Still Ashamed

Scott Bradley

I wrote a post some time ago in which I said I was ashamed to be an American; I still am.

Yesterday (11/8) I heard (and thankfully did not see) a video (released by "Rolling Stone") on Democracy Now! in which a detainee in Afghanistan was being tortured while American soldiers — trainers — looked on. His cries were horrific. (I admit to having an incredible dread of torture.)

This was done in my name. This is now, even as I write, being done in my name. My country is an evil empire, and its citizens by virtue of their complacency are responsible. Got stuff? What else matters?

But this was an aberration we will be told, the work of a few bad apples. No it is not. This is America at work around the world — sending out its mercenaries to bring death and terror to keep the world safe for the multinational corporations and the ruling elite.

But why should I be ashamed? I denounce this evil; I write this post. Yet still I profit (at least for the moment) from this despicable system. And I know of no way to change it.

But mostly I am ashamed because I am not myself sufficiently transformed as to be able to transform others. My engagement would just be more of the same.

I once was a Christian, and as a Christian went to protest at a Christian sponsored "God Bless America" rally and held up a sign saying, "America's God is the Devil". I say it again now: America's God is the Devil.

Where are the prophets? Where are the religious, Jewish, Christian and Muslim, who stand up in sackcloth and ashes and scream the idolatry of nationalism, "exceptionalism", empire, and divine mandate? Let me, at least, say together with Rev. Wright, Obama's (our beloved Judas who sold us out for a few pieces of silver) abandoned preacher, "God damn America!"

You can check out Scott's other miscellaneous writings here.

Through the Looking Glass

Trey Smith

On Monday, government offices were closed in Washington DC, to mark Columbus Day. Except that most of them had been closed anyway, because of the US government shutdown. As everyone knows, Christopher Columbus was an Italian navigator who, in the service of the Spanish crown, supposedly "discovered" America and reported its potential to a wondering world. I have spent the summer in the United States watching, with growing alarm, a country engaged in a degree of self-harming which, if observed in a teenager, would lead any friend to cry "call the doctor at once". As I set course back to Europe, my conclusion is this: America should do a reverse Columbus. The world no longer needs to discover America; but America urgently needs to discover the world's view of America.

Ordinary Americans, and especially the small minority active in Democrat and Republican primaries, must learn more of what people across the globe are thinking and saying about the US. For if you follow that, you realise that the erosion of American power is happening faster than most of us predicted – while the politicians in Washington behave like rutting stags with locked antlers.
~ from Americans Need to Discover How the World Sees Them by Timothy Garton Ash ~

It's not just the shutdown either, though I'm sure that makes us look like boobs to most Europeans. On issue after issue, too many Americans are absolutely clueless as to how this nation is viewed by others.

Most of the world doesn't like our steady use of drones because they think that drones fuel far more terrorism than it quells. They don't like our military/economic strong arm tactics and they certainly have not been happy to learn that the US government is spying on them 24/7. They think our response to mass shootings and general gun violence borders on insanity. Most of all, the vast majority of the world's citizens are tired of American hypocrisy -- do as we say, not as we do -- that often rears its head in the form of American Exceptionalism.

The American empire may not be dead yet, but that day is coming and, as Garton Ash remarks, the end may arrive a lot sooner than a lot of people realize. If our leaders -- as well as many in the unwashed masses -- don't learn the lesson of humility, we may soon discover that paybacks can be hell!

60 Years and Counting

Trey Smith

Even as the United States presses for the rapid destruction of chemical weapons in Syria, a dispute lingers over unexploded chemical munitions that U.S. soldiers left on a Panamanian island more than 60 years ago.

Panama has pressed the United States for decades to remove them, and now it’s optimistic that the Obama administration has agreed.

But the administration itself is less definitive about whether an agreement has been struck to clean up the ordnance that litters San Jose Island, 60 miles into the Pacific from Panama City, the nation’s capital.

The World War II-era chemical munitions are known to include phosgene and mustard gas, and may include other toxic chemical agents. From 1945 to 1947, a contingent of U.S. soldiers tested chemical weapons on the then-deserted island, leaving behind at least eight unexploded 500- and 1,000-pound bombs.

A decade ago, the U.S. government offered to train Panamanians to clean up the mess as long as Panama released the United States from liability. Panama rejected the offer, demanding that the Pentagon itself remove and dispose of the toxic munitions.
~ from Panama Hopes U.S. Will Clean Up Chemical Weapons It Left on Island by Tim Johnson ~

Hmm. Can you spell h-y-p-o-c-r-i-t-e?  I wonder if President Obama can!

We (Kind of, Sort of) Matter, But You Don't

Trey Smith

Four US Senators -- 3 Democrats and 1 Republican -- have drafted a bill to rein in the NSA and its pervasive surveillance apparatus. In general, this is welcome news and it shows that the disclosures by Edward Snowden may yet bear fruit. However, while these senators are concerned with the violation of rights of American citizens, the Guardian reports that "there is limited, if any, support in Congress for limiting the NSA's ability to monitor or gather evidence on foreigners."

