Op-Ed via truth-out.org, 11 September 2010, by: William Rivers Pitt

(Image: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: slagheap, Nicholas Vinacco, Phillip Capper)

I moved into a new apartment last week, and I’ve since noticed that when there are low clouds in the sky, the airplanes out of Logan fly low over my new neighborhood as they depart for wherever. It is cloudy today and I can hear them overhead, roaring by every few minutes, hidden in the gray weather above.

I think about that day when I hear the engines. Of course I do. It was nine years ago, but still, for me, it is the sound of airplane engines that brings it all back, if only for a moment.

Everyone has a story about where they were on that day. One friend of mine, a cook, was buried in the kitchen for the breakfast rush and had no idea what was going on until the orders dried up. He walked out of the kitchen wondering what was going on to find everyone staring dumbstruck at the television. Another friend of mine was working at a brokerage house in San Francisco. He didn’t have a television and liked to listen to music on headphones during his commute to work. He got to work and started calling various extensions at the New York home office in the World Trade Center, but nobody was picking up. It wasn’t until his boss came in and told him what had happened that he realized he had been calling dead people.

I was a teacher, and it was the first day of school. I was the first person in the building to find out what was going on, and I ran around from teacher to teacher letting them know what had happened before hauling two televisions out of the library closet so we could all watch together. I was shattered, but the children were terrified, and so I had to hold myself together and reassure them, even as the sound of fighter jets started roaring overhead. One of my students heard the news and turned white, because her father was supposed to be at a meeting in the Trade Center that morning. He survived, many others did not. That night, I bought a bottle of brown liquor on the way home and drank it off in front of my own television as those images were seared into my memory forever.

When all is said and done, someone once said, there’s nothing left to do or say. There are 300 million versions of this story in America, and billions more around the world. Everyone remembers where they were, and what they were doing, on that day. Give anyone you meet a chance, and they’ll tell you all about it.

Nine years, four national elections, two wars and two presidents since that day, and where are we now as a nation? Broke, deranged and dangerous pretty much sums it up. We have Christian-Taliban pastors in Florida with filthy souls threatening to burn the Qu’ran, as if such an act had any meaning beyond a desire to make money, and a national news media apparatus all too happy to give them all the ink and air time he could ever wish for. We have seething crowds threatening arson and murder because a Muslim community center might get built next to a strip club on the site of a defunct coat store. We have national caricatures like Sarah Palin charging people more than $200 for the chance to meet with her on that day, as if she has any significance at all. We’ve got stabbings and beatings and firebombings, and this is nine years later.

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We are a nation of euphemisms now. It’s not spying on the American people, it is “national security.” It’s not holding someone in a hellhole without charges or trial, it is “indefinite detention.” It’s not kidnapping, it is “extraordinary rendition.” It’s not murder or assassination, it is “targeted killing.” It’s not torture, it is “enhanced interrogation.” It’s not wildly and patently illegal and immoral on its face, it is “war.”

We are a lessened nation nine years later, and much of the damage has been done by our own hand. It is one thing for people to react with fear and rage after an outrageous act of violence. It is quite another for the leaders of those people to exploit that fear and rage for their own dark and greedy purposes, and nine years later, we are down in the ditch thanks to exactly that sort of behavior. Thousands of American soldiers have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, and tens of thousands more have been grievously maimed. Millions of civilians in those two countries have been slaughtered or shattered, but we may never know the true scope of the carnage, because “we don’t do body counts.”

It is not all darkness, however, because we also have this, from the second president to take up residence in the White House since that day:

President Obama concluded his press conference today with a statement on the importance of protecting the rights of American Muslims. “We don’t differentiate between them and us,” he said. “It’s just us. And that is a principle that I think is going to be very important for us to sustain.”

Obama was asked about the controversial Park51 Islamic center, and said: “I think I’ve been pretty clear on my position here. And that is: This country stands for the proposition that all men and women are created equal, that they have certain inalienable rights, and one of those inalienable rights is to practice their religion freely.”

“What that means,” he continued, “is that if you could build a church on a site, you could build a synagogue on a site, if you could build a Hindu temple on a site, then you should be able to build a mosque on the site.”

