Op-Ed
The idea that wars are waged out of humanitarian concern may not at first appear even worthy of response. Wars kill humans. What can be humanitarian about that? But look at the sort of rhetoric that successfully sells new wars:
"This conflict started Aug. 2, when the dictator of Iraq invaded a small and helpless neighbor. Kuwait, a member of the Arab League and a member of the United Nations, was crushed, its people brutalized. Five months ago, Saddam Hussein started this cruel war against Kuwait; tonight, the battle has been joined."
Thus spoke President Bush the Elder upon launching the Gulf War in 1991. He didn't say he wanted to kill people. He said he wanted to liberate helpless victims from their oppressors, an idea that would be considered leftist in domestic politics, but an idea that seems to create genuine support for wars. And here's President Clinton speaking about Yugoslavia eight years later:
"This conflict started Aug. 2, when the dictator of Iraq invaded a small and helpless neighbor. Kuwait, a member of the Arab League and a member of the United Nations, was crushed, its people brutalized. Five months ago, Saddam Hussein started this cruel war against Kuwait; tonight, the battle has been joined."
Thus spoke President Bush the Elder upon launching the Gulf War in 1991. He didn't say he wanted to kill people. He said he wanted to liberate helpless victims from their oppressors, an idea that would be considered leftist in domestic politics, but an idea that seems to create genuine support for wars. And here's President Clinton speaking about Yugoslavia eight years later:
It was not until Secretary of State Hillary Clinton walked to the George Washington University podium last week to enthusiastic applause that I decided I had to dissociate myself from the obsequious adulation of a person responsible for so much death, suffering and destruction.
I was reminded of a spring day in Atlanta almost five years earlier when then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld strutted onto a similar stage to loud acclaim from another enraptured audience.
Introducing Rumsfeld on May 4, 2006, the president of the Southern Center for International Policy in Atlanta highlighted his “honesty.” I had just reviewed my notes for an address I was scheduled to give that evening in Atlanta and, alas, the notes demonstrated his dishonesty.
I thought to myself, if there’s an opportunity for Q & A after his speech I might try to stand and ask a question, which is what happened. I engaged in a four-minute impromptu debate with Rumsfeld on Iraq War lies, an exchange that was carried on live TV.
That experience leaped to mind on Feb. 15, as Secretary Clinton strode onstage amid similar adulation.
I was reminded of a spring day in Atlanta almost five years earlier when then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld strutted onto a similar stage to loud acclaim from another enraptured audience.
Introducing Rumsfeld on May 4, 2006, the president of the Southern Center for International Policy in Atlanta highlighted his “honesty.” I had just reviewed my notes for an address I was scheduled to give that evening in Atlanta and, alas, the notes demonstrated his dishonesty.
I thought to myself, if there’s an opportunity for Q & A after his speech I might try to stand and ask a question, which is what happened. I engaged in a four-minute impromptu debate with Rumsfeld on Iraq War lies, an exchange that was carried on live TV.
That experience leaped to mind on Feb. 15, as Secretary Clinton strode onstage amid similar adulation.
When a satirist published a phony U.S. government report in 1967 that recommended against allowing peace to ever break out, most people seemed to fall for the prank. Members of the news media were either in on the joke or victims. The copy I have is marked up with a yellow highlighter by someone who grew angrier and angrier through the book's pages. Toward the end, when the authors of the "report" advocated reviving slavery, the previous owner of my copy scrawled "BULL SHIT" in all caps across two pages.
This will be a familiar experience to anyone who has ever used both Twitter and sarcasm. No matter how outrageous the joke, there are those who will take it seriously and who will insist on taking it seriously even after having been let in on the joke. Thus the "Report From Iron Mountain on the Possibility and Desirability of Peace" still has believers in its authenticity despite being an obvious prank.
This will be a familiar experience to anyone who has ever used both Twitter and sarcasm. No matter how outrageous the joke, there are those who will take it seriously and who will insist on taking it seriously even after having been let in on the joke. Thus the "Report From Iron Mountain on the Possibility and Desirability of Peace" still has believers in its authenticity despite being an obvious prank.
