Is our silence in the face of the atrocities of the US War Machine a "betrayal"?

[Karmadillo]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/04/03-2

Published on Saturday, April 3, 2010 by The New York Times
We Still Don’t Hear Him
by Bob Herbert

The great man was moving with what seemed like great reluctance. He knew as he climbed from the car in Upper Manhattan that he was stepping into the maelstrom, that there were powerful people who would not react kindly to what he had to say.

“I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight,” said the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “because my conscience leaves me no other choice.”

This was on the evening of April 4, 1967, almost exactly 43 years ago. Dr. King told the more than 3,000 people who had crowded into Riverside Church that silence in the face of the horror that was taking place in Vietnam amounted to a “betrayal.”

He spoke of both the carnage in the war zone and the toll the war was taking here in the United States. The speech comes to mind now for two reasons: A Tavis Smiley documentary currently airing on PBS revisits the controversy set off by Dr. King’s indictment of “the madness of Vietnam.” And recent news reports show ever-increasing evidence that we have ensnared ourselves in a mad and tragic venture in Afghanistan.

Dr. King spoke of how, in Vietnam, the United States increased its commitment of troops “in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept, and without popular support.”

It’s strange, indeed, to read those words more than four decades later as we are increasing our commitment of troops in Afghanistan to fight in support of Hamid Karzai, who remains in power after an election that the world knows was riddled with fraud and whose government is one of the most corrupt and inept on the planet.

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[Warpy]

1. Uh, many of us are not silent

but we're being silenced by a corporate media that loves the wars.

[leftstreet]

2. There's a war somewhere? You're kidding

K&R

[theoldman]

3. I remember the situation in Vietnam very well.

We were supporting a very corrupt government. It's hell when the good guys are worse than the bad guys.

[branders seine]

4. Since the end of WWII (and I mean within days of the end)

The US has been the primary "bad guy" on the planet.

Our rabid RW military chose the Nazis over the commies, and we've been on an anti-human trajectory ever since.

[Name removed]

9. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[MadHound]

10. What do you find so funny in that statement?

That we've been the bad guys in the post WWII global power structure? Look at our record, numerous wars for empire since WWII.

Or that we "chose" the Nazis over the Communists. I agree, the word chose is a bit ill defined, but the fact of the matter is that we did seem to take in a virulent inoculation of Nazi thought, not to mention Nazi personnel and resources after WWII, and yes, this has effected our political structure.

[Rage for Order]

11. This:

"The US has been the primary "bad guy" on the planet."

The US has not been as pure as the driven snow, but to say we have been the "primary bad guy on the planet" since the end of WWII is rather ridiculous. Read a few history books. Look at places like Cambodia under Pol Pot, the People's Republic of China under Chairman Mao, or North Korea under Kim Jong Il to name a few. Take a break from your anti-American bias and learn about some of the other countries in this great big world we inhabit.

[NNN0LHI]

13. Pol Pot came to power due to a U.S.-backed right-wing military coup

That may not be the best example?

Don

[Rage for Order]

17. Not exactly

But even if we were to take your statement at face value, Lech Walesa also came to power because of US policies. How many millions of his countrymen did Walesa slaughter when he gained power?

:shrug:

[NNN0LHI]

20. Believe what you want

http://articles.latimes.com/1992-01-05/opinion/op-2234_1_prince-sihanouk

Yet Another Chapter in the Many Lives of Cambodia's Ruler

>>>In 1970, Sihanouk was overthrown by the U.S.-supported Lon Nol regime while the prince was in Moscow. He then allied himself with the Khmer Rouge guerilla movement and returned with them in 1975. Sihanouk, however, was kept isolated, helpless while one of history's bloodiest regimes emptied the capital and killed millions of its citizens--including five of his children.<<<

[Rage for Order]

24. Simplify it all you want

Your statement that "Pol Pot came to power due to a US-backed right-wing military coup" sounded more like you were saying "the US put Pol Pot in power" than "US support of the opposition had the effect of assisting the Khmer Rouge's rise to power", which is a more accurate statement.

I would ask you again: whose fault was it that Pol Pot chose to murder millions of his fellow citizens? Just because someone rises to power does not mean they are then forced into wholesale slaughter. It was a choice made by that regime, not something dictated to them by the US.

