MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
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MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Order today at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
Put a little sanity in your life with Noam Chomsky:
We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush’s compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic. Uncontroversially, his crimes vastly exceed bin Laden’s, and he is not a “suspect” but uncontroversially the “decider” who gave the orders to commit the “supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole” (quoting the Nuremberg Tribunal) for which Nazi criminals were hanged: the hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of refugees, destruction of much of the country, the bitter sectarian conflict that has now spread to the rest of the region.
There’s more to say about [Cuban airline bomber Orlando] Bosch, who just died peacefully in Florida, including reference to the “Bush doctrine” that societies that harbor terrorists are as guilty as the terrorists themselves and should be treated accordingly. No one seemed to notice that Bush was calling for invasion and destruction of the U.S. and murder of its criminal president.
Comments
If Bush had to fear international reprisals, it would have tempered his decisions. If we don't have the domestic means to bring Bush to justice, he shouldn't have a free pass.
by Rootman on Mon, 05/09/2011 - 7:35am
I'd understand why they did that.Just as I understand why we executed OBL
by Flavius on Mon, 05/09/2011 - 9:22am
Chomsky is often thought-provoking, insightful. Here, he's just dialing it in.
He calls bin Laden a "victim," and dismisses his numerous videotaped confessions about directing the 9/11 hijackers as empty boasting.
Chomsky's totally right that Bush, Cheney and their henchmen are war criminals, and even that their crimes were capital offenses. So the U.S. indulges in a glaring double standard. We knew that.
Nothing he says speaks to the rightness or wrongness of killing bin Laden.
by acanuck on Mon, 05/09/2011 - 4:45pm
I think he was making a semantic point with that - just because someone confesses to a crime doesn't mean they did it - whether freely or under torture. Now, I believe bin Laden was behind it, but it doesn't mean we should be sloppy with our law.
by Desider on Mon, 05/09/2011 - 5:28pm
Like, what if the glove doesn't fit? He could walk.
by Rootman on Mon, 05/09/2011 - 5:31pm
There's always the civil suit. And the book contract. And the stealing trophies in a petty thug heist. Eventually they fall.
by Desider on Mon, 05/09/2011 - 5:41pm
I love the guy, but this is the weakest I've read from Chomsky. Maybe I'm too tied up in our own imperialism but we'd have been withing our rights regarding OBL even if 9/11 hadn't happened. We tried taking him out with cruise missiles in the 90s. I think we were within our rights then as well, though Chomsky obviously does not.
by Michael Maiello on Mon, 05/09/2011 - 5:39pm
What I read from our guys in Sudan was our intelligence then was complete crap. We wanted to make Sudanese incorrigible, and so we ignored grossly wrong indications in the factory.
Do we have a "right" to be so wrong? Just because WTC was toppled, do we get a free pass to kill civilians in the wild in Pakistan through negligent drones?
Specifically for OBL, we used cruise missiles because we couldn't get up close to him. Obviously that wasn't the case this time around - so where's the justification? We had rights to go into Pakistan and get him, but once we chose that route, the summary execution permission slip is gone.
(And I think Juan Cole makes some good points about Pakistan's and OBL's violating nations' sovereignty. Which happens quite a lot to get outraged as a principle)
by Desider on Mon, 05/09/2011 - 5:49pm
I always felt that our drones in Pakistan were coordinated in support of their own military campaigns in the region to a large extent. There was a total "they doth protest too much" feel to the Pakistani reaction. Rightly or wrongly, compared to the Pakistani method of artillery based ground assaults that tend to level whole villages, it felt to me like a mutual interest operation that was a less devastating overall alternative (despite inarguable innocent casualties and unfortunate direct responsibility). At times it even felt some operations tilted against our interests to help them achieve objectives with their own internal militants.
My opinion of our drone program changed dramatically when Obama established his "anybody anywhere on my command" doctrine. That is insane. Bush was probably *doing* it - but not even he went there as an official policy.
by kgb999 on Mon, 05/09/2011 - 6:14pm