In upmarket restaurants one wouldn’t know the world is suffering from a food crisis. As I observed young executives and professionals slurping oysters and chasing them with martinis at a downtown San Francisco watering house last month without glancing at the prices of such items, less affluent mortals around the world had to overreach their budgets to buy bread, tortillas and oil to cook their food. But those who routinely pay $25.95 for seared ahi tuna hardly blink when the menu lists the same dish for $28.95 -- certainly not after three martinis.
Masters of the Universe celebrate their success, (large salaries and bonuses) by using OPM – other people’s money. Nostalgia for Ronald Reagan among older members of this set runs rampant – days of no taxes when sleeping with the President meant attending a cabinet meeting and environmental problems came from trees. (“Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do,” Reagan said in 1981 and "A tree is a tree. How many more do you have to look at?" the California Governor snorted in 1966, opposing expansion of Redwood National Park.)
Masters of the Universe celebrate their success, (large salaries and bonuses) by using OPM – other people’s money. Nostalgia for Ronald Reagan among older members of this set runs rampant – days of no taxes when sleeping with the President meant attending a cabinet meeting and environmental problems came from trees. (“Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do,” Reagan said in 1981 and "A tree is a tree. How many more do you have to look at?" the California Governor snorted in 1966, opposing expansion of Redwood National Park.)
“Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.” — Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Egyptians lock arms, a dictator tumbles. Let’s think about this, shall we? How could such a thing have happened? I ask this knowing the hard part is just beginning. The hard part is always just beginning.
Egypt — brutal dictatorship now under military rule, key caretaker of Western interests in the Middle East — has yet to transform itself institutionally into the type of society its people have indicated over an extraordinary 18 days that they want and deserve; and much could happen in the coming weeks and months, from pressures both internal and international, to thwart, co-opt and derail the January 25 Revolution.
Egyptians lock arms, a dictator tumbles. Let’s think about this, shall we? How could such a thing have happened? I ask this knowing the hard part is just beginning. The hard part is always just beginning.
Egypt — brutal dictatorship now under military rule, key caretaker of Western interests in the Middle East — has yet to transform itself institutionally into the type of society its people have indicated over an extraordinary 18 days that they want and deserve; and much could happen in the coming weeks and months, from pressures both internal and international, to thwart, co-opt and derail the January 25 Revolution.
A standard zigzag of political rhetoric went for a jaunt along Pennsylvania Avenue on Tuesday (Feb. 15) with a speech by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at George Washington University. “Iran is awful because it is a government that routinely violates the rights of its people,” she declared. During the last few weeks, much has changed in the politics of the Middle East -- but not much has changed in the politics of Washington, where policymakers turn phrases on a dime.
The currency is doublespeak, antithetical to a single standard of human rights.
And so, the secretary of state condemns awful Iran, invoking “our sense of human dignity, the rights that flow from it and the principles that ground it.” But don’t hold your breath for any such condemnation of, say, Saudi Arabia -- surely an “awful” government that “routinely violates the rights of its people.”
It wasn’t long ago that Hosni Mubarak’s regime -- with all its repression and torture -- enjoyed high esteem and lavish praise in Washington. For Egyptians, the repression and torture went on; for the bipartisan savants running U.S. foreign policy, the suppression was good geopolitics.
The currency is doublespeak, antithetical to a single standard of human rights.
And so, the secretary of state condemns awful Iran, invoking “our sense of human dignity, the rights that flow from it and the principles that ground it.” But don’t hold your breath for any such condemnation of, say, Saudi Arabia -- surely an “awful” government that “routinely violates the rights of its people.”
It wasn’t long ago that Hosni Mubarak’s regime -- with all its repression and torture -- enjoyed high esteem and lavish praise in Washington. For Egyptians, the repression and torture went on; for the bipartisan savants running U.S. foreign policy, the suppression was good geopolitics.
In this age of supposedly fighting against rulers and on behalf of oppressed peoples, the Vietnam War offers an interesting case in which the U.S. policy was to avoid overthrowing the enemy government but to work hard to kill its people. To overthrow the government in Hanoi, it was feared, would draw China or Russia into the war, something the United States hoped to avoid. But destroying the nation ruled by Hanoi was expected to cause it to submit to U.S. rule.