In other words, while a movement appears to be growing to limit the massive amount of spying on innocent Americans, innocent citizens of Australia, Brazil, Belgium, China or Somalia are shit out of luck! No one seems to be championing YOUR right to privacy.

Consequently, American Exceptionalism is alive and well. Because we are Americans, we should be excluded from mass spying because we are (sort of, kind of) exceptional peons. The rest of you aren't exceptional, so you will have to put up with Uncle Sam's Big Brother. But don't be mad or cross. Big Brother Uncle Sam will continue to spy on you to protect you...from yourselves.

Humanitarian Intervention and Exceptionalism

Trey Smith

Last week, Starbucks asked its American customers to please not bring their guns into the coffee shop. This is part of the company's concern about customer safety and follows a ban in the summer on smoking within 25 feet of a coffee shop entrance and an earlier ruling about scalding hot coffee. After the celebrated Liebeck v McDonald's case in 1994, involving a woman who suffered third-degree burns to her thighs, Starbucks complies with the Specialty Coffee Association of America's recommendation that drinks should be served at a maximum temperature of 82C.

Although it was brave of Howard Schultz, the company's chief executive, to go even this far in a country where people are better armed and only slightly less nervy than rebel fighters in Syria, we should note that dealing with the risks of scalding and secondary smoke came well before addressing the problem of people who go armed to buy a latte. There can be no weirder order of priorities on this planet.

That's America, we say, as news of the latest massacre breaks – last week it was the slaughter of 12 people by Aaron Alexis at Washington DC's navy yard – and move on. But what if we no longer thought of this as just a problem for America and, instead, viewed it as an international humanitarian crisis – a quasi civil war, if you like, that calls for outside intervention? As citizens of the world, perhaps we should demand an end to the unimaginable suffering of victims and their families – the maiming and killing of children – just as America does in every new civil conflict around the globe.
~ from American Gun Use Is Out of Control: Shouldn't the World Intervene? by Henry Porter ~

Can you imagine the outrage and contempt of most Americans if the United Nations seriously entertained a resolution to intercede in this American civil war? Any nation that had the temerity to suggest that the UN needed to send peacekeepers to our shores would be denounced -- threatened even -- in the strongest terms possible. This would be one of those rare situations in which Americans of almost all political persuasions would unite together to say that the UN has no business telling us -- the exceptional Americans -- what is right and what is wrong.

And yet, this is what the US does all the time. We constantly stick our noses into other people's business. If something is going on in some nation and we don't like it -- it somehow threatens our overly broad national interests or national security -- we easily can come up with a host of reasons why it is our supreme role to step in to discipline recalcitrant leaders or factions and/or to aid the downtrodden. We often package it as a humanitarian effort, but these actions too often terrorize, kill and maim the innocent.

If the shoe was on the other foot -- the world joined together to try to end the humanitarian crisis of American gun violence (one that we refuse to address on our own) -- do you think our leaders and most of the public would welcome the aid with open arms?

From Russia with Love, Part 3

Trey Smith

Today I have been sharing and commenting on portions of Edward Snowden's recent statement issued from Moscow on Friday. The full statement can be read at the WikiLeaks website.

I announce today my formal acceptance of all offers of support or asylum I have been extended and all others that may be offered in the future. With, for example, the grant of asylum provided by Venezuela’s President Maduro, my asylee status is now formal, and no state has a basis by which to limit or interfere with my right to enjoy that asylum. As we have seen, however, some governments in Western European and North American states have demonstrated a willingness to act outside the law, and this behavior persists today. This unlawful threat makes it impossible for me to travel to Latin America and enjoy the asylum granted there in accordance with our shared rights.

This willingness by powerful states to act extra-legally represents a threat to all of us, and must not be allowed to succeed. Accordingly, I ask for your assistance in requesting guarantees of safe passage from the relevant nations in securing my travel to Latin America, as well as requesting asylum in Russia until such time as these states accede to law and my legal travel is permitted. I will be submitting my request to Russia today, and hope it will be accepted favorably.

Imagine the outrage from US officials if the shoe was on the other foot. Suppose the US had granted asylum to an individual from North Korea and the North Koreans had made efforts to block the person's ability to travel. You know as well as I do that President Obama and congressional leaders would mount their bully pulpits to denounce North Korea's actions in the strongest way possible. They would rally support from other nations to apply as much pressure as possible to force the North Korean government to allow this individual safe passage.

But that's the insidious nature of American Exceptionalism. What is not kosher for any other nation even to contemplate is completely kosher for us. We don't care what anybody else thinks and we certainly won't kowtow to any manner of pressure. We are god and, by this logic, anything we say and anything we do is right, just and the way things must be.

Edward Snowden is in Obama's crosshairs because he valiantly stood up to look in the face of power to say No, you are not god!

