Tuesday, June 7, 2016

Whose Souls Cry Out, and Who is Awakened?

 
--Nuclear Future, Paresh Nath (UAE)

The tragedy is not that things are broken.
The tragedy is that things are not mended again.
--Cry, the Beloved Country,
Alan Paton

  The West's post-Holocaust pledge that genocide
 would never again be tolerated proved to be hollow,
and for all the fine sentiments inspired,
by the memory of Auschwitz,
the problem remains that denouncing evil
is a far cry from doing good
--We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow
We Will Be Killed With Our Families,
Phillip Gourevitch

Bellum ominum contra omnes
 --Thomas Hobbes
_________________________

President Obama recently laid a wreath at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial in the presence of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. His disingenuous proclamation played well to the crowd, but was so much well-scripted fluff. He said Hiroshima was,

 “the start of our own moral awakening”. We come to mourn the dead. Their souls speak to us, they ask us to look inward, take stock of who we are.”

So let's talk about morals and some dead, of the recent variety. When the United States handed Saddam Hussein over to the new Shia-led government, they set on him like a pack of hyenas, snapping his neck with a rough cow rope in a mosh pit of celebration after an amateur show trial.

The U.S. Celebrated in the carnage and joined in the morbid ebullience, despite the fact that Hussein had done nothing to the U.S. to warrant such bloodlust. What had he done that our friends the Saudis or Egyptians do not?

Ditto the grotesque murder of Libyan President Muommar Qaddafi. Our sociopathic Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gleefully acknowledged his death-by-mob in the street on commercial television. Her delusions of grandeur were exposed with her petty, "We came, we same, he died."  

And yet life for Libya and its people -- just as for Iraqis post-Saddam -- has grown exponentially worse since Qaddafi was deposed. What, exactly, does the U.S. have to crow about, and what moral direction can it provide?

But to the Japanese empire circa August, 1945. Hirohito was the divine emperor of an operation in which Koreans were used as labor and sex slaves. U.S. and British Prisoners of War were tortured, murdered and used for bayonet practice. Japanese medical officers used U.S. P.O.W.'s in chemical and biological research. The litany of terror goes on (even ignoring the fact that the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor brought the U.S. into the war.)

The point is: the Emperor was a war criminal of the highest order, and yet the U.S. never bothered to treat him as such. [He reigned until his death in 1989.]

What has changed from 1945 to 2016? Do our recent actions speak of a "moral awakening"? 

Are we listening to the voices of the newly-dead which we have created, and what do we see when we "take stock of who we are"?

12 comments:

  1. Ranger-

    I think you are right about Hirohito. You can thank old Dugout Doug MacArthur for that one. Many say it was a good strategy for the Cold War that followed. I'm not sure about that, but then I never had any smarts on geopolitik.

    As for Sadaam Hussein I am now, and was then, against our invasion of Iraq. Yet once we caught that little bugger what do you suggest that we should have done with him? The man was a recidivist sociopath. Would you lock him up with Noriega for a cellmate? Let him go? Sweet-talk the Brits into exiling him to the Island of St Helena like they did to Napoleon? Tell us your solution. As far as I am concerned the Shia [Sadaam's victims] deserved the right to decide his fate. Too bad they showed their bad side later in your mosh pit. As far as the U.S. "celebrating the carnage" I do not have the same recollection that you do. Perhaps you were watching FOX?

    I was also against our involvement in the Libyan Civil War. In my estimation it was the Europeans that pushed very hard for NATO to go in on the side of the NTC rebels. We made a mistake in going along with it.

    Sorry you consider our future Madame President to be sociopathic.

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    1. In Regard to Sadaam: US should have sent him to La Hague.

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  2. Wow. That's a lot of post for some basic standard-issue politician boilerplate. What was he supposed to say? The truth, that nations do not have morals, but interests, and that if deadly violence serves those interests - as it did in 1945 - nations including our own will use it?

    Show me the last politician who did that and I'll carry your ruck from here to the Halls of Montezuma and kiss your ass when we get there.

