Killing in war through different moral lenses

American Sniper (2014)
By Chris Driscoll |  Stranger in a Strange Land 

WARNER BROS/MALPASO PRODUCTIONS

[dropcap]Chris Kyle,[/dropcap] the sniper upon whose life the new Clint Eastwood movie, “American Sniper” is based, worked for a while as Sarah Palin’s body guard. Enough said? Well, yes, probably for most of you, that one fact tells you all you need to know about this dubious American hero being glorified in Eastwood’s latest cinematic endeavor. But there’s more, much much more, to tell.

First though, allow me to introduce the other hero of this contrast and comparison in sniper films, the other famous sniper upon whose life a movie was based: Vasily Grigoryevich Zaitsev.
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Vasily was a sharpshooter in the Battle of Stalingrad, the most horrendous conflagration during the entire Second World War. He was played by Jude Law in the 2001 movie “Enemy at the Gates.”

These sniper movies make for a stark contrast between two wars, one a desperate defensive struggle against Nazi occupation and genocide, the other, an aggressive war of imperial plunder based on hypocrisy,  taking the lives of literally hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, and turning to rubble a whole  ancient civilization. I guess we should not be surprised that the morals or lack of morals in the two men neatly reflect the morality or lack of morality in the two wars, the Soviets’ Great Patriotic War (World War II) and the U.S. War on the People of Iraq.

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LEARN MORE ABOUT VASILY ZAITSEV, THE GREATEST SNIPER OF WORLD WAR 2 AND HERO OF THE SOVIET UNION.

[learn_more caption=”The amazing story of Valery Zaitsev-Click on this bar.”]

This Hero of the Soviet Union killed more than 300 Nazi soldiers in the Battle of Stalingrad during World War II and taught scores of other snipers.

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Vasily Zaitsev was born into a family of peasants in the village of Yelenovsk in the Chelyabinsk Region in the Urals. His grandfather taught him to hunt at a very early age. As bullets were scarce, Vasily learnt to pull the trigger just once per animal. This is how he grew up to become a sharpshooter.

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In 1937 Vasily was recruited into the Red Army.
Despite his small frame, he was sent to serve in the Soviet Navy in the Pacific, near Vladivostok. But when Nazi forces invaded the Soviet Union, Zaitsev, like many of his comrades, volunteered to be transferred to the frontline. At the time he had already reached the rank of Sergeant Major.

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On the eve of 22 September 1942 Zaitsev crossed the Volga River and joined the 1047th Rifle Regiment of the 284th Rifle Division of the 62nd Army. He made a name for himself during the first encounters with the enemy in the flame-lit city. One day, Zaitsev’s commanding officer called him up and pointed at an enemy officer in a window 800 meters away. Vasily took aim from his standard-issue Mossin-Nagant rifle, and with one shot, the officer was down. In less than a few moments, two other Nazi soldiers appeared in the window, checking their fallen officer. Vasily fired two more shots, and they were killed. For this, together with the Medal for Valor, Vasily was also awarded a sniper rifle.

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 Vasily Zaitsev’s name quickly became known across the Soviet Union. Between 10 November and 17 December he was credited with 225 verified kills, 11 of them snipers. The Soviets soon organized a school of snipers based in a metal hardware factory, marking the beginning of the sniper movement in the Red Army. “For us there was no land beyond the Volga,” Zaitsev once said in a famous quote, revealing his fervent loyalty to the Motherland.

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Zaitsev would hide in all sorts of locations – on high ground, under rubble, in water pipes. After a few kills he would change his position. Together with his partner Nikolay Kulikov, Zaitsev would hide and sting. One of Zaitsev’s common tactics was to cover one large area from three positions with two men at each point – a sniper and scout. This tactic, known as the “sixes,” is still in use today and was implemented during the war in Chechnya.

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In his memoirs, Vasily recalls a certain sly Nazi sniper he tracked for a week – they called him the “Supersniper.” He was allegedly Heinz Thorvald, aka Erwin König, a high-ranking Werhmacht officer and head of the Berlin sniper school. There is little known about König’s identify. He reportedly came to Stalingrad to kill Zaitsev, who had already caused much havoc and drained Nazi morale. Zaitsev writes that the sniper was highly skilled and was very hard to find. But when two of Vasily’s comrades were injured by a sniper, Zaitsev and Kulikov began searching the area, and Vasily noticed a glimpse of light under a piece of metal. When Kulikov lifted a helmet on a stick from a window, Erwin König fired and revealed himself as he peeked to see whether his target was dead. It was then that Zaitsev shot him in the head.

