May 25, 2005
US Military Atrocities and the Moral Choice Facing the American People
The “honorable” US military has been unleashed on defenseless peoples in the Middle East and Asia with horrifying consequences. Much of what is foul and backward in American society has been encouraged and cultivated in the armed forces, inviting or producing a considerable crowd of sadists, psychopaths and, frankly, perverts.... given nothing culturally or morally, exposed to the most reactionary influences—religious fundamentalism, nationalism, the cult of blood and guns.
The description of the physical and psychological torture of the prisoners at Bagram renders one physically ill. And one encounters the same porno-sadism over and over again in the exploits of this military all over the world!
Administration personnel are confident that they will never be held to account for their crimes...Both government spokesmen and liberal pundits like Alan Dershowitz, Ted Koppel and Michael Ignatieff have been explicitly or tacitly advocating torture since the events of September 11, 2001. Genuinely democratic consciousness has almost entirely disintegrated within the upper echelons of American society. Today, anything goes.
The argument that barbaric methods are needed to combat “terrorism” and extract information that could “save lives,” the time-honored claim of every authoritarian regime, is both spurious and illegal, especially given that the US government had considerable prior knowledge about the 2001 terrorist hijackings and refused to act on it. Moreover, this argument ignores the political reality: torture is never about specific pieces of information, it is one element of an overall policy. It is meant to break the will of a resisting movement or population. So it was with the Nazi authorities, so it is today with the American military.
The absence of widespread and loudly voiced revulsion to the crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq is shameful. It speaks to the degraded state of American public opinion.
article By David North and David Walsh thanks joerg
~Save yourself. Save your family. Keep your kids away from the blood-lust and out of the armed forces.
Whatever holy war, revenge fantasy or kill-sports they're selling this year (and for generations to come) ain't worth shit, ain't worth getting maimed or dying over.
Respect yourself, choose 'cruelty-free' living.
It's your choice.
[abu ghraib image via google/ caption cieciel]