Tag Archives ⇒ united states

Big Lies & Mass Hysteria

September 11, 2003
· Martin Kelley

It was Adolf Hitler, the world’s most notri­ous dic­ta­tor, who told us that The great mass of peo­ple … will more eas­i­ly fall vic­tim to a big lie than to a small one.

And it is in the vein that I will pass along the lat­est poll by MS-NBC, that has found that 70% of Amer­i­can peo­ple think Hus­sein and 9/11 are linked. This is per­haps the biggest lie of my life­time. I fear for the very soul of my nation, that so many of my fel­low Amer­i­cans would deny all evi­dence to allow them­selves to go along with this myth. There has been no evi­dence of any con­nec­tion. Most of the hijack­ers were Sau­di nation­als, opposed to the U.S.-backed rul­ing Sau­di fam­i­ly. Al Qae­da is a group of reli­gious fun­da­men­tal­ists trained in part with CIA mon­ey who have always been opposed to the sec­u­lar social­ist regime of Sad­dam Hus­sein. There’s no mys­tery who the hijack­ers were or why they chose the U.S. as their tar­get. Con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries aren’t need­ed to explain the events of two years ago.

So why then do we believe Sad­dam blew up the World Trade Cen­ter tow­ers? Maybe there are too many of us who love our lives of con­ve­nience, who love our big cars, our big homes, our opu­lent lifestyles and maybe we know that deep down our lifestyle is based on con­trol of Mid­dle East oil. Or per­haps Sad­dam Hus­sein has become the demon we pour all our world­ly fears and guilt into, so that we think all the world’s trou­bles must come from him.

What­ev­er the rea­son, the results are a kind of mass hys­te­ria. Sev­en our of ten Amer­i­cans believe in a con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry so divorced from any evi­dence that his­to­ry sure­ly pre­pares to mock us. Every so often I’ll read of the out­landish con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries run­ning through the Arab world — like the one that the planes were manned by Israelies and that all the Jews who worked in the tow­ers were warned not to come to work — and I’ll won­der how a peo­ple could live in such a state of unre­al­i­ty. But then I see American’s myths: just as incred­i­ble, just as based on our own demons. We have based a war and a for­eign pol­i­cy on the boogie-men of our sub­con­sciences. We have killed for our fears. What if we were to wake up to real­i­ty: could we still jus­ti­fy the war and occu­pa­tion of Iraq with the impe­ri­ous­ness and sure­ty that we’ve shown so far?

Weapons? no. Program? no. Scientists? no. High School Calc? A‑ha!

September 5, 2003
· Martin Kelley

Okay, so the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the war on Iraq was the weapons of mass destruc­tion Sad­dam Hus­sein had ready to use against the U.S.. The U.S. knew where the weapons were and a war would find them. Well, the war came and no weapons were found. So the sto­ry changed. The U.S. attacked Iraq because Sad­dam Hus­sein was devel­op­ing weapons of mass destruc­tion, which he would then sure­ly use against the U.S. The U.S. knew where the weapons were being devel­oped and they would be uncov­ered any day now. But five months of inspec­tors comb­ing Iraq have found nothing.

So now a new sto­ry. The U.S. under­sec­re­tary of state for arms con­trol tells us that whether Hus­sein had the weapons “isn’t real­ly the issue.” But the war is still jus­ti­fied because Sad­dam had sci­en­tists who might some­day work on a weapons pro­gram that might some­day build a weapon that might some­day be used against the U.S. or one of its allies

Bolton said that Sad­dam kept “a coterie” of sci­en­tists he was pre­serv­ing for the day when he could build nuclear weapons unhin­dered by inter­na­tion­al constraints.

I’m per­son­al­ly just wait­ing for the next lev­el of Bush Admin­is­tra­tion retreat. Wait for Bolton to announce next month that it didn’t mat­ter if Sad­dam didn’t actu­al­ly have any trained nuclear sci­en­tists, as occu­pa­tion inspec­tors had uncov­ered evi­dence that North Badg­dad High taught cal­cu­lus for its eleventh graders. “They might go on to work on a weapons pro­gram some­day, we had to invade before Sad­dam could teach them Calc II.”

The excus­es just get more pathet­ic as the truth becomes hard­er to ignore: the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion lied to the Amer­i­can peo­ple. The only win­ners in this war are the ener­gy com­pa­nies rebuild­ing the Iraqi infra­struc­ture with U.S. tax­pay­er dol­lars. It’s time to con­nect the dots, to stop pay­ing inves­ti­ga­tors to comb Iraq for the non-existant weapons. The inspec­tors should be recalled to Wash­ing­ton to inves­ti­gate the very real bam­boo­zle (dare I say “con­spir­a­cy”?) that foist­ed a war on the Amer­i­can peo­ple. We’ve been played for chumps.

