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Kill, Kill, Kill
By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
In a recent interview with the Pakistani newspaper Dawn, Osama bin Laden
justified the killing of innocent Americans this way :
"If an enemy occupies a Muslim territory and uses common people as human
shield, then it is permitted to attack that enemy. For instance, if
bandits barge into a home and hold a child hostage, then the child's
father can attack the bandits and in that attack even the child may get
hurt. America and its allies are massacring us in Palestine, Chechnya,
Kashmir and Iraq. The Muslims have the right to attack America in
reprisal."
That's the traditional justification for killing, isn't it?
They kill us, we kill them, they kill us, we kill them.
What ever happened to "thou shalt not kill"?
Equally unimpressive is President Bush's justification for killing: we
are in a war with terror.
Okay, then what about terror committed by us?
We kill innocents, they kill innocents. It's all terror.
Last week, Bush said we don't target innocent civilians.
Oh yeah? What about the nuclear attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or the
fire bombing of Dresden? What about U.S. support in the 1980s for the
contra war in Nicaragua, and the CIA mining of Nicaraguan ports --
actions which killed thousands and led to a judgment against the United
States at the World Court?
Civilian targeting, and terror, pure and simple.
Most despicable are those in our media, who sit comfortably in their
modern offices, staring at their computers, and hit the keys advocating
more killing of innocents thousands of miles away.
Here's our short ten worst list, in order of repulsiveness:
Michael Kelly (Washington Post): "American pacifists � are on the side
of future mass murders of Americans," they are "objectively
pro-terrorist," "evil" and "liars."
Jonathan Alter (Newsweek): Wondered whether torture would "jump-start
the stalled investigation into the greatest crime in American history."
Urges pacifists to shut up because "it's kill or be killed."
Bill O'Reilly (Fox TV): "The US should bomb the Afghan infrastructure to
rubble -- the airport, the power plants, their water facilities, the
roads. � The Afghans are responsible for the Taliban. We should not
target civilians, but if they don't rise up against this criminal
government, they starve, period."
A.M. Rosenthal (Washington Times): In addition to Afghanistan, wants to
bomb Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Iran, and Syria.
Ann Coulter (ex-National Review): Her response to terrorism is to
"invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to
Christianity."
Steve Dunleavy (New York Post) " "The response to this unimaginable
21st-century Pearl Harbor should be as simple as it is swift -- kill the
bastards. � A gunshot between the eyes, blow them to smithereens,
poison them if you have � As for cities or countries that host these
worms, bomb them into basketball courts."
Rich Lowry (National Review): "If we flatten part of Damascus or Tehran
or whatever it takes, that is part of the solution."
Charles Krauthammer (Washington Post): "We are fighting because the
bastards killed 5,000 of our people, and if we do not kill them, they
are going to kill us again."
Thomas Friedman (New York Times): "We have to fight the terrorists as if
there were no rules." And the perverted "give war a chance."
George Will (Washington Post): "The Bush administration is telling the
country that there is some dying to be done. ... The goal is not to
'bring terrorists to justice,' which suggests bringing them into sedate
judicial settings -- lawyers, courtrooms, due process, all preceded by
punctilious readings of Miranda rights. Rather, the goal is destruction
of enemies."
Of course, the peace voices have been shunned by the big media
corporations.
After September 11, Clear Channel, the nation's largest owner of radio
stations, sent out an internal memorandum with a list of songs the
stations were not to play, including John Lennon's "Imagine."
In response, Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, took out a full page ad in the
New York Times with eight words from the song: "Imagine all the people
living life in peace."
Then she took out a billboard on Time Square that said: "Give Peace a
Chance."
"What John wrote is a very strong and beautiful message," Ono said. "I
think they (Clear Channel) wanted everyone to be in a kind of attack
mode."
John Lennon: "Give Peace a Chance."
Thomas Friedman: "Give War a Chance."
You decide.
Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime
Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based
Multinational Monitor. They are co-authors of Corporate Predators: The
Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common
Courage Press, 1999).
(c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
This article is posted at:
http://lists.essential.org/pipermail/corp-focus/2001/000093.html
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