The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Our Depravity

Apparently 86% of Americans think that shooting an unarmed bin Laden was ok.

Yeah.  Once up on a time, a different country in a different time, put on trial men who had been complicit, not just in killing a few thousand people, but millions.  They gave those people, known as Nazis, a trial.  But that was a different country, and a different time, when America still at least tried to do the right thing, and when Americans thought doing the right thing was, well, the right thing.

Back then over 50% of Americans didn’t approve of torture, either.  They understood that people who torture are evil.  Period.

Osama bin Laden and the prisoners at Guantanmo are either:

  • Prisoners of war, in which chase they should receive full Geneva convention rights, or;
  • Common Criminals, in which case they have the right to a speedy trial, to face their accusers and to see the evidence against them.

A majority, possibly a vast majority, of Americans, are now morally depraved as a people.  This wasn’t quite true even four years ago.  A slight majority of Americans, at that time, were against torture.  Now they are for it.

End of the line.

This is paralleled by something I see in fiction all the time.  The rise of the cult of the family.  The idea is that anything you do for your family is morally ok.  The first time I noticed that this was out of hand was the movie Patriot.  In that move Mel Gibson refuses for fight for the rebels against England until his family is harmed.

That may be many things, but it is not patriotic.  The deaths of Iraqis killed by the American war criminal George Bush are not less real than Bin Laden’s, they do not matter less, and they are far far more numerous.

The rest of the West is marching down this route of moral depravity as well.  In country after country, recession caused by the outright fraudulent and illegal actions of the rich is responded to by cutting services to the poor, who had nothing to do with it in any way, shape, or form, while billions to trillions are spent making sure the rich are bailed out.  And, say what you will, but populations keep voting these governments in.  Sure, they aren’t as depraved as Americans, but they’re working on it.

We live in a depraved time.  Yes, our elites are evil. Virtually to a man or woman they are monsters.  But we are complicit in this.  Whether in pluralities or outright majorities or in our own depraved indifference we enable them.

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67 Comments

  1. But we are complicit in this.

    Exactly right, Ian. And that link’s from three years ago, next Thursday.

  2. Ghostwheel

    I think it’s even worse than that with our elites. I think if they had actually killed Bin Laden, they surely would have put up the body for independent verification so as to assuage any doubt.

    I think they killed a bunch of innocent civilians in that compound.

    They may have believed Bin Laden was there. But if he had been, they surely wouldn’t have disposed of the body Tony Soprano style.

    The photo they released, which shows ten percent of an old man’s face, proves nothing. Try convincing the photographer at the DMV to put a portrait taken from that angle on your Driver’s License.

    Depravity? People don’t even demand their government prove it murdered who they claim it did. Just more gore for the blood fest.

  3. lefthook

    Ian, the vast majority of this country has always accepted torture. They just called it different things. I’m moving as soon as I can. I can’t accept living in a such a morally depraved country.

    What is most repulsive to me are Obamabots. They are moral nihilists. They believe in NOTHING. They will justify and believe anything as long as Dear Leader looks good.

  4. lefthook

    Also, great comment about the cult of the American family. Coincidentally I am writing a black satire about that very subject.

  5. I think the view of Americans toward torture and the war on terror have basically been stampeded in that direction and anyone who says “whoa wait a minute, I want to ask a few questions about this” is basically set upon as being “unpatriotic”. A case in point is football player Rashard Mendenhall who merely tweeted ” What kind of man celebrates death? It’s amazing how people can HATE a man they have never even heard speak. We’ve only heard one side.”

    For that, Mendenhall lost an endorsement contract and was roundly condemned by the Pittsburgh Steelers. That statement doesn’t even come close to a strong dissent IMO, yet the reaction was overwhelming and the message is that if you’re a visible public figure, no dissent, however mild, will be allowed. Given that, it’s easy to see how people can be lead to accept torture, endless detention and etc.

    If what is being done is correct, then it will always stand up in the light of day and there’s no need to squelch questions or dissenting views.

  6. grs

    Conflating torture and death in a raid will get you nowhere. This wasn’t a mandated execution. You’re taking it a bit far. The question in the poll was:

    “3* Do you approve or disapprove of the president’s decision authorizing the mission to kill Osama bin Laden?”

    The mission was capture or kill bin Laden. That just means people are fine if he was killed in the operation. I’ll ask you this, what if the SEALS weren’t allowed to kill bin Laden in the raid?

  7. Ian Welsh

    Oh, bullshit. He was unarmed, if they’d wanted him alive they would have taken him alive. One old man, on dialysis, in his bedroom against a full equipped SEAL from the most elite SEAL Team. I see no good reason to believe that it was even capture him if you can.

    And yes, torture and refusal to give people trials or to obey the rules of war are the flip sides of the same problem, the same depravity, the same casual disregard for the law that we see everywhere in American society now. This is the same wellspring from which flows the refusal to prosecute all the Wall Street fraudsters or to tax the rich, the idea that only some people have the protection of the law and only some people are subject to the penalties of the law. The US is corrupt and depraved in its selective application of the law, turning it into an instrument of evil, not justice.

    The refusal to give justice to people like Bin Laden and the people in Guantanmo is EXACTLY why ordinary Americans get no justice either. You have exactly the rights granted to the worst, and no more. This is crystal clear at this point.

    (As an aside.) There are missions where spec.ops aren’t allowed to kill their targets, because the targets are more valuable alive than dead. On missions like that, if you have to take a bullet, you take a bullet. The fact that this was not such a mission either indicates that the US believed Bin Laden had no critical information (ie. was no longer really a threat) or massive incompetence.