The sniper duel is loosely depicted in the feature film “Enemy at the Gates,” directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud and starring Jude Law as Zaitsev and Ed Harris as Major König. Vasily continued teaching Soviet soldiers while sniping Nazi troops until January 1943 when he was severely wounded and blinded by a mortar. He was taken to Moscow, where he was operated on by Professor Filatov, the famous Russian ophthalmologist. While he was in hospital, his rifle was given to the best snipers in his school. His students, the “zaichata,” were credited with more than 6,000 kills during World War II.

Vasily Zaitsev (left) training a companion. (Za Rodinu, via flickr.)

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With his sense of sight restored, Zaitsev returned to the frontline, where he continued teaching snipers, commandeered a mortar platoon and became a Regiment Commander. He fought in Ukraine, at the Dnepr and in Odessa, sniping the enemy at the Dniestr River. But during the victorious day of 9 May 1945, he was in hospital again. He ended the war with the rank of Captain. After the war, Zaitsev lived in Kiev, where he studied at a textile university and then worked as an engineer before becoming the director of a textile plant.

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Vasily Zaitsev died in 1991 and was buried in Kiev, although his final request was to be buried in the land he fought so hard to defend – Stalingrad. His wish came true on the 63rd anniversary of the Battle of Stalingrad, when Vasily Zaitsev was reburied with full military honors at Mamayev Kurgan in Volgograd, a monument in honor of the millions of victims of the battle. His rifle is on display in the Museum for the Defense of Stalingrad.

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Vasily Zaitsev’s highest awards include: Hero of the Soviet Union, Order of Lenin, Order of the Red Banner (twice), Order of the Patriotic War (First Class), Medal for the Defense of Stalingrad and the Medal for the Victory Over Germany.

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SOURCE: RUSSIAPEDIA
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MAIN ARTICLE RESUMES HERE

After the war, Zaitsev, unlike Kyle, did not go into politics–or reality TV shows–but rather, he settled in Kiev where he took correspondence courses to become an engineer, and worked his way up to become the director in a textile factory. During the war, after being wounded, he wrote two books on sniper tactics which militaries around the world, including the U.S. military, still use today in sniper training.

Kyle, who tragically lost his life in Dec. 2013 when a post-traumatically stressed Iraq War vet went berserk on him at a shooting range in West Texas, was a notorious and well-exposed public liar. So, little about Eastwood’s movie—based on Kyle’s book, “American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History“—can be relied upon.

“So you turn around and sue, expecting $2 million from a military widow and her fatherless children? Yeah, like that is going to help your reputation, jackass.”

“Chris Kyle was a true American patriot–the soldier who stood up for his country and saved so many lives by doing the job his Commander-in-chief gave him, taking out the bad guys. For his extraordinary work, Chris was known as “The American Sniper.” He was senselessly murdered on our own soil while helping a military brother. His widow and young children will forever feel a lot more “hurt” than you will, Jesse, after a sad verdict in your ridiculous lawsuit against Chris. . .”

In another adventure of dubious validity, a profile in the June 2013 issue of “The New Yorker” has Kyle claim he went to New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina and he and a friend stationed themselves on top of the Superdome where they proceeded to “take out” about 30 armed looters. A U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) spokesman told The New Yorker, “To the best of anyone’s knowledge at SOCOM, there were no West Coast SEALs deployed to Katrina.” He said Kyle’s story, “defies the imagination.” And, of course, there were no reports at the time of 30-some extra dead bodies laying around New Orleans with sniper bullets in their bodies.

As a New Republic headline proclaimed in the magazine’s obituary of the fallen sniper, “If Chris Kyle Had Been a Muslim, We’d Call him an Extremist.” After all, the New Republic opined, he had a “crusader’s cross” tattooed on his arm. In his book, Kyle wrote, “On the front of my arm, I had a crusader cross inked in. . . I wanted everyone to know I was a Christian. I had it put in red, for blood. I hated the damned savages I’d been fighting. I always will. They’ve taken so much from me.”

