I'm a military combat veteran and critic of our government's invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, and I don't support the troops. I'll protest in the streets to end the war, and when the troops come home, I'll do what I can to see that they get the benefits and treatment they need and deserve. That's my contribution to the troops.
Many people "oppose the war but support the troops." Rotten war, brave soldiers. I don't buy this at all. Although little Johnny or Judy might have once been that nice kid next door, he or she may now be engaged in massacres and atrocities.
"The troops" are waging war against a civilian population, making little or no attempt to distinguish between "insurgents" and "collateral" innocents in the vicinity. When faced with frequent sniping, mines, ambushes and treachery by supposed local "allies," even the best-trained occupation armies soon become brutal, sadistic, cynical and demoralized.
Torture and atrocities happen in all wars, on both sides. None are right, but America has to accept the fact that when little Johnny or Judy enlists in one of the branches of service, he becomes a hired killer.
People are convinced that however evil, wicked and misguided the president might have been to launch the war, the ordinary soldiers who are actually waging it are overwhelmingly dedicated and honorable. The average person thinks that "99.9 percent of the troops" are as pure as driven snow, our "best and brightest." I don't buy either of those jingoistic platitudes. When I was in the military, it was composed of many different kinds of people, including a fair share of losers, brutes and bloodthirsty thugs.
I believe that every one of the U.S. government's military and "civil" agents in Iraq are engaged in "a war of unprovoked aggression," and therefore all bear some guilt for participating in an evil enterprise. I am not suggesting that the man who drives a supply truck is as guilty as the man who shoots a baby at point blank range, but all of our forces are guilty to some degree.
Doing wrong is doing wrong, be it in Gainesville or Iraq. Bush told the soldiers to go, and they chose to obey. When the Nazis at Nuremberg claimed they were "only following orders," they received no mercy, nor did they deserve any. Perhaps the enlisted men and women who merely tagged along are less culpable than Bush, but nobody involved in this huge criminal undertaking is entitled to a clean bill of moral health.
The longer U.S. forces stay in Iraq, the more brutalized and undisciplined they will become, and the more hated they will be. The vast majority of the global community sees the U.S. as the bad guys, and rightly so. We have no moral reason for being in Iraq and the world knows it.
The problem in Iraq and Afghanistan is not that the U.S. forces have a few bad apples. The barrel itself is rotten. To remain morally upright, people need to steer clear of voluntary association with criminals and acting as their mercenaries.
You always hear that the troops signed a contract and must obey orders. Not if they deem such orders to be illegal or beyond moral bounds. They can always refuse to obey, go to jail, go AWOL or move to another country. These are better decisions than killing innocent civilians for corporate greed.
The American military machine has killed and tortured millions of innocent people and will continue to do so until made to stop. I call on my fellow vets to heed Thoreau's advice that we use our lives to "stop the machine" and thereby expiate the legacy of pain, suffering and death we participated in.
http://www.gainesville.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060708/EDITORIALS0101/60708001/1097/editorials
Tuesday, 30 June 2009
Saturday, 27 June 2009
Again, May God Forgive Us
The eyewitness account provided by Abu Ghraib inmate Kasim Mehaddi Hilas, describing one of numerous episodes of sexual abuse by U.S. interrogators, including rape, homosexual rape, sexual assaults with objects including a truncheon and a phosphorescent tube, and other forms of sexual abuse and humiliation of detainees.
We need to dispense immediately with the idea that releasing the second batch of photos depicting torture and other abuse at Abu Ghraib and six other installations would create an unacceptable danger to U.S. troops in the region.
Though it seem callous of me to point out as much, we should recognize that people who enlist in the military are paid, trained, and equipped to confront danger. We should also recognize that we do the cause of liberty no favors if we make it easier to invade and occupy foreign countries; indeed, we ought to do everything we can to accentuate the difficulty of carrying out criminal enterprises of that sort.
While we should focus most of our hostile attention on the policymakers responsible for sending the military on imperial errands of that sort, we shouldn't ignore the moral responsibility of every individual who enlists in the military and carries out the killing business such immoral policies entail.
Given the pervasive stench of imperial corruption exuded by all of our public institutions, I cannot understand how anybody possessing the moral equivalent of the sense of smell could enlist in the military, or remain therein – as if that particular organization enjoys some peculiar immunity from the decadence that afflicts the rest of the Regime.
Conservatives and others who revere the founders of our late Republic might recall that the men who won our independence and wrote the Constitution opposed a standing army, not only because it could be employed as an instrument of domestic tyranny, but also because it would offer irresistible opportunities for foreign adventurism. In this, as in so much else, the Founders' wisdom has withstood the passage of time.
Yes, it's entirely likely that releasing the photographs of torture and sexual assault – including homosexual rape and, God forgive us, the defilement of children – would lead to dangerous and potentially lethal complications for armed government employees who are killing people and destroying property in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, countries they invaded and continue to occupy by force.
If our rulers were genuinely concerned about danger to "our troops," they would release the Abu Ghraib documents and bring the troops home. There – problem solved! Instead, they are illegally suppressing the photos and keeping the troops in the field – and now letting it be known that the U.S. military will remain mired in Mesopotamia (which is the more tractable of the two ongoing conflicts) for another decade or longer.
I suspect that the "danger" that preoccupies the ruling Establishment is not that confronted by the troops (about whom that Establishment cares little), but rather the danger potentially posed by those troops if enough of them escape the mental dungeon of official indoctrination and take a good, critical look at the people, institutions, and causes for which they're hired to kill and die. Exposure to the abuse photos, and the battlefield consequences that would ensue, would tend to focus the mind in that direction.
An observation by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who investigated the Abu Ghraib abuses, seems to underscore my point.
"I am not sure what purpose [releasing the 2,000 additional photos of prisoner abuse] would serve other than a legal one and the consequence would be to imperil our troops, the only protectors of our foreign policy – "
Hold it right there: Taguba said "protectors of our foreign policy," not "defenders of our independence" or "guardians of our liberties." The foreign policy referred to entails open-ended entanglements in the affairs of nearly every nation on earth, as well as plundering huge sums from taxpayers to sustain a grotesquely huge military establishment and bribe political elites abroad.
That foreign policy cultivates misery and harvests war and terrorism. Why in God's Name would any decent human being defend that foreign policy in the abstract, much less spill blood to implement it?
Although I wish harm or death on no human being, it seems to me a good idea to adjust the current set of incentives in such a way that at least some American military personnel, as they deal with another gust of blowback, will have an overdue confrontation with their conscience and decide unilaterally to end their service of the world's largest criminal enterprise, the government of the United State (spelling intentional).
Am I trying to incite desertion?
Reducing the matter to terms simple enough for Sean Hannity to understand them – yes, I am, in those circumstances where desertion is necessary in order to avoid carrying out immoral, unsustainable policies in the service of a depraved Regime.
Desertion is a moral imperative when continued service implicates a soldier in crimes against God and mankind. Indeed, there are times when desertion is a moral duty.
Yes, American enlistees swear an oath in God's Name. Then again, so do Mafiosi. Nobody outside of that criminal fraternity considers it improper for a Mafia foot soldier to renounce his oath.
No oath of service can sanctify participation in a criminal enterprise. What should distinguish a republican military from an armed gang is a sacred commitment to the rule of law – meaning the defense of individual liberty and property, and the enforcement of measures that limit the power of government.
At least some military and law enforcement personnel (or do I repeat myself) have come to understand that the oath they swore requires that they be willing to disobey certain orders. In exceptional circumstances, fidelity to constitutional principles would require wholesale repudiation of military service, rather than selective refusal to comply with illegal orders.
We applauded the courage of those who "defected" from the Red Army during its occupation of Afghanistan. (Interestingly, I don't recall the correct term, "deserted," being used to describe such cases.) Apart from nationalistic special pleading, I can't think of a way of framing an argument to justify the Soviet deserter while execrating an American stationed in Iraq or Afghanistan who follows the same course of action for the same reason: The triumph of conscience over programming.
For those whose conscience can withstand such an assault, another motive might prove effective. Those who have seen the film Braveheart remember its depiction of the Battle of Stirling Bridge: Huge, serried rows of British infantry, archers, and heavy cavalry assemble across the field from a large, poorly armed, and indifferently motivated throng of Scottish foot soldiers, all of them hapless conscripts forced by their feudal lords to fight.
Near the front of the Scottish host the lords – whose allegiances are divided by favors dispensed on them by the English King Edward I – are seen frantically discussing a negotiating strategy. The camera then pans to a conversation between two serfs, who in disgusted terms discuss the impending sell-out, which will follow the same blueprint as several before it: The armies will briefly skirmish, then a negotiation will ensue leaving the lords richer and the serfs paying more in taxes.
"That's it lads," one of the serfs exclaims. "I'm not fighting for these bastards!"