The Afghanistan War, already the longest war in U.S. history, is another interesting case in that the demonic figure used to justify it, terrorist leader Osama bin Laden, was not the ruler of the country. He was someone who had spent time in the country, and in fact had been supported there by the United States in a war against the Soviet Union. He had allegedly planned the crimes of September 11, 2001, in part in Afghanistan. Other planning, we knew, had gone on in Europe and the United States. But it was Afghanistan that apparently needed to be punished for its role as host to this criminal.
The Afghanistan War, already the longest war in U.S. history, is another interesting case in that the demonic figure used to justify it, terrorist leader Osama bin Laden, was not the ruler of the country. He was someone who had spent time in the country, and in fact had been supported there by the United States in a war against the Soviet Union. He had allegedly planned the crimes of September 11, 2001, in part in Afghanistan. Other planning, we knew, had gone on in Europe and the United States. But it was Afghanistan that apparently needed to be punished for its role as host to this criminal.
The Ohio GOP may soon push "breakthrough" legislation requiring the official execution of Medicare recipients, according to a fictional source within the party. Secret computer-based lotteries will decide who will be eliminated from the state's Medicare rolls, he said in confidence, but family notification would be withheld until after the shootings have taken place.
The GOP now has total control of the Ohio legislature and governor's office. The unnamed "source" explained that soaring budget deficits threaten the party's efforts to eliminate the Ohio estate tax, a tariff that could lower the income of some of the state's multi-millionaires by as much as several thousand dollars.
"There are simply too many Ohioans turning 65 to allow this to continue," the source said. "Clearly those who have not accumulated at least $2 million by the time they become seniors have no right to continue to live, let alone to impinge on those who, by the force of their efforts and the grace of God, have become acceptably rich."
The GOP now has total control of the Ohio legislature and governor's office. The unnamed "source" explained that soaring budget deficits threaten the party's efforts to eliminate the Ohio estate tax, a tariff that could lower the income of some of the state's multi-millionaires by as much as several thousand dollars.
"There are simply too many Ohioans turning 65 to allow this to continue," the source said. "Clearly those who have not accumulated at least $2 million by the time they become seniors have no right to continue to live, let alone to impinge on those who, by the force of their efforts and the grace of God, have become acceptably rich."
The danger of permitting the Egyptians democracy, rather than replacing a dictator with his (and our) torturer lies, let us be honest, not in the possibility that Egyptian politics will approach the religiosity of our own Republican Party, and not in the possibility that the civil liberties we have helped deny Egyptians for decades won't all be immediately established, and certainly not in the possibility that the Egyptians would commit collective suicide by attempting to attack the United States, but rather in the possibility that other peoples would be inspired to attempt self-rule as well, and -- more directly -- in the probability that Egypt would cease to uphold the collective punishment of the people of Gaza.
George W. Bush has his back to the wall. He just cancelled a speech in Switzerland due to fear of mass protests and his arrest for authorizing the torture of detainees at Guantánamo Bay.
Bush is afraid of another Pinochet incident. In 1998, late Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was arrested in London on a warrant from Spain for multiple crimes committed during his brutal, bloody reign.
Human rights activists all over the world have pledged to seek arrest warrants wherever Bush travels outside the United States. Already, legal proceedings in Spain and Germany target Bush and his henchmen for their crimes. Bush cannot hide, just like Pinochet couldn’t.
We owe the people of Switzerland, Spain and Germany a debt of gratitude for their steadfastness and continued activity to bring Bush to justice. We can do no less.
This is truly a global movement for accountability and justice. The American people have a special responsibility to continue to expose Bush and keep the pressure on.
Bush and Cheney were hoping that the outrage against them would die, but it never will.
Bush is afraid of another Pinochet incident. In 1998, late Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was arrested in London on a warrant from Spain for multiple crimes committed during his brutal, bloody reign.
Human rights activists all over the world have pledged to seek arrest warrants wherever Bush travels outside the United States. Already, legal proceedings in Spain and Germany target Bush and his henchmen for their crimes. Bush cannot hide, just like Pinochet couldn’t.
We owe the people of Switzerland, Spain and Germany a debt of gratitude for their steadfastness and continued activity to bring Bush to justice. We can do no less.
This is truly a global movement for accountability and justice. The American people have a special responsibility to continue to expose Bush and keep the pressure on.
Bush and Cheney were hoping that the outrage against them would die, but it never will.