They Might be People
I have been reading around the web that we should vote for Obama because Hillary Clinton feels she should inherit the presidency. I find that not very helpful. It is not even logical. Let me be clear about this I do not care about Hillary’s personality, nor Obama’s personality or McCain’s if he had one. The issue is issues as far as I am concerned. And as far as the “Anyone but a Republican” approach goes I find that less than helpful as well for it lends credence to the myth that the Democrats are not as bad as the Republicans when it comes to waging unjust and illegal warfare.
The reason I do not support Hillary is that she is part of the neo-liberal movement. That movement which believes in America’s right to dominate the rest of planet Earth. For example if Hillary was as much of a part of Bill Clinton’s presidency as she claims then she is a monster for sharing responsibility in the half million deaths of mostly Iraqi children when Bill urged the UN to place brutal sanctions against Iraq after the first Gulf War. Nor do I support Obama who has said he only disapproves of “dumb wars.” Obama has spoken of unilateral military violence against Pakistan and that though he would be willing to talk to Iran he also said nothing is off the table as far as Iran is concerned. That Iran is not actually a threat makes me conclude that Obama is either a moron or a liar and I suspect the latter rather than the former. In fact Obama has lied about funding from Wall Street lobbyists and likely his stance on NAFTA as well.
Justin Raimondo—
Editorial note: This is an excerpt from a pamphlet published in 1996, Into the Bosnian Quagmire: The Case Against U.S. Intervention in the Balkans. We republish it now, in successive installments, because the rise of Barack Obama as the putative Democratic presidential candidate augurs the rise of a new liberal internationalism – the very same sort of policy that led us to bomb Belgrade, one of the oldest cities in Europe, and paved the way for the establishment of the gangster state known as Kosovo.
This was deemed a "humanitarian intervention": we were told that the Serbs were "ethnically cleansing" the Kosovars from their own territory, and that tens of thousands had been slaughtered. As is the case with other more recent military actions, it all turned out to be a crock: the tens of thousands dead shrunk to a few thousand, including victims from both sides in what was, after all, a civil war.
Hillary Clinton recently had the nerve to call the Kosovo war an example of "how it should be done." If the near-complete emptying of Serbs from Kosovo and Bosnia, the burning of churches, and the establishment of a radical Muslim enclave in the heart of Europe is a Clintonian "success," then one has to wonder what failure would look like.
Be sure to read the rest for some very interesting and informative history.
I have also been reading how the wars now raging in Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan are referred to as “Bush’s wars” or the neo-con’s war. The Democratic held Congress and indeed the Republican held Congress before it have all conspired, if that is the right word, to keep the imperial war machine churning by fueling it with money. And why the strange silence on the slaughter we have sponsored in Somalia by all the candidates? The justification for this has been and continues to be the terrorist threat, an all inclusive term to describe anyone who for some strange reason object to being bombed, murdered really, by the American military in our never ending battle against the terrorist. I have often wondered if the news media and government did not constantly refer to the people we slaughter as terrorists, insurgents, and militants, would Americans be more concerned with the daily slaughter of innocent people than they are now? Just for example you might view the video posted by Jonathan Versen entitled--
Little Terrorist
If any neo-liberal humanitarians and neo-cons out there view the video it just might dawn on you that we are interfering in the lives of, destroying the lives of, gasp, people who are much like us rather than some kind of monster hatched in the brain-pans of our lunatic leaders steeped in the fairy tale of American exceptionalism. But I probably hope for too much.
While we are thinking about our humanitarian endeavors and in the vein of the Little Terrorist and the Clinton Iraq sanctions consider this essay by Dave Lindorff on what he calls—
Bush’s War on Children in Iraq.
In the 2004 assault by US Marines on the city of Fallujah, things were even worse. Dexter Filkins, a reporter for the New York Times, reported that before that invasion, some 20,000 Marines encircled the doomed city, which the White House had decided to level because it harbored a bunch of insurgents and had angered the American public by capturing, killing and mutilating the bodies of four mercenaries working for US forces. The residents of the 300,000-population city were warned of the coming all-out attack. Women and children and old people were allowed to flee the city and pass through the cordon of troops. But Filkins reported that males determined to be “of combat age,” which in this case was established as 12 and up, were barred from leaving, and sent back into the city to await their fate. Young boys were ripped from their screaming mothers and sent trudging back to the city to face death.
In the ensuing slaughter, as the US dumped bombs, napalm, phosphorus, anti-personnel fragmentation weapons and an unimaginable quantity of machine gun and small arms fire on the city, it is clear that many of those young boys died.