Kyle also liked to regale his friends with a story about being attacked at a gas station at gunpoint by two assailants, whom he claimed to have shot dead. But again, there were no witnesses, police say they found no bodies, and in general, the story sounds about as accurate as the New Orleans tale.

Reality show star

In 2012 Kyle co-starred in the reality TV show, Stars Earn Stripes, produced by Mark Burnett, in which celebrities supposedly competed in war games on behalf of charities. It was a twisted, repellent concept—half blatant chauvinism cum propaganda for imperial wars, and half insult to the peoples and nations used as mere backdrops for the stars’ ludicrous shenanigans— from the mind of one of Hollywood’s most reactionary power players (Burnett also produces Survivor, and 10 other shows, including The Apprentice, Shark Tank, etc. A Christian “fundie” and proud of it, in 2013 Burnett produced The Bible series that brought in around 100 million viewers, and ended up being the most-watched cable miniseries of the year. In 2014 Burnett went on to produce the feature film Son of God).

Gen. Wesley Clarke, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, was roped in to host Stars Earn Stripes. Along with Kyle were the former “First Gentleman of Alaska,” Todd Palin; singer and actor Nick Lachey; retired professional boxer, Laila Ali, daughter of Mohammed Ali, who should have known better considering her father’s record of opposition to imperial wars; and TV Superman from “Lois and Clark,” Dean Cain. The show was mercifully cancelled after loud protests from many people and organizations, including many veterans.

As noted earlier, character questions had begun to pile up—even in mainstream outlets—by the time Kyle died. In a Guardian (UK) op-ed, Lindy West described Kyle as a “hate-filled killer” and asked, “Why are simplistic patriots treating him as a hero?” She pointed out that Kyle, in his autobiography called killing “fun”, said he “loved” it, and was convinced that he was taking out the “bad guys”.  “I hate the damn savages,” Kyle said in his book. “I couldn’t give a flying fuck about the Iraqis.”

Kyle claimed 255 kills, with 160 confirmed by the Department of Defense, making him the most effective sniper in U.S. history.

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All of the above would present difficult issues to a more socially responsible director when seeking to portray as tortured and contradictory an individual as Chris Kyle, but Eastwood does not fit that mould; his specialty, at least in the area of military flicks, is to produce pseudo-serious melodramas that leave out as much of the truth as necessary to end up with a hagiographic image of the chosen heroes. The upshot is highly effective emotional manipulation, and the public (and critics) eat it. I have no idea if Eastwood does this deliberately or not. Either way the effect is the same. 

This is the propaganda imperial America wants people consuming, as America’s new generation of “wars of choice” requires unflagging supporters.  To maintain the necessary propaganda momentum the ruling elite, via the Pentagon, its ubiquitous corporate media, and other less visible tentacles, is not averse at funding and endorsing Hollywood projects that crudely or subtly  manufacture passionate support for foreign interventions and racist hatred of whichever “enemy du jour” falls in Washington’s crosshairs.

Critics accolades misguided

In their almost unanimous acclaim for Eastwood’s film, American critics —aping the producers’  assurances that the film is not really political and not really about Iraq (!) —have only shown the poverty of their intellect or simply their abject careerist conformity.  As Peter Maass put it so well on his comments on the film for The Intercept,

Kyle’s memoir has been turned into a film starring Bradley Cooper and it’s an Oscar contender even before its national release on January 16. The Los Angeles Times hails its action scenes as “impeccably crafted,” while The New Yorker salutes Clint Eastwood for making other directors “look like beginners.” Unfortunately, Hollywood’s producing class, taking a break from exchanging catty emails about A-list stars, has created another war film that ignores history, and reviewers who spend too much time in screening rooms are falling over themselves in praise of it.

They should know better. In 2012, “Zero Dark Thirty,” about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, was lavishly praised by most reviewers, and it wasn’t until criticism emerged from political reporters like Jane Mayer and others (I wrote about it too) that the tide turned against the pro-torture fantasy at its core. The backlash, coming after the film made “best of the year” lists, was probably responsible for it (fortunately) being all but shut out of the Academy Awards. Hopefully the praise-and-reconsider scenario will recur with “American Sniper.” (How Clint Eastwood Ignores History in ‘American Sniper‘)

Maass is absolutely spot on. The moral context of a story with grave implications for our society is not something to kick aside as so much extraneous baggage. Zaitsev was shooting at the invaders, Germans—many Nazis—who were in his homeland plundering, murdering, raping and in general doing whatever they could to utterly destroy Stalingrad and kill all its people, not to mention deal a hard morale blow to the Soviet people and smash the Soviet Union itself. Not to mention that Germany had started the war after mounting some pretty cynical false flag events in Poland and elsewhere.