At some point, if liberty is to have a fighting chance, American military personnel are going to have to experience an epiphany and decide that they're no longer going to fight on behalf of the bastards running the Regime.
http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/
We need to dispense immediately with the idea that releasing the second batch of photos depicting torture and other abuse at Abu Ghraib and six other installations would create an unacceptable danger to U.S. troops in the region.
Though it seem callous of me to point out as much, we should recognize that people who enlist in the military are paid, trained, and equipped to confront danger. We should also recognize that we do the cause of liberty no favors if we make it easier to invade and occupy foreign countries; indeed, we ought to do everything we can to accentuate the difficulty of carrying out criminal enterprises of that sort.
While we should focus most of our hostile attention on the policymakers responsible for sending the military on imperial errands of that sort, we shouldn't ignore the moral responsibility of every individual who enlists in the military and carries out the killing business such immoral policies entail.
Given the pervasive stench of imperial corruption exuded by all of our public institutions, I cannot understand how anybody possessing the moral equivalent of the sense of smell could enlist in the military, or remain therein – as if that particular organization enjoys some peculiar immunity from the decadence that afflicts the rest of the Regime.
Conservatives and others who revere the founders of our late Republic might recall that the men who won our independence and wrote the Constitution opposed a standing army, not only because it could be employed as an instrument of domestic tyranny, but also because it would offer irresistible opportunities for foreign adventurism. In this, as in so much else, the Founders' wisdom has withstood the passage of time.
Yes, it's entirely likely that releasing the photographs of torture and sexual assault – including homosexual rape and, God forgive us, the defilement of children – would lead to dangerous and potentially lethal complications for armed government employees who are killing people and destroying property in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, countries they invaded and continue to occupy by force.
If our rulers were genuinely concerned about danger to "our troops," they would release the Abu Ghraib documents and bring the troops home. There – problem solved! Instead, they are illegally suppressing the photos and keeping the troops in the field – and now letting it be known that the U.S. military will remain mired in Mesopotamia (which is the more tractable of the two ongoing conflicts) for another decade or longer.
I suspect that the "danger" that preoccupies the ruling Establishment is not that confronted by the troops (about whom that Establishment cares little), but rather the danger potentially posed by those troops if enough of them escape the mental dungeon of official indoctrination and take a good, critical look at the people, institutions, and causes for which they're hired to kill and die. Exposure to the abuse photos, and the battlefield consequences that would ensue, would tend to focus the mind in that direction.
An observation by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who investigated the Abu Ghraib abuses, seems to underscore my point.
"I am not sure what purpose [releasing the 2,000 additional photos of prisoner abuse] would serve other than a legal one and the consequence would be to imperil our troops, the only protectors of our foreign policy – "
Hold it right there: Taguba said "protectors of our foreign policy," not "defenders of our independence" or "guardians of our liberties." The foreign policy referred to entails open-ended entanglements in the affairs of nearly every nation on earth, as well as plundering huge sums from taxpayers to sustain a grotesquely huge military establishment and bribe political elites abroad.
That foreign policy cultivates misery and harvests war and terrorism. Why in God's Name would any decent human being defend that foreign policy in the abstract, much less spill blood to implement it?
Although I wish harm or death on no human being, it seems to me a good idea to adjust the current set of incentives in such a way that at least some American military personnel, as they deal with another gust of blowback, will have an overdue confrontation with their conscience and decide unilaterally to end their service of the world's largest criminal enterprise, the government of the United State (spelling intentional).
Am I trying to incite desertion?
Reducing the matter to terms simple enough for Sean Hannity to understand them – yes, I am, in those circumstances where desertion is necessary in order to avoid carrying out immoral, unsustainable policies in the service of a depraved Regime.
Desertion is a moral imperative when continued service implicates a soldier in crimes against God and mankind. Indeed, there are times when desertion is a moral duty.
Yes, American enlistees swear an oath in God's Name. Then again, so do Mafiosi. Nobody outside of that criminal fraternity considers it improper for a Mafia foot soldier to renounce his oath.
No oath of service can sanctify participation in a criminal enterprise. What should distinguish a republican military from an armed gang is a sacred commitment to the rule of law – meaning the defense of individual liberty and property, and the enforcement of measures that limit the power of government.
At least some military and law enforcement personnel (or do I repeat myself) have come to understand that the oath they swore requires that they be willing to disobey certain orders. In exceptional circumstances, fidelity to constitutional principles would require wholesale repudiation of military service, rather than selective refusal to comply with illegal orders.
We applauded the courage of those who "defected" from the Red Army during its occupation of Afghanistan. (Interestingly, I don't recall the correct term, "deserted," being used to describe such cases.) Apart from nationalistic special pleading, I can't think of a way of framing an argument to justify the Soviet deserter while execrating an American stationed in Iraq or Afghanistan who follows the same course of action for the same reason: The triumph of conscience over programming.
For those whose conscience can withstand such an assault, another motive might prove effective. Those who have seen the film Braveheart remember its depiction of the Battle of Stirling Bridge: Huge, serried rows of British infantry, archers, and heavy cavalry assemble across the field from a large, poorly armed, and indifferently motivated throng of Scottish foot soldiers, all of them hapless conscripts forced by their feudal lords to fight.
Near the front of the Scottish host the lords – whose allegiances are divided by favors dispensed on them by the English King Edward I – are seen frantically discussing a negotiating strategy. The camera then pans to a conversation between two serfs, who in disgusted terms discuss the impending sell-out, which will follow the same blueprint as several before it: The armies will briefly skirmish, then a negotiation will ensue leaving the lords richer and the serfs paying more in taxes.
"That's it lads," one of the serfs exclaims. "I'm not fighting for these bastards!"
At some point, if liberty is to have a fighting chance, American military personnel are going to have to experience an epiphany and decide that they're no longer going to fight on behalf of the bastards running the Regime.
http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/
Wednesday, 24 June 2009
Killers in the Classroom
During a heated debate in a class I teach on social justice, several US Marines who had done tours in Iraq told me that they had "sacrificed" by “serving” in Iraq so that I could enjoy the freedom to teach in the USA. Parroting their master’s slogan about “fighting over there so we don’t have to fight over here”, these students proudly proclaimed that they terrorized and killed defenseless Iraqis. They intimated that their Arab victims are nothing more to them than collateral damage, incidental to their receipt of some money and an education.
A room full of students listened as a US Marine told of the invasion of Baghdad and Falluja and how he killed innocent Iraqis at a check point. He called them “collateral damage” and said he had followed the “rules”. A Muslim-American student in front of him said “I could slap you but then you would kill me”. A young female Muslim student gasped “I am a freshman; I never thought to hear of this in a class. I feel sick, like I will pass out.”
I knew in that moment that this was what the future of teaching about justice would include: teaching war criminals who sit glaring at me with hatred for daring to speak the truth of their atrocities and who, if paid to, would disappear, torture and kill me. I wondered that night how long I really have in this so called “free” country to teach my students and to be with my children and grandchildren.
The American military and mercenary soldiers who “sacrificed” their lives did not do so for the teacher’s freedom to teach the truth about the so-called war on terror, or any of US history for that matter. They sacrificed their lives, limbs and sanity for money, some education and the thrills of the violence for which they are socially bred. Sacrificing for the “bling and booty” in Iraq or Afghanistan, The Philippines, Grenada, Central America, Mexico, Somalia, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, or any of the other numerous wars and invasions spanning US history as an entity and beginning with their foundational practice of killing the Indians and stealing their land.
Many of the classes that I teach now include students who “served” in the US military and security corporations. There are also many students who intend to join the US military upon completion of a degree because with the degree they get a bigger “sign on” bonus of ten to fifty thousand dollars. Their position is supported by many of the student body, who, vegetating according to the American Plan, believe they should “support their troops”. The excuses that they give for joining or intending to join the US military terrorist training camps are first and foremost motivated by a desire for money. One student proudly said that he is willing to kill for money, a better standard of living and an education. Another student, who had done two tours of duty to the Empire in Iraq, justified killing and torture, citing the importance of staying on top as the world’s number one super power so that his family could have the highest standard of living and unlimited access to the world’s oil supplies.
Yet another soldier-student said that there would always be wars and someone had to do it. The”it” is killing, rape, and plunder for profit. Some of the soldier-students agreed that military terrorism was thrilling. Stopping and killing people at checkpoints in order to maintain a comfortable lifestyle in the USA was worth the risk of being killed or maimed. Little did they know that the very education they would kill for could include a course on social justice in which they would be compelled to examine their motives, beliefs and actions in an evil, illegal, immoral and unjust invasion and occupation of a people who never hurt or harmed them or any of their fellow citizens.
