- I won't listen to, or read, the news of the war. The
only news I want to hear is that the murder is over.
-
- Murder? Yes, that word is carefully chosen.
-
- I can easily imagine how the expression "shock and
awe" was born. Remember, in America, marketing comes before anything.
Everything from breast cancer treatment to Jesus is loudly marketed in
this bizarre society. That's not even a slight exaggeration, although if
you haven't lived there, you'll have to take my word for it. They are busy
marketing terror, insecurity, and xenophobia right now, and that makes
your chances of visiting America to research questions of this kind not
very good.
-
- If you're a full-blooded American, marketing murder,
even mass murder, is just like marketing anything else. You can't be squeamish
about it. You need a good turn of phrase or slogan, an eye-catching logo,
and perhaps some stirring theme music. You need what will convince jaded
consumers that something new and exciting is about to appear on their television
screens. The need is greater than ever now that entertainment and information
have been fully merged on American broadcasting -- broadcasting, by the
way, owned by a remarkably small number of people, all of whom just happen
to share the same interest in keeping the Pentagon's furnaces stoked with
four hundred billion dollars a year.
-
- I imagine platoons of Pentagon consultants, each earning
hundreds of dollars an hour, coming and going for months before the war
with their expensive laptops in designer leather cases, making presentations
of their marketing proposals, each hoping to land the big contract. Then
one day someone stunned the crowd with a super presentation of just the
right concept, "shock and awe," with plenty of special effects
guaranteed to play well on television.
-
- It can't be that none of the creased-pants innocents
in the Pentagon ever heard of the Western Front in the First World War
where truly horrifying bombardments, with guns that could shatter your
eardrums if you were too close, sometimes went on for days before the troops
jumped the tops of their trenches and charged the barbed wire of the other
side across fields raked with heavy machine guns and cratered by shell
holes where mustard gas lingered like a poison fog ready to blind and burn
out the lungs of anyone unfortunate enough to stumble in.
-
- Of course, these bombardments were aimed at soldiers,
not at a city like Baghdad, but perhaps I quibble.
-
- Americans don't fight that way anymore. Actually, since
Vietnam -- where they were sent running even after they managed to napalm
a good portion of the nation's villages -- Americans don't fight at all.
There have been attempts to re-institute the practice here and there, as
in Mogadishu, but the results weren't happy -- a few dead soldiers and
America turned and ran. Of course, it didn't have to be that way if they
hadn't muddled a humanitarian mission with the urge to mow down every local
who looked at them the wrong way. Maybe they just hadn't done enough focus
groups and marketing surveys before that sour-smelling little mission.
-
- Now, America simply commits mass murder with computer-controlled
weapons from a safe distance and calls it fighting. When the explosions
and screaming stop and the brave American lads set out on their mission
of occupation from air-conditioned quarters (they don't do trenches anymore)
in their air-conditioned armored cars, dressed in bullet-proof Kevlar suits
and equipped with sun-tan lotion and freeze-dried linguini, there isn't
a lot for them to do but avoid slipping and falling in the human gore splattered
everywhere by missiles and high-tech bombs. They also must remember to
don their bubble-boy suits and respirators in areas saturated with tons
of vaporized depleted uranium.
-
- There's very little risk to the "boyz" -- all
of whom, regardless of steroid-induced, bovine bulk and savage-looking
buzzed-off hair, are affectionately regarded as awkward, young Ricky Nelsons
(at least, before his cocaine phase), who always say things like "sir"
and "aw, heck."
-
- I've written before about the approaching age of American
high-tech Puritanism, but I didn't expect it to be upon us so completely
quite so quickly, reminding one of the sudden onset of a new ice age. America
is able to destroy anyone or anyplace it finds displeasing or just suspicious
-- this is Sharon's Israel occupying Palestine on a global scale.
-
- No consultations with others are needed, or if Americans
do briefly consult, it will be a marketing ploy taken in full confidence
they are free to ignore everyone and push them aside, even when this happens
to include, as it does in the case of Iraq, most of the world's people.
