Some thoughts on the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001

Peace can never be brought about by violent means.

Justice consists in doing what is fair and right and in accordance with law; proportionality is a key element of just punishment.

Fanatics, whether religious or ideological, care nothing about truth, only about what they believe is The Truth. That is why they are impervious to any rendition of facts, the evidence of the senses, or logic.

It is not rational to seek the answers to current problems in so-called ‘Holy Scriptures’ (whether Torah, Bible or Quran) written thousands of years ago.

Heroes are persons who perform actions beyond the call of duty. Just putting on a military uniform or those of a police officer or firefighter does not make one a hero. Nor does doing what a dangerous job entails make one, ipso facto, a hero.

The debasement of our language goes hand in hand with the corporate media’s abandonment of investigative journalism.

The corporate media’s operating principle in regard to the government nowadays is:  See no evil – Hear no evil – Speak no evil.

If American exceptionalism ever existed, then the fabric of our Constitution and adherence to its principles and goals and the rule of law were the crux of any such exceptionalism. Our governments over the past 45 years have done their utmost to destroy that American exceptionalism.

It is universally recognized that the United States-led invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003 was an unnecessary, illegal and immoral war that put the nation, and the world, in further danger.

There were almost 3,000 victims slaughtered by the terrorist attacks on the WTC, the Pentagon, and on the thwarted attack plane that crashed in Pennsylvania. The United States-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have resulted, by conservative estimate, in the deaths of more than 120,000 victims. But, of course, our forces are fighting for peace, justice, democracy and freedom. All those dead are unfortunate but beside the point. What hubris!

Torture is always a crime, despite what former military service dodger and former VP Dick Cheney may say or write in his self-serving book and interviews.

After George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan will one day be seen to have been the second worst president this nation has ever had, replacing Richard Nixon. Mr. Obama is working diligently on being number four, nudging out Bill Clinton, who in turn eclipsed George H. W. Bush, followed by LBJ. Almost all of our present economic and foreign policy imbroglios can be found to have originated or been exacerbated as a result of one or another of these so-called leaders’ policies or lack of forthrightness.

The United States is an imperial power, wrapped in the delusions of de facto abandonment of its ideals, and mocked by the contravention of its own principles, while mouthing what are now mere shibboleths: democracy, freedom, and justice.

The calamitous problems of our democracy can be laid at the feet of both the Democrats and the Republicans – the two wings of the Corporate Party.

To rational people, being opposed to particular policies of the Israeli government does not make one anti-Semitic, just as being opposed to particular policies of the U. S. government does not make one anti-American.

Perhaps one day our government will declare its independence from the State of Israel.

If Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, and Tom Paine were alive today, they’d be organizing the people against the Powers That Be. I think even John Adams and Hamilton would join the effort.

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(c) Gregory V Driscoll 2011

Of worthy and unworthy victims

Now that we’ve had the news presenters, commentators, and pundits tell us that Mr. Obama’s Tucson memorial speech was exquisite, masterful, level-headed and one of the best speeches ever delivered by a leader of a democratic empire since the age of Pericles– oh, pardon me, I just got carried away with all the wondrous rhetoric, and was deafened into mind-numbness by the mixed congratulatory chorus of sucking-up by the corporate media — that last part about democratic empire wasn’t anything that appeared (or will ever appear) in the pages of the New York Times, Washington Post or National Review or on the airwaves of Fox News and the other corporate or public broadcasting networks.

It truly amazes me almost everyday how blind so many of us have become to the inconsistencies and contradictions that our so-called leaders – ‘managers’ is a much more accurate term nowadays – display for all to see and hear, without so much as a peep from the phalanxes of the over-paid and smarmy but beautifully coiffed ‘chattering class’.

Here we have the head of a vast military beast whose tentacles extend into some 170 countries across the globe, and that daily intimidates, threatens, detains, injures, or kills hundreds – including children – invoking the memory of a nine year old girl and using her innocence to mask once again the murderous actions and attitudes which our ‘democratic’ and imperial policies bring to innocent children and their parents in foreign lands.   The latter, as Noam Chomsky would point out, fall under the category of ‘unworthy victims’, while nine-year old Christina Taylor Green, and the others murdered and wounded in Tucson, fall under the category of ‘worthy victims.’

What especially irritated me about the pResident’s use of this little girl’s character and memory was this passage:

I want us to live up to her expectations. I want our democracy to be as good as she imagined it.  All of us – we should do everything we can to make sure this country lives up to our children’s expectations .

This from a person during whose very first year in office, and taking only Afghanistan, 131 children were killed as the result of NATO forces’ airstrikes and another 22 children had their lives ended during night searches by forces acting in our name.

I doubt if little Christina or my grandchildren would include killing children among their expectations of us.  Nor would they imagine our democracy to be good with the blood of Afghani, Pakistani, Iraqi and so many other foreign children rising in a tide that will soon result in our being despised by all the world.

So, the pResident can have his rhetoric, and can gloat at having successfully pulled his poll numbers up a few points, maybe even hit upon the new theme for his next campaign.

I much prefer reading the speech at the link below, given by Martin Luther King, Jr. in April 1967, and for which the same ‘democratic’ press and news networks which praise Mr. Obama excoriated and vilified Dr. King.  He was murdered exactly a year later.

To this day, this speech is rarely re-issued by our print media, nor the audio feed heard on our airwaves – with good reason, too.  For it flies in the face of all the self-congratulatory pabulum and self-deceptive speechifying from LBJ, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger through Ronald Reagan and Bush I on to Mr. Obama’s John-the-Baptist, Bill Clinton, to Bush II, and now the present Pericles.

Link to Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1967 Riverside Church Speech