To be fair, in this week’s discussion in class there was some mention that some of the student’s intentions had been honorable at the time that they joined the military. They wanted to “help other people”. A few woman students who want to join the military commented that they would be working to “free and defend” people here and abroad. However, for the most part and by their own admission, personal financial gain was their main focus in signing on. Their bottom line was getting the money and their thrills by joining and belonging to the biggest terrorist organization in the world, the USA.
What appears to trouble the soldier student is that the rhetoric of fighting for freedom and democracy is a lie that cannot blanket the horror and guilt of their terrorism. They do not want to hear that participation in invasion and occupation, murder and pillaging, is logically inconsistent with any legitimate concept of freedom or liberation. They know the greed and programmed lust for violence that motivates them. They expect that if they can make it out alive, they get some money, a comfortable lifestyle and an education. Their plan is to secure the oil, the diamonds, the gold, the water, the guns, the drugs, and the bling for their masters, who they hope will cut them in on the swag. They say that someone has to be on top and they want to be on the side of the strong, not the weak. Robbing Hoods, not Robin Hoods.
And now, here they sit in my course on social justice, terrorist war criminals, wanting high paying “criminal justice” jobs in a university Justice Studies program. They want approval, appreciation and honors for terrorism, torture, and murder. They want a university degree so they can get an even higher salary terrorizing more people around the world with security companies such as Blackwater or Halliburton. They want that appropriately named “sheepskin” so they can join the CIA, FBI, and other police and track down and terrorize US residents here.
These military and mercenary terrorist-students are trained in terrorist training camps all under the USA, funded by American taxpayers. In fact, people under the USA are “sacrificing” their health care and their children’s educations while donating their tax dollars to these terrorist training camps. These terrorist camps train money hungry working class stiffs to murder, steal and plunder for the power hungry US corporate war lords.
There is a saying that “if you do the crime, you do the time”. My response is that “If you do the war crimes, you will do time in hell, whether the hell of war trauma and shock, of diseases such as those caused by depleted uranium, the old-fashioned traditional hell, fire and brimstone assigned to malefactors…or the hell of sitting in a social justice class and discovering what the hell you are in hell for, or are about to be.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17074.htm
A room full of students listened as a US Marine told of the invasion of Baghdad and Falluja and how he killed innocent Iraqis at a check point. He called them “collateral damage” and said he had followed the “rules”. A Muslim-American student in front of him said “I could slap you but then you would kill me”. A young female Muslim student gasped “I am a freshman; I never thought to hear of this in a class. I feel sick, like I will pass out.”
I knew in that moment that this was what the future of teaching about justice would include: teaching war criminals who sit glaring at me with hatred for daring to speak the truth of their atrocities and who, if paid to, would disappear, torture and kill me. I wondered that night how long I really have in this so called “free” country to teach my students and to be with my children and grandchildren.
The American military and mercenary soldiers who “sacrificed” their lives did not do so for the teacher’s freedom to teach the truth about the so-called war on terror, or any of US history for that matter. They sacrificed their lives, limbs and sanity for money, some education and the thrills of the violence for which they are socially bred. Sacrificing for the “bling and booty” in Iraq or Afghanistan, The Philippines, Grenada, Central America, Mexico, Somalia, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, or any of the other numerous wars and invasions spanning US history as an entity and beginning with their foundational practice of killing the Indians and stealing their land.
Many of the classes that I teach now include students who “served” in the US military and security corporations. There are also many students who intend to join the US military upon completion of a degree because with the degree they get a bigger “sign on” bonus of ten to fifty thousand dollars. Their position is supported by many of the student body, who, vegetating according to the American Plan, believe they should “support their troops”. The excuses that they give for joining or intending to join the US military terrorist training camps are first and foremost motivated by a desire for money. One student proudly said that he is willing to kill for money, a better standard of living and an education. Another student, who had done two tours of duty to the Empire in Iraq, justified killing and torture, citing the importance of staying on top as the world’s number one super power so that his family could have the highest standard of living and unlimited access to the world’s oil supplies.
Yet another soldier-student said that there would always be wars and someone had to do it. The”it” is killing, rape, and plunder for profit. Some of the soldier-students agreed that military terrorism was thrilling. Stopping and killing people at checkpoints in order to maintain a comfortable lifestyle in the USA was worth the risk of being killed or maimed. Little did they know that the very education they would kill for could include a course on social justice in which they would be compelled to examine their motives, beliefs and actions in an evil, illegal, immoral and unjust invasion and occupation of a people who never hurt or harmed them or any of their fellow citizens.
To be fair, in this week’s discussion in class there was some mention that some of the student’s intentions had been honorable at the time that they joined the military. They wanted to “help other people”. A few woman students who want to join the military commented that they would be working to “free and defend” people here and abroad. However, for the most part and by their own admission, personal financial gain was their main focus in signing on. Their bottom line was getting the money and their thrills by joining and belonging to the biggest terrorist organization in the world, the USA.
What appears to trouble the soldier student is that the rhetoric of fighting for freedom and democracy is a lie that cannot blanket the horror and guilt of their terrorism. They do not want to hear that participation in invasion and occupation, murder and pillaging, is logically inconsistent with any legitimate concept of freedom or liberation. They know the greed and programmed lust for violence that motivates them. They expect that if they can make it out alive, they get some money, a comfortable lifestyle and an education. Their plan is to secure the oil, the diamonds, the gold, the water, the guns, the drugs, and the bling for their masters, who they hope will cut them in on the swag. They say that someone has to be on top and they want to be on the side of the strong, not the weak. Robbing Hoods, not Robin Hoods.
And now, here they sit in my course on social justice, terrorist war criminals, wanting high paying “criminal justice” jobs in a university Justice Studies program. They want approval, appreciation and honors for terrorism, torture, and murder. They want a university degree so they can get an even higher salary terrorizing more people around the world with security companies such as Blackwater or Halliburton. They want that appropriately named “sheepskin” so they can join the CIA, FBI, and other police and track down and terrorize US residents here.
These military and mercenary terrorist-students are trained in terrorist training camps all under the USA, funded by American taxpayers. In fact, people under the USA are “sacrificing” their health care and their children’s educations while donating their tax dollars to these terrorist training camps. These terrorist camps train money hungry working class stiffs to murder, steal and plunder for the power hungry US corporate war lords.
There is a saying that “if you do the crime, you do the time”. My response is that “If you do the war crimes, you will do time in hell, whether the hell of war trauma and shock, of diseases such as those caused by depleted uranium, the old-fashioned traditional hell, fire and brimstone assigned to malefactors…or the hell of sitting in a social justice class and discovering what the hell you are in hell for, or are about to be.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17074.htm
Monday, 22 June 2009
Why we don't support our troops
Since the outbreak of war the media has relentlessly pushed the line that whatever your attitude to the war you must support the Australian troops.
Simon Crean, Bob Brown and leading figures in the anti-war movement have fallen into line behind the rhetoric that anti-war activists should patriotically back "our" boys. This is a dangerous stance for anti-war campaigners to take as it concedes ground to the warmongers and makes it harder to build a powerful movement against US imperialism.
We need to build a movement to stop the killing in this war and in the future wars that US imperialism with Australian backing is preparing to wage - not for spurious, patriotic reasons back our troops.
Socialists don't want to see young, working class Australians die in this war. That's why we call on the Howard government to immediately pull Australian troops out of the Middle East.
The rank and file soldiers are just pawns used by the government. Howard does not give a stuff whether they are killed, wounded or suffer mental breakdowns.
The Australian and US troops from the last Gulf War and from Vietnam were effectively abandoned after the war. The support and compensation payments their families received were pathetic.
For Howard and the Australian ruling class workers are simply fodder to be exploited at home for profit in the factories, offices or building sites or cannon fodder to die overseas in the pursuit of the profits of Australian and US companies in their wars of imperial conquest.
The best thing we can do to save the lives of rank and file Australian soldiers and of Iraqi soldiers and civilians is to build the largest protests possible against this murderous war. The more we do to undermine the war effort the quicker the troops will be brought home.
Even though we won't stop this war, the bigger the movement we build against it the more difficult it will be for the likes of Howard to send off more working class Australians to die in future wars. One of the triumphs of the anti-Vietnam War movement was that for many years afterwards it severely limited the ability of US and Australian governments to send troops off to fight and die.
Though socialists don't want to see rank and file Australian troops die we don't in any way support them fighting this war. We don't believe that Australian troops should obey orders and carry out their "duty" to kill Iraqis.
Socialists are totally opposed to Australian troops killing Iraqi troops or civilians. We do not privilege the lives of Australians over those of the people of Iraq, particularly as "our" side is totally wrong in this war.
Australian troops are not simply doing their "job". They are helping to impose the bloody rule of US, British and Australian imperialism on the people of Iraq.
