American Violence in Iraq: Necrophilia or Savagery?

[beetbox]

American violence in Iraq: Necrophilia or savagery?
Part 4 of a 5-part series: Obedience, defiance, and conscience

By Kim Petersen and B. J. Sabri
Online Journal Contributing Writers

Since the magazine posed these questions on American domestic violence, we decided to transpose them from their domestic milieu to the wider horizons of US international violence: (1) How violent is America abroad? (2) How many people have America's military killed around the world? (3) The world has had enough of US fascist violence . . . But are there any solutions? Finally, a fundamental question: Since violence rules America, is the US also ruling the world through violence?

Answer to question 1: America's violence worldwide speaks for itself. From the destruction of the Originals Peoples of the United States to the inhabitants of Iraq, the US motivation to annihilate its designated enemy, to conquer, colonize, place under tutelage, or control foreign resources has not undergone any substantial change in over two centuries. Beyond that, the ideology of confrontation and violence appears to have cemented itself so deep in the American mind that some segments of the American people have become more overtly enthusiastic about war and conquest than the ideologues of empire themselves.

Answer to question 2: Wars directly after World War II: Korea, 3 million; Vietnam, 3 million; Panama, 4,000; Iraq (Gulf War: 400,000; sanction, 1.5 million, Operation "Iraqi Freedom" and ongoing occupation; over 128,000): 2 million; Yugoslavia, 24,000; Afghanistan, 20,000. If we add all those who the US indirectly killed by arranged military coups in Indonesia, Congo, Chile, Haiti, Iran, Iraq, Latin America, and elsewhere, as well as all those Palestinian murders abetted through the largesse of US arms and "aid" to the Zionist program of ethnic cleansing and genocide, the number of people murdered worldwide as a result of militaristic US foreign policy implemented by its obliging soldiers is beyond count.

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American violence seems atavistic in nature; i.e., inherited and transmitted from one generation to the next. This could explain why the system always defends the status quo. Nevertheless, throughout modern American history, the voices that opposed US imperialism and its violence have always remained an ostracized intellectual faction without significant mass movement that could stop or reverse US insanity in the world. In the case of Iraq, although the American people now know that US aggression is a product of deception, although many know about the tens-of-thousands of civilians that the US forces slaughtered in that hapless nation, the voices that rise up to stop that insanity are confined to progressive media and scattered fringes of the American society. Where are the American people and where are those mythical "values" that Bush fulminates about ad nauseam

http://www.onlinejournal.com/Commentary/082605Petersen-4/082605petersen-4.html

[Canuckistanian]

1. I'm guessing this won't be a NYT Op-Ed.....

Any time soon.....

[Maraya1969]

2. It is very scary to see what type of people we, as a nation have become

Hopefully the ones who want peace will win in the end. If not, maybe we will have some inner peace knowing that we tried.

[wli]

3. The US is rehashing 1930's Germany with more advanced technology

I'm sure to be incinerated as part of Bushler's "Final Solution" to the "liberal question."

[Karenina]

4. Bada-bing

Bada-boom!!!