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Friday, September 4, 2009

U.S. War on Afghanistan: Who Does The Killing, Who Does The Dying, Who Profits?


(U.S. Marine Lance Corporal Joshua Bernard, deceased)

When did the U.S. invade Afghanistan? Early 2002, as I recall, almost 8 years ago. A country which consists of tribes, rocks, dire poverty, and land which the oil companies want to use for oil pipelines so they can steal oil from neighboring countries, pipe it through Afghanistan, then sell it on the open market for billions of dollars in profits. And pay presumably enormous kick-backs to the U.S. politicians who have funded this war knowing exactly why we were invading that country.

But you wouldn't really know we were conducting a war against those poor people because the media is owned by war-mongers, controlled by the government, and "our" Democrats love war more than the Republicans do.

Once in awhile something happens that brings the war to our attention. Like this week when Senator Feingold said perhaps it's time to get the hell out, or at least set a timetable, since nobody has any explanation as to why we're still there. (Except for that whole pipeline issue).


(With weapons, on patrol)

But something else happened this week in the U.S. War on Afghanistan. An American died. A Marine. And somebody, a journalist, took a picture of him while he was dying, and it showed up in the press. And the whole U.S. government went nuts. WHAT? ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND? SHOWING PICTURES OF DEAD AMERICANS TO THE PUBLIC?


(Wounded)

We cheer and celebrate the mass slaughter of "them" -- the Iraqis, Iranians, the poor people of Afghanistan. But God forbid an American who's over there doing the killing should himself get killed. Got to cover that up fast.

Ask yourself this: what would you do if another country invaded your country, stayed for 8 years, put an oil executive in and called him "president," killed your people, occupied your land, roamed throughout with tanks, guns, dropped bombs from airplanes, what would you do if you got the chance to fight back?

When the picture of U.S. Marine Lance Corporal Joshua Bernard was shown in the press as he was dying, the Department of Defense and Secretary Robert Gates contacted AP (which took and published and photo) and "asked" them to remove the photo. It was removed. No dead Americans can be shown. Everybody else dead is okay, but no dead Americans. That's called censorship and pretending and lying and deceiving and keeping the public from recognizing the true cost of war. People die. And it costs a lot of money too. But mostly, people die.

What do you call journalists who only print what the government tells them to? Stenographers.

End all the Wars. Bring the Troops Home.

5 comments:

  1. Hey NAB...

    I don't have anything to say that you haven't already said about the nauseating hypocrisy of Robert Gates and the rest of the defense establishment about what can be shown from Afghanistan, and I just stopped by to share my latest discovery in the wilds of Youtube, and it's something wonderful...

    Keren Ann, a singer working in France who also sings in English, as in Lay Your Head Down.

    There's lots more of her on Youtube, and multiple albums on Amazon.

    BTW I got banned from OpenLeft immediately after posting a quick hit "Obama Slaughters a Village in Afghanistan," which is also posted as a diary on firedoglake and elsewhere.

    That makes 14 "progressive" websites where I was banned immediately after posting criticism of Obama.

    Meanwhile, I hope your leg has finished healing, and you can chase down that geezer who swipes your newspapers. How fast can he be?

    J.F.

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  3. Really? You got banned from Open Left? That is so funny. Maybe they should call it "Closed Left."

    I got "warned" at the Daily Kos once. But I didn't understanding what the warning was about. Of course I didn't understand most of what went on over there anyway -- the 16th district in the midwestern section of the 4th plat in Iowa has a close race for dog catcher.

    Then I think I was kind of sneakily-banned from Huffington Post once. At least every time I tried to post there it was blocked, so I finally wrote them and complained, and about three months later they came back and said "Oops -- try it now." So I think I got my wrist slapped.

    If you're not offending someone, you're probably not saying anything worthwhile.

    There's a guy at Open Left, I think one of the founders, who always uses the word "Hegemony," or "Hegemonic" in his headlines. And once I commented that I bet 80% of the people in this country (maybe 90%) don't understand that word, so he might want to come up with a more familiar alternative. He was very offended. He told me that he was considered quite the brilliant writer by (some publication), and I, on the other hand, was a moron. What-ever. I just know this: it turns out that most of the public gets it wrong when asked to explain the difference between "prior" and "subsequent," so lawyers are trained to use the words "before" and "after" if they want the jury to understand them.

    I think Open Left is a good idea but the recession is just crushing many online sites. People hoped it might pay for itself, turn into something profitable, make a buck, but now that is unlikely in the near future.

    You need to just pick a new name, get a new e-mail address, go back there and keep posting. I was thinking about using Emma Goldman's mug-shot at my facebook photo, not that anyone else would get it. But you could re-register at Closed Left under the name Etta Goldman, see if anyone catches on. Or there's always Minnie Mouse.

    Also go to Truthdig. I like that website. Like Robert Scheer. Lots of interesting articles there.

    Anyway, I'm still laughing. Banned for truthful commenting. I wonder if that's in the Rules. But keep coming here, let me know where else you are posting. I'm going to go look up your article. Duh -- we're killing women and children. People act like we're not supposed to mention that. Maybe Robert Gates was a co-founder of Closed Left.

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  4. After some negotiation, Chris Bowers reversed the ban by Paul Rosenberg, and I immediately put up the most condescending "apology" in the history of condescension. Paul Rosenberg is your "hegemonic" front-page poster, and apparently the last straw was "Frisco Liberals," a grating term of abuse that I invented just for him and his version of identity politics.

    I also like Truthdig and Robert Scheer, but they also banned me during the primary wars for constantly referring to Obama as a "stinking con-man."

    Meanwhile, I had a chance to read all the way through Gates' phony outrage about Joshua Bernard, and it was even more nauseating the second time around.

    Gates sent Bernard to die in a hopeless war, and now he's bitching about a photo.

    But Joshua Bernard's death was infinitely more real than any photograph.

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  5. Well, I'm glad you've been un-banned. Or are you banned again? Personally I hate the word "Frisco," even if Mr. Hegemony himself lives there (which I didn't know), it's just too demeaning to the rest of that wonderful city. I'll have to go to Open Left and catch up. I've been too busy stewing and obsessing about my crutches and my useless foot to really follow much of anything.

    You know David Sirota at Open Left had a big blow-up online with some poster awhile back. Yes, the poster was a jerk, maybe, kind of, but Sirota was completely inappropriate -- banned him. Power corrupts, right. Then I think he unbanned him. So those people need to really take a breath and stop this Stalinist craziness. There are people who are just posting for the purpose of promoting the Klan or the Republican party, same thing, and they should be banned. But for others, who simply have a different way of expressing things, this is silly.

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