  8. Celsius 233

    I’ve been gone for 8 years this month; it’s little comfort watching the disintegration of the U.S. from 10,000 miles away. No regrets; it’s just there’s little difference in my feelings here or there, even though I know I’m far better off financially in my chosen country.
    It’s also become apparent that very few, very very few, will actually pack up and leave as I did.
    Of course there are myriad reasons/rationalizations as to why people make the choices they make; but I can’t help but think the biggest reason is denial. This is also the most frightening possibility, because it will allow the very continuation of the internationally criminal policies of the U.S. to continue unabated.
    Depraved is an apt, but unfortunate, description of the present rulers of the U.S. of A.

  9. It’s important to emphasize, as Ian has, how far down the depravity goes.

    In the recent Canadian elections, it was suburbanites in Toronto who tipped the scales, suburbanites who live in the “American dream” Orange-Countyish suburbs in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). It’s the psychology of the American dream, of having your own fortress, that reinforces this mentality, and it’s a mentality that has grown to some extent throughout the English-speaking world, if not the “Western” world.

  10. Celsius 233

    ^ Yes, I understand that; but millions upon millions of U.S. citizens have been disenfranchised and no longer have any hope of “the American dream” (always bullshit anyway) so I guess I naively thought this would be an awakening. The sleeper sleeps the sleep of no dreams…

  11. guest

    I remember how upset people got at the thought of US casualties so many years after Viet Nam. Starting a war was no small thing. A lot of people were very upset and uneasy about Grenada, Panama, etc. Now look how inured we are. Nobody bats an eyelash at our soldier’s deaths, much less the deaths of foreigners. Even the terrorist deaths in London or Russian don’t shock like they used to. I don’t think humanity is on any track that can be called progress anymore. Following crackpots like Bush or Palin doesn’t scare anyone, whether we are talking about their military adventures or their excellent adventures in economic catastrophes. Now the massacres in Burundi and Rwanda or the former Yugoslavia really don’t seem so unimaginable here in America.

  12. Morocco Bama

    Excellent post. Depraved, indeed. I think that depravity was always there in U.S. citizens, lurking beneath the surface, ready to be activated when the Zeitgeist demanded it. The traditional education setting indoctrinates them into this latent and idle depravity. It codifies scapegoating and bullying. This Benny Hill skit sums it up nicely.

    http://www.veoh.com/watch/v6304456ttteG9WQ

  13. John B.

    I agree with this post and the various commentors who have rightly pointed out our moral depravity but what I take issue with is whether this is a new condition or a new phenomena for the American people. I say it is not.

    Read history on our dealings with the natives that were here from Plymouth onward, whether it was the eastern tribes along the new england seaboard or the iroqouis league and the New York lust for thier homeland or the forced removal of the Cherokee (my people) in the south or the war against the Shawnee and their allies in the ohio river country or the many and varied western tribes that are to numerous to do justice to in this short post. The list is endless.

    We are brutal and unforgiving in our quest for dominion both on this continent and in this hemisphere and now overseas. The only thing different in our “foreign policy” from colonial times to modern times is our enemies and our weapons.

    I don’t think we are less moral or depraved as a people now than we were at any time in our history. We tell ourselves nice stories and have our local heroes who are defenders of all that is good and just, but this is not new nor will it be essentailly different in the future. It is our condition and those of us that are rightly outraged by our acts and our lies (like Ian) continue to point us in a better direction and course of action and when we are not stoned out of our heads on fear and greed we make some concerted effort to amend our ways by better story telling and the like, but essentially as humans and as Americans we have not changed, nor will we.

  14. someofparts

    I think it was Hannah Arendt who said that the paterfamilias is the lynchpin of fascism.

  15. Lisa Simeone

    Family, tribalism, nationalism, whatever you want to call it — it is now and has always been one of the great evils of the world. It’s also one of the most easily exploited of human traits.

    And I don’t believe education has anything to do with it. There are millions of “educated” people who are just as bloodthirsty as anybody else. The number of people who see beyond race, nation, tribe to “human being” have always been in the minority, no matter their status in life.

    Celsius, you’re lucky you were able to move. Not all of us can. And it isn’t from denial. Some of us have elderly parents we can’t leave. Some of us can’t get work permits in other countries. There are myriad reasons why we have to stay. At least I’ll go down fighting. Unlike so many others out there, who are either blind or cowardly or apathetic or all of the above.

  16. David Kowalski

    I really think we are more depraved, even far more depraved, as a society than we were as little as 40 years ago. When a captured Vietcong was shot in the head on live TV nobody said “good” and lots of people were appalled. When Buddhist monks burned themselves it was shocking. When Nixon tried to steal an election he had already won by intimidating donors through contracts, the and the IRS and and sabotaging opponents campaigns he was thrown out of office. George W. Bush just flat out stole the Presidency and the same newspapers and TV stations that howled against Nixon were complicit telling everyone to go home and be quiet. Torture and the open sale of the US government go on in the open and are approved. Unem[ployment, cost of living, and other federal data is routinekt jimmied to make the government look better. Openly fraudulent banksters wjo ruin the economy are not prosecuted because it costs too much while 2 million mostly druggies are in jail or prison. Ans on. Taxes get shifted from corporations to the little people via payroll taxes and then the corporate whores want to steal that.

    This is the most corrupt government ever beating even the era of the robber barons.

  17. Michael

    Speaking of moral depravity

    http://www.defencetalk.com/osama-bin-laden-hideout-a-videogame-battleground-34013/

    “A software map named fy_abbottabad in reference to the city where a US military team killed the infamous Al-Qaeda leader in a May 2 raid was available Monday as a setting for play in online computer shooter game ‘Counter-Strike.'”

    You know i’m not one of those prudes who sees violent videogames as destructive to our civilization, but what really takes me aback about this is the wish fullfillment mixed with sadism.

