NAV. SEC. BLUNDERS ON OBAMA
"... the feeling that there is a common humanity" even with adversaries "is deep in his own personal experience and his DNA," say Naval secretary Richard Danzig, speaking about Obama in a long past Newsweek I happened upon in my doctor's office today.
Okay! In his DNA? Who made this guy a Naval secretary? What kind of brain numbness does his statement show us? By what evidence can he claim to know Obama's DNA?
Besides the stupidity of such a statement at the surface level is the truth of what underlies it far beyond what a Naval officer actually knows. The truth is, and a very important truth is is, there is a "common humanity" in all of us just by the definition of "humanity". We all share it in common and to the same degree and depth. It is exactly that "shared humanity" that ought to show us humans the way to a world peace that is lasting and satisfying.
It's only when we see someone as an enemy that we forget the common humanity they share with us and begin to dehumanize them. That navy guy is ignorant as cow manure. He does not even realize the important truth that underlies his superficial analysis of Obama's character.
What we need is a world full of people who understand that we all share a common humanity and that if we were them (the other), then we'd see that they are doing just as we'd be doing if we were in their shoes and trying to deal with America's aggressive stance toward the world under neocon leadership. If that navy dupe would only use his own "common humanity" to interpret and understand his enemy's behavior, we'd soon see an end to violence in the world. He's got it all right at his fingertips, but he can't see it because of neocon blinders.
Showing posts with label neocons. Show all posts
Showing posts with label neocons. Show all posts
Friday, August 15, 2008
NEOCON GANGBANGERS
It occurred to me this morning as I noodled around in the shower, alternating between bursts of song and thought, that neocons and gangbangers have approximately the same idea about how to "win ? and influence people". If Americans elect Barack Obama as president of these United States, we will gain tremendous respect around the world. Our melting pot promise will once again be fulfilled, but neocons have a different idea about how to influence the world. They want the world to fear America. It's in that wish that one can see the gangbanger influence in neocon thought. Gangbangers talk about "respect" all the time, but as far as I can tell, they mean "fear" when they say respect because it usually accrues to the banger with the biggest gun. It's a typical confusion for emotionally immature children to confuse fear and respect. Nazis and Fascists also confuse those terms. Now... I'm not saying that neocons are fascists. It's just that they think like fascists. Now that wouldn't make them fascists, would it?
It occurred to me this morning as I noodled around in the shower, alternating between bursts of song and thought, that neocons and gangbangers have approximately the same idea about how to "win ? and influence people". If Americans elect Barack Obama as president of these United States, we will gain tremendous respect around the world. Our melting pot promise will once again be fulfilled, but neocons have a different idea about how to influence the world. They want the world to fear America. It's in that wish that one can see the gangbanger influence in neocon thought. Gangbangers talk about "respect" all the time, but as far as I can tell, they mean "fear" when they say respect because it usually accrues to the banger with the biggest gun. It's a typical confusion for emotionally immature children to confuse fear and respect. Nazis and Fascists also confuse those terms. Now... I'm not saying that neocons are fascists. It's just that they think like fascists. Now that wouldn't make them fascists, would it?
Monday, April 28, 2008
AMERICA’S HITLERIAN NIGHTMARE OF TORTURE
Look—it’s become routine for neocons to claim that it is unfair of us more moral Americans to compare them to Hitlers, Stalins or Maos or to any of the dictators of any regime that, in the past, used torture and which many good American’s, some modern Americans notwithstanding, have always been hateful of, but the facts continue to speak for themselves. It’s not only I or any other living, good American who condemns them, it is our entire American history of the past 100 years and all its greatest spokesmen that condemns torturers and dictators. So, if they can support torturing any enemy that they decide to call an enemy, then, I suppose there is nothing protecting me from their torture, or you yourself when the time comes, that protects all of us from their torture except a common and widespread respect for the laws of humanity that defend anyone the next Bush regime decides to call a criminal.
The following is from a Newsweek article (May 5, 2008) written by Dahlia Lithwick, and as a good humanist might say, may the humane laws of America protect her. Or as one of the torturers might say, may God preserve her soul.
