====================================================================== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. ======================================================================
An existentialist cri de coeur that, while refreshing, probably falls on deaf ears among those who throw their votes away on presumed "lesser evils"--not to mention those who don't even admit their error in viewing Obama as the Great One pushing "hope" while advancing the interests of Wall Street and the Pentagon. David ========================== > Obama's Finest Hour: Killing Innocent People For "Made-Up Crap" > http://www.chris-floyd.com/articles/1-latest-news/2035-obamas-finest-hour-ki > lling-innocent-people-for-qmade-up-crapq.html > Written by Chris Floyd Monday, 18 October 2010 17:03 > > If ever I am tempted by the siren songs of my tribal past as a deep-fried, > yellow-dawg Democrat, and begin to feel any faint, atavistic stirrings of > sympathy for the old gang, I simply think of things like the scenario > below, sketched last week by Johann Hari, and those wispy ghosts of > partisanship past go howling back to the depths: > > Imagine if, an hour from now, a robot-plane swooped over your house and > blasted it to pieces. The plane has no pilot. It is controlled with a > joystick from 7,000 miles away, sent by the Pakistani military to kill > you. > It blows up all the houses in your street, and so barbecues your > family and > your neighbours until there is nothing left to bury but a few charred > slops. Why? They refuse to comment. They don't even admit the robot-planes > belong to them. But they tell the Pakistani newspapers back home it is > because one of you was planning to attack Pakistan. How do they know? > Somebody told them. Who? You don't know, and there are no appeals against > the robot. > > Now imagine it doesn't end there: these attacks are happening every > week somewhere in your country. They blow up funerals and family dinners > and children. The number of robot-planes in the sky is increasing every > week. You discover they are named "Predators", or "Reapers" – after the > Grim Reaper. No matter how much you plead, no matter how much you make it > clear you are a peaceful civilian getting on with your life, it won't > stop. > What do you do? If there was a group arguing that Pakistan was an evil > nation that deserved to be violently attacked, would you now start to > listen? > > ...[This] is in fact an accurate description of life in much of > Pakistan today, with the sides flipped. The Predators and Reapers are > being > sent by Barack Obama's CIA, with the support of other Western governments, > and they killed more than 700 civilians in 2009 alone – 14 times the > number killed in the 7/7 attacks in London. The floods were seen as an > opportunity to increase the attacks, and last month saw the largest number > of robot-plane bombings ever: 22. Over the next decade, spending on drones > is set to increase by 700 per cent. > > > Friends, it's very simple: if you support Barack Obama and the > Democrats -- > even if reluctantly, even if you're just being all sophisticatedly > super-savvy and blogospherically strategic about it, playing the "long > game" or eleven-dimensional chess or what have you -- you are supporting > the outright murder of innocent people who have never done anything > against > you or yours. You have walked into a house, battered down the bedroom > door, > put the barrel of a gun against the temple of a sleeping child, and pulled > the trigger. That is what you are supporting, that is what you are > complicit in, that is what you yourself are doing. > > But hey, let's be all super-savvy and eleventh-dimensional ourselves here > for a moment. Let's be pragmatic, and technocratic, let's be grown-ups, > let's not get sidetracked by a bunch of jejune, dorm-room, hippy-dippy > moralizing. No, let's concentrate on practicalities, let's get down to > brass tacks, let's be serious and focus on "what works" to protect our > national security. OK, so here's the practical result of the illegal > campaign of mass murder that Obama is waging on the sovereign territory of > one of America's allies: > > ... Drone technology was developed by the Israelis, who routinely use > it to bomb the Gaza Strip. I've been in Gaza during some of these attacks. > The people there were terrified – and radicalised. A young woman I know > who had been averse to political violence and an advocate of peaceful > protest saw a drone blow up a car full of people – and she started > supporting Islamic Jihad and crying for the worst possible revenge against > Israel. Robot-drones have successfully bombed much of Gaza, from secular > Fatah to Islamist Hamas, to the brink of jihad. > > Is the same thing happening in Pakistan? David Kilcullen is a > counter-insurgency expert who worked for General Petraeus in Iraq and now > advises the State Department. He has shown that two per cent of the people > killed by the robot-planes in Pakistan are jihadis. The remaining 98 per > cent are as innocent as the victims of 9/11. He says: "It's not > moral." And > it gets worse: "Every one of these dead non-combatants represents an > alienated family, and more recruits for a militant movement that has grown > exponentially as drone strikes have increased. ... It could be poised to > get even worse: Bob Woodward's Obama's Wars says the US has an immediate > plan to bomb 150 targets in Pakistan if there is a jihadi attack inside > America. > > > Why, it's almost as if the drone campaign was designed to create more and > more enemies -- and more and more contracts for war profiteers to build > more and more drones, which can then be used to create more and more > enemies, which means more and more contracts for ..... say, it is a > practical plan, after all! A practical plan to create terrorism, not quell > it. > > And what is the "evidence" used by the Administration militarists as they > draw up their target lists for the defenseless villages in Pakistan? What > is the "intelligence" produced by the $75 billion lavished on our 200,000 > security apparatchiks every year? On what basis is Barack Obama killing > people in Pakistan? Hari reports: > > ..