From Russia with Love, Part 2

Trey Smith

Today I will be sharing and commenting on portions of Edward Snowden's recent statement issued from Moscow on Friday. The full statement can be read at the WikiLeaks website.

Since that time, the government and intelligence services of the United States of America have attempted to make an example of me, a warning to all others who might speak out as I have. I have been made stateless and hounded for my act of political expression. The United States Government has placed me on no-fly lists. It demanded Hong Kong return me outside of the framework of its laws, in direct violation of the principle of non-refoulement – the Law of Nations. It has threatened with sanctions countries who would stand up for my human rights and the UN asylum system. It has even taken the unprecedented step of ordering military allies to ground a Latin American president’s plane in search for a political refugee. These dangerous escalations represent a threat not just to the dignity of Latin America, but to the basic rights shared by every person, every nation, to live free from persecution, and to seek and enjoy asylum.

Yet even in the face of this historically disproportionate aggression, countries around the world have offered support and asylum. These nations, including Russia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Ecuador have my gratitude and respect for being the first to stand against human rights violations carried out by the powerful rather than the powerless. By refusing to compromise their principles in the face of intimidation, they have earned the respect of the world. It is my intention to travel to each of these countries to extend my personal thanks to their people and leaders.

It is ironic to the nth degree that, while the Obama administration has taken the position that breaking a domestic law in order to expose greater criminality is patently wrong, they have concurrently thumbed their noses at international law and protocols! While our politicians have said that the rule of law is sacrosanct, it somehow doesn't constrain their own actions!

As I have mentioned many times before, this underscores the quintessential essence of American Exceptionalism. We expect everyone else to abide by the spirit and letter of all laws, regulations and treaties, but we only follow the same when we feel like it. If it happens to inconvenience us in any way, shape or form or it thwarts the machinations of the elite, we treat any law, regulation, legal agreement or treaty as if it doesn't exist.

A common belief held by many Americans is that those in other nations -- particularly Muslim ones -- hate us for our freedoms and modern lifestyles. I don't think that is it at all. They hate us because of the unmitigated arrogance of our elites.

Can't say that I blame them!

Bombs: Just What the Doctor Ordered

Trey Smith

In Washington Dulles airport I noticed a large advertisement. I’d seen it before and not paid attention. (No doubt that’s why they saturate public space with the things.) It showed a woman’s face with the words: “A car crash in California almost took her leg. A bomb blast in Iraq helped save it.” It directed one to a website: orthoinfo.org/dominique

I’m against car crashes in California. I’m in favor of saving Dominique’s leg. But at the website what we find is a claim that her leg was saved because her orthopaedic surgeon had experience in Iraq. And I don’t mean in the Iraqi hospitals that existed before we destroyed that country. I mean he had experience in the destruction process.

“Thank you, Dr. Paul Girard. How lucky was I to have an orthopaedic surgeon with wartime experience and special insights on how to treat an injury like mine?” Thus writes Dominique, whose partner James comments on the doctor: “His experience as a wartime orthopaedic surgeon in Iraq gave him a special familiarity with traumatic limb injuries.” How would James know this? Presumably the doctor, whose own comments don’t mention the war, told him. Or someone ghost wrote the website.

The orthoinfo.org website was created by three societies of orthopaedic surgeons that clearly know which side of the mutilated troop their bread is buttered on. (Orthopaedic comes through French from the Greek for boneheaded.)

Surely a few people walk through U.S. airports while simultaneously living in reality, the reality in which the United States destroyed the nation of Iraq, slaughtered 1.4 million people, created 4.5 million refugees, destroyed the health and education and energy infrastructures, created epidemics of disease and birth defects, traumatized millions of children, and left behind a ruined violent anarchic state cursed with deep divisions previously unknown.

Surely some of those reality-based people are aware that a majority of Americans believes the war benefited Iraq, and a plurality believes Iraqis are grateful. To read, on top of that perversity, the claim that a bomb blast in Iraq saved Dominique’s leg is sickening. A doctor saved her leg. He found a silver lining in a genocide. The bomb blasts didn’t fucking save people. The bomb blasts killed people. And very few of the killers or their funders or their voters seem to care.
~ from Wartime U.S. Travelogue by David Swanson ~

Have Americans and members of the world, in general, benefited from innovations developed on the battlefield? An honest answer would be a resounding yes. Lessons learned in war frequently are applied in peacetime.

But that is no excuse for war! Just because a few positives come out of it, this in no way negates or justifies the many negatives. War is an abomination and there is no way to dress it up otherwise.

The questions left unasked in the advertisement that Swanson saw are: How many Iraqis died to save Dominique's leg? How many were maimed and injured? How many lost their homes? How many became refugees? How many were so traumatized that life will never be the same?

Swanson's article offers another example of the insidious nature of American Exceptionalism. It treats the Iraqi people as if THEIR lives don't matter. What is a shattered Iraqi's life compared to the saving of one American leg?

