"Terrorism" Now Meaningless. The New York Post pretends (a) that the war against Iraq was for "self-defense" and (b) that Iraq was involved in terrorism.
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It does these despicably dishonest things indirectly, by implication. Self-defense: "Is Kerry suggesting is [sic] that America not take military action — even in self-defense — without the specific approval of France and/or Germany?" Get it? The Bush Administration's aggression against Iraq was "self-defense"! Bullshit.
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Terrorism: "Kerry's vow to 'bring the full force of our nation's power' against the terrorists rings so hollow. President Bush, after all, did just that when America ... removed Saddam Hussein in Iraq." Get it? Saddam was a terrorist. Double bullshit.
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The war was sold to Americans as necessary for our own defense, but that was a baldface lie that habitual (pathological?) liars such as the nameless editorialists at the New York Post continue to utter even tho it has been proved completely and absolutely false. Iraq was never a danger to the United States; never attacked the United States; and never so much as had plans to attack the United States.
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It is in the nature of paranoid psychopaths to justify their assaults on others as self-defense, because those others would attack them if they had the chance! But delusions of being oppressed by others do not fly when the "other" is tiny, inconsequential Iraq and the one 'endangered' is the greatest power in the history of the world.
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Let's review: Iraq is 6,000 miles from the nearest part of the United States, and the heartland of this country is a further thousand miles away. Iraq never had so much as ONE weapon that could do any significant harm even if it could reach us, and in any event had no way whatsoever to reach us. It had no intercontinental ballistic missiles. No satellites to rain death upon us from space. No missile-carrying submarines. No intercontinental-range bombers. No aircraft carrier, much less a carrier fleet to sail across the entire length of the Mediterranean Sea, then the entire width of the Atlantic Ocean - undetected! - to launch a sneak attack upon us!
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The suggestion that Iraq was a danger to us was a lie, pure and simple: a cynical, vicious lie by anti-Arab slanderers intent on slaughtering Arabs by persuading Americans that it's kill-or-be-killed and if we don't strike now, Iraq will land troops on the beaches of Delaware and march triumphantly into Washington, conquering us and subjecting us to Saddam's genocidal dictatorship! Oh, they wouldn't dare give all those details aloud, because even to say them aloud is to show how ridiculous the premise is: little bitty Iraq, with no navy, no nuclear weapons, no ICBMs or any other means of reaching us, 6,000 and more miles away, is somehow going to destroy the greatest power in the history of the world! Ridiculous.
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All that an attack upon the U.S. could have accomplished is to bring down upon a helpless Third World country the wrath of a superpower of unprecedented might, capable of taking on the entire planet Earth today and winning! To put things in context, the U.S. is so powerful militarily that in conventional warfare it could defeat every single empire in world history, from the Romans to the Parthians to the Caliphate to the Chinese Empire to the Mongol Empire to the Mogul Empire to the Japanese and Nazi empires in World War II. The only thing that can defeat us militarily is nuclear weapons (which none of the great empires before us, except the Soviet, ever had). And Iraq never had nor was even close to having nuclear weapons.
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"Terrorism" could be unpleasant for us, but it could never do any critical damage, much less bring down our civilization - except thru over-reaction, whereby we ourselves destroy our civilization by abandoning everything we stand for and becoming as much a monster as every other empire in history. There is only one power that can destroy the United States, and that IS the United States.
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Why, when the notion that Iraq was a danger to us is widely understood to be utterly false, does the Post continue to pretend that we had to act, in "self-defense"?
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"Blame the victim", that's why. That's the basic, kneejerk tendency of the Radical Right. The poor are poor because they deserve to be poor. Slums are slums because the people who live there make them slums and deserve to have to live there. Iraq deserved to be destroyed because it was making plans to attack us. All bullshit.
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There was not one iota of justification for the attack upon Iraq on the basis of "self-defense". Iraq was never a danger to us. It was, however, a serious danger to Israel. And that is why it had to be destroyed.
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But Israel is not the New York Post's country, tho you'd think, from its endless fascination with that little monster of a country, that Israel is the Post's country. There's a familiar word for Americans who set up the U.S. up for hatred and violence for the sake of another country: "treason".
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U.S. foreign policy should serve only U.S. interests, which at end means our fundamental values and base principles. Imperialist mass murder for fascist theocracy is not one of them.
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As for Iraq's being involved in "terrorism", it was no more involved in terrorism than is the government of Israel and, thus, the Government of the United States, which approves beforehand or afterward every crime of violence committed by the Israelis. If Iraq, which assisted unconventional warfare against its enemies in the Middle East - never against us - is guilty of "terrorism", then the United States is too, because the U.S. assisted the Cubans who launched the Bay of Pigs invasion, sent massive aid to the contras in Nicaragua, and has supported covert operations in scores of countries and carried out actual Marine invasions of a bunch of countries in the Carbibbean plus TWO wars against a helpless Third World country that never attacked us!
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How is it that when Hezbollah launches rocket attacks upon Israeli settlements in the Occupied West Bank, that is "terrorism", but when the Israeli government launches rocket attacks upon residential neighborhoods in the Gaza Strip, that is not "terrorism"? Hezbollah isn't a government, so its acts are termed "terrorism". Israel is a government, so its acts are not "terrorism". But Saddam controlled the government of Iraq, so how could his acts be "terrorism"?
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When identical acts are given different names, that is called "hypocrisy", a term that is always valid - unlike "terrorism", which has lost all meaning. (Responsive to editorial "Kerry Plays the Hawk", New York Post, May 29, 2004)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 2:29 PM