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  3. The court at the Hague would be a good call Eddie. But do they want us there after we stiffed them regarding Nicaragua back in the 80s?

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  4. mike,
    i was in a local bar when the hanging occureed and EVERYBODY in the bar shouted with glee.
    in my simplicity i'd call that celebrating the carnage.
    my solution would have been NOT TO INVADE IRAQ.
    its ironic that hiro was a true war criminal and enemy and we gave him a pass, and our FORMER ally got the broken neck treatment.
    does any one remember Diem?
    jim

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  5. mike,
    i was in a local bar when the hanging occureed and EVERYBODY in the bar shouted with glee.
    in my simplicity i'd call that celebrating the carnage.
    my solution would have been NOT TO INVADE IRAQ.
    its ironic that hiro was a true war criminal and enemy and we gave him a pass, and our FORMER ally got the broken neck treatment.
    does any one remember Diem?
    jim

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  6. Jim -

    You hang out in the wrong type of gin mills. Agree we should never have invaded Iraq. But IMHO Sadaam deserved to be hung. A shame the Shia jumped the gun and stretched his neck for Dujail, a minor massacre [if there is such a thing]. The Kurds should have had the option to hang him or not. He [Sadaam] never went to trial for the Kurdish genocide aka al-Anfal. That was his worst crime where he used chemical warfare on civilians in peaceful Kurdish villages. Then he Arabized Kirkuk province by forcing Kurds out of their homes and moving many thousands of poor Arabs into that empty housing. He put tens of thousands of Kurdish men and boys in front of mass firing squads. Many more Kurdish women and children in concentration camps died of starvation or exposure.

    Although our relations with Sadaam seemed cordial during the Iraq/Iran War, Iraq was never our ally. Reagan and Rumsfeld certainly covertly sold him weapons during the Iraq/Iran War and provided him with Intel on the Iranians. But IIRC in the same time frame they also covertly shipped weapons to Iran - over 2000 TOW Antitank missiles and some Hawk Surface to Air missiles.

    As for Diem, we did not hand him over to anybody. The Vietnamese arrested him and chose to do away with him. Perhaps they wanted to coup-proof his successor Big Minh, whose aide-de-camp assassinated Diem and his brother Nhu. BTW Big Minh died peacefully in bed in Pasadena. He never served time, neither in the west for Diem's murder nor did the communists put him in a re-education camp like they did with a million other ARVN veterans/GVN politicians & bureaucrats.

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    Replies
    1. I've always regretted that we failed to hang anyone for Iran-Contra.

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  7. FDChief,
    we did hang some one. didn't we hang the presidency around GHW Bushs' neck.?
    we rewarded Gates pretty well for all his sub rosa performances.
    let freedom ring.
    jim

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  8. FDChief,
    we did hang some one. didn't we hang the presidency around GHW Bushs' neck.?
    we rewarded Gates pretty well for all his sub rosa performances.
    let freedom ring.
    jim

    ReplyDelete
  9. I thought Gates was cleared? Weren't Casey and Poindexter the go-to guys on that b*tt-f*ck? And Ronnie Raygun achieved sainthood - sad time.

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  10. GHWB seems to have been deep in the mire, as well, so jim's main point is pretty much spot on. And don't forget Darth Cheney - he was lurking behind the arras as part of the coverup (he was the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee).

    As far as Bob Gates went, here's what his Wiki entry has to say:

    "Independent Counsel made this decision (that Gates' role was not indictable) subject to developments that could have warranted reopening his inquiry, including testimony by Clair E. George, the CIA's former deputy director for operations. At the time Independent Counsel reached this decision, the possibility remained that George could have provided information warranting reconsideration of Gates' status in the investigation. George refused to cooperate with Independent Counsel and was indicted on September 19, 1991. George subpoenaed Gates to testify as a defense witness at George's first trial in the summer of 1994, but Gates was never called."

    So I'm not sure I'd say he was "cleared". Like so MANY people in the two Reagan Administrations, he may not have been "dirty"...but he sure as hell wasn't "clean"...

    ReplyDelete