Sam, I Thought We Were Friends

Trey Smith

US intelligence services are spying on the European Union mission in New York and its embassy in Washington, according to the latest top secret US National Security Agency documents leaked by the whistleblower Edward Snowden.

One document lists 38 embassies and missions, describing them as "targets". It details an extraordinary range of spying methods used against each target, from bugs implanted in electronic communications gear to taps into cables to the collection of transmissions with specialised antennae.

Along with traditional ideological adversaries and sensitive Middle Eastern countries, the list of targets includes the EU missions and the French, Italian and Greek embassies, as well as a number of other American allies, including Japan, Mexico, South Korea, India and Turkey. The list in the September 2010 document does not mention the UK, Germany or other western European states.
~ from New NSA Leaks Show How US is Bugging its European Allies by Ewen MacAskill and Julian Borger ~

Gee, this news would seem a bit embarrassing, don't ya think? As I write this post Sunday night, I am wondering about how the Obama administration will attempt to worm its way out of this one. What can they say? Will they advance the idea that they think our allies are terrorists too?

If nothing else, I guess it's a good thing that we at least are not targeting a strong ally like Germany. Oh wait, hold on a second. A news bulletin just came across my desk.

The reports of NSA snooping on Europe – and on Germany in particular – went well beyond previous revelations of electronic spying said to be focused on identifying suspected terrorists, extremists and organised criminals. (emphasis mine)

It turns out that the US government is something akin to a peeping tom! They spy on potential terrorists. They spy on innocent Americans. They spy on innocent citizens of the world. And they even spy on the leaders of their own allies. It is getting to the point in which a person might ask: Is there anyone US spy agencies and contractors don't spy on?

Now, I think it should be really obvious why the NSA and other US agencies spy on European leaders. It is not because of terrorism; it's more that negotiations go much smoother when you already know where everyone else is coming from. When you can see the cards everyone else is holding, it makes it that much easier to place winning bets. It also makes it far easier to blackmail folks.

In essence, while members of the US government like to talk about the rule of law and good faith negotiations, our leaders apparently don't believe in either. Like a mafia organization, we like to win any game we enter and the best way to guarantee that sort of outcome is to cheat.

Cheating your enemies is par for the course. But cheating your best buddies? That's darn audacious, but not very good form!

Outrage and Apathy

Trey Smith

The insidious nature of American Exceptionalism can best be illustrated by how far too many Americans view two similar events and yet have completely different reactions. In an article about the uneven cuts originating from the sequester, David Swanson notes,

Shooting children in a U.S. school is a crime. Dropping a missile on a foreign school is something more like law enforcement.

Let that sink in. In both instances, we are talking about the senseless deaths of innocent children. In both instances, we are talking about parents who sent their vibrant little ones off to school and only to return to collect a body bag. In both instances, we are talking about heinous acts that will scar families and communities for life.

One of these acts is deemed deplorable, while the other is deemed as little more than a part of "war". One of these acts generates compassion across the nation, while the other elicits little more than a collective yawn, if that much.

It is easy to understand why most non-Americans today view Americans with less than sympathetic eyes -- our sense of morality is skewed!

The Will of the People?

Trey Smith

The White House on Saturday called on Tehran to "heed the will of the Iranian people", after the moderate cleric Hassan Rouhani was elected as the country's new president.

In a statement, the Obama administration congratulated Iran's voters on having the "courage in making their voices heard" in the face of censorship and intimidation. It added that Washington remained open to engagement to reach a diplomatic solution to concerns over Tehran's nuclear program.
~ from White House Says Tehran Must 'Heed Will of People' on Rouhani Victory by Matt Williams ~

In today's episode of American Exceptionalism, we have the US President -- a man who rarely listens to "the will of the people" -- urging the newly-elected leader of another nation to do what American leaders typically don't do themselves.

Americans say no to war...and yet the old wars continue and new ones appear on the horizon.

Americans want living wage jobs...and yet neither the President nor Congress wants to focus on that issue at all.

Over and over again, polls show that a majority of Americans want universal healthcare...and yet even the public option -- a very watered down version of it -- was pulled from consideration.

Americans want clean air and water...and yet little is being done to clean up and protect either.

Americans want the national focus to switch from Wall Street to Main Street...and yet Wall Street continues to be the sole focus of the political elites.

More recently, Americans say that they don't want to be spied on by their own government...and yet President Obama defends almost every spying program conducted by his administration.

Instead of addressing the newly-elected Iranian president, maybe President Obama should utter those words again...while looking in the mirror!

277,000,000 to 2

Trey Smith

The horror of Boston should be a reminder that the choice of weaponry can be in itself an act of evil. “Boston Bombs Were Loaded to Maim” is the way The New York Times defined the hideousness of the weapons used, and President Obama made clear that “anytime bombs are used to target innocent civilians, it is an act of terror.” But are we as a society prepared to be judged by that standard?