  18. Greg

    I would agree with you about Canada except a majority of voters, voted against the policies of the Conservatives. There is still hope here, but only with electoral reform and God knows, the elites will do everything to stop that.

  19. Morocco Bama

    Maybe education is a bit too narrow of a focus. Social Engineering is the better term, of which traditional education is a large part. The majority of a child’s waking hours are spent in a traditional educational setting where they are subjected to a litany of Social Engineering devices, both formal and informal. If you have children, you understand of which I speak. It is an uphill battle to undue what traditional education attempts to do to your child. Last week, my daughter indicated that they announced OBL was dead on her Middle School morning news recap over the PA system. We discussed it over dinner, but I’m sure many families are not, and children are left to assimilate this information on their own, at the predations of the school social system or the 24/7 Entertainment Complex that is the Internet/TV/Movies.

    You can’t compare now to two-hundred years prior. It’s not Apples to Oranges. Depravity was certainly present two-hundred years prior, but what inculcated its manifestation was quite different from inculcates it today, and it’s important to understand the distinction if you want to “fight” it today.

  20. Jack Olson

    In 1996, Osama Bin Laden signed and published a Declaration of Jihad (“Holy War”) Against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Mosques. The Land of the Two Holy Mosques refers to Saudi Arabia.

    So, Bin Laden considered himself at war. He said so and he pursued that war through barbaric means, by sending teams of murderers into a number of foreign countries to massacre civilians by the thousand. To complain that he wasn’t given a trial when he remained at large and able to order further terrorism is moral idiocy. It is the equivalent of demanding that an army capture and try enemy soldiers who haven’t surrendered instead of gunning them down.

    By the time the Nazi defendants at Nuremberg and the Japanese defendants at Tokyo were put on trial, their governments had long since capitulated. Al Quaeda has not. Instead, they insist that they are still at war and will continue to wage it by the same barbaric means they use already. It makes little sense to object to the killing of murderers whose favorite weapon is suicide bombing, much more sense to kill them before they commit still more murders.

  21. Morocco Bama

    You know i’m not one of those prudes who sees violent videogames as destructive to our civilization

    Well, I’m one of those prudes. Video games are a form of Social Engineering….a form of rewiring the brain, and when they are violent, they desensitize the gamer to violence and its implications. Does that mean that every gamer who plays violent video games is going to go on a murder spree? No. But let’s not pretend it has no effect on the gamer’s psychical reaction to violence in society.

  22. Morocco Bama

    See, I like what Jack says only in the sense that he makes fence straddlers take a position, and get off the fence.

    I do not recognize this thing called al Qaeda for what the media says it is. I do not, and will not, give this substantial fabrication the mythological legitimacy the MIC hopes to attain, and is attaining with most people of the West, intellectual and non-intellectual alike.

    Either way, it’s the acceptance of mafia style hits and torture and the like without questioning, not to mention the outright celebration of it, that is of concern here, not the legal minutia from which the most immoral of attorneys could rationalize anything.

    Back to Social Engineering, I would say the reaction I observed to be attributed equally to the ubiquitous nature of Sports in the U.S. Sports is everything in this country. It is part of the fabric of life in the U.S. The reaction to the alleged assassination of the alleged OBL is likened to Sports fans after their team achieves major victory, or a slam dunk, or a touchdown. Indeed, BHO made reference to it by talking about spiking the ball.

  23. malcontent

    To complain that he wasn’t given a trial when he remained at large and able to order further terrorism is moral idiocy.

    Does someone other than yourself really have to explain this in terms you understand Jack?

    Slow down a bit and chew on it for a moment. Are you just another terrorist Jack?

    Of course I like to think that I refuse to accept savagery over civility but I still wake up every day and tolerate sophistry like yours over and above the lawless, reckless direction from our national decision makers. We’re killing men, women and children everyday in the name of freedom from terror. For America.

    At least I bitch about it. I don’t know how you sleep at night Jack.

  24. John B.

    M Bama says:

    “You can’t compare now to two-hundred years prior. It’s not Apples to Oranges. Depravity was certainly present two-hundred years prior, but what inculcated its manifestation was quite different from inculcates it today, and it’s important to understand the distinction if you want to “fight” it today.”

    I say only by scale MB, only by scale.

  25. anon2525

    To complain that he wasn’t given a trial when he remained at large and able to order further terrorism is moral idiocy. It is the equivalent of demanding that an army capture and try enemy soldiers who haven’t surrendered instead of gunning them down.

    No, it is the equivalent of what happened some times during the second world war: sinking a ship and then shooting the surviving men in the water. That is, it is a war crime. Even in war, there are crimes.

    You have a choice: Either say that it is a crime to shoot an unarmed man (who is not threatening anyone with physical harm) in the head, or say that it is not a crime, and pass a law that says that.

    But you don’t have the choice to make up facts. The shooting of bin Laden was not “the equivalent of demanding that an army capture and try enemy soldiers who haven’t surrendered”, so your argument has no foundation.

    The u.s. managed to capture, try, and execute Timothy McVeigh, a domestic terrorist, murderer, and former u.s. soldier, but obama chose not to capture and put on trial bin Laden. It was a political choice to kill him, not a military judgment made in battle. (Likewise, the prisoners in Guantanamo are political prisoners who haven’t been put on trial because there is no case to be made and who haven’t been released because there are politicians who benefit from keeping them imprisoned.)

  26. ks

    Ian,

    Great post and comments. I come down on the “same as it ever was” side of things. In terms of torture, we haven’t gotten more depraved. The depravity has simply come out into the open moreso than in the past.

