| by Paul Craig Roberts
What is it with Americans and sex? Why
is an illicit affair the ONLY reason for removing someone from political
office? Why is it that government officials, presidents and vice presidents
included, can violate US statutory law and torture people, spy on Americans
without the necessary warrants, murder US citizens without due process, confine
US citizens to dungeons for life without evidence and due process of law, start
multi-trillion dollar wars on the basis of contrived allegations that have no
basis in fact, murder civilians in seven countries, overthrow legitimate governments,
and all of these massive crimes against humanity can be accepted as long as no
one in Washington gets any sex out of it? Is this feminism’s contribution to
American morality?
( November 14, 2012, Washington DC, Sri Lanka Guardian) When Chris Floyd is at his best, as he
is below, he puts things in perspective for readers that they otherwise never
confront. Obama has won reelection, and his supporters think that somehow
things are going to be different. Fat chance.
While evil continues to envelop America,
the public is focused on CIA director General Petraeus’ resignation. The FBI
spied on him and found that he was having an affair with his biographer, a
woman 20 years younger than his 60 years.
Has the United States, the hero of the
cold war, become in its behavior and motivations the enemy it overcame? Why
does Washington want hegemony over the world? Why does Washington want this
hegemony so badly that Washington is willing to murder women, children, aid
workers, husbands and fathers, village elders, anyone on earth including its
own American heroes?
What is the evil that drives Washington?
How can the evil that drives Washington
be contained, stamped out, prevented from destroying the human race?
What does the world do when it confronts
unbridled evil, which is what Washington is?
The Reality of the “Lesser Evil”
Is This Child Dead Enough for You? ~
Chris Floyd
To all those now hailing the re-election
of Barack Obama as a triumph of decent, humane, liberal values over the
oozing-postule perfidy of the Republicans, a simple question:
Is this child dead enough for you?
This little boy was named Naeemullah. He
was in his house — maybe playing, maybe sleeping,
maybe having a meal — when an American drone missile was fired into the residential area where he lived and blew up the house next door. [http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/12/photos-pakistan-drone-war/?pid=999]
maybe having a meal — when an American drone missile was fired into the residential area where he lived and blew up the house next door. [http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/12/photos-pakistan-drone-war/?pid=999]
As we all know, these drone missiles
are, like the president who wields them, super-smart, a triumph of technology
and technocratic expertise. We know, for the president and his aides have
repeatedly told us, that these weapons — launched only after careful
consultation of the just-war strictures of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas
— strike nothing but their intended targets and kill no one but “bad guys.”
Indeed, the president’s top aides have testified under oath that not a single
innocent person has been among the thousands of Pakistani civilians — that is,
civilians of a sovereign nation that is not at war with the United States — who
have been killed by the drone missile campaign of the Nobel Peace Prize
Laureate.
Yet somehow, by some miracle, the
missile that roared into the residential area where Naeemullah lived did not
confine itself neatly to the house it struck. Somehow, inexplicably, the hunk
of metal and wire and computer processors failed — in this one instance — to
look into the souls of all the people in the village and ascertain, by magic,
which ones were “bad guys” and then kill only them. Somehow — perhaps the
missile had been infected with Romney cooties? — this supercharged hunk of high
explosives simply, well, exploded with tremendous destructive power when it
struck the residential area, blowing the neighborhood to smithereens.
As Wired reports, shrapnel and debris
went flying through the walls of Naeemullah’s house and ripped through his
small body. When the attack was over — when the buzzing drone sent with
Augustinian wisdom by the Peace Laureate was no longer lurking over the
village, shadowing the lives of every defenseless inhabitant with the terrorist
threat of imminent death, Naeemullah was taken to the hospital in a nearby
town.
This is where the picture of above was
taken by Noor Behram, a resident of North Waziristan who has been chronicling
the effects of the Peace Laureate’s drone war. When the picture was taken,
Naeemullah was dying. He died an hour later. [http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/12/photos-pakistan-drone-war/?pid=998]
He died.
Is he dead enough for you?
Dead enough not to disturb your victory
dance in any way? Dead enough not to trouble the inauguration parties yet to
come? Dead enough not to diminish, even a little bit, your exultant glee at the
fact that this great man, a figure of integrity, decency, honor and compassion,
will be able to continue his noble leadership of the best nation in the history
of the world?
Do you have children? Do they sit your
house playing happily? Do they sleep sweetly scrunched up in their warm beds at
night? Do they chatter and prattle like funny little birds as you eat with them
at the family table? Do you love them? Do you treasure them? Do you consider
them fully-fledged human beings, beloved souls of infinite worth?
How would you feel if you saw them
ripped to shreds by flying shrapnel, in your own house? How would you feel as
you rushed them to the hospital, praying every step of the way that another
missile won’t hurl down on you from the sky? Your child was innocent, you had
done nothing, were simply living your life in your own house — and someone
thousands of miles away, in a country you had never seen, had no dealings with,
had never harmed in any way, pushed a button and sent chunks of burning metal
into your child’s body. How would you feel as you watched him die, watched all
your hopes and dreams for him, all the hours and days and years you would have
to love him, fade away into oblivion, lost forever?
What would you think about the one who
did this to your child? Would you say: “What a noble man of integrity and
decency! I’m sure he is acting for the best.”
