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THE INSIDE HISTORY OF THE
ISRAEL LOBBY
Former top
CIA analysts Kathleen and Bill Christison give CounterPunchers
the real scoop on the Israel lobby and precisely how powerful
it is. Read
how US presidents from Wilson, through FDR to Truman were manipulated
by the Zionist lobby; how Israel bent LBJ, Reagan and Clinton
to its purpose; how Bush's White House has been the West Wing
of the Israeli government; how Washington's revolving doors send
full-time Israel lobbyists from think-tanks to the National Security
Council and the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans. For all who want a
true measure of the Lobby's power, the Christisons' 8-page dossier,
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The Haditha Massacre was more
than horrific; it was predictable. More than predictable, it
was inevitable. Equally horrific, predictable, and inevitable
is the devious reporting by the supposedly liberal media. The
"alleged" war crimes at Haditha might be the work of
a "handful" of Marines who "snapped" and,
for those reading between the lines, those Marines are guilty
of something far worse than mass murder: They've soiled the pristine,
courageous image of the American military in Iraq. As Stan Goff
sez: "The bad apple defense is back."
Someone turn down the lights
and start the My Lai slide show, please...
The date was March 16, 1968.
"Under the command of Lieutenant William L. Calley, Charlie
Company of the Americal Division's Eleventh Infantry had 'nebulous
orders' from its company commander, Captain Ernest Medina, to
'clean the village out'," explains historian Kenneth C.
Davis.
All they found at My Lai were
women, children, and old men...no weapons, no signs of enemy
soldiers. Calley ordered villagers to be killed and their huts
destroyed. Women and girls were raped before they were machine-gunned.
By the end of the massacre, hundreds of villagers were dead.
"This was not the only
crime against civilians in Vietnam," Davis adds. "It
was not uncommon to see GIs use their Zippo lighters to torch
an entire village." Indeed, My Lai was not an aberration.
On the very same day that Lt. Calley entered into infamy, another
U.S. Army company entered My Khe (a sister subhamlet of My Lai)
and killed a reported 90 peasants.
One of the My Khe veterans
later said, "What we were doing was being done all over."
Of course it was. It had to
be. To expect otherwise is to ignore the reality we've all played
a role in creating. "This culture has killed a lot of people,
and will continue to do so until it collapses, and probably long
after," writes Derrick Jensen in his new book, "Endgame."
* *
*
"The My Lai massacre had
its predecessor in the Philippines in 1906," says Howard
Zinn. "The American army attacked a group of 600 Moros in
southern Philippines-men, women, and children living in very
primitive conditions, who had no modern weapons. The American
army attacked them with modern weapons, wiped out every last
one of these 600 men, women, and children." The commanding
officer responsible for this war crime received a telegram of
congratulations from Theodore Roosevelt.
* *
*
"Jane and Joe Sixpack
are shocked," writes Ted Rall of the Haditha Massacre.
"Congressional Democrats are calling for an investigation
and, for once, will probably get one. Political analysts worry
that the Haditha massacre could hurt U.S. propaganda efforts
even more than the infamous photos of torture at its Abu Ghraib
concentration camp."
The Haditha Massacre
is a PR problem. The Haditha Massacre is an opportunity
for the Democrats to posture. The Haditha Massacre is yet
another chance for "Jane and Joe Sixpack" to be reminded
that when Iraqi rebels kill a civilian, it's further proof of
their inhuman status but when an American soldier commits premeditated
murder, it's an anomaly. It takes a whole lotta propaganda to
condition a populace to buy into this formula...but as Goff reminds
us: "They were not rogues. They were us."
* *
*
The most infamous "aberration"
during the Korean War was the No Gun Ri massacre. Veterans of
the U.S. Army First Cavalry Division told the Associated Press
in 1999 that Captain Melbourne C. Chandler, "after speaking
to superior officers by radio, ordered machine-gunners from his
heavy weapons company to set up near the bridge tunnel openings
and open fire. U.S. commanders had claimed there were 'infiltrators'
among the villagers." Chandler told his men: "The hell
with all those people. Let's get rid of all of them."
* *
*
"Those who make the political
decisions that guide this culture are more interested in increasing
their own personal power and the power of the state than they
are in human and nonhuman well-being," writes Jensen. "They
need the resources, and will get them, come the hell of depleted-uranium-induced
malformations or the high water of melted ice caps."
"Those who make the political
decisions," of course, should be investigated, charged,
tried, and sentenced. But those who don't make the political
decisions must start recognizing that even if a miracle should
occur and the criminals responsible for the The Haditha Massacre
face justice, it would be a hollow victory if it ended there.
Jensen continues: "Movements
for peace are damned before they start because unless they're
willing to unmake the roots of this culture, and thus the roots
of the violence, they can at best address superficial cause,
and thus, at best, provide palliation."
* *
*
How about to Good (sic) War?
Any "aberrations" there? Edgar L. Jones, a former war
correspondent in the Pacific, put it best when he asked in the
February 1946 Atlantic Monthly, "What kind of war do civilians
suppose we fought anyway? We shot prisoners in cold blood, wiped
out hospitals, strafed lifeboats, killed or mistreated enemy
civilians, finished off the enemy wounded, tossed the dying into
a hole with the dead, and in the Pacific boiled flesh off enemy
skulls to make table ornaments for sweethearts, or carved their
bones into letter openers."
* *
*
As things stand now, the long
list of American military interventions will grow and the subsequent
aberrations (sic) will never cease. We can-and must-fight to
expose the criminals and we should take pride in every life saved,
every transgression averted. But until the system is challenged
(overhauled? rejected?), all we can realistically hope for is
the occasional reform or indictment.
Colonel Oran Henderson, charged
with covering-up the My Lai killings, explained: "Every
unit of brigade size has its My Lai hidden someplace." I'll
see Henderson and raise him this: Every human has her or his
My Lai hidden someplace.
Each time we chalk up atrocities
to the policies of one or another political party, we commit
an intellectual My Lai. Whenever we demand "stop the war,"
but not "stop war," we commit an intellectual My Lai.
If we bring our grievances to the guardians of the very system
that creates those grievances, we commit an intellectual My Lai.
Albert Einstein once said:
"No problem can be solved from the same consciousness that
created it." We currently dwell in a My Lai consciousness.
Even those who struggle for peace and justice exist in the Haditha
state of mind. Unless we step away from a mentality that inspires
us to boil the flesh off enemy skulls, our solutions are like
band-aids and will only serve to validate and strengthen a cultural
structure that values profits over life itself.
Where do we start? I'll quote,
once again, from Derrick Jensen's "Endgame": "One
of the good things about everything being so fucked up-about
the culture being so ubiquitously destructive-is that no matter
where you look-no matter what your gifts, no matter where your
heart lies-there's good and desperately important work to be
done."
Mickey Z. is the author of several books, most
recently 50 American Revolutions You're Not Supposed to Know
(Disinformation Books). He can be found on the Web at http://www.mickeyz.net.
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By Michael Neumann
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