-
- In hopes of gaining some outward show of respectability,
this time America conducted a very unpleasant behind-the-scenes campaign
of threats and bribery. Again, that is not an exaggeration; that is how
they obtained that pathetic list of thirty countries not one in ten Americans
has ever heard of, but, even then, most of these places are not joined
in the killing, just signaling support in some diffuse way as a response
to pressure from the world's economic pituitary giant.
-
- When you really think about it, who else could join in
the killing? Who else is equipped for long-distance computerized murder?
But America always looks to others to occupy and police, relieving the
"boyz" even of these tasks.
-
- You might think that if there had been any true case
for war, it would be obvious to more of the world's leaders. Why would
you need all the browbeating and threats? But the case was not obvious,
because some very bright people in the U.N. Security Council, all in fact
friends of the United States, thrashed it out and could not agree. Mostly,
all they wanted was time and patience for inspections. But Mr. Bush, gifted
intellect and learned scholar that he is, knew better than all of them,
and besides, in the Texas he comes from, all that matters is that you have
the biggest fists or are first out with your gun.
-
- Maybe next time America will feel it can dispense with
respectability. It really got very little for its effort. That's what America's
frighteningly rat-like neocons are telling us with their talk about a damaged
U.N. and Atlantic Alliance. They just neglect to mention that it is the
U.S. that did the damage.
-
- We all know what Lord Acton said about power and absolute
power. His words remain perhaps truer than anything ever uttered about
human behavior, and they should serve as a warning, but I fear they provide
only consolation. Just imagine a world where it has become possible to
slaughter any number of people, virtually with impunity -- a world where
that kind of power is in the hands of a relatively small group of narrow,
earnest, self-satisfied people possessing virtually limitless material
resources and believing themselves somehow guided by God as no one else
on the planet is privileged to be.
-
- It's a dismaying picture of the future, but if you are
watching or listening to the news about Iraq from the Pentagon's just-built,
custom-designed, super-deluxe, press-conference studio, you're getting
a first hard look at that very future.
-
- [John Chuckman is former chief economist for a large
Canadian oil company. He has many interests and is a lifelong student of
history. He writes with a passionate desire for honesty, the rule of reason,
and concern for human decency. He is a member of no political party and
takes exception to what has been called America's "culture of complaint"
with its habit of reducing every important issue to an unproductive argument
between two simplistically defined groups. John regards it as a badge of
honor to have left the United States as a poor young man from the South
Side of Chicago when the country embarked on the pointless murder of something
like three million Vietnamese in their own land because they happened to
embrace the wrong economic loyalties. He lives in Canada, which he is fond
of calling "the peaceable kingdom."]
-
- John Chuckman encourages your comments: <mailto:jchuckman@YellowTimes.org>jchuckman@YellowTimes.org
-
- YellowTimes.org is an international news and opinion
publication. YellowTimes.org encourages its material to be reproduced,
reprinted, or broadcast provided that any such reproduction identifies
the original source, http://www.YellowTimes.org. Internet web links to
http://www.YellowTimes.org are appreciated.
-
- http://www.yellowtimes.org/article.php?sid=1196
-
-
- Comment
-
- Dr. Jerry A. Taylor
Colonel US Army, Retired
3-25-3
-
- Dear Jeff -
-
- Thank you for the opportunity to reply to Mr. John Chuckman's
article. I truly enjoy the freedom to state opinions without the fear of
censure. Keep the good work up.
-
- As one of Jeff's semi-regular callers whenever the Nuke/Chem/Bio-weapons
angle get brought up, he needs to look into why the hell we give samples
of weaponized diseases to every little tinpot dictator in the world!
-
- Comments to the article listed below.....
-
- Dear John Chuckman:
-
- I would have posted my comments to your website, but
the notice states that it has been suspended.
