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The "Good" Germans of the 21st Century
By Tim Gatto
It’s Labor Day. I wasn’t going to write anything, just drink some bottles of my favorite German wine and light the grill and put some Italian Sausages on. I have a very good life, quiet, secure and safe. That’s why I wonder why I do the things I do. Let me explain.
Why do I get upset when I see my nation putting its military footprint all over the world and treating Muslims like they are the scourge of the Earth as they kill as many of Allah’s followers as they can? Why should I care? Why should I care when suspected “terrorists” or “insurgents” face “extraordinary rendition” and are tortured by other countries at the bequest of the U.S? Why should I give a shit?
I live in the country in South Carolina. I have one liberal friend besides my wife. I talk to the guys at the gun/pawn shop, they are my friends but they are different from me. The only thing that draws us together is being neighbors, guns, and the book I wrote, “Kimchee Days”. They are busy people; they don’t dwell on what I dwell on.
I dwell on the direction my country is headed. Even though it hasn’t affected me personally, I still care. I only know one thing in my life that’s always been true. If you see something happening that is wrong and you don’t speak out, then you are complicit. I don’t wish to be complicit. Complicity is for cowards. Most Americans I’m afraid to say are cowards of the worst kind.
Some estimates say we have killed over a million Iraqi’s, dislocated four million Iraqi’s to other nations that don’t want them, destroyed their infrastructure, caused a civil war and left the country of Iraq in shambles when we fought a war of aggression on them that was against all international laws. Tony Blair is being investigated by the ICC. When the investigation is through, I believe he will finish his days in prison for his part in the war on Iraq. Alas, we are not a signatory to the ICC law against wars of aggression. Bush will probably be charged next, along with Cheney, but as long as they stay out of countries that signed the charter, they will continue to live as free men, how wrong is that?
I think of all the munitions we used in Iraq. I am disgusted at our use of “depleted” uranium in our ordinance that poisons the air and ground and the water tables and has a half-life of over 400,000 years. Mothers and Fathers in Iraq don’t ask if it’s a boy or a girl. They ask if the baby is normal. Cancer rates have gone up over 600% for children, the most vulnerable of the populace. How can we be proud to inflict so much carnage upon a people that had already endured decades under a dictatorship?
Now we are playing Iraq Redux in Afghanistan. We will kill people indiscriminately, just as we killed those people in Iraq. We are warmongers, war for war’s sake. The government says that the “terrorists” that appeared on 9/11 were trained in Afghanistan. They don’t know that. In fact, they never charged Bin Laden with the crimes of 9/11. It is all propaganda for war in search of resources.
Why do I care? I care because they do all this in my name and in your name. I refuse to be an accomplice to murder in these insane wars. Obama has shown himself to be a Bush clone. All that promise flushed down the sewer that is the war in Afghanistan.
What can we as a people do? Well we can call the government out on the threat they claim Iran is. Write to the different networks and make them prove that Iran is enriching uranium to weapons grade or shut the hell up. Demand the same of our government. Don’t let warmongers like Murdock frame the international news. Don’t let the soldiers have a free pass on their participation in illegal wars. They should be treated exactly like the vets of Vietnam. We all should know better than to give our bodies in support of wars of aggression. Screw the conquering heroes. I spent 21 years in the Army and never participated in crimes against humanity. No free pass for soldiers. They choose to inflict misery upon the world.
Yes, passive resistance or violent insistence is the order of the day. Stop supporting the corporate controlled political parties like the Democrats and Republicans. They both are failures. Both parties have yet to bring this nation to its sensibilities.
For once, try to stand up for your principles if anyone has any left. Don’t let us become the “Good Germans” of the 21st Century, because that is where we are headed. One other thing, I don’t make this stuff up.
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"Never let us tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories regarding the attacks of Sept 11th." George W Bush
Not only against all international laws are these wars, for while this is definitely important, the wars are illegal according to the U.S. Constitution, with or without the U.S. being co-signatory to the international laws. And these are not only high or extreme crimes according to the Constitution, for to commit such crimes, the leadership can't avoid also committing usurpery, treason, and actually war on Americans. It's not the kind of extreme wars the U.S. and its allies in organized state and inter-state wars (theatre and low profile, say, wars) committed against Iraqis, Afghans, and the many other tens or hundreds of millions of innocent and very defenseless people across this planet; but it is war against Americans by our government.