Kyle, on the other hand, was the invader in a war of choice that easily qualifies as an international War Crime as per Nuremberg Tribunal laws, while so-called “enemy combatants” like Mustafa were defending their country from imperialist domination and occupation. How many Americans, you may ask, would not resist a brutal invader under exactly similar circumstances? Apparently this elementary question never entered Eastwood’s skull.

And there are other points of congruency. Both films have subplots that feature strong women in supporting roles. In American Sniper, Kyle’s wife, Taya, played by Sienna Miller, portrays the hardships of the wife of a SEAL holding down the home front, and, after Kyle’s return, the difficulty of dealing with a man who’s spent months in a combat zone killing people and being tormented by the inevitable demons. In Enemy Tania, played by Rachel Weisz, is a Stalingrad resident in the local militia who becomes Zaitsev’s love interest during the Battle of Stalingrad.

With Sniper Eastwood apparently yields again to a troubling penchant to sentimentalize bullies or war in general. In Heartbreak Ridge (1986) Eastwood constructed a script that whitewashed the enormous—in fact shameful—disparity between the forces of puny Grenada and the greatest superpower on earth. In his flick, it was the Marines who covered themselves in glory, although even some Marines found the deed a bit short of genuine heroism, considering their own record of combat in practically all latitudes against far more formidable opponents.
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With Flags of Our Fathers (2006), focusing on Iwo Jima, Eastwood again chose war as the main canvas, and although he tried to “balance” the books by also including the Japanese side of the story, noble he, there’s enough luster and praise for the military to satisfy any man (or woman) in uniform these days.

War can be profitable. Heartbreak, for example, went boffo at the box office, chalking up almost a 1000% return on investment.

Budget	$15 million[1]
Box office	$121,700,000[2]

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Eastwood’s political contradictions

I guess the solution to Eastwood’s riddle is that we should simply note what he does instead of what he says. It is clear that Eastwood is ignorant or indifferent to the distinction between subjective and objective when it comes to evaluating an artist’s social impact.  Whatever he may think subjectively, it’s undeniable that, objectively, where it counts, Eastwood has been more often than not a supporter of conservative approaches to social and foreign policy, and that his cumulative oeuvre has consistently defended a rightwing or establishmentarian position.

In 1992, Eastwood acknowledged to writer David Breskin that his political views represented a fusion of Milton Friedman and Noam Chomsky and suggested that they would make for a worthwhile presidential ticket.^[329] In 1999, Eastwood stated, “I guess I was a social liberal and fiscal conservative before it became fashionable.”^[330] Ten years later, in 2009, Eastwood said that he was now a registered Libertarian.^[331]

Despite being heavily associated with firearms in his Westerns and cop movies, Eastwood has publicly endorsed gun control since at least 1973. In the April 24, 1973, edition of the Washington Post, the star stated that “I’m for gun legislation myself. I don’t hunt.”^[332] Two years later, in 1975, Eastwood told People magazine that he favors “gun control to some degree”.^[333] About a year later, Eastwood remarked that “All guns should be registered. I don’t think legitimate gun owners would mind that kind of legislation. Right now the furor against a gun law is by gun owners who are overreacting. They’re worried that all guns are going to be recalled. It’s impossible to take guns out of circulation, and that’s why firearms should be registered and mail-order delivery of guns halted.”^[334] In 1993, he noted that he “… was always a backer” of the Brady Bill, with its federally mandated waiting period.^[335] In 1995, Eastwood questioned the purpose of assault weapons. Larry King, the famous television host and newspaper columnist, wrote in the May 22, 1995, edition of USA Today that “My interview with Eastwood will air on ‘Larry King Weekend’ … I asked him his thoughts on the NRA and gun control and he said that while people think of him as pro-gun, he has always been in favor of controls. ‘Why would anyone need or want an assault weapon?’ he said.”^[336]

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But regardless of Eastwood’s motives, there is no doubt that the US establishment welcomes movies like “American Sniper” because they promote support for its wars of plunder, wars that would be difficult to get people behind if not for mountains of propaganda.