It was fantastic that some Australian sailors effectively refused to fight in this war by refusing inoculations. Socialists realise it is very difficult for rank and file soldiers to refuse orders but to the extent that they can without putting their lives at risk we encourage them to try to frustrate the war aims of Bush, Howard and their officers.
By taking action to undermine the war effort Australian troops will not only help the Iraqi people they will help preserve their own lives. Mindlessly obeying the orders of Howard and co is the surest way to put your life and future at risk.
This is unlikely to be a long war so it will be difficult for US and Australian troops to organise against it. But to the extent that Australian troops refuse to fire on the enemy, disobey orders and so on the anti-war movement must support them against the brutal discipline imposed by the military authorities.
In Vietnam the revolt by the US troops played an important role in ending the war. US GIs published their own anti-war papers, wore peace symbols on their helmets, disobeyed orders, deserted and eventually collectively refused to fight.
The heroic example in Iraq of a US soldier rolling grenades into officers' tents, injuring over a dozen of them, is an inspiring reminder of the similar practice of "fragging" that had US officers in Vietnam terrified of their own troops.
In 1970 a mass meeting of union delegates in Melbourne declared:
"We encourage those young men already conscripted to refuse to accept orders against their conscience, and those in Vietnam to lay down their arms in mutiny against the heinous barbarism perpetrated in our name upon the innocent, aged, men, and women and children."
It is advice that is very pertinent today.
http://www.sa.org.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=915&Itemid=106
Simon Crean, Bob Brown and leading figures in the anti-war movement have fallen into line behind the rhetoric that anti-war activists should patriotically back "our" boys. This is a dangerous stance for anti-war campaigners to take as it concedes ground to the warmongers and makes it harder to build a powerful movement against US imperialism.
We need to build a movement to stop the killing in this war and in the future wars that US imperialism with Australian backing is preparing to wage - not for spurious, patriotic reasons back our troops.
Socialists don't want to see young, working class Australians die in this war. That's why we call on the Howard government to immediately pull Australian troops out of the Middle East.
The rank and file soldiers are just pawns used by the government. Howard does not give a stuff whether they are killed, wounded or suffer mental breakdowns.
The Australian and US troops from the last Gulf War and from Vietnam were effectively abandoned after the war. The support and compensation payments their families received were pathetic.
For Howard and the Australian ruling class workers are simply fodder to be exploited at home for profit in the factories, offices or building sites or cannon fodder to die overseas in the pursuit of the profits of Australian and US companies in their wars of imperial conquest.
The best thing we can do to save the lives of rank and file Australian soldiers and of Iraqi soldiers and civilians is to build the largest protests possible against this murderous war. The more we do to undermine the war effort the quicker the troops will be brought home.
Even though we won't stop this war, the bigger the movement we build against it the more difficult it will be for the likes of Howard to send off more working class Australians to die in future wars. One of the triumphs of the anti-Vietnam War movement was that for many years afterwards it severely limited the ability of US and Australian governments to send troops off to fight and die.
Though socialists don't want to see rank and file Australian troops die we don't in any way support them fighting this war. We don't believe that Australian troops should obey orders and carry out their "duty" to kill Iraqis.
Socialists are totally opposed to Australian troops killing Iraqi troops or civilians. We do not privilege the lives of Australians over those of the people of Iraq, particularly as "our" side is totally wrong in this war.
Australian troops are not simply doing their "job". They are helping to impose the bloody rule of US, British and Australian imperialism on the people of Iraq.
It was fantastic that some Australian sailors effectively refused to fight in this war by refusing inoculations. Socialists realise it is very difficult for rank and file soldiers to refuse orders but to the extent that they can without putting their lives at risk we encourage them to try to frustrate the war aims of Bush, Howard and their officers.
By taking action to undermine the war effort Australian troops will not only help the Iraqi people they will help preserve their own lives. Mindlessly obeying the orders of Howard and co is the surest way to put your life and future at risk.
This is unlikely to be a long war so it will be difficult for US and Australian troops to organise against it. But to the extent that Australian troops refuse to fire on the enemy, disobey orders and so on the anti-war movement must support them against the brutal discipline imposed by the military authorities.
In Vietnam the revolt by the US troops played an important role in ending the war. US GIs published their own anti-war papers, wore peace symbols on their helmets, disobeyed orders, deserted and eventually collectively refused to fight.
The heroic example in Iraq of a US soldier rolling grenades into officers' tents, injuring over a dozen of them, is an inspiring reminder of the similar practice of "fragging" that had US officers in Vietnam terrified of their own troops.
In 1970 a mass meeting of union delegates in Melbourne declared:
"We encourage those young men already conscripted to refuse to accept orders against their conscience, and those in Vietnam to lay down their arms in mutiny against the heinous barbarism perpetrated in our name upon the innocent, aged, men, and women and children."
It is advice that is very pertinent today.
http://www.sa.org.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=915&Itemid=106
Sunday, 21 June 2009
Would You “Support the Troops” in Bolivia?
Soldiers who join the military voluntarily sign a very unusual contract with the federal government. It is a contract that effectively obligates the soldier to go anywhere in the world on orders of the president and kill people as part of an invasion force against other countries. It doesn’t matter whether the intended victims deserve to die or not. That issue is irrelevant as far as the soldier is concerned. His job is not to question why people he is ordered to kill should be killed; his job is simply to invade and carry out the killing, no questions asked.
For example, let’s say that President Bush orders U.S. troops to invade and occupy Bolivia. The order would reach the Pentagon, which then would pass the order downward to generals, colonels, majors, captains, sergeants, and privates in America’s standing army. With perhaps one or two exceptions, no soldier would challenge the president’s decision to invade Bolivia, because that’s not part of the employment contract he has signed with the military. The soldier’s duty would simply be to carry out the president’s order to invade Bolivia.
Suppose a soldier says, “Mr. President, I can’t carry out this order because it would involve killing innocent people wrongfully, including the people who are going to defend their nation from this attack. You have no moral right to order an invasion of Bolivia because neither the Bolivian people nor their government has attacked the United States. Moreover, the invasion would be illegal under our form of government because you haven’t secured the constitutionally required congressional declaration of war. My conscience will not permit me to kill any Bolivians as part of this operation, including Bolivian soldiers defending their nation from this attack. Therefore, I simply cannot participate in this invasion. ”
That soldier would be taken aside by a few superior officers for a very candid and direct conversation. His superiors would explain to him that it is not within his job description to second-guess the president’s decision to attack Bolivia. The soldier’s job, he would have carefully explained to him, is to trust that his commander in chief is making the right decision and to carry out his order. The soldier’s superiors would also explain to him that if he persists in his refusal to participate in the operation, he will be court-martialed and severely punished.
What about conscientious-objector status? Wouldn’t that relieve the soldier from participating in the attack on Bolivia?
No, because under military rules conscientious-objector status applies only if a soldier objects on moral or religious grounds to all war. A soldier is not permitted to gain conscientious-objector status if he happens to object to a particular war as being illegal, unjust, or immoral.
Back to our Bolivia example. To make it easy on U.S. soldiers who might feel a bit squeamish about killing Bolivians, the president could announce that they were invading Bolivia in order to oust the recently elected socialist president, a man who has close ties to Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chavez, who is another socialist and who has close ties to Fidel Castro, who is both a socialist and a communist and who had close ties to the communist Soviet Union, which had once promised to bury America.
Thus, by invading Bolivia, the president would argue, the troops would be helping bring freedom and stability to Latin America and also be protecting the United States from the threat of communism. Moreover, U.S. troops occupying Bolivia would be serving as a magnet for attracting Latin American communists and terrorists that U.S. troops could then exterminate. Finally, the president could provide another rationale for the invasion: that by invading Bolivia, U.S. troops would actually be defending the United States from an invasion by undocumented Bolivian immigrants.
It would be all the troops would need to go forward with a clear conscience. Undoubtedly, 99 percent of U.S. troops would obey the orders of the president to invade Bolivia, even if they felt a bit uneasy about killing people in the process. They would faithfully fulfill the terms of their employment contract.
How do we know that this is true — that U.S. troops would faithfully do their duty by carrying out the orders of their commander in chief to invade Bolivia? Easy — because we know that they followed the president’s order to invade Iraq, a country that never attacked the United States or even threatened to do so. And on invasion day, they would dutifully drop 500-pound bombs on Bolivia, fire missiles into cars and buildings, and shoot Bolivian soldiers who resisted the invasion. Women and children who would be killed as part of the operation would be considered the unfortunate collateral damage of war. And the more the Bolivian military resisted the invasion, the more it would be held morally responsible for Bolivian casualties.
Throughout the operation, the troops would be reporting back on how they’re killing the “bad guys.” American reporters, donning military helmets and embedding themselves with the troops, would dutifully attend Pentagon briefings, after which the U.S. press would breathlessly exalt the heroic exploits of the troops. Bronze and silver stars would be awarded soldiers who fought courageously against Bolivian soldiers and insurgents.