Pacifism and the Congo Dilemma

August 25, 2003
· Martin Kelley

From the War Resisters League’s Judith Mahoney Paster­nak, “an hon­est look at the chal­lenge paci­fism faces in places like the Congo”:www.warresisters.org/nva0703‑1.htm:
bq. There are those who chal­lenge the paci­fist posi­tion with such ques­tions as, “A man with a gun is aim­ing it at your moth­er. You have a gun in your hand. What non­vi­o­lent action do you take?” Our usu­al answer is, “I’m a paci­fist. I don’t have a gun in my hand. Next ques­tion.” But at least once in every gen­er­a­tion — more fre­quent­ly, alas, in these violence-ridden years — the chal­lenge is a hard­er one to shrug off with a flip answer.
The answer of course is to stop wars before they start, by stop­ping the arms trade, the dic­ta­tor­ships, and the crush­ing eco­nom­ic reforms demand­ed by West­ern banks _before_ these forces all com­bine and erupt into war. Paster­nak out­lines four parts to a blue­print that could end much of the vio­lence in the Congo.
I’ve always been impressed that the folks at War Resisters are will­ing to talk about the lim­its of non­vi­o­lence (see David McReynolds seven-part “Phi­los­o­phy of Nonviolence”:www.nonviolence.org/issues/philosophy-nonviolence.php). While war is nev­er the only option (and arguably nev­er the best one), it’s much more effec­tive to stop wars ten years before the bul­lets start fly­ing. In each of the wars the U.S. has fought recent­ly, we can see past U.S. poli­cies set­ting up the con­flict ten, twen­ty and thir­ty years ago.
The largest peace march­es in the world can rarely pre­vent a war once the troops ships have set sail. If U.S. pol­i­cy and aid had­n’t sup­port­ed the “wrong” side in Iraq and Afghanistan twen­ty years ago, I don’t think we would have fought these cur­rent wars. Paci­fists and their kin need to start ask­ing the tough ques­tions about the cur­rent repres­sive regimes the U.S. is sup­port­ing – places like Sau­di Ara­bia and Pak­istan – and we need to demand that build­ing democ­ra­cy is our coun­try’s num­ber one goal in the Iraq and Afghanistan occu­pa­tions (yes, pri­or­i­tize it _over_ secu­ri­ty, so that we “don’t replace Sad­dam Hus­sein with equal­ly repres­sive thugs”:www.nonviolence.org/articles/000130.php.

U.S. taking on Hussein Strongman Role

August 24, 2003
· Martin Kelley

It should­n’t be a sur­prise but it makes me sick any­way. The _Washington Post_ reports that the “U.S. occu­pa­tion is hir­ing Sad­dam Hus­sein’s ex-spies”:www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37331-2003Aug23.html.
It must be a good job mar­ket for mid-level Sad­dam Hus­sein loy­al­ists. Back in June, we learned that the U.S. had put “ex-Iraqi gen­er­als in charge of many Iraq cities”:http://www.nonviolence.org/articles/000027.php (at the same time the U.S. can­celed promised elec­tions). The U.S. trum­pets cap­ture of big-name Iraqi lead­ers like “Chem­i­cal Ali”:www.msnbc.com/news/955391.asp?vts=082120030615 but then qui­et­ly hires their assis­tants. The major­i­ty of the new U.S. intel­li­gence recruits come from Sad­dam Hus­sein’s Mukhabarat, an agency whose name is said to inspire dread among Iraqis.
The infra­struc­ture of Sad­dam Hus­sein’s repres­sion appa­ra­tus is being rebuilt as a U.S. repres­sion appa­ra­tus. The stat­ues of Sad­dam Hus­sein go down, the “play­ing card” Iraqi fig­ure­heads get caught, but not much changes.
The arti­cle says that the new spy hir­ing is “covert” but it’s appar­ent­ly no secret in Iraq. even the Iraqi Gov­ern­ing Coun­cil, a dum­my rep­re­sen­ta­tive body hand­picked by U.S. forces, has expressed “adamant objec­tions” to the recruit­ment campaign:
bq. “We’ve always crit­i­cized the pro­ce­dure of recruit­ing from the old regime’s offi­cers. We think it is a mis­take,” Mah­di said. “We’ve told them you have some bad peo­ple in your secu­ri­ty apparatus.”
No, the “covert” audi­ence is the U.S. pub­lic, who might start feel­ing quesy about the Iraq War if they knew how eas­i­ly the U.S. was slip­ping into Sad­dam Hus­sein’s shoes.

