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Posted April 9, 2003
Regarding "The Real War" by Justin Raimondo:
Out of curiosity, I decided to read an article an your site, I believe it was "THE REAL WAR – Now it starts." Now, I am sure – you are all babbling f*cking idiots. Thank god three quarters of this country agrees with me. Have fun, wackos!
Justin Raimondo replies:
I got news for you, Brad baby: three-quarters of Americans do NOT support the U.S. staying in Iraq and "nation-building" – but, if you do, you're welcome to go there yourself and start building.... See ya!
Yes the young lady is correct. Thousands of Iraqis should be punished. If they took the lives of another individual without allowing that person due process, they committed murder and are punishable by death, considering the current state of lawlessness. Punishment is something that is scaled according to need. When too many drunk drivers killed people on American highways, American mothers banded together and insisted upon tougher laws.
Mothers and women in general set the bar for what is legitimate punishment for people who have wronged their offspring, so you would do well to listen to this young woman. A whole generation, make that 2 generations have been programmed by ethnic hate and emboldened to attack fellow Muslims and Americans. To preserve our security and to provide justice for the Muslim survivors, a great many of the programmed youth doing the dirty work for monstrous regimes are going to be removed from the ranks of the living. One hopes the remainder get the message.
Justin Raimondo replies:
I am a regular reader of Antiwar.com and generally enjoy reading your articles. However, I found one of the statements in your most recent article somewhat disturbing. In that article you wrote:
"Although Ms. Naamas came to the US as a child, she apparently has not lost that Middle Eastern ferocity that is so frightening, and alien, to the American mind."
In retrospect, I suppose I agree with you. After all, it was that Middle Eastern ferocity that is so alien to the American mind that committed genocide against one million (that's six zeros) innocent Vietnamese civilians between 1963-1974. And of course it was those ferocious A-rabs who colluded with the Suharto regime in 1965 to murder over 500,000 Indonesian civilians, and who later conspired with that same regime in 1972 to invade East Timor, causing the liquidation of 100,000 Timorese lives. And let us not forget how those oh so violent Arabs extinguished over 600,000 innocent Laotians and Cambodians between 1970-1975. Nor should we ever forgive how that Middle Eastern ferocity that is so alien to the American mind trained and financed terrorist armies in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador in the 1980s, causing the mass extinction of the native populations in those countries, etc.
Oh how do you innocent Americans ever put up with that ferocious, uncivilized Arab mind!
Justin Raimondo replies:
Oh please, are you telling me that the level of religious and ethnic hatred in the US even approaches that of the Middle East? Where is our Bin Laden? That, of course, is a good reason for the US to STAY OUT of the region, which was the whole point of bringing up such a politically incorrect matter to begin with.
"To an American, such passions are extreme, and more than a little insane. Although Ms. Naamas came to the US as a child, she apparently has not lost that Middle Eastern ferocity that is so frightening, and alien, to the American mind. These passions visited us once before, on 9/11, and we will revisit them in Iraq, where they will not be easily reined in. This is the meaning of the fight yet to come, as The Observer put it in a recent article: the real war to take place in the wake of our initial 'victory.'"
It makes people in this part of the world sick to the point of vomiting to hear Americans claiming that "Middle Eastern ferocity" is "frightening and alien to the American mind". The supposedly democratic United States periodically sends its people around the world to fry hundreds of thousands (if not millions by now) of people alive (many of them civilians and children) to promote its business interests, so it can become even richer and more wasteful. It is truly amazing that this fact seems to have escaped even well informed commentators such as the author of this article, and is testimony to the incredible amount of brainwashing and propaganda that Americans are subject to. The interviewed lady in question is probably more a product of Western culture than Middle Eastern.
As anybody who has visited this part of the world can tell you, Middle Easterners, and Muslims in general, are of the kindest and most decent people on this earth. I would ask the author of this article to attempt to view the facts without bias and seriously reconsider his point of view on this matter.