No one would keep count of how many Bolivians were killed in the operation because no one would want to know and no one would care. Only the deaths of American soldiers would count and be counted.
The American people would be infected with war fever. Dissidents would be challenged with “Now is not the time to debate whether we should have gone to war against Bolivia. The fact is that we are at war and so we’ve got to support the troops.” The FBI would monitor anti-war protests for threats to national security from socialists, communists, and terrorists. The country would be rife with anti-immigrant hysteria, and there would be raids, round-ups, and deportations of Hispanic immigrants.
Protestant ministers and Catholic priests would exhort their parishioners to support the troops in harm’s way. Those ministers and priests serving in military reserve units as chaplains would accompany the troops to Bolivia and explain to them that war is in the Old Testament, that as soldiers they could trust the judgment of the president, and that they could kill Bolivians with clear consciences. Church newspapers and bulletins would wax eloquent on how this was a “just” war, especially given that it would be protecting the national security of the United States from communism and also liberating the Bolivian people from the horrors of socialism and the threat of communism. The American flag would be displayed proudly in church altars, especially during Sunday service or mass (except, of course, in churches in Bolivia, where Protestant ministers and Catholic priests would be proudly displaying the Bolivian flag.)
People who came to the assistance of the Bolivians from Colombia, Ecuador, and other Latin American countries would be considered “terrorists” or “bad guys.” Those who came from Cuba would be called “communist terrorists.” And U.S. troops would kill them all, especially if they were trying to kill U.S. troops.
But what about the morality of the entire operation? Where is the morality of killing people who have never attacked the United States and who have done nothing worse than try to defend their country from a wrongful invader? Where is the morality in killing in “self-defense” when you don’t have a right to be there killing people in the first place? Does a burglar who has entered someone’s home in the middle of the night have the moral (or legal) right to claim self-defense if he kills the homeowner who shot at him while he was burglarizing the homeowner’s home in the middle of the night?
Indeed, where is the morality in signing a contract that obligates a person to go kill people who haven’t attacked his country?
“But we signed the employment contract thinking that we were defending America,” soldiers say. “We’re just trying to be patriots.”
But everyone knows that presidents don’t use their standing army to defend America. They use it to attack countries that haven’t attacked the United States. After all, how many times has America been invaded by a foreign army in the last 50 years? (Answer: None!) What country in the world today has the military capability of invading the United States? (Answer: None!)
By signing a contract that obligates the soldier to kill people in the process of obeying the president’s order to invade other nations, the soldier effectively agrees to surrender his conscience to the will of the president. After killing people pursuant to that contract, he effectively says to himself and to God, “I’m not responsible for killing that person I just shot or bombed because I signed a contract with my employer that obligates me to kill people on his command and that relieves me of having to decide whether my employer’s order was right or wrong.”
But the troops aren’t the only ones who surrender their consciences. As soon as the troops are committed to battle, many citizens also surrender their consciences, rallying to support the troops and cheering them to victory, praying that God bring an end to the violence and the “terrorism” in the country that the troops have invaded, without heed to whether the troops have the moral right to be in the invaded nation killing people.
How wise is the surrender of conscience, both among the troops and the citizenry, in both the short term and long term, especially in a country that prides itself on Judeo-Christian principles?
In my opinion, not wise at all.
Thursday, 18 June 2009
No, I Do Not Support "The Troops"
I. Introduction
I have intended to write this post for the last few years. As Memorial Day approaches, I thought: why not do it right now? Indeed, why the hell not? I have never sought outrage for its own sake; I write what I do because I am convinced it is true, and I am arrogant enough to believe that some of what I write concerns matters of importance. But I am prepared to admit that outrage -- especially when it proceeds from sentimental, superficial, aggressively anti-intellectual cultural pieties that enjoy widespread acceptance -- is a highly enjoyable side effect. Now that I consider the matter, at least insofar as negative reaction to certain of my essays is concerned, outrage is most typically not a side effect at all, but the reaction in toto. This was certainly true of the criticism that greeted, "Yes, I Want the United States to Lose," an article written in early 2007.
In reviewing that essay today, I see that I've been making one foundational argument for some time: that the United States' invasion and occupation of Iraq constituted and constitutes today an incomprehensibly monstrous series of war crimes. I extended this argument in a piece concerning the last two presidential candidates, "A Choice of War Criminals." I have yet to see a convincing argument that these actions by the U.S. do not constitute war crimes. The reason for that is simple and unavoidable: such an argument does not exist -- not, that is, if one actually examines the relevant evidence. Almost all American politicians, and almost all commentators and bloggers, resolutely refuse to consider that evidence, just as they refuse to consider the conclusions it compels. Instead, either by conscious design or (more commonly, at least as far as those not regularly concerned with politics are concerned) by unthinkingly absorbing basic assumptions from the cultural atmosphere, they believe and advance the central tenets of the American myth.
In this respect, they function in a manner identical to that employed by Barack Obama. In analyzing the monumental series of lies offered by Obama in his widely-praised speech about race in America -- and that praise revealed in a notably unforgiving manner just how remarkably stupid our public discourse has become -- I wrote:
As indicated, in some respects this current essay may be considered a companion piece to, "Yes, I Want the United States to Lose." This article also amplifies some themes in a piece I wrote for Memorial Day two years ago: "Against Annihilation of the Spirit: Let Us All Become Cowards." The starting point of that essay was an appreciation of an altogether remarkable film, The Americanization of Emily, with its extraordinary screenplay by Paddy Chayefsky. About that film, I said:
And to set the broader context for our consideration of the unquestioning reverence offered by virtually everyone for "the troops," I also provide these passages from, "Let Us All Become Cowards":
II. "The Troops" as the Crucial, Indispensable Element of Imperial Power
Because a certain kind of defender of American mythology will be eager to misunderstand and distort my argument, I must briefly clarify a few preliminary matters. This piece concerns "the troops" as an institution; that is, it concerns the U.S. military as the indispensable and primary means of implementing and realizing the goals of the U.S. ruling class. The major goal is worldwide dominance, to be achieved by, among other elements, a global empire of bases. As detailed in that essay, not only Republicans but Democrats as well, and also liberal bloggers such as Atrios and Think Progress, support an ever bigger and bigger military, regardless of the fact that the U.S. spends more on defense than the rest of the world combined. This, too, is a goal embraced by Obama, as noted in a typically bloodthirsty appreciation offered by Media Matters and discussed in the middle section of this recent article.
Please note that this goal of worldwide control has nothing whatsoever to do with self-defense in any meaningful way. It is a policy of offensive aggression, unceasing and with an unending list of possible targets. Thus, the primary purpose for which "the troops" are utilized is not defensive in nature, but offensive, against countries that have never threatened the U.S. and that most often could not threaten the U.S. in any serious manner. A person who joins the military is obliged to understand this, on the general principle that an adult ought to know what he is doing. This is especially true when a person seeks to become an instrumentality of death, either firsthand and directly, or indirectly, by offering support in any one of numerous ways for those who commit the murders.
Having said this, I will add that in many instances, I will decline to pass moral judgment in an individual case. To make that kind of judgment, one would need certain information: the understanding of the particular individual him or herself, what information he is aware of and has access to, and similar kinds of matters. In addition, I am painfully aware that, for many people, there appear to be no other avenues for education and advancement (economic and otherwise), a terrible truth that has broader application as the U.S. economy collapses. (Do you think it is a coincidence that government and military service become one of the last remaining secure areas of employment? I encourage you to consider the issue again. I am not suggesting that the ruling class has engineered widespread economic collapse to drive people into government service, military or of other kinds, but I do not suggest that primarily because I don't think any group, no matter how powerful, could control the huge number of variables involved, although they might believe they could. Hubris and narcissism usually go together. But I certainly do suggest that the government and the ruling class is more than willing to take full advantage of this calamitous state of affairs.)
Even though I will not offer moral judgments across the board, I will make judgments in certain categories of cases. Two major categories deserve condemnation in the strongest terms: those who torture other human beings, and those who diligently train to murder individuals who have never threatened them or their country and who, all too often, then do murder them. We correctly condemn those who offer the defense made -- and subsequently rejected -- on behalf of the war criminals of World War II, that they were only "following orders." But those war criminals were not soldiers for the Great and Good United States. For the sake of the latter, most Americans of all political persuasions will enthusiastically accept the Nazi defense. Our national denial is fully comprehensive, and contemptible in the extreme.