[MadHound]

16. Yes, Pol Pot was an atrocity, but you do understand how he got there, don't you

The US was not only conducting a war in Vietnam, but also upon Cambodia, and more importantly meddling in Cambodian politics. If we hadn't tainted the campaign and name of Lon Nol, Pol Pot would have never risen to power and the Killing Fields would have never come about.

And yes, China and N. Korea have had their share of atrocities. But neither one has projected their desires for empire into all corners of the globe as the US has. Look where we have meddled in the past sixty five years, every single continent, Vietnam, Korea, virtually all of Central and South America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, we have military forces fighting on every single one of these continents, not because we were threatened, but simply for the sake of material gain and empire. Sure, we've cloaked it in ideological battles, "fighting Communism" and such, but the fact of the matter is that was a smokescreen.

You may view America as the great savior or some such, but the historical record belies that. I suggest that you go study it.

[Greyhound]

45. No, he doesn't and he's sure as hell not interested either.

'Murika, fuck yeah!

[malaise]

15. It's only funny if you haven't done the body count

since WWII

[Rage for Order]

18. Communism killed many more millions than the US

Both pre and post-WW2. It's a fact, and all your protestations to the contrary won't change that fact

[MadHound]

19. Really? Have you counted all the millions that we have killed either directly or indirectly?

I would say that we pretty much kept pace with the Soviet Union post WWII. Granted, Stalin killed 26 million of his own people before the war, but then again how many Indians did we kill during the 17th, 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries. Certainly more than 26 million.

We're not "good guys", we're not "bad guys", we're humans with all the good and the bad which that implies. And as humans, we are a violent, rapacious people.

[Rage for Order]

22. I agree with your last two sentences

Which is why I thought it ridiculous for the poster to whom I originally replied to state "The US has been the primary "bad guy" on the planet" since the end of WW2. Has the US been perfect? Of course not. However, some of our wrongdoings have been offset by a few of the times when we did the right thing.

[omega minimo]

23. You are cherrypicking your examples and waving the bogeyman flag of Communism

also insulting those here who apparently have "read some books" and know more about US involvement in other countries in recent history than you do.

[Rage for Order]

26. Yes, America bad, all other countires good

You're quite the foreign affairs analyst

[omega minimo]

30. Yes, cliched bonehead response good, all thoughtful posts bad

BAM BAM

[Rage for Order]

35. Good to see you recognize the shortcomings of your own position

Admitting it is half the battle. Maybe now you can begin to educate yourself on how the real world works

[omega minimo]

36. yes you outted yourself on arrival

:thumbsdown:

[MadHound]

25. Well, the fact of the matter is that we have been the primary "bad guy"

During the latter half of the 20th century and into the 21st. As I stated before, while China, Russia and Korea have done their fair share, the fact of the matter is that we have gone around the world, on every continent, to spread death and destruction for the sake of empire and gain. Sure, we have done this under the pretext of various "threats", the Cold War, War on Drugs, War on Terror, but the fact of the matter is that these were but polite fig leaves that were used to cover our real motivations, namely empire and treasure.

Yes, we are sadly human. All the more the shame that we don't acknowledge this and try to better ourselves, especially in our position as a global leader. We should be an example of our better selves, but alas we have fallen victim to the greed and viciousness of any empirical power.

[Rage for Order]

28. The US freed the entire Eastern Bloc

You don't have to take my word for it. Ask the people who lived behind the Iron Curtain what they think are the primary reasons for the collapse of the USSR and their subsequent freedom. We freed tens (if not hundreds) of millions of people from the tyranny of the USSR. That obviously counts for nothing in your eyes. The US has done some incredibly bad things, but we have done some incredibly good things as well. By electing to focus only on the bad we've done you overlook all whose lives were improved by US intervention.

[MadHound]

32. Umm, they freed themselves

The USSR collapsed due to overspending on the military, Gorbachev started introducing modernization and openness in government, the people, groups such as Solidarity, started taking over the levers of power, and the USSR basically imploded. About the only thing that we did was continue our high levels of military spending, which contributed to the Soviet Union overspending on the military, which helped lead to their collapse.