Justin Raimondo replies:
If Americans are so ferocious, then how come we didn't have suicide bombers in the American civil war? What I'm speak of here is a special brand of ferocity tied to ethnic and religious conflict of the sort that we haven't yet experienced in this country. The Middle East has a much longer history, of course, and had more time to accumulate the hatreds that are only now beginning to emerge here in America.
Mr. Raimondo is being a little self-serving when he states that:
"Although Ms. Naamas came to the US as a child, she apparently has not lost that Middle Eastern ferocity that is so frightening, and alien, to the American mind."
Ferocity is not alien to the American mind one bit, in fact quite the opposite. After twenty years of increasingly violent film, video games and millions of advertisements consciously or unconsciously glorifying the military ethos (some examples: Rainbow Six first person combat video games, Blackhawk Down, Saving Private Ryan), I think US cannon fodder is quite ready to make the ultimate sacrifice in order to reach level 2.
On the outskirts of Umm Qasr, BBC reporters took images of US soldiers whooping with joy as their antitank penis – sorry missile – exploded on an Iraqi position. It is said that the huns also clapped and cheered as they piked their enemies bodies and killed babies.
I too thought before the war that only the US administration was to blame for all this, but the sad reality is that the mood in the US appears to be a bit like that of Germany as they started remilitarizing. A significant minority all in favour of extending its might and ideas by military means and a silent majority too frightened and too enamoured of the perceived benefits of the status quo to adequately resist them.
Just like that Goldberg fellow wrote about the Germans and World War II, so will some bright young Asian write in 2050 about the Americans and World War III (I refuse to call it World War IV, the cold war being cold was NOT a war) against a backdrop of humanitarian and reconstruction aid to the US while Europe scrounges up some kind of Marshall plan to at least decontaminate the worst hit parts of the middle east.
Nah, Mr. Raimondo, the US is a country baying for its first real blood, and its going to get some. For my part I'm cleaning out the shelter this weekend.
~ Dr. Y. Leung Ki, Switzerland
Justin Raimondo replies:
I was referring to the special brand of ferocity tied to ethnic and religious hatred, that is truly alien to the US but all too common in the Middle East. We don't have suicide bombers here: after the Civil War, the troops from both sides went home, there were no reprisals, and the nation reunited. That would never happen anywhere else.
In your otherwise great article, I take exception to your final paragraph and comment about "Islamist nutballs". Why label people, whose country this is after all, Islamist nutballs or any other kind of nutballs because they choose to fight against an invader and occupier? Are they stupid or nutballs or mentally defective because they are Islamists or because they do not surrender to power like good little children should. I don't get it. Are you for or against this war and occupation? So why call the people who live there and have to live under the planned occupation and all that that means, nutballs, Islamist or otherwise, if they resist. Also, it is a sure bet that any and all resistance, even after the elimination of Saddam and the Baathists will be attributed to Islamists or fanatics. Isn't it just possible, even probable, many people, regardless of religion or nationality, hate people who attack them without legitimate provocation, invade, kill, conquer and occupy them.
That seems supremely reasonable and sane to me. Saner by comparison to those who commit such atrocities in our names, with our young men and women and our money. One thing hardly, if ever, discussed which I think is a major problem for people here is the very idea that people would willingly sacrifice their lives for a cause. Though we give it lots of lip service at funeral services when the issue of body bags must be quickly and solemnly disposed of, the attitude here is that it is nuts, just plain dumb. Only for those poor, stupid bastards who can't afford college or get a decent job any other way than to make a deal with the devil. "You signed up for an education and the hope of a better life? Sorry, you poor dumb schmuck but you failed to read the fine print." The American blood that is sacrificed is not willing (and I would argue that neither is the Iraqi or Palestinian or Islamist "suicides"). It is just more of the facile propaganda we get here in "the land of free and home of the brave" They are fanatics, alien, other, too different and they don't think like us, they must be subhuman nutballs or Islamist crazies. So, "let's roll", let's kill them.