Like Mike Prysner, an Iraq War veteran who became a serious conscientious objector and founder or co-founder of the anti-war war veterans organization called March Forward, well, like he said about who the greatest enemies of the U.S. are; they're not foreign. They are the U.S. leadership. (Look for videos at Youtube for him speaking about this. His words are great to hear and they're irrefutably true.)
It's most definitely true that the greatest enemy of the U.S. is its own leadership, and it should be clear that this means that the leadership has been committing war on or against us. It's the softer political war, instead of deploying the military forces against us; but it's war and the population isn't strongly active. There evidently is no strong revolutionary citizens movement for the restoration or establishment of the practice of Constitutional government. We would never suffer war like the Iraqis, Aghans and many other victims of U.S. and western wars of aggression have suffered and are suffering; but a serious, though peaceful, non-violent revolutionary movement is needed in the U.S. and there's some real movement, yet evidently not enough.
Note that it's not new that the greatest enemy of the US is its leadership. It's been this way for a long time and pretty much has always been this way since President JFK was assassinated; but it had been this way in earlier 20th century and further back.
Anyway, the U.S. doesn't have to ratify the Rome Statute of the ICC for the U.S. leadership to be prosecutable and convicted, sentenced for their crimes, for the U.S. Constitution is sufficient for this purpose. The international laws, et cetera, are certainly important, but prosecuting these war criminals of the U.S. doesn't require more than the Constitution.
That's something the leadership cannot un-ratify; but they certainly and clearly are usurpers, hijackers, traitors, racketeers, gangsters, and so on.
Re. DU and its half-life
Not that it really matters, for humans won't be here for as long as you said DU's half-life is, but it's not 400,000 years. It's 4.468bn years, which is the physical half-life, while the biological one is considerably shorter; according to the Wikipedia page for DU.
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Depleted_uranium
(https://secure is because of using the Firefox add-on from the EFF and which is called or named https-everywhere.)
Re. number of Iraqis who died due to this war:
I think that over a million is a very expectable number and it was reported during Fall 2007 or 2008, while more Iraqis have died only because of this war since that report was published. And it's two different study groups that reported this number two or three years that based on their highly and widely respected survey methods.
And plenty more Iraqis have died since then because of this war; and many more will die only because of this war. The cancer and extreme deformity rates are very high in Fallujah and other parts of Iraq, and apparently in some parts of Afghanistan, because of the U.S. And the war of course also causes a lot of toxic pollution from the destruction of oil infrastructure, while water sanitation continues to go unrestored and is a great danger for Iraqis.
Re. civil war among Iraqis
People who refer to that should make sure to read up in the section linked in the homepage of BRusselsTribunal.org for "The Salvador Option and Death Squads". If people don't do this, then they will remain ignorant of very important and dark aspects of what's really gone on during this war in Iraq.
Re. "Tony Blair is being investigated by the ICC":
That's very interesting news and this is the first time I've heard or read of this. I look forward to seeing what will happen.
Re. "We are warmongers, war for war’s sake":
Not quite and you are more accurate a little further on in your article. While some U.S. military generals, et cetera, love hunting down and killing people, this being real "sport" for them, especially when the "gooks" and "hajis" aren't whites and westerners, these wars are really for global dominance and racket.
Re. 9/11:
Quote:
"The government says that the “terrorists” that appeared on 9/11 were trained in Afghanistan. They don’t know that. In fact, they never charged Bin Laden with the crimes of 9/11. It is all propaganda for war in search of resources".
True about the latter part, but the U.S., with the use of the or some of the Pakistani ISI, did see to the training and formation of Al Qaida during the 1980s in Afghanistan, and as Sibel Edmonds testified under oath and/or has said since having testified in Ohio August 8th, 2009, the U.S. leadership was in relationship with Al Qaida, Osama bin Laden and the Taliban right up to 9/11.
But the U.S. leadership had already made it a firm decision prior to 9/11 that they were going to command and lead war on Afghanistan no later than October 2001.
9/11 basically served only as a pretext for driving "popular" American support for the war on Afghanistan, so you're right about a propaganda war by the U.S. elites against Americans to try to get us to support the war that's really for resources, though also global dominance. The two are related, but there's a "little" more to the global dominance.
It's all a psychopathic effort to try to expand the empire of the top ruling elites of the U.S. It's not for our profit; it's for their profit.
Re. what we can do about this:
Quote: "What can we as a people do? Well we can call the government out on the threat they claim Iran is. Write to the different networks and make them prove that Iran is enriching uranium to weapons grade or shut the hell up".
No one of the West has any moral or legal ground for politically or militarily attacking or threatening Iran even if it was enrichening uranium, which the IAEA has repeatedly said that Iran hasn't been doing; or certainly far from enough enrichment for making nuclear weapons anyway.