The president’s deployment of drones that all too often treat innocent civilians as collateral damage comes quickly to mind. It should also be pointed out that the U.S. still maintains a nuclear arsenal and, as our killing and wounding hundreds of thousands of innocent Japanese demonstrated, those weapons are inherently, by the president’s definition, weapons of terror. But it is America’s role in the deployment of antipersonnel land mines, and our country’s refusal to sign off on a ban on cluster munitions agreed to by most of the world’s nations, that offers the most glaring analogy with the carnage of Boston.

To this day, antipersonnel weapons –– the technologically refined version of the primitive pressure cooker fragmentation bombs exploded in Boston –– maim and kill farmers and their children in the Southeast Asian killing fields left over from our country’s past experiment in genocide. An experiment that as a sideshow to our obsession with replacing French colonialism in Vietnam involved dropping 277 million cluster bomblets on Laos between 1964 and 1973.

The whole point of a cluster weapon is to target an area the size of several football fields with the same bits of maiming steel that did so much damage in Boston. The International Committee of the Red Cross, which has been active in attempting to clear land of remaining bomblets, estimates 10,000 Lao civilian casualties to date from such weapons. As many as twenty-seven million unexploded bomblets remain in the country, according to the committee.
~ from 277 Million Boston Bombings by Robert Scheer ~

Americans are all worked up about 2 IEDs planted in a crowd, but few of these same worked up people think at all about about those "277 million cluster bomblets" or the millions of landmines this nation has deployed itself or sold to others. I'm not saying that people shouldn't be worked up about the situation in Boston, but what about everywhere else? If 3 dead and 200+ injured is a cause for public outrage, where is the outrage for the tens of thousands killed and injured?

As I have pointed out numerous times before, I certainly can understand why much of the rest of the world bristles at American Exceptionalism. If a bomb explodes within our borders, it is a tragedy. If a bomb explodes within the borders of one of our western allies, it is a travesty. If a bomb explodes almost anywhere else -- particularly if it's one of "our" bombs -- there generally is no reaction at all. About the most you might get from the majority of Americans is the briefest of an afterthought, if even that much!

Though we might like to believe otherwise, the US does not occupy the moral high ground. We kill and maim far more than we are killed or maimed. The numbers aren't even close.

More on the DPRK "Situation"

Trey Smith

The corporate media reduces the DPRK (North Korea) to the Kim family and prefaces their names with the terms “madman”, “evil” and “brutal”. Such vilifications of foreign leaders are used here not only to signify they are target for US overthrow. They are meant to intimidate and isolate anti-war activists as being out in left field for ever wanting to oppose a war against countries ruled by “madmen” – be they Saddam, Fidel, Hugo Chavez, Ahmadinejad, Qaddaffi.

Yet to a sensible person, it is crazy that the US, with nuclear weapons thousands of miles from home, in South Korea, denies North Korea a right to have its own nuclear weapons on its own land – particularly when the North says it is developing nuclear weapons only as a deterrent because the US won’t take its own weapons out of the Korean peninsula.

Missing in what passes for discourse on the DPRK in the corporate media is that the US was conducting month-long war maneuvers last March in Korea, now extended into April, using stealth bombers, undetectable by radar, capable of carrying nuclear weapons. And this year these are not “deterrent” war maneuvers, but “pre-emptive war” maneuvers.

Would the US government and people get a little “irrational” if a foreign country that previously had killed millions of our people, sent nuclear capable stealth bombers off the coasts of New York City, Washington DC, Houston, Miami, Los Angeles, San Francisco, there to fly around for a month in preparation for a possible nuclear attack on us? For what is called, in warped US language, war “games”?
~ from North Korea's Justifiable Anger by Stansfield Smith ~

This whole "situation" smacks of the American Exceptionalism I often write about. The ONLY nation to utilize nuclear bombs in war against a civilian population (Hiroshima, Nagasaki) has spent a good deal of the past few decades scolding particular nations for even attempting to develop nuclear weapons. At the same time, we have encouraged those nations that advance the interests of our elite to maintain nuclear stockpiles.

As Smith mentions, almost no one in the mainstream media has mentioned the "war games" angle. Knowing this kind of important information, it begs the question: Is the US purposely goading the DPRK to do and say what they are doing and saying? Are we setting them up for our own political ends?

Smith makes another key point for your consideration.

Since World War II there have been 9000 missile launches. 4 were by the DPRK. There have been 2000 atomic bomb tests. 3 were by DPRK. No country was sanctioned by the UN Security Council for this. No country except the DPRK. Why wouldn’t the North Koreans be incensed by this double standard, especially when the US has nuclear weapons in South Korea?

Look, I am against the whole idea of nuclear weapons. I think the world would be a far safer place if we got rid of every damn one of them. My point here is not that I favor a nuclear weapon free-for-all. It's more that, if we continue to maintain the capability to destroy the world at the push of a button, who are we to deny any other nation the same right? If we argue that our nuclear arsenal exists to serve as a deterrent to other nations, then how can we deny other nations who wish to have their own nuclear arsenal to deter us?

