Largely because of the widespread international recognition that the world could ill afford another major war, the United Nations came into existence in October 1945, two months after the surrender of Japanese forces ended World War II. Emphasizing the need to prevent war, the first sentence in the preamble to the
United Nations Charter reads:
We the peoples of the United Nations determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime brought untold sorrow to mankind…
The Charter goes on to define “
Crime against peace” as a war crime, and more specifically as the invasion of one country by another for any purpose other than self-defense.
The United States of America played the
leading role in the founding of the United Nations. President Roosevelt deserves most of the credit for conception of the idea, and President Truman led the process of its creation after Roosevelt’s death.
Yet in the United States today, especially during the George W. Bush administration, war has become normalized by our corporate news media to such an extent that it is no longer thought of as an option of last resort (though that thought is often given lip service). Glen Greenwald, in his book, “
A Tragic Legacy – How a Good Vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency”, describes the current state of affairs in our country:
In reviewing the pre-Iraq War “debate” this country had both on television and in print, one of the most striking aspects in retrospect is the casual and even breezy tone with which America collectively discusses and thinks about war as a foreign policy option… There is really no strong resistance to it, little anguish over it, no sense that it is a supremely horrible and tragic course to undertake – and particularly to start. Gone almost completely from our mainstream political discourse is horror over war…. In our political discourse, there is no longer a strong presumption against war. In fact, it is almost as though there is a reverse presumption…
The Iraq War as a case in pointAnyone who disagrees with Greenwald’s characterization need consider only a few very simple salient points about the Iraq War:
More than a million Iraqi civilians
have died as a result of the war.
It has produced over
4 million refugees.
We have destroyed Iraq’s infrastructure, including its
electricity and
potable water services.
The vast majority of Iraqis
want us out of their country.
The war is
fueling the creation of new anti-American terrorists in huge numbers.
The war has
killed nearly 4 thousand America soldiers and is
costing us hundreds of billions of dollars.
Here is a
not untypical reaction by an Iraqi citizen to the American invasion and occupation of her country – which I’ve posted before but which bears repeating:
People are seething with anger… Every newspaper you pick up in Baghdad has pictures of some American or British atrocity or another. It's like a nightmare that has come to life. Everyone knew this was happening in Abu Ghraib and other places… American and British politicians have the audacity to come on television with words like, "True the people in Abu Ghraib are criminals, but…" Everyone here in Iraq knows that there are thousands of innocent people detained… In the New Iraq, it's "guilty until proven innocent”…
And through all this, Bush gives his repulsive speeches. He makes an appearance on Arabic TV channels looking sheepish and attempting to look sincere, babbling on about how this 'incident' wasn't representative of the American people or even the army, regardless of the fact that it's been going on for so long… But when the bodies were dragged through the streets of Fallujah, the American troops took it upon themselves to punish the whole city… Bush… Your credibility was gone the moment you stepped into Iraq and couldn't find the WMD....
So are the atrocities being committed in Abu Ghraib really not characteristic of the American army? What about the atrocities committed by Americans in Guantanamo? And Afghanistan? … It seems that torture and humiliation are common techniques used in countries blessed with the American presence…
Why is no one condemning this? … I don't understand the 'shock' Americans claim to feel at the lurid pictures. You've seen the troops break down doors and terrify women and children… curse, scream, push, pull and throw people to the ground with a boot over their head. You've seen troops shoot civilians in cold blood. You've seen them bomb cities and towns. You've seen them burn cars and humans using tanks and helicopters. Is this latest debacle so very shocking or appalling?
I sometimes get emails asking me to propose solutions or make suggestions. Fine. Today's lesson: don't rape, don't torture, don't kill and get out while you can – while it still looks like you have a choice... Chaos? Civil war? Bloodshed? We’ll take our chances – just take your Puppets, your tanks, your smart weapons, your dumb politicians, your lies, your empty promises, your rapists, your sadistic torturers and go.
What more does one need to know? After the claim that Iraq posed an imminent danger to our country was
proven false, George Bush resorted to “spreading democracy to Iraq” and “fighting terrorism” as his new excuses for the invasion and continuing occupation of Iraq. But the above noted facts are absurdly inconsistent with those excuses – and yet we hardly ever hear these issues discussed by our national news media.
The connection between George Bush’s “War on Terror” and the normalization of war in the U.S.The extent to which George Bush sought and achieved the acceptance of war in our country by closely associating it with his so-called “War on Terror” can be seen in how our corporate news media sided with George Bush on this issue during the 2004 presidential election campaign.
John Kerry tried to disassociate Bush’s “War on Terror” from the need for actual war.
He maintained that the fight against terrorism would best be won through a combination of sound intelligence gathering, law enforcement, cooperation with other countries, and border security, rather than by attacking nations that posed no threat to us and had nothing to do with the 9-11 attacks on our country. As Greenwald notes, Kerry told the
New York Times Magazine that “Endless warfare could not ever end the evil of terrorism because terrorism is a
tactic used to advance a political and religious ideology, and thus cannot be eradicated through the use of military force.”
Greenwald describes how Kerry’s message was received by journalists and pundits:
But Kerry’s advocacy of an alternative course to Bush’s failing militarism provoked wild controversy and great derision, from the Bush campaign as well as journalists and pundits across the ideological spectrum. Kerry’s approach lacked – indeed, it rejected – the fulfilling, reassuring simplicity of cheering on wars. The Bush campaign and the tough-guy media pundits wildly distorted, then caricatured, and then scornfully laughed away Kerry’s point…. Oh, how hilarious – weak little John Kerry wants to treat terrorism like a law enforcement problem! He wants to protect against Al Qaeda attacks with police methods! He would “protect us” by serving subpoenas on Osama bin Laden! He wants to surrender to the terrorists and give them therapy! He only wants to defend America if he first gets a permission slip from the U.N. That is so funny.