Almost Famous

August 22, 2003
· Martin Kelley

Con­ser­v­a­tive god­fa­ther of the inter­net Instapun­dit almost linked to Non​vi​o​lence​.org the oth­er day. He did­n’t like our take on the eno­la Gay exhib­it, but instead of link­ing direct­ly to us so his read­ers could see what we had to say, he linked to Bill Hobbs’ cri­tique. I guess Instapun­dit alter ego Glen Reynolds must not think his read­er­ship can han­dle dis­sent­ing voic­es. Instapun­dit read­ers who cut and past­ed to get here:

  • Yes, the Japan­ese were secret­ly try­ing to sur­ren­der before the atom­ic bomb­ings of Hiroshi­ma and Nagas­ki. The U.S. thought incin­er­at­ing 150,000-some peo­ple was a good nego­ti­at­ing tac­tic, and it worked: the Japan­ese gov­ern­ment to instant­ly agree to uncon­di­tion­al surrender.
  • Yes, the U.S. takeover of Hawaii and the Philip­pines were aggres­sive acts to secure ship­ping routes in the South Pacif­ic. In 1854, a Unit­ed States war­ship under the com­mand of Com­modore Matthew Cal­braith Per­ry sailed to Japan and forced it to sign treaties open­ing up its mar­kets. The threat of Russ­ian expan­sion from the West and U.S. expan­sion from the south and east was a large part of the rea­son Japan mil­i­ta­rized in the first place. These are the kind of facts one should have when stand­ing in the Smith­son­ian gaz­ing up at Eno­la Gay and won­der­ing how it ever came to be that the U.S. would drop two nuclear weapons over two heavily-populated cities.

Celebrating nuclear terror with amnesia and techno-lust

August 19, 2003
· Martin Kelley

The Smith­son­ian Muse­um in Wash­ing­ton has “reassem­bled the eno­la Gay, the plane that dropped the atom­ic bomb on the Japan­ese city of Hiroshi­ma in 1945”:www.nytimes.com/2003/08/19/national/19MUSe.html. Try­ing to avoid the con­tro­ver­sy that accom­pa­nied a 1995 exhi­bi­tion, the cur­rent muse­um direc­tor says this exhib­it will:
bq. “focus on the tech­no­log­i­cal achieve­ments, because we are a tech­no­log­i­cal muse­um… This plane was the largest and most tech­no­log­i­cal­ly advanced air­plane for its time.”
This con­tin­ues the moral blind­ness that cre­at­ed the blood­i­est cen­tu­ry in human his­to­ry. Instead of look­ing at how pol­i­tics, war and tech­nol­o­gy inter­sect­ed in an event that instant­ly killed 80,000 peo­ple, we shine up the met­al and blab­ber on about tech­nol­o­gy. The bomb­ing’s death count far over­shad­ows the 3,000 deaths at the World Trade Cen­ter two years ago. If the sight of the tow­ers col­laps­ing is a hor­ror we can nev­er for­get or min­i­mize, then so too is Hiroshi­ma’s mush­room cloud.
The only way mil­i­tarism and nation­al­ism sur­vives is by abstract­ing war and ignor­ing the very real death, blood and tragedy. The Japan­ese peo­ple caught up in their coun­try’s lust for war were vic­tims as soon as the fight­ing start­ed. Their par­tic­i­pat­ing in their coun­try’s war was a result of pro­pa­gan­da and nation­al­is­tic fer­vor, the same mix that led so many Amer­i­cans to sup­port the war in Iraq.
The over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of peo­ple killed on August 8, 1945 were peo­ple who nev­er fired a gun. They were sim­ply try­ing to stay alive in a world full of human-made ter­ror. They were ordi­nary peo­ple who watched as their coun­try’s lead­ers plot­ted and warred. Most were afraid to say no to war, to unite with paci­fists around the world, or to denounce mil­i­tarism wher­ev­er it exist­ed and with what­ev­er excuse it gave for its horror.
The roots of World War II were oil and ter­ror: Japan­ese lead­ers attacked its neigh­bors to gain con­trol of the indus­tri­al resources the home islands did­n’t have. Amer­i­can lead­ers (indus­tri­al and polit­i­cal) had waged war against Hawaii and the Philip­pines for con­trol of Pacif­ic ship­ping lanes. The plot­ting for war start­ed long before Pearl Har­bor and involved the lead­ers in both coun­tries. In a very real way, the war in Iraq is just the lat­est chap­ter in the century-long war over oil.
But his­to­ry, truth and moral­i­ty will all be stripped out of the Smith­so­ni­an’s new exhib­it, as spokes­peo­ple for the Amer­i­can Legion and Air Force have declared:
bq. “As long as the eno­la Gay is pre­sent­ed in the light that it was used — to end the war and save lives — that’s fine.”
bq. “We are sat­is­fied that it is in his­tor­i­cal con­text this time and does not make com­ments about U.S. aggres­sion in the Pacific.”
No, school­child­ren vis­it­ing Wash­ing­ton won’t learn the truth about the bomb­ing. Anoth­er gen­er­a­tion will be spoon-fed pro­pa­gan­da about its coun­try’s great­ness and good­ness. Anoth­er gen­er­a­tion will not pause to con­sid­er its coun­try’s old sins and trag­ic mis­takes. A typ­i­cal blog entry about the Smith­son­ian exhib­it that claims “no sin­gle plane did more to save lives in World War II”:http://www.hobbsonline.blogspot.com/2003_08_01_hobbsonline_archive.html#106130896137661056 . Abstract death and claim right­eous­ness to your coun­try, keep mil­i­tarism going and keep peace­ful peo­ple from unit­ing across nation­al boundaries.