There are a few lonely exceptions to this unreflective acceptance of war crimes committed by the United States. Following the dictates of national mythology, those war crimes become "blunders" at worst. To name unflinchingly murder and war crimes for what they are would call into question those necessary articles of national faith that support most Americans' conception of themselves and their country. One notable and heroic exception is Lt. Ehren Watada, whose example I wrote about in, "The Personal Factor: You're Either With the Resistance -- or With the Murderers." When Watada refused to be deployed to Iraq, he understood precisely the nature of his action and what the consequences were likely to be: "My participation would make me party to war crimes." Heroes of this kind are rare in any age. In our time, they are almost unheard of, just as most Americans never knew who Watada was, or know today. As I wrote in "The Personal Factor":
You should consult the article in its entirety for Vance's full argument. Here, I will offer only too-brief excerpts. Vance begins his approach to the question in his title from an explicitly Christian perspective, but he immediately broadens that approach to all individuals:
III. The Non-Opposition of the Liberal-Progressives
Vance's article is not the only one from several years ago I've held in reserve. Another piece I noted, in January 2006, was a column by Joel Stein. The perspective Stein offered was a singularly unusual one, highly unusual even among liberals and progressives. My primary objection to the column is its jokey, humorous tone; this subject is one to which such a tone is especially unsuited. (I say that about very few topics; torture is another.) But this approach is part of Stein's writerly persona; we might wish it were otherwise, at least on a few topics, but such a wish is extremely unlikely to find fulfillment.
And despite what I consider to be this very regrettable flaw, Stein is entirely correct on the major substantive points:
But about "the troops" and the reverence for them demanded by our culture of obedience, Stein is absolutely right. And note that one of his concerns (his reference to "no parades," for example) is the issue targeted by Chayefsky: the glorification of the military, and everything that follows from that glorification. It was tiresomely predictable that numerous conservative voices would be raised in ferocious denunciation of Stein. You can find many nauseating, self-congratulatory examples of that kind easily enough on your own, if the thrillingly outraged, incoherent, nearly unintelligible grunts of those who never learned to think are of interest to you.
Of more interest is denunciation from another corner, from what styles itself as the "opposition," except on any issue that matters. For example, this:
In fact, liberals are unforgivably very far from "weak" in this regard. For many years, most liberals and progressives have revealed a sickening disregard for innocents slaughtered in the pursuit of Empire, an issue I explored just this week. "Exceptionally Awful," indeed.
I discussed some of the reasons for this perspective of most liberals and progressives in "The Obedience Culture, and the Death of the Mind":
IV. Conclusion
On the occasion of this Memorial Day and on the days to come, all of which promise to be deeply tragic and murderously bloody so long as the goals of the American ruling class remain unchanged, the objects of your reverence must be severely restricted. That reverence must be reserved for innocent lives, and especially for those innocent lives ended, maimed and altered forever by needless, futile, endlessly destructive war, past, present and future.
The historical and contemporary record makes possible only one conclusion: those needless and futile wars are not just "a few" or only "some" of them, and the trail of devastation is not the result of "regrettable misjudgments" for which amends have been made, or are even possible. No, almost every single war ever fought by the United States was entirely unnecessary in terms of any justifiable conception of self-defense; this is unquestionably true of every intervention since World War II. The murders are the result of intended and intentional policy, reached after deliberation and in service to the goals of the ruling class: power, wealth, dominion and control -- and always more power, wealth, dominion and control. To challenge those goals and to begin to alter them, you must challenge every assumption underlying the myths upon which the United States feeds, as it continues to brutalize and kill in vast numbers. One of the key assumptions that you must question and finally reject is the demand for glorification of "the troops."
To conclude, I offer again my words at the end of "Let Us All Become Cowards":
I have intended to write this post for the last few years. As Memorial Day approaches, I thought: why not do it right now? Indeed, why the hell not? I have never sought outrage for its own sake; I write what I do because I am convinced it is true, and I am arrogant enough to believe that some of what I write concerns matters of importance. But I am prepared to admit that outrage -- especially when it proceeds from sentimental, superficial, aggressively anti-intellectual cultural pieties that enjoy widespread acceptance -- is a highly enjoyable side effect. Now that I consider the matter, at least insofar as negative reaction to certain of my essays is concerned, outrage is most typically not a side effect at all, but the reaction in toto. This was certainly true of the criticism that greeted, "Yes, I Want the United States to Lose," an article written in early 2007.
In reviewing that essay today, I see that I've been making one foundational argument for some time: that the United States' invasion and occupation of Iraq constituted and constitutes today an incomprehensibly monstrous series of war crimes. I extended this argument in a piece concerning the last two presidential candidates, "A Choice of War Criminals." I have yet to see a convincing argument that these actions by the U.S. do not constitute war crimes. The reason for that is simple and unavoidable: such an argument does not exist -- not, that is, if one actually examines the relevant evidence. Almost all American politicians, and almost all commentators and bloggers, resolutely refuse to consider that evidence, just as they refuse to consider the conclusions it compels. Instead, either by conscious design or (more commonly, at least as far as those not regularly concerned with politics are concerned) by unthinkingly absorbing basic assumptions from the cultural atmosphere, they believe and advance the central tenets of the American myth.
In this respect, they function in a manner identical to that employed by Barack Obama. In analyzing the monumental series of lies offered by Obama in his widely-praised speech about race in America -- and that praise revealed in a notably unforgiving manner just how remarkably stupid our public discourse has become -- I wrote:
The resistance of the ruling class and of most Americans to one aspect of the truth about 9/11 remains astonishing, and it demonstrates how puerile our national conversation is. Of course, the ruling class cannot admit that to state the obvious fact that actions have consequences is not to say that the U.S. "deserved" 9/11 -- for to acknowledge the millions murdered by the U.S. government and our policy of aggressive military intervention across the globe would subject our own actions to the kinds of judgments that only the United States is entitled to make, and only about the actions of others. The United States is uniquely exempt from the standards we apply to everyone else; thus runs the catechism at the church of our inherent national superiority.In this manner, among many others, liberal critics of the Iraq catastrophe have long demonstrated that they do not disagree with the basic foreign policy methods and goals put forth by conservatives (and by neoconservatives as well). Certainly, they do not: over the last hundred years, liberals have utilized endless global intervention in service of worldwide American hegemony, usually more determinedly and more bloodily than the conservatives themselves (always excepting the criminal reign of George II). In this respect, as in everything else of importance, Obama rigorously and unforgivably continues what went before, just as George W. Bush did. Neither Obama nor the liberals challenge even one of the fundamental premises underlying United States foreign policy; as a result, the devastation and death continue unabated. (As just a few recent examples, see here and here.) In the same way, liberals will almost never challenge the widespread practice of frequently repeated adulation of "the troops," and we will shortly examine one revealing instance of this dynamic.
...
Our national catechism tells us that America is Good -- and that America's murders are Good Murders. You may not say otherwise.
As indicated, in some respects this current essay may be considered a companion piece to, "Yes, I Want the United States to Lose." This article also amplifies some themes in a piece I wrote for Memorial Day two years ago: "Against Annihilation of the Spirit: Let Us All Become Cowards." The starting point of that essay was an appreciation of an altogether remarkable film, The Americanization of Emily, with its extraordinary screenplay by Paddy Chayefsky. About that film, I said:
Chayefsky's target is the one identified by [Charlie Madison, the film's protagonist]: it is the glorification of war, and the countless ways in which all of us "honor the institution." We build statues of our war heroes and name streets after them; we erect shrines to the dead. We insist on the "ideals" for which we fought, and the "goodness" of our intentions. Many of us do this in the misdirected and destructive search for "meaning" in our lives: our own stunted souls prevent us from finding fulfillment and happiness in our individual lives, so we look for "glory" by climbing over endless piles of corpses.If you want to begin to appreciate what happens in war -- what actually happens, not what you read in most books or see in almost all films -- I recommend you begin with the Paul Fussell books mentioned and the excerpts I offered in the earlier essay.
And what is lost in all of this is the unbearable horror and pain inflicted on individual human beings, and the particularized, specific costs of our quest for glory, or meaning, or "national greatness," or honor.
And to set the broader context for our consideration of the unquestioning reverence offered by virtually everyone for "the troops," I also provide these passages from, "Let Us All Become Cowards":
I recall that, several months ago, there was some discussion on various blogs about a particularly awful aspect of the obvious propaganda campaign leading up to the invasion of Iraq, and the public's eager willingness to believe all of it, or at least their notable failure to resist it. It was suggested that we had lost our "horror" of war, on the assumption that we had in some other time appreciated the monstrousness of the slaughter of human beings. This is an utterly naive and grossly mistaken rewriting of American history, one that proceeds directly from critical aspects of the mythology we tell ourselves about ourselves: that we are unique in all of history, that our form of government is the greatest and best possible to mankind, toward which all others should and must strive, and that our national character is predisposed toward compassion and peace.
Lies on top of lies, on top of still more lies, all of it.
...
