Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War
2
Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only
Superpower
West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir
Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American
Empire
<www.killinghope.org >
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