By david swanson
October 1, 2012

A writer at the Atlantic named Conor Friedersdorf recently noted the level of evil many have been brought to support:

“Tell certain liberals and progressives that you can’t bring yourself to vote for a candidate who opposes gay rights, or who doesn’t believe in Darwinian evolution, and they’ll nod along. Say that you’d never vote for a politician caught using the ‘n’-word, even if you agreed with him on more policy issues than his opponent, and the vast majority of left-leaning Americans would understand. But these same people cannot conceive of how anyone can discern Mitt Romney’s flaws, which I’ve chronicled in the course of the campaign, and still not vote for Obama. Don’t they see that Obama’s transgressions are worse than any I’ve mentioned? I don’t see how anyone who confronts Obama’s record with clear eyes can enthusiastically support him. I do understand how they might have concluded that he is the lesser of two evils, and back him reluctantly, but I’d have thought more people on the left would regard a sustained assault on civil liberties and the ongoing, needless killing of innocent kids as deal-breakers.”

 

Not long ago, I attended a speech by Obama, along with thousands of his adoring cheerleaders formerly known as citizens. I asked him to stop killing people in Afghanistan, and the Secret Service asked me to leave.

But, just now, I got a phone call from the local Obama office. They had my name because I’d picked up a ticket to attend the speech. The young woman wanted to know if I would come help phone other people. I asked if she was familiar with the president’s kill list and his policy of killing men, women, and children with drones. She said she knew nothing about that but “respected my opinion.” She hung up. Objecting to presidential murder is now an opinion, and willingness to be aware of its existence is an appendage to the opinion. If you don’t object to presidential murder by Democrat, then you simply arrange not to know about it. Thus, in your opinion, it doesn’t exist.

Some of my friends at this moment are in Pakistan apologizing to its government and its people for the endless murderous drone war fought there by our country. They’re meeting with victims’ families. They’re speaking publicly in opposition to the crimes of our government. And my neighbors, living in some other universe, believe most fundamentally, not that one candidate will save us, not that the two parties are fundamentally opposed, not that a citizen’s job is to vote, not that war is all right if it’s meant well — although they clearly believe all of those things — but, most fundamentally, they believe that unpleasant facts should simply be avoided. So, in a spirit of afflicting the comfortable to comfort the afflicted, here are a few from recent days:

WAR IS A LIE

We know that in the past “defensive” wars have been intentionally launched by fraud or provocation. We know that many in our government want a war with Iran. We know that several years ago then-Vice President Dick Cheney proposed disguising U.S. ships as Iranian and attacking other U.S. ships with them. We know that then-President George W. Bush proposed disguising a plane as belonging to the United Nations, flying it low, and trying to get Iraq to shoot at it. We know that there was no Gulf of Tonkin incident, no evidence that Spain attacked the Maine, no doubt that the weapons and troops on board the Lusitania were public knowledge, no question that FDR worked hard to provoke an attack by Japan, and so on. And we know that Iran has not attacked another nation in centuries. So, it almost goes without saying that Washington warmongers are contemplating ways to get Iran to make the “first move.” Assassinating scientists hasn’t worked, blowing up buildings doesn’t seem to do it, cyber-war isn’t blossoming into real war, sanctions are not sanctioning armed resistance, and dubious accusations of Iranian terrorism aren’t sticking. Exactly what do we have to do to get ourselves innocently attacked by the forces of evil?

The Israel Lobby to the rescue! Patrick Clawson, Director of Research at the Washington Institute Of Near East Policy, blurted out the following on video this week:

“Crisis initiation is really tough. And it’s very hard for me to see how the United States president can get us to war with Iran. . . . The traditional way America gets to war is what would be best for U.S. interests. Some people might think that Mr. Roosevelt wanted to get us into World War II . . . . You may recall, we had to wait for Pearl Harbor. Some people might think Mr. Wilson wanted to get us into World War I. You may recall that he had to wait for the Lusitania episode. Some people might think that Mr. Johnson wanted to send troops to Vietnam. You may recall he had to wait for the Gulf of Tonkin episode. We didn’t go to war with Spain until the Maine exploded. And Mr. Lincoln did not feel he could call out the federal army until Fort Sumter was attacked, which is why he ordered the commander at Fort Sumter to do exactly that thing which the South Carolinians had said would cause an attack. So, if in fact the Iranians aren’t going to compromise, it would be best if somebody else started the war. . . . I mentioned that explosion on August 17th. We could step up the pressure. I mean, look people, Iranian submarines periodically go down. Someday one of them might not come up. Who would know why? [LAUGHTER FROM AUDIENCE] . . . . We are in the game of using covert means against the Iranians. We could get nastier.”

This is serious advocacy for manufacturing a “defensive” and “humanitarian” war. This is not a war critic or a Yes Men prankster. The position of most elected officials in Washington, including the President, fits well with this. That position includes the ultimatum that Iran must cease doing what U.S. National Intelligence Estimates say it is not doing, namely building nuclear weapons. The goal at the bottom of all of this is war. The purpose of the war is not related to any of the excuses for it. The purpose is something else entirely. But it’s ugly, so it’s easier not to look.

HUMAN EXPERIMENTATION

We often forget that war is the worst thing there is. Hence our government’s shift in policy back to outsourcing a lot of the torture and insourcing the “cleaner” approach of assassination without torture. Hence, also, our common fantasy that war can be used to solve a problem that is somehow worse than war.

We also forget that torturing people can be crueler than experimenting on them. Torture has been given an acceptance in the United States during the past decade that “human experimentation” has not. So, we are still capable of a bit of shock when a story comes out like this one: During the 1950s and 1960s the U.S. Army sprayed zinc cadmium sulfide, apparently including radioactive particles, in poor neighborhoods in St. Louis and other cities, to test the results on the people who unknowingly breathed it.

At the end of World War II, the U.S. military’s Operation Paperclip brought nearly 500 Nazi scientists to the United States to work on U.S. weaponry. Many view their influence on the nascent military industrial complex as critical to its sadistic and sociopathic tendencies ever since. In fairness to the Nazis, it’s possible that they simply fit in well, serving the military of a nation with a long history of genocide, slavery, torture, and public deception.

I came across a member of Veterans For Peace this week who’s been struggling many years as a result of experimental vaccines and drugs given to hundreds of thousands of U.S. soldiers during the Gulf War. We also learned this week that every prisoner in the Guantanamo death camp has been given experimental drugs without their knowledge or at least without their consent.

And then there’s this: “Congressional Probe Reveals Cover-Up of ‘Auschwitz-Like’ Conditions at US-Funded Afghan Hospital”:

“A congressional investigation has revealed a top U.S. general in Afghanistan sought to stall an investigation into abuse at a U.S.-funded hospital in Kabul that kept patients in, quote, ‘Auschwitz-like’ conditions. Army whistleblowers revealed photographs taken in 2010 which show severely neglected, starving patients at Dawood Hospital, considered the crown jewel of the Afghan medical system, where the country’s military personnel are treated. The photos show severely emaciated patients, some suffering from gangrene and maggot-infested wounds. For TV viewers of Democracy Now!, please be warned: these images are extremely graphic and may be disturbing.”

NOTHING MORE EVIL

Here’s what I’m trying to get at. If you try to think of something more evil than what we are now doing, you’ll fail. Name your evil: destroying the earth’s climate? President Barack Obama flew to Copenhagen to single-handedly derail any process for protecting the earth’s atmosphere. The only way in which to fantasize about greater evil is quantitative, not qualitative. We could drop more bombs. We could starve more children. We could experiment on more prisoners. In fact, this is what Lesser Evilism amounts to. A Lesser Evilist today is not choosing less evil policies, but the same policies in what he or she hopes will be lesser amounts.

That might be a rational calculation within a polling place. But living it prior to and after an election, apologizing and cheering for one of two teams, as if self-governance were a spectator sport, is nothing other than complicity in the most hideous forms of cruelty and murder. That complicity is insidious. Evil begins to look like something else, because the Lesser Evilist, within his or her own mind, comes to view the Lesser Evil forces as good, if not glorious, if not saintly.