So the myths prevail. Our wars are always noble, fought for the purest of motives. Our warriors are similarly noble, engaged in a high-minded crusade. They butcher and slaughter, and are butchered and slaughtered themselves, so that "civilization" might be preserved. Never mind that many of the warriors themselves would not agree. Never mind that the front-line soldiers know that war is insanity, and only insanity. Never mind the overwhelming, senseless, futile, endless horror of what actually happens in combat, and the details that never reach the public.
II. "The Troops" as the Crucial, Indispensable Element of Imperial Power
Because a certain kind of defender of American mythology will be eager to misunderstand and distort my argument, I must briefly clarify a few preliminary matters. This piece concerns "the troops" as an institution; that is, it concerns the U.S. military as the indispensable and primary means of implementing and realizing the goals of the U.S. ruling class. The major goal is worldwide dominance, to be achieved by, among other elements, a global empire of bases. As detailed in that essay, not only Republicans but Democrats as well, and also liberal bloggers such as Atrios and Think Progress, support an ever bigger and bigger military, regardless of the fact that the U.S. spends more on defense than the rest of the world combined. This, too, is a goal embraced by Obama, as noted in a typically bloodthirsty appreciation offered by Media Matters and discussed in the middle section of this recent article.
Please note that this goal of worldwide control has nothing whatsoever to do with self-defense in any meaningful way. It is a policy of offensive aggression, unceasing and with an unending list of possible targets. Thus, the primary purpose for which "the troops" are utilized is not defensive in nature, but offensive, against countries that have never threatened the U.S. and that most often could not threaten the U.S. in any serious manner. A person who joins the military is obliged to understand this, on the general principle that an adult ought to know what he is doing. This is especially true when a person seeks to become an instrumentality of death, either firsthand and directly, or indirectly, by offering support in any one of numerous ways for those who commit the murders.
Having said this, I will add that in many instances, I will decline to pass moral judgment in an individual case. To make that kind of judgment, one would need certain information: the understanding of the particular individual him or herself, what information he is aware of and has access to, and similar kinds of matters. In addition, I am painfully aware that, for many people, there appear to be no other avenues for education and advancement (economic and otherwise), a terrible truth that has broader application as the U.S. economy collapses. (Do you think it is a coincidence that government and military service become one of the last remaining secure areas of employment? I encourage you to consider the issue again. I am not suggesting that the ruling class has engineered widespread economic collapse to drive people into government service, military or of other kinds, but I do not suggest that primarily because I don't think any group, no matter how powerful, could control the huge number of variables involved, although they might believe they could. Hubris and narcissism usually go together. But I certainly do suggest that the government and the ruling class is more than willing to take full advantage of this calamitous state of affairs.)
Even though I will not offer moral judgments across the board, I will make judgments in certain categories of cases. Two major categories deserve condemnation in the strongest terms: those who torture other human beings, and those who diligently train to murder individuals who have never threatened them or their country and who, all too often, then do murder them. We correctly condemn those who offer the defense made -- and subsequently rejected -- on behalf of the war criminals of World War II, that they were only "following orders." But those war criminals were not soldiers for the Great and Good United States. For the sake of the latter, most Americans of all political persuasions will enthusiastically accept the Nazi defense. Our national denial is fully comprehensive, and contemptible in the extreme.
There are a few lonely exceptions to this unreflective acceptance of war crimes committed by the United States. Following the dictates of national mythology, those war crimes become "blunders" at worst. To name unflinchingly murder and war crimes for what they are would call into question those necessary articles of national faith that support most Americans' conception of themselves and their country. One notable and heroic exception is Lt. Ehren Watada, whose example I wrote about in, "The Personal Factor: You're Either With the Resistance -- or With the Murderers." When Watada refused to be deployed to Iraq, he understood precisely the nature of his action and what the consequences were likely to be: "My participation would make me party to war crimes." Heroes of this kind are rare in any age. In our time, they are almost unheard of, just as most Americans never knew who Watada was, or know today. As I wrote in "The Personal Factor":
It is the person who says, "No," whom we must seek to understand. It is not melodramatic or engaging in overstatement to say that he or she is our salvation.On the general subject that concerns us, I strongly recommend to your careful consideration an article by Laurence Vance, "Should Anyone Join the Military?" I made a note of Vance's article when it first appeared in October 2007, and I have been meaning to excerpt it ever since.
You should consult the article in its entirety for Vance's full argument. Here, I will offer only too-brief excerpts. Vance begins his approach to the question in his title from an explicitly Christian perspective, but he immediately broadens that approach to all individuals:
Should anyone join the military?For further details, study the full article. With regard to points five and six identified by Vance, you might want to read another of my essays: "The Obedience Culture, and the Death of the Mind." In that article, I quoted Paul Fussell on the broader significance of the dynamic that is crucial to any military's identity and operation:
Here are seven reasons why I think that no one, regardless of his religion or lack of it, should join today’s military.
1. Joining the military may cost you your limbs, your mind, or even your life.
...
2. Joining the military may have an adverse effect on your family. The breakup of marriages and relationships because of soldiers being deployed to Iraq and elsewhere is epidemic. Multiple duty tours and increased deployment terms are the death knell for stable families.
...
3. Joining the military does not mean that you will be defending the country. The purpose of the U.S. military should be to defend the United States. Period. Yet, one of the greatest myths ever invented is that the current U.S. military somehow defends our freedoms. First of all, our freedoms are not in danger of being taken away by foreign countries; if they are taken away it will be by our own government. It is not a country making war on us that we need to fear, it is our government making war on the Bill of Rights. And second, how is stationing troops in 150 different regions of the world on hundreds of U.S. military bases defending our freedoms? It is not the purpose of the U.S. military to change regimes, secure the borders of other countries, or spread democracy at gunpoint. The Department of Defense should first and foremost be the Department of Homeland Security.
4. Joining the military means that you will be helping to carry out an evil, reckless, and interventionist U.S. foreign policy. For many, many years now, U.S. foreign policy has resulted in the destabilization and overthrow of governments, the assassination of leaders, the destruction of industry and infrastructure, the backing of military coups, death squads, and drug traffickers, imperialism under the guise of humanitarianism, support for corrupt and tyrannical governments, interference in the elections of other countries, taking sides or intervening in civil wars, engaging in provocative naval actions under the guise of protecting freedom of navigation, thousands of dubious covert actions, the dismissal of civilian casualties as collateral damage, the United States being the arms dealer to the world, and the United States bribing and bullying itself around the world as the world’s policeman, fireman, social worker, and busybody.
5. Joining the military means that you will be expected to unconditionally follow orders.
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6. Joining the military means that you will be pressured to make a god out of the military.
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7. Joining the military means that you may be put into a position where you will have to kill or be killed. What guarantee do you have that you will always be in a non-combat role? You are responsible for the "enemy" soldiers you kill as they defend their homeland against U.S. aggression. It may soothe your conscience if you attempt to justify your actions by maintaining it is self-defense, but it is hardly self-defense when you travel thousands of miles away to engage in an unnecessary and unjust war. You are responsible for the civilians you kill. Dismissing them as collateral damage doesn’t change the fact that you killed someone who was no threat to you or your country. You are responsible for every soldier and civilian you kill: not Bush, not Cheney, not Rumsfeld, not Gates, not your commanding officers, and not Wolfowitz, Feith, Hadley, Perle, Abrams, Tenet, Powell, Rice, and the other architects of the Iraq War. Bush and company will not be firing a single shot. You will be expected to do their dirty work and live with it the rest of your life. "Thou shalt not kill" is not just a tenet of the Judeo-Christian tradition; it is part of the moral code of every civilization, pagan or religious.
Should anyone join the military? Certainly not today’s military. And until a major change in U.S. foreign policy occurs, not tomorrow’s military either. So be all you can be: Just don’t be it in the U.S. military.
Now my point is simple: if you are trained to be uncritical of the military, you can easily go a little further and learn to be uncritical of government and authority, and even to be uncritical of all established and received institutions. The ultimate result is the death of the mind, the transformation of the higher learning and independent scholarship into a cheering section for whatever popular notions and superstitions prevail at the moment. ... I wonder if the habit of unthinking obedience is a good one to instill in young Americans. For one thing, what is clear about the culture of war is that it is necessarily an obedience culture. In armies, as one critic has noticed, where there must be unquestioning obedience, there must necessarily be passive injustice. And not just that--the obedience culture is certain over the long-run to shrivel originality and to constrict thought, to encourage witless adaptation and social dishonesty.
III. The Non-Opposition of the Liberal-Progressives
Vance's article is not the only one from several years ago I've held in reserve. Another piece I noted, in January 2006, was a column by Joel Stein. The perspective Stein offered was a singularly unusual one, highly unusual even among liberals and progressives. My primary objection to the column is its jokey, humorous tone; this subject is one to which such a tone is especially unsuited. (I say that about very few topics; torture is another.) But this approach is part of Stein's writerly persona; we might wish it were otherwise, at least on a few topics, but such a wish is extremely unlikely to find fulfillment.