    Let me give you what I think is a relevant comparison – local policing. Putting aside that local police forces here seem to have become more paramilitary operations rather than local cops, for way longer than I’ve been alive, things that would qualify as torture have been going on in local police precints but, as long as those things were mostly confined to racial minorities and poor whites and the areas they lived in, society generally looked the other way. In their neighborhoods the cops were “Officer Friendly” and in those other neigborhoods the cops were “Officer-Beat-Your-Ass”. I think this long standing tacit acceptance of “localized torture” along with some really evil propagandizing and the detrioriating economic condition have us where we are now. A population armed to the teeth but afraid of its own shadow.

  27. I would agree with you about Canada except a majority of voters, voted against the policies of the Conservatives. There is still hope here, but only with electoral reform and God knows, the elites will do everything to stop that.

    I’m aware of that; nevertheless we need to explain those particular seats that were the sine qua non of their majority victory. It was only something like a 2.5% vote increase, but it came out of there.

  28. anon2525

    How many people have seen this picture of the children killed by
    U.S./NATO bombing? Where are the people outside the white house
    chanting “usa! we are child killers! usa!”

    bin Laden is shot and everyone knows about it. Obama goes on national
    television to announce that he gave the order.

    Many weeks earlier, soldiers on two u.s. helicopters shoot nine boys
    who are out gathering firewood for their families. How many people
    have even heard about this? Where is obama’s speech where he accepts
    responsibility for giving the order? Where is his speech where he
    announces the investigation for this crime or for charging the
    soldiers?

    “A majority, possibly a vast majority, of Americans” would find the
    picture of these dead children disturbing and would be opposed to
    their killings. But that majority does not work at the news desks in
    the large newspapers or the cable or network news, nor does that
    majority hold elective office or have decision-making authority in
    the democratic or repub parties.

  29. Jack Olson

    Malcontent, I sleep safer at night because the man who ordered the deaths of thousands of my countrymen, as well as many thousands of people in foreign countries, cannot do so any longer.

  30. malcontent

    So might makes right and the fear justifies it. That’s not morality by any definition I would recognize.

  31. Jack Olson

    Anon2525, may I give you a concrete example? After a long and dangerous battle against a Japanese destroyer, Captain Edwin Beach of the U.S. Navy managed to torpedo and sink it. He ordered his men to surface the sub and ram the lifeboats, which they did. He reasoned that he could not afford to give such a dangerous enemy the chance to survive and possibly sink his sub or any other U.S. subs later on.

    Or, consider a purely civilian example. The policemen who ambushed and killed Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker didn’t give them a chance to surrender. They didn’t even have jurisdiction at the spot, since the Texas lawman who led the ambush had no jurisdiction in Louisiana. Yet, by the time he died, Barrow and his gang were suspects in the murders of nine policemen and several civilians. Can we blame his killers for not giving him a chance to give himself up? Only if we ourselves are prepared to take such risks. Since I’m not, I wouldn’t expect the policemen to.

    The strict path of legality would mean asking the Pakistanis to capture Bin Laden and then demand his extradition, just as the strict path of legality would have prevented the Israeli Mossad from capturing Adolf Eichmann in Argentina and taking him to Jerusalem. The Argentines objected to this violation of their sovereignty. Yet, they had admitted Eichmann to their country and harbored him, or at least failed to locate him where he was hiding. One can object to the Israelis’ illegal action only if one gives greater weight to Argentine sovereignty than to bringing so great a criminal to justice. I’m not willing to do that, either, although you could ask Malcontent.

  32. Certain authoritarian mindsets believe that the power to kill thousands radiates from a single man, or from a single government of elites. The whole point of Ian’s post flies by such people.

  33. anon2525

    I sleep worse at night knowing that the men&women who responded to bin Laden have not been held accountable for the invasions of countries that has lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children, women, and men. I sleep worse at night knowing that the u.s. constitution has been subverted and the people who have done this have been succeeded by people who have continued this instead of holding the other people accountable for their crimes.

    The end (the killing of bin Laden) has not been justified by the means (the killing of hundreds of thousands of people and the subversion of law).

  34. anon2525

    The strict path of legality would mean asking the Pakistanis to capture Bin Laden and then demand his extradition, just as the strict path of legality would have prevented the Israeli Mossad from capturing Adolf Eichmann in Argentina and taking him to Jerusalem.

    During the TARP “debate”, it was argued that either the banks be bailed out, or the economy would collapse. It was a false choice. Likewise, your points argue “either shoot an unarmed and non-threatening man” or set him free forever. Again, a false choice.

    None of your examples provide a reason for why an unarmed and non-threatening man must be shot in the head. If you think that an unarmed and non-threatening man must be shot in the head rather than be captured and put on trial (as was done with McVeigh), then say it plainly instead of attempting to justify it with non-relevant incidents. None of your examples explain why he could not have been captured.

  35. ks

    Yeah Jack sure….I’m sure vision of bin laden kept tortured your sleep previously. So, I’m glad you’re sleeping better now.

  36. ks

    “None of your examples provide a reason for why an unarmed and non-threatening man must be shot in the head. If you think that an unarmed and non-threatening man must be shot in the head rather than be captured and put on trial (as was done with McVeigh), then say it plainly instead of attempting to justify it with non-relevant incidents. None of your examples explain why he could not have been captured.”

    Didn’t he tell you? It made him sleep better at night. That’s all the matters. The “strict legality” nonsense is just a red herring.

  37. David Kowalski

    Hey, hey, LBJ
    How many kids did you kill today

    It turned out that the damage done had a profound impact on those ordering the bombings in Vietnam. People resigned from high level posts. My Lai meant something. And yet, as shown in the documentary “fog of War”, Vietnamese civilian casualties were far higher than our policy makers thought.

    Whose chanting? Certainly nobody is covering it. The number of protesters against going to war was 6 million world wide and hardly anyone noticed. The much adored and over covered Tea Party couldn’t get anywhere near that, maybe 5% despite widespread corporate sponsorship. Mark Twain once wrote that if things reached a point he’d do better off going to Russia because he preferred his despotism pure rather than covered with the fig leaf of democracy.