Would you say: “Well, this is a bit
unfortunate, but it’s perfectly understandable. The Chinese government (or Iran
or al Qaeda or North Korea or Russia, etc. etc.) believed there was someone
next door to me who might possibly at some point in time pose some kind of
threat in some unspecified way to their people or their political agenda — or
maybe it was just that my next-door neighbor behaved in a certain arbitrarily
chosen way that indicated to people watching him on a computer screen thousands
of miles away that he might possibly be the sort of person who might
conceivably at some point in time pose some kind of unspecified threat to the
Chinese (Iranians/Russians, etc.), even though they had no earthly idea who my
neighbour is or what he does or believes or intends. I think the person in
charge of such a program is a good, wise, decent man that any person would be
proud to support. Why, I think I’ll ask him to come speak at my little boy’s
funeral!”
Is that what you would say if shrapnel
from a missile blew into your comfortable house and killed your own beloved
little boy? You would not only accept, understand, forgive, shrug it off, move
on — you would actively support the person who did it, you would cheer his
personal triumphs and sneer at all those who questioned his moral worthiness
and good intentions? Is that really what you would do?
Well, that is what you are doing when
you shrug off the murder of little Naeemullah. You are saying he is not worth
as much as your child. You are saying he is not a fully-fledged human being, a
beloved soul of infinite worth. You are saying that you support his death, you
are happy about it, and you want to see many more like it. You are saying it
doesn’t matter if this child — or a hundred like him, or a thousand like him,
or, as in the Iraqi sanctions of the old liberal lion, Bill Clinton, five
hundred thousand children like Naeemullah — are killed in your name, by leaders
you cheer and support. You are saying that the only thing that matters is that
someone from your side is in charge of killing these children. This is the
reality of “lesser evilism.” [http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/to-honor-value-of-single-life-first.html]
***
Before the election, we heard a lot of
talk about this notion of the “lesser evil.” From prominent dissidents and
opponents of empire like Daniel Ellsberg and Noam Chomsky and Robert Parry to
innumerable progressive blogs to personal conversations, one heard this basic
argument: “Yes, the drone wars, the gutting of civil liberties, the White House
death squads and all the rest are bad; but Romney would be worse. Therefore,
with great reluctance, holding our noses and shaking our heads sadly, we must
choose the lesser evil of Obama and vote accordingly.”
I understand that argument, I really do.
I don’t agree with it, as I made plain here many times before the election. I think
the argument is wrong, I think our system is so far gone that even a “lesser
evil” is too evil to support in any way, that such support only perpetuates the
system’s unconscionable evils. But I’m not a purist, not a puritan, not a
commissar or dogmatist. I understand that people of good will can come to a
different conclusion, and feel that they must reluctantly choose one
imperial-militarist-corporate faction over the other, in the belief that this
will mean some slight mitigation of the potential evil that the other side
commit if it took power. I used to think that way myself, years ago. Again, I
now disagree with this, and I think that the good people who believe this have
not, for whatever reason or reasons, looked with sufficient clarity at the reality
of our situation, of what is actually being done, in their name, by the
political faction they support.
But of course, I am not the sole arbiter
of reality, nor a judge of others; people see what they see, and they act (or
refrain from acting) accordingly. I understand that. But here is what I don’t
understand: the sense of triumph and exultation and glee on the part of so many
progressives and liberals and ‘dissidents’ at the victory of this “lesser
evil.” Where did the reluctance, the nose-holding, the sad head-shaking go?
Should they not be mourning the fact that evil has triumphed in America, even
if, by their lights, it is a “lesser” evil?
If you really believed that Obama was a
lesser evil — 2 percent less evil, as I believe Digby once described the
Democrats in 2008 — if you really did find the drone wars and the White House
death squads and Wall Street bailouts and absolution for torturers and all the
rest to be shameful and criminal, how can you be happy that all of this will
continue? Happy — and continuing to scorn anyone who opposed the perpetuation
of this system.
The triumph of a lesser evil is still a
victory for evil. If your neighborhood is tyrannized by warring mafia factions,
you might prefer that the faction which occasionally doles out a few free hams
wins out over their more skinflint rivals; but would you be joyful about the
fact that your neighborhood is still being tyrannized by murderous criminals?
Would you not be sad, cast down, discouraged and disheartened to see the violence
and murder and corruption go on? Would you not mourn the fact that your
children will have to grow up in the midst of all this?
So where is the mourning for the fact
that we, as a nation, have come to this: a choice between murderers, a choice
between plunderers? Even if you believe that you had to participate and make
the horrific choice that was being offered to us — “Do you want the Democrat to
kill these children, or do you want the Republican to kill these children?” —
shouldn’t this post-election period be a time of sorrow, not vaulting triumph
and giddy glee and snarky put-downs of the “losers”?
If you really are a “lesser evilist” —
if this was a genuine moral choice you reluctantly made, and not a
rationalization for indulging in unexamined, primitive partisanship — then you
will know that we are ALL the losers of this election. Even if you believe it
could have been worse, it is still very bad. You yourself proclaimed that Obama
was evil — just a bit “lesser” so than his opponent. (2 percent maybe.) And so
the evil that you yourself saw and named and denounced will go on. Again I ask:
where is the joy and glory and triumph in this? Even if you believe it was
unavoidable, why celebrate it? And ask yourself, bethink yourself: what are you
celebrating? This dead child, and a hundred like him? A thousand like him? Five
hundred thousand like him? How far will you go? What won’t you celebrate?
And so step by step, holding the hand of
the “lesser evil,” we descend deeper and deeper into the pit.
Chris Floyd is an American writer based
in the UK. His blog, “Empire Burlesque,” can be found at http://www.chris-floyd.com.
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