And despite what I consider to be this very regrettable flaw, Stein is entirely correct on the major substantive points:
I don't support our troops. This is a particularly difficult opinion to have, especially if you are the kind of person who likes to put bumper stickers on his car.I note that, despite my agreement with Stein on the subject of supporting "the troops," he also provides confirmation of two of the deepest self-delusions still maintained by almost every liberal and progressive you will encounter, including almost all bloggers. The first is that anyone was "deceived by false intelligence." This is a deeply dangerous canard, one I have examined repeatedly and in detail. You can start with, "Played for Fools Yet Again," and follow the numerous links. The second is the lie about "ethnic genocide in Kosovo." I note again and again that liberals and progressives still repair to this awful lie about Clinton's disastrous interventions (as Clinton himself did in the first instance); I mentioned it just the other day (again, follow the links to much, much more; you might start with this one for the truth about the "genocide" claim in particular).
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I'm not for the war. And being against the war and saying you support the troops is one of the wussiest positions the pacifists have ever taken -- and they're wussy by definition.
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Blindly lending support to our soldiers, I fear, will keep them overseas longer by giving soft acquiescence to the hawks who sent them there -- and who might one day want to send them somewhere else. Trust me, a guy who thought 50.7% was a mandate isn't going to pick up on the subtleties of a parade for just service in an unjust war. He's going to be looking for funnel cake.
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After we've decided that we made a mistake, we don't want to blame the soldiers who were ordered to fight. Or even our representatives, who were deceived by false intelligence. And certainly not ourselves, who failed to object to a war we barely understood.
But blaming the president is a little too easy. The truth is that people who pull triggers are ultimately responsible, whether they're following orders or not. An army of people making individual moral choices may be inefficient, but an army of people ignoring their morality is horrifying. ...
I do sympathize with people who joined up to protect our country, especially after 9/11, and were tricked into fighting in Iraq. ...
But when you volunteer for the U.S. military, you pretty much know you're not going to be fending off invasions from Mexico and Canada. So you're willingly signing up to be a fighting tool of American imperialism, for better or worse. Sometimes you get lucky and get to fight ethnic genocide in Kosovo, but other times it's Vietnam.
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I'm not advocating that we spit on returning veterans like they did after the Vietnam War, but we shouldn't be celebrating people for doing something we don't think was a good idea. All I'm asking is that we give our returning soldiers what they need: hospitals, pensions, mental health and a safe, immediate return. But, please, no parades.
But about "the troops" and the reverence for them demanded by our culture of obedience, Stein is absolutely right. And note that one of his concerns (his reference to "no parades," for example) is the issue targeted by Chayefsky: the glorification of the military, and everything that follows from that glorification. It was tiresomely predictable that numerous conservative voices would be raised in ferocious denunciation of Stein. You can find many nauseating, self-congratulatory examples of that kind easily enough on your own, if the thrillingly outraged, incoherent, nearly unintelligible grunts of those who never learned to think are of interest to you.
Of more interest is denunciation from another corner, from what styles itself as the "opposition," except on any issue that matters. For example, this:
Wanker of the DayTo discourage any misperception, Atrios waded into the swamp of his own comments section. Many of those comments endeavored mightily to determine if Stein was "serious" in his argument -- this despite the fact that, regardless of Stein's persona as a humorist in large part, his seriousness about this argument was entirely obvious. So much for the contention that liberals as a group demonstrate unusual perceptiveness. Atrios had the answer for this maddeningly complex question:
Joel Stein
Bring on the parades. If our military rank and file have been betrayed by their civilian leadership they deserve our respect doubly.
stein's serious and should be dropped into baghdad along with goldberg and malkinSo much for the claim that liberals as a group exhibit great compassion and tolerance, especially where dissenters to the central claims of liberal orthodoxy are concerned. But Atrios's own vicious denunciation is part of the other major concern revealed in the comments: that "people like Stein" give liberals "a bad name," and allow conservatives to make the argument that liberals are "weak on national security." Never mind genocide in Iraq or the argument that condemns it as an unforgivable war crime. Forget all that, and instead contemplate the unspeakable tragedy of liberals being misperceived as weak when it comes to murdering the innocent.
In fact, liberals are unforgivably very far from "weak" in this regard. For many years, most liberals and progressives have revealed a sickening disregard for innocents slaughtered in the pursuit of Empire, an issue I explored just this week. "Exceptionally Awful," indeed.
I discussed some of the reasons for this perspective of most liberals and progressives in "The Obedience Culture, and the Death of the Mind":
The United States is fully militarized in a much deeper sense: it is now militarized psychologically and culturally. The other day, I analyzed how the critical lessons necessary to the achievement of an obedience culture are instilled in teenagers. As I noted there, the most fundamental lesson imparted to the high school students who peacefully protested the Iraq occupation is the necessity of obedience. Obedience, they were instructed, is the absolutely mandatory requirement -- if you wish to have a future, if you wish to pursue your goals, and if you wish to have any life at all.Among liberal and progressive bloggers, you can find a very few honorable exceptions to the demanded liberal orthodoxy, which almost always apes the conventional (and conservative) orthodoxy in every significant respect. But those exceptions are very few; that they are, powerfully demonstrates the wide reach of the prevailing view, which inexorably pushes all dissenting views to the most distant margins.
As Fussell notes, and as I observed in my earlier discussion, you have only to give up a few things: justice, originality, honesty, and an independent mind. ...
Consider the people you know. Take a look at the views offered in our media. Consider the opinions offered on the most prominent and popular blogs, and the courses of action they support -- and the courses of action they reject. And then reflect upon the fact that the great majority of people are more than willing to give up all the values Fussell identifies. And for what? To be popular, to be successful, to wield "influence," to be "respectable."
In terms of its possessing a significant, genuinely vital intellectual and cultural life insofar as our political structures and governing purposes are concerned, the United States is already dead. That we refuse to recognize this does not alter the fact of our demise. Although it may take years or even decades for the rot to set in on a scale that forbids denial, all that remains for those of us who hope for a future of peace and liberty is to perform the autopsy, and to make certain we understand what went so horribly wrong.
IV. Conclusion
On the occasion of this Memorial Day and on the days to come, all of which promise to be deeply tragic and murderously bloody so long as the goals of the American ruling class remain unchanged, the objects of your reverence must be severely restricted. That reverence must be reserved for innocent lives, and especially for those innocent lives ended, maimed and altered forever by needless, futile, endlessly destructive war, past, present and future.
The historical and contemporary record makes possible only one conclusion: those needless and futile wars are not just "a few" or only "some" of them, and the trail of devastation is not the result of "regrettable misjudgments" for which amends have been made, or are even possible. No, almost every single war ever fought by the United States was entirely unnecessary in terms of any justifiable conception of self-defense; this is unquestionably true of every intervention since World War II. The murders are the result of intended and intentional policy, reached after deliberation and in service to the goals of the ruling class: power, wealth, dominion and control -- and always more power, wealth, dominion and control. To challenge those goals and to begin to alter them, you must challenge every assumption underlying the myths upon which the United States feeds, as it continues to brutalize and kill in vast numbers. One of the key assumptions that you must question and finally reject is the demand for glorification of "the troops."
To conclude, I offer again my words at the end of "Let Us All Become Cowards":
Chayefsky rejects the myths in their totality. He implores us to embrace cowardice. I beg you to follow his advice. You can be certain the cries for war will rise again, if not against Iran, then against North Korea, or in ten years' time against China, or against a country not now in the news, but which will fill the role required by the vast machinery of war. And when those cries overwhelm all facts and make reasonable argument impossible, and when they are amplified once again by an ever-compliant, always docile and obedient media, plead cowardice. If you value the sanctity of a single life, it is the only sane course to take, and the bravest.http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2009/05/no-i-do-not-support-troops.html
Tuesday, 16 June 2009
Grenade blast kills Afghan child
An explosion near a US military convoy in northeastern Afghanistan has killed one child and wounded at least 49 other civilians, police said.
It was not immediately clear what caused the blast on Tuesday in Asadabad, the provinical capital of Kunar province, but several witnesses said a US soldier had thrown a grenade into a crowd of people.
Ehsanullah Fazli, a doctor at the Asadabad hospital, said most of the wounded were children and some were in a critical condition.
"I was on my way to school. Their tyre burst, and then a soldier hurled a hand grenade from the convoy," Abdul Wahab, a 12-year-old boy, told the Reuters news agency as he lay in a hospital bed with shrapnel wounds in his legs.
Other victims at the Asadabad hospital gave similar accounts.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/06/200969102356369283.html
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