  38. StewartM

    After a long and dangerous battle against a Japanese destroyer, Captain Edwin Beach of the U.S. Navy managed to torpedo and sink it. He ordered his men to surface the sub and ram the lifeboats, which they did. He reasoned that he could not afford to give such a dangerous enemy the chance to survive and possibly sink his sub or any other U.S. subs later on.

    HUH!?

    Like, with their destroyer sunk, how exactly were the survivors in the lifeboats an immediate threat to anyone? Were they going to sink US subs with their bare hands?

    As for the long-term consequences of letting those men live, when anyone did that to our side, we called it what it is–an atrocity. Not justifiable under the rules of war. Once sailors are in the water, no matter what nationality, if you can do anything at all, then you rescue them. You pick them up.

    StewartM

  39. Jack says,

    So, Bin Laden considered himself at war.

    Good for him. Unfortunately for your argument, terrorists cannot declare war in the conventional sense. They are non-state actors. They can’t institute a draft to put together an army, spend a huge amount of state money on mobilizing factories to build tanks and make bullets, invade and conquer another state, or do any of the other things Hitler (to whom Bin Laden is often ludicrously compared) could do.

    Did Timothy McVeigh consider himself at war? Did the blind sheikh who tried to bring down the World Trade Center consider himself at war? Who cares? Factually speaking, they were not at war with the United States. They were terrorists, which means they were criminals, not heads of state who have the ability to declare war on other states. As criminals, they were caught, tried and put in prison for their offenses. And we cheered.

    Presidential candidate John Kerry argued for a criminal approach with regard to Osama Bin Laden in 2004, and “progressives” who crow about Obama’s kewl killing of OBL now, were cheering Kerry then.

    Our attitudes towards terrorism have most certainly changed since 9/11, as a result of the Bush Administration’s conflation of the words “war” and “terror.” This conflation has enabled our elites to justify the previously unheard-of levels of authoritarianism and moral depravity of which Ian speaks.

  40. StewartM

    …just as the strict path of legality would have prevented the Israeli Mossad from capturing Adolf Eichmann in Argentina and taking him to Jerusalem. The Argentines objected to this violation of their sovereignty. Yet, they had admitted Eichmann to their country and harbored him, or at least failed to locate him where he was hiding. One can object to the Israelis’ illegal action only if one gives greater weight to Argentine sovereignty than to bringing so great a criminal to justice. I’m not willing to do that, either, although you could ask Malcontent.

    I’ll take that example. In that instance, as Eichmann, while a fugitive from justice, no longer held any position of power and was thus no longer a threat to anyone. Ergo, that being the case, Argentina’s sovereignty trumps Israeli’s supposed right to apprehend him.

    Now, that doesn’t mean that Israel and the rest of the world who disapproved of Argentina harboring Eichmann couldn’t bring economic and political pressure to bear to try to compel them to release him.

    StewartM

  41. anon2525

    Didn’t he tell you? It made him sleep better at night. That’s all the matters. The “strict legality” nonsense is just a red herring.

    Which is (doubly?) ironic since shooting an unarmed and non-threatening man shouldn’t even rise to the level of “strict legality.” Never mind making the argument that it was “strictly legal” to kill him. Make even the moral case that you must kill an unarmed and non-threatening man, rather than capturing and trying him. Unless you must kill him, it is not justified. This is why initial reports were that he resisted or was armed. Most people expect that if you shoot a man in the head, with a military-grade weapon no less, he must have been armed and resisted.

    The u.s. would have been much better off had obama ordered the military to try to capture bin Laden so that it could demonstrate that it believed in justice. Those who are convinced that he would have been convicted and executed should have wanted this outcome. They ought to be angry that obama gave this order because it was not good for the u.s., and it helped a politician kill a man for political gain.

    The next time that an american is summarily executed, these people ought to blame obama.

  42. StewartM

    Once sailors are in the water, no matter what nationality, if you can do anything at all, then you rescue them. You pick them up.

    As evidence of this:

    http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq41-1.htm

    “Trial of Japanese War Criminals, Documents: 1. Opening Statement by Joseph B. Keenan, Chief of Counsel, 2. Charter of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, 3. Indictment. Washington: Dept. Of State, 1946….Appendix D’s Section Ten refers to violations of the Hague Convention such as “Killing enemies, who, having laid down their arms or no longer having means of defense, had surrendered…” Also in regard to the Hague Convention, Section Thirteen refers to “Killing survivors of ships sunk by naval action and crews of captured ships…”

    So if we hold the Japanese to that standard, as well we should, so should we hold Americans.

    StewartM

  43. anon2525

    From April 26th:

    In Afghanistan, at least eight NATO troops and a contractor have died after a veteran Afghan air force pilot opened fire inside a military compound in Kabul. There are reports that six of the dead soldiers are Americans.

    It’s OK for the u.s. to shoot children from helicopters and it’s OK for “allies” to shoot american soldiers because, apparently, there are no crimes and acts are justified by the acts themselves. Now shooters are allowed to be judge, jury, and executioner.

  44. ks

    Speaking of Bin Laden’s death, check out this quote I got from a column on antiwar.com:

    “Maureen Dowd of The New York Times vaguely dismisses suggestions that even if his death were justified, bin Laden should have been tried and convicted of his crimes against humanity, and instead enthuses with everyone else, “we briefly celebrated one of the few clear-cut military victories we’ve had in a long time, a win that made us feel like Americans again—smart and strong and capable of finding our enemies and striking back at them without getting trapped in multitrillion-dollar Groundhog Day occupations.”