The Faceless Others

Trey Smith

There are more than 30,000 books on the Vietnam War in print. There are volumes on the decision-making of Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, grand biographies of Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh, rafts of memoirs by American soldiers -- some staggeringly well-written, many not -- and plenty of disposable paperbacks about snipers, medics, and field Marines. I can tell you from experience that if you read a few dozen of the best of them, you can get a fairly good idea about what that war was really like. Maybe not perfect knowledge, but a reasonable picture anyway. Or you can read several hundred of the middling-to-poor books and, if you pay special attention to the few real truths buried in all the run-of-the-mill war stories, you’ll still get some feeling for war American-style.

The main problem with most of those books is the complete lack of Vietnamese voices. The Vietnam War killed more than 58,000 Americans. That’s a lot of people and a lot of heartache. It deserves attention. But it killed several million Vietnamese and severely affected -- and I mean severely -- the lives of many millions more. That deserves a whole lot more focus.

From American histories, you would think the primary feature of the Vietnam War was combat. It wasn’t. Suffering was the main characteristic of the war in Southeast Asia. Millions of Vietnamese suffered: injuries and deaths, loss, privation, hunger, dislocation, house burnings, detention, imprisonment, and torture. Some experienced one or another of these every day for years on end.
~ from Who Did You Rape in the War, Daddy? A Question for Veterans that Needs Answering by Nick Turse ~

In reading Turse's article, I thought about the recent 10-year anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq. Just as with Vietnam, almost the entire focus on that "war" is from the US perspective.

The main focus by those to the left of center is that President Bush lied to us. We were deceived and we are not happy about it.

I don't have much sympathy for all the folks out there who claim they were deceived. Why? Because the lies were exposed in real time! Countless individuals and commentators made very strong cases that what Bush and his minions were saying wasn't true and yet the vast majority of our elected leaders PLUS the American public supported the invasion of Iraq. Bomb them back to the stone age was a familiar retort.

Even today people who claim they were deceived still believe that, while the war was prosecuted under false pretenses, one wonderful thing came out of it: We got Saddam. In getting Saddam, we freed the Iraqi people.

What chauvinistic dribble!

While there can be no question that Hussein was a repressive tyrant, the standard of living under his regime was far better than it is today. Back then, Iraq had a functioning electricity grid and working water sanitation facilities. Hospitals were equipped with the latest in technology. Schools operated at near capacity. And most people went about their daily business without fear of being shot, bombed or kidnapped.

Today none of these things is true. In "freeing" the Iraqi people, we decimated their infrastructure. Even worse, the violence didn't magically end when the majority of our troops left. Iraq today is a shell of its former self and a good deal of the population lives in communities that closely resemble ghettos.

Oh, but we don't like to talk about such negatives.

No, if we're going to talk about negatives, then it's about the number of our service men and women who were killed, injured or psychologically crippled. It's not that our people don't deserve compassion and sympathy -- it's more that our numbers pale in comparison to the Iraqi people. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were killed, injured, psychologically devastated and/or displaced from their homes and yet they barely get a mention. It's enough to make an average Iraqi feel as if Americans only see worth in American lives and no one else.

War is hell, but the worst hell occurs where the war is fought. Almost all modern American wars are fought somewhere else. It is because Americans don't experience war in their face that it is easy for us to embrace jingoist and sanitized versions of what actually took place. It is why we listen to American voices and don't even notice that the people who suffered the most are not represented.

Diagnosis: Murder

Trey Smith

Violating international borders, stalking an individual and blowing him up without the benefit of accusation or trial – most people would call that premeditated murder. If the person being murdered is an important public figure, we think of it as an assassination. But “murder” and “assassination” are problematic, because both are illegal under U.S and international law. Only under strict circumstances of imminent threat does U.S. law give the president authorization to actively pursue and kill an “enemy”.

The Obama administration, taking a page straight out of the Cheney/Bush playbook, is claiming a blanket authorization cloaked in the vagaries of their war on terror even though they no longer call it the war on terror. We are supposed to trust that they will only righteously strike the truly bad.

Under the tutelage of the national security state, the press and the American public have been trained to make some crucial substitutions in their utterances. Murder and assassination have been changed to “strikes”, preferably surgical ones. Young boys become “militants”, which dehumanizes and militarizes them at the same time.

The president, meanwhile, is not a murderer, or even a noble assassin. No, he is our protector, our guardian, our kick-ass-we're-number-one-in-chief. The aforementioned “collateral damage” has neatly bundled the killing field-scape of dead and dismembered people into something more palatable to assuage the public, which might otherwise become concerned.

Our adversaries of the moment, whether they are fanatic religious terrorists, uniformed troops from the wrong country, or simply people taking up arms against a foreign occupation or a corrupt domestic regime, have all been lumped together as “bad guys.”