The war in Iraq, of course, was founded on lies—nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, and the suggestion that Saddam was involved in the 9/11 attacks—something the media could have easily disproven, had American journalists discharged their duty instead of simply acted as “stenographers to power” safeguarding their careers. In fact it has been massive and nonstop unchallenged lies since 9/11 that have also permitted the inauguration of a new era of “permanent terror psychosis”, with terrible consequences for real democracy and freedom in America and the world.

This is not the place to offer a detailed analysis of the betrayals of the American press, which has now fully integrated itself into the system’s propaganda machine, but it should be said that Hollywood —an engine of mass communications that now comprises both cinema and television—is certainly not an innocent bystander.

Just to enumerate some of the more recent outrages, it is precisely this highly polluted and confused public consciousness that has allowed Washington to assault and destroy Libya, Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, a strategy that has now given rise to our own Frankenstein in ISIL, al Qaeda, etc., but which —fortunately for the military-industrial-security complex—provide further fuel for our endless “anti-terror wars”.  The same massive ignorance and disinformation has enabled the West to pull a fascist coup in Ukraine; ignore the genocidal Israeli attack on Gaza and Kiev’s war on Novorussia, while also defusing the “Arab Spring” from Cairo to Bahrain, etc, etc. Ironically, such appalling criminality pales in comparison to the even more catastrophic  policies being rolled out by NATO under US hegemony, including the effort to isolate and destabilize China for the crime of being a competing power, and the vicious and hypocritical demonization of Russia and her leader, Putin—all of it pushing the world that much closer to a final nuclear conflagration.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
NOTES
Stalingrad (2013), also presents a realistic vision of this conflict, and, naturally, the Russian perspective. Worth checking out.

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Based on	American Sniper by Chris Kyle DIRECTED BY CLINT EASTWOOD
Starring	Bradley Cooper (as Kyle) Sienna Miller (as his wife) Max Charles Luke Grimes Kyle Gallner Sam Jaeger Jake McDorman Cory Hardrict

 Distributed by Warner Bros.

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The Big Bully turns tail when confronted by a capable adversary.  Not only that, but the Pentagon had the gall to issue a protest for an incident clearly caused by its own policy of constant provocations. 

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Bill Van Auken and David North, wsws.org
[W]ith US politicians and the American media engaged in an increasingly acrimonious debate over the strategy guiding the latest US war in the Middle East, the United States Army has unveiled a new document entitled the Army Operating Concept (AOC), which provides a “vision of future armed conflict” that has the most ominous implications. It is the latest in a series of documents in which the Pentagon has elaborated the underlying strategy of preventive war that was unveiled in 1992—that is, the use of war as a means of destroying potential geopolitical and economic rivals before they acquire sufficient power to block American domination of the globe.

The document was formally released at this week’s Association of the United States Army (AUSA) conference, an annual event bringing together senior officers and Defense Department officials for a series of speeches and panel discussions, along with a giant trade show mounted by arms manufacturers to show off their latest weapons systems and pursue lucrative Pentagon contracts.

Much of this year’s proceedings were dominated by dire warnings about the impact of cuts to the Army’s troop strength brought about by sequestration. Gen. Raymond Odierno, chief of staff of the Army, told reporters at the AUSA conference Monday that he was “starting to worry about our end strength” and regretting having told Congress in 2012 that the Army could manage with 490,000 active-duty soldiers.

In addition to the 490,000, there are 350,000 National Guard soldiers and 205,000 reservists, for a combined force—referred to by the Pentagon as the Total Army—of well over one million American troops. The answer to why such a gargantuan armed force would seem inadequate to Gen. Odierno can be found in the new Army Operating Concept (AOC), a reckless and dangerous document laying out a strategy of total war that encompasses the entire planet, including the United States itself.

The document makes clear that in regard to the ongoing debate over “boots on the ground,” for the top brass of the US Army there is no question: there will be boots and plenty of them.

At the outset, the AOC states its “vision” for the coming wars to be fought by the US Army. In language that recalls former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s invocation of the “unknown unknowns,” the document asserts: “The environment the Army will operate in is unknown. The enemy is unknown, the location is unknown, and the coalitions involved are unknown.”