“We’ve got millions of Muslim Americans, our fellow citizens in this country,” Obama said. “They’re going to school with our kids. They’re our neighbors. They’re our friends. They’re our coworkers. And when we start acting as if their religion is somehow offensive, what are we saying to them?”

That’s about exactly right, despite the sorry fact that it comes from the same president who has been helpless to refrain from perpetuating – or all too eager to perpetuate – the barbaric and anti-American practices that have become all too commonplace in the nine years since that day. In this, he must not be allowed to lead us, because the grooves of this manner of leadership are too deeply cut into the road for him to easily deviate. In this, we must lead him, and I suspect he will follow if given the chance.

Nine years later, one truth remains: America is an idea, a dream, a hope that has yet to be realized. Take away our people, our cities, our roads, our crops, our armies and navies and bombs and guns, take all of that away and there is still the idea, as vibrant and vital as it was when the Founders first put ink to parchment and changed the world. Everyone you know owns a heritage that began somewhere else; we are all different in so many ways, and all that binds us is the ink on that parchment and the ideas therein contained. We are all our brother’s and sister’s keeper, beholden to one another, all of us children of that idea.

Nine years ago, we were forced into an accounting of how dear that idea is to us, and were found wanting. Nine years later, we still are. The idea deserves better than what we have given to it. We can continue in this fashion, or we can summon within ourselves the will and wisdom to locate those better angels of our nature that are surely there, waiting for us.

Let us try, at least, to locate them, and make them sing. 365 days from now, we will be marking the passage of a decade since that day. What a proper moment to celebrate a new beginning, a renewed focus on how we can dedicate ourselves to the daily creation of that more perfect union we know is possible. What a chance to transform a day of sorrow and hatred into a day of somber recognition of our flaws, our faults, and the boundless possibilities of the idea that is, still, us.

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via t r u t h o u t ~ Tuesday 20 July 2010

(Image: City Lights Publishers)

The late Howard Zinn’s new book “The Bomb” is a brilliant little dissection of some of the central myths of our militarized society. Those who’ve read “A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA’s Secret Cold War Experiments,” by H.P. Albarelli Jr. know that this is a year for publishing the stories of horrible things that the United States has done to French towns. In that case, Albarelli, describes the CIA administering LSD to an entire town, with deadly results. In “The Bomb,” Zinn describes the U.S. military making its first use of napalm by dropping it all over another French town, burning anyone and anything it touched. Zinn was in one of the planes, taking part in this horrendous crime.

In mid-April 1945, the war in Europe was essentially over. Everyone knew it was ending. There was no military reason (if that’s not an oxymoron) to attack the Germans stationed near Royan, France, much less to burn the French men, women, and children in the town to death. The British had already destroyed the town in January, similarly bombing it because of its vicinity to German troops, in what was widely called a tragic mistake. This tragic mistake was rationalized as an inevitable part of war, just as were the horrific firebombings that successfully reached German targets, just as was the later bombing of Royan with napalm. Zinn blames the Supreme Allied Command for seeking to add a “victory” in the final weeks of a war already won. He blames the local military commanders’ ambitions. He blames the American Air Force’s desire to test a new weapon. And he blames everyone involved — which must include himself — for “the most powerful motive of all: the habit of obedience, the universal teaching of all cultures, not to get out of line, not even to think about that which one has not been assigned to think about, the negative motive of not having either a reason or a will to intercede.”

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When Zinn returned from the war in Europe, he expected to be sent to the war in the Pacific, until he saw and rejoiced at seeing the news of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, 65 years ago this August. Only years later did Zinn come to understand the inexcusable crime of the greatest proportions that was the dropping of nuclear bombs in Japan, actions similar in some ways to the final bombing of Royan. The war with Japan was already over, the Japanese seeking peace and willing to surrender. Japan asked only that it be permitted to keep its emperor, a request that was later granted. But, like napalm, the nuclear bombs were weapons that needed testing. The second bomb, dropped on Nagasaki, was a different sort of bomb that also needed testing. President Harry Truman wanted to demonstrate nuclear bombs to the world and especially to Russia. And he wanted to end the war with Japan before Russia became part of it. The horrific form of mass murder he employed was in no way justifiable.

