KILLING CIVILIANS : BUSINESS AS USUAL ?

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Obama has a choice.

“When he takes office on the 20th, he will inherit a vast apparatus. That afternoon, he will become the world’s number one arms dealer. He will become the world’s number one trainer of paramilitaries. If he doesn’t immediately give an order to say “Stop, no more support for forces that kill civilians,” he—probably on that day, civilians will be killed by bullets, by shrapnel, with Obama’s name on it. That’s the choice he has to make.” - ALLAN NAIRN

Right now in Gaza, it’s US shrapnel that is tearing the bodies of so many civilians there. The US ethic has been to say, “It’s OK. The law does not apply to us.”

AMY GOODMAN: We had you on a little while ago talking about the advisers to the presidential candidates. At the time, it was Hillary Clinton, it was Barack Obama. Now, Barack Obama has chosen the people he wants to constitute as his cabinet. Quick thoughts?

ALLAN NAIRN: He’s continued Gates at the Pentagon. He’s talking about Jim Steinberg for the number two in the State Department under Hillary Clinton. Steinberg is someone who was involved in the decision-making and has openly defended the bombing of the Shifa pharmaceutical plant, which was one of the main pharmaceutical suppliers and evidently caused massive civilian suffering. Obama, by all indications, is continuing the longstanding US policy of backing the killing of civilians if the US feels it is necessary. The system works on autopilot. If he does not stand up on the first day and say he is stopping it, it will continue, and he’ll be responsible.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, for example, he’s saying he will close Guantanamo.

ALLAN NAIRN: That’s good. Right now liberals and Democrats are focused on the twists that Bush added to this system, US people directly involved in torture, Guantanamo, the chain of CIA secret prisons. Assume Obama shuts all that down. Then we’re just back to where we were before Bush, which was the US backing forces that kill civilians in dozens of countries around the world and torture being carried out with US support, except the torture is done by the local forces that the US is training and supplying. In El Salvador, for example, the CIA would give courses to members of the National Guard, the National Police and the Treasury Police. They would do the torture. The CIA people would stand in the next room. They would watch. They would slip in questions. So, if we go back to that system, is that—that doesn’t make any difference to the person being tortured, whether the hand that wields the razorblade is an American hand or a local hand. The problem is the torture itself.

Bloomberg says proportionalism is stupid, it’s “ridiculous.” Osama bin Laden would agree. This is the ethic of terrorism. By that standard, does that mean that the Palestinians are now allowed to start killing Israelis at the ratio of 100-to-1? Israel is now killing 100 Palestinians for every Israeli. Does that mean, with 600 Palestinians dead, there should now be 60,000 Israelis dead? And since Bloomberg rejects proportionalism entirely, that’s a license for Palestinians to kill all of Israel, to kill all of America, for everyone to kill everyone. This is the ethic and the logic of terrorists, and this is the ethic and the logic that still, unfortunately, governs the rulers of the United States. And Mayor Bloomberg was simply stating what is commonplace thinking. And unless Obama rejects that on his first day, the US will continue killing civilians. It’s right there in front of us. It’s right there in the statements. It’s right there in the actions. It’s there in the bodies of people who were torn up by American munitions. We’ve got to see it and stop it.
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WhiteNoise
  • added January 09, 2009

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