But we didn't invade or free any Warsaw bloc country, they did that all themselves. Hell, we didn't even know the collapse was in the wind until it happened.

Oh, and I'm fully aware of what the people of the former USSR have to say about America and the subject of liberation, after all I know quite a few Russians and have a couple in my extended family. They don't agree with the historical view that you are proposing.

[Rage for Order]

34. Yes, you're right, and former residents of Eastern Bloc countries are wrong

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2004-06-05-europe-reagan_x.htm

Leaders, former dissidents and ordinary citizens across eastern Europe expressed gratitude to Ronald Reagan for helping to end decades of "evil empire" communism and Cold War-era oppression.

The Reagan administration devoted manpower and cash to quietly expanding its contacts in East bloc countries such as Poland and Czechoslovakia. "He is the one who allowed the breakup of the Soviet Union. May God rest his soul," said Bogdan Chireac, a foreign affairs analyst for the Romanian newspaper Adevarul.

"During his administration, U.S. citizens at all levels and of all walks of life — politicians, senators, journalists, academics — systematically and repeatedly were visiting Czechoslovakia and other communist countries, meeting the dissidents and the opposition," former Czech dissident Jiri Dienstbier told AP. "Their (Americans') open support was very important for our safety and for our position in society," he said.

"Mr. Reagan, along with Pope John Paul II, was one of the architects who dismantled communism in eastern Europe and stopped the expansion of the Soviet Union," said Ivo Samson, an analyst with the Slovak Foreign Policy Association. "The fact that today Bulgaria is a member of NATO could happen only after the efforts of this great American president. His name will forever remain in history," said Petko Bocharov, a prominent Bulgarian journalist.

"For us, Reagan was important because we knew he was really anti-communist, emotionally anti-communist," said Zdenek Kosina, 65, a Czech computer specialist. "For us, he was a symbol of the United States' genuine determination to bring communism to an end." Laurentiu Ivan, 35, a customs officer in the Romanian capital, struggled to describe Reagan's legacy and then said: "It is due to him (America) that we are free."


Apparently those idiots don't understand the history of their own countries!

:eyes:

[MadHound]

37. OMG, you have gone off the deep end,

You're one of the Reagan zombies who thinks, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that Reagan ended the Cold War.

The only contribution that Reagan made was to continue the policies of previous administrations, namely increasing our spending on the military and maintaining intelligence contacts in the Warsaw pact. And that had been going on for three decades before Reagan came on the scene. Reagan merely reaped the windfall of those policies, he didn't implement them.

Oh, and USA today, not a terribly credible source. Get back to me when you've got something from a peer reviewed journal or such.

But wait, the collapse of the Soviet Union didn't happen under Reagan, it happened under Bush, so shouldn't we be giving him credit:rofl:

Your worship of Reagan is blinding you to historical reality. Take off the rose colored glasses and educate yourself.

Here's a shocker for you, we didn't even need to get into the Cold War military, especially missile build up during the fifties. Go look up Reinhardt Gehlen and again, educate yourself.

[Rage for Order]

38. You could not find one inaccurate point in the article

So you elect to attack the messenger...the Associated Press, via the USA Today. In your view the Associated Press is not a "terribly credible source"? Okay then.

I think Reagan gets much more credit than he deserves. US policy towards the USSR beginning under Eisenhower and continuing through the Reagan administration - including all administrations between them - is what brought down the Iron Curtain, not Reagan himself. However, my point in posting that article was to demonstrate that, to the people who actually lived under the USSR, the actions of America were seen as vitally important in helping to secure their freedom. You can discount it all you want, but in doing so you're stating that you, a person who has lived their life in relative opulence and freedom, know better than those who had to suffer under the abuses of the USSR.

[MadHound]

40. As I've stated, the only action that America took that helped end the USSR

Was ratcheting up our military spending for decades, which forced the Soviet Union to try and keep pace, thus bankrupting them.

This did indeed weaken the USSR, but it was the actions of various labor unions, protest groups, and even Gorbachev himself that brought about the end of the USSR. The US had no direct, and very little indirect role in that, as evidenced by the fact that we were taken completely by surprise, both when the war fell, when Poland rose, and when the USSR toppled. Our intelligence and intelligence operations in the Soviet Union were quite weak and contributed very little.