…………………………

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••
Ted Koppel’s Terrible Media Criticism
Posted on 09/25/2012 by Peter Hart, FAIR

TV news veteran Ted Koppel has done two pieces on NBC’s Rock Center that attempt to critique the partisanship of today’s media system. But what the reports really illustrate is that some people aren’t very good at playing media critic–especially when they feel obligated to suggest that “both sides” are equally at fault.

Koppel’s first report (9/13/12) looked at right and left watchdogs, “an industry out there on both sides monitoring and recording anything that could hurt the political opposition.” That “industry” consists of the liberal  Media Matters for America and the right-wing Media Research Center.

As Koppel explains, “You got people sitting there with headsets…waiting for someone to make a misstep.” He goes on to wonder whether the groups on both sides are “feeding the sausage machine.”

But his argument starts to fall apart right away, as he begins to tell the story of Georgetown law student and women’s health advocate Sandra Fluke. Koppel explains that radio host Rush Limbaugh’s famous remarks about Fluke–in which he called Fluke, among other things, a “slut”–seemed to be inspired by a column published by the Media Research Center. (The piece in question ran under the subtle headline “Sex-Crazed Co-Eds Going Broke Buying Birth Control, Student Tells Pelosi Hearing Touting Freebie Mandate.”)

Limbaugh’s comments provoked an outcry, which Koppel explained this way:

Bingo. Limbaugh had committed the kind of gaffe that fuels an entire industry, and he gave the Obama White House a gift that keeps on giving.

Well, maybe. Or he’s a sexist creep who said exactly what he wanted to convey to his audience–which isn’t really a “gaffe” at all.

Koppel explains that a “counter-gaffe” came soon thereafter, when CNN pundit Hilary Rosen said that Mitt Romney’s wife Ann “has actually never worked a day in her life.”

“I mean, this is a two-sided fistfight,” anchor Brian Williams explained as the segment closed. But it’s hard to see how the two sides can be equated. One side published a nasty hit piece on an individual, which was echoed by the most powerful radio talk show host in the country. Apparently the offense on the liberal side was noticing Limbaugh’s sexist drivel. The other example consisted of a dopey comment from a relatively obscure TV liberal mostly known for doing corporate PR.

The second installment (9/20/12) was no better, as Koppel attempted to explain how the media make all of this even worse by giving a platform to combatants on both sides.

Williams set up the show with the expected riff on how both sides do it. The secret tape of Mitt Romney at a fundraiser talking about the “47 percent” was the first strike, but then came “the counterattack from the right–the tape of Barack Obama from 14 years ago saying he believes in redistribution.” Actually, the Obama tape was deceptively edited; the rest of that passage includes Obama talking about how to “decentralize delivery systems” in order to “foster competition” and “work in the marketplace.”

Koppel starts his argument by suggesting the media have gone from the likes of Walter Cronkite to the Fox News Channel’s shouting conservative Bill O’Reilly (ignoring  the flourishing of far-right broadcasters well before O’Reilly). Actually, Koppel argues that “the bar for civility on cable television and talk radio has fallen so low that by comparison, O’Reilly seems almost reasonable.”

Indeed, if the show was meant to be ironic, then it succeeded; much of it was Koppel allowing O’Reilly to hold forth on incivility and the coarsening of the political dialogue. O’Reilly, true to his character, turns the discussion  back into a complaint about the forces arrayed against him: “I have been vilified to the extent that I have to have bodyguards almost everywhere I go.”

The Koppel segment wanted badly to show that “both sides” are contributing to this destructive cycle: “The partisan ranting is more widespread than ever,” he says. But for a supposedly two-sided problem, it seemed like they had trouble finding the left-leaning equivalent to far-right talk show hosts like Michael Savage and Mark Levin, save for a few fleeting clips from MSNBC.