It makes everything so simple, like a John Wayne western.

In print and on line, editors will change “drone murder” to “drone strike.” Why does death by arbitrary government fiat get a pass on being called murder?
~ from The US and the M Word by Dan DeWalt ~

DeWalt has capsulized my revulsion to the US drone program. Though our leaders, the mainstream media and many of my fellow citizens utilize all sorts of Orwellian euphemisms to discuss it, few people will call it what it really is -- murder.

As I have pointed out numerous times before, if someone described the drone program and indicated it was being utilized by North Korea, Argentina, Libya or Iran, almost every American would castigate it. The American public overwhelmingly would support sanctions or worse against such a country. Media pundits would talk incessantly about such a program's immoral basis and use it to show how the US is morally superior.

If arbitrarily murdering people is wrong in North Korea or Iran, why is it okay in the United States of America?

We know the answer, don't we? Americans are exceptional; we have "God's ear."

Greatest Nation E-V-E-R

Trey Smith

Glenn Greenwald has penned another superb column on the subject of American Exceptionalism. He examines the declarative statement and belief that the United States of America "is "the greatest country ever to exist." As he points out, it is an absurd notion that the people of ANY nation can be objective about such an assertion!

At the very least, the tendency of the human brain to view the world from a self-centered perspective should render suspect any beliefs that affirm the objective superiority of oneself and one's own group, tribe, nation, etc. The "truths" we're taught to believe from birth - whether nationalistic, religious, or cultural - should be the ones treated with the greatest skepticism if we continue to embrace them in adulthood, precisely because the probability is so great that we've embraced them because we were trained to, or because our subjective influences led us to them, and not because we've rationally assessed them to be true (or, as in the case of the British Cooke, what we were taught to believe about western nations closely aligned to our own).

That doesn't mean that what we're taught to believe from childhood is wrong or should be presumed erroneous. We may get lucky and be trained from the start to believe what is actually true. That's possible. But we should at least regard those precepts with great suspicion, to subject them to particularly rigorous scrutiny, especially when it comes to those that teach us to believe in our own objective superiority or that of the group to which we belong. So potent is the subjective prism, especially when it's implanted in childhood, that I'm always astounded at some people's certainty of their own objective superiority ("the greatest country in world history").

As someone who was born and has lived my entire life in the US, I can state that there are many positive attributes of my country. By the same token, there are many deficits as well. By different measurements, the US is better on some issues than other nations and far worse in other categories. On the whole, I am glad to be an American simply because that's what I am.

If I had been born and raised in Australia, Botswana, Peru, Iraq or North Korea, I am sure I would be just as glad. All nations and societies have their problems and each one has its strong points. Most of us are proud to hail from where we hail because that is where we hail from.

I have no need to ponder the notion that I live in "the greatest country ever to exist." On its face, it is a ludicrous statement, one born of subjective posturing, not anything remotely objective.

Oh, the Irony!

Trey Smith

A US State Department official on Monday "expressed concern" about what he called "a 'climate of impunity' over abuses by police and security forces" - in Egypt. The official, Michael Posner, warned that failure to investigate Egyptian state agents responsible for "cruel treatment of those in their custody" - including torture - creates "a lack of meaningful accountability for these actions". Last week, I wrote that "I've become somewhat of a connoisseur of US government statements that are so drowning in obvious, glaring irony that the officials uttering them simply must have been mischievously cackling to themselves when they created them," and this American denunciation of Egypt's "climate of impunity" almost certainly goes to the top of the list.

After all, Michael Posner works for the very same administration that not only refused to prosecute or even investigate US officials who tortured, kidnapped and illegally eavesdropped, but actively shielded them all from all forms of accountability: criminal, civil or investigative. Indeed, Posner works for the very same State Department that actively impeded efforts by countries whose citizens were subjected to those abuses - such as Spain and Germany - to investigate them. Being lectured by the US State Department about a "culture of impunity" is like being lectured by David Cameron about supporting Arab dictators.
~ from Italy's Ex-Intelligence Chief Given 10-year Sentence for Role in CIA Kidnapping by Glenn Greenwald ~

It seems like not a day goes by anymore when another example of American Exceptionalism doesn't pop up to rear its ugly head! (I've been writing about this general topic so much lately that I'm adding a new label/tag to this post.)

As Greenwald points out, the irony of this situation is rich! Our leaders enjoy "a climate of impunity" that far exceeds any other western democracy and quite few non-democracies too. You can wiretap citizens without a court order and you won't be prosecuted. You can order people to be tortured against domestic and international law and you won't be prosecuted. Heck, you can crash the world economy and we won't lay a hand on you. As long as you are a bona fide member of the ruling elite, you can do almost anything you want and you don't have to worry about being prosecuted or even investigated.

When it comes to the "important people" in US society, as President Obama has told us peons on more than one occasion, we need to look forward, not backwards. (Of course, if you don't happen to be one of those oh so "important people," then we will look backwards, NOT forward! Funny how it works that way.)