This is the war on terror. The word “terrorist” is today’s boogey man of childhood just waiting to spring out in the dead of night yet a case could be made that the worst terrorist nation is the United States with its untold numbers of “collateral” deaths resulting from our war against terror. Our forthright news media continues to call them terrorists, insurgents and militants despite the fact that most of the casualties are innocent civilians. In fact they just might be people.
The reason I do not support Hillary is that she is part of the neo-liberal movement. That movement which believes in America’s right to dominate the rest of planet Earth. For example if Hillary was as much of a part of Bill Clinton’s presidency as she claims then she is a monster for sharing responsibility in the half million deaths of mostly Iraqi children when Bill urged the UN to place brutal sanctions against Iraq after the first Gulf War. Nor do I support Obama who has said he only disapproves of “dumb wars.” Obama has spoken of unilateral military violence against Pakistan and that though he would be willing to talk to Iran he also said nothing is off the table as far as Iran is concerned. That Iran is not actually a threat makes me conclude that Obama is either a moron or a liar and I suspect the latter rather than the former. In fact Obama has lied about funding from Wall Street lobbyists and likely his stance on NAFTA as well.
Justin Raimondo—
Editorial note: This is an excerpt from a pamphlet published in 1996, Into the Bosnian Quagmire: The Case Against U.S. Intervention in the Balkans. We republish it now, in successive installments, because the rise of Barack Obama as the putative Democratic presidential candidate augurs the rise of a new liberal internationalism – the very same sort of policy that led us to bomb Belgrade, one of the oldest cities in Europe, and paved the way for the establishment of the gangster state known as Kosovo.
This was deemed a "humanitarian intervention": we were told that the Serbs were "ethnically cleansing" the Kosovars from their own territory, and that tens of thousands had been slaughtered. As is the case with other more recent military actions, it all turned out to be a crock: the tens of thousands dead shrunk to a few thousand, including victims from both sides in what was, after all, a civil war.
Hillary Clinton recently had the nerve to call the Kosovo war an example of "how it should be done." If the near-complete emptying of Serbs from Kosovo and Bosnia, the burning of churches, and the establishment of a radical Muslim enclave in the heart of Europe is a Clintonian "success," then one has to wonder what failure would look like.
Be sure to read the rest for some very interesting and informative history.
I have also been reading how the wars now raging in Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan are referred to as “Bush’s wars” or the neo-con’s war. The Democratic held Congress and indeed the Republican held Congress before it have all conspired, if that is the right word, to keep the imperial war machine churning by fueling it with money. And why the strange silence on the slaughter we have sponsored in Somalia by all the candidates? The justification for this has been and continues to be the terrorist threat, an all inclusive term to describe anyone who for some strange reason object to being bombed, murdered really, by the American military in our never ending battle against the terrorist. I have often wondered if the news media and government did not constantly refer to the people we slaughter as terrorists, insurgents, and militants, would Americans be more concerned with the daily slaughter of innocent people than they are now? Just for example you might view the video posted by Jonathan Versen entitled--
Little Terrorist
If any neo-liberal humanitarians and neo-cons out there view the video it just might dawn on you that we are interfering in the lives of, destroying the lives of, gasp, people who are much like us rather than some kind of monster hatched in the brain-pans of our lunatic leaders steeped in the fairy tale of American exceptionalism. But I probably hope for too much.
While we are thinking about our humanitarian endeavors and in the vein of the Little Terrorist and the Clinton Iraq sanctions consider this essay by Dave Lindorff on what he calls—
Bush’s War on Children in Iraq.
In the 2004 assault by US Marines on the city of Fallujah, things were even worse. Dexter Filkins, a reporter for the New York Times, reported that before that invasion, some 20,000 Marines encircled the doomed city, which the White House had decided to level because it harbored a bunch of insurgents and had angered the American public by capturing, killing and mutilating the bodies of four mercenaries working for US forces. The residents of the 300,000-population city were warned of the coming all-out attack. Women and children and old people were allowed to flee the city and pass through the cordon of troops. But Filkins reported that males determined to be “of combat age,” which in this case was established as 12 and up, were barred from leaving, and sent back into the city to await their fate. Young boys were ripped from their screaming mothers and sent trudging back to the city to face death.
In the ensuing slaughter, as the US dumped bombs, napalm, phosphorus, anti-personnel fragmentation weapons and an unimaginable quantity of machine gun and small arms fire on the city, it is clear that many of those young boys died.
This is the war on terror. The word “terrorist” is today’s boogey man of childhood just waiting to spring out in the dead of night yet a case could be made that the worst terrorist nation is the United States with its untold numbers of “collateral” deaths resulting from our war against terror. Our forthright news media continues to call them terrorists, insurgents and militants despite the fact that most of the casualties are innocent civilians. In fact they just might be people.
posted by Unknown at 12:38 PM
<< Home