I may be the only one on this list who has spoken up in support of Churchill's arguments, but I know that I'm not alone. I know of many leftists and anarchists who support what Churchill is saying, but who keep their words private. The mood in this country AND on this list is such that anybody who expresses their true beliefs are at risk for attacks.
Chuck0
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Alright already. I've written rants so similar to Churchill, pure guilt drags me out of lurking. I read Churchill's essay this morning, and all I've got to say is right-on Ward, warts and all.
His complete essay is here:
http://www.kersplebedeb.com/mystuff/s11/churchill.html
Unfortunately, it's long winded and wonders a lot. Here is a taste that includes the `little Eichmanns' part (see below).
I wouldn't have used Eichmann as a rhetorical example only because Eichmann was an officer seeking advancement. I don't know the names of all the millions who just went along with the program, the Good Germans, any more than I know the names of the people killed in WTC. But clearly Churchill's meaning was directed at the Good Germans, the Good Americans, just doing their `job'.
On the other hand, let's not kid ourselves that most of our `jobs' are in fact devoted to supporting and promulgating the evil Empire and its neoliberal capitalist pig hegemony---mine included (when I was still working). That's what `jobs' tend to be in the Empire.
Do we `deserve' deferments from the war because we have the right thoughts and sympathies? I don't think so. That was Robert Fisk's problem in Afghanistan and he took his beating for it. Most of us are lucky enough to not have to take a beating or a killing. Chances are we will stay lucky.
But sometimes luck runs out. As Camus wrote, neither victims nor executioners. How that trick is performed is something I don't know how to do--but just doing my `job' turned out to not be the answer.
CG
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Meet the "Terrorists"
Of the men who came, there are a few things demanding to be said in the face of the unending torrent of disinformational drivel unleashed by George Junior and the corporate "news" media immediately following their successful operation on September 11.
They did not, for starters, "initiate" a war with the US, much less commit "the first acts of war of the new millennium."
A good case could be made that the war in which they were combatants has been waged more-or-less continuously by the "Christian West" - now proudly emblematized by the United States - against the "Islamic East" since the time of the First Crusade, about 1,000 years ago. More recently, one could argue that the war began when Lyndon Johnson first lent significant support to Israel's dispossession/displacement of Palestinians during the 1960s, or when George the Elder ordered "Desert Shield" in 1990, or at any of several points in between. Any way you slice it, however, if what the combat teams did to the WTC and the Pentagon can be understood as acts of war - and they can - then the same is true of every US "overflight' of Iraqi territory since day one. The first acts of war during the current millennium thus occurred on its very first day, and were carried out by U.S. aviators acting under orders from their then-commander-in-chief, Bill Clinton. The most that can honestly be said of those involved on September 11 is that they finally responded in kind to some of what this country has dispensed to their people as a matter of course.
That they waited so long to do so is, notwithstanding the 1993 action at the WTC, more than anything a testament to their patience and restraint.
They did not license themselves to "target innocent civilians."
There is simply no argument to be made that the Pentagon personnel killed on September 11 fill that bill. The building and those inside comprised military targets, pure and simple. As to those in the World Trade Center . . .
Well, really. Let's get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break. They formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America's global financial empire - the "mighty engine of profit" to which the military dimension of U.S. policy has always been enslaved - and they did so both willingly and knowingly. Recourse to "ignorance" - a derivative, after all, of the word "ignore" - counts as less than an excuse among this relatively well-educated elite. To the extent that any of them were unaware of the costs and consequences to others of what they were involved in - and in many cases excelling at - it was because of their absolute refusal to see. More likely, it was because they were too busy braying, incessantly and self-importantly, into their cell phones, arranging power lunches and stock transactions, each of which translated, conveniently out of sight, mind and smelling distance, into the starved and rotting flesh of infants. If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I'd really be interested in hearing about it.
The men who flew the missions against the WTC and Pentagon were not "cowards." That distinction properly belongs to the "firm-jawed lads" who delighted in flying stealth aircraft through the undefended airspace of Baghdad, dropping payload after payload of bombs on anyone unfortunate enough to be below - including tens of thousands of genuinely innocent civilians - while themselves incurring all the risk one might expect during a visit to the local video arcade. Still more, the word describes all those "fighting men and women" who sat at computer consoles aboard ships in the Persian Gulf, enjoying air-conditioned comfort while launching cruise missiles into neighborhoods filled with random human beings. Whatever else can be said of them, the men who struck on September 11 manifested the courage of their convictions, willingly expending their own lives in attaining their objectives.
Nor were they "fanatics" devoted to "Islamic fundamentalism."
One might rightly describe their actions as "desperate." Feelings of desperation, however, are a perfectly reasonable - one is tempted to say "normal" - emotional response among persons confronted by the mass murder of their children, particularly when it appears that nobody else really gives a damn (ask a Jewish survivor about this one, or, even more poignantly, for all the attention paid them, a Gypsy).
That desperate circumstances generate desperate responses is no mysterious or irrational principle, of the sort motivating fanatics. Less is it one peculiar to Islam. Indeed, even the FBI's investigative reports on the combat teams' activities during the months leading up to September 11 make it clear that the members were not fundamentalist Muslims. Rather, it's pretty obvious at this point that they were secular activists - soldiers, really - who, while undoubtedly enjoying cordial relations with the clerics of their countries, were motivated far more by the grisly realities of the U.S. war against them than by a set of religious beliefs.
And still less were they/their acts "insane."
Insanity is a condition readily associable with the very American idea that one - or one's country - holds what amounts to a "divine right" to commit genocide, and thus to forever do so with impunity. The term might also be reasonably applied to anyone suffering genocide without attempting in some material way to bring the process to a halt. Sanity itself, in this frame of reference, might be defined by a willingness to try and destroy the perpetrators and/or the sources of their ability to commit their crimes. (Shall we now discuss the US "strategic bombing campaign" against Germany during World War II, and the mental health of those involved in it?)
Which takes us to official characterizations of the combat teams as an embodiment of "evil."
Evil - for those inclined to embrace the banality of such a concept - was perfectly incarnated in that malignant toad known as Madeline Albright, squatting in her studio chair like Jaba the Hutt, blandly spewing the news that she'd imposed a collective death sentence upon the unoffending youth of Iraq. Evil was to be heard in that great American hero "Stormin' Norman" Schwartzkopf's utterly dehumanizing dismissal of their systematic torture and annihilation as mere "collateral damage." Evil, moreover, is a term appropriate to describing the mentality of a public that finds such perspectives and the policies attending them acceptable, or even momentarily tolerable.
Had it not been for these evils, the counterattacks of September 11 would never have occurred. And unless "the world is rid of such evil," to lift a line from George Junior, September 11 may well end up looking like a lark...