The segment closed with a discussion that perfectly illustrated the problem with Koppel’s approach: Far-right shock pundit Ann Coulter posing as a media critic, alongside comedian Bill Maher–presumably a stand-in for the left. (“Smart, stubborn, and ideological opposites,” Koppel explained.)

Even though the pairing doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, Maher wound up making the most coherent observation by challenging one of Koppel’s statements:

 KOPPEL: The bifurcation is really extreme. I mean, the left is further left and the right is further right.

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••••••

By Barry Grey, wsws.org

The magnitude and monstrous consequences of a war on Iran would dwarf our interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan combined.

Within American ruling circles, it is well known that plans for war against Iran are far advanced, but there is a conspiracy of silence by both political parties and the media to keep this reality out of the presidential election. The intent is to drag the American people into yet another bloody war in the Middle East on the basis of false pretexts and lies, despite broad popular opposition to an attack on Iran.

Nothing reveals the anti-democratic and fraudulent character of the elections more clearly than the refusal to explain to the American people the military carnage that is being prepared in their name and allow them to express their democratic will.

Over the past week, a number of commentaries in the American and European press have warned of an attack by either Israel or the US, or both, against Iran in the near future, and a bipartisan group of former foreign policy officials, retired generals and former legislators has issued a report outlining the potentially catastrophic consequences of an unprovoked attack on the Persian Gulf country.

Some of the recent articles have the character of a pre-emptive political strike by ruling class figures wary of a war against Iran, while others suggest that such a war is necessary and inevitable. The confluence of such commentaries is itself an indication that detailed planning for war is underway.

At the United Nations on Tuesday, President Obama reiterated that the US will “do what we must” to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is pressing for greater US security guarantees to Israel, whose prime minister, Benyamin Netanyahu, has criticized Obama for not moving quickly enough to launch military action.

But beyond such general threats, the reality of advanced plans for war is being concealed.

The National Journal on Monday posted an article entitled “The Path to War with Iran.” The article, prompted by a conference held last Friday by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy on the subject of US-Israeli coordination against Iran, began by noting the significance of Obama’s speech last March before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. “Obama announced a new policy that put the United States and Iran on a collision course from which neither has veered,” the author wrote.

“Iran’s leaders should understand that I do not have a policy of containment,” Obama declared at the time. “I have a policy to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon… I will not hesitate to use force when it is necessary to defend the United States and its interests.”

Commenting on the implications of Obama rejecting a policy of “containing” a nuclear Iran, the author wrote: “Either Tehran would have to abandon its suspected nuclear weapons program, or the president was all but pledging a preventive war to destroy it.”

He then noted that Washington has deployed the largest US naval armada to the Persian Gulf in years and that the US Senate last Friday passed a bipartisan resolution, cosponsored by more than three-fourths of the chamber, ruling out a strategy of containment in regard to Iran.

The article quoted David Makovsky, an Israel “expert” and senior fellow at the Washington Institute, saying that the next administration, whether headed by Obama or Romney, will be under “intense pressure” to launch a military attack on the oil-rich country. Patrick Clawson, an Iran “expert” and director of research at the Washington Institute, said that, “[R]ight now we are headed towards war.”

The German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung published an article on Monday headlined “Dangerous War Rhetoric” that began: “When everyone is talking of war, a spark is sufficient to ignite one.”

The article compared the current situation in the Middle East to the eve of World War I, warning, “From a European perspective, things seem much like Europe in 1914.” It went to say that war could be set off by “an unplanned incident between US and Iranian ships in the Persian Gulf, a miscalculation of the Israeli or of the Iranian military, or a significant terrorist attack.”

Albert Hunt, Washington editor at Bloomberg News, published an article in Newsday, also last Monday, headlined “Americans Deserve a Pre-Emptive Debate on Attacking Iran.” He began: “The last two presidents have misled voters on the cost of armed conflicts. Amid another election, the drumbeats of war are sounding again. This time the subject is Iran. To paraphrase Ronald Reagan: Here we go again.”