The only logical explanation for this paranoid scenario is that the US military views every country beyond its borders as a potential enemy. Starting from the premise that the environments, the enemies, the locations and the coalitions involved in future conflicts are unknown, the US Army requires a strategy for war against all states and peoples. This strategy is derived from the unstated, underlying imperative that US imperialism exert hegemony over the entire planet, its markets and resources, and that it be prepared to militarily annihilate any rival that stands in its way.

The document states bluntly that the “character of armed conflict” will be influenced primarily by “shifts in geopolitical landscape caused by competition for power and resources.” For the Army’s top brass, such wars for imperialist domination are a certainty.

The Army’s strategic aim, according to the document, is to achieve “overmatch,” which it defines as “the application of capabilities or use of tactics in a way that renders an adversary unable to respond effectively.”

What do these words entail? In the case of a confrontation with another nuclear power, they encompass the implementation of a first-strike doctrine of mass annihilation. In regard to the subjugation and domination of other areas of the globe, they call for massive ground operations to quell popular resistance and enforce military occupation.

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There is little question the US military is completely “corporatized”. The Pentagon follows global corporate goals and marches to corporate values.  The lies and self-serving delusions are rampant.  The Pentagon accuses Russia of being “determined to expand its territory and assert its power on the Eurasian landmass,” precisely US imperialism’s own strategic goal.

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Significantly, after more than a decade of the so-called “global war on terror, “ when countering a supposedly ubiquitous threat from Al Qaeda was the overriding mission of the US military-intelligence apparatus, “transnational terrorist organizations” are rather low on the Army’s list of priorities.

First and foremost are “competing powers,” a category that includes China, followed by Russia. In the case of China, the document evinces serious concern over Chinese “force modernization efforts,” which it says are aimed at achieving “stability along its periphery,” something that the US military is determined to block. China’s military efforts, it states, “highlight the need for Army forces positioned forward or regionally engaged,” and for “Army forces to project power from land into the air, maritime, space and cyberspace domains.”

Based on recent events in Ukraine, the document accuses Russia of being “determined to expand its territory and assert its power on the Eurasian landmass,” precisely US imperialism’s own strategic goal. Only a powerful deployment of US ground forces, it argues, can deter Russian “adventurism” and “project national power and exert influence in political conflicts.”

From there, the paper proceeds to “regional powers,” in the first instance, Iran. It also accuses Iran of “pursuing comprehensive military modernization” and argues that “Taken collectively, Iranian activity has the potential to undermine US regional goals,” i.e., undisputed hegemony over the Middle East and its energy resources. Iran’s activities, it concludes, “highlight the need for Army forces to remain effective against the fielded forces of nation states as well as networked guerrilla or insurgent organizations.”

The document does not limit the “vision” of future military operations to war abroad, but includes the need to “respond and mitigate crises in the homeland,” which it describes as “a unique theater of operations for the Joint Force and the Army.” The Army’s mission within the US, it asserts, includes “defense support of civil authorities.”

The AOC document is stark testimony to a military run amuck. Involved in these strategic conceptions are advanced preparations for fighting a Third World War, combined with the institution within the US itself of a military dictatorship in all but name.

Gen. Odierno’s complaints about troop strength will not be satisfied by any minor congressional adjustments of the Pentagon budget. The kind of warfare that the Army is contemplating cannot be waged outside of a massive military mobilization by means of universal conscription—the return of the draft.

The founders of the United States repeatedly expressed grave distrust of a standing army. The military as it presently exists and its plan for global warfare represent a hideous modern-day realization of their nightmare scenario. The implementation of this doctrine of total war is wholly incompatible with democratic rights and constitutional government within the US. It requires the ruthless suppression of any political opposition and all social struggles mounted by the American working class.

Within the US ruling establishment and its two political parties, there exists no serious opposition to carrying the militarization of life within the so-called “homeland” to its ultimate conclusion. Civilian control of the military has been turned into a dead letter, with politicians routinely bowing to the generals on matters of policy, both foreign and domestic.

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Bill Van Auken and David North are senior members of the Social Equality Party (SEP), publisher of wsws.org.

