The 10 Most Excellent Reasons to Attack Iran
1. Iran has threatened to fight back if attacked, and that’s a war crime. War crimes must be punished.
2. My television says Iran has nukes. I’m sure it’s true this time. Just like with North Korea. I’m sure they’re next. We only bomb places that really truly have nukes and are in the Axis of Evil. Except Iraq, which was different.
3. Iraq didn’t go so badly. Considering how lousy its government is, the place is better off with so many people having left or died. Really, that one couldn’t have worked out better if we’d planned it.
Shooting Handcuffed Children
By David Swanson
The Liberty Voice guest contributor
hat tip: http://afterdowningstreet.org
The occupied government of Afghanistan and the United Nations have both concluded that U.S.-led troops recently dragged eight sleeping children out of their beds, handcuffed some of them, and shot them all dead. While this apparently constitutes an everyday act of kindness, far less intriguing than the vicious singeing of his pubic hairs by Captain Underpants, it is at least a variation on the ordinary American technique of murdering men, women, and children by the dozens with unmanned drones.
Also this week in Afghanistan, eight CIA assassins (see if you can find a more appropriate name for them) were murdered by a suicide bombing that one of them apparently executed against the other seven. The Taliban in Pakistan claims credit and describes the mass-murder as revenge for the CIA’s drone killings. And we thought unmanned drones were War Perfected because none of the right people would have to risk their lives. Oops. Perhaps Detroit-bound passengers risked theirs
unwittingly.
The CIA has declared its intention to seek revenge for the suicide strike. Who knows what the assassination of sleeping students was revenge for. Perhaps the next lunatic to try blowing up something in the United States will be seeking revenge for whatever Obama does to avenge the victims (television viewers?) of the Crotch Crusader. Certainly there will be numerous more acts of violence driven by longings for revenge against the drone pilots and the shooters of students.
In a civilized world, the alternative to vengeance is justice. Often we can even set aside feelings of revenge as long as we are able to act so as to deter more crime. But at the same time that the puppet president of Afghanistan is demanding the arrest of the troops who shot the handcuffed children, the puppet government of Iraq is facing up to the refusal of the United States to seriously prosecute the Blackwater assassins of innocent Iraqis. Justice will not be permitted as an
alternative to vengeance — the mere idea is anti-American.
No one so much as blinks at the CIA’s avowal of vengeance for the recent suicide attack, never mind the illegality, because the entire illegal war on Afghanistan/Pakistan was launched and is still maintained as a pretended act of revenge for the crimes of 9-11. Of course, we’re not bombing the flight schools or the German and Spanish hotels. Of course, we admit that there are fewer than 100 members of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Of course we openly seek massive permanent bases and an
oil pipeline. Of course, Obama’s decisions are all electoral calculations computed by the calculus of cowardice. Of course, we’re prosecuting the Butt Bomber as a criminal, just as we always used to
prosecute criminals as criminals. Of course, revenge would not be a legal justification for war even if we could persuade ourselves it was a sane one. But the war is publicly understood as revenge, the resistance by its victims is understood as revenge, the escalation is understood as revenge for the resistance, and an eye for an eye slowly makes the whole world blind.
No, We’re Not a Broken People (but this is a marathon, not a sprint!)
By David Swanson
courtesy of: David Swanson’s blog
In 2004 I began speaking at rallies and forums around the country on issues of peace and justice, something I’ve done off-and-on ever since. Up through 2008, it was extremely unusual for questions from the audience to consist of pure defeatism. In 2009, it was rare to get through a Q&A session without being asked what the point was of trying.
And the defeatism is so contagious that it will be hard for me to make it through 2010 if people don’t shut up about how doomed we are. If current trends continue, by 2011 the only people showing up at forums on peace and justice will all be old enough to tell my grandparents they’re too young to understand how pointless it is to try. And my grandparents are dead.
Most of the defeatist questions I get asked are more statements than questions, mostly informing those in the room of ways in which our nation is corrupted that we are all painfully aware of, but stated as much out of frustration and despair as out of any hope of hearing a miraculous solution articulated.
Aren’t politicians all bought and paid for? Haven’t we tried being activists for years with no success? Can’t the corporate media just destroy us if it wants to? Won’t the secret permanent bureaucracy just kill any politicians who stray from the plan? Isn’t anything good doomed to fail under our two-party system? Et cetera and so forth.
Some of these questions / statements / cries of anguish build into them an analysis of what’s wrong and, therefore, of what needs to be fixed, at least in the view of the questioner. And I tend to agree with much of the analysis I hear, and to want to add to it. (For example, I want to get people to see the danger of leaving all power in the hands of presidents, even though returning it to Congress wouldn’t do a bit of good until we fix Congress.) But I have no sympathy for what I consider the unintellectual and immoral offense of coughing discouragement on people.
So, I ask participants in events I’m speaking at not to do it.