Further on in his column, Greenwald tells about how Italy's former intelligence chief received a 10-year prison sentence for participating in the CIA kidnapping of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr (who was imprisoned for 4 years but, unsurprisingly, was NEVER charged with a crime). As Greenwald opines, no US prosecutor or court would even think of attempting such a prosecution here.

Why?

Because American leaders are so damn exceptional!

Freedom of the Press

Trey Smith

We are at it again. It seems that not a week goes by when our leaders don't invoke American Exceptionalism. If you haven't caught on, here is how it works: If the US does or does not do something, everything's a-okay. However, if another sovereign nation does or does not do something similar -- particular when this doing or not doing is something we happen to disagree with -- it is b-a-d as b-a-d can be.

Courtesy of Dave Lindorff, we learn of the latest example. Our leaders have decided to block Press TV (an English-language network owned by Iran) from being shown in our country.

But wait a minute! Aren't we always complaining when other countries, like the former Soviet Union, or Cuba, or North Korea, block our propaganda broadcasts, notably Radio Marti or Radio America? You bet we do. We consider that an example of limiting the free flow of information -- of denying the people of those countries access to outside information.

How does that square with what the US is doing in this case with PressTV?

It's exactly the same. Our government is not punishing Iran. It is punishing us, by shutting us out from getting Iran's side of the story.

You see, while it is vitally important for the citizens of the world to be exposed to viewpoints they may not be accustomed to, it turns out that this same right is not vitally important to Americans...or so say our leaders. No, we need to be spoon-fed only what they want us to know!

Bringing Home Baby

Trey Smith

Many Americans are incensed that President Vladimir Putin recently signed legislation to halt the adoption of Russian children by American families. While there is some international political intrigue involved, for me, this is yet another case of American Exceptionalism. How dare a foreign government limit the access to babies for potential American parents! Who does this Putkin guy think he is, anyway?

As Laurie Penny writes in The Guardian, while some American's are upset over the ban, there are children in THIS country begging to be adopted.

What makes Americans so desperate to adopt children from overseas? Right now there are 23,000 American children waiting to be adopted. Most of them, however, are older than prospective parents would like – between five and 16. Also, most prospective adoptive parents in the US are white, and a great many of the children available for adoption are black or Latino. There are many reasons why a white American couple might want to adopt a child from Russia, Romania or Ukraine, rather than be matched with a black child from their home state, but race is no doubt one of them. The more you look at the overseas adoption business, the less the US looks like a nation of philanthropists.

But here's the main point I would like to draw out. As far as I know, there is no program in which potential parents of foreign countries regularly adopt American infants! You don't find couples in Botswana, Germany or Indonesia going to their local adoption broker to leaf through pictures and bios of American babies.

It's not that we don't have children born here to poor families who struggle to meet their most basic needs. It is not that we don't have areas of the country that are the victims of severe blight. And it's certainly not that we don't have thousands of children in need of adoption.

What IS different is that these babies are born in "the greatest nation on the face of the earth." Since Americans live in "the greatest society in the history of the world," our infants are better than any foreigner who might adopt them. In other words, it would be a step down to leave our blessed shores to go live in some far off land.

Those kinds of paternalistic attitudes are the very essence of American Exceptionalism!

Anywhere But Here

Trey Smith

Consider this scenario: the Mexican government receives intelligence that a known narco-terrorist is holed up in a house in Arizona. They fly a drone over downtown Phoenix, fire on the building, completely destroying it and killing their target along with a handful of American civilians. How would we react? Fox so-called News would be calling for a return of the Mexican-American War!

What if a known terrorist affiliated with Basque Separatists was riding in a car down Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, and a Spanish drone flying above the city launched a hell-fire missile - obliterating the car, killing and injuring dozens of nearby civilians, and leaving a giant crater in the middle of a busy Manhattan street. Do you really think Americans would say, "Well, those drone things sure are a nice, tidy way to fight terrorists"?
~ from Obama Breaks the Golden Rule on Drones by Thom Hartmann ~

I've written a lot recently which references American Exceptionalism. Hartmann's two scenarios above underscore this point. Too many of my fellow countrymen see absolutely NOTHING wrong with such acts, so long as they occur somewhere else! Yet, if these acts occurred here, these same people would go completely ape shit!!

Why the different reactions to the same basic actions? It is because a good number of Americans think they are better than everyone else. They think they are more moral than everyone else. They think they are more kind and compassionate than everyone else.

When you think you are kinder, more moral and better than all the other beings on this planet, it provides you with a sense of complete superiority. Like a parent, you sometimes have to discipline your children when they talk back or don't do what you want them to do. You have to teach them a lesson by employing tough love.

So, as the planetary parent, the US is entitled -- some believe we are authorized by Gawd -- to burnish the whip and the stick. We have to beat everyone else into shape. If that means killing innocents along the way, so be it. Parents are NOT to be questioned!