    The mind boggles though it shouldn’t given the source but really, how is it possible for someone to be alive, much less a NY Time columnist, the past 10 years and make such a statement? You would’ve had to be in a coma lasting from the day after 9/11 until the day Bin Laden was killed to make such a statement considering that in reality the 10 year “search” for, and killing of, Bin Laden was hardly clear cut and we did and are trapped in “multitrillion-dollar Groundhog Day occupations.”

  45. anon2525

    So if we hold the Japanese to that standard, as well we should, so should we hold Americans.

    Japanese who water-boarded american POWs were tried after the war, and executed.

    No americans who have water-boarded prisoners have even been charged, much less put on trial.

  46. anon2525

    The mind boggles…much less a NY Time columnist…

    We are at least a decade since nytimes’ columnists should be held in high regard. Anthony Lewis stopped writing his column in 2001. Observant people should no longer think that it has any claim to that legacy.

  47. Pepe

    Malcontent, I sleep safer at night because the man who ordered the deaths of thousands of my countrymen, as well as many thousands of people in foreign countries, cannot do so any longer.

    Actually, I would think/assume that his death would make you less safe (reprisal attacks).

    However, the odds of you being killed by a terrorist, while going about your daily life in the States, is approximately zero.

  48. ks

    We are at least a decade since nytimes’ columnists should be held in high regard. Anthony Lewis stopped writing his column in 2001. Observant people should no longer think that it has any claim to that legacy.

    Anthony Lewis wasn’t all that either. My point wasn’t about whether to hold anybody in high regard or not, it was that a featured columinst for the supposed “Paper of Record” could so blithely dismiss basic facts. As I said, the mind boggles but I’m not surprised.

  49. Lisa Simeone

    Excellent thread. Bravo to so many (and thank you, ks, for your astute observations about racial minorities, torture, and the militarization of the police; increased use of Tasers also falls into this continuum).

    But dear god, the guy who brought up the WWII example of the American ship deliberately ramming lifeboats?? And you think that’s justifiable? That’s called a war crime. And you know it.

    Why is it that everything the U.S. does is good, right, true, noble, and just, even when its actions are exactly the same as actions we declare heinous when they’re done by other countries?

    I’m so sick of the propaganda in the US, promulgated by our government and propagated by a complicit media and dimwit populace. So sick of it.

  50. JustPlainDave

    You might want to do some looking into what public opinion was regarding what should be done with the Nazis and Japanese at the end of World War II. I haven’t yet been able to find the final Gallup tabulations, but the secondaries on it are sobering to say the least.

  51. David Kowalski

    Ah.Maureen Dowd. She’s the one who ridiculed Al Gore consitently in 2000 mostly because he wore earth tones. She’s a gifted twit and does major harm as she consistently sides with the cool kids and only the cool kids.

    The Times is consistently scooped by the Daily News on city and state stories. They are consistently scooped by blogs on national stories. They are a cultural magazine type publication with a high price tag. The NYT serves the corporates and does a better job with stories on Omaha than New Jersey or Connecticut.

    Since they wan $20 a month eventually, I’ve stopped reading them and replace them with the Washington Post, LA Times, NJ.com, and the NY Daily News.

  52. Morocco Bama

    I’m surprised they didn’t capture OBL and hand him over to the TSA to be groped and fondled the remainder of his life.

  53. Lisa Simeone

    MB,

    No, they’re saving that fate for the rest of us. After all, surely we’re only one level less suspicious than OBL.

  54. StewartM

    madamab:

    Unfortunately for your argument, terrorists cannot declare war in the conventional sense. They are non-state actors. They can’t institute a draft to put together an army, spend a huge amount of state money on mobilizing factories to build tanks and make bullets, invade and conquer another state, or do any of the other things Hitler (to whom Bin Laden is often ludicrously compared) could do.

    Very well put. The next time I hear someone compare OBL to Hitler, or for that matter Saddam Hussein to Hitler, I think I’ll puke.

    Not only what you said–both were less of a threat to the US. Hitler was not only evil, aggressive, and expansionist, willing to risk war and willing to prosecute it with absolutely no scruples, BUT he also was had at his beckoning a state possessing one of the world’s most productive economies capable of developing advanced technologies as good anyone’s. Saddam, by contrast, was oil-rich but his armed forces had to be equipped with hand-me-downs (mostly Soviet) which he had purchased at the international equivalent of the local gun-and-knife show. OBL couldn’t even do that–as rich as he was, he had no state resources upon which to draw.

    They were terrorists, which means they were criminals, not heads of state who have the ability to declare war on other states. As criminals, they were caught, tried and put in prison for their offenses. And we cheered.

    Some of us argued on 9/12 that this all should be treated as a crime, not a “war”, and OBL should be treated as a criminal, and Al-Qaeda should be treated as a criminal organization. But for all I can see, such an approach wouldn’t have justified the US occupying Middle Eastern countries and displacing regimes. That must be why it wasn’t tried.

    StewartM

  55. anon2525:
    We even tried some Japanese on trumped up charges and executed them. Why? Because MacArthur wanted to vanquish a foe.

  56. StewartM said:

    Some of us argued on 9/12 that this all should be treated as a crime, not a “war”, and OBL should be treated as a criminal, and Al-Qaeda should be treated as a criminal organization. But for all I can see, such an approach wouldn’t have justified the US occupying Middle Eastern countries and displacing regimes. That must be why it wasn’t tried.

    Exactly – I was one of those people, and I was happy to hear John Kerry say the same thing in 2004. Of course, by that time the orchestrated confusion of the words “war” and “terrorism” had taken hold, and Dubya had used them as an excuse to invade and occupy Iraq. Now people truly do not seem to know the difference between a terrorist leader of a few ragtag fanatics, and a head of state. It is scary.

