"Kill Faster!" If anyone doubts the corrosive effect that war has on warriors and warrior societies, s/he need only read the rantings of Ralph Peters, supermilitarist writer for the New York Post. That he is an open madman does not for an instant alter the fact that he is a bloodthirsty psychopath whose mind is fixated on violence and death to "enemies" who must be killed en masse, secretly, out of range of the cameras if need be so no one can stop their murders.
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Today's Post carried the refreshingly forthright rant "Kill Faster!", in which the monster Peters says there's nothing wrong with what the U.S. military has done anywhere in Iraq, and we should do more of it, but do it so fast that the media cannot see what's going on, report back to the people, and allow the people to decide if this is the way we want to act in the world and to be seen to act by the world's other peoples. "Kill faster!" shouts the madman. Forget about the innocent men, women and children. You've got "terrorists" to kill, and anyone who gets between you and the "terrorists" must be destroyed. If they're in the wrong place at the wrong time, that's their problem, not ours.
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Yesterday, according to news reports, the U.S. fired upon a wedding party, killing some 45 innocent partygoers. (The military claims it fired on a "safe house" for "terrorists" infiltrating from Syria. The 15 children and 10 women killed were just in the way, I guess.) Today, the U.S. invaded the home of Ahmed Chalabi, once Washington's darling, and, according to news reports of what Chalabi himself said, held guns to his head! They also raided the offices of his political organization, an organization the U.S. hand-delivered to Iraq from exile. Yes, that's right: the U.S. military actually flew long-exiled Chalabi into Iraq, and carried 600 of his followers to Nasiriyah! Now they hold guns to the head of the very man they flew in to lead a new government!
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Has the military concluded that all Iraqis are enemies, to be treated as such? Innocent partygoers, people regarded as friends only days ago are now treated as The Enemy. Shoot them. Hold guns to their head. Are we now to see no friends in Iraq, only enemies - just as Arab militants regard all Americans as their enemy?
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We are supposed to be indignant about innocent civilians being killed for political ends, and call that "terrorism". But if the "people" who kill innocent civilians wear uniforms, our uniforms, that automatically makes killing alrite? No, it most certainly does not. Who, then, are terrorists, and who not? Or have we all been barbarized by this conflict, so are now all terrorists?
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All militaries are bad. All militarism is bad. Our butchers are not one whit better than anybody else's butchers, be they in uniform or out. Acts stand bare, naked of uniforms. If you kill the innocent, you commit a crime. If you attack people who have never attacked you, you commit the internationally condemned crime of aggression. If you don't care about the guilt or innocence of people you call "enemy" and kill them without distinction, you commit a crime against humanity. And you lose the right to call yourself a "victim of terrorism"; lose the right to think of yourself as a decent person, or country, or society, or civilization.
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That is what militarism does, and it must be stopped. The United States is being destroyed by the New Militarism. The more savage we become, the 'faster we kill', the more we are hated and attacked, so the more we need to resort to military "solutions", which leads to another self-perpetuating turn in the cycle of violence: we kill again, more innocents die, and even larger numbers of people, everywhere, come to hate us and want us ALL dead, however they have to do that: bombs on trains, planes into office towers, sarin gas in subways - anything that does it, to anyone in a society of killers that much of the world comes to hate.
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Ralph Peters and his ilk have nothing but contempt for Americans' historical desire to be liked. He wants us to be feared. He doesn't care if we're hated, as long as we can kill the enemies we make. I suspect he actually likes making us hated, because that inspires violence against us, which gives him the chance to urge us to kill more and more in alleged "retaliation" for violence against us that he, and our own violent acts, inspire.
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'Our' bombs are not one iota more innocent than 'Theirs', just because 'Ours' are dropped from planes flying very high and 'Theirs' are set by the roadside or loaded into trucks. 'Our' uranium-laced artillery shells are not one whit more honorable than 'Their' "dirty bombs", conventional devices that scatter radioactivity - except that 'We' really do have uranium-coated artillery shells and 'They', the "terrorists" don't have dirty bombs. 'They' have managed to kill only a few thousand of 'Us'. 'We' have killed hundreds of thousands of 'Them'. And they didn't attack us first. We, thru our dear 'friend' Israel, started this whole horrible cycle of violence and counter-violence and counter-counter-violence and on, and on.
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We have no right to claim innocence.
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The Old Testament contains these words, the "handwriting on the wall": Mene mene tekel upharsin. Do they apply to us? (Responsive to "Kill Faster!", New York Post, May 20, 2004)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 1:03 PM