You may not like that, but it is the truth. That is not the opinion of somebody "lived their life in relative opulence and freedom," but rather the opinions of many well known and respected historians, both foreign and domestic.

[Rage for Order]

41. The quotes from the article I posted contradict what you claim

You claim that "The only action that America took that helped end the USSR was ratcheting up our military spending for decades...", and "...it was the actions of various labor unions, protest groups, and even Gorbachev himself that brought about the end of the USSR."

The people quoted in the AP article state that part of the reason they had the courage to speak out was because they knew the US was their stalwart ally in their struggle against communist rule. You may not think it meant much, but to the people who lived the daily struggle the fact that they knew they had a strong friend supporting them meant a great deal.

"(Americans') open support was very important for our safety and for our position in society"

"...a symbol of the United States' genuine determination to bring communism to an end."

Don't be so quick to discount the effects of symbols and messages in the course of human events.

[MadHound]

42. A handful of quotes does not history make.

I would suggest that you read up on a few things, like the influence of George Kennan, specifically about his political leanings and the Long Letter. Also, read up on Reinhardt Gehlen, and start with the book Secret Empire by Phillip Tubman.

Get back to me after you've completed that, then perhaps we can have a rational discourse.

[Pavulon]

33. Stalin was a wonderful killer of MILLIONS

not like A million but MILLIONS plural. He killed political allies, starved Ukrainians, and generally had people shot with the same concern most people have over taking a piss.

Yeah, we did just fine. Other than our tolerance of the revisionist doofuses who try to rewrite history to their politics.

[Thothmes]

46. As did our rabid right wing congress and our rabid right wing president

These were the folks that gave the ok to working with defeated germans like Von Braun and Gehlen.

[proteus_lives]

48. Oh horse-shit.

The US has made plenty of bad policy decisions but "primary bad guy"? :eyes:

Do I need to list the actions of China, North Korea, Russia and other states?

Stop being so simple.

[patrice]

5. I told 2 people this week the back-story of those chemical weapons for which we were told

we were invading a sovereign nation.

Even after all of this time, they were still ignorant of how it was that Saddam Hussein had come to posses what was, by the time of the Invasion in 2003, a stockpile of degraded and useless chemical weapons that were smuggled over the border of Iraq long before we got there in March of that year.

[happy_liberal]

6. yes, Silence is Betrayal

Many of us have not been silent but I don't know what everyone else is doing. How is it possible we are still in Iraq, Rumsfeld promised 2 weeks, now millions of dead innocents, trillions wasted, entire war based on lies and yet, Americans still just accept this. I don't get it. And Afghanistan is so stupid, don't even get me started...

[starroute]

7. There's such a thing as attacking the sympton instead of the cause

Speaking up about the Vietnam War didn't do a thing to prevent any of the wars since. If anything, it made Americans more easily herded into new aggressions in order to wipe out the "shame" of Vietnam.

At some point in the 70's, I decided it was a lot more important to understand and attack the root causes of American aggression, the chief of which is the capitalist need to secure resources and markets. There may have been actual wars of self-defense in the past -- though even that is arguable to an extent -- but every war since 1950 has been fought for the benefit of Wall Street.

The second problem, I would say, is the power of the military-industrial complex, which has no profits without war or the threat of war and which is currently too deeply embedded in the American economy to be removed without major dislocations.

Third would be the carefully indoctrinated American terror of "socialism," which serves many purposes. It helps justify wars in defense of capitalism. It creates a situation where the government has to keep feeding the military-industrial complex because more people-centered forms of Keynsian spending are shunned. And it overall protects the wealthy by interfering with the kind of redistribution of wealth that any economy needs in order to keep from falling into financial gridlock.

If the amount of time and energy that has gone into increasingly useless anti-war movements could be focused on the failings of capitalism instead, we might find the answer to a lot of problems that currently appear intractable, with stupid wars of imperialism being only one.

