Hide the Photos of the Maimed and the Dead, so the War Looks Sterile, Glorious and Successful.

They hide the dead to help the "fight for freedom." Most corporate news organizations have been cheerleaders for the wars waged by the party in power.  They curate the experience for you to spare you the trouble of thinking.  Think of Afghanistan. And see here.  Raw photography would end almost every war, so that's why you are not permitted to see the photos, especially photos of up-close suffering, maiming of civilians and death, in the corporate media. Not in Iraq, Afghanistan, Gaza, Syria, Lebanon, Iran or anywhere else that the US fights for "freedom." Robert Fisk, Robert Fisk (1946–2020) was a highly regarded British journalist and author:

I always remember when Madeleine Albright announced that Israel was under siege. For a brief moment, I asked myself, if there were Palestinian tanks in Haifa. How do we reach a stage where we so distort reality that we actually have a lethal effect on the conflict itself? The worst example of this, I'm sorry to say, is television, the way in which, unless an Iraqi is obliging enough in a war to die romantically beside the road in silhouette with all his arms still attached, you do not see the dead for viewers of television, not in the Arab world, I might add that in the West we do not see the dead, and thus our leaders, all of whom at the moment have ZERO experience of real war--the journalists do, but not our leaders in the West--they are able to present, to the public, war as a bloodless sand pit. War as something primarily to do with victory and defeat rather than death, which is exactly what is about on a large scale. War represents the total failure of the human spirit.

And I had a perfect example of this in 2003 I was in Baghdad. I was trying to get down to Basra. I got halfway, and then I was so frightened I could hardly write. And were so many bombs dropping from my own Air Force, among others, that I turned back to Baghdad. But Al Jazeera were in Basra, and they got back the same day to Baghdad with their video film, and I sat with them in their little tent. You probably realized that in a war, many of the big agencies pool their material, especially the television companies. So it was being sent through the satellite to Reuters in London, whose job was to edit the film. So of course, this was film of a civilian hospital. There were some soldiers brought in wounded and dead, but most of the pictures were of dead and wounded, women and children. They had been killed and wounded by British artillery fire in Basra. The British were besieging Basra while the Americans took the highway to claim Baghdad. And what was particularly revealing was, as they showed the film, I listened to the remarks coming back from London. You know, there were terrible scenes. It was one of a child holding its intestines and a woman with part of her hand missing. And there were screams and cries and lots of blood on the film. And the voice from London said, "You know, we can't really show this. You can't show this to people at tea time." And by this moment, I had my notebook out for The Independent, my newspaper. THIS was going to be tonight's story. So [Al Jazeera] said, "Please, please. Please, we risked our life for this. Just let us put out a little bit more of the film. Maybe you can use it." And of course, there were more pictures of blood and wounded children and dead children. And then the voice came back and said, "This is obscene. We can't put obscene pictures like this on Western television." They pleaded again by now, of course. My pen was skidding over the pages. These were great quotes, because this is what was wrong. And then the voice came back for the third and final time. "We can't show these pictures because we must respect the dead." Now you get the point. We didn't respect them when they were alive. We didn't respect them when we blew them to bits. But when they're dead, by God, we have to respect them.

Continue ReadingHide the Photos of the Maimed and the Dead, so the War Looks Sterile, Glorious and Successful.

Why do we honor 6,440 U.S. soldiers who died in Afghanistan and Iraq?

Memorial Day Question: Why do we need to honor 6,440 U.S. soldiers who died in Afghanistan and Iraq? Answer: Because they were asked to go there. To put this day into perspective, I've re-published this image by "ARG" at Pixwit (with permission of the artist): Additional note from the artist:

Chicken Heart Winner (Five-deferment Dick) November 17, 2005: As Vice President Dick Cheney attacks the Democrats for questioning the honesty of the president's warmaking, Congressman John Murtha, himself a decorated Korean War and Vietnam War combat veteran and a staunch warhawk, announces it's time to bring the troops home. Concerning Mr. Cheney's ranting, Murtha resorted to uncharacteristic sarcasm: "I like guys who got five deferments and have never been there and send people to war and then don't like to hear suggestions about what needs to be done." Concerning Cheney's lack of military service, he's on record: "I had other priorities in the '60s than military service."

Continue ReadingWhy do we honor 6,440 U.S. soldiers who died in Afghanistan and Iraq?