Another issue I would like to see addressed is that this war is merely another in the long list of capitalist vs. socialist struggles. The US plan to privatize Iraq's oil industry is a huge hint. As was the US-led attempted coup in Venezuela last year. So what's really new, another capitalist American aggression against socialist regimes... ? Only new rhetoric, new spin, new words for the same old reason.
Justin Raimondo replies:
I said the REGION is filled with Islamist nutballs. My evidence: September 11, 2001.
Where did the politicians in D.C. learn these methods of conquest? It goes back much further than World War II. Substitute “South” and “Confederate” in your article for “Baath” and you’ll find the blueprints for a prior “reconstruction”. Interestingly, that same term is being used again. The barring of former leaders from service or voting, the reversing of traditional societal roles, the various grades of offender as declared by DC, the breeding of new resentments, etc.
As a proud descendant of Confederate veterans, I do not equate the CSA with Iraq by any means. However, the Yankee “do-gooder” attitude that remade the South through subjugation is alive and well on the Potomac. The only bright side that I can imagine is thousands of Yankees (neocons) carpetbagging their way to Iraq, permanently.
You are beginning to see the outlines of what is obvious to some of us: many small victories leads to eternal war. Any look at the history of empires shows clearly a very simple fact: all empires are expansionist until they go bankrupt.
You would think victorious empires would never go bankrupt, but they all do. Even if no one opposes them in their looting expeditions, they still go bankrupt. Even if, actually especially if, the countries the empire loots has lots of loot, the empire still goes bankrupt.
Why? Several interlocking reasons. One is, looting corrupts the energy used for industry and the ability to think clearly. Like an out of control drunk, the rulers and social leaders literally go mad with lust as they rob everyone. This madness then is turned upon the empire itself as they then loot the empire and cease innovations, preferring to simply take with both hands in the form of crushing taxes and megalomanical projects. This process happens to all empires. The other way empires fall is for all others to unite against the empire and engage it in endless battles until it is defeated which is how the German and French and Spanish empires ended, for example.
The USA is on a cusp. We know that we face a future where oil will be less and less and our lifestyle won't work anymore. We also are deep into an economic crisis and have no idea what to do next. The easy solution to this is to take all the oil pumping nations and simply steal the oil there, pumping it out as fast as possible and ignoring the consequences. Already, the stock market is trying to get back up to unrealistic levels because they are assuming oil will be very cheap again and this is the basis of our culture and economy.
Cheap oil is a disaster at this point. If it is cheap, no one will build competing systems since any system will be, by definition, more expensive. After all, all systems are built around a cheap oil basis. Simple capitalism has been suspended in favor of using the military to impose an economic system that is simple looting. It would be like someone going to the computer industry with a gun and ordering them to sell computers for only ten bucks.
Once a country launches itself into the looting mode, there is no turning back. The moral rot sets in rapidly. I see many in my part of America, openly lusting for the oil, anticipating happily the joys of cheap oil purchased so dearly, they just can't wait. They are excited that the "American Way of Life" will roll on and on.
They can't see the reality which is Russia and China and Germany and France and most other nations oppose this. They can't see that the lust to loot causes a nation to go mad. We won't be able to stop ourselves. The bill is too high. Already, our trade deficit, our budget deficit, our obligations for the future to ourselves, our state budgets, all are disastrously in the red and our rulers hope to solve all by looting. Since we cut taxes to the wealthy ruling elite when all this was going on, one must assume our Congress people and the ruler in DC all think looting Iraq will solve this economic Gordian knot. Cut it with a sword!
This is why World War III is inevitable. I see no way out at this point.
~ Elaine Supkis, Berlin, New York
Challenge to President Bush and PM Blair
As of April 7th., Iraq has not used weapons of mass destruction on the coalition forces and no weapons were located. If some are found after this date there is a good possibility that they would have been planted.
Here is a challenge to President Bush and Prime Minister Blair. You told us that Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction posed a grave and imminent danger to world peace. That they had a nuclear capability, chemical and biological weapons and Scud missiles.