Thus did our corporate news media side with George Bush’s vision of his “War on Terror”: Terrorists are Evil and George Bush is Good. Therefore, anyone who fails to recognize this and support George Bush’s extreme militarism either doesn’t understand the threat of terrorism or is on the side of the terrorists.
The use of terrorism to make politically useful but logically incoherent argumentsThe Bush administration has repeatedly and shamefully used any reminder of terrorism for its own political purposes. It doesn’t matter if the event in question in fact poses an argument
against George Bush’s vision of the terrorist threat. So successful has Bush been in instilling fear in the American people, and so complicit has our corporate news media been in supporting his absurd views, that any hint of terrorism can be used to George Bush’s political advantage. A good example of this was the announcement, shortly before the 2006 Congressional elections, of a
plot to blow up ten commercial jets scheduled to leave England and fly over the Atlantic Ocean. George Bush used the episode to
make the following point at a press conference:
The recent arrests that our fellow citizens are now learning about are a stark reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom, to hurt our nation.
But the Islamist plot that Bush referred to should be seen, if one reflects logically upon it, not as an event that vindicates his views but as an event that
contradicts his views and supports Kerry’s views on the terrorist threat. Greenwald explains:
The U.K. terrorist plot was disrupted not by invading other countries or dropping bombs on Middle Eastern neighborhoods, but through diligent, legal, and patient law enforcement efforts, i.e., the measures advocated by Kerry that prompted such mockery in the press…
The effect of Bush policies on the anti-American terrorist threatFar from aiding in our efforts to address the threat of Islamist terrorism, George Bush’s simple minded views and policies inflame it. Greenwald explains why:
This mind-set is incoherent, dangerous, and – worst of all – entirely counterproductive, because nothing fuels the anti-American resentment at the heart of terrorism more than invasions and bombing campaigns in Muslim countries…
Most of the participants in the U.K. bomb conspiracy were British citizens, born in England. They had nothing to do with Iraq or Saddam Hussein or Iranian mullahs … They were motivated by hatred of the United States, hatred which could not possibly be anything other than inflamed, and certainly not diffused, as a result of watching the U.S. attack a sovereign oil-rich country filled with Muslim holy sites. The ongoing occupation of Iraq spawns daily video of corpses of Muslim children, pictures of bombed marketplaces, and tales of American abuses against Muslims inside torture prisons formerly used by Saddam Hussein. All of that is continuously broadcast by Al Jazeera and other Middle East media outlets…
A word on George Bush’s motivationI love the way that Greenwald explains these crucially important issues and puts them in perspective. The only thing that I disagree with him about is George Bush’s motivations. Greenwald believes that the root of the problem is Bush’s is simple minded
Manichean world view, which looks at everything in terms of good vs. evil. He gives Bush credit for sincerely believing his nonsense, notwithstanding the tremendous damage it has caused to the lives of millions of people.
I on the other hand look at it very differently. I wouldn’t criticize Bush’s Manichean world view per se, as I myself hold elements of that view. I do believe that there is a great deal of evil in the world, and I believe that good people must stand up to and fight that evil if human civilization is to endure and thrive. In that respect I agree with some of George Bush’s rhetoric.
Unlike Greenwald, I see no evidence whatsoever of sincerity in George W. Bush. Nor do I see any evidence of good in him. I don’t believe for a moment that he has the slightest desire to “spread democracy” to Iraq or anywhere else. On the contrary, I see the proliferation of
no-bid contracts, the
missing billions of dollars, the
skyrocketing profits of the Bush/Cheney oil cronies, the
100 Bremer orders making Iraq a colony of the United States, the proliferation of
permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq, the
production sharing agreements designed to ensure access of U.S. oil companies to Iraq’s oil, and the failure of George Bush to ever mention the destruction he’s wrought on the Iraqi people as evidence of nothing but a dark plan to increase the wealth and power of the few regardless of the cost to the rest of the world’s people. In short, I see these things as evidence of
unmitigated evil.
The bottom lineThe bottom line is this: In the name of combating terrorism, the United States has become the
greatest sponsor of terrorism in the world. The Bush administration and its supporters in the United States and elsewhere claim to be outraged over the fact that terrorists killed approximately three thousand innocent American citizens to advance their ends. Yet they apparently fail to see the rank hypocrisy in their own killing of a million innocent Iraqis in their alleged efforts to combat terrorism. And the U.S. national news media sits idly by and fails to discuss this – perhaps the most important issue that needs to be discussed in our country today.
There is indeed a great divide in the U.S. today. On the one hand there are those who share the attitudes and values of most of us at DU: Who believe that the United States of America is capable of and indeed has on many occasions done great harm in the world; that our country does NOT have the right to colonize other countries under the guise of “spreading democracy” to them; and who do NOT want our country to become the most invincible imperialist power the world has ever known.
At the other extreme are those who
call us traitors for holding those views; who believe or claim to believe that their country holds a monopoly on Good in the world; that the rest of the world should therefore be subservient to our interests; and that whenever we are at war the only goal of any importance is to “win” the war, whatever that means, and regardless the cost in human lives or anything else.
And then there are probably a whole bunch of people who are in between those two extremes. I wish I understood what those people are thinking.
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