On loving one’s enemies

I believe that Jesus was a human being, not a God. Therefore, I don't give him homage, but I do occasionally read his alleged teachings, which I evaluate one-by-one. Jesus allegedly said some things that make sense to me, but other things attributed to Jesus don't make much sense to me. When I run into a teaching of Jesus that doesn't make sense, I set it aside as something that doesn't make sense. I'm free to do this, because I'm not a Christian. If I were a Christian, however, I would think that I should follow ALL of the teachings attributed to Jesus, because if I were a Christian, I would probably believe that Jesus is God, and who would I be to disagree with God? One of the things Jesus seemed to teach quite clearly was that we should love our enemies. Robert Wright summarizes these teachings:

The “Love your enemy” injunction, as we’ve seen, appears in both Matthew and Luke. In the Matthew version, Jesus says, “I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” In the letter to the Romans, written more than a decade before Matthew or Luke was written, Paul says, “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.” And if Paul doesn’t quite say to love your enemies, he does add “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink.” Paul also says, in that same passage, “Do not repay anyone evil for evil … never avenge yourselves.” Similarly, Jesus, just before advising people to love their enemies, says, “Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.”

Continue ReadingOn loving one’s enemies

Who is the U.S. killing with its drones?

What would you think about someone who started shooting a gun from the top of the Empire State Building in order to kill "bad people" walking on the sidewalks below? Assume that he could tell very little, if anything, about the people he was killing.  Also assume that when we asked him to justify how he knew he was shooting "bad people" he asked us to trust him and questioned our loyalty to the United States to the extent we doubted him.  Now consider America's largely indiscriminate killings using its huge fleet of drones.  Glenn Greenwald puts it in perspective:

After I linked to [a New York Times] Op-Ed yesterday on Twitter — by writing that “every American who cheers for drone strikes should confront the victims of their aggression” — I was predictably deluged with responses justifying Obama’s drone attacks on the ground that they are necessary to kill The Terrorists. Reading the responses, I could clearly discern the mentality driving them: I have never heard of 99% of the people my government kills with drones, nor have I ever seen any evidence about them, but I am sure they are Terrorists. That is the drone mentality in both senses of the word; it’s that combination of pure ignorance and blind faith in government authorities that you will inevitably hear from anyone defending President Obama’s militarism . . . .  As it turns out, it isn’t only the President’s drone-cheering supporters who have no idea who is being killed by the program they support; neither does the CIA itself. A Wall Street Journal article yesterday described internal dissension in the administration to Obama’s broad standards for when drone strikes are permitted, and noted that the “bulk” of the drone attacks — the bulk of them – “target groups of men believed to be militants associated with terrorist groups, but whose identities aren’t always known.” As Spencer Ackerman put it: “The CIA is now killing people without knowing who they are, on suspicion of association with terrorist groups.”

Take a look at Greenwald's article to get a feel for what it is like for innocent families to live in terror of attack by drones. I wrote on this topic recently, actually twice, and I find it profoundly disturbing that this sort of sky-adjudication and killing is being done in my name by our large staff of predator pilots. The way we are fighting our ongoing drone "war" appears incompatible with a genuine attempt to seek lasting peace.  We don't have any confidence that we are killing people who threaten the United States. Shame on us.

Continue ReadingWho is the U.S. killing with its drones?

The cost of America’s warmongering

President Barack Obama recently suggested that America's wars had cost $1 trillion. Reuters suggested that Obama is not being forthright:

Staggering as it is, that figure grossly underestimates the total cost of wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan to the U.S. Treasury and ignores more imposing costs yet to come, according to a study released on Wednesday. The final bill will run at least $3.7 trillion and could reach as high as $4.4 trillion
The study referred to is this one, by Costs of War.  Unlike your local newspaper or your local TV news, this is website that pulls no punches. Here are some of the findings:
  • While we know how many US soldiers have died in the wars (just over 6000), what is startling is what we don’t know about the levels of injury and illness in those who have returned from the wars. New disability claims continue to pour into the VA, with 550,000 just through last fall. Many deaths and injuries among US contractors have not been identified.
  • At least 137,000 civilians have died and more will die in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan as a result of the fighting at the hands of all parties to the conflict.
  • The armed conflict in Pakistan, which the U.S. helps the Pakistani military fight by funding, equipping and training them, has taken as many lives as the conflict in neighboring Afghanistan.
  • Putting together the conservative numbers of war dead, in uniform and out, brings the total to 225,000.
  • Millions of people have been displaced indefinitely and are living in grossly inadequate conditions. The current number of war refugees and displaced persons -- 7,800,000 -- is equivalent to all of the people of Connecticut and Kentucky fleeing their homes.
    How disproportionate has been America's response to the 9/11 attacks?  Reuters offers this:

    What followed were three wars in which $50 billion amounts to a rounding error. For every person killed on September 11, another 73 have been killed since.

    Continue ReadingThe cost of America’s warmongering