Letters to the Editor
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Thanks for the post
Seriously. Sometimes I wonder why I argue with free market religion types and you just reminded me why. Making people suffer for the short term in order to "save" them as the Phoenix Squads did really is crap. Man it would be great if one day, we have an executive that firmly denounces what ever other executive since FDR did before him. And then that executive stopped doing that torture bullshit. Man that would be great. I would hang flags over everything I own. I think all the other countries would hang up our flag as well.
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Charlie Wilson's War
That there is a "Charlie Wilson's War" advertisement above your article makes it that much better. Nothing like glamorizing handing the highest tech weapons in the world to the same guys that try and succeed in blowing up the WTC in the name of free market capitalism! Look at how sexy, and charming Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts are as they had weapons to Tim Osman (Bin Laden's old code name). We should all give a rousing cheer to those counter terrorists we arm, and all the great things they do. Like bringing us the Taliban, WTC 1993, WTC 2001 (because we didn't learn the first time), The Afghanistan Wars, The Crack Wave (Nicaragua), Plan Columbia, and who can forget Pinochet?
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A moebius strip of hypocrisy...
These issues and incidents are also not merely relics of administrations past, chucked into the dustbin because the people who enacted them are no longer in office. In fact, most of the same policies continue unabated. Taking a gander at the State Department's requests for funding in 2008 we find 1.3 billion dollars for Egypt to build a more professional military, despite it having a defacto President for life, a military more advanced than any on its continent, and the only African and/or Middle Eastern country besides Israel to have spy satellites. Another 366 million goes towards interdiction in Colombia, and supposed buttressing of "alternative economic" programs, presumably the vastly successful fumigation programs in the Colombian jungles.
People who make appeals to moral superiority about America's foreign military strategy often quickly switch to geopolitical realpolitik when confronted with these kinds of facts. Instead of liberating for democracy, we are now choosing lesser evil-ism and engaging in stabilizing a region. Its a confusing moebius strip of contradictions that feed into each other, in oft impossible ways.
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We did not believe our own fellow Americans really did these things
Until now, the time of the the George Wilkes Bush Administration, 21st Century, we just did not believe Americans really were involved in these things, especially these murders and tortures.
To the rest of the world: Many of us are sorry, and we apologize. To Americans: Stop. Pull back.
This is not just vague, general leftie rant. Our leaders and a group of crazies really have been torturing and murdering. Not The Land of the Free/Home of the Brave, but the land of electric shocks to genitals and bodies in sacks.
Please vote against these people, and then send them to prison.
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Counter Terrorism also took out Pablo Escobar
A black day for coke heads all across the nation for sure. Of course one could argue the merits of that long run. As long as you're not one of those jackasses calling FARC and the drug cartels 'freedom fighters'.
Also some of your bestest friends in the whole world are terrorists - the Hamas, Hezbollah, Chechnyans. I guess it depends on which side of the "I Hate the West" you stand on.
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Remove the anonymous feature...
I think its time the anonymous feature be removed. I don't think I've ever been on a thread where an "anonymous" contributor has done anything but bait and flame.
I also enjoy the lumping in of Chechcyans (sic), an ethnic group, right alongside Islamic fundamentalist groups. While there is no doubt of the viciousness of separatist forces, the Russian Army nor its newly installed pro-Moscow government, don't exactly have the cleanest hands either. Then again, the new Pan-slavism of Putin, and his ideal to reunite the former satellites in some sort of bizarre nationalist dream, should be re-assuring to everyone.
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A Recipe For Things To Come
When our world influence is determined by the use of excess military strength, torture, and hypocrisy, we are guaranteeing ourselves to be a target for future terrorist attacks.
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Will anything change?
It was always a mystery to me, growing up in the UK, why more Americans didn't protest the actions of their government.
Over here, America's dodgy dealings round the world were an open secret. We knew about the US-enabled death squads in South America. Later, we knew about the goings on in Central America, where Ronald Reagan's government aided the Contra 'freedom fighters' in their orgy of violence in Nicaragua. And so on.
So why, as self-proclaimed 'leaders of the free world', did Americans tolerate this? Was it that they didn't know, or didn't believe it? Or was it that they felt the ends justified the means? Or was it that they did protest but were just ignored and/or vilified by the government and MSM?
And now we have torturing, Guantanamo, extraordinary renditions, black sites, ruthless mercenary armies. There is some protest at this within America, but will it change anything? When it all blows over will it just be business as usual?
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Mass Murder By Numbers
Wonderful piece, Mr. Grandin -- this aspect of our country's history is the ghastly shadow that hangs over our politics for the last 60 years. While it's well-known in Washington (and, I'm sure, is rationalized by our leaders), it seems that the majority of everyday Americans either: 1) don't know about it, 2) don't want to know about it, 3) don't care about it, or 4) have rationalized it/justified it in their morally blinkered ideology.
It's the shame of our nation, and colors how our country is seen in the world, the real dichotomy between our lofty words and dirty deeds, creates cognitive dissonance that undermines our credibility and legitimacy as a lawful nation.
Until we come to terms with it, and prevent our government from continuing to do it (the operative narrative these days is "Oh, yeah, those were the bad old days; we're all better now." -- even though it's all still out there, just under different names, with new justifications) -- until a real popular reckoning occurs, our country is going to continue to be an imperial perpetrator of war criminality, not a republic.
And for what? Just because we don't like countries with elections we can't rig, having freethinking teachers, independent journalists, active, popular labor unions, and other things that have made most Western nations First World countries, desirable, successful, powerful, and prosperous. In practice, what we like in the Third World are dictatorships, juntas, and government-as-thug -- terror states. Not even rhetorical hyperbole -- it's our actual practice, if people would only pay attention, and hold their representatives' feet to the fire.