[The] press releases uncritically repeated by the press after a > bombing always brag about "senior al-Qa'ida commanders" killed – but some > people within the CIA admit how arbitrary their choice of targets is. One > of their senior figures told The New Yorker: "Sometimes you're dealing > with > tribal chiefs. Often they say an enemy of theirs is al-Qa'ida because they > want to get rid of somebody, or they made crap up because they wanted to > prove they were valuable so they could make money." > > > That's right: Barack Obama is killing hundreds of innocent civilians in > Pakistan on the basis of crap made up for money. Made-up crap. For money. > That's why a child who is just as precious as your child is to a > parent who > is just as real a person as you are was killed this week, by Barack Obama > and the Democratic Party and the entire bipartisan foreign policy > establishment of the United States of America: crap made up for money. > > And of course, it's not just tribal chiefs making up crap for blood money: > the entire aforementioned bipartisan foreign policy establishment is now > and has for years been making up crap "so they could make money" -- for > themselves, for their corporate patrons, for their government > agencies, for > their defense and "security" stockholdings, for the perpetuation of their > bloated, belligerent, pig-ignorant domination of world affairs and > American > society -- by killing innocent people all over the world. > > "But oh my gosh, oh my lord, we have to support Obama! What if those Tea > Party Republicans get into power? What would happen then?" What would > happen? The same goddamned thing that's happening right now, that's what. > More and more war, more and more murder, more and more domination by a > militarist kleptocracy. As Glenn Greenwald notes this week, Obama and the > Tea Partiers (and the neocons, and the liberal hawks, and the Bush Regime > war criminals) are in lockstep (even goosestep) on keeping the War Machine > stoked and rolling. > > That's why the opposition to the Tea Party Republicans has been so anemic, > focused almost entirely on personality flaws or asinine comments or resume > padding or stupid things they did in college. The Democrats can't possibly > attack them on substance -- i.e., the fact that the Tea Partiers are rabid > warmongers who delight in murder, torture and repression and believe that > the poor, the sick, the old, the weak, the unlucky, and the vulnerable > should just eat shit and die already -- because these are the same > positions the Democrats hold! Who "reformed" health care into a > gargantuan, > guaranteed boondoggle for rapacious conglomerates? Who bailed out the > bankers and left millions in the hands of savage "robo-signers?" Who > set up > the "Catfood Commission" and stocked it from top to bottom with long-time, > deep-dyed haters of the poor and the weak? It wasn't Dick Cheney, bub. > > I don't want to see the Tea Partiers in power. But I'm not going to > support > one faction of murderers and plunderers just to keep out another > faction of > murderers and plunderers. Hari makes this good analogy about the drone > program: > > Yet many people defend the drones by saying: "We have to do something." > If your friend suffered terrible third-degree burns, would you urge her to > set fire to her hair because "you have to do something"? Would you give a > poisoning victim another, worse poison, on the grounds that any action is > better than none? > > > Similarly, I say: would you support one murderer -- who likes to break > into > children's bedrooms and blow their brains out -- in order to stop another > murderer, who would do the same thing, from taking over a vicious gang of > murderers? What would be the basis, the reason for your support? That the > first murderer wears nicer suits? Digs cooler music? Throws better street > parties? Leaves a pretty little flower next to the blown-out brains? > > For a system sunk so deeply in evil, there is no "lesser" evil to choose. > The militarist kleptocracy itself is evil, and every political faction > that > does not denounce it and seek to dismantle it is complicit in this evil. > The choice is to stand outside such factions; the choice is > non-cooperation > with evil, as advocated by Thoreau, Tolstoy, Gandhi, King. I'm not > going to > spend my brief time here on earth standing with blood-soaked killers, no > matter what factional name they give themselves, or what loyalties they > might claim on our myth-clouded memories of the past. I'm not going to > teach my children that all we can do is to grovel before one > child-murdering maniac or another, to keep quiet, to never speak the > truth, > to sell their votes, their dignity and their souls to murderers who would > pervert every good instinct -- and every bad instinct -- every worthy hope > and every nasty fear, to keep themselves in power. > > Dead children. Made-up crap. For money. That's what our leading > "dissidents" want us to support. There is much that could be said > about the > utterly puerile arguments being offered for this murder-abetting stance; > but in the interests of brevity, and civility -- and my own sanity -- I > will forbear, and simply say: no thanks. ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