Manufactured terrorist threat

August 14, 2003
· Martin Kelley

The big news this week has been the foil­ing of a plot to smug­gle ground-to-air mis­sile from Rus­sia into the Unit­ed States. ABC News claims there’s “less in mis­sile plot than meets the eye”:abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/World/missile030813_sting.html and goes so far as to call it a set-up. From start to fin­ish, the plot was orches­trat­ed as a sting oper­a­tion by U.S. and Russ­ian agents. The accused mas­ter­mind Hemant Lakhani had no Russ­ian con­tacts and no his­to­ry of arms smug­gling. The ABC arti­cle paints him as a small-time black mar­ket importer down on his luck who thought this would be a good way of mak­ing easy mon­ey and pay­ing off debts.
This does­n’t excuse his actions but it does change the way this we think about this whole plot. There was no arms sell­er. There was no ter­ror­ist user. No weapon made it by U.S. or Russ­ian intel­li­gence (for they were the ones who shipped it). What we do have is a two-bit mid­dle­man who talked trash abou the U.S. and offered to be a link of the arms trade. Like an idiot, Lakhani fol­lowed the bread crumbs of oppor­tu­ni­ty left for him by U.S. intel­li­gence agen­cies. We now know there are peo­ple desparate enough to sel­ll any­thing if the price is right (did­n’t we already know that?) and that sales­men will talk­ing trash about a poten­tial buy­er’s com­peti­tors to close a deal.
That there’s some­one will­ing to sell mis­siles is indeed fright­en­ing, but it’s not worth this sort of media cov­er­age. No ter­ror­ist was involved in all this and the only ones talk­ing about using these weapons were U.S. agents! One has to to won­der if this is the lat­est “threat” all “cooked up by some White House insider”:http://www.nonviolence.org/articles/000116.php. “Lets pose as Al Qae­da, wave lots of mon­ey in front of a desparate idiot, nail him when he grabs for it and declare it as a Al Qua­da plot foiled.”

Duck Rogers Gamma Ray Bombs

August 14, 2003
· Martin Kelley

Like some­thing out of an old Looney Toons reel, the U.S. mil­i­tary is “try­ing to build a death ray bomb”:www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1018361,00.html. Part of the next gen­er­a­tion of bou­tique nuclear weapons the Pen­ta­gon craves, this one kills by send­ing nuclear gam­ma rays. The _Guardian_ arti­cle talks about how devel­op­ment of the new weapon might lead to a new arms race. This is of course quite pos­si­ble: new weapons throw off the bal­ance of pow­er and often cre­ate the per­ceived need for new defences in a con­tin­u­ing cycle.
One won­ders why the U.S. needs to be build­ing ever more sophis­ti­cat­ed weapons of mass destruc­tion. It already has enough nuclear weapons to ensure total destruc­tion of a coun­try and the two recent wars have shown that its mil­i­tary is quite effi­cient at inva­sion. A gam­ma ray weapon would­n’t help in a sit­u­a­tion like North Korea, where there are more-conventional weapons they could strike back with that would seri­ous­ly hurt U.S. or its allies (even with­out their renewed nuclear weapon pro­gram their short-range mis­siles would dev­as­tate South Korea and Japan).