Some of the disastrous consequences such a war could have were spelled out in a report released last week by the Iran Project, a bipartisan panel of former leading US diplomats, military officers and congressmen.

They wrote, “Even in order to fulfill the stated objective of ensuring that Iran never acquires a nuclear bomb, the US would need to conduct a substantially expanded air and sea war over a prolonged period of time, likely several years. If the US decided to seek a more ambitious objective, such as regime change in Iran or undermining Iran’s influence in the region, then an even greater commitment of force would be required to occupy all or part of the country. Given Iran’s large size and population, and the strength of Iranian nationalism, we estimated that the occupation of Iran would require a commitment of resources and personnel greater than what the US has expended over the past 10 years in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined.”

The report pointed to risks of “all-out regional war” in the Middle East, of unidentified allies of Iran (such as Russia or China) acting to help Iran repel US attacks, and of a global economic collapse.

There is also the possibility that the US or Israel might employ nuclear weapons. During the 2008 Democratic primary campaign, Hillary Clinton threatened to “obliterate” Iran.

The American ruling class has a long history of organizing wars of aggression behind the backs of the American people. President Lyndon Johnson ran for election in 1964 pledging to avoid a major war in Vietnam, even as he was planning to escalate the US intervention. He notoriously told the military brass, “Just let me get elected, and then you can have your war.”

In the 2000 presidential election, plans for an attack on Iraq were concealed by both Bush and Gore. In the 2002 mid-term election, the Democrats made a calculated decision, despite broad popular opposition to Bush’s war plans, not to discuss the advanced preparations for an invasion.

In 2008, Obama postured as an anti-war candidate, and proceeded once in office to continue the war in Iraq, expand the carnage in Afghanistan and extend US military aggression and subversion to Pakistan, Libya and Syria.

Whatever pledges of military action Obama and Romney may have given Netanyahu, they are for criminal acts of aggression carried out with contempt for US and Israeli public opinion. A recent poll by the Chicago Council for Global Affairs found 70 percent opposition in America to a US strike on Iran. Another poll found only 32 percent support in Israel for an Israeli strike.

This is a damning indictment of American capitalism and of the American political system. Even after hundreds of thousands of lives were lost and trillions of dollars squandered in unpopular wars for US control of the oil-rich Middle East, US imperialism is pressing ahead with plans for a new, even deadlier war.

The American people must be warned: A vast crime is being prepared behind your backs and in your name! Unless the war criminals in the White House, the Pentagon and the CIA are disarmed and held to account, ever-more bloody regional wars will coalesce into another global conflagration.

The working class is the social force that can prevent this, but only if it breaks free of the Democratic Party and the two-party system and takes the path of mass political struggle for the overthrow of the capitalism, the root cause of war, and the establishment of socialism.

Barry Grey is a senior political analyst with wsws.org, a socialist information resource of the Socialist Equality Party.

Copyright © 1998-2012 World Socialist Web Site – All rights reserved

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•••

By Stephen Lendman

On September 25, Obama addressed the UN General Assembly. Duplicity, imperial arrogance, and belligerent were conspicuous. He began discussing US ambassador Christopher Stevens. On September 11, he was killed in Benghazi, Libya. Obama inverted truth like he always does.

He claimed he went there last year to help Libyans “cope with violent conflict, care for the wounded, and craft a vision for the future in which the rights of all Libyans would be respected.”

“And after the revolution, he supported the birth of a new democracy, as Libyans held elections, and built new institutions, and began to move forward after decades of dictatorship.”

Fact check

Stevens was an imperial front man. He urged violent intervention. He supported NATO’s killing machine throughout months of slaughter. He participated in Libya’s destruction. He helped turn Africa’s most developed country into a charnel house. Tens of thousands were murdered. Multiples more were injured. Many more were displaced.

Mostly civilians were harmed. NATO attacks willfully targeted them. At issue was replacing another independent government with a puppet one.

