"Humanitarian Bombing"

[Carrol Cox]

I think it's important (as a supplement to Doug's discussion of
hypocrisy)
to emphasize the willingness of U.S. rulers (ruling class) to slaughter
for
the sake of slaughter (i.e., to make an example of a people even though
there are not immediate interests at stake). Sartre, in a persuasive
though
not wholly convincing article, argued that this was the case in the war
in
Vietnam -- that that war was over South America, not Vietnam (or even
the whole of Southeast Asia). The Vietnamese people were merely to
serve as a example to the people of South America of what horrors
awaited anyone who dared challenge U.S. power.

On this basis he contrasted Vietnam and Algeria. The French had
real and serious economic interests in the exploitation of Algerian
labor, and so genocide was not an option in that war. In contrast,
since the U.S. had no economic interest in the exploitation of
Vietnamese labor (Nike came much later), genocide was a possible
option, and in fact U.S. military strategy was based on the choice of
that option. At the end of his essay Sartre raises a parllel question to

that Doug raises. He wondered if the U.S. rulers named their choices
as he did when talking among themselves, and suggested that U.S.
hypocrisy and moralistic self-deception had to be considered.

Since the end of the Vietnam war my own tentative hypothesis for
most U.S. interventions (whatever the nominal reasons) is that they
are aimed at the American people -- specifically, that their overriding
goal is the destruction of what came to be called the Vietnam
Syndrome or spontaneous popular resistance to military adventurism.
If that was the goal, the strategy is working -- as shown by the
willingness
of even sophisticated and supposedly "left" intellectuals to take
seriously
the right/ability/honesty of the U.S. government in making moral
judgments
on conflicts elsewhere in the world and act accordingly. Anyone who has
studied at all closely the actions of the U.S. in the world since 1970
must
know that (a) its intentions are never even remotely humanitarian and
(b)
the results are always (there has been no exception) a disaster for the
people the U.S. claims to be helping. (This includes even pure
"disaster,"
earthquake, storm, plague, etc., relief.)

What frightens me is the apparent willingness of some to go along
with the implicit premise of U.S. policy in the 20th century: that its
military/economic strength translates into moral superiority to
barbarian
Iranians, Iraqi, Serbs, Haitians, etc. Grade school pieties have a
terrible survival value.

Carrol