  57. anon2525

    We even tried some Japanese on trumped up charges and executed them.

    I did not know that. More important is that the u.s. firebombed Tokyo and dropped nuclear weapons Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and no one was tried for that, or even charged. In the documentary on Robert McNamara, R.M. says that general LeMay said that it was a good thing (for LeMay and others) that the u.s. won the war, otherwise they would have been tried for war crimes.

    Even to this day, the majority of the u.s. population does not admit that these were war crimes. Depravity? It has a long history.

  58. anon2525

    My Lai meant something.

    It did mean something. And yet, by 2004, when the reporting of a much larger crime* during the Vietnam war was printed, it had no effect because the corporate media don’t pay attention to reporting that they have not originated. So much for the “first rough draft of history” conceit.

    * The Toledo Blade’s reporting on “Tiger Force”.

  59. anon2525

    My point wasn’t about whether to hold anybody in high regard or not, it was that a featured columinst for the supposed “Paper of Record” could so blithely dismiss basic facts. As I said, the mind boggles but I’m not surprised.

    Yes, “paper of record” is a slogan that gets repeated often. Don’t accept the slogan and your mind won’t be boggled. WikiLeaks is the latest significant example that the nytimes is a corporate mouthpiece with an agenda, not a record of reality. Keller’s behavior, as reported elsewhere, during this period has been reprehensible.

    I don’t read it or its columnists (except Krugman), but considering that they deliberately hired Brooks and Douhat (sp?), that should put to rest any expectation that their featured columnists have a strong attachment to representing reality. Observant people need to make up their minds that these corporate media are not trying to tell the truth. Some truth seeps in, but it is only there to give the media plausible deniability for the suckers.

  60. Morocco Bama

    Now people truly do not seem to know the difference between a terrorist leader of a few ragtag fanatics, and a head of state. It is scary.

    I know the difference. The latter is a much more powerful terrorist, and head of state is just lipstick on a pig.

  61. Celsius 233

    Lisa Simeone PERMALINK
    May 10, 2011
    Celsius, you’re lucky you were able to move. Not all of us can. And it isn’t from denial. Some of us have elderly parents we can’t leave.
    ================================
    Okay, you’re excused. I understand what you’re saying; I’m thinking of family (mine) and friends (again, mine) from whom I’ve heard many excuses which give me pause. It brings into question, for me, if they really get it?
    Make no mistake; being an expat, especially in a very different culture, has it’s moments, some of which are very difficult. But in the end it’s a very enriching experience. Cheers.

  62. anon2525:
    One in particular was General Yamashita. Read William Manchester’s American Caesar. It’s a bio of MacArthur.

  63. David Kowalski

    What did the US elites learn from Vietnam? There is not enough support to fight a long war with draftees. Originally, th elites took that to mean that wars in the post Vietnam era should be short and sweet: Granada, Panama, the Gulf War. George W. Bush and Barack Obama take it another way. Wars fought by a “professional” military that does not include the children of opinion makers can be fought over a long time. Wars “fought” (and they rarely fight just indiscriminately kill and torture) by mercenaries are better yet.

    Other lessons: huge casualties by foreigners don’t matter. Controlling TV coverage is a key to controlling public sentiment.

    The two big wars fought by the US, the Civil War and WW II lasted four years or less. Korea lasted three years, WW I was officially a year and a half with the combat portion for the US under a year. The longer wars (American Revolution, Vietnam, to some extent the “Indian wars”) were at times very unpopular.

    “This is justice” coming from the alleged greatest constitutional lawyer is a farce on several levels. Justice would be getting back the lives of the 3,000 people killed on 9/11. Justice would be getting back the America of 9/10 with full constitutional liberties, no military torture, no TSA gropes, the right to protest within sight of the President and no mercenaries.

    As long as people are talking movies, how far are we from “The Running Man” where a designated monster gets to run the gauntlet on a killing field for public amusement? We are not there yet but slowly but surely we are getting there. Yes, 9/11 may be the day that America as we know it died but the real perpetrators are the elites. Patriot Act? Tax Cits? Torture? Mercenaries? US oil companies as the only beneficiary outside the military industrial complex for Iraq? Oil for blood? I wouldn’t be so quick to eliminate the connection only it is really corporate profits for blood.

  64. anon2525

    What did the US elites learn from Vietnam? There is not enough support to fight a long war with draftees.

    Yes, this observation has been repeated many times in the past decade, going back to at least Rep. Rangel, who called for re-instating the draft around the time of the start of the invasion of Iraq.

    What has been less commonly observed during the past decade is that what was learned by wealthy and corporations during the second world war* is that military actions can make private profit for private companies that contract to sell weapons, services, and mercenaries to the gov’t. And at the same time, taxes have not been raised on the wealthy or corporations to pay for these private profits. Instead, the opposite has occurred–taxes have been cut.

    Re-instituting the draft 1) assumes that it is OK to force people to go along with military actions and 2) causes many people to have to lose their lives until public opinion and civil actions take place to change it.

    The wealthy and corporations need to be made to know that if the u.s. takes military action 1) it will cost them money in higher taxes to pay for it and 2) there will not be private profits to be made.

    It is a myth that the u.s. is involved in foreign occupations because of principles of foreign policy. The u.s. is involved these occupations because the wealthy and corporations do not pay the cost of them and because they are making a profit from them. If the reverse were true, then these people would be paying lobbyists and bribing politicians contributing to campaigns to stop the actions. If they learned that they would always pay and never profit, the u.s. would not be routinely taking military action, but would use economic and diplomatic persuasion.

    * Prior to the second world war, the u.s. always sent home the large armies that it drafted for the wars. The wealthy, corporations, and people with military “careers” have repeated the observation that the u.s. had no significant military at the start of that war, and that therefore, they “believe”, it needed to keep a large standing army going forward.