Casualties inflicted doing it aren’t counted. Obama claimed Stevens “was killed in the city he helped to save.” He bears responsibility for destroying it and much of Libya. He helped install its puppet government. Obama continued extolling a war criminal. It takes one to know one. He blamed terrorists and Al Qaeda for killing him. Again he lied like he always does.  Mark Robertson and Finian Cunningham explained what Obama suppressed. Their Global Research article discussed Libya’s Green Resistance. They’re committed Jamahiriya loyalists. They’re freedom fighters. They want imperial occupiers driven out.

Stevens “used a Tripoli hotel as his base, since the Green Resistance had burned down the US embassy in the capital, Tripoli.”

He moved to Benghazi. He thought he’d be safer there. He thought wrong. Green Resistance fighters targeted him. On September 11, he was killed. The date was likely coincidental.

Obama tried distancing himself from the anti-Muslim hate film. It sparked violence in 30 or more countries. Israel’s fingerprints are all over it. It also reflected virulent US anti-Islamic sentiment.  Since taking office, Obama waged war on Islam. Bush did before him. Ravaging one country after another is policy. Millions died. Millions more suffer horrendously. Human misery never is taken into account. Grief isn’t in America’s vocabulary.

Obama outrageously claimed America “has not and will not seek to dictate the outcome of democratic transitions abroad. (It’s) the obligation of all leaders in all countries to speak out forcefully against violence and extremism.”

Washington deplores democracy. It won’t tolerate it at home or abroad. No nation in world history committed more violent extremism than America. Countless millions of corpses attest to its record. Viciousness defines its agenda. It long predated Obama’s term in office.

It’s unparalleled and unconscionable. Obama continues America’s sordid tradition. He urged remembering that “Muslims have suffered  the most at the hands of extremism.” He omitted explaining who bears most responsibility. America’s culture is violent. Its roots are longstanding. It’s reflected worldwide and at home. Among all Western nations, it has by far the highest homicide rate. It has a passion for owning guns and using them.

Violent films are some of its most popular. Similar video games crowd out simpler, more innocent street play of earlier generations. Its society isn’t called a rape culture for nothing. Women experience extreme violence. Usually it’s committed by a husband, another relative, or someone they know.

Major media largely suppress it. Child and elder abuse are largely ignored. Imperial wars are called liberating ones. Peace, tranquility and safety are illusions. Foreign wars, homeland repression, and domestic violence crowd them out. It begs the question: What kind of country glorifies mass killing, assaults and abuse? Why is pacifism considered sissy and unpatriotic?

What gives America the right to claim exceptionalism and moral superiority? How can it call itself indispensable? No nation anywhere matches its deplorable record.

Obama had the audacity to claim otherwise in New York. Imperial arrogance was on display. He railed unjustifiably against Iran. He barely stopped short of declaring war. Doing so would constitute naked aggression. Iran threatens no one. Its nuclear program is peaceful. World leaders know. US and Israeli intelligence know it. No matter. America threatens war. Perhaps it’s planned sometime post-November elections.

Obama or Romney make no difference. Both represent two sides of the same coin. They’re venal imperial scoundrels. In New York, Obama was blunt, saying:

International law is clear. No nation may interfere in the internal affairs of others. None can dictate policy or wage preemptive war. America asserts the right for both unilaterally. Doing so reveals an out-of-control menace.

Israel matches its threat regionally. On September 23, Mossad-connected DEBKA file (DF) headlined “Hamas signs binding military commitment to Iran-led war on Israel,” saying:

Hamas co-founder and member of its leadership Mahoud al-Sahar, as well as Iranian deputy military commander Marwan Issa met earlier in September in Beirut.

DF claims they and Hezbollah agreed to wage war on Israel. Saying so inverts truth. They’re committed to defending themselves if attacked and providing aid.

DF also claims 22,000 elite Iranian al Qods Bridades fighters built up positions in Syria and Lebanon on Israel’s borders. No evidence whatever proves it.

DF suggests Hamas is “under contract to defer to Tehran” militarily. Moreover, Iran, Hezbollah, Syria and Hamas allegedly agreed to cooperate against Israel.

“In a potential outbreak of war,” Iran’s military command will be in charge.