Western elites do it anyway, but it's full of bs; it's extreme hypocrisy, hegemony, racket state gangsterism, state terrorism, et cetera. It's all hellbent hypocrisy and that is highly criminal. It'd be great if there were no nuclear weapons as well as power plants, but that world doesn't exist and it surely is not going to any time soon.
Iran would not be really faultable if it did enrich uranium and/or arm itself with nuclear weapons, which the Iranians would only use for the purpose of deterring wars against itself. Everyone has the right to defense, so everyone has the right to be able to deter attacks against us or themselves. Deterrence is not aggression; it's not an attack. It's only a measure of persuading hegemons from attacking.
Re. your view on soldiers:
Quote: "No free pass for soldiers. They choose to inflict misery upon the world".
I disagree. While there are some soldiers who like to commit the crimes of war that they do commit, many only followed orders to deploy to Iraq due to ignorantly believing the lies of the Bush-Cheney administration. A good number became conscientious objectors, and many of the others developed serious PTSD, probably bad enough to make it either extremely difficult or impossiblefor them to be able to dissent against criminal orders.
You say that you "spent 21 years in the Army and never participated in crimes against humanity", which I take to mean that you never served in wars; because the U.S. has been permanently leading theatre wars of aggression and orchestrating low-profile, non-overt wars with the use of evil, wicked proxy governments since WW II.
Maybe you're older and served the 21 years before WW II, or didn't serve in war zones for the U.S. following WW II anyway.
Re. the Rep. and Dem. Parties:
Quote: "Stop supporting the corporate controlled political parties like the Democrats and Republicans. They both are failures. Both parties have yet to bring this nation to its sensibilities".
They're among the criminal elites and have no intention of bringing the country to its senses, or to sensibility. The majority of them are highly complicit in all of this brutal and extreme racketeering, gangsterism, mass murder, destruction, et cetera, against humanity, including against Americans.
They have been simultaneously and rather necessarily committing war on the USA for the past decade, and much longer than that, but a lot of citizens evidently don't perceive this aspect of the whole reality.
They're not failures. They are in a moral sense, but they clearly don't care about morality. They're not failures because they're part of this major criminality and they profit from doing this, surely very wittingly. It's what they [choose] to do and, so far, they have been "successful" in this.
We can, however, consider the failures found in the choices voters made when they elected these criminals, cons to political offices. This voter irresponsibility and lack of critically objective duty with respect to the Constitution, international laws, et cetera, the U.S. is a co-signatory to and which the Constitution make part of the supreme law of the land in the U.S., constitutes a very important failure. And voter callousness vis-a-vis other peoples' lives, sovereignties, et cetera, is a major failure; for citizens who wish to be Constitutional anyway.
Voters who disrespect these and other important, good parts of the Constitution and who really want nothing to do with it, while wittingly supporting wars of aggression and for racket, have not failed; but citizens who have desired to be Constitutional failed and the least of the ways is from naively believing the political leadership, instead of recognizing that the leadership is extremely corrupt, criminal.
There are other ways in which voters failed, but this post is long enough as it is, so I won't say more about this topic.
Closing:
Quote: "Don’t let us become the “Good Germans” of the 21st Century, because that is where we are headed".
Americans already reached that point years ago; including years before the Bush-Cheney administration was [appointed], rather than elected.
And I'd say that Americans today have been certainly and clearly worse than the German population was in the 1930s and '40s, because most of them didn't have more than state-controlled media for information source, while we have now long had a lot of easy access to sources of information from different segments in the U.S. as well as from other countries. The Web, www, has been available since 1993, while people could have had access to the Internet prior to 1993; just not the Web part, which became available only in 1993.
The Germans didn't choose to ignore sources of different views and analyses. They or most of them only had the Nazi-controlled source. Americans have long had much more and clearly have been [choosing] to disregard many available sources that provide critically different views, analyses, and reporting.
The Germans weren't really worse than many people were in earlier history and we can consider U.S. history for this. Many Americans ignored the major genocide against American Indians, and many ignore the fact that the genocide has not ended yet. It's ongoing, but it's also only one example of earlier relevant U.S. history, nationally and internationally.
I believe that American and foreign supporters of the U.S.-lead wars on humanity are the worst in all of human history, so far. And I hope that the future isn't going to be worse than today.
But I overall agree with what you're saying. The wars are criminal and need to be stopped. And the perpetrators would hopefully be prosecuted, et cetera.