Produce this evidence and don't just take portions of chemical and biological agents etc., from your stocks and plant them in Iraq because we will not be fooled. There has been to much fabricating and lying up to this point.
You claimed that Iraq has 1.5 tons of VX nerve gas, nearly 20,000 liters of anthrax and 30,000 artillery shells or rocket warheads that could carry chemical or biological agents. These are the quantities we expect you to produce. These are big quantities and should not be difficult to find.
We were
also told that the attack on Iraq was not about controlling their oil
reserves. Millions of people around the world, who were opposed to this
war, will be watching closely to see if they were lied to.
~ Kenneth D. Curry, Alberta, Canada
Backtalk
editor Sam Koritz replies:
I'm going to go out on a limb here and jeopardize my hard-earned reputation as the Erik Jan Hanussen of antiwar letters editors. I predict that evidence will be found indicating that the Hussein regime was close to a major breakthrough in w.m.d. technology and that only the timely intervention of the Allies saved the world from this danger.
The evidence
will be too compelling to be casually dismissed.
Shareholders' Rights
...War Resistors League shows us that while our military budget is expressed at 17% of our GDP, in fact when interest on the debt of past military spending is added, we are effectively looking at 46% of our annual government spending being applied to current and past military costs. The contractors who benefit from this spending lie at the heart of America’s war machine. A military budget of this scale is really a massive form corporate socialism and in any true democracy should be determined on a more level democratic playing field. Naturally the US government owes its citizens a strong and viable national defense system. However, the current nature of military spending makes conflicts almost inevitable, whether to pave the way for new foreign markets, sell weapons to currently “friendly regimes” democratic or otherwise, or simply weed out inventory (in the most cynical view) if you are in the business of selling arms, you will want supplies depleted in some way shape or form. Supply demand, or vice versa, same result. The overwhelming size and superiority of today’s American military is surely a sore temptation for those in power who see military fixes to global and domestic problems on every horizon.
Americans, through their pension funds, mutual funds or privately hold trillions of shares of public companies. Currently when they vote at shareholders meetings they generally do so by proxy, voting on a limited number of issues. This is where we could follow the money.
Create a movement to allow shareholders to vote, through their proxy on the percentage of funds donated by the corporation to a political party.
The shareholder could vote on which party he wants the prorated amount of his donation to be applied to. Simply put, each share would represent a fraction of the donation made by the corporation, in relation to the number of shares outstanding. As the attached table demonstrates, certain segments of American corporations donate their money overwhelmingly to the most pro-business party, often Republican and likely to be more hawkish and pro-war.
While large institutional holdings and major business leaders would still likely vote their political donates in favor of the status quo, individual shareholders voting their choice would help level the playing field. Current donations are so lopsided that for many democratic candidates to stand a chance they must basically mime the policies of the opposition. We have become effectively a democracy of a Corporate Democratic Party and a Corporate Republican Party. The debate has become Coke vs. Pepsi. I challenge you to a blind taste test.
While making such a reform a reality would surely involve a long and protracted grass roots battle, it could be a peaceful way to retool the militaristic nature of our economy.
The right of a shareholder vote on political spending by the underlying corporation would not only affect citizen’s views on military issues, but obviously any other platform promulgated by either party in the future. Whether the issue is health care, social security, what have you, every shareholder would have a proportional vote.
With additional leverage through this kind of stock ownership it could also be argued that Americans would be more inclined to invest in stocks and carefully tailor their portfolios to their conscience. I’m sure in the case of national peril they would buy defense stocks and so on.
As long as corporations have the right of personhood, and the resources to contribute vast amounts of money to the political party of their choice, we will never have an equitable democracy that truly represents the will of the people. We will be governed by the few not the many. There has recently been a case made by Thomas Hartmann, in his book "Unequal Protection" that the original ruling in 1876 in favor of corporations having personhood, ruled against the corporation. A corporate friendly railway official who titled the document inferred otherwise. That, apparently, is largely why we find ourselves where we are today. Likely, in light of this new research the status quo will be challenged in the courts in the coming years. In the meantime, a push for shareholder representation to political parties could radically change the chances of fair minded rational politician’s chances of gaining office.