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By David Swanson
Originally posted on December 10, 2010 by Cyrano’s Journal Today 

The following is an excerpt from David Swanson’s self-published new book War is a Lie (David Swanson, 2010)

and that you’ll send them to college if they live? hey, just promising it costs you nothing. If they’re resistant, you started too late. Put military video games in shopping malls. Send uniformed generals into kindergartens to warm the children up to the idea of truly and properly swearing allegiance to that flag. Spend 10 times the money on recruiting each new soldier as we spend educating each child. Do anything, anything, anything other than starting a draft.

Formally we have no draft, but in practice we have a poverty draft. The majority of military recruits come from below-median income neighborhoods.

Mariscal understands that there are many other motivations as well, including the desire to do something useful and important for others. But he believes those generous impulses are being misdirected:

The transition from war primarily by the rich to war primarily by the poor has been a very gradual one and is far from complete. For one thing, those in the highest positions of power in the military are more likely to have come from privileged backgrounds. And regardless of their background, top officers are the least likely to see dangerous combat. Leading the troops into battle is not how it works anymore, except in our imaginations. Both presidents Bush saw their approval ratings soar in public opinion polls when they fought wars ? at least at first when the wars were still new and magnificent. Never mind that these presidents fought their wars from the air-conditioned Oval Office. One result of this is that those making the decisions upon which the most lives hang are the least likely to see war death up close, or to have ever seen it.

The Air-Conditioned Nightmare

The first President Bush had seen World War II from an airplane, already a distance away from the dying, although not as far away as Reagan who had avoided going to war. Just as thinking of enemies as subhuman makes it easier to kill them, bombing them from high in the sky is much easier psychologically than participating in a knife fight or shooting a traitor standing blindfolded beside a wall. Presidents Clinton and Bush Jr. avoided the Vietnam War, Clinton through educational privilege, Bush through being the son of his father. President Obama never went to war. Vice Presidents Dan Quayle, Dick Cheney, and Joe Biden, like Clinton and Bush Jr., dodged the draft. Vice President Al Gore went to the Vietnam War briefly, but as an army journalist, not a soldier who saw combat.

Himmler told them to do their duty even if it was hard. He returned to doing his from the comfort of a desk.

Shalt Thou Kill or Not?

Killing sounds a lot easier than it is. Throughout history, men have risked their own lives to avoid having to take part in wars:

The mutilation of bodies, whatever drives it in each case, is a fairly common practice in war, although engaged in mostly by people who were not inclined to murderous violence prior to joining the military. Numerous war trophy photos from the War on Iraq show corpses and body parts mutilated and displayed in close-up, laid out on a platter as if for cannibals. Many of these images were sent by American soldiers to a website that marketed pornography. Presumably, these images were viewed as war pornography. Presumably, they were created by people who had come to love war ? not by the Himmlers or the Dick Cheneys who enjoy sending others, but by people who actually enjoyed being there, people who signed up for college money or adventure and were trained as sociopathic killers.

Gilligan looks at violent crimes, especially murder, and then turns his attention to our system of violent punishment, including the death penalty, prison rape, and solitary confinement. He views retributive punishment as the same sort of irrational violence as the crimes it is punishing. He sees structural violence and poverty as doing the most damage, but he does not address the subject of war. In scattered references Gilligan makes clear that he lumps war into his theory of violence, and yet in one place he opposes ending wars, and nowhere does he explain how his theory can be coherently applied.

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David Swanson is the author of the just published book War Is A Lie and Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union. He blogs atLet’s Try Democracy and War Is a Crime.

© 2010 davidswanson.org All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/149165/

 

These are just rehearsals by the lurking police state…get ready for the real thing.

Barry Grey, wsws.org

[T]he state of Missouri, with the full backing of the Obama administration, has responded to continuing protests against the police murder of Michael Brown, an unarmed African American teenager, by imposing de facto martial law on the largely working class city of Ferguson.

Residents have been stripped of the constitutionally guaranteed right to assemble, reporters have been arrested or banished in violation of freedom of the press, police checkpoints have been set up at major intersections. A massive force of military vehicles, helicopters, sound cannon, flash grenades, tear gas, SWAT teams wielding assault weapons and local cops backed by National Guard troops has been deployed to intimidate, terrorize and crush social protest.

On Monday night, the crackdown on overwhelmingly peaceful protesters demanding justice in the killing of Brown was stepped up. Seventy-eight people were arrested ostensibly for failing to obey a police order, for which there is no legal or constitutional basis, to disperse.