-
- I have something in common with you sir, I am, too, a
poor boy from the wrong side of the tracks. Unlike yourself and the other
cowards, one of which I am ashamed to say is the current President, I didn't
escape my draft notice. I went to Nam and served. Your "point of honor"
is nothing more than the cowardice. So you and George Bush have something
in common. Besides being the village idiot, you both chose to flee responsibility.
-
- I have often wondered if you are bothered in the late
night hours that some other poor boy's name is up on that wall in Washington
rather than your own. Ever feel a twinge of guilt that you were one of
the corporate executives for a large oil company while that Vietnam vet
was having someone spit in his face and call him "baby killer"?
Do you feel any guilt over making your living working for an organization
that poisons the environment with their product?
-
- Is America perfect?
-
- Hell no.
-
- Is Canada perfect?
-
- Ask a member of one of the First Nation tribes there.
I doubt you will find they think Canada is "the peaceable kingdom."
-
- Since you cannot ever know what being an American soldier
is, let me tell you:
-
- "THE AVERAGE MILITARY MAN"
-
- The average age of the military man is 19 years.
-
- He is a short haired, tight-muscled kid who, under normal
circumstances is considered by society as half man, half boy. Not yet dry
behind the ears, not old enough to buy a beer, but old enough to die for
his country.
-
- He never really cared much for work and he would rather
wax his own car than wash his father's; but he has never collected unemployment
either.
-
- He's a recent High School graduate; he was probably an
average student, pursued some form of sport activities, drives a ten year
old jalopy, and has a steady girlfriend that either broke up with him when
he left, or swears to be waiting when he returns from half a world away.
-
- He listens to rock and roll or hip-hop or rap or jazz
or swing and 155mm Howitzers.
-
- He is 10 or 15 pounds lighter now than when he was at
home because he is working or fighting from before dawn to well after dusk.
-
- He has trouble spelling, thus letter writing is a pain
for him, but he can field strip a rifle in 30 seconds and reassemble it
in less time in the dark.
-
- He can recite to you the nomenclature of a machine gun
or grenade launcher and use either one effectively if he must.
-
- He digs foxholes and latrines and can apply first aid
like a professional.
-
- He can march until he is told to stop or stop until he
is told to march.
-
- He obeys orders instantly and without hesitation, but
he is not without spirit or individual dignity.
-
- He is self-sufficient. He has two sets of fatigues: he
washes one and wears the other. He keeps his canteens full and his feet
dry.
-
- He sometimes forgets to brush his teeth, but never to
clean his rifle.
-
- He can cook his own meals, mend his own clothes, and
fix his own hurts. If you're thirsty, he'll share his water with you; if
you are hungry, his food.
-
- He'll even split his ammunition with you in the midst
of battle when you run low.
-
- He has learned to use his hands like weapons and weapons
like they were his hands. He can save your life - or take it, because that
is his job.
-
- He will often do twice the work of a civilian, draw half
the pay and still find ironic humor in it all. He has seen more suffering
and death then he should have in his short lifetime.
-
- He has stood atop mountains of dead bodies, and helped
to create them.
-
- He has wept in public and in private, for friends who
have fallen in combat and is unashamed.
-
- He feels every note of the National Anthem vibrate through
his body while at rigid attention, while tempering the burning desire to
'square-away' those around him who haven't bothered to stand, remove their
hat, or even stop talking. In an odd twist, day in and day out, far from
home, he defends their right to be disrespectful.
-
- Just as did his Father, Grandfather, and Great-grandfather,
he is paying the price for our freedom.
-
- Beardless or not, he is not a boy.
-
- He is the American Fighting Man that has kept this country
free for over 200 years.
-
- He has asked nothing in return, except our friendship
and understanding.
-
- Remember him, always, for he has earned our respect and
admiration with his blood.
-
- When you feel the need to use your bully pulpit to beat
up on America, her defenders and her vets, I want you to know that there
is one man that isn't afraid of a bully. And I am not the only one.
-
- Sincerely,
-
- Dr. Jerry A. Taylor
Colonel US Army, Retired
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