This writer would welcome any input you might have on the merit of the above concept, and any help with direction on how to get traction with such a movement.
~ Anita
C., FEDUP, Foreign Energy Dependence Undermines Peace
Heroes and Cowards
War is planned in the safety of the cold-hearted halls of power by men who are detached from, and immune to its human suffering. It is fought in the heartbreaking cruelty of death and destruction amongst the ruins of the streets and homes of innocent men, women and children on the other side of the world. But it is won in the heart warming simple yet courageous actions of men like Mohammed of Iraq, who risked his life to save a young American woman, a foreigner, a stranger, yet for him another human being. His act shines as a light to all of us in these dark days.
I wonder if there is any feeling of shame or guilt in the cold hearts of those men in Washington who send a young woman barely out of her teens, into harms way to fight their battles for them. Would they send their own daughters into this unjustified war? There is more courage in the heart of Mohammed than can be seen in all the generals and politicians in Washington. His was a humble act of selfless heroism. The acts of the generals and politicians are arrogant acts of self interest and egotism. They are moral cowards of the lowest order compared to the moral courage of one Iraqi citizen.
And when Jessica arrives home, what empty words will be bestowed upon her by the artificially elected president of her country. That she did her duty, served her country? The real truth is that she and many others like her took the only option available to them to escape from a life of poverty in the great and free United States. The Armed forces of America are not defending freedom; they are simply the underprivileged pawns protecting the wealth of the powerful kings and queens of America’s affluent society. The sons and daughters of the wealthy have other choices when their nation goes to war. Witness the aversion to military service displayed by many of the privileged currently in power. You will not find the children of millionaires dressed in battle fatigues fighting in Iraq.
The American government should weep in shame at their actions that placed this young woman and her impoverished peers in mortal danger and ended abruptly the lives of her comrades. But there will be no tears in Washington – no remorse for the thousand of lives lost, for the millions of lives disrupted and destroyed. The cradle of civilization has become the grave for countless innocent victims. It has also become the graveyard for the noble American dreams and ideals that the founding fathers envisioned for a once proud but now arrogant nation. It has become the cemetery for the moral principles of the United States government.
Canada stands alongside millions of citizens around the globe against the illegal actions of the United States government. It also stands against the monstrous acts of the Iraqi and any other nation’s barbaric regimes. But we do not believe in lowering our standards of civilized actions to their barbaric levels in order to overcome them. There are many other options. It may take more time, but with patience and determination, the peaceful citizens and nations will prevail over every despotic regime.
Canada is not an anti-American nation. We stand beside every peace loving citizen of the United States and like minded people around the world. No nation has a monopoly on good any more than any nation has a monopoly on evil. To believe this is to divide the tribes of mankind with hatred. Mohammed of Iraq has shown us that the good exists alongside evil everywhere. He is not alone. Mohammeds exist in all nations just as Saddams exist. Saints and sinners are evenly distributed amongst us. We are one family on this planet. This is our tiny village in the vast universe. Every bomb on Iraq is a bomb on our own community of mankind. Every death is the death of our own brother and sister, mother and father, son and daughter. We have to learn to live together on this small planet, or we shall all surely die together. The world is too small, too fragile to sustain the level of destruction inflicted by modern warfare; the resources too precious to waste and the great potential of humanity and life too great a gift to squander.
Hostages
So I'm wondering just how high GW's approval rating would be were he not holding hundreds of thousands of our sons and daughters hostage in the Arabian desert. Seems to me from the beginning (9/11) he's held some or most of us hostage to one fear, threat or another I getting free rein to do as he pleases in the interim.
My only hope is that the public's famously short attention span is already tiring of the same, relentless crap on TV every day and might be about ready to get back to living their own lives instead of putting everything on hold until it's declared safe to live again.
~ J. McGill, Montana