The scale of the repression is vastly disproportionate to the supposed threat from what the authorities are calling “criminal elements.” At a 2:20 am Tuesday press conference, Missouri Highway Patrol Captain Ron Johnson, who was put in charge of security operations last week by Democratic Governor Jay Nixon, could point only to two hand guns, one Molotov cocktail and some water bottles allegedly captured by the police to justify that night’s violent crackdown and mass arrests. He advised “peaceful protesters” to stay home Tuesday night so that the police could identify all those on the street as “outside agitators” and arrest them.

The arbitrary and disproportionate use of force has characterized the entire crisis. Brown, who was not carrying a weapon, was shot six times at point-blank range. Peaceful protests by outraged residents were met with a military-style crackdown, mass arrests, the declaration of a state of emergency, and the imposition of what amounts to martial law.

As video reports posted on the World Socialist Web Site show, residents of Ferguson are making the connection between the military-police occupation of their city and the use of similar methods by the United States government in Iraq and Afghanistan. They are pointing to the hypocrisy of Washington’s claim to be defending democratic and human rights in the Middle East and Central Asia, while at home it responds to any sign of social opposition by employing the same anti-democratic and violent means it cites as the reason for overthrowing foreign governments.

This is the very point the WSWS made just days before the police murder of Brown. In an August 4 Perspective column entitled “The slaughter in Gaza: A warning to the international working class,” the WSWS wrote: “The Israeli onslaught in Gaza is a forewarning of the measures that will be used in every country against working class resistance to war, militarism and the agenda of austerity. The methods developed in the course of a decade of the US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to terrorise hostile populations will also be used against workers fighting to defend their jobs, living standards and basic democratic rights.”

The resort to police state methods in Ferguson is the outcome of the protracted decay of American democracy. This process entered a new stage with the theft of the 2000 presidential election. It was accelerated after 9/11 and the declaration of the so-called “war on terror.” From the start, that phony war was used to justify an eruption of imperialist war abroad and an unrelenting assault on democratic rights within the US.

The past 13 years have seen a massive buildup of the repressive powers of the state at the expense of democratic rights, resulting today in the existence of a police state in waiting. The USA Patriot Act, which sanctioned the unbridled expansion of government spying on the people of America and the world, was followed by the establishment of the Homeland Security Department, which has coordinated and funded, along with the Pentagon, the transformation of local police into paramilitary counterinsurgency forces. The Northern Command, the first ever military command covering the territory of the United States, was set up.

These innovations were accompanied by countless studies and plans developed by military and intelligence agencies and think tanks for urban warfare and mass repression to quash social protest in the US. The 2013 Boston Marathon bombings were seized on as an opportunity to put such plans to the test. For the first time in American history, a major urban area was placed under a military-police lockdown and civil liberties were effectively suspended. The absence of any significant protest from any section of the political or media establishment confirmed the collapse of any commitment to democracy within the ruling class.

The assault on democratic rights under George W. Bush has been accelerated under Barack Obama. The current president has not only shielded the authors of torture programs and the Guantanamo gulag from prosecution, he has asserted his right to indefinitely detain and even assassinate US citizens without due process, and admitted to having done so.

The driving force behind these advanced preparations for a police state is the immense growth of social inequality. A quasi-criminal corporate-financial elite, which enriches itself on the basis of speculative activities of a parasitical nature while destroying the industrial infrastructure and decent-paying jobs, arrogates to itself an ever greater share of the national wealth. This form of criminality is inextricably linked to a criminal foreign policy based on aggression, war and plunder.

Every democratic and social demand of the working class collides with the social interests of this new aristocracy. It views every manifestation of social protest as a threat to its interests that must be immediately smashed.

The vast and unaccountable military-police-intelligence apparatus that has been built up over the years functions as the guarantor of the interests of this criminal capitalist elite. A political analysis of the events in Ferguson must begin not with the empty and insincere rhetoric of Obama and other politicians, but with what they are doing. In the interests of the financial oligarchy they serve, they are mobilizing the repressive violence of the state to terrorize the working class in Ferguson and set a precedent to be used in cities all across the country.

This is the reality of America. Not accidentally, the most socially unequal of all advanced industrialized countries is also the most undemocratic. The root cause is the capitalist system itself, which is incapable of meeting the basic needs of the working class, the vast majority of the population.

Barry Grey is a senior political commentator with wsws.org, a socialist publication.