[FormerDittoHead]

12. Good points, but they still have to lie to get us to fight...

>it was a lot more important to understand and attack the root causes of American aggression, the chief of which is the capitalist need to secure resources and markets. There may have been actual wars of self-defense in the past -- though even that is arguable to an extent -- but every war since 1950 has been fought for the benefit of Wall Street.

While I agree that's what we DO, I would submit that not a single war we've had (I don't consider us having "fought" in Desert Storm) was SOLD using that narrative.

In every case, there was another "reason" why we went to war.

I would agree that among the many lies that Republicans are expected to adopt, this is one of them. Many of them DO "understand" that we control other countries for our benefit. At times they admit it.

People in the middle, however, listening, watching, reading the mainstream media have little choice but to accept the narrative which they're given, and I simply don't blame them for believing what they're told from many different, otherwise reliable sources.

I would submit that the majority of the American people / Democrats would NOT have allowed Bush to invade Iraq if it had otherwise been well accepted in the news / media that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 and that they didn't posed even a future threat to us, and would distract us from fighting real terrorists....

I do completely agree with the mis-characterization of socialism versus capitalism. When I was younger, "consumerism" was a movement, especially in the media with shows like 60 minutes regularly exposing the things corporations do.

Now, "consumer news" is often boiled down to "which cell phone should I buy"?

[Karmadillo]

8. Kick

nt

[wildbilln864]

14. and a sad k&r! nt

[Vattel]

21. Not much substance to the editorial.

Dr. King was right on the mark about Vietnam and U.S. militarism. But Afghanistan is not Vietnam, and I would rather hear why Herbert is so sure that we are in a "quagmire" in Afghanistan. Everyone recognizes that reducing corruption in Karzai's government and improving the economy in Afghanistan are crucial to success, but are these goals unattainable? Unlike Vietnam, the insurgency in Afghanistan is very unpopular. Personally, I am still hoping for success in Afghanistan, although I am against our war effort there because I beleive that given that failure is not unlikely, and that innocent lives are being taken, and that billions of dollars are being spent, there are more cost-effective ways to benefit humanity.

[MadHound]

29. Wow, you could insert the words Afghanistan for Vietnam

And Ngô Đình Diệm for Karzai, and this apologist rhetoric would be right at home in the NYT LTTE section fifty years ago.

Afghanistan is a quagmire. No matter what happens, when we leave the native people are going to remove anything that we have set up because of the simple fact that we're an outside, an alien invader. Karzai's government will be swept away, and the people will install their own government as soon as we leave.

Meanwhile, though we're supposed to be winning hearts and minds over there, that is impossible because we're simultaneously blowing the shit out of them. Rather a contradiction. And while the insurgency is unpopular, America is even more unpopular because we are seen as invaders.

There can be no "success" nor a "victory". At best we can minimize the destruction, and that would best be achieved by our pulling out ASAP.

[Vattel]

39. you're mistaken

we are more popular in Afghanistan than the insurgency.

[TheWatcher]

43. Prove it.

[Vattel]

44. The most recent polls provide solid evidence.

The poll results came out in January. 61% of Afghans support the presence of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. 69% of Afgans say that the Taliban pose the biggest danger to Afghanistan. Only 4% say that the United States pose the biggest danger. This poll was pretty carefully administered, but even if the methodology was somewhat flawed, the numbers clearly show that the U.S. is more popular than the Taliban among Afghans. See http://abcnews.go.com/images/PollingUnit/1099a1Afghanistan-WhereThingsStand.pdf

[TheWatcher]

47. I said Proof, not Propaganda.

Dismissed.

[Echo In Light]

27. Silence = Consent

[lunatica]

31. I don't recall much silence during the Vietnam war, even from the media

Our evening news always had film of the war, and it was the real war that was being filmed. We saw medics running to save the wounded. We saw the wounded being airlifted by helicopters. We saw correspondents like Dan Rather reporting to us while hunkering down in foxholes with shooting all around him. We saw photos of people being shot, of monks pouring gasoline on themselves and burning themselves. We saw the little girl running naked away from her village because she was burned by our napalm.

Nowadays the media has created a truth vacuum. When you scream in a vacuum does anyone hear you? No. No one hears you. Our silence is a bullshit accusation. How about saying the media's silence and the government's silence. Shit! Teabaggers aren't the only ones who are screaming!