Zinn also goes back to dismantle the mythical reasons the United States was in the war to begin with. The United States, England, and France were imperial powers supporting each other’s international aggressions in places like the Philippines. They opposed the same from Germany and Japan, but not aggression itself. Most of America’s tin and rubber came from the Southwest Pacific. The United States made clear for years its lack of concern for the Jews being attacked in Germany. It also demonstrated its lack of opposition to racism through its treatment of African Americans and Japanese Americans. Franklin D. Roosevelt described fascist bombing campaigns over civilian areas as “inhuman barbarity” but then did the same on a much larger scale to German cities, which was followed up by the destruction on an unprecedented scale of Hiroshima and Nagasaki — actions that came after years of dehumanizing the Japanese. Zinn points out that “LIFE magazine showed a picture of a Japanese person burning to death and commented: ‘This is the only way.’” Aware that the war would end without any more bombing, and aware that U.S. prisoners of war would be killed by the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, the U.S. military went ahead and dropped the bombs.

Americans allowed these things to be done in their name, just as the Germans and Japanese allowed horrible crimes to be committed in their names. Zinn points out, with his trademark clarity, how the use of the word “we” blends governments together with peoples and serves to equate our own people with our military, while we demonize the people of other lands because of actions by their governments. “The Bomb” suggest a better way to think about such matters and firmly establishes that:

• What the U.S. military is doing now, today, parallels the crimes of the past and shares their dishonorable motivations;
• the bad wars have a lot in common with the so-called “good war,” about which there was little if anything good;
• Howard Zinn did far more in his life for peace than for war, and more for peace than just about anybody else, certainly more than several Nobel Peace Prize winners.

This piece originally appeared on WarisaCrime.org.

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I was absolutely delighted that Keith had Rodda on to discuss this topic.  When it comes to calling Barton out on his dreadful misrepresentations of American history, no one is better suited.

I had occasion to link to some of Rodda’s latest work in my July 8 Care2 post:

For much, much more regarding Barton’s crimes against history be sure to check out the extensive works ofTalk to Action blogger (and also at The Huffington Post) Chris Rodda, Senior Researcher for the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, and the author of Liars for Jesus:  The Religious Right’s Alternate Version of American History.  Rodda’s “No, Mr. Beck…” series is instructive for understanding Barton’s tactics; like misrepresenting the work of actual academics in order to suggest that the Constitution was based on the Book of Deuteronomy, or cropping a quote from John Adams in order to claim that the second American President thought “Governments must be administered by the holy ghost.”  (Sigh…)

Barton, clearly, has no shame.  And as you’ll see in the clip from the July 8 Countdown broadcast, he is in serious need of some fashion advice.  (I know… It’s a petty observation. But that  jacket is tragic.)

Post Updated Below – Obama Relieves McChrystal of his Post

In his June 23 “Special Comment” regarding Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s comments to Rolling Stone – over which, McChrystal reportedly intends to tender his resignation — the host of MSNBC‘s Countdown posited that President Obama should reject it:

…Sir, you should take General McChrystal’s resignation, and fold it up, and put it in your top drawer, and tell him that that is where it will remain, and that as of now you are not accepting it. Correct.

He tenders his resignation. You tell him to get back to Afghanistan because he’s not getting out of this morass he helped create, and tell him to make sure we get the surge troops withdrawn on time or faster if he can. And then, Sir, you sit back and watch the political world’s collective jaw drop.

Olbermann then lays down some history of presidents past and how they reacted when Generals Behave(d) Badly.

Uncertain if Obama should/will heed the advice, but Olbermann makes a persuasive argument.  Watch:

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Update via PoliticusUSA – President Obama Relieves General McChrystal of His Post:

McChrystal arrived at White House ready to tender his resignation Wednesday at 10:00 AM. At 1:15 PM, MSNBC announced that President Obama relieved General McChrystal of the Afghanistan war which McChrystal was commanding. MSNBC is reporting that General Petraeus has been chosen to replace General McChrystal as commander of the Afghanistan forces… (Read More)