[SNIP]
Full and fair trials might have happened for enemy combatants, but missteps have led to a legal process that now exists solely to prove the detentions were justified; that the captives are-as former Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld once called them—"the worst of the worst." That's a political conclusion, not a legal one, and it's why Col. Morris Davis—former chief prosecutor for the military commissions at Guantanamo—resigned last fall, claiming political interference had created the impression of a "rigged process stacked against the accused." Davis later told The Nation that in a conversation with Pentagon general counsel William Haynes in 2005, Haynes told him flatly, "we can't have acquittals. If we've been holding these guys for so long, how can we explain letting them get off? We've got to have convictions."
If prisoners were illegally tortured at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, who was responsible? A memo written by John Yoo, a deputy at the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel from 2002 to 2003, was declassified this month. He argued that military interrogators could subject suspected terrorists to harsh treatment as long as it didn't cause "death, organ failure or permanent damage."
Yoo's a possible contributions to torture at Guantanamo almost pale in comparison with ABC News's revelations that administration officials, including Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, John Ashcroft, George Tenet, Colin Powell and Don Rumsfeld, met several times in the White House to discuss torture techniques for Al Qaeda suspects. The group signed off on slapping, pushing and waterboarding, in a manner "so detailed ... some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed." Days later, President George W. Bush confirmed he "approved" of these tactics.
Yet despite the fact that senior members of the Bush administration may have violated the War Crimes Act of 1996, the Geneva Conventions and the Uniform Code of Military Justice, there is scant serious talk of legal accountability.
[PASTE]
Here's a haiku with a spring kigo (seasonal reference):
Look—it’s become routine for neocons to claim that it is unfair of us more moral Americans to compare them to Hitlers, Stalins or Maos or to any of the dictators of any regime that, in the past, used torture and which many good American’s, some modern Americans notwithstanding, have always been hateful of, but the facts continue to speak for themselves. It’s not only I or any other living, good American who condemns them, it is our entire American history of the past 100 years and all its greatest spokesmen that condemns torturers and dictators. So, if they can support torturing any enemy that they decide to call an enemy, then, I suppose there is nothing protecting me from their torture, or you yourself when the time comes, that protects all of us from their torture except a common and widespread respect for the laws of humanity that defend anyone the next Bush regime decides to call a criminal.
The following is from a Newsweek article (May 5, 2008) written by Dahlia Lithwick, and as a good humanist might say, may the humane laws of America protect her. Or as one of the torturers might say, may God preserve her soul.
[SNIP]
Full and fair trials might have happened for enemy combatants, but missteps have led to a legal process that now exists solely to prove the detentions were justified; that the captives are-as former Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld once called them—"the worst of the worst." That's a political conclusion, not a legal one, and it's why Col. Morris Davis—former chief prosecutor for the military commissions at Guantanamo—resigned last fall, claiming political interference had created the impression of a "rigged process stacked against the accused." Davis later told The Nation that in a conversation with Pentagon general counsel William Haynes in 2005, Haynes told him flatly, "we can't have acquittals. If we've been holding these guys for so long, how can we explain letting them get off? We've got to have convictions."
If prisoners were illegally tortured at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, who was responsible? A memo written by John Yoo, a deputy at the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel from 2002 to 2003, was declassified this month. He argued that military interrogators could subject suspected terrorists to harsh treatment as long as it didn't cause "death, organ failure or permanent damage."
Yoo's a possible contributions to torture at Guantanamo almost pale in comparison with ABC News's revelations that administration officials, including Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, John Ashcroft, George Tenet, Colin Powell and Don Rumsfeld, met several times in the White House to discuss torture techniques for Al Qaeda suspects. The group signed off on slapping, pushing and waterboarding, in a manner "so detailed ... some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed." Days later, President George W. Bush confirmed he "approved" of these tactics.
Yet despite the fact that senior members of the Bush administration may have violated the War Crimes Act of 1996, the Geneva Conventions and the Uniform Code of Military Justice, there is scant serious talk of legal accountability.
[PASTE]
Here's a haiku with a spring kigo (seasonal reference):
Winter trucks labor
in the slushy mall streets
with Spring fashions.
in the slushy mall streets
with Spring fashions.
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