  65. David Kowalski

    IIRC taxes were raised during the Civil War, WW II and Vietnam. War contractors were scrupulously investigated by a Senate Committee led by Harry Truman. Truman claimed to have found enough waste to fund the Marshall Plan. Civil War contractor fraud was also thoroughly investigated and probably even more common. One instance was the use of reprocessed wool for uniforms. The uniforms proved to be of such poor quality that the materials name, shoddy, entered the language. Casualties from tainted food during the Spanish American War easily exceeded casualties from battle.

    Btw, income taxes were first tried to pay for the War of 1812 before being ruled unconstitutional. The system paid tax collectors a percentage of collections and the tax collectors got stiffed.

    Tax cuts during war? Unique.

  66. StewartM

    David Kowalski:

    What did the US elites learn from Vietnam? There is not enough support to fight a long war with draftees. Originally, th elites took that to mean that wars in the post Vietnam era should be short and sweet: Granada, Panama, the Gulf War. George W. Bush and Barack Obama take it another way. Wars fought by a “professional” military that does not include the children of opinion makers can be fought over a long time. Wars “fought” (and they rarely fight just indiscriminately kill and torture) by mercenaries are better yet.

    Other lessons: huge casualties by foreigners don’t matter. Controlling TV coverage is a key to controlling public sentiment.

    Other “lessons” that the elites learned were:

    a) To intimidate protesters from by surveillance from the get-go, before any anti-war resistance has a chance to take off (i.e., Josh Wolfe)

    b) to remake the US armed forces. Cap Weinberger’s military was *supposedly* built for fighting the Soviets, yet as some critics have pointed out, by the mid-1980s the arsenal that he had equipped our forces with was so hideously expensive (and potentially unreliable and prone to mechanical failure) that if a ground war *had come* in Europe, in a few weeks all that expensive high-tech weaponry would be either destroyed in combat or out-of-service due to breakdown and/or mechanical wear-and-tear. The Russians for their part would have been in a similar pickle, because they–due to their longstanding inferiority complex against the West which usually led them to believe that whatever tack the Pentagon was taking *MUST* be the correct course–had been copying the Americans as best they could and making their weaponry ever more expensive and complicated as well. In regards to tanks, we would have been digging up our M-60s and M-48s from National Guard units while the Russians would be pulling out T-62s and T-55s, and ditto with other arms. The lesson of WWII–that weapons systems must be capable of being mass-produced (i.e., relatively cheap), relatively mechanically reliable, and readily serviceable, were forgotten.

    Or were they? In the case of Weinberger’s military, maybe not. What Cap Weinberger did happen to produce was a military which excelled in “showing the flag” across the globe, hitting adversaries in the less-developed world usually equipped with Soviet hand-me-downs with “shock and awe”. Moreover, such brief conflicts employing high-tech weaponry results in few body bags to have to bring home. As you say, “enemy” casualties, no matter how huge, and no matter if they include a large number of non-combatants, don’t matter to American public opinion, only our own body bag tallies count. So we got an interventionist force that is far better suited to browbeating and bullying developing countries moreso than fighting developed ones.

    Was that a deliberate decision? One has to wonder. It does niche if you were to believe that the only mistakes in Vietnam were a) too much TV attention to anti-war protesters and b) too many American body bags coming home.

    If I’m am right, these planner forgot one thing in regards to Iraq: remaking a country over, a la Germany or Japan after 1945, requires a mass draftee army. One of the problems we ran into in Iraq was that the all-volunteer army resulted in too few boots on the ground.

    c) I’ll also add another thing about going to the all-volunteer army. Not only do you develop military “careers” (which the Founders thought dangerous), not only do you exempt the children of the elite from ever having to risk their necks by going to that route, you also draw into its ranks people of conservative bent who will be more likely to accept platitudes from their leaders that the sacrifice of their children and their friends in a faraway land for Exxon’s profit margin was really the most noble thing conceivable.

    StewartM

  67. gtash

    I don’t sleep any better because bin Laden is dead. If he died in his sleep my level of comfort would not have changed. If he died in his sleep, he still would have been revered and memorialized by his avid followers and maybe some of the marginal ones too. For them he was and is legend.

    And I don’t sleep any better because he was shot down–“extreme prejudice”, murder, assassination—it doesn’t matter what it’s called. It was revenge for all intents and purposes. Charles Bronson could have been the leader of Seal Team 6, but of course Chuck Norris is the latter day version. Or maybe Mr. Bardem in “No Country for Old Men”.

    He should have been captured and the “free” world should have borne the price of his incarceration and all the inflammatory press that goes with it, and all the risk that crazy terrorists of the “Free Osama” variety would try to avenge with their strategy of “resistance”. Like the Guantanamo situation, America is uncomfortable with long, long incarcerations. They are troublesome news items that build political resistance over time. And if the endpoint of them is an execution, they only engender a long discussion about capital punishment and victim’s rights. It isn’t telegenic. It isn’t “cut to the chase” journalism. The fervor that could have been bullet-in-the-head (or syringe in the vein) revenge gives way to a droning conversation about justice and human rights.

    I generally agree with what has been said by others about the impact of media. I think my country has always had a hair-trigger mentality and likes it that way. The speed and breadth of our ability to hold-up the media mirror and reflect it as we “live the part” only speeds the process of believing our own press, stroking our vanity, enlarging our mythology for succeeding generations. Everyone always wants to justify his own personal violence. The more extreme, the more energetic the justification.

    And for those who believed the nightmare would end with bin Laden’s death, I hope they had their moment of relief and revenge. I hope they can rationalize it sufficiently to sleep at night